“State Analysis from Below” and Political Dynamics in Egypt after 2011

Harders, Cilja

doi:10.1017/s0020743814001524

Cited by 10 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…They are defined by occurring beyond the land and immediate coastal lines, i.e., areas of relative state control and social infrastructure, and instead exploring political openings and configurations at its fringes. Where protesters in terranean peripheries might experiment politically due to the presence of local communities in the absence of state institutions (Harders, 2015), transterranean protests are characterized by the lack of such communities and networks. Protests occurring beyond land-based activism are thus difficult to conceptualize with existing approaches.…”

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confidence: 99%

Exploring transterranean activism as a research site beyond local protest sites

Sydiq

2023

Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

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Increased interest in the spatial dimension of protests and activism has led to both the material spatial condition of protest activities and their spatial effect entering academic debate. With Social Movements being a dominant paradigm for activism which focuses on strategic localization and scalar tactics, an emphasis has been put on political activities in proximity to either centralized power or to actor communities and networks. On the fringes of Social Movements, however, smaller types of direct action have been emerging in places outside of conventional, landed spaces. Chinese and Japanese nationalists symbolically contesting national authority over islands in the Pacific, Environmentalists blockading oil platforms in the North Sea, refugee rights groups preventing air-based deportations and nationalists attempting to prevent human rights groups from saving drowning migrants have in common that the site of their activities are beyond the traditional power base of the state on solid ground and make use of specific sets of laws and regulations. This paper argues that transterranean spaces encompass an interplay of state and non-state actors heavily impacted by their location. As these spaces exist beyond the mainland, they share a lack of presence of both state and society. Both state agencies and activists have to adapt their strategies during successive contentions. I conceptualize this relationship as contentious configurations shaping these interactions: Vertical Activist-State, horizontal activist-activist and interconnected state-state contentious configurations. They serve as heuristic tool to analyze protest dynamics in transterranean spaces by highlighting both state power and actor’s engagement with it. With technological advancements and increased access to transterranean, such contentions are likely to increase.

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Exploring transterranean activism as a research site beyond local protest sites

Sydiq

2023

Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

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“…The intervening years have also brought changes in analytical perspectives. For example, political scientists and historians of the MENA region are now devoting greater focus to civil society actors and subaltern groups (Al-Zubaidi et al 2013 ; Harders 2015 ; Cronin 2012 ). There is also a growing emphasis on the agency of marginalized groups such as women (see Langohr 2015 ; Khalid 2015 ), young people (see Abdalla 2016 ; Ouaissa and Gertel 2014 ) and ethnic-religious minorities or middle classes blocked from advancement (Ouaissa 2013 ).…”

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Introduction

Ouaissa¹,

Pannewick²,

Strohmaier³

2020

Re-Configurations

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This essay collection is the outcome of interdisciplinary research into political, societal, and cultural transformation processes in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region at the Philipps-Universität in Marburg, Germany. It builds on many years of collaboration between two research networks at the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies: the research network “Re-Configurations: History, Remembrance and Transformation Processes in the Middle East and North Africa” (2013–19), funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), and the Leibniz-Prize research group “Figures of Thought | Turning Points: Cultural Practices and Social Change in the Arab World” (2013–20), funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). Both research projects’ central interest lay in the political, social, and cultural transformation that has become especially visible since 2010–11; we conceptualize this transformation here using the term “re-configurations.” At the core of the inquiry are interpretations of visions of past and future, power relations and both political and symbolic representations.

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“…Even if the uprisings did not destabilize the regional political landscape to the extent that some observers initially suggested (Dabashi, 2012), questions remain concerning how to account for their impact and the dynamics they unleashed. Seen solely through the lens of authoritarian persistence or failures of democratization, much of what changed as a result of the uprisings is all too easily overlooked, including the emergence of new forms of political mobilization from below (Sadiki et al, 2013;Langohr, 2015;Salime, 2015;Harders, 2015); the rise, collapse and reconfiguration of new political coalitions; and fundamental shifts in conceptions of political legitimacy, citizenship and statesociety relations. Why, in some cases, did uprisings disrupt existing structures of power and bring new actors to the fore, including previously marginalized civil society actors, while in others they seemed to reinforce established elites?…”

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Explaining the Arab Uprisings: transformations in Comparative Perspective

Heydemann¹

2018

Dynamics of Transformation, Elite Change and New Social Mobilization

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Middle east studies, smith college, Usa From transitions to transformations For a brief moment in early 2011, the Middle East seemed poised to slip free of its authoritarian moorings. The mass uprisings that swept across the region in late 2010 and early 2011 created unprecedented possibilities for political openings of a kind the Middle East had never previously experienced. Less than a year before the uprisings began, Larry Diamond, a prominent scholar of democratic transitions, characterized the Middle East as 'a striking anomaly-the principal exception to the globalization of democracy' (Diamond, 2010: 93). By early 2011, as protests gathered momentum, and demands for voice, dignity and justice spread from Tunisia to Egypt and onwards across Yemen, Bahrain, Libya and Syria, an end to the Arab world's exceptionalism appeared to be at hand. Within a matter of weeks, presidents-for-life Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt had been forced from office. By year's end, they would be joined by Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen and Muammar Qadhafi of Libya.

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“State Analysis from Below” and Political Dynamics in Egypt after 2011

Cited by 10 publications

References 3 publications

Exploring transterranean activism as a research site beyond local protest sites

Exploring transterranean activism as a research site beyond local protest sites

Introduction

Explaining the Arab Uprisings: transformations in Comparative Perspective

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