Joel Beinin Research Articles

Book Review: A Critical Political Economy of the Middle East and North Africa edited by Joel Beinin, Bassam Haddad, and Sherene Seikaly

Book Review: <i>A Critical Political Economy of the Middle East and North Africa</i> edited by Joel Beinin, Bassam Haddad, and Sherene Seikaly

Workers and Thieves: Labor Movements and Popular Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt by Joel Beinin

Workers and Thieves: Labor Movements and Popular Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt by Joel Beinin

Joel Beinin. Workers and Thieves: Labor Movements and Popular Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt; David De Vries. Strike Action and Nation Building: Labor Unrest in Palestine/Israel, 1899–1951.

Joel Beinin’s Workers and Thieves: Labor Movements and Popular Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt draws on his earlier seminal work (Beinin and Zachary Lockman, Workers on the Nile: Nationalism, Communism, Islam, and the Egyptian Working Class, 1882–1954 [1987]; Beinin, Workers and Peasants in the Modern Middle East [2001]; and Beinin, The Struggle for Worker Rights in Egypt [2010]), as he offers a comparative, events-driven history of workers’ movements in Tunisia and Egypt that uses the 2010–2011 revolutions as beginning and ending points. Tunisia and Egypt are not only the first sites of recent insurrections in Southwest Asia and North Africa, but also historical sites of working-class activism, a topic too rarely addressed in North American scholarship. Beinin shows both labor activists’ efforts to dissociate their actions from politics and the ineluctably political nature of labor activism. Labor protest appears as a claim for political inclusion in response to policies imposed from above.

The origins of labour autonomy in authoritarian Tunisia

Among the most remarkable things about the Tunisian revolution of 2011 was the role of the national trade union (UGTT). Joel Beinin has shown the critical importance this institutional power gave Tunisian workers in comparison to Egypt. I argue that its pre independence history is inadequate to understand this phenomenon given the weakness of Tunisian labour in the 1950s and 1960s. Instead, it can be traced to elite political crises of the 1970s, relatively continuous base militancy from 1970 to 2011 and the collapse of state military relations in the early 1990s. I use State Department archives combined with data from the International Labor Organization and the Tunisian Ministry of Social Affairs to make this case. These results support the idea that co-optation of Tunisian unions was far less extensive than pre 2011 studies suggested, but that labour unrest was less widespread and less disruptive to strategic industries in comparison to 2011 and after.

Jewish-Iranian Identities in the Pahlavi Era

A few years ago, while conducting archival research on Pahlavi-era Iranian newspapers, I came across a photo from the anti-shah demonstrations that took place in late 1978 and early 1979. It showed a large group of Armenians protesting against the shah. In these years many Iranians and Westerners considered the shah's policies beneficial for religious minorities in Iran. Around the same time, I found a sentence that made this discovery more intriguing. In his seminal workIran between Two Revolutions, Ervand Abrahamian mentions that throughout the Muhammad Riza Pahlavi era, the opposition to the communist Tudeh party accused it of being controlled by “Armenians, Jews, and Caucasian émigrés.” I tried to find references in the current scholarship to Jews participating in the party, which could have earned them their part in this propaganda campaign, but found very little. Having read the important works of Joel Beinin, Orit Bashkin, and Rami Ginat on Jewish revolutionaries, including communists, in the Middle East, I wondered where the Jewish radicals in Iran were. Several factors may contribute to this silence in the historiography: the writing of Iranian history from a Zionist vantage point, a lack of interest in the history of the Iranian left in the postrevolutionary historiography, and an inability to conceptualize the transregional and global nature of the Iranian Jewish community.

Novas perspectivas nos estudos sobre movimentos sociais no Islã e no mundo muçulmano

Resenha do livro: Social Movements, Mobilization and Contestation in the Middle East and North Africa - (Joel Beinin e Frédéric Vairel, Orgs.), Ed. Stanford, CA, 2011.

Anarchists in Education: The Free Popular University in Egypt (1901)

Anarchists in Education: The Free Popular University in Egypt (1901)

Elie Podeh and Onn Winckler, editors. Rethinking Nasserism: Revolution and Historical Memory in Modern Egypt. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. 2004. Pp. xv, 365. $59.95

Journal Article Elie Podeh and Onn Winckler, editors. Rethinking Nasserism: Revolution and Historical Memory in Modern Egypt. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. 2004. Pp. xv, 365. $59.95 Get access Podeh Elie and Winckler Onn, editors. Rethinking Nasserism: Revolution and Historical Memory in Modern Egypt. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. 2004. Pp. xv, 365. $59.95. Joel Beinin Joel Beinin Stanford University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 110, Issue 2, April 2005, Pages 591–593, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/110.2.591-a Published: 01 April 2005

Joel Beinin. The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. xii, 329 pp.

The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. xii, 329 pp. @T2first: During the past three decades, several major scholarly studies and personal accounts of Egyptian Jewry have been published in Europe, Israel, and the United States. The most noted scholarly publications include Jacob M. Landau, Jews in Nineteenth Century Egypt (New York: New York University Press, 1969); Gudrun Kramer, The Jews in Modern Egypt, 1914–1952 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1989); Michael M. Laskier, The Jews of Egypt, 1920–1970: In the Midst of Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the Middle East Conflict (New York: New York University Press, 1992); Yoram Meital, 'Atarim yehudiyim be-Miṣrayim (Jerusalem: The Ben-Zvi Institute, 1995); Zvi Zohar , Tradition and Change: Halachic Response of Middle Eastern Rabbis to Legal and Technological Changes [Egypt and Syria, 1880–1920]. [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: The Ben-Zvi Institute, 1993); and Yosef Algamil, Pirqei Tuvia ben Simḥa Levi Babovitch: 'Aḥaron ḥakhmei ha-kara'im be-Miṣrayim, 2 vols. (Ramlah: Center for Karaite Jewry, 1998). Some of the best personal accounts are Maurice Mizrahi, L'Egypte et ses Juifs: Le Temps revolu, xixe–xxe siecles (Geneva: Imprimerie Avenir, 1977); Yitzhaq Gormezano-Goren, Blanche [Hebrew] (Tel-Aviv: Am Oved, 1987); Jacqueline Kahanoff Mi-mizrah. shemesh (Tel-Aviv: Yariv Hadar, 1978); Ronit Matalon, Zeh ‘im ha-panim 'eleynu (Tel-Aviv: Am Oved, 1995); Rachel Maccabi, Mitzrayim sheli (Tel-Aviv: Sifriyat ha-Poalim, 1968); and Andre Aciman, Out of Egypt (New York: Farrar Strauss Giroux, 1994). Joel Beinin's book is the product of several years of research in Israel, Egypt, France, and the United States, in which he consulted not only books but also newspaper articles in English, French, Arabic, and Hebrew, as well as archives, among them the YIVO Institute records; the Haganah, Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir, and the Central Zionist archives (Israel); the Jamie Lehmann Memorial Collection of Yeshiva University (containing the records of the Cairo community); and the U.S. National Archives . He also interviewed Egyptian Jews and non-Jews.

Ralph M. Coury. &lt;italic&gt;The Making of an Egyptian Arab Nationalist: The Early Years of 'Azzam Pasha, 1893–1936&lt;/italic&gt;. Reading, UK: Garnet Publishing. 1998. Pp. viii, 528. £35.00

Journal Article Ralph M. Coury. The Making of an Egyptian Arab Nationalist: The Early Years of 'Azzam Pasha, 1893–1936. Reading, UK: Garnet Publishing. 1998. Pp. viii, 528. £35.00 Get access Coury Ralph M.. The Making of an Egyptian Arab Nationalist: The Early Years of 'Azzam Pasha, 1893–1936. Reading, UK: Garnet Publishing. 1998. Pp. viii, 528. £35.00. Joel Beinin Joel Beinin Stanford University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 107, Issue 1, February 2002, Page 316, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/107.1.316 Published: 01 February 2002

The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora

In this provocative and wide-ranging history, Joel Beinin examines fundamental questions of ethnic identity by focusing on the Egyptian Jewish community since 1948. A complex and heterogeneous people, Egyptian Jews have become even more diverse as their diaspora continues to the present day. Central to Beinin's study is the question of how people handle multiple identities and loyalties that are dislocated and reformed by turbulent political and cultural processes. It is a question he grapples with himself, and his reflections on his experiences as an American Jew in Israel and Egypt offer a candid, personal perspective on the hazards of marginal identities.

&lt;sc&gt;Joel Beinin&lt;/sc&gt;. &lt;italic&gt;The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora&lt;/italic&gt;. (Contraversions: Critical Studies in Jewish Literature, Culture, and Society, number 11.) Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1998. Pp. xii, 329

Journal Article Joel Beinin. The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora. (Contraversions: Critical Studies in Jewish Literature, Culture, and Society, number 11.) Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1998. Pp. xii, 329 Get access Beinin Joel. The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora. (Contraversions: Critical Studies in Jewish Literature, Culture, and Society, number 11.) Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1998. Pp. xii, 329. Daniel J. Schroeter Daniel J. Schroeter University of California, Irvine Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 106, Issue 1, February 2001, Pages 300–301, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/106.1.300 Published: 01 February 2001

Egyptian Jews: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora. . Joel Beinin.

Egyptian Jews: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora. . Joel Beinin.

The dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: culture, politics, and the formation of a modern diaspora

The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, by Joel Beinin. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1998, xii + 267 pages. Append. to p. 274. Notes to p. 306. Bibl. to p. 322. Index to p. 329. n.p. Reviewed by Eric Davis In its initial phase, the study of minorities in the modem Middle East, which began with Albert Hourani's Minorities in the Arab World (1947), was relatively non-controversial and largely theoretical. The study of minorities acquired a negative connotation only with the rising interest in theories of imperialism, dependency and neocolonialism in the wake of decolonization and the Vietnam War. For younger scholars especially, the study of minorities came to be viewed as an attempt to give intellectual sustenance to efforts to fragment the Middle East (e.g., by undermining Arab nationalism). In recent years, the interest in minorities seems to have faded. While the reasons for this are difficult to pinpoint, the emigration of minorities from the Middle East-such as the Copts from Egypt and the Maronites from Lebanon-certainly represents an important factor. In light of the relative paucity of studies on minorities, Joel Beinin's analysis of the Egyptian Jewish community is a welcome addition. Thoroughly researched and written with great empathy for its subjects, this study eschews a chronological narrative in favor of a tableau that emphasizes this community's social and cultural heterogeneity and diverse geographic origins. The author's intriguing portrait is not merely an account of the rise and decline of the Egyptian Jewish community, the majority of which left Egypt after the 1956 invasion by British, French, and Israeli forces. It also presents a critique of the shortcomings of master narratives, especially those of traditional Zionism and Egyptian nationalism, in explaining the dynamics and structure of this community. As such, this volume offers insights into other transformations in the Middle East, such as the weakness of civil society, reflected especially by the lack of tolerance for cultural and political diversity. The author's study also reminds the reader that, in attributing blame to Egyptian Jews for the creation of a Zionist state, a great deal of Egyptian intellectual discourse is still dominated by a conspiratorial approach (pp. 248-50). Read simply from a pre-1956 cultural perspective, this study reminds the reader of the tremendous loss to Arab and other Middle Eastern states (e.g., Iraq) that resulted from the exodus of the Jews and other minorities during decolonization. Among the many members of the Jewish community who had enhanced the cultural and social fabric of everyday Egyptian life were great singers such as Layla Murad, civic leaders such as Ren6 Qattawi (who lectured me in Paris in late 1974 on his family's anti-Zionist credentials), wealthy entrepreneurs such as the Cicurels, and leftist political activists such as Henri Curiel. Thoroughly Arabized and Egyptianized, on the one hand, and drawn from diverse geographic origins and divided into competing Rabbanite and Karaite communities, on the other, Egyptian Jews were, one can argue, as divided internally as they were by the divisions that separated them from the larger Arab Muslim populace. …

BOOK REVIEWS

BOOK REVIEWS Get access Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising against Israeli Occupation Edited by ZACHERY LOCKMAN and JOEL BEININ. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 1989. Pp. 425. Price PB £5.95. 1-85043-247-3. Musa Mazzawi Musa Mazzawi Reading Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Islamic Studies, Volume 4, Issue 1, January 1993, Pages 121–122, https://doi.org/10.1093/jis/4.1.121 Published: 01 January 1993

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: Political Islām: Religion and Politics in the Arab World. By Nazih Ayubi. Egypt from Nāsser to Mubāak: A Flawed Revolution. By Anthony McDermott. The Gulf War: The Origins and Implications of the Iraq‐Iran Conflict. By Majid Khadduri The Making of Iran's Islamic Revolution: From Monarchy to Islamic Republic. By Mohsen M. Milani Workers on the Nile: Nationalism. Communism, Islam and the Egyptian Working Class, 1882–1954. By Joel Beinin and Zachary Lockman. A History of the Maghrib in the Islamic Period. By Jamil M. Abun‐Nasr. Historical Dictionary of Tunisia. By Kenneth J. Perkins. Community and Consensus in Islam. Muslim Representation in British India, 1860–1947. By Farzana Shaikh. Islam in Java: Normative Piety and Mysticism in the Sultanate of Yogyakarta. By Mark R. Woodward. La géographie humaine du monde musulman jusq'au milieu du lie sièc?e. Tome 4. Les travaux et les jours. By André Miquel. Blindness and Autobiography: Al‐Ayyam of Taha Husayn. By Fedwa Malti‐Douglas. The Tragedy of Sohrab and Rostam, from the Persian National Epic, the Shahname of Abol‐Qasem Ferdowsi. Translated by Jerome W. Clinton. A Compassionate Peace: A Future For Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East, revised edition. By Everett Mendelsohn. The Arab World Today. William R. Polk. Toward an Islamic Reformation: Civil Liberties, Human Rights and International Law. By Abdullahi Ahmed An‐N'im.Jam't al‐Ikhwān al Muslim?n fi'l Urdun wa Filist?n: afabāt Tārikhiyya. By 'Awni J. al‐ābaydi Athar al Jamāt al islāmiyya al maydani Khil?l al qarn al 'ihr?n. By Dr. Mahmud Salim Images of the West: Third World Perspectives. By David C. Gordon. Intellectual Studies on Islam: Essays Written in Honor of Martin B. Dixon. Edited by Michel M. Mazzaoui and Vera B. Moreen. The Middle East: A History. By Sydney Nettleton Fisher and William Ochsenwald. The Longest war: The Iran‐Iraq Military Conflict. By Dilip Hiro. The History of Modern Egypt from Muhammad Ali to Mubarak. By P. J. Vatikiotis. Commandments by God in Qur'ān. Compiled by Ch. Nazar Mohammad. Lahore: The author, n. d. xx + 775. n. p.

Joel Beinin. &lt;italic&gt;Was the Red Flag Flying There? Marxist Politics and the Arab-Israeli Conflict in Egypt and Israel, 1948–1965&lt;/italic&gt;. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1990. Pp. xix, 317. Cloth $40.00, paper $12.95

Journal Article Joel Beinin. Was the Red Flag Flying There? Marxist Politics and the Arab-Israeli Conflict in Egypt and Israel, 1948–1965. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1990. Pp. xix, 317. Cloth $40.00, paper $12.95 Get access Beinin Joel. Was the Red Flag Flying There? Marxist Politics and the Arab-Israeli Conflict in Egypt and Israel, 1948–1965. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1990. Pp. xix, 317. Cloth $40.00, paper $12.95. Sondra M. Rubenstein Sondra M. Rubenstein Hofstra University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 97, Issue 2, April 1992, Pages 591–592, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/97.2.591 Published: 01 April 1992

The Foundations of State-Labor Relations in Contemporary Egypt

Discussion of labor and the state by political scientists generally moves in one of two possible directions, concentrating on either the degree of open competition in the political order or the large-scale social and political effects of conflict over the division of the national income. The first direction generally addresses pluralism and corporatism, and union organization is a by-product of more consequential state decisions about organizing the economy. The second approach generally appears in the literature on Marxism, Communist parties, and revolution. Significant differences exist between these analytic frameworks, but both view the limitation of the political and economic independence of union movements as something imposed on largely unwilling union leaders and members who nevertheless benefit from the growth and concentration of union memberships and from distributive state policies. While both of these approaches can be enlightening, they leave aspects of the problem of corporatism unexplained. For example, why do workers and their unions often seem to welcome the limitation of competition implicit in corporatism?' Could it have to do with the ways workers compete for jobs and firms compete for shares of markets? When we recall that workers often must choose between increasing their wages and securing their claims to employment, then part of the corporatist puzzle may be understood as an instrumental and hence necessarily transitory bargain between workers and the state. Arguments about corporatism have largely been reflected in recent books and articles on the Egyptian labor movement as well as on other parts of the developing world. Robert Bianchi and Mustafa Kamil Al-Sayyid are among the most prominent names associated with the interest group perspective on corporatism, while Joel Beinin and Zachary Lockman are the most prominent advocates of a Marxist approach.2 Marsha Pripstein Posusney has attempted to combine elements of both neo-Marxist political economy and interest group approaches in her work on the contemporary labor movement.3 In Workers on the Nile, Joel Beinin and Zachary Lockman take an explicitly Marxist approach to the history of the Egyptian labor movement. Writing as historians determined to avoid the pitfalls of mechanical determinism and economism, Beinin and Lockman never define very clearly their analytic framework. Rather, they tell us that objective economic relations constitute the basis for a certain configuration of political and ideological relations in a given society, and it is in the matrix of this structured totality that class struggle takes place.4 The empirically rich book that results from this approach only barely retains its analytic mooring to the assumption that workers and owners struggle ceaselessly over division of the profits in the firm and division of the national income and political power in society as a whole.5 Writing on his own, Beinin uses a more well-defined Marxist approach and tells us that

Intifada Books: The Palestinian Intifada-December 8, 1987-December 8, 1988: A Record of Israeli Repression. . M. Cherif Bassiouni, Louise Cainkar. ; The Palestinian Uprising. . Samir Abed-Rabbo, Doris Safie. ; Intifada: The Palestine at the Crossroads. . Jamal R. Nassar, Roger Heacock. ; Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising against Israeli Occupation. . Zachary Lockman, Joel Beinin. ; Israel, Egypt, and the

Intifada Books: The Palestinian Intifada-December 8, 1987-December 8, 1988: A Record of Israeli Repression. . M. Cherif Bassiouni, Louise Cainkar. ; The Palestinian Uprising. . Samir Abed-Rabbo, Doris Safie. ; Intifada: The Palestine at the Crossroads. . Jamal R. Nassar, Roger Heacock. ; Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising against Israeli Occupation. . Zachary Lockman, Joel Beinin. ; Israel, Egypt, and the

War, Otherness, and Illusionary Identifications with the State

t is useful to distinguish among five different contexts in which the U.S. war effort in the Middle East can be analyzed and critiqued: 1. Long-term U.S. power politics and imperial objectives of domination, including military intervention in the Third World to secure strategically and economically important resources. Publications by Noam Chomsky and Joel Beinin may very well be the best-known and most effective among these critiques. 2. Inconsistencies and hypocrisies in the official moral legitimation of the war, raising questions such as the following: If U.S. foreign policy is guided by morality, why does the U.S. not intervene-even diplomatically-when thousands are murdered by a Suharto in Last Timor or a Pinochet in Chile? Does it not give pause that the images, for example, of gassed Kurdish children, that are used to demonstrate Hussein's disdain for human life, largely date back to a time when he was the friend of the United States against the then-popular tyrant, Khomeini? Why weren't these images disseminated in the media earlier? Why does the