Why are so many adult children living still living with mum and dad? Why do young people seem so disinterested in politics? And what are the hidden threats to Britain’s long-term prosperity lurking in the next few decades? First published in 2010, Ed Howker and Shiv Mailk’s Jilted Generation answers fundamental questions about the society you thought you knew. It identified, for the first time, the perilous position of Britain’s young adults and, with a title brandished by everyone from Ed Miliband to student protesters, the book’s thesis has formed a controversial but essential part of Britain’s political debate. With significant additional material, this edition updates the argument and explains the real effects of austerity policies and the recession. And, crucially, it explains what must be done to protect a vital and underestimated national asset – Britain’s newest adults.

Amidst recent hype about events in the Middle East, there have been few attempts to get below the surface and develop a fuller understanding of what politics means there. The Middle East: The Politics of the Sacred and Secular redresses this balance and provides essential historical and theoretical context. In this book, Shahrough Akhavi shows that the way people think about politics in the Middle East has developed in response to historical experience. Islam has obviously played a pivotal role and the book does much to disentangle myth and reality about Islamic responses to politics. Refreshingly, however, the book focuses on the universal concepts of the individual, civil society, the state, justice, authority and obligation and how these have been interpreted by Middle Eastern thinkers in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Akhavi builds a dynamic picture of a politically exciting and engaged region. The fresh perspective this book brings to global political theory, and the background it gives students of politics in the Middle East make it an important addition to the World Political Theories series.

Prior to 2011, popular imagination perceived the Muslim Middle East as unchanging and unchangeable, frozen in its own traditions and history. In Life as Politics, Asef Bayat argues that such presumptions fail to recognize the routine, yet important, ways in which ordinary people make meaningful change through everyday actions. First published just months before the Arab Spring swept across the region, this timely and prophetic book sheds light on the ongoing acts of protest, practice, and direct daily action. The second edition includes three new chapters on the Arab Spring and Iran's Green Movement and is fully updated to reflect recent events. At heart, the book remains a study of agency in times of constraint. In addition to ongoing protests, millions of people across the Middle East are effecting transformation through the discovery and creation of new social spaces within which to make their claims heard. This eye-opening book makes an important contribution to global debates over the meaning of social movements and the dynamics of social change.

Explores the many facets of Arab political thought from the nineteenth century to the present day.

This work, first published in 1972, is an objective introduction to the social, political, and cultural changes that took place in the Middle East in the years after the Second World War. It includes papers by some of the most distinguished scholars in the field as well as personal accounts by insightful observers living in the area. It includes articles on such topics as Arab socialism and nationalism, religious communities, ethnic minorities, women in Arab society, education, and many more.

During the second half of the twentieth century, the Arab intellectual and political scene polarized between a search for totalizing doctrines--nationalist, Marxist, and religious--and radical critique. Arab thinkers were reacting to the disenchanting experience of postindependence Arab states, as well as to authoritarianism, intolerance, and failed development. They were also responding to successive defeats by Israel, humiliation, and injustice. The first book to take stock of these critical responses, this volume illuminates the relationship between cultural and political critique in the work of major Arab thinkers, and it connects Arab debates on cultural malaise, identity, and authenticity to the postcolonial issues of Latin America and Africa, revealing the shared struggles of different regions and various Arab concerns.

Cultural Transitions in the Middle East deals with the interlacing of themes constitutive of traditional cultures and world-views in the Middle East with concepts and outlooks that have originated in the modern Western World. A number of Muslim thinkers who are indigenous products of the Middle East cultural setting have now begun to use some of the forms of modern Western literature and social thought. Conversely, some intellectuals trained in modern secular schools have attempted to reevaluate their Islamic heritage. The papers cover aspects of this subtle interpenetration which has not been explored to date.