Dispatches from the Arab Spring : Understanding The New Middle East

It is time to rethink how we understand the Arab world. The myriad revolts and revolutions of the so-called Arab Spring unleashed forces of emancipation and spirits of social justice that swept across the region with unprecedented speed, ferocity, and joy. As these epochal movements faced violent devolutions and frustrating detours, horizons of transformation remained in question. But there is no doubt that like so many dictators, the old regimes of perception about the Arab world have been toppled. Dispatches from the Arab Spring offers modes of analysis inspired by the methodology of revolt. It provides a comprehensive reintroduction to the entire region, not just those countries and spectacles that most captivated the media. This book weaves comprehension of new forms of domination and resistance into the whole cloth of social history, political geography, cultural creativity, global political economy, and power politics. The study of the Arab world is no longer limited to grasping the intractability of imperial or colonial or bellicose pasts: it is turning to recognize the exciting imminence of global futures. The book collects writings by some of the world’s most respected intellectuals who have turned their attention to the region. They are deeply aware of the national and local dynamics, schooled in the world of detail-where the devil lurks but so does hope. Dispatches from the Arab Spring lays out a tentative map for the future, hewed of a comparative agenda for introducing the region to students, the public, and researchers, for tracking new actors, structural economic formations, and political possibilities. A truly global history that examines the prospects of a worldwide power shift from North to South. PAUL AMAR is associate professor in the Global and International Studies Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His books include The Security Archipelago: Human-Security States, Sexuality Politics, and the End of Neoliberalism; Cairo Cosmopolitan: Politics, Culture, and Urban Space in the New Globalized Middle East (edited with Diane Singerman); New Racial Missions of Policing: International Perspectives on Evolving Law-Enforcement Politics; Global South to the Rescue: Emerging Humanitarian Superpowers and Globalizing Rescue Industries; and The Middle East and Brazil. VIJAY PRASHAD is the Edward Said Chair at the American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon. He is the author, most recently, of The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South.…