The Gay Girl in Damascus Hoax explores the vulnerability of educated and politically engaged Westerners to Progressive Orientalism, a form of Orientalism embedded within otherwise egalitarian and ...anti-imperialist Western thought. Early in the Arab Spring, the Gay Girl in Damascus blog appeared. Its author claimed to be Amina Arraf, a Syrian American lesbian Muslim woman living in Damascus. After the blog's went viral in April 2011, Western journalists electronically interviewed Amina, magnifying the blog's claim that the Syrian uprising was an ethnically and religiously pluralist movement anchored in an expansive sense of social solidarity. However, after a post announced that the secret police had kidnapped Amina, journalists and activists belatedly realized that Amina did not exist and Thomas Tom MacMaster, a forty-year-old straight white American man and peace activist living and studying medieval history in Scotland was the blog's true author. MacMaster's hoax succeeded by melding his and his audience's shared political and cultural beliefs into a falsified version of the Syrian Revolution that validated their views of themselves as anti-racist and anti-imperialist progressives by erasing real Syrians. Watch our book talk with the author Andrew Orr here: https://youtu.be/MnaaxlO6Vuw
Since 2011, the art of the Arab uprisings has been the subject of much scholarly and popular attention. Yet the role of artists, writers and filmmakers themselves as social actors working under ...extraordinary conditions has been relatively neglected. Drawing on critical readings of Bourdieu’s Field Theory, this book explores the production of culture in Arab social spaces in ‘crisis’. In ten case studies, contributors examine a wide range of countries and conflicts, from Algeria to the Arab countries of the Gulf. They discuss among other things the impact of Western public diplomacy organisations on the arts scene in post-revolutionary Cairo and the consequences of dwindling state support for literary production in Yemen. Providing a valuable source of empirical data for researchers, the book breaks new ground in adapting Bourdieu’s theory to the particularities of cultural production in the Middle East and North Africa.
This book reveals the limitations of dominant Western International Relations for studying the Arab Uprisings. It shows instead that focusing on varied social forces and non-state actors, as well as ...domestic semi-political and socio-economic transformations, can establish new ways of reading foreign policy and politics of post-revolutionary Middle East countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, and GCC countries.
The advent of the Arab Spring in late 2010 was a hopeful moment for partisans of progressive change throughout the Arab world. Authoritarian leaders who had long stood in the way of meaningful ...political reform in the countries of the region were either ousted or faced the possibility of political if not physical demise. The downfall of long-standing dictators as they faced off with strong-willed protesters was a clear sign that democratic change was within reach. Throughout the last ten years, however, the Arab world has witnessed authoritarian regimes regaining resilience, pro-democracy movements losing momentum, and struggles between the first and the latter involving regional and international powers. This volume explains how relevant political players in Arab countries among regimes, opposition movements, and external actors have adapted ten years after the onset of the Arab Spring. It includes contributions on Egypt, Morocco, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Algeria, Sudan, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Yemen, and Tunisia. It also features studies on the respective roles of the United States, China, Iran, and Turkey vis-à-vis questions of political change and stability in the Arab region, and includes a study analyzing the role of Saudi Arabia and its allies in subverting revolutionary movements in other countries.
This Open Access Pivot represents the first extensive exploration of social accountability within the Arab world following the 2011 Arab uprisings. Drawing on insights from development studies, ...comparative politics, and Middle East studies, the authors explore the evolution of accountability as a governance concept, review theories on social accountability’s role in improving public service delivery, and categorize types of social accountability initiatives, highlighting respective strengths and weaknesses. Detailed country chapters provide a solid basis for the comparative approach which reveals major variations in meanings of accountability, mobilization strategies, and official responses, rooted in the specific sociopolitical contexts of each country. Moreover, the book analyzes the influence of political and economic elites as well as the nature of popular mobilisation on accountability dynamics in the region. The authors conclude by discerning differences and commonalities across cases and offer recommendations for policymakers, donors, and practitioners seeking to enhance the effectiveness of social accountability initiatives. They address challenges such as the lack of enforcement mechanisms, the difficulty of scaling up initiatives, and the ambiguous effects of international interventions. This pioneering Pivot fills a significant void in the study of social accountability in the MENA region and provides a compelling framework for future research and policy design, making it an indispensable resource for experts and scholars.
This book is available open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. The so-called Arab Spring challenged conventional wisdom and ...certainties about the Arab world where its effects continue to be felt as well as in the diaspora. This book provides an original contribution to current social and cultural theory on Arab social movements by giving a fuller historical and critical treatment of contemporary artistic and cultural production from the region and beyond. Thematically structured and covering culture, media, politics, and literary studies, the book uses a range of theoretical material that engages readers in three key ways. First, it adopts a critical standpoint with respect to the term “Arab Spring,” recognizing the multiple interpretations and varied geographical, historical, and political realities of the term. Second, its focus on carefully selected case studies - namely, Egypt, Tunis, Syria, and Yemen - adds depth to analysis of the cultural, literary and artistic dimensions that operate fluidly across the Arab world. Third, it presents a methodological case study for the growing community of researchers involved in interdisciplinary education. Together, the contributors to the book show how the interplay of politics, culture, and media across varied locations has and continues to shape emergent Arab social forms and a region on the cusp of historical and cultural change.
Curtis R. Ryan explains how Jordan weathered the turmoil of the Arab uprisings. Crossing divides between state and society, government and opposition, and struggles over elections, reform, and ...identity. Jordan and the Arab Uprisings is a definitive analysis of Jordanian politics before, during, and beyond the Arab Spring.
In the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse, the 2003 American invasion of Iraq, and the Arab uprisings of 2010-2011, a new Middle East took shape. In this book, James L. Gelvin explores these ...changes, offering a succinct overview of the region's recent political and cultural historical developments. He focuses particularly on the uprisings and their aftermath, the Syrian Civil War, ISIS, and those factors that threaten the lives of the region's inhabitants.
This book deals with the waves of revolutions in North Africa labelled as the Arab Spring. Each of the countries in the region was affected by the Arab Spring and has experienced specific processes ...and consequences. Due to the complexity of the phenomenon, any kind of comprehensive research and analyses need an interdisciplinary approach to deal with the Arab Spring from multiple perspectives. This volume brings together a group of scholars from various disciplines covering different aspects of the revolutionary changes in the North African countries. Beyond the Arab Spring in North Africa collects diverse studies with an emphasis on specificity. Chapters deal with a wide range of topics that include both minor as well as major themes. These include the formation of youth movement in Egypt long before the Arab Spring and their subsequent participation in the revolution, analysis of Tunisian women’s participation in Arab Spring events, spatial disparities in Tunisia and their impact on the revolution with special focus on Sidi Bouzid as one of the socio-economically weakest areas, rights and social status of sexual minorities in Tunisia, polemics over the role of New Media as both revolutionary and contra-revolutionary tools, broader discussion over the prospects for multilateral cooperation and regional integration in the studied area, reflection of the Arab Spring in the Czech media, impact of the work of ‘Ali ‘Abd al-Raziq on the debates over political secularism in Islamic society, as well as a general debate over democratization in North Africa, or Arab states as such. Beyond the Arab Spring in North Africa will find its readers in all relevant social sciences dealing in various contexts with the contemporary North Africa.
