Asef Bayat, Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009, 320 pp. $US 21.95 paper (978-0-8047-6924-2), $US 60.00 hardcover (978-0-8047-6923-5)
In this book on social change within Arab and Muslim societies in the Middle East, Asef Bayat brings together the empirical cases and theoretical positions with which he has been engaged throughout his scholarship. Addressing debates about social development and democratization that are germane to the fields of social movements, Middle East/Islamic studies, and international relations Bayat argues that everyday social dynamics are altering societies in the Middle East in ways that are usually unacknowledged by onlookers in the West and undesired by authoritarian holders of power in the region. … Read more
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