Mobilization and Modernity in the Middle East

Abstract

Current forms of socio-political mobilization in the Middle East are rooted in the transformations afforded by the region’s participation in the making of a global institutional modernity which is both productive and ideological. This paper explores the emergence of new social agents and the social movements they have sought out as partners and precipitated. In many cases these forces have been proposing or subverting reforms to the state and the public order since the last decades of the Ottoman Empire, through the mandate period and beyond the postcolonial social pact. Ottoman modernity was characterized by fierce debates and the emergence of new activities and public spaces which afforded the mobilization of established and newly constituted social agents. In some cases such debates were forcefully suspended by mandate administrations and their collaborators. The process of decolonization at mid-century and the wave of revolutions which unfolded in its wake brought historically marginal sectors to power in much of the region. These were groups which institutionalized their own visions of the common good; establishing a postcolonial social pact which defended the construction of militarized, authoritarian state apparatuses. Furthermore, I present a critical overview of the forms mobilization has assumed in the region over the past decades: the social landscape and the dynamics of mobilization which have given rise to the revolts and revolutions unfolding today. Finally, I undertake an analysis of the press coverage of the revolts in the Arab and international press online, pointing to synergies and discontinuities in the interpretation of women’s participation on the revolutions and the Islamist presence in processes of post-revolutionary political consolidation.