Based on ongoing fieldwork in Beirut, this paper examines the impact of real dystopian space on utopian political imaginaries through a study of Lebanese non-governmental organization (NGO) Act for the Disappeared. I argue that cultural traumas like civil war, the specific rupture to which my case study addresses itself, and the dystopian spaces they produce often provide the material by which utopian visions of the future are stitched together through processes of collaborative memory-making. I begin by suggesting that a utopian political vision in postwar Lebanon would involve government transparency and intersectarian political cooperation. Specifically, Act for the Disappeared uses claims to knowledge withheld by the Lebanese state – especially regarding the 17,000 Lebanese who disappeared during the war (1975-1990) – as a common basis for building alliances between sects. Next, I show how the organization uses the city, divided along sectarian lines since the war, as a stage on which to perform intersectarian solidarity. I examine its 30th anniversary activities in November 2012, including a walk of the city, which followed a trajectory through historically-fraught spaces: the National Museum, the mass graves of civil-war fallen, and Beirut’s “reconstructed” downtown. Through participant observation and interviews with attendees and organizers, I show that these dystopian spaces offer poignant material for visions of solidarity and cooperation across sectarian lines. Finally, I point to similar work by other Lebanese NGOs. While studies of contemporary Lebanon have long been concerned with sectarian divisions, a more complete picture of current Lebanese cultural politics must also attend to an emergent politics of hope.

In 2006, the Community Museum of Ben M’Sik opened in the Casablanca neighborhood of Ben M’Sik in order to document life in the rapidly changing urban space through oral interviews. The museum sought to offer new narratives of what it meant to live in Morocco’s formerly largest shantytown that went beyond accepted stories of dissidence and crime. In 2010, Moroccan writer and painter Mahi Binebine published the novel, Les Etoiles de Sidi Moumen (The Stars of Sidi Moumen) which was praised by critics for describing the life conditions of another Casablanca shantytown. In describing the path to terrorism taken by a group of young men, the novel sought to humanize and change the terms through which terrorism and its roots are seen. In this paper, I compare Binebine’s novel to the public history project in the Community Museum in Ben M’Sik, and explore the politics of narrating and memorializing sites of urban poverty in Morocco. I argue that by focusing on suffering and lack as the sole lens of understanding for Sidi Moumen, Binebine produces a reductive vision of life in an informal settlement, and all the while attempting to critique the state, caters to state security discourses about terrorism. I argue that the participatory approach adopted by the community museum of Ben M’Sik offers a more nuanced and rich description of life in the neighborhood that upends the stereotypical depictions of poverty present both in Binebine’s novel and in state discourses about urban renewal and crime.

A confrontation between autocratic Arab leaders and militant, highly politicized, street battle-hardened soccer fans that has already contributed to the toppling of former Egyptian and Tunisian presidents Hosni Mubarak and Zine el Abedine Ben Ali builds on a political tradition inherent in the game since its introduction by the British. That tradition is rooted in the fact that politics was associated with the founding of the vast majority of soccer clubs in the region and underlies its foremost derbies, some of which rank among the world’s most violent. Nevertheless, perceptions of political differences in soccer dating back as far as the early 20th century to support of and opposition to the colonial administrators and long toppled monarchs live on until today even if they are no longer grounded in political reality or reflect a club’s fan demography. That is certainly true for two of the region’s most ferocious derbies: Cairo’s nationalist Al Ahly SC versus once royalist Al Zamalek SC and Tehran’s Persepolis versus Estighlal FC, the former team of the shahs. Perception and reality coincide far more, however, in those clubs in which Berber, Kurdish, and Palestinian and in some cases even Jewish-turned-Israeli identity politics were built into their founding. Then like now soccer serves rulers as a tool to ensure political support. Increasingly, however the pitch is a battlefield in autocratically governed countries for differing visions of the future even if it most immediately it is a struggle for control of the foremost contested public space and a training ground for the day anti-autocratic mass protests erupt. Taken together, the fan groups constitute a major social force. In Egypt, for example, they represent one of the largest civic groups in the country after the ruling Muslim Brotherhood. The power of the fans is highlighted by the fact that they have prevented the lifting of a suspension of professional soccer in Egypt for much of 2012. The suspension was imposed after 74 fans were killed in February 2012 in a politically loaded brawl in Port Said, the worst incident in Egyptian sporting history. Inspired by founders who often defined themselves as anarchists, the fans see their struggle as one for justice, dignity and freedom and against autocracy, corruption, abuse and repression.

This paper explores the mappings, destabilizations, reconfigurations, and consolidations of gender, ethnicity, class, and state power (Al-Khalifa ruling family, U.S., Saudi Arabia) in Bahrain since the ongoing democracy uprisings that began in February 2011. I assume mutually shaping strategies of control and resistance between state and opposition forces whose members have varying positionalities and visions of the good society. I am concerned with how strategies of repression and resistance are reflected in and on different “bodily presences” (Fregonese 2012) in the built environment at particular moments -- quotidian or event-based -- and the gendered dimensions of these materialized and embodied dynamics. There is a long history of repression, divide and rule sect politics, and containment tracing to British imperialism, the Bahrain ruling family’s dependent relations with its near and wealthier neighbor, Saudi Arabia, and its important geo-political-military location within recent U.S. imperial goals and anxieties. But Bahraini society also includes a history of leftist resistance and cross-class solidarity (at least in urban areas) based on class-based subordination, as well as oppositional political formations based on regional Shi’i solidarities. This paper is particularly concerned with the gendered dimensions of these processes since February 2011 in a context with its own patriarchal dynamics and how these map onto bodies and space in Bahrain. Among the questions addressed are: What are the primary mechanisms through which men and women are organizing? How does this inform particular approaches to space? What impact, if any, are the uprisings having on the gendered and classed segregation of space? How has the uprisings impacted the urban-rural divide? What have been the impacts of the decentralization of protest from Manama to villages and small towns as central city spaces have been the primary targets of security clampdowns and containment strategies? This paper will be based on fieldwork and textual, cartographic, and visual secondary and primary source research.

The public sphere is a vital element of urban life. In recent years Muslim individuals and groups have entered and demanded their place and equal participation in German urban public spheres. Results have been mixed. In some cases, Muslims are considered proponents of non-liberal ideas and perspectives and hence declared unfit for full-fledged participation in liberal debate and cities. In other contexts, pious Muslim individuals and groups have long since become ordinary urban actors and participants. Based on anthropological fieldwork conducted in Stuttgart, Germany, I introduce concrete examples of Muslim participation and interventions that have made individuals and groups integral parts of the urban public sphere. Analyzing contributions of individuals and associations (e.g. public lectures, debates, open houses in mosques, or religious dialogue events), I argue that Muslims are constructive members of German urban public spheres. I illustrate how what might seem to be distinctly Muslim public platforms often work to ease the way of Muslim citizens into larger arenas of public participation and debates. Topics debated in particular Muslim contexts frequently serve to connect internal debates to larger public debates. Muslims interventions and public activities do not occur in opposition to the mainstream urban public sphere, but increasingly form one dynamic element of German urban public spheres.