What does it mean to be marginalized? Is it a passive condition that the disadvantaged simply have to endure? Or is it a manufactured label, reproduced and by its nature transitory? In the wake of the new uprising in Egypt, this insightful collection explores issues of power, politics and inequality in Egypt and the Middle East. It argues that the notion of marginality tends to mask the true power relations that perpetuate poverty and exclusion. It is these dynamic processes of political and economic transformation that need explanation. The book provides a revealing analysis of key areas of Egyptian political economy, such as labour, urbanization and the creation of slums, disability, refugees, street children, and agrarian livelihoods, reaching the impactful conclusion that marginalization does not mean total exclusion. What is marginalized can be called upon to play a dynamic part in the future -- as is the case with the revolution that toppled President Mubarak.

What does it mean to be marginalized? Is it a passive condition that the disadvantaged simply have to endure? Or is it a manufactured label, reproduced and by its nature transitory? In the wake of the new uprising in Egypt, this insightful collection explores issues of power, politics and inequality in Egypt and the Middle East. It argues that the notion of marginality tends to mask the true power relations that perpetuate poverty and exclusion. It is these dynamic processes of political and economic transformation that need explanation. The book provides a revealing analysis of key areas of Egyptian political economy, such as labour, urbanization and the creation of slums, disability, refugees, street children, and agrarian livelihoods, reaching the impactful conclusion that marginalization does not mean total exclusion. What is marginalized can be called upon to play a dynamic part in the future -- as is the case with the revolution that toppled President Mubarak.

In 2011, capital's crisis erupted in Egyptian society. This eruption, and subsequent politics, have been misrepresented as revolutionary, as the working class was – and is increasingly so – devalued and disempowered. In Crisis and Class War in Egypt, Sean F. McMahon critically analyses Egypt's recent political history. He argues that the so-called 'revolution' was the appearance of capital's destruction of the value of the Egyptian working class and an existential crisis for capital. In response, productive capital in the form of the military used, disposed of and replaced its junior partners in governing; first the predatory capital of the Mubarak state with the commodity capital of the Muslim Brotherhood, and then commodity capital with the finance capital of the Gulf Cooperation Council. These reconfigurations have been expressed in all manner of reactionary governmental arrangements including constitutions, legislation and currency reform. Extending today's analysis into the near future, McMahon sees the war of Egyptian society intensifying, and increasingly violent lives for Egyptian workers.

The millions of Egyptians who returned to the heart of Cairo and Egypt’s other major cities for 18 days until the eventual toppling of the Mubarak regime were orderly without an organisation, inspired without a leader, and single-minded without one guiding political ideology. This book examines the decade long of protest movements which created the context for the January 2011 mass uprising. It tells the story of Egypt’s long revolutionary process by exploring its genealogy in the decade before 25 January 2011and tracing its development in the three years that have followed. The book analyses new forms of political mobilisation that arose in response to ever-increasing grievances against authoritarian politics, deteriorating living conditions for the majority of Egyptians as a consequence of neo-liberal policies and the machinery of crony capitalism, and an almost total abandoning by the state of its responsibilities to society at large. It argues that the increasing societal pressures from different quarters such as labour groups, pro-democracy movements and ordinary citizens during this period culminated in an intensifying culture of protest and activism that was vital in the lead up to the dramatic overthrow of Mubarak. It, also, argues that the features of these new forms of activism and political mobilisation have contributed to shaping the political process since the downfall of Mubarak. Based on research undertaken since 2002, Egypt’s Long Revolution is an essential resource for scholars and researchers with an interest in social movements, comparative politics and Middle East Politics in general.

This professional book introduces an analytical framework of urban informality perspectives in the Middle East that is aligned with the Global South. The context of Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan—in the Middle East— is the transregional focus of this book. In these contexts, the book opens a new arena of academic discussion on the theory and practice of urban informality. Urban Informality: Experiences and Urban Sustainability Transitions in Middle East Cities questions urban informality, "as a site of transitions", interrelated and interlinked with urban sustainability transitions in speedy changes in a given environment. The book presents ‘urban informality sustainability transitions’ regarding resilience and adaptability that require shifts in urban systems. Shifts from a static process to a dynamic process that eradicates the fragmentation between the tensions, anxieties, and pressures of four modes of production, reproduction, consumptions, and distribution of goods and services in the city and its practices. Finally, through eleven chapters, the concluding remarks explore to what extent and how can urban informality transitions be sustainable.

This volume sets out to explore the dialectic relating agriculture, crisis and conflict, and attempts to expand the knowledge on these interactions. Part 1 of the volume (chapters 1-6) discusses thematic issues and methodological approaches to understanding the intersection of agriculture, crisis and conflict. Part 2 (chapters 7-20) provides case studies that take a detailed approach to understanding agricultural contexts facing crisis and conflict, or the role played by agriculture within crisis and conflict. Studies are selected from areas that might be expected to feature in such a volume (the Middle East and North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and Latin America) as well as less obvious regions where conflict within agriculture refers not to widespread violence or wars but rather latent or simmering crisis (Central Asia and Europe). Crises stemming from politically-driven violence, natural disasters and climate change are covered, as well as competition over resources.

After the ousting of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011, much debate surrounded the reasons for the former regime's longevity and its collapse. Here, Safinaz El Tarouty provides an original contribution to the study of authoritarianism in Egypt by focusing on the role of businessmen in authoritarian survival. As the regime intensified neoliberal economic reforms that led to social deprivation and frustration among increasing numbers of Egyptian citizens, they co-opted businessmen in order to defuse challenges and buttress the regime, constructing a new political economy of authoritarianism. Extending the existing literature on clientelism, El Tarouty creates a typology of regime-businessmen relations to describe the multiple mechanisms of co-option in the context of economic liberalization. Ultimately, though, these businessmen proved too narrow a constituency to provide legitimacy to the regime and, in fact, formed one of the reasons for its collapse.