Asef Bayat, a well-known scholar of the Middle East, will deliver a seminar entitled ‘Making Sense of the Arab Spring’ tomorrow.

“Seven years ago, the outbreak of the Arab uprisings created an unprecedented optimism about the future of democracy in the Arab world,” says Bayat. “But today, a strong sense of pessimism and despair surrounds the trajectory of these uprisings.”

His presentation attempts to historicise the Arab revolutions, comparing them with those of the 1970s, notably the Iranian revolution of 1979.

He adds: “I suggest that what transpired in Tunisia, Egypt or Yemen in 2011 was not revolution in the sense of their 20th-century counterparts, but a ‘refo-lution’, that is, revolutionary movements that emerged to compel the incumbent regimes to reform themselves.”

He will discuss the above concept and the outcome of these revolutions during the talk.

Bayat teaches sociology and the Middle East at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He taught at the American University in Cairo for many years and served as the director of the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM), holding the chair of Society and Culture of the Modern Middle East at Leiden University, the Netherlands. His research areas range from social movements and social change, to religion and public life, Islam and modernity, urban space and politics, and the contemporary Middle East. He also wrote a number of books.

The seminar is being organised by WIPSS (Work in Progress in the Social Studies) seminar and the Malta Sociological Association.

The talk will be held tomorrow at the University of Malta’s Gateway Building Hall E (ground floor on the right viewed from university entrance) at 6pm. Students are encouraged to attend and the public is welcome. The one-hour talk will be followed by a discussion.