Palgrave Macmillan, September 2015
While the Arab people took center stage in the Arab Spring protests, academic studies have focused more on structural factors to understand the limitations of these popular uprisings. This book analyzes the role and complexities of popular agency in the Arab Spring through the framework of contentious politics and social movement theory.
Social Movement Theory or ‘Contentious Politics’ is the most popular and debated theoretical perspective in the study of contemporary international politics. Contentious Politics in the Middle East engages directly with the mainstream debate on the subject. The book analyses a number of neglected or even completely unexplored subjects including the role of the Amazigh population during the Arab Spring, the formation and institutionalization of anarchical movements in Egypt as well as sociological analyses of the Ultras in Egypt during popular uprisings or of the social movement organisations that participated in the Gezi Park protests in Turkey in 2013 such as the Anti-Capitalist Muslims and Revolutionary Muslims.
The chapters of the book apply familiar questions raised by social movement theorists to the relatively under-researched case study of the Middle East after the uprisings: How and why do contentious politics differ? How have social movements changed, or been changed by, the political contexts within which they operate? Which are the limitations of contentious politics theory that these events have exposed?
List of Contributors
Jan Wilkens ♦ Mishana Hosseinioun ♦ Anastasia Nosova ♦ Aula Hariri ♦ Jasmine Gani ♦ Inez von Weitershausen ♦ Eugenio Lilli ♦ David Zarnett ♦ Suzanne Morrison ♦ Magdalena C. Delgado ♦ Oğuzhan Göksel ♦ Suzan Gibril ♦ Cleo Jay ♦ Laura Galián ♦ Ayce Dursun ♦ Kim Jezabel Zinngrebe ♦ Birce Altıok-Karşıyaka ♦ Kerem Yıldırım ♦ Pascal Debruyne ♦ Christopher Parker ♦ Alaa Tartir ♦ Hadi Makarem ♦ Harry Pettit
Fawaz Gerges 