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Youth, the “Arab Spring,” and Social Movements

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2016

Charles W. Anderson
Charles W. Anderson*
Affiliation:
Georgetown University
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Extract

Almost two years after the inception of the so-called “Arab Spring” some of its primary constituencies remain enigmatic. To a certain degree, this is an effect of previous scholarly interest in various regimes’ strategies for maintaining their monopolization of critical resources, and, ultimately, of state power. The literature on “durable authoritarianism” has taught us much about autocratic longevity and the structures and dynamics that underpinned the management of the populace, as well as marginalization of challengers in a variety of regimes throughout the region. As some scholars have recently observed, however, the focus on authoritarian regimes’ staying power led to overestimations of their strength and, correspondingly, to underestimations of their publics. Of course studies of social movements, resistant populations, and opposition groups are plentiful and trends like the growth of Islamist groups have received copious attention.

Type
Essays
Information
Review of Middle East Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , Winter 2013 , pp. 150 - 156
Copyright
Copyright © Middle East Studies Association of North America, Inc. 2013 

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References

End Notes

1 Mona El-Ghobashy, “Theories of the Egyptian Revolution,” The Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, NYU, 14 November 2011. See also: El-Ghobashy, , “The Praxis of the Egyptian Revolution,” Middle East Report 258 (Spring 2010): 2–13.Google Scholar

2 Quoted in Ryan Lizza, “The Consequentialist: How the Arab Spring Remade Obama's Foreign Policy,” The New Yorker, 2 May 2011.

3 For a critique, see Greg Burris, “Lawrence of E-Rabia: Facebook and the New Arab Revolt,” Jadaliyya E-zine, October 2011.

4 For example, Swedenburg, Ted, “Imagined Youths,” Middle East Report 245 (Winter 2007): 4–11 Google Scholar; Bayat, Asef, Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009).Google Scholar

5 International Labour Organization, “Global Employment Outlook September 2012: Bleak Labour Market Prospects for Youth,” conclusions in brief at UN News Centre: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=42797&Cr=Youth&Crl=#.UMYSMpPjnCZ.

6 Swedenburg, “Imagined Youths,” 5.

7 The youth field in Palestine, for instance, has long been considered an elite preserve of one variety or another, e.g., Porath, Yehoshua, The Palestinian Arab National Movement, 1929-1939: from Riots to Rebellion (London: Frank Cass, 1977)Google Scholar. This is true even in newer scholarship that expressly revises older perspectives on the early Palestinian national movement, such as Weldon Matthews's important volume, Confronting an Empire, Constructing a Nation: Arab Nationalists and Popular Politics in Mandate Palestine (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006)Google Scholar. My dissertation research rebuts such presumptions,“From Petition to Confrontation: The Palestinian National Movement and the Rise of Mass Politics, 1929-1939,” New York University, 2013.Google Scholar

8 On Egypt, relevant studies include: Mitchell, Richard P., The Society of the Muslim Brothers (London: Oxford University Press, 1969)Google Scholar; Jankowski, James, Egypt's Young Rebels: ‘Young Egypt': 1933-1952 (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1975)Google Scholar; Abdalla, Ahmed, The Student Movement and Nationalist Politics in Egypt, 1923-1973 (London: Al-Saqi Books, 1985)Google Scholar; and more recently, Gershoni, Israel and Jankowski, James, Confronting Fascism in Egypt: Dictatorship versus Democracy in the 1930s (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009).Google Scholar Regarding Syria, see: Khoury, Philip Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920-1945 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987)Google Scholar; Watenpaugh, Keith, Being Modern in the Middle East: Revolution, Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Arab Middle Class (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Dueck, Jennifer, The Claims of Culture at Empire's End: Syria and Lebanon under French Rule (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).Google Scholar

9 For example: Wien, Peter, “‘Watan’ and ‘Rujula’: the Emergence of a New Model of Youth in Interwar Iraq,” in Simonsen, Jorgen Baek, editor, Youth and Youth Culture in the Contemporary Middle East (Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 2005), 10–19.Google Scholar

10 Joseph, Gilbert and Nugent, Daniel, “Introduction” in Joseph, G. and Nugent, D., editors, Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994), 5.Google Scholar

11 Juan Cole has recently argued that the Arab uprisings are in fact “youth revolts,” a designation sure to stir further contention,“Mobilization and Collective Action in the Arab Spring,” 10 November 2011, UCLA; available as a podcast through the G.E. von Grunebaum Center for Near Eastern Studies: http://www.international.ucla.edu/cnes/podcasts/article.asp?parentid=122955.

12 See David Miller, Aaron, “For America, an Arab Winter,” The Wilson Quarterly (Summer 2011): 36–42; quote from 38.Google Scholar

13 Tripp, Charles, The Power and the People: Paths of Resistance in the Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 15–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 For somewhat varied considerations on temporality and social movements, see for instance: Katsiaficas, George, The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Social Movements and the Decolonization of Everyday Life (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2006 [1997])Google Scholar; McAdam, Doug and Sewell, William H. Jr., “It's About Time: Temporality in the Study of Social Movements and Revolutions,” in Aminzade, Ronald R., editor, Silence and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 89–125 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tripp, The Power and the People.

15 Chalcraft, John, “Horizontalism in the Egyptian Revolutionary Process,” Middle East Report 262 (Spring 2012): 6–11.Google Scholar

16 Ibid.

17 On this point, compare Chalcraft with Katsiaficas.

18 The rhizome as organizing rubric makes analogy to plants with horizontal and interlinked rather than vertical and individualized root systems, and is a mindful reinvention of notions of the grassroots.

19 Chalcraft, “Horizontalism,” 6.