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New Review of "Contested Legitimacies" (Grimm, 2022) by Amira Abdelhamid

News from Jul 11, 2023

In the latest issue of "Contemporary Sociology", Amira Abdelhamid reviews "Contested Legitimacies: Repression and Revolt in Post-Revolutionary Egypt" by Jannis Grimm (2022):

"Contested Legitimacies: Repression and Revolt in Post-Revolutionary Egypt offers a novel reading of contentious politics in post-coup Egypt. The book successfully documents Egypt’s recent protest history in great detail, particularly two episodes that have been central in “influencing the trajectory of contentious dynamics” in post-revolutionary Egypt (p. 62). These are the resistance tactics against the July 3, 2013 military coup, spearheaded by the National Alliance to Support Legitimacy (NASL), and those of the Popular Campaign to Protect the Land (PCPL) in 2016, against the transfer of two Egyptian islands to Saudi Arabia.
However, author Jannis Julien Grimm has done so much more than lay out the events of these episodes. By engaging with the concepts of “strategic interaction, discursive contestation, and political subjectivation” (p. 28), Grimm analyzes rich primary and secondary data to emphasize the “situatedness and contingency of social change” (p. 22). Unlike mainstream accounts that make clear-cut distinctions between the different contenders in Egypt’s postrevolutionary political arena, Grimm illustrates the inherent instability of discourses that shape the ever-shifting conduct and alliance-making strategies of these contenders."

Amira Abdelhamid (2023): Contested Legitimacies: Repression and Revolt in Post-Revolutionary Egypt. Contemporary Sociology, 52:4, 345-346.

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