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

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

Author: Joel Beinin

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2013-08-21

Total Pages: 349

ISBN-13: 0804788030

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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.


Workers and Thieves

Workers and Thieves

Author: Joel Beinin

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2015-11-11

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 0804798648

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Since the 1990s, the Middle East has experienced an upsurge of wildcat strikes, sit-ins, and workers' demonstrations. Well before people gathered in Tahrir Square to demand the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, workers had formed one of the largest oppositional movements to authoritarian rule in Egypt. In Tunisia, years prior to the 2011 Arab uprisings, the unemployed chanted in protest, "A job is a right, you pack of thieves!" Despite this history, most observers have failed to acknowledge the importance of workers in the social ferment preceding the removal of Egyptian and Tunisian autocrats and in the political realignments after their demise. In Workers and Thieves, Joel Beinin corrects this by surveying the efforts and impacts of the workers' movements in Egypt and Tunisia since the 1970s. He argues that the 2011 uprisings in these countries—and, importantly, their vastly different outcomes—are best understood within the context of these repeated mobilizations of workers and the unemployed over recent decades.


Protest and Mass Mobilization

Protest and Mass Mobilization

Author: Merouan Mekouar

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-02

Total Pages: 156

ISBN-13: 131707422X

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Why and how do some acts of protest trigger mass mobilization while others do not? Using the cases of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, Mekouar argues that successful mass mobilization is the result of a surprise factor, whose impact and exceptionality is amplified by the presence of influential political agents during the early phase of protest, as well as by regime violence and unusual media coverage. Together this study argues that these factors create a perception of exceptionality, which breaks the locally available cognitive heuristic originally in favor of the regime, and thus creates the necessary conditions for mobilization to occur. This book provides a unique dialectical picture of mobilization in North Africa by focusing both on the perspective of those who mobilized against their local regimes and members of the security forces who were responsible for stopping them. Moreover, it offers a first-hand account of the tumultuous days preceding authoritarian collapse and explains the mechanisms through which political change occurs.


Network Mobilization Dynamics in Uncertain Times in the Middle East and North Africa

Network Mobilization Dynamics in Uncertain Times in the Middle East and North Africa

Author: Frédéric Volpi

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-06-29

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 1000011828

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This comprehensive volume investigates the dynamics of mobilization and demobilization of social networks before, during, and after episodes of political turbulence in the Middle East region, focusing particularly on the 2011 Arab uprisings. The authors consider important questions regarding agency, strategic action, and institutional outcomes that have significance for social mobilization, social movements, and authoritarian governance. This collection proposes an interactive perspective linking up contentious politics with routine governance through a dynamic articulation of repertoires of contention. The authors use a micro-mobilization perspective to frame the different trajectories of protest networks in times of uncertainty. They place the interactions between grassroots activists, structured organizations, and state actors at the centre of the explanation of change and stability in the recent mobilizations of the region. By starting with descriptions of interactions at the grassroots level, the authors then explain macro level dynamics between networks and other players, including the state. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Social Movement Studies.


Protests and Generations: Legacies and Emergences in the Middle East, North Africa and the Mediterranean

Protests and Generations: Legacies and Emergences in the Middle East, North Africa and the Mediterranean

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2017-04-18

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 9004344519

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The aim of Protests and Generations is to problematize the relations between generations and protests in the Middle East, North Africa and the Mediterranean. Most of the work on recent protests insists on the newness of their manifestation but leave unexplored the various links that exist between them and what preceded them. Mark Muhannad Ayyash and Ratiba Hadj-Moussa (Eds.) argue that their articulation relies at once on historical ties and their rejection. It is precisely this tension that the chapters of the book address in specifically documenting several case studies that highlight the generating processes by which generations and protests are connected. What the production and use of generation brings to scholarly understanding of the protests and the ability to articulate them is one of the major questions this collection addresses. Contributors are: Mark Muhannad Ayyash, Lorenzo Cini, Éric Gobe, Ratiba Hadj-Moussa, Andrea Hajek, Chaymaa Hassabo, Gal Levy, Ilana Kaufman, Sunaina Maira, Mohammad Massala, Matthieu Rey, Gökbörü Sarp Tanyildiz, and Stephen Luis Vilaseca. *Protests and Generations is now available in paperback for individual customers.


The Power of Civil Society in the Middle East and North Africa

The Power of Civil Society in the Middle East and North Africa

Author: Ibrahim Natil

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-05-24

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 0429560028

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This book investigates the power of civil society in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), in the context of the post-Arab Spring era, as well as more long-standing challenges and constraints in the region. In recent years, local civil society actors have faced significant challenges from social conservatism, conflict, violence, and the absence of democracy and exclusive political systems. Over the course of the book, the authors investigate how the sector has succeeded in achieving its own objectives despite these shifting conditions, the restrictive political environment and the complexity of the socio-cultural and economic context. Structured around the three themes of peace-building, development, and change, the book also addresses challenges faced by civil society organizations linked to ethnic, linguistic, and cultural diversities as well as religious salient differences that are crucial markers of social and political identity. Case studies are drawn from the Palestinian Occupied Territories, Jordan, Iran, Nigeria, Niger, Egypt, and Morocco, and particular effort has been made to showcase original research from contributors who are from the region . This book will be of particular interest to researchers working on development, peace-building, conflict resolution, civil society, and politics within the MENA region.


Politics of Social Change

Politics of Social Change

Author: Manfred Halpern

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2015-12-08

Total Pages: 461

ISBN-13: 140087534X

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The author, analyzing major social groups in this area, treats particularly the "new middle class," a group socially isolated from the traditional life of Islam and committed to a wide-ranging modernizing impulse. Originally published in 1963. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.


After the Arab Uprisings

After the Arab Uprisings

Author: Shamiran Mako

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-07-22

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 1108647626

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Why were some, but not all the Arab mass social protests of 2011 accompanied by relatively quick and nonviolent outcomes in the direction of regime change, democracy, and social transformation? Why was a democratic transition limited to Tunisia, and why did region-wide democratization not occur? After the Arab Uprisings offers an explanatory framework to answer these central questions, based on four key themes: state and regime type, civil society, gender relations and women's mobilizations, and external influence. Applying these to seven cases: Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Bahrain, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, Valentine M. Moghadam and Shamiran Mako highlight the salience of domestic and external factors and forces, uniquely presenting women's legal status, social positions, and organizational capacity, along with the presence or absence of external intervention, as key elements in explaining the divergent outcomes of the Arab Spring uprisings, and extending the analysis to the present day.


The Oxford Handbook of Social Movements

The Oxford Handbook of Social Movements

Author: Donatella Della Porta

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 865

ISBN-13: 0199678405

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The Handbook presents a most updated and comprehensive exploration of social movement research. It not only maps, but also expands the field of social movement studies, taking stock of recent developments in cognate areas of studies, within and beyond sociology and political science. While structured around traditional social movement concepts, each section combines the mapping of the state of the art with attempts to broaden our knowledge of social movements beyond classic theoretical agendas, and to identify the contribution that social movement studies can give to other fields of knowledge.


Women's Rights in the Middle East and North Africa

Women's Rights in the Middle East and North Africa

Author: Sanja Kelly

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Published: 2010-07-16

Total Pages: 606

ISBN-13: 1442203978

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Freedom HouseOs innovative publication WomenOs Rights in the Middle East and North Africa: Progress Amid Resistance analyzes the status of women in the region, with a special focus on the gains and setbacks for womenOs rights since the first edition was released in 2005. The study presents a comparative evaluation of conditions for women in 17 countries and one territory: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestine (Palestinian Authority and Israeli-Occupied Territories), Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. The publication identifies the causes and consequences of gender inequality in the Middle East, and provides concrete recommendations for national and international policymakers and implementers. Freedom House is an independent nongovernmental organization that supports democratic change, monitors freedom, and advocates for democracy and human rights. The project has been embraced as a resource not only by international players like the United Nations and the World Bank, but also by regional womenOs rights organizations, individual activists, scholars, and governments worldwide. WomenOs rights in each country are assessed in five key areas: (1) Nondiscrimination and Access to Justice; (2) Autonomy, Security, and Freedom of the Person; (3) Economic Rights and Equal Opportunity; (4) Political Rights and Civic Voice; and (5) Social and Cultural Rights. The methodology is based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the study results are presented through a set of numerical scores and analytical narrative reports.