Bloodshed, Liminality & The Ends Of Egypt’s Revolution
The word “ends” has at least two significant meanings. We can speak of “ends” as goals, aspirations or outcomes. For example, we might ask, “What are the ends…
Author: MPeterson
Are The Media Using The Wrong Yardstick To Measure The Revolution?
The concept of “revolution” used by Western media to report on the so-called “Arab Spring” (itself a term coined by the Western media) is rooted in understandings of…
“Revolutionary Egypt” Book Gets a Facebook Page
Its a book about the “Facebook revolution”, right? So it is only appropriate it finally gets its own Facebook page–concurrent with its coming out in paperback and as…
Egypt as “Securocratic” State
There’s a new paper from Maha Abdelrahman of the University of Cambridge entitled “Policing neoliberalism in Egypt: the continuing rise of the ‘securocratic’ state.” Abdelrahman join…
What Did Hosni Mubarak Mean By “Democracy”
That democracy means different things to different people is a truism so obvious as to be banal. But the intercultural problem that raises remains perpetually interesting: what do…
Cleaning Up Cairo
One of the things I teach my students about power in my Peoples of the World class at Miami University is that power rests in the ways that…
Creating Participatory Democracy (Or Trying, Anyway)
In hindsight, the biggest problem with the extraordinary protests in Tahrir Square was the lack of a coherent plan for creating democracy once Mubarak stepped down. I hear that…
Bibliography of the Egyptian Revolution Updated
The Bibliography resource on the Egyptian uprisings has been updated. The bibliography now includes over 875 references. Updates include articles from such journals as Digest of Middle East Studies, …
“The Arab Spring: Five Years After”
Third World Quarterly has a special collection of articles on “The Arab Spring: Five Years After.” The collection of six papers is edited by Richard Falk, of Princeton,…
“The Egyptian Revolution Hasn’t Happened Yet”
I had dinner with Robin Wright this week after she delivered the 2016 Grayson-Kirk lecture at Miami University. Egypt was one of seven countries she discussed (along…
Twitter Images of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution: New Journal Article
Images have a semiotic density quite different from that of words, So if “a picture is worth a thousand words” how many tweets is it worth? And is…
CFP: Media & Culture
CALL FOR PAPERS Arab Media & Society, the biannual journal of the Kamal Adham Center for Television and Digital Journalism in the School of Global Affairs and Public…
Urban Space, Virtual Space, and the Media In Egypt
What is “the geography of urban uprising during the so-called Arab Spring” and, particularly, what is the relationship between its physical and virtual locations? That’s the question…
“Revolutionary Egypt” Book Launch
If you are going to be in London next month–Nov. 17, to be precise–you might want to drop in on a panel at the London Middle East Institute…
When We Assess Democracy In Egypt, Whose “Democracy” Are We Measuring?
“Bread, freedom, social justice!” What’s your definition of democracy? Yesterday, after a lecture on ethnographic fieldwork, a student came up to me to discuss the anthropological c…
Constructing and Consuming Gender through Media: Call for Papers
Constructing and Consuming Gender through Media Call for Papers CyberOrient: Online Journal of the Virtual Middle East Editor-in-Chief: Daniel Martin Varisco Guest Editor: Mona Abdel-Fadil Submission …
What’s The Hadith On Facebook?
Just after dawn has broken, the musical voice of the muezzin fills the silence, calling the faithful to prayer: “al-salaatu khayrun min al-nawm.” (prayer is better than sleep) Except (perh…
Theorizing Media And Conflict
The Media Anthropology Network of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) has issued a call for proposals for the a workshop on conflict and media. The goal is…
Dying For The Revolution: Special Journal Issue
“Death lies at the beginning of the Arab uprisings and continues to haunt them.” So writes Amira Mittermeier in the introduction to a special collection of articles in…
Love And Fear in Egypt
Autocratic and democratic regimes are pretty much the same, says Joseph Massad in an article in the journal Public Culture. The chief difference is whether they seek to…
Did Social Media Cause The Egyptian Revolution?
I was recently asked (by otherwise sensible people), “Dr. Peterson, how would you assess the predominant media narrative that the ‘Arab Spring’ revolutions—nicknamed ‘Facebook …
Martyrs Without A Cause? Egypt’s Revolutionary Martyrs as Empty Signifiers
What is the meaning of martyrdom? The difference between a martyr and a victim is the investment of a slain body with meaning by a public. The martyrs…
Interview With Reem Abou El-Fadl About “Revolutionary Egypt”
I have a chapter in this new book on the Egyptian revolution. “there is the responsibility that comes with any social science study, particularly in an area fraught…
Thinking About Liminality in Tahrir Square
I have a chapter on the Egyptian revolution in this new book. As I struggled to make sense of the dramatic changes in Egypt from January 2011 forward,…