The government has backtracked on a directive that was, ironically, issued by President William Ruto when he was Kenya’s agriculture minister. In 2009, Ruto banned the export of unprocessed macadamia nuts to allow local processors access to larger quantities of the raw material which in turn would create jobs in this labour-intensive sector.

In recent years, macadamia farming has gained traction in even non-traditional growing areas beyond Mt Kenya such as the Rift Valley and western regions. However, both the county and national governments have consistently failed to put in place all the measures necessary to support the macadamia sector and this has significantly affected farm gate prices today, leading to huge losses for farmers.

A number of factors have contributed to the poor farm gate prices, which the government wrongly assumes will improve once competition is introduced by bringing in more exporters of raw macadamia.

Following the export ban, both the national government and county governments in macadamia catchment areas failed to provide the policy support necessary to promote a sector where four years ago the farm gate price for a kilo of raw nuts was Ksh180 due to the increased number of processors. Fears have emerged in recent years that Kenya is losing its grip on the niche international market due to the low quality of the nuts produced, which makes the KSh180 per kilo price unsustainable.

At the time Kenya instituted the ban on exports of raw macadamia nuts in 2009, there were only three other macadamia nut-producing countries in the world—Australia, South Africa, and Hawaii in the United States, with Kenya supplying about 20 per cent of the total global demand.

Between 90 and 95 per cent of Kenya’s macadamia is produced for export. Key export destinations for Kenyan macadamia are the US, the European Union, Japan, China, Hong Kong and Canada. In 2020, the demand for Kenya’s macadamia globally declined by 40 per cent, a drop the processors attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic.

New entrants who now threaten Kenya’s global market include China, Guatemala, Malawi, Vietnam, Colombia, New Zealand, Mozambique, Brazil, Paraguay and Swaziland. In total, 15 countries in the world have joined the macadamia producing club in the last decade.

The Chinese government established the International Macadamia Research and Development Center in Lincang in 2018 and the country’s market potential for macadamia is now the largest on the planet, recording an 11-fold increase in macadamia consumption between 2012 and 2018.

In an earlier interview, the Chief Executive Officer of the Nut Processors Association of Kenya (NutPAK),  Mr Charles  Muigai, said that the biggest challenge to Kenya’s market competitiveness in the global arena is the low quality of nuts produced by Kenyan farmers due to the insufficient support the sector receives from the government and other actors.

A report by the Netherlands Centre for the Promotion of Imports from Developing Countries titled Value Chain Analysis for Macadamia Nuts from Kenya 2020 cited climate change, the impact of pests and diseases, poor agricultural practices, lack of access to inputs, use of unsuitable or old macadamia varieties and immature harvesting as Kenya’s main challenges.

At a critical point of transition following the ban, there was no functioning formal association of macadamia farmers. The Ministry of Agriculture did initiate the creation of the Macadamia Growers Association of Kenya in 2009, but it remains underfunded and without offices.

Unlike the tea and coffee sectors, the macadamia sector has evolved without any regulation or policy support from the government, the only major interventions being the 2009 ban and its anchoring in law in 2018.

The production of macadamia nuts in Kenya traces its history to 1944 when a European settler named Bob Harries introduced the crop from Australia in his estate near Thika town for ornamental and household consumption purposes.

The government would years later facilitate the creation of a joint venture between Japanese investors led by Yoshiyuki Sato and a Kenyan, Pius Ngugi, to set up the Kenya Nut Company (KNC), which to this day still runs the factory in Thika.

Initially, the company built a modern processing plant and established its own macadamia plantations on about 400ha and also set up a nursery for the propagation of adapted and grafted seedlings to supply out-growers.

The production of macadamia nuts in Kenya traces its history to 1944 when a European settler named Bob Harries introduced the crop from Australia.

By 1975, the company was processing nuts from its own estate as well as from out-growers. It enjoyed a monopoly purchase right for in-shell nuts, sourcing 90 per cent of the raw nuts from 140 smallholder coffee cooperative societies, as well as from another 47 buying centres.

Like the cashew nut sector, the macadamia sector was affected by the liberalisation of the economy. Being a private company, KNC could not be privatized, which shielded it from the decay that ensued in the cashew nut sector.

However, liberalisation accelerated domestic competition. In 1994, Equity Bank founder Peter Munga  opened a macadamia processing factory called Farm Nut Co. in Maragua in then Murang’a District.

With the entry of Farm Nut, the role of middlemen became predominant, due to the logistics challenges faced by the company in sourcing nuts from farmers. Brokers would buy nuts directly from the farmers, offering better prices than the cooperatives had, and immediate payment. Consequently, this significantly reduced farmers’ costs of transporting nuts to collection centres and collecting payments from banks.

Moreover, reduced volumes from the cooperatives increased processors’ transactional costs.  It became more convenient for them to deal with middlemen, and by the early 2000s, the role of the cooperatives in the macadamia supply chain had diminished.

A dramatic shift in the industry came in the early 2000s when China became a mass consumer of the nuts. The emergence of a growing middle class in China with an appetite for in-shell nuts, and the increasing number of container ships docking in Mombasa demanding cargo for the return journey, tempted Chinese traders to venture into the export of raw macadamia nuts from the country.

Local processors would buy nuts mainly from Kiambu, Murang’a, Kirinyaga, and Nyeri, where Kikuyu processors had established processing units and created networks with local communities that they hired for factory jobs. This helped to lock the Chinese out of these regions.

Estimates by the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service indicate that nearly 60 per cent of macadamia had been exported in-shell in 2008, implying that exporters had been able to purchase most of the crop from Embu and Meru. This posed a huge threat, bringing processors together to push the government to ban the export of raw nuts that was finally instituted on 16 June 2009.

A dramatic shift in the industry came in the early 2000s when China became a mass consumer of the nuts.

With the exit of the Chinese and the creation of processors’ and farmers’ associations, there was hope that the industry would get organised and receive the necessary support.

This did not happen. Both the farmers and processors would soon be left to their own devices, competing with each other to fight the Chinese who were still smuggling nuts out of Kenya. However, the competition and the need to create more volume saw processors increase production five-fold in the last decade, reaching close to 50,000 metric tonnes by 2020. They also grew in number from 5 to over 30, a move that saw farmers get an unprecedented Sh200 a kilo despite complaints that the quality did not justify the price.

In Meru and Embu the belief remained that things would be different were the Chinese buyers still available, and this may have prompted the recent lifting of the ban. The processors blamed the poor prices on brokers and the resultant high percentage of immature nuts. A narrative was also pushed that if farmers started selling the nuts to processors directly—rather than via brokers—good prices would return.

According to the report of the Centre for the Promotion of Imports from Developing countries, the main opportunity for yield improvement lies with supporting extension service providers, such as the Kenya Agriculture and Livestock Organisation (KALRO) and the Agriculture and Food Authority (AFA), to increase farmers’ capacities and to multiply and disseminate high-yielding macadamia seedlings that are suited to the different macadamia growing regions of Kenya.

There are two main areas of intervention for quality improvement. The first involves supporting processors who wish to obtain loans to buy crops in advance, thereby addressing farmers’ need for quick cash. The second is the implementation of region-relevant harvesting moratoria.

Upstream traceability of Kenyan macadamia is severely challenged by the large number of smallholder farmers and independent buying agents. Small plantations typify Kenya’s production system as opposed to producers like China, South Africa and Australia, which have large plantations. Around 200,000 small farms in Kenya currently produce an estimated 42,500 tons of in-shell nuts.

Upstream traceability of Kenyan macadamia is severely challenged by the large number of smallholder farmers and independent buying agents.

Moreover, support should go to the creation of a registry of farmers, including data such as landholding size, age and number of macadamia trees and macadamia varieties and traders. This registry should be governed and accessed by members of the sector’s associations and by the AFA.

Communication and dialogue among macadamia stakeholders is lacking, with conflicting interests among actors often leading to rivalry.

To address this, sector associations should establish, adopt and enforce codes of conduct to regulate sector players. Dialogue and transparency should be the ruling principles of this code of conduct. Moreover, all actors should discuss a multi-stakeholder strategy to address the challenges facing the macadamia sector.

Eastern Africa has been grappling with multiple humanitarian crises exacerbated by climate-induced drought emergencies, disease outbreaks, floods and social instability due to civil conflict and the prolonged effect of 2019 locust plagues and the COVID-19 pandemic. Between 2017 and 2023, the population needing humanitarian assistance in parts of Eastern Africa rose from 22.5 million to 68 million and, as reported in the financial tracking systems of the United Nation Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affair- UN-OCHA, the cost of humanitarian assistance doubled from US$4.1 billion to US$9.4 billion.

Of the crises besetting the region, severe drought is the most significant humanitarian emergency, especially for rural communities, as livelihoods primarily depend on animal husbandry and farming. Over the past 40 years, the region has experienced severe droughts: in 1976-1978, 1985-1988, 2010-2011, 2016-2017 and 2020-2022. Due to these crises, there has been significant interest in early warning systems and anticipatory planning in development and humanitarian contexts.

In particular, following the 1985 famine that resulted from severe drought and production failure, huge investments in early warning, preparedness and response were made. For example, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) created FEWSNET—Famine Early Warning System Network—an agency for evidence-based early warning information. FEWSNET’s primary focus is to provide scientific information on acute food insecurity, agro-climatic conditions and drought early warning to governments, international relief agencies, scientists, and NGOs, among others, for actionable response in preventing drought and famine emergencies. Equally, Eastern African states established ICPAC, initially known as the IGAD Drought Monitoring Centre in Nairobi (IDMC-N). ICPAC is the World Meteorological Organisation’s (WMO) regional climate centre of excellence. These agencies, together with others, work closely with government meteorological departments at the regional, national and local level to provide timely early warning information for preparedness, contingency planning and early action.

Over the last 20 years, the accuracy of  early warning information has improved, at least for short-term predictions, but the main challenge has been reaching local communities—what some call the “last mile”. The result is that early warning information often does not reach where it is most needed. Despite all the talk of early warning, disaster risk reduction, shock-responsive systems, contingency planning and anticipatory action, the end results are mixed to say the least. We need to ask, how can these big investments in early warning be linked to local approaches to prediction and response?

Predicting droughts and communicating the predictions through risk reports and early warning bulletins is now standard practice. In Kenya, the impressive National Drought Management Authority (NDMA), a government outfit based in 23 Arid and Semi-Arid Land (ASAL) counties, was established in 2011 with significant donor support. It produces monthly bulletins stacked with information derived from earth observations by satellites as well as surveys of key vulnerability indicators (household food consumption, market prices for livestock, food, water, livestock body condition, vegetation, status etc.) collected across each region. These bulletins are shared with the county government, the array of NGOs working in each area, and local communities.

Despite the deluge of high-quality information, the gap between early warning (which is increasingly accurate, at least for the short-term) and action on the ground is enormous. This has been a perennial problem. There are issues of trust (why should I believe the government?), inertia (surely if I wait a bit, then things will get better) and communication styles (a dozen pages in English rather than vernacular and visual versions, although this is apparently going to change). Moreover, those working on the ground know that there’s a drought right now (livestock is dying in numbers, there is no grass and water), so they don’t need information that the situation is dire. As one frustrated NDMA officer observed, “With early warnings you are telling them what they already see. We are ambassadors for what they already know!”

Deliberating on uncertainties: the need for local debate

The big problem with such information systems is that they are usually one-way: we have the information, you should listen and act. There is no space for dialogue, deliberation and debate. There are always uncertainties: Does this really apply here? Why wasn’t the drought predicted correctly last time? Is this information relevant to me right now? The assumption of specialised expertise filling a “deficit” in local knowledge and understanding has long prevailed in debates about science-policy interactions; it applies as much to early warning and drought alert information in pastoral drylands.

Despite the deluge of high-quality information, the gap between early warning and action on the ground is enormous.

This gap was recognised by a number of agencies that came together to design the Community-Managed Disaster Risk Reduction (CMDRR) approach, based on a participatory diagnosis of problems and joint construction of solutions. While the CMDRR committees are aimed at producing development and contingency plans that can then articulate with funding programmes from the government and NGOs, the most essential part of these committees is the process.

Meeting monthly and composed of a group of locally selected “experts”, they draw on local experience and knowledge and discuss impending or unfolding crises. This may be drought, but also conflict, animal disease or other challenges facing them, right there in their own context. This deliberation is crucial as diverse views are shared, dispute and contestation are possible, and in this way, uncertainties (for they are always there) are addressed.

For example, in one village some way off the main road near Moyale, we met the chair of the local committee who explained its functioning. There are 23 members, 15 men and 8 women. The roles are voluntary although they have been supported—now over nine years—by a local NGO. The membership includes elders with long, historical experience of past crises and how these were addressed, and several people with specialist expertise.

The assumption of specialised expertise filling a “deficit” in local knowledge and understanding has long prevailed in debates about science-policy interactions.

Among these local experts is a man who is an expert in treating sick and injured animals (specialised in local techniques for bone-setting). His knowledge is sought by community members when animals become sick in “normal” times, but when a particular disease spreads dramatically, he is a crucial point of contact. With veterinary officers few and far between, he must link with those selling drugs, but also those with knowledge (as he has) of traditional herbs and treatments. The local “disease reporters” pass information upwards to their superiors, but their local knowledge is also crucial in understanding disease at a local level. Connecting these networks is crucial in responding to a crisis, as described for North Horr, also in Marsabit county. The CMDRR is thus a vital platform for integrating and sharing this knowledge.

Local early warning: the role of community-based prediction and response

In addition to those with expertise in particular facets of crisis response, there are others who act as the local early warning system; they claim that they never make use of the NDMA bulletins but have their own system. This is perhaps not surprising: there is no phone network in the village, and they are not provided with data bundles to download the documents with all their graphs and tables. Instead, they make use of locals who are experts in predicting droughts and other crises.

Two such experts are members of the committee. One woman recently inherited the role of Uchu from her mother, expert reader of animals’ intestines. Her mother was renowned throughout the area as someone who could accurately predict what will happen by inspecting the intestines of a recently slaughtered goat, cow or bull. They must be animals that have been born and raised in the area and ideally are young calves or kids. Usually, the intestines of animals slaughtered for weddings, funerals or naming ceremonies are used by such experts. If the signs are unclear, the process is repeated with a newly slaughtered animal of the right type. Those who read the signs are offered a fried portion of the liver. Once eaten the predictions are made, and people discuss. Sometimes there are conflicting versions from different people, and further deliberations have to be made. Even in the indigenous science of making predictions using animal intestines, there are uncertainties.

Although intestine readers can divine the future across a range of hazards, others may be referred to. Some throw shoes to see what the future might bring, while others gaze at the stars. These indigenous astronomers are especially well regarded. In the same village where we conducted our interviews, an interpreter of the patterns of the stars was also present. People view the local astronomer as especially good at predicting future climate events, usually over a more extended period than those who read from the intestines of slaughtered animals.

Even in the indigenous science of making predictions using animal intestines, there are uncertainties.

Of course, predictions only happen at a certain point in time, and in relation to a certain set of questions that community members pose. But droughts, conflicts, disease outbreaks and so on unfold over time in uncertain ways. This is why predictions must be repeated, and adaptations and responses to these must be continuous, part of a process. Combining multiple knowledge is essential, along with discussions around uncertainties, if a humanitarian crisis is to be contained based on early warning information.

Closing the early warning gap 

The problem with the centralised early warning systems, and the whole paraphernalia of reporting that follows, is that they too often do not reach the “last mile”—the affected communities. This is where the early warning’s “missing  link” has long been identified. Often distrusted and perceived as alien to local contextual knowledge, recommendations are frequently rejected.

This is why the NDMA in Moyale has, with the encouragement of a local NGO, started to work with local early warning specialists in workshops where external, “scientific” information is shared at the local level and debated alongside the local interpretations and predictions. In Moyale sub-county the NDMA has invited traditional forecasters from across the region, including different ethnic groups. At a workshop, they slaughter a goat, and each individual inspects the intestines. After completing their inspections, they share the results and compare them with the ICPAC and Meteorological Department forecasts.

Often distrusted and perceived as alien to local contextual knowledge, recommendations are frequently rejected.

As the local NDMA officer explained, despite debate about the specifics, there was remarkable convergence between the different views. Building trust with local communities through using local knowledge in tandem with external, “scientific” sources is seen as an important route to communication, with community radio programmes planned where the results can be discussed.

And yet, the huge investments in early warning systems using the very best satellite technologies and highly sophisticated interpretation techniques often assume a linear transformation of information, from those who know and those who don’t. But this ignores the fact that local pastoralists are well practised in predicting and responding to drought. In the end, the fancy technological solutions are no match for the local deliberations on the ground about uncertain futures using multiple sources of knowledge.

No-one expects these predictions to be correct all of the time—whether local or external—but it’s the deliberation around uncertainties that ensues following a prediction that is important in shaping local responses. Effective responses always have to be embedded in local contexts, drawing on local knowledge and social relations, and this is why too often external interventions around “resilience” fail and why alternatives are needed.

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This is article is adapted from the second of a series of three blogs written as part of a scoping study and supported by ACIAR (Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research). 

Twelve years have passed since the Arab Spring, and both Egypt and Tunisia are facing a stark economic crisis. Both are currently under the mercy of extremely unfavorable structural adjustment programs imposed by the International Monetary Fund, relying heavily on food imports, mired in debt, and facing historical inflation rates with unprecedented hikes in food prices. This dire economic situation is made all the worse by a relentless escalation of authoritarian measures in both countries. The prevailing atmosphere indicates that the counterrevolution has prevailed and that avenues of emancipatory possibility have shrunk almost to the point of extinction.

Every year, however, as the anniversary of the January uprisings approaches, dread ensues, not only because it prompts us to reflect on the defeat, but also because of the steady barrage of analysis we are inundated with, grappling with the same questions every year, and revealing an unsatiated desire to answer questions that we already probably know the answers to. Questions abound about horizontalism or verticalism, leadership, or leaderlessness that date back to the break between Stalin and Trotsky, which have eternally divided those in the 1917 camp vs the 1968 camp. Spontaneity contra organization ad infinitum.

A book that stands out in this genre, however, is Asef Bayat’s Revolution Without Revolutionaries: Making Sense of the Arab Spring. Published in 2017, it has become one of the most referenced in the field. In it, the Iranian-American sociologist grapples with the idea of what revolution means in a post-Cold War era. Bayat—correctly in my opinion—attributes the failure of the January uprisings, despite their extraordinary mobilization and resistance, to a lack of revolutionary vision, political organization, and a dearth of intellectual articulation by its leaders. He does so by comparing them to the revolutions of the 1970s when the concept of revolution was largely informed by socialism and anti-imperialism. Adversely, the January uprisings, affected by the NGOization of the world, seemed to be more concerned with democracy, human rights, and accountability.

Deviating away from the approach he took in Revolution Without Revolutionaries, Bayat—in his sixth and latest book, Revolutionary Life: The Everyday of the Arab Spring, published in 2021—decides to focus on the granular rather than the structural by focusing on the “non-movements” as he refers to them, giving primacy to “what the revolution meant to ordinary people.” Focusing on Egypt and Tunisia, Bayat’s argument is that the events of 2011 set something in motion, and brought a different set of social relations in everyday life. The book is rich with examples of this everyday resistance from both countries, covering different categories.

With his starting point being the subaltern, Bayat attempts to investigate the relationship between the “ordinary” and the “extraordinary,” or the “mundane” and the “monumental.” Evoking Antonio Gramsci and American anthropologist and anarchist James C. Scott, his focus this time is civil society and everyday resistance as opposed to the macro approach he used in Revolution Without Revolutionaries, with the aim of finding the connection between both. He also aims to give the subaltern “agency” in relation to revolutionary moments. This is made manifest even in the naming of the chapters of the book (the poor and the plebian, women, children of the revolution, etc.), assigning a separate experience to every group. In doing so he tries to make us consider the meaning of revolution, providing us with an alternative narrative that doesn’t fall under the binary of “success” and “defeat.” Its strength lies in that it rejects the defeatist paradigm that has become the prevalent narrative of the uprisings.

“A ‘failed’ revolution may not be entirely failed if we consider significant transformations that may transpire at the level of the ‘social’,” Bayat contends. Arguably, one can attribute this approach to a sort of theoretical optimism that refuses to give in to defeat. However, it prompts us to think about the bleakness of the current post-counterrevolution reality that these everyday resistances—which one can argue are universal and present in all societies, not just societies that have undergone recent political transformations—are something to be celebrated.

Although the attempt to reframe the revolution from being seen through the lens of “failure” or “defeat” is notable, the premise of the book itself is indicative of the current impossibility of actual politics, be it in Egypt or Tunisia. The absence of which gives cause to the celebration of and the need to document the minutiae of these quotidian acts.

The book’s heavily researched chapters are divided thematically, each tackling a different demographic of the revolution. While these chapters are brimming with examples, the choice to divide them into categories that are arguably liberal watchwords is expressive of this absence of politics, defaulting to the reproduction of cultural subjects. Wouldn’t we rather develop class positions that traverse these social categories than have signifiers like “the poor” or “the children?”

In the chapter, Mothers and Daughters of the Revolution, Bayat references at least three different examples of women taking off their hijab as an example of changing social attitudes. One example was a woman who left her advertising job in the corporate sector to work in civil society and human rights and took off her hijab. Another example was a woman who took off her hijab and married a human rights advocate; another one obtained the courage to travel alone and also took off her hijab. While these examples do not make up the majority of examples of everyday resistance given in the book, they suggest an overreliance on anecdotal experience and cast what are extremely individualized acts of rebellion as resistance.

Nonetheless, Bayat explains that he understands that these categories are more complex than their titles and that they can be divided along class or racial lines. However, he is cautious of a “reductionist Marxism” that tends to “reduce the multilayered sources of subaltern dissent,” and emphasizes the importance of civil society formation, invoking Gramsci’s utilization of civil society as a way to counter Leninist vanguardism (understood as a small elite group leading the revolution on behalf of the working class). In the Gramscian sense, the method through which the working class can challenge this hegemonic dominance is through creating cultural institutions mired in broad-based, popular movements that would develop organically through civil society. However, I do not think this translates to the concept of civil society as it is used today.

As Adam Hanieh argues in Lineages of Revolt, the idea of civil society is mostly championed by international organizations and international financial institutions, linking it with free market economic policies as a bulwark against authoritarianism. For Hanieh, “the state/civil society dichotomy serves to ‘conceptualize away’ the problem of capitalism, by disaggregating society into fragments, with no overarching power structure, no totalizing unity, no systemic coercions—in other words, no capitalist system, with its expansionary drive and its capacity to penetrate every aspect of social life.” He posits instead for class to be used as the “key social category from which to comprehend the dynamics of any society, distinct from the catchall notion of civil society (as it is conventionally understood).”

Bayat also refers to the work of James C. Scott as a necessary departure from this Marxist “economism” when it comes to thinking about resistance, and attributes the concept of everyday resistance to him. However, Bayat maintains that there is a certain reductionism in Scott’s work through his sole focus on everyday resistance as the structure for change, and aims in this book to bridge the gap between the study of everyday resistance and the study of revolutions by using a combined approach to analyze the Arab Spring. Scott coined “everyday resistance” in his 1985 book Weapons of the Weak to describe everyday acts of resistance that are not as impactful or obvious as other forms of organized, collective articulations of resistance, such as revolutions. Everyday resistance or infrapolitics as he sometimes refers to it, is more dispersed and is not as visible to society or the state. While Scott conceives of resistance as an act or acts that could be taken by a collective, his conception of a collective is merely a group of unorganized individuals. In this conception of resistance as the lived experience of scattered individuals with specific grievances choosing to act outside of calculated collective action, it is unlikely that this resistance will grow into broader political dissent that can lead to more organized action.

While the “idea, the ideal and the memory of Revolution need to be maintained,” as Bayat mentioned in a December 2017 interview in Open Democracy, the idea of an unfinished revolution or an unfinished project is one that I largely agree with. However, these forms of resistance that Scott and in this case Bayat bring forth, challenge Marxist accounts of theories of revolution by insisting that political action can also happen on a smaller scale—that way giving up on the more material and structural factors. And while Bayat recognizes in the introduction that these structural and macro factors exist and that Revolution Without Revolutionaries was entirely devoted to them, an acknowledgment of the fact does not explain this Scott-like romanticization of the quotidian in Everyday Life. This horizontally determined view of politics is difficult to square with the more structural analysis he offers in Revolution Without Revolutionaries and offers little politically emancipatory potential for any revolutionary movements to emerge. It leads us to a depoliticized place, unable to conceptualize how political agency is exerted at a structural level.

We can even go as far as to argue that this everyday resistance is a knee-jerk reaction to the counterrevolutions that took place and are therefore defensive and reactive. It fails to offer a transformative political project and is more interested in asserting individual choice and autonomy than the assembling and channeling of collective capacity to act to produce political effects. Of course, that is not a failing on the individuals mentioned but is demonstrative of how grim political prospects currently are and have been since the counterrevolutions.

The spontaneity of everyday resistance can provide insight into how oppressive societies operate. However, in order to overturn these structures, it is unlikely that the separated and defensive actions of individuals would pose an actual threat to the status quo. Such resistance is too disparate and scattered, therefore unable to affect society in a material way. What we need to think about here, what we need to prioritize, is the project of building collectiveness—the radical restructuring of society rather than acts of individual agency.

Is there really a need to differentiate between “everyday life” and “the revolution?” If Bayat’s theory of change is that scattered acts of protest can have a multiplier effect, and accumulate into collective power, then surely the goal is to build the latter. Ultimately, there must be some degree of political organization that can mobilize disparate actors. To that end, everyday resistance in and of itself is ineffectual, and can only mitigate existing social conditions.

In the introduction, Bayat says he attempts to “establish an analytical link between the everyday and the revolution.” He argues that “subaltern everyday struggles came together in the Arab uprisings to forge a collective and contentious force coalescing with the political mobilizations that had been initiated largely by young activists.” However, we saw that this was not sufficient.

Bayat says, “A surprising revolutionary moment may emerge from the underside of societies that appear safe and secure.” Is there even a causal relationship between the macro and the grassroots? There is an assumption that the plurality of organizational forms is a given, and that this plurality of forms in and of itself has an inherent value. If anything, history has shown us that not all forms of resistance can form blocks to morph into macro resistance, especially during times of political thinness and the absence of real political organization.

If resistance is indeed found in everyday life—yet does not evolve or account for further political ramifications in terms of political organizing beyond its moralizing qualities—all it serves to imply is an individualistic conception of politics or an assertion of politics as identity or affirmation; one that showcases the thinning of political formation in the region rather than resistance that can amount to tangible political transformation. The combined vision Bayet thinks or does not exist. In fact, politics within this context can at best be a means of reconciling ourselves to our precarious conditions, rather than a way out of them.

Macro and revolutionary moments have their own micropolitical transformations that emerge in tandem. One does not have to seek the emergence of the latter on its own; in fact, the former often informs the latter. We do not need to pose a false choice between the micro and the macro or the structural. Wouldn’t it be better to seek a structural change that is informed by the possibilities of politics? Attention to the micro is helpful when embedded within a larger political project, and when it can be considered to be developing political consciousness and shifting orientation towards the collective.

While the resonance is great and the memory of 2011 remains, we need to be wary of supporting cautious and defensive reformism, cloaked in the guise of everyday resistance and lacking the antagonisms of political struggle and successful processes of social change.

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Revolutionary Life: The Everyday of the Arab Spring (2021) by Asef Bayat is available from Harvard University Press.

This post is from a partnership between Africa Is a Country and The Elephant. We will be publishing a series of posts from their site once a week.