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As the world is crippled by the novel coronavirus pandemic, countries across the Middle East are bracing for an unprecedented fallout. A region that continues to bear the brunt of many wars, conflicts, and authoritarian oppressions has been held hostage to an invisible virus rampaging through its nations, indiscriminately affecting and infecting all parts of their populations. Already dire socioeconomic situations in many of these countries have been exacerbated by the closure of workspaces and educational facilities, the concomitant rise in redundancies and unemployment, increased social and political frictions, decimation of markets, and a further plummeting of economies. As official livelihood structures crumble under the weight of increasingly impoverished and unsupported populations, the informality of life will only intensify across the Middle East, as it will elsewhere in the world. While informal networks of working, living, and socializing are crucial for the survival of disadvantaged communities across the Middle East, these have taken a direct hit from nation-wide and government-mandated closures and restrictions and increased digital surveillance. These measures, combined with public fears and safety concerns, have largely kept Middle Eastern populations at home and off the streets. It is only a matter of time before these predicaments become intolerable for the many already trying to endure in precarious environments, compelling collective anger and resentment to once again spill out into the open.

This chapter charts Ebony’s initial response to the ‘mainstreaming’ of black history in American popular and political culture during the 1970s, focused around the magazine’s discussion of, and engagement with, the American Bicentennial in 1976. As a whole, Ebony’s coverage of the Bicentennial reflected a shift away from a more activist-oriented depiction of black history and an embrace of less political and more commemorative editorial perspective. Yet even as this shift occurred, Bennett pushed for a rejection of the Bicentennial as an ‘affront to truth and freedom.’

As part of restricting public space and cracking down on civil society and opposition political parties, Egypt’s new authoritarian regime has tried to manage social activism through repression, undemocratic legal frameworks, and aggressive judicial tools. It has intensified its efforts to intimidate professional associations, student groups, and labor activists, and has also expanded its targets to include young human rights advocates and citizens who have publicly stood against police brutality. Egypt’s ruling generals may not be embattled yet, but, with the crackdown on civil society and the decline of party politics, these activist groups currently offer the greatest hope for changing the tide. This study examines the four main anti-authoritarian platforms that have shaped social activism in Egypt since 2013: 1) single-cause initiatives that are opposing human rights abuses and advocating for the rights and freedoms of the victims;2) professional associations that are defending freedoms of expression and association;3) student groups that are challenging the systematic interference of the security services in their affairs and the permanent presence of security forces on campuses; and 4) the labor movement that is galvanized by deteriorating economic and social conditions and by the government’s repression of labor activists. In addition, this chapter highlights how spontaneous eruptions of popular anger in response to human rights abuses have become politically significant.

Urbanization is always embedded within struggles over social power. Who gets to build what, where, and how are political, social, and economic questions that can have far-reaching spatial and temporal consequences. The postcolonial era in the Middle East in the 1950s resulted in an intensification of the processes of industrialization and urbanization. In countries like Egypt, this meant the construction of many factories and industries unaccompanied by programs for the construction of worker housing, ushering in decades of informal settlements. In the contemporary era, the Sisi regime has announced a major intervention into the urban fabric with the elimination of “informal” urban areas. This study focuses on how the concept of urban informality has been weaponized across the Middle East, and especially in Egypt, and how it has been used in contemporary political practice in the region. The framework of urban informality in the Middle East is most often deployed not to improve the urban conditions of vulnerable communities, but to further their marginality through displacement and dispossession. This study emphasizes the issue of targeting the urban poor through the concept of urban informality in Egypt, through which the government has displaced and dispossessed certain urban communities. The rhetoric around urban informality serves as a proxy for other social conflicts around class, politics, and religion.