Tahrir – Peter Geoghegan

Sean O'Casey in Tahrir Square

By peterPosted on 16th January 2012Posted in Irish Times, PoliticsTagged Egypt, Occupy, Sean O'Casey, Tahrir

In 1936, Robert Merton published a seminal paper entitled “The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action” in the American Sociological Review . Seemingly minor events, the then 26-year-old argued, can have profound, unanticipated implications. The “law of unintended consequences” was born. Mohammed Bouazizi was the same age as Merton when he provided the digital age’s most […]

From Tahrir Square

By peterPosted on 22nd December 2011Posted in Politics, ScotsmanTagged Egypy, Muslim Brotherhood, Scaf, Tahrir1 Comment

I spent ten days or so in Cairo at the start of this month. Here’s the first of a few articles I wrote while I was there, a news piece on the elections for the Scotsman. EGYPT’S ultra-conservative Islamist party plans to push for a stricter religious code after claiming strong gains in the first […]