Amid the current turmoil in the Middle East, Understanding Tahrir Square sounds a rare optimistic note. Surveying countries in other parts of the world during their transitions to democracy, author Stephen Grand argues that the long-term prospects in many parts of the Arab world are actually quite positive. If the current polarization and political violence in the region can be overcome, democracy will eventually take root. The key to this change will likely be ordinary citizens—foremost among them the young protestors of the Arab Spring who have filled the region’s public spaces—most famously, Egypt’s Tahrir Square. The book puts the Arab Spring in comparative perspective. It reveals how globalization and other changes are upending the expectations of citizens everywhere about the relationship between citizen and state. Separate chapters examine the experiences of countries in the former Eastern bloc, in the Muslim-majority states of Asia, in Latin America, and in Sub-Saharan Africa during the recent Third Wave of democratization. What these cases show is that, at the end of the day, democracy requires democrats. Many complex factors go into making a democracy successful, such as the caliber of its political leaders, the quality of its constitution, and the design of its political institutions. But unless there is clear public demand for new institutions to function as intended, political leaders are unlikely to abide by the limits those institutions impose. If American policymakers want to support the brave activists struggling to bring democracy to the Arab world, helping them cultivate an effective political constituency for democracy—in essence, growing the Tahrir Square base—should be the lodestar of U.S. assistance.

This book analyses Egypt's 2011 Revolution, highlighting the struggle for freedom, justice, and human dignity in the face of economic and social problems, and an on-going military regime.

The book explores the multi-faceted nature of contemporary reflections on agency, focusing on various discursive practices that shape the posthumanist approach to the relationship between the human and non-human world from a planetary perspective. The chapters delve into critical human-animal studies, examine new non-anthropocentric identity constructs, and offer analyses that reinterpret meanings through semiotic inversions and challenge static cultural patterns. The book concludes with discussions on decolonization practices that aim to liberate agency from oppressive systems, particularly those dominated by imperial phallogocentrism.

This timely guide examines the influence of social media in private, public, and professional settings, particularly the ethical implications of the cultural changes and trends created by their use. In the quest for quick dissemination of information, web users and content providers find both opportunity and liability in digital broadcasts. Examples abound: Twitter members tap into news reports well in advance of traditional print media, but stories are prone to inaccuracies and misinformation; Facebook shares useful data mined from member profiles, but this sharing often compromises privacy. It is no surprise that use of social media gives rise to a host of moral dilemmas never before encountered. This book sheds light on the effects of this new medium on the individual and society. Through two volumes chock full of topics found in news headlines everyday, the authors look at evolving trends in social media and their impact on privacy, politics, and journalism. The first volume explores the role of this technology on national and international security. Volume 2 focuses on the individual as both a producer and consumer of internet content, showing how the media itself is changing notions of self-identity, relationships, and popular culture. The book's content covers such topics as individual and community psychology, citizen journalism, and corporate technology.

This book is an urgent and compelling account of the Occupy movements: from the M15 movement in Spain, to the wave of Occupations flooding across cities in American, Europe and Australia, to the harsh reality of evictions as corporations and governments attempted to reassert exclusive control over public space. Across a vast range of international examples over twenty authors analyse, explain and helps us understand the movement. These movements were a novel and noisy intervention into the recent capitalist crisis in developed economies, developing an exceptionally broad identity through a call to arms addressed to ‘the 99%’, and emphasizing the importance of public space in the creation and maintenance of opposition. The novelties of these movements, along with their radical positioning and the urgency of their claims all demand analysis. This book investigates the crucial questions of how and why this form of action spread so rapidly and so widely, how the inclusive discourse of ‘the 99%’ matched up to the reality of the practice. It is vital to understand not just the choice of tactics and the vitality of protest camps in public spaces, but also how the myriad of challenges and problems were negotiated. This book was published as a special issue of Social Movement Studies.

First-person accounts by scholars and journalists of the Arab Spring and the revolution that ended Mubarak’s presidency. On January 25, 2011, the world’s eyes were on Egypt’s Tahrir Square as millions of people poured into the city center to call for the resignation of president Hosni Mubarak. Since then, few scholars or journalists have been given the opportunity to reflect on the nationwide moment of transformation and the hope that was embodied by the Egyptian Revolution. In this important and necessary volume, leading Egyptian academics and writers share their eyewitness experiences. They examine how events unfolded in relation to key social groups and institutions such as the military, police, labor, intellectuals, Coptic Christians, and the media; share the mood of the nation; assess what happened when three recent regimes of Egyptian rule came to an end; and account for the dramatic rise and fall of the Muslim Brotherhood. The contributors’ deep engagement with politics and society in their country is evident and sets this volume apart from most of what has been published in English about the Arab Spring. The diversity of views brought together here is a testament to the contradictions and complexities of historical and political changes that affect Egypt and beyond.

This book traces the mobilization process leading up to the January 25 Uprising, and furthers our understanding of the largely unexpected diffusion of protest during this Egyptian Revolution. Focusing on the role of the so-called “Cairo-based political opposition,” this study strongly suggests a need to pay closer attention to the complexity and contingent nature of such large-scale protest episodes. Building on interviews with activists, employees of NGOs in the human rights advocacy sector, and journalists, this in-depth single case study reveals how different movement organizations in the Egyptian prodemocracy movement had long, and largely unsuccessfully, tried to mobilize support for socio-political change in the country. Against this backdrop, the book illustrates how a coalition of activists sought to organize a protest event against police brutality in early 2011. The resulting protests on January 25 surprised not only the regime of Hosni Mubarak, but also the organizers.

Demonstrates how social movements can become mass scale with the aid of smart social networking and media management.

Going from Upper Egypt to Cairo to start a new life was not easy, neither on her nor on her childhood sweetheart. When both decided to head North, they had only one thing to count on, hope. They had never expected what was in store.

When protesters in Egypt began to fill Cairo's Tahrir Square on January 25th—and refused to leave until their demand that Hosni Mubarak step down was met—the politics of the region changed overnight. And the United States' long friendship with the man who had ruled under Emergency Law for thirty years came starkly into question. From Franklin D. Roosevelt's brief meeting with King Farouk near the end of World War II to Barack Obama's Cairo Speech in 2009 and the recent fall of Mubarak—the most significant turning point in American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War—this timely new book answers the urgent question of why Egypt has mattered so much to the United States. The Road to Tahrir Square is the first book to connect past and present, offering readers today an understanding of the events and forces determining American policy in this vitally important region. Making full use of the available records—including the controversial Wikileaks archive—renowned historian Lloyd C. Gardner shows how the United States has sought to influence Egypt through economic aid, massive military assistance, and CIA manipulations, an effort that has immediate implications for how the current crisis will alter the balance of power in the Middle East. As millions of Americans ponder how the Egyptian revolution will change the face of the region and the world, here is both a fascinating story of past policies and an essential guide to possible futures.