Life as Politics - 2nd Edition by Asef Bayat (Paperback)

About the Book

An updated and expanded look at how under the shadow of authoritarian rule, ordinary people can make meaningful change through the practices of everyday life in the Middle East.

Book Synopsis

An updated and expanded look at how under the shadow of authoritarian rule, ordinary people can make meaningful change through the practices of everyday life in the Middle East.

Review Quotes

"In Life as Politics Asef Bayat offers up a historically rich, analytically rigorous and conceptually innovative account of Middle East oppositional movements . . . [A] tour de force that will inspire as well as inform scholarship on Middle East social movements--most importantly by moving beyond a preoccupation with 'exceptionalist' tendencies. Above all, this work establishes Asef Bayat as a virtuoso of the sociological imaginary. Specialist and non-specialist readers alike will find themselves transported to the streets of the Middle East and afforded a first-hand view of social and political activism in the making."--Navid Pourmokhtari "Against the Current"

"Life as Politics offers a brilliant alternative perspective on public life by taking seriously the daily lives and the social agency of ordinary people."--Middle East Book Reads

"Asef Bayat has penned a remarkable study. Life as Politics should be a mandatory read for any journalist, scholar or politician who has never been to the Middle East."--Arab News

"When Life as Politics was published..., Asef Bayat's arguments on grassroots dynamism as the harbinger of democratic transformations in the Arab world seemed a utopian hope. Barely a year later, as events of the 2011 Arab Spring continue to unfold, his critical insights on everyday forms and spaces of political activity in the region have become prescient."--Contemporary Sociology

About the Author

Asef Bayat is the Catherine and Bruce Bastian Professor of Global and Transnational Studies and Professor of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn (Stanford, 2007).