Exploitation, Debt & Aid in Egypt and Tunisia: What Direction for the Revolutions?

Speaker Dr Adam Hanieh. In the wake of the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, international financial institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, in partnership with the Gulf Arab States, have rushed to offer loans and investment packages to the new transitional regimes. The possible conditionalities attached to these aid packages have provoked widespread concern from the region’s political movements, and need to be seen in the context of ongoing struggles to achieve the social and economic demands that underpinned the uprisings. Dr. Adam Hanieh will examine the logic of financial aid in the Middle East, locating the discussion within the political economy of the uprisings and the neoliberal transformation of the region over the past two decades. Dr. Hanieh is a Lecturer in Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), and is author of the recently published Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States (Palgrave-MacMillan 2011).
Nearest tube station Farringdon. 6.45pm (doors open 6.30). £3, concessions £2, tickets on door.