Social Movements, Mobilization, and Contestation in the Middle East and North Africa: Second Edition (Stanford Studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0804785694 ISBN 13: 9780804785693

Verlag: STANFORD UNIV PR, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

Before the 2011 uprisings, the Middle East and North Africa were frequently seen as a uniquely undemocratic region with little civic activism. The first edition of this volume, published at the start of the Arab Spring, challenged these views by revealing a region rich with social and political mobilizations. This fully revised second edition extends the earlier explorations of Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, and adds new case studies on the uprisings in Tunisia, Syria, and Yemen.

The case studies are inspired by social movement theory, but they also critique and expand the horizons of the theory's classical concepts of political opportunity structures, collective action frames, mobilization structures, and repertoires of contention based on intensive fieldwork. This strong empirical base allows for a nuanced understanding of contexts, culturally conditioned rationality, the strengths and weaknesses of local networks, and innovation in contentious action to give the reader a substantive understanding of events in the Arab world before and since 2011.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Joel Beinin is Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History at Stanford University, and a past president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America. He is coeditor of The Struggle for Sovereignty: Palestine and Israel, 1993-2005 (Stanford, 2006) and author of The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora (2005). He is the series editor of Stanford Studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures.Frédéric Vairel is Assistant Professor of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa.

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Social Movements, Mobilization, and Contestation in the Middle East and North Africa

By Joel Beinin, Frédéric Vairel

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2013 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8047-8569-3

Contents

Preface, 
Contributors, 
Introduction: The Middle East and North Africa Beyond Classical Social Movement Theory Joel Beinin and Frédéric Vairel, 
PART 1. AUTHORITARIANISMS AND OPPOSITIONS, 
1. Protesting in Authoritarian Situations: Egypt and Morocco in Comparative Perspective Frédéric Vairel, 
2. Egyptian Leftist Intellectuals' Activism from the Margins: Overcoming the Mobilization/Demobilization Dichotomy Marie Duboc, 
3. Leaving Islamic Activism Behind: Ambiguous Disengagement in Saudi Arabia Pascal Menoret, 
4. Hizbullah's Women: Internal Transformation in a Social Movement and Militia Anne Marie Baylouny, 
PART 2. MOBILIZING FOR RIGHTS, 
5. Three Decades of Human Rights Activism in the Middle East and North Africa: An Ambiguous Balance Sheet Joe Stork, 
6. Unemployed Moroccan University Graduates and Strategies for "Apolitical" Mobilization Montserrat Emperador Badimon, 
7. Presence in Silence: Feminist and Democratic Implications of the Saturday Vigils in Turkey Zeynep Gülru Göker, 
8. Mobilizations for Western Thrace and Cyprus in Contemporary Turkey: From the Far Right to the Lexicon of Human Rights Jeanne Hersant, 
PART 3. HOW ARABS BECAME REVOLUTIONARY, 
9. Becoming Revolutionary in Tunisia, 2007–2011 Amin Allal, 
10. A Workers' Social Movement on the Margin of the Global Neoliberal Order, Egypt 2004–2012 Joel Beinin and Marie Duboc, 
11. Dynamics of the Yemeni Revolution: Contextualizing Mobilizations Laurent Bonnefoy and Marine Poirier, 
12. "Oh Buthaina, Oh Sha'ban—the Hawrani Is Not Hungry, We Want Freedom!": Revolutionary Framing and Mobilization at the Onset of the Syrian Uprising Reinoud Leenders, 
Notes, 
Bibliography, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

PROTESTING IN AUTHORITARIAN SITUATIONS

Egypt and Morocco in Comparative Perspective Frédéric Vairel

DURING THE 1990S AND ESPECIALLY SINCE 2000, the forms and means of political participation increased in Morocco and Egypt. The emergence of collective actions whose objective is not to overthrow the regime but to obtain the implementation of new policies, or changes to make the system more democratic, has transformed the streets into a major arena of reform. This chapter will analyze the contentious spaces resulting from the competition between protesting actors and regime incumbents. In these spaces, increasing public and collective indignation takes different forms, expressed in familiar collective action repertoires: demonstrations, petitions, press releases, hunger strikes, coalitions and associative networks, and sit-ins. By "contentious space" I mean a part of the social world built at the same time against and in reference to the political field and its formal institutions. Actors in contentious spaces share the idea that changing politics by mobilizations and political activism is possible. They also have common practices and skills regarding modes of action—writing a statement, organizing a sit-in, building an NGO or a group, gathering people around a cause (Mathieu 2007). People active in contentious spaces also share political comradery and friendship. Despite their diverse or even opposing political stances or their concurrences, they share a history of repression and of time served in prison.

By analyzing spaces of political competition beyond the institutional sphere and taking into account the reciprocal determinations of contentious and institutional politics, I avoid the "polity-centered bias" characterizing most of the studies of Morocco and Egypt as well as the approaches of a number of social movement theorists—although Tarrow (1990, 1993), and more precisely Goldstone (2003), have challenged the rigid distinction between the politics of movements and institutional politics or public policing. To understand the logic of these contentious spaces, one has to keep in mind that they function under coercion. The contentious arenas constitute a "new discipline" adopted by regimes against activists' organizations and mobilizations; they are part of the way authoritarianism is reinventing itself. The study of the setbacks suffered by activists' associations and groups allows us to analyze precisely how the Moroccan and Egyptian authorities constrain their activities.

In Morocco different movements have evolved around a government plan to improve women's conditions (National Plan for the Integration of Women in Development); around the repression during the "Years of Lead" and the regime's history of violence; and around Arab causes like Palestine and Iraq. In Egypt the emergence of Kifaya ("Enough!" or the Egyptian Movement for Change) in December 2004 and its mobilizations against hereditary succession and President Mubarak's authoritarian rule have attracted attention from international observers and policy makers. In April and May 2006 different groups—from leftists to the Muslim Brothers (MB)—took to the streets in defense of the independence of the judiciary. They were supporting judges who were critical of the regime and who questioned the fairness of the 2005 legislative elections. In July 2006 mobilizations against the Israeli war in Lebanon revealed both the vitality and the limits of Egyptian oppositional movements.

In Egypt and Morocco the emergence of social movements is not a result of mere window-dressing measures to satisfy key international allies like the United States or the EU. The transformation of collective action, its goals and mottoes, has rendered protests tolerable if not legitimate. Nowadays militants no longer seek to overthrow regimes as in the 1970s and 1980s. Instead they intend to transform them from within, in either a democratic or Islamic way. On the incumbents' side, democracy has become the language of power. In Egypt and Morocco incumbents are modifying the style of their domination, with an increasing tolerance for public expression of discontent. But this situation, in which regimes and oppositions share the same reference to democracy without agreeing on its content—what David I. Kertzer describes as "solidarity without consensus" (1988, 67–75)—complicates contestation.

Egypt and Morocco are two demographic and political heavyweights in Arab politics. The two countries are broadly open to the international environment. For different historical and political reasons, both have strong links with the EU and the United States. They are members of the Barcelona process and have concluded free trade agreements with the EU and the United States in the case of Morocco, and a preferential trade agreement (the QIZ agreement, see below) with Israel and the United States in the case of Egypt.

During the 1990s, Morocco was often perceived as a welcoming land for transitology scholars. Their enthusiasm was based on the idea that any political changes are equivalent to democratic transformations, although Salamé (1994) expressed only measured optimism about the prospects for democracy. Economic liberalization, constitutionalism, elections, reference to the human rights lexicon, a broader range of freedom in public discourses, and the monarchical succession were thought to signal a democratic transition. A few years later, Egypt was often...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: STANFORD UNIV PR
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0804785694
• ISBN 13: 9780804785693
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 352
• Herausgeber: Beinin Joel, Vairel Frédéric
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Mare Nostrum Group B.V.; gpsr@mare-nostrum.co.uk; ; Doelen 72; Breda; 4831 GR; Niederlande