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

by Beinin, Joel; Vairel, Frederic

• ISBN13: 9780804775250
• ISBN10: 0804775257
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-04-21
• Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr

Summary

The Middle East has become a place that almost everyone "knows" something about. The region is rarely considered a site for socially conscious activism, and is frequently written off as culturally defined by Islam, strongly anti-Western, and uniquely susceptible to irrational political radicalism, authoritarianism, and terrorism. However, as this new volume reveals, the region is rich with political mobilizations that neither inexorably lead toward democratization nor degenerate into violence. The authors present case studies of Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey inspired by Social Movement Theory (SMT). However, they also critique and expand the horizons of SMT's classical concepts of political opportunity structure and collective action frames, and mobilize 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 in the enduring authoritarian regimes of the region where, with the exception of Turkey, there is little sign of democratization.

Author Biography

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. Frdric Vairel is Assistant Professor of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. ix
Contributors	p. xi
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
Introduction: The Middle East and North Africa Beyond Classical Social Movement Theory	p. 1
Authoritarianisms and Oppositions
Protesting in Authoritarian Situations: Egypt and Morocco in Comparative Perspective	p. 27
Leaving Islamic Activism Behind: Ambiguous Disengagement in Saudi Arabia	p. 43
Egyptian Leftist Intellectuals' Activism from the Margins: Overcoming the Mobilization/Demobilization Dichotomy	p. 61
Mobilizing for Rights
Three Decades of Human Rights Activism in the Middle East and North Africa: An Ambiguous Balance Sheet	p. 83
Presence in Silence: Feminist and Democratic Implications of the Saturday Vigils in Turkey	p. 107
Mobilizations for Western Thrace and Cyprus in Contemporary Turkey: From the Far Right to the Lexicon of Human Rights	p. 125
Islamic Social Movements
The Egyptian Jama'a al-Islamiyya as a Social Movement	p. 143
Hizbullah's Women: Internal Transformation in a Social Movement and Militia	p. l63
Labor Struggles
A Workers' Social Movement on the Margin of the Global Neoliberal Order, Egypt 2004-2009	p. 181
From Europe to Turkey: A Case of the Variable Value of Resources	p. 202
Unemployed Moroccan University Graduates and Strategies for ôApoliticalö Mobilization	p. 217
Afterword: Popular Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt	p. 237
Notes	p. 255
Bibliography	p. 275
Index	p. 305
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