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Rethinging Time and Space in the Arab Uprisings
Abstract
The Arab Uprisings that began in 2010 and continue into the present have led many scholars of Middle East politics to take a hard look at our theories and hypotheses about robust authoritarianism, social movements, and forms of political dissent. Many have been concerned with the failure to predict, while others have focused on why major uprisings spread to some locations and not others, and still others have concerned themselves with the resilience of the authoritarian structures. This paper does not claim to identify the "what's missing" from these debates, and as thus will not resolve and of those questions indicated above. However, it seeks to employ a different lens--actually, two lenses--to look at the uprisings from a new perspective in order to identify patterns or developments that might have remained less noticed. Because most of the literature on revolutions, social movements, and even democratization utilize a hypothetical "stages" continuum (and sometimes even teleology) to identify the various elements of uprisings or transitions, the "space" of analysis is typically at the nation-state level (which states saw major uprisings, which were successful, etc.) while the "time" of the uprisings is seen as moving from a particular moment that marks a significant rupture from the past. What happens when we "slice" up the uprisings--and even the region--into different conceptual units? What new insights emerge? This paper will utilize substantial primary material from Jordan and secondary material from elsewhere in the Middle East to explore the uprisings through an approach that does not put the uprisings per se as the central unit of analysis. It will utilize critical approaches to temporalities, memory, and geography to illustrate--through largely interpretive and sometimes ethnographic lenses--that the lived experiences of the uprisings often have little in common with the theoretical models of stages, rupture, and spacial clusterings that are most common in the field of political science.
Discipline
Political Science
Geographic Area
All Middle East
Sub Area
None