The Dawn of the Arab Uprisings , livre ebook

The Dawn of the Arab Uprisings
In the last few years, Jadaliyya has established itself as an indispensable source dealing with the contemporary Arab world. This collection of its pieces on the Arab uprisings is perhaps the best introduction to the political movements that have shaken that region since January 2011. It offers a set of intelligent commentaries on revolutionary events in almost every Arab country, and their repercussions in the area and beyond. Dawn of the Arab Uprisings is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand the possible future developments of our uncertain world.
Talal Asad, City University of New York
As contemporary reflections, these writings capture the unfolding of revolutionary events as they happened and convey the uncertainties, hopes and disappointments of collective worlds being remade. As the work of scholars and activists with a rich knowledge of the region s histories and political aspirations, the essays offer lasting insights into the forces shaping a new moment in world history.
Timothy Mitchell, Columbia University
The outburst of the Arab Revolutions demands imaginative and novel perspectives on the Arab world, and Jadaliyya has managed to provide a unique forum covering the region with a fresh approach to its issues and problems. Its talented contributors, from the Arab world and beyond, combine objectivity with a progressive, humanistic engagement, and never shy away from sometimes explosive topics such as the world of oil and its despotic monarchies. Necessary reading on an Arab world in the throes of change.
Fawwaz Traboulsi, author of A History of Modern Lebanon
Not since struggles for independence has the Middle East witnessed the kind of mass mobilization characteristic of recent Arab uprisings. The online journal Jadaliyya has been at the forefront of intelligent commentary, capturing the immediacy of current events with uncommon thoughtfulness. With an appreciation for the various genres expressive of politics, the journal has placed public intellectuals, activists, journalists, artists, and academics in conversation, enabling contentious debates and divergent analyses to reach multiple, global publics. A primer of importance not only to students of the Arab Spring, but also to those concerned with protest more generally, this collection represents relevant writings from the early months of the uprisings. Registering both the exhilarating optimism and crushing disappointment of contemporary political life, this volume is recommended for anyone interested in the interrelationships among domestic, regional, and international affairs; it gives voice to some of the possibilities for and impasses to political transformation.
Lisa Wedeen, Mary R. Morton Professor of Political Science and the College, University of Chicago
During the Arab uprisings, my first port of call every day was Jadaliyya to understand and interpret the events. The articles collected here are a very rare combination-scholarly but also accessible for a broad public. This book will be a much-treasured volume for undergraduate students, and its sophistication will also benefit postgraduates and academics. More importantly, an intelligent lay reader will also find the book immediately useful.
Dr Laleh Khalili, SOAS, University of London

First published 2012 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Copyright Bassam Haddad, Rosie Bsheer and Ziad Abu-Rish 2012
The right of the individual contributors to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 3325 0 Hardback ISBN 978 0 7453 3324 3 Paperback ISBN 978 1 8496 4797 7 PDF eBook ISBN 978 1 8496 4798 4 Kindle eBook ISBN 978 1 8496 4799 1 EPUB eBook
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Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services Ltd Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Simultaneously printed digitally by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, UK and Edwards Bros in the United States of America
Contents

Acknowledgments
Foreword
Jadaliyya : Archiving the Revolution
Roger Owen
Introduction
Bassam Haddad, Rosie Bsheer, and Ziad Abu-Rish
SECTION I: OPENING ARTICLES
1. Impromptu: A Word


Sinan Antoon
2. Preliminary Historical Observations on the Arab Revolutions of 2011


Rashid Khalidi
3. Awakening, Cataclysm, or Just a Series of Events? Reflections on the Current Wave of Protest in the Arab World


Michael Hudson
4. Paradoxes of Arab Refo-lutions


Asef Bayat
5. The Year of the Citizen


Mouin Rabbani
6. Three Powerfully Wrong-and Wrongfully Powerful-American Narratives about the Arab Spring


Jillian Schwedler, Joshua Stacher, and Stacey Philbrick Yadav
SECTION II: TUNISIA
7. The Tunisian Revolution: Initial Reflections


Mohammed Bamyeh
8. Tunisia s Glorious Revolution and its Implications


Noureddine Jebnoun
9. Let s Not Forget about Tunisia


Nouri Gana
10. The Battle for Tunisia


Nouri Gana
SECTION III: EGYPT
11. The Poetry of Revolt


Elliott Colla
12. Why Mubarak is Out


Paul Amar
13. Egypt s Revolution 2.0: The Facebook Factor


Linda Herrera
14. Egypt s Three Revolutions: The Force of History Behind this Popular Uprising


Omnia El Shakry
15. The Architects of the Egyptian Uprising and the Challenges Ahead


Saba Mahmood
16. The Revolution Against Neoliberalism


Walter Armbrust
17. Egypt s Orderly Transition: International Aid and the Rush to Structural Adjustment


Adam Hanieh
SECTION IV: LIBYA
18. The Arabs in Africa


Callie Maidhof
19. Tribes of Libya as the Third Front: Myths and Realities of Non-State Actors in the Long Battle for Misrata


Jamila Benkato
20. Solidarity and Intervention in Libya


Asli B li and Ziad Abu-Rish
SECTION V: BAHRAIN
21. Let s Talk about Sect


Tahiyya Lulu
22. Distortions of Dialogue


Tahiyya Lulu
23. When Petro-Dictators Unite: The Bahraini Opposition s Struggle for Survival


Rosie Bsheer and Ziad Abu-Rish
SECTION VI: YEMEN
24. Yemen s Turn: An Overview


Lara Aryani
25. How it Started in Yemen: From Tahrir to Taghyir


Nir Rosen
26. Saleh Defiant


Ziad Abu-Rish
SECTION VII: SYRIA
27. Why Syria is Not Next...So Far


Bassam Haddad
28. Fear of Arrest


Hani Sayed
29. Syrian Hope: A Journal


Amal Hanano
SECTION VIII: REGIONAL REVERBERATIONS OF THE ARAB UPRISINGS
30. The Political Status Quo, Economic Development, and Protests in Jordan


Ziad Abu-Rish
31. Dissent and its Discontents: Protesting the Saudi State


Rosie Bsheer
32. The Never Ending Story: Protests and Constitutions in Morocco


Emanuela Dalmasso and Francesco Cavatorta
33. Emergencies and Economics: Algeria and the Politics of Memory


Muriam Haleh Davis
34. Iraq and its Tahrir Square


Zainab Saleh
35. Tahrir s Other Sky


Noura Erakat and Sherene Seikaly
36. What is [the] Left?


Maya Mikdashi
Epilogue: Parting Thoughts
Madawi Al-Rasheed
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments

We would first like to extend our appreciation to the authors whose articles make up the bulk of these pages. Their willingness to share their research, experiences, and reflections vis- -vis the Middle East in general and the Arab uprisings more specifically was central to Jadaliyya s role in shaping academic and non-academic discourses alike. We would also like to thank Jadaliyya s co-editors, contributing editors, and our many dedicated interns. They were all part of the solicitation, submission, review, editing, and posting processes that initially brought these articles to light.
The transformation of a disparate set of articles published on Jadaliyya into a coherent edited volume encapsulating the initial period of the Arab uprisings involved several individuals. Roger Owen s Foreword and Madawi Al-Rasheed s Epilogue are testaments of their commitment to supporting new projects and advancing critical interventions related to the production of knowledge on and solidarity networks in the Arab world. Thomas Sullivan was an invaluable resource in preparing the format and layout of the manuscript for submission. We are grateful for his copy-editing work and that of Adam Gallagher. Finally, we offer our appreciation to David Shulman and his colleagues at Pluto Press, both for their initial excitement about the project as well as their diligence in seeing it through to completion.
We dedicate this volume to Mohamed Bouazizi and the countless others who have given their lives in the struggle for dignity, justice, and freedom.
Foreword
Jadaliyya : Archiving the Revolution

The uprisings in the Arab world in the early part of 2011 clearly constitute a world historical event. Although the actual word revolution is somewhat imprecise, it has the great value of linking them to a long line of revolutionary activity, including the violent overthrow of the old orders in Paris beginning in 1789, as well as to the more peaceful Velvet revolutions in Eastern Europe following the withdrawal of the Soviet military forces in 1989-90. In the Middle East s own version of these mighty events, not only were a series of tyrants toppled but the strength of popular feeling, and the stubborn willingness of the