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Abstract:

In October 2019, hundreds of thousands took to the streets of Lebanon to protest austerity measures in what became known as the “thawra.” These were the largest mass protests seen in the country's modern history. 
 

The Lebanon Uprising of 2019 puts the revolution in its historical and regional context and also follows the huge transformations that have been unraveling in Lebanon ever since. The book is a unique source of testimonies that brings to the fore the voices of those scholars, activists, researchers, and journalists who took part in the protests or were closely involved in the unfolding events. These accounts include stories about specific events and struggles, views of the uprising from various regions of the country, and reflections on topics such as the labor struggle, disability, the student movement, foreign interventions, the struggle for preserving environmental spaces, the role of refugees and non-Lebanese within the movement, and women and queer participation. 
 

The book situates the protests within the historical, political, economic, social, and environmental foundations of the Lebanese polity, as well as in the broader context of a "second wave” of Arab uprisings and a global wave of upheavals in 2019, making this book a testament to the rich history of protests and activism in the country. It features some primary documents, including photos and other materials that were disseminated in the streets and over social media platforms, making this book an important resource of first-hand knowledge.


Bio:
Dr. Rima Majed is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Sociology, Anthropology and Media Studies Department at the American University of Beirut (AUB). Her work focuses on the fields of social movements, uprisings, sectarianism, conflict and violence, with a focus on the Middle East. She was a visiting fellow at Princeton University in 2018/19, and a research fellow at the Middle East Initiative at Harvard University in 2022/23. Her work has appeared in several journals, books and media platforms such as American Political Science Review, Social Forces, British Journal of Sociology, Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of the Middle East, Middle East Law and Governance Journal, Routledge Handbook on the Politics of the Middle East, Global Dialogue, Idafat: The Arab Journal of Sociology, OpenDemocracy, Middle East Eye, CNN and Al Jazeera English. She is also the co-editor of The Lebanon Uprising of 2019: Voices from the Revolution (I.B. Tauris, 2022), and the Principal Investigator on the “Critical Approaches to Development Studies in the Middle East and North Africa" project at the American University of Beirut (Lebanon). 

Dr. Jeffrey G. Karam is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Lebanese American University (LAU). He is currently a Research Fellow with the Forum Transregionale Studien’s Europe in the Middle East-The Middle East in Europe (EUME) program and the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Politics at Freie Universität Berlin. Karam is also a member of AGYA (the Arab-German Young Academy of Sciences and Humanities). He has held postdoctoral fellowships and visiting professorships at Harvard University, Boston University, and the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung. From 2018 to 2022, Karam was a non-resident Research Associate at Harvard University’s Middle East Initiative. As a scholar between Beirut and Berlin, Karam's research and writing focus on the politics of intelligence and foreign policy, revolutions and counter-revolutions, and transformational moments of political change in West Asia and North Africa, with an emphasis on the Arab world. Karam is the editor of The Middle East in 1958: Reimagining A Revolutionary Year (I.B. Tauris and Bloomsbury, 2020), co-editor of The Lebanon Uprising of 2019: Voices from the Revolution(I.B. Tauris and Bloomsbury, 2022), and one of the editors of Global Authoritarianism: Perspectives and Contestations from the South (Transcript and Columbia University Press, 2022). Karam is the author of numerous publications, and his research has been published in academic and public outlets, including Intelligence and National Security, the Arab Studies Journal, Journal of Political Science Education, H-Diplo/ISSF, TRAFO, Jadaliyya, The Washington Post, openDemocracy, the Daily Star Lebanon, Megaphone, among others. He tweets @JGKaram. 

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