Social Movements, Mobilization, and Contestation in the Middle East andNorth Africa

Joel Beinin is Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History at Stanford University, and a past president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America. Frederic Vairel is Assistant Professor of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa.

"It is a must-read for historians and social scientists interested in social movements in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and an important resource for understanding the region's recent political change, contemporary history, and, in spite of the modest disclaimers of the editors, the uprising of 2011."-John Chalcraft, Arab Studies Journal Reviews "This is an excellent volume and a much needed addition to the scholarship on social movements, revolutions, and Middle Eastern studies. I recommend it to all those wishing to understand the tumultuous events of the Arab spring and collective action in the region more generally."-Atef Said, Mobilization "An altogether welcome addition to both the social movement literature and the growing body of work on contention in the Middle East and North Africa. In the wake of 9/11, scholars rushed to fill the gaping void in scholarly knowledge of all manner of 'Islamacist' movements, but generally without tapping into the rich body of work on contentious politics that had been produced in recent years. And for their part, movement scholars were missing in action when it came to knowledge of events in this crucial region of the world. This exceptional collection has gone a long way towards remedying this problem and bringing these two important literatures into productive dialog with each other."-Doug McAdam, Stanford University "Protest in the Middle East and North Africa is not just a monopoly of Islamists. This volume juxtaposes Islamist activism with movements by workers, intellectuals, feminists, human rights activists, and others that don't get much attention in the West, but which present a fuller picture of political and social upheavals in the region."-Charles Kurzman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill