Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East, Second Edition

This book gives a refreshing view of the Middle East. It talks about the dynamics of poor people, radical islam, feminism in the area, pre Arab Spring social and economic dynamics. It fights common assumptions and generalizations we have on the Middle East. Pretty good and very recommended. The author is not one sided, he knows what the assumptions on Arabs and Muslims are and he accepts them when they are valid, but he contests against them with lots of examples.

It's all good.

This was the last book book my Humanistic class to read and after suffering through many dry or dreadful texts, this one was surprisingly easy to read, engaging, interesting and hopeful. I think Bayat has a great perspective on how individual people and truly make positive, lasting change in the world.

A new form of social movements have emerged in Middle Eastern societies and Bayat does an excellent job in describing what form of collective action new generations of Muslim youths are deploying. Bayat calls it new Islamic "refo-lutions," which combines a mix of religion with modernity to mobilize against oppression. These new ways of contesting sultanistic regimes are more potent and much bigger than the fundamentalist movements in the Islamic world. We need to pay closer attention to "everyday forms of protests" and what goals they aspire to, instead of reverting back to supporting old regimes.