Author
MERMIER Franck
A researcher at the CNRS (Institut Interdisciplinaire d'Anthropologie du Contemporain-the Laboratory of Urban Anthropology), Franck Mermier directed the French Centre for Yemen Studies in Sanaa from 1991 to 1997, and the Department for Contemporary Studies at the Institut Français of the Near East in Beirut from 2005 to 2009. His anthropological research bears notably on the worlds of publishing and culture as well as on the urban societies of the Arab world. His publications include Le Cheikh de la nuit. Sanaa, organization des souks et société citadine (Arles: Actes Sud/Sinbad, 1997); Le Yemen contemporain (co-editor, Karthala 1999); Mondialisation et nouveaux medias dans l’espace arabe (editor, Maisonneuve et Larose, 2003); Le livre et la ville. Beyrouth et l’édition arabe (Arles: Actes Sud/Sinbad, 2005); Liban. Une guerre de 33 jours (co-editor, Paris: La Découverte, 2007); Mémoires de guerres au Liban (1975 – 1990) (co-editor, Arles: Actes Sud/Sinbad, 2010).
Articles
Aden in the Time of the Red Star
Franck MERMIER
6 April 2010
The People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen was the only regime in the Arab world that genuinely identifying itself as Marxist. During its short existence, from 1970 to 1997, it became a base for Soviet influence in the region and the capital for Arab liberation movements, most notably those of Palestine and the Arab peninsula, and for Middle-Eastern communist organisations. Aden, its capital, which Westerners associate most readily with the myth of Rimbaud or the figure of [Paul] Nizan, author of Aden-Arabie, thus gave up its status as a free zone so as to become a laboratory for socialist experience in the poorest country on the peninsula.
Yemen: an opposition of many voices
Franck MERMIER
25 February 2011
In 2011, Ali Abdallah Saleh will celebrate thirty three years as head of the Yemeni state. Since 1990, following the unification of Yemen, his power has extended to the southern provinces, which, after the British troops left in 1967, were incorporated into the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, governed by a Socialist regime allied to the USSR. The Unity Constitution, adopted by referendum in 1991, provided for a multiparty system, organized an electoral system and press freedom. For those reasons, unlike its neighbors, Yemen, sole republic in the Arabic peninsula, saw a rich civil society and political life flourish thanks to its regional distinctive characteristics, its diverse historical customs and its ideological influences spanning from Marxism to Islamism, in their numerous variations.