In this intriguing memoir, British born Rosemary Sabet moves back and forth between her past as a child growing up in post war London and her present involvement in the Egyptian revolution. The events in Tahrir Square, Cairo, trigger her memory as she questions what quirks of fate brought her to participate in such an unprecedented, momentous uprising. As we follow the twists and turns and churning uncertainty of Egypts revolution from its outset on January 25th 2011 until the ambivalent celebration one year later the author, fuelled by passion, recounts her personal involvement in the uprising, in which she experienced periods of great fear and disappointment intermingled with moments of courage and triumph. In a series of anecdotes, the reader is taken on a nostalgic journey of the authors carefree childhood, to her unconventional experiences abroad as a young girl in the fifties. With raw and honest insight, Sabet remembers Londons swinging sixties and reveals some of her wickedly funny amorous escapades. We follow her to Rome during the era of the dolce vita where she eventually meets and marries her Egyptian husband. They move to Southern Yemen where she begins to encounter the cultural challenges so imbued in the Middle East, and from where she is propelled to nearly four decades of Egypts turbulent history.

No major campaign has ever been successful without 'counterpower' - the power that the 'have-nots' can use to remove the power of the 'haves'. This is examined by investigating the history and tactics of the suffrage movement, the labour movement, the anti-war movement, the anti-colonial movement, the environmental movement and more. In the context of the financial crisis and the threat of climate change, engagement in system-critical social movements is on the increase. This unique book demystifies the power dynamics of social change.

This is not a standard guide to writing a dissertation, thesis, project report, journal article or book. Rather, this book will help researchers who are dissatisfied with the typical recipe approaches to standardised forms of writing-up and want to explore how academic writing can be used to greater effect. Writing Research Critically shows that writing up is not just about ‘presenting findings’ as if the facts would speak for themselves. As the authors show there are certain vital skills that any writer needs to develop within their academic writing, such as the ability to: develop critical understanding and a personal academic voice question assumptions and the status quo frame the background and transgress the frame read between the lines when reviewing the literature strengthen interpretations and conctruct persuasive arguments challenge and develop theory and explanations develop ideas that create possibilities for realistic action Packed with examples from a range of writing projects (papers, dissertations, theses, reports, journal articles and books), this book provides a practical and refreshing way to approach and present research. Through case studies the authors offer a step-by-step guide from the early stages of planning a writing project, whether an undergraduate paper or a professional publication, to the polishing processes that make the difference between a merely descriptive account to an argument that intends to be critical and persuasive. Written in a clear accessible style this book will inspire a wide range of researchers from undergraduates to postgraduates, early career researchers and experienced professionals working across a wide range of fields, and demonstrate how research can have more impact in the real world.

The Arab World is perceived to be a region rampant with constructed and ambiguous national identities, overwhelming wealth and poverty, religious diversity, and recently the Arab uprisings, a bottom-up revolution shaking the foundations of pre-established, long-standing hierarchies. It is also a region that has witnessed a remarkable level of transformation and development due to the accelerated pace imposed by post-war reconstruction, environmental degradation, and the competition among cities for world visibility and tourism. Accordingly, the Arab World is a prime territory for questioning urban design, inviting as it does a multiplicity of opportunities for shaping, upgrading, and rebuilding urban form and civic space while subjecting global paradigms to regional and local realities. Providing a critical overview of the state of contemporary urban design in the Arab World, this book conceptualizes the field under four major perspectives: urban design as discourse, as discipline, as research, and as practice. It poses two questions. How can such a diversity of practice be positioned with regard to current international trends in urban design? Also, what constitutes the specificity of the Middle Eastern experience in light of the regional political and cultural settings? This book is about urban designers ’on the margins’: how they narrate their cities, how they engage with their discipline, and how they negotiate their distance from, and with respect to global disciplinary trends. As such, the term margins implies three complementary connotations: on the global level, it invites speculation on the way contemporary urban design is being impacted by the new conceptualizations of center-periphery originating from the post-colonial discourse; on the regional level, it is a speculation on the specificity of urban design thinking and practice within a particular geographical and cultural context (here, the Arab World); and finally, on the local level, it is an a

Todays Islamists are not a reproduction of an ancient legacy, but are modern political actors defined by modern discourses, argues Basheer Nafiin The Islamists. He examines the emergence and development of political Islam in the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century, discussing the historical context within which political Islam arose, and relating it to the social movements and political parties that lead the phenomenon today. On questions concerning the state, economics and law, the differences among Islamists are no less than their agreements. Nafit eases out some of these agreements and differences relating to governance, citizenship, pluralism, unity, revivalism, and truth. This very accessible work, intended for both an academic and general audience, highlights these matters by examining the groups and individuals that constitute the broad category of political Islam, considering how they have developed over time, and how they have impacted on the countries in which they operate.