Book Alert: Iranian scholar Asef Bayat launches Arabic translation of 'Life as Politics' in Cairo

Ahram Online , Saturday 16 May 2015

Sociology professor Bayat published Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East just before the Arab spring

Asef Bayat
Iranian scholar Asef Bayat

The National Centre for Translation in Cairo's Zamalek will host Iranian writer and scholar Asef Bayat on Sunday at 10:30am to launch the Arabic translation of his book Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East.

In his book Bayat argues that the Muslim Middle East has been perceived as unchanging and unchangeable, frozen in its own traditions and history, but such presumptions fail to recognise the routine yet important ways in which ordinary people make meaningful change through everyday actions.

The book was published months before the Arab spring.

The Arabic version, which is published by the National Centre for Translation, was translated by Ahmed Zayed.

Bayat taught at the American University in Cairo in the 1990s. He is currently professor of sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has also written Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn (Stanford, 2007).

 

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