MER Article The "Street" and the Politics of Dissent in the Arab World In the tense weeks between the September 11 attacks and the first US bombing raids over Afghanistan, and continuing until the fall of the Taliban, commentators raised serious concerns about what the Wall Street Journal later called the "irrational Arab street." [1] If the US attacked a Muslim Asef Bayat • 18 min read
MER Article Cairo's Poor The proliferation of more than 100 squatter communities with some 6 million inhabitants signifies only one, but perhaps the starkest, component of the growing socioeconomic disparity [1] in Cairo since Sadat’s infitah (“opening up” or economic liberalization) in 1974 and the more recent implementation of the IMF’s structural Asef Bayat • 12 min read
MER Article Squatters and the State The early 1990s saw a period of renewed urban popular uprisings in Iran, unprecedented since the 1979 revolution. From August 1991 to August 1994, six major upheavals took place in Tehran, Shiraz, Arak, Mashhad, Ghazvin and Tabriz, and there were frequent minor clashes in many other urban centers. M Asef Bayat • 14 min read
MER Article Workers' Control After the Revolution In the months preceeding the February armed insurrection which led to the downfall of the Pahlavi regime, the term shura (council) appeared frequently in the speeches and literature of various political tendencies ranging from the Islamic right to the leftist organizations. The most ardent advocates Asef Bayat • 19 min read