Social Movements in the Middle East and North Africa:
Shouldn''t we go a step further?
a workshop at the Tenth Mediterranean Research Meeting
European University Institute, Robert Schuman Centre for
Advanced Studies, Mediterranean Programme, Montecatini
Terme, near Florence (Italy), 25 -28 March 2009.
coordinated by
Dr. Joel Beinin
Professor of History, Stanford University, USA
Professor of History American University in Cairo (on
leave 2008-09)
and
Dr. Frédéric Vairel
Researcher, Centre d'Etudes et de Documentation
Economiques, Juridiques
et Sociales, Cairo
Paper proposals of 500-1,000 words, in English, are
invited before 1 September 2008.
Applicants may apply on line at:
http://www.rscas.org/medform.asp
<
https://postoffice.eui.eu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.rscas.org/medform.asp>
.
Please include a short cv of no more than five pages.
Selection of papers will take place by 30 September. Final
papers are
due by 15 January 2009
Please circulate this call widely.
Below is an abstract of the workshop. For further
information please see
http://www.iue.it/RSCAS/Research/Mediterranean/mrm2009/Index.shtml
<
https://postoffice.eui.eu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.iue.it/RSCAS/Research/Mediterranean/mrm2009/Index.shtml>
and
http://www.iue.it/RSCAS/Research/Mediterranean/mrm2009/desc_pdf/MRM2009_Ds07.pdf
<
https://postoffice.eui.eu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.iue.it/RSCAS/Research/Mediterranean/mrm2009/desc_pdf/MRM2009_Ds07.pdf>
Abstract
Social movement theory has rarely ventured beyond the
terrain of the USA
and Europe or narrow understandings of the "political"
based on case
studies drawn from the global North. Consequently, it
often
misunderstands activism in the South, which sometimes
occurs as silent
resistances, bypassing of authority, day-to-day forms of
resistance or
evading practices of power.
Social movement studies are commonly framed by disciplines
other than political science, which tends to minimize or
obscure the political
meanings of those movements.
Except for riots and revolutionary moments, contentious
politics has
been little studied. More recently the notion of
"Islamism" has
marginalized the Middle East as a land of "ugly
movements," off the
maps of "mainstream" social science. The best-known
studies of Islamic
mobilizations are either little affected by social
movement theory or,
despite their empirical richness, limit themselves to
asserting that
these cases confirm its predictions. Another category of
work, research
on the associational revival in the Middle East, typically
falls into
the teleological trap of regarding the "awakening of civil
society" as a
sign and a condition for democratization.
The Middle East and North Africa are excellent sites for
studying
collective action in authoritarian settings and can enrich
our
understandings of comparative politics and social movement
theory. To
complement the literature focused on structural processes
at the state
or regime level, we propose to concentrate on "politics
under the
threshold" which might threaten authoritarianism:
opportunities and
constraints for collective action in authoritarian regimes
and their
effects on the reconfiguration of such regimes. The
objective is to
understand regime transformations through the social and
political
relations that underlie them and not through binary
categories of
democracy-authoritarianism.
Joel Beinin
Director of Middle East Studies Professor of History
Professor of History Stanford University
American University in Cairo (on leave 2006-08)
jbeinin@???
Frédéric Vairel
Researcher
Centre d'Etudes et de Documentation Economiques,
Juridiques et Sociales Cairo fvairel@???
