The Arab Uprising: Researching the Revolutions, 22-23 September 2014. Conference held at the CBRL British Institute in Amman. 

Keynote Lecture: The Political Subject in the 'Arab Spring' by Philip Marfleet 

Opening Remarks
Session 1: Women, Gender and the Arab Uprisings (Sara Ababneh, Ahmed Kadry)
Session 2: The Arab Spring from Afar (Omar Sirri, Helen Underhill, Daniele Rossi-Doria)
Session 3: Performance, Affect and the Arab Spring (Leila Tayeb, Sarra Moneir Ahmed)
Session 4: Trauma, Human Rights and Resistance (Alessandro Columbu, Vivienne Matthies-Boon, Johannes Gunesch)
Session 5: 'Interventions': Internal and External (Marianna Charountaki, Zoe Holman, Mathew R. Stevens)
Closing Remarks (Dawn Chatty & Phillip Marfleet)



Session 2



The Arab Uprising: Researching the Revolutions | 22-23 Sept 2014

The Political Subject in the 'Arab Spring', Keynote Lecture 

The Arab Uprising: Researching the Revolutions Conference, 22-23 September 2014 held at the CBRL British Institute in Amman

Abstract: The scale and energy of recent political movements in the Arab world has astonished many observers, including academic analysts and strategists within the region. Tens of millions of people have engaged in efforts to change their circumstances, asserting their capacities as political subjects - individually and collectively. 

The ‘Arab Spring’ has raised pressing questions about notions of political passivity or even inertia in Middle East societies, challenging ideas about Arab/Islamic ‘exceptionalism’ and prejudicial attitudes in place since the colonial era. 

How do these developments affect long-term assessment of political change? What are the implications for other political actors and for researchers within and beyond the Middle East? Do recent civil conflicts and faltering movements for democratisation imply that old attitudes should be reinstated?

Biography: Philip Marfleet is Professor in the School of Social Sciences at the University of East London. He has written extensively on issues of globalisation, migration, and socio-political change in the Middle East. Recent publications include Egypt: the moment of change, with Rabab El-Mahdi (eds), Zed (2009); ‘Mubarak’s Egypt – nexus of criminality’, in State Crime, Vol 2 (2013); and ‘ “Identity politics” – Europe, the EU and the Arab Spring’, with Fran Cetti, in Ismael, Tareq Y. & Parry, Glenn E. in International Relations of the Contemporary Middle East, Routledge (2014).



The Political Subject in the 'Arab Spring' | Keynote | Philip Marfleet | 22 Sept 2014

Un/doing the Political: Women in the Jordanian Day-Waged Workers Movement 

The Arab Uprising: Researching the Revolutions, 22-23 September 2014. Conference held at the CBRL British Institute in Amman. 

The Arab Uprising: Researching the Revolutions, 22-23 September 2014. Conference held at the CBRL British Institute in Amman. 

Abstract: The striking lack of an alternative vision has been one of the biggest obstacles that, not only revolutionaries in Egypt and Tunisia have struggled with, but also protestors in Europe and the United States.  In a paper that is the outcome of a thirteen-month long qualitative field study, I ask what the Jordanian day-waged workers' movement can teach us about alternative ways of doing politics and envisioning political structures. The day-waged labour movement was the trigger that paved the rise of the ‘Jordanian Popular Protest Movement’ (Al-Hirak al-Sha‘bi al-Urduni). Despite its significance, the movement has received surprisingly little attention. The workers' movement is not only unique in the tremendous success of its social activism, but also because of the radical means the workers have used to secure their rights and the innovative gender-equal structure that they developed. The work of the day-waged labourers calls into question commonly held truths about political work, particularly its supposed division from the economic realm, in addition to notions of citizenship and the public/private dichotomy.  I argue that it is crucial to examine the work and discourse of the day-waged labour movement in order to help us imagine alternative politics

Biography: Sara Ababneh is an Assistant Professor and researcher at the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan, where she coordinates the internship program and the Arab Barometer. Dr. Ababneh taught courses on Middle Eastern politics, gender, and international relations theory at the University of Jordan and at various colleges at the University of Oxford. In addition, she served as the faculty host of the CIEE Interdisciplinary Faculty Development Seminar entitled “Jordan: Women and Gender in Light of the Arab Spring” in the summer of 2013. After receiving a BSc in Politics and Economics from Earlham College in Indiana and an MScEcon in International Politics, at the University of Wales, Aberystywth, Dr. Ababneh earned her DPhil in Politics and International Relations at St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford in 2009.  Her dissertation was a study of female Islamists in Hamas in occupied Palestine and the Islamic Action Front in Jordan. Currently she is studying the popular Jordanian protest movement (Al-Hirak al-Sha‘bi al-Urduni), the Jordanian Personal Status Law reform in terms of gender and class, and EU-Jordanian relations.

Un/doing the Political: Women in the Jordanian Day-Waged Workers Movement | Sara Ababneh

Gender and Revolution: Historical Patterns and Challenges towards Women’s Rights in Post-revolutionary Egypt

The Arab Uprising: Researching the Revolutions, 22-23 September 2014. Conference held at the CBRL British Institute in Amman. 

Abstract: This paper will seek to examine the political participation of Egyptian women in Egypt’s tumultuous history of revolution, particularly 1919 and 2011. By examining events in 1919, and to an extent 1952, this paper will highlight that the high levels of female participation in the eighteen day protests against Mubarak in 2011 was not a historical precedent in Egypt despite the worldwide attention women’s participation in the protests received. Moreover, this paper will seek to underscore that in the Egyptian context, women’s participation in itself has not produced greater gender equality in the post-revolutionary period. This stagnation is not an accident but rather the product of several key indicators of Egypt’s revolutionary protests in 1919 and 2011. This includes the lack of specific women’s rights discourse during the protests as well as the continued false assumption that the removal of an imperialist or authoritarian government will pave the way for a more progressive government towards women’s rights. In conjunction with this, a close look at the attempted marginalisation of women and women’s rights advocates in Egypt after the 2011 Revolution will also be offered, which will in turn reveal the obstacles and challenges Egyptian women face in overcoming socio-political constructs that are often legitimised through a false Islamic framework that is used to defend gender inequality. This paper will also offer insight into the discourse of women’s rights advocates and feminists in Egypt (this distinction is important) and the strategies they have employed in order to meet their objectives



Biography: Ahmed Kadry is a third year PhD candidate at Imperial College London where he is researching women’s socio-political rights activism in Egypt and its relationship to various forms of the Egyptian State(s) since the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. He is particularly interested in the way the concept of nationalism is formed and presented along gendered lines in Egypt and across the Middle East. He is also a frequent writer and commentator on Egyptian and Middle Eastern affairs where his work has appeared for the BBC, ITV, The Huffington Post, and others.

Ahmed Kadry's participation in the conference was sponsored by MBI Al Jaber Foundation.

Gender and Revolution: Historical Patterns and Challenges ... | Ahmed Kadry

As if in Manama: Real-time Exile, New Diaspora Politics, and Living Bahrain Abroad

The Arab Uprising: Researching the Revolutions, 22-23 September 2014. Conference held at the CBRL British Institute in Amman. 

Abstract: This paper engages with the analytically neglected role of exiled and diaspora political activists and their impact on the Arab uprisings, through the case study of Bahrain. Largely as a result of the popular uprising that began in February 2011 and which has continued through various forms of protest and resistance since, a significant number of young Bahraini activists have sought asylum in the UK and other countries. Drawing on interviews with youth activists now exiled in and around London, this paper highlights how activist encounters with the Bahrain state have shaped the nature of the exile experience by analysing: the extent to which exiled activists continue to engage in their home country’s politics, through online activism, international media campaigns and lobbying; the nature and effectiveness of their efforts to engage international civil society to take up their continued cause; and how exile and diaspora politics shapes the evolving imaginary of the Bahraini nation for activists abroad, especially the subjective construction of what it means to be Bahraini for those outside the country's borders, including some who have been forcibly deprived of their nationality. By taking as our point of departure the stories of ordinary activists, their encounters with the Bahraini state, and their experiences engaging in diaspora politics, we seek to evaluate how narrative and lived experience shape subsequent political activity in exile, and in turn the extent to which activism abroad influences or changes political consciousness and national imagination.

Biography: Omar Sirri is currently a PhD student in political science at the University of Toronto. His research interests include the political anthropology of constitution making in the Middle East, and ethnographies of political activism in and related to GCC countries. He was previously a research assistant in the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House where he focused on Iraq and the Gulf. He has conducted field research in Iraq on the politics of constitution making, and in Syria on the socio-economic effects of the Iraqi refugee crisis that developed there after Iraq’s 2006-07 civil conflict. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and International Relations from the University of British Columbia, and a Master’s degree in Middle East Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.

As if in Manama: Real-time Exile, New Diaspora Politics, and Living Bahrain Abroad | Omar Sirri

A Critical Analysis of Arendt and Canetti’s Concept of 'the Masses': Application on the Waves of the Egyptian Revolution

The Arab Uprising: Researching the Revolutions, 22-23 September 2014. Conference held at the CBRL British Institute in Amman. 

Abstract: The waves of the Arab Revolutions since the dawn of 2011 proposed a new and dominant fact that has become part of the Arab reality ever since: the mainstream understanding of the  “Arab streets”  by former or current authoritarian regimes was proven wrong, and a new conceptualisation and methodological comprehension is an imperative matter. In light of this, as social scientists, the search for a methodological and theoretical explanation, directs us towards the urge of transdisciplinary research. 

This forces us to look for other perspectives or conceptual settings that could be borrowed or operationalised in the social sciences to explain our reality and its transformations. In order to apprehend the role of street protests, their nature and dynamics, and their structure versus spontaneity, this paper aims at shedding light on the concepts of power and protesting or revolting masses at times of agitation in the texts of two dominant and central philosophers, namely Hannah Arendt in The Human Condition and Elias Canetti’s Crowds and Power. By doing so, questions such as group formations, knowledge creation, identity shifts and power relations within groups of the protesting masses, and between them and state apparatuses, will be tackled and reflected on using moments from the Egyptian revolution over the past three years: the 18 day wave of the Egyptian revolution, the Mohamed Mahmoud and People’s Assembly sit-ins in late 2011, and the 30/6 mass street protests.

Biography: Sarra Moneir Ahmed is a transdisciplinary academic who specializes in political ethnography, studies of mass movements and political psychology particularly in Egypt. Moneir holds further specializations and research interests in areas related to political theory, political anthropology and Arab-Islamic philosophy and history. She earned her B.Sc. in Political Science from Cairo University in 2006 and her Master’s degree in Global History from the University of Vienna in 2010 on the topic of “Arab-Islamic Political Philosophy of the 18th and 19th Centuries: The Religious and the Political Problematic in Egypt”. She is also currently a PhD candidate at the Department of Development Studies at the University of Vienna on the topic “The Political Psychology of the Egyptian Masses: Between Myths, Truths and Lies, and Psychological Spaces”. Moneir is residing between Vienna and Cairo, where she is working on her dissertation parallel to teaching as an Assistant Lecturer of Political Science at the Future University in Egypt since fall 2011. During her stays in Vienna, Moneir was granted two scholarships (1. October 2012-March 2013, 2. March 2014 – September 2014) by the OeAD (Jubilee scholarships for Arab Scholars on Democratisation Processes) and the Ministry of Scientific Research of Austria at the University of Vienna. Her stays in Cairo are divided between teaching, as well as conducing various research and societal projects, and intensive fieldwork and observation. One of her latest projects was on “Re-thinking the Empowerment of Egyptian Women: A Grassroots Study” (Cairo Uni-LSE Project, Nov. 2013). Her recent conference participations were: Free University of Berlin (October 2012)“Theorising the Masses in Arab Politics”, York University (March 2013) “Memory of the Masses: 18th and 19th Century Experiences in Cairo’s Resistance”, and Institute le Monde Arabe Paris (June 2013) “A Historical Perspective on Nationalism in the 18th and 19th Centuries Cairo: The Experience of the Masses”. Her recent publication is “Who is Afraid of Twitter: The Egyptian Revolution and its Own Globality” in an Omnibus book on Globalisation, Lang Publications, Germany – Frankfurt am Main 2013. 

A Critical Analysis of Arendt and Canetti’s Concept of 'the Masses' ... | Sarra Moneir Ahmed

This New Writing North podcast was recorded at Durham Book Festival 2018. In this episode Jordanian screenplay writer Mofleh Al Adwan and poet Linda France discuss their experiences taking part in the Alta'ir creative exchange. This cross-cultural exchange between Durham and Amman was established to help raise the profile of British writing in Jordan and of Arab writing and culture in the UK. 

Alta’ir is a partnership project between Durham Book Festival/New Writing North, the Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL), St Mary’s College, Durham University, Dr Fadia Faqir and the British Council.

Durham Book Festival is commissioned by Durham County Council and produced by New Writing North. Find out more about the festival at durhambookfestival.com.

Durham Book Festival 2018: Alta'ir Durham-Jordan Creative Exchange

The CBRL inspires and supports the highest quality research in the humanities and social sciences in the countries of the Levant. Through its events and outreach activities, CBRL encourages the exchange and dissemination of knowledge and ideas for the benefit of all.

CBRL is a non-profit organisation. Comments and queries are welcome to: cbrldevelopment@thebritishacademy.ac.uk.

A Critical Analysis of Arendt and Canetti’s Concept of 'the Masses' ... | Sarra Moneir Ahmed

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