Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
The wave of anti-government protests that swept through the Arab world from December 2010 on started to transform politics and society in the Middle East. The protests came as a surprise to many observers—but not to Rami Zurayk, an veteran Lebanese agronomist and social activist who had been analyzing the collapse of traditional agricultural livelihoods in the Middle East since the late 1980s. In 2007, Zurayk started writing the "Land and People" blog, which charts food-policy and agricultural policy issues throughout the Middle East. Food, Farming, and Freedom presents his choice of the best of the posts in the blog from 2007 through April 2011. It concludes with a chapter tracking the early months of the Arab Spring.
"A major contribution to our understanding of the roots of this unprecedented upsurge of Arab youth, Arab energy, and Arab political maturity."
—Rashid Khalidi, professor, Columbia University
"Look no further for the real roots of the Arab Spring than Rami Zurayk’s highly readable and very solid analysis of the region’s development failures, particularly the ruling regimes’ abandonment of the rural areas to misery and despair."
—Nadia Hijab, cofounder of Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network
"Rami has written a thoughtful and radical alternative to the various fashionable globalization literature on the Middle East. Rami’s book provides a model for activists: he succeeds in linking the daily struggle against capitalism and corporate greed, with the struggle against state injustices and FOREIGN occupation in the Middle East. It is not the UNDP reports that can explain the conditions of social injustice in the region, but Rami’s book can: it is recommended for activists, students, and academics. Rami’s writings don’t come out only from an academic experience, but he also writes from a first-hand, grass-roots background of struggle against injustice in the Middle East. Rami has traveled widely inside Lebanon and in the Middle East: his travel is not the typical academic travel. He has connected with workers and farmers in the most remote areas of Lebanon and Yemen. The book could not be more timely: it is the antithesis of the New York Times‘ coverage of the region. I strongly and enthusiastically recommend this book and hope that it would be used in introductory courses on Middle East politics and development."
—As’ad AbuKhalil, California State University, Stanislaus