Pious Neoliberalism and Islamic Charity in Egypt
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Abstract:
Islamic charities occupied a critical space in Mubarak-era Egypt. While there are a plethora of organizational types and activities, Mona Atia describes a particular type of work performed by Islamic charities as a merging of religious and capitalist subjectivity, or pious neoliberalism. Pious neoliberalism describes how Islamism works in conjunction with neoliberalism rather than as an alternative to it. It represents a new compatibility between business and piety that is not specific to any religion, but rather is a result of the ways in which religion and economy interact in the contemporary moment. In Egypt, pious neoliberalism produces new institutions, systems of knowledge production and subjectivities. This lecture explores the relationship between Islamic charity and Egypt’s variegated religious landscape. The author will discuss how Islamic charities helped spread Islamic practices outside the space of the mosque and into everyday life/spaces and their impact on development in Egypt.
Speaker Bio:
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Mona Atia is Associate Professor of Geography and International Affairs at the George Washington University. She received her PhD in Geography at the University of Washington, where she received the 2008 Distinguished Dissertation Award. She holds a MSc in Cities, Space and Society from the London School of Economics and a BS in Business Administration from the University of California at Berkeley. Professor Atia is a critical development geographer whose areas of expertise include Islamic charity and finance, philanthropy and humanitarianism, and the production of poverty knowledge. She is author of Building a House in Heaven: Pious Neoliberalism and Islamic Charity in Egypt (University of Minnesota Press, 2013). She currently holds an NSF CAREER Award for her project "The Impact of Poverty Mapping on the Geography of Development."
This event is co-sponsored by the Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies.
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Reuben Hills Conference Room
2nd Floor East Wing E207
Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, California 94305
Mona Atia
Associate Professor
The George Washington University
Seminars
Authoritarianism in the Era of Mass Politics
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Abstract:
The uprisings that spread across the Middle East in 2011 created new hope for democratic change in the Arab world. Four years later, the euphoria that greeted the Arab uprisings has given way to a far more somber mood, a recognition of the limits of mass protests to bring about political change, and acknowledgement that the region's entrenched authoritarian regimes are more resilient than many protesters imagined. Yet in responding to the challenge of mass politics, authoritarian regimes in the Middle East have not simply shown their resilience. In adapting to new challenges they have also changed, giving rise to new and more troubling forms of authoritarian rule, suggesting that the turmoil of recent years may be only the beginning of an extended period of political instability, violence, and repression in many parts of the Middle East.
Speaker Bio:
Steven Heydemann
Steven Heydemann serves as the vice president of Applied Research on Conflict at United States Institute of Peace. Heydemann is a political scientist who specializes in the comparative politics and the political economy of the Middle East, with a particular focus on Syria. His interests include authoritarian governance, economic development, social policy, political and economic reform and civil society. From 2003 to 2007, Heydemann directed the Center for Democracy and Civil Society at Georgetown University. From 1997 to 2001, he was an associate professor in the department of political science at Columbia University. Earlier, from 1990-1997, he directed the Social Science Research Council’s Program on International Peace and Security and Program on the Near and Middle East. Heydemann is the author of Authoritarianism in Syria: Institutions and Social Conflict, 1946-1970 (Cornell University Press, 1999), and editor of Networks of Privilege in the Middle East: The Politics of Economic Reform Revisited, (Palgrave Press, 2004), and War, Institutions and Social Change in the Middle East (University of California Press, 2000).
This event is co-sponsored by the Arab Studies Institute
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Goldman Conference Room
4th Floor East Wing E409
Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, California 94305
Steven Heydemann
Vice President, Applied Research on Conflict
USIP
Seminars
Will the Revolution be Tweeted? Information & Communication Technology and Conflict
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Is communication technology conducive to collective violence? Recent studies have provided conflicting answers to the same question. While some see the introduction of cellular communication as a contributing factor to civil conflict in Africa (Pierskalla and Hollenbach APSR 2013), others ascribe an opposite effect to mobile communications in Iraq (Shapiro and Weidmann IO forthcoming). During the talk, I will further explore the logic behind "Why the revolution will not be tweeted", and argue that the answer lies in contagion processes of collective action at the periphery, not the hierarchical schemes of central coordination as was argued before. To provide evidence, I will draw on historical accounts of social revolutions, a GIS study of the Syrian Civil War, a convenience survey sample from the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, as well as network experiments of collective risk-taking in a controlled setting.
Speaker Bio
Navid Hassanpour
This event is part of the Liberation Technology Seminar Series.
NEW LOCATION
School of Education
Room 128
Navid Hassanpour
Postdoctoral Research Associate, Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance (NCGG)
Seminars
Workers and Revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia
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Abstract:
Arab workers participated prominently in the popular uprisings of 2011. They shared the outrage of many of their compatriots over daily abuse by internal security forces, widespread corruption, and foreign policies subservient to U.S. interests. Their participation in those uprisings was also informed by struggles against the neoliberal economic restructuring of the region since the 1970s, which resulted in an indecent chasm between rich and poor, deteriorating working conditions and public social services, and high youth unemployment.
Egypt experienced a strike wave of unprecedented magnitude in the 2000s. Tunisia, with one exception, experienced less intense contestation by workers and others. Egyptian workers’ have had very limited influence on national politics in the post-Mubarak era. Democratic development seems unlikely in the near future. The Tunisian national trade union federation and its affiliates were the central force in installing procedural democracy. The nature of workers’ social movements in the 2000s partially explains these divergent outcomes.
Speaker Bio:
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Joel Beinin is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and Professor of Middle East History. He received his A.B. from Princeton University in 1970, his M.A. from Harvard University in 1974, and his A.M.L.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1978 and 1982. He also studied at the American University of Cairo and and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He lived in Egypt in 1969, 1980-81, 1985, 1986, 1994, 2004-05, and 2006-08 and in Israel in 1965-66, 1970-73, 1987, 1988, 1993, and 1993. He has taught Middle East history at Stanford University since 1983. From 2006 to 2008 he served as Director of Middle East Studies and Professor of History at the American University in Cairo. His research and writing focuses on workers, peasants, and minorities in the modern Middle East and on Israel, Palestine, and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Beinin has written or edited nine books, most recently Social Movements, Mobilization, and Contestation in the Middle East and North Africa; co-edited with Frédéric Vairel (Stanford University Press, 2011) and The Struggle for Worker Rights in Egypt (Solidarity Center, 2010). His articles have been published in leading scholarly journals as well as The Nation, Middle East Report, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, Le Monde Diplomatique, and others. He has appeared on Al-Jazeera TV, BBC radio, National Public Radio, and many other TV and radio programs throughout North America, and in France, Egypt, Singapore, and Australia, and has given frequent interviews to the global media. In 2002 he served as President of the Middle East Studies Association of North America.
This event is co-sponsored by the Arab Studies Institute.
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Goldman Conference Room
4th Floor East Wing E409
Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, California 94305
Joel Beinin
Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History
Stanford University
Seminars
Can Arabs be human rights defenders?
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In a recent article, Stanford Professor of Middle East History Joel Beinin examines the controversy over the decision of a European Parliament bloc to withdraw their nomination of Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel Fattah to the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought after a Wall Street Journal editorial accused Abdel Fattah of inciting hatred against Israel on social media.
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Program on Arab Reform and Democracy welcomes new leadership
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This summer Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) is welcoming new leadership to oversee the growth and development of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy (ARD), one of the Center's principal research programs examining contemporary issues of political development in the Arab world.
Lisa Blaydes, assistant professor of political science at Stanford, will assume the role of faculty co-director, working together with CDDRL Director Larry Diamond to help shape the program's research agenda. Blaydes will be joined by Hesham Sallam, currently a CDDRL pre-doctoral fellow completing his Ph.D. in government at Georgetown University. He will serve as the program's new associate director, assuming operational management and developing the program's research initiatives and activities at Stanford and throughout the Arab world, in partnership with the faculty co-directors. Sallam is also joining CDDRL as a research associate. In that capacity he will produce research and publications on questions related to political and economic reform in the Arab World.
Sallam is replacing ARD's founding director Lina Khatib, who left CDDRL last year to assume directorship of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace's Middle East office in Beirut.
"We are very excited to have Hesham Sallam assuming this leadership role in the ARD program, and joining the research staff of CDDRL,” said Diamond. “Hesham is not only a superb scholar of Arab politics and political economy, but has also been deeply engaged in analytic and public policy debates about the future of the region. His deep knowledge and broad credibility in the field will be strong and immediate assets to the program, and will help us build on the strong foundation laid by our founding program leader, Lina Khatib."
“I am extremely delighted to join the CDDRL and FSI family,” said Sallam. “I look forward to working closely with the Stanford community, faculty, students, and staff, to expand interdisciplinary discussions of Arab politics and society on campus.”
“By enhancing its intellectual engagement with scholars and activists in Arab world, ARD will continue to nuance our understanding of conflicts over political, social and economic rights in the region by supporting critical scholarship and by developing innovative research agendas,” he said.
Sallam’s dissertation examines how Islamist movements have impacted the politics of economic reform in Egypt before and after the Arab uprisings in 2011. His previous research has received the support of the United States Institute of Peace and the Social Science Research Council. Sallam also serves as co-editor of the Jadaliyya, a leading online magazine, which invites critical debate and analysis of current events in the Arab world from academics, activists and journalists.
Diamond expressed great enthusiasm over the addition of Lisa Blaydes to the program’s faculty leadership. “Over the past several years, Lisa has rapidly emerged as one of the most original and influential scholars of politics and social change in the Arab world,” he said. “She brings to the program intense intellectual curiosity, scholarly distinction and a keen interest in advancing social science studies of the Arab world."
Blaydes, a specialist in comparative politics and politics in the Middle East, recently published the book, Elections and Distributive Politics in Mubarak’s Egypt, which examines the complex relationships among regimes, rent-seeking elites and citizens fostered by authoritarian elections.
“The Arab world is at a critical juncture,” said Blaydes. “Although mass protests have transformed public political consciousness, the long-term impact of the protest movement on more concrete forms of power has yet to be determined. Policy-relevant scholarly research such as that conducted by the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy may help us to identify pathways to political reform.”
Blaydes and Sallam, together with Diamond, participated in the most recent ARD Program conference on political change in the Arab world. Held in collaboration with the Center for Research on Globalization and Democratic Governance at Koc University in Turkey, the conference brought together leaders in policy, academia and government to address issues of violence and government transitions in the region following continuous civil unrest and political uncertainty.
Founded in 2010 with annual support from the Moulay Hicham Foundation, CDDRL's Program on Arab Reform and Democracy aims to be a hub for intellectual capital about issues related to good governance, social change and political reform in the region, producing rigorous and policy-relevant academic research. Conferences and seminars in the U.S. and the Arab world provide innovative forums for academics and policy-makers to advance new ideas and approaches to the most pressing issues facing the region today.
For more information on the Program on Arab Reform and Development, please visit: http://arabreform.stanford.edu/.
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Stanford scholar examines entrepreneurship in North Africa
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In a recent report, CDDRL Postdoctoral Fellow Amr Adly, with the support of the Center for International Private Enterprise, provides insight on post-revolution entrepreneurship in Egypt and Tunisia. He suggests that in order to advance their economies, governments must carry out comprehensive reforms that provide greater accessibility to formal institutional structures for the broadest base of private sector enterprises, namely, small business owners, rural enterprises, and female entrepreneurs.
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