The Arab Uprisings A decade of struggles

Endorsements

Living through revolutionary moments is both exhilarating and humbling. When protestors in Tunisia and Egypt in 2011 toppled their dictators, their actions spread like wildfire across the Middle East and North Africa, inspiring similar forms of collective mobilisation. Peasants, workers, women, students, and unemployed youth revolted against their governments through organised strikes, street protests, and the takeover of public spaces and squares. This was real people power. Ten years on, The Arab Uprisings: A Decade of Struggles does a fantastic job of taking stock of what happened and how we can understand it. The editors – Miriyam Aouragh and Hamza Hamouchene – carefully curated this collection, bringing together scholars and activists with roots in the region, to draw out the common underlying structural reasons for these struggles. By placing class and political economy at the centre of analysis, this book provides us with the intellectual tools to understand why these revolutionary moments and movements emerged, what course they took, as well as the counterrevolutionary forces that contained and brutally suppressed them. While solidarity oozes from the very pores of these chapters, the writers do not shirk from critically exploring the contradictions, weaknesses, and shortcomings in the movements, driven by a desire to draw lessons for the future. Beautifully illustrated by Fourate Chahal, this book is a love song to those who risked their lives to rise up for “bread, justice and dignity”.

- Mandy Turner, Professor of Conflict, Peace and Humanitarian Affairs, University of Manchester.

"I think a few things emerge from reading about the Arab revolutions, whether supported or transformative, and that is that they all point to the importance of transnational solidarity. They all point to the ways in which these forms of transnational solidarity can build not only for example, in support of Palestinians, who are being abandoned by various Arab states, but also in support of the movements that are emerging in both the Global North and elsewhere in the global south of farmers movements in India or the police, the anti police violence movements that have emerged in Nigeria but also in the Global North. And, and I think that the significance of transnational solidarity ends up being incredibly important."

- Laleh Khalili, Professor of International Politics at Queen Mary University of London

A startling and beautiful collection of chapters about the causes, character and trajectory of the revolutionary wave in 2011, and after. The book does so much more than simply celebrate an inspired frenzy of history but draws out the reasons for the uprisings and - crucially - how they went down to defeat. In diagnosing and analyzing this collapse of revolutionary movements and popular struggles the authors point to how our energies and revolutions can be sustained and strengthened in the future. An indispensable volume.

- Leo Zeilig, author of novel The World turned Upside Down and A Revolutionary for our time - the Walter Rodney story. Leo is an editor at ROAPE

The uprisings of the past decade in North Africa and West Asia are carefully analysed in this thoughtful volume. The authors do so with a view to learning from the past for the struggles of the future. This book is a must-read for students of revolution everywhere.

- Fiona Dove, Director, Transnational Institute

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