Maha Abdelrahman

Topics of Interest:
Protest Movements, State-Civil Society Relations, Security Institutions, Labour Relations, Nationalism, Global Networks

Countries/Regions of Interest:
Middle East, Egypt

List of Publications

Books and Monographs:
Egypt’s Long Revolution: Protest Movements and Uprisings London: Routledge (2014).

Abdelrahman, M. et al., (eds) Cultural Dynamics in Contemporary EgyptCairo Papers in Social Science 27(volumes 1&2) The American University in Cairo Press (2006).

Civil Society Exposed: The Politics of NGOs in Egypt,London: I.B. Tauris, New York: St. Martins/Macmillan (2004).

Book Chapters:
‘La montée et le déclin des Frères Musulmansdansl'ère post-Moubarack’ in La Diplomatie au défi des religions: Tensions, guerres, médiations edited by Denis Lacorneet al, Paris: Odile Jacob (2014), pp. 109-127.

‘The Transnational and the Local: Egyptian Activists and Transnational Protest Networks’ in Hendrik Kraetzchmar The Dynamics of Opposition Cooperation in the Arab World: Contentious Politics in Times of Change Routledge (2012), pp.167-184.

‘Civil Society and the Death of Social Theory’ in Huda El-Sadda (ed) Mapping Knowledge Production in the Arab World Cairo: CASAW and the Supreme Council for Culture (2007), pp. 291-395.

‘Divine Consumption: Islam and Consumerism in Egypt’ in Cultural Dynamics in Contemporary Egypt, (2006), pp. 69-79.

Journal Articles:
‘In Praise of Organisation: Egypt between Activism and Revolution’ Development and Change 44 (3): 569–585 (2013).

A Hierarchy of Struggles? The ‘Economic’ and the ‘Political’ in Egypt’s Revolution Review of African Political Economy  39(13):614-628 (2012).

The Transnational and the Local: Egyptian Activists and Transnational Protest Networks’ British Journal of Middle East Studies 38 (3): 407-424 (2011).

‘With the Islamists? Sometimes…With the State? Never!’ The British Journal of Middle East Studies 36(1): 37-54 (2009).

‘NGOs and the Dynamics of the Egyptian Labour Market’ Development in Practice 17(1) 78-84 (2007).

‘The Nationalization of the Human Rights Debate in Egypt’ Nations and Nationalism 13(2): 285-300 (2007).

‘Politics of 'un-Civil' Society in Egypt’ Review of African Political Economy 29 (91): 21-36 (2002).

Non-Refereed:
‘The Egyptian opposition: from protestors to revolutionaries? Open Democracy (22 April 2013).

‘Ordering the Disorderly? Street Vendors and the Developmentalist State’ Jadaliyya (14 January 2013).

‘Egypt: A Map of  Protest’ The London Middle East Institute Newsletter  (December 2011).

‘NGOs: A New Lobby Group?’ WighatNazar (November 2006), pp.22-28 (in Arabic).

‘The Left and Political Islam in Egypt’, International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World ISIM Review, (June 2004).

‘Civil Society in Egypt’ in Egypt Almanac, The American University in Cairo Press, (2002).

Book Reviews:
‘Genealogies and Balance Sheets of the Arab Uprisings’ The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising, Gilbert Achcar, Jadaliyya (2014).

‘Marginality and Exclusion in Egypt’, edited by Ray Bush and HabibAyeb, in Afkar/Ideas European Institute of the Mediterranean (2012).

‘Development, NGOs and Civil Society’, edited by J. Pearce, in Development and Change, (spring 2002).

Reports:
Civil Society Networks in the Arab World   NOVIB/OXFAM, 2006.

Contract-Financed Technical Co-operation and Local Ownership: Egypt Country Study Report (co-authored with Raymond Apthorpe) SIDA Evaluation Series, 2002.

Evaluation Report of the UNICEF-NGO Coalition on the Rights of the Child  UNICEF: Cairo, 2001.

My academic training reflects my interdisciplinary approach to studying questions of social change. I obtained my undergraduate degree in Anthropology and Masters in Sociology from the American University in Cairo. I later went on to receive my PhD in Development Studies from the International Institute of Social Studies in the Netherlands. My first position was lecturing at the American University in Cairo where I taught Sociology and Development Studies. Currently, I lecture on the Sociology and Politics of Development and the Politics of the Middle East at the University of Cambridge.

My research interests lie in the area of state/civil society relations in the Middle East within a political economy framework. My earlier research focused on civil society as both a theoretically and politically contested terrain where different state and non-state actors compete over the creation of hegemony and counter-hegemonic projects. In particular, my work examined civil society in Egypt and how the politics of NGOs provided a microcosm of Egyptian politics which is dominated by the interplay of authoritarian regimes, international donors and financial institutions promoting neoliberal policies, co-opted societal forces and nascent groups articulating more democratic visions of society. Another research project upon which I was engaged during this period examined the political economy of Islamic consumerism

Still engaged with the state/society area and the changing political landscape of the twenty-first century, I began to research rising forms of new opposition politics in the Middle East that challenge long-held views in mainstream literature. My work, which began in the late 1990s and spanned the first decade of the twenty-first century, was based on intensive field research on new networks of activism and a rising culture of resistance in Egyptto aggressive neoliberal policies. I derived my analysis from a comprehensive reading of theories of revolution and new social movements. My main contribution, however, was to question the relevance of some of these traditional theoretical approaches to more recent forms of resistance and revolutionary processes in Egypt and across the globe. My research resulted in a series of articles on protests and activism in which I examined questions of tactics and strategy of these new groups and movements. Major themes included the links of domestic opposition groups and global protest movements, the changing politics of the Left and the relevance of tactics employed by new social movements of the twentieth century for changing global and national politics. Subsequently, my main research output has been the recently-published book, Egypt’s Long Revolution: Protest Movements and Uprisings (Routledge, 2014), which is a culmination of very detailed research on these themes conducted over the last decade.  The main contribution of the book is a new, more critical framework with greater explanatory power for analysing new social movements especially during phases in which they move from the role of opposition movement under authoritarian rule to that of revolutionary actor during times of major transformation. This (re)introduces questions of political organisation, the role of ideology and the intersection of economic and political struggles during revolutionary processes and moments of global transformation.

My current research focuses on the auxiliary role of the police state within the framework of increasing ‘strategies of dispossession’ both at the global level and in the context of Egypt and the Middle East. I am also interested in examining rising forms of precarious labour with the aim of challenging traditional binaries of informal and formal sectors.