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Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA

The panel brings together scholars who have direct experience of the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and Bahrain. They discussed the historical roots, recent developments and challenges that civil societies in these countries are currently facing. 

Chaired by Dr Lucia Sorbera, University of Sydney, speakers include: Larbi Sadiki, Assoc Professor of International Affairs at Qatar University; Walid El Khachab, Assoc Professor and Coordinator of Arabic Studies, York University; and Dr Ala'a Shehabi, co-founder of Bahrain Watch, an NGO working on transparency and accountability. 

For more info and speaker's biography see this page: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2015/civil_society_resilience_authoritarianism.shtml

Civil Society And Resilience against Authoritarianism in the Middle East and North Africa

Speaker: Thomas Pierret, University of Edinburgh
Chair: John Chalcraft, LSE

Over the last four years, the Syrian insurgency has witnessed the rise and consolidation of certain factions, particularly Islamist ones, but also the demise of once powerful groups of a more nationalist persuasion. Drawing on Paul Staniland's social-institutionalist conceptual framework, Thomas Pierret argues that groups that have relied on long-standing networks stemming from armed militancy or religious proselytism had a determining organisational advantage over counterparts that lacked such a background. Recorded on 2 May 2017.

This seminar forms part of the 'Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA Research Theme'.

2016/17

Insurgent Cohesion and Collapse in Syria: A Social-Institutionalist Explanation

Speaker: Salwa Ismail, SOAS
Chair: John Chalcraft, LSE

In this seminar, Professor Ismail discusses dimensions of contention and oppositional action anchored in urban space. She addresses the following questions: How, in the context of the Arab Revolutions, did the urban-based mass protests link with existing patterns of urban political action? What forms of contentious action undergird and animate these protests? In answering these questions, she focuses on urban popular forces in Cairo, their modes of inhabiting the city, and on the politics of the urban everyday. Recorded on 12 February 2014.

This seminar forms part of the 'Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA Research Theme'.

The Politics of the Urban Everyday in the Arab Revolutions

Speaker: Steffen Hertog, LSE
Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre

Gulf private sectors contribute the majority of national capital formation and employment, and have diversified into a wide range of manufacturing and service activities. National development strategies rely on private business as a primary driver of growth and development. At the same time, however, business contributes little to economic policy-making and is isolated in national politics, regularly failing to be represented in elected bodies. This talk explains this passive and isolated role of business by looking at how, despite all diversification, it remains structurally dependent on state spending and subsidies, and how its interests are at odds with those of GCC citizens at large. Recorded on 5 March 2014.

This is an LSE Kuwait Programme event.

Diversified but Marginal: The GCC Private Sector as an Economic and Political Force

Speaker: Maha Abdelrahman, University of Cambridge
Discussant: Ahmad Shokr, New York University
Chair: John Chalcraft, LSE

In this seminar, Dr Abdelrahman raises questions about some of the general features of new social movements such as decentralised organisational structures, working outside formal politics and a decision not to capture the state, specifically during moments of revolutionary upheaval. She uses the case of the 25 January uprising in Egypt to examine these features in relation to the inability of revolutionary forces to harness the power of the mobilised masses and to provide a coherent alternative(s) against institutions of the counter-revolution. Recorded on 6 May 2014.

New Social Movements and the Question of Organisation During Revolutionary Processes

Speaker: Charles Anderson, Georgetown University
Chair:  John Chalcraft, LSE

Charles Anderson discusses his paper, which is part of a broader argument for a history from below of Arab society under the Palestine Mandate.  By reexamining the political economy of the countryside under the first 18 years of British rule and the responses of peasants and ex-peasants to the escalating pressures they faced, it contends that greater attention to the history of the rural majority has much to teach us.

In tandem, it advances an analysis of the Mandatory regime as a liberal despotism, the policies of which consolidated the emergence of a “landless class” that ultimately rose against it during the multifaceted rebellion known as the Great Revolt (1936-39). Recorded on 20 May 2014.

This seminar forms part of the 'Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA Research Theme'.

Will the Real Palestinian Peasantry Please Sit Down? A New History of British Rule in Palestine

Speaker: Fadi Bardawil, University of North Carolina
Discussant: Fuad Musallam, LSE
Chair: John Chalcraft, LSE

Drawing on the theorisation of the Marxist group Socialist Lebanon, Fadi Bardawil looks at how Lebanon's simultaneous economic integration into the Arab area through its services-based mode of production, and its isolation from Arab political causes, was affected by the advent of the Palestinian Resistance on the national political scene. Bardawil pays particular attention to how the Left theorised the Lebanese State, class-formation, as well as the role of Palestinian Resistance as an external force that would transform the rules of the Lebanese sectarian political game by rallying the masses around the national question. Recorded 21 January 2015.

This seminar forms part of the 'Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA Research Theme'.

Theorising Revolution, Anticipating Civil War: Class, State, and Political Practice in 1960s Lebanon

Speaker:  Frédéric Vairel, University of Ottawa
Discussant: Nawal Mustafa, LSE
Chair: John Chalcraft, LSE

Frédéric describes how self-limitation works in contemporary Moroccan mobilisation, with particular reference to the 20th February Movement. In 2011, contestation dynamics did not reach national amplitude despite being spread across various parts of the country. Frédéric looks at the institutionalisation of contentious space, shedding light on the relation between contentious space and institutional politics. He also addresses how different actors within contentious spaces calculate their actions and explains why self-limitation is not embedded in a moral economy in Morocco. Recorded on 20 May 2015.

This seminar forms part of the 'Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA Research Theme'.

Image Credit: Hasna Lahmini, Flickr. Protesters carry the Moroccan flag during the February 20 protest in Rabat.

How Self-Limiting Mobilisations Work: The Case of Morocco

Speaker: Claire Beaugrand, Institut Français du Proche Orient
Discussant: Filippo Dionigi, LSE Middle East Centre
Chair: John Chalcraft, LSE

Bahrain has had a long history of exiling its opponents as a way to regulate political dissent. The 2011 political uprising in Bahrain marked a new phase in the history of Bahraini outmigration and exile politics. The brutal repression with which the protest movement was met (particularly from March to July 2011) led to a new wave of political exile, affecting a wider range of socio-economic categories. With most of the Arab countries, notably Syria, themselves in turmoil and Gulf countries having closed ranks behind the Bahraini government, the destinations of out-migrants also became more limited with the UK and Lebanon on the top of the list.

This research examines the forms of opposition and advocacy that were built on previous exile experiences, focusing on a new generation of opponents that includes children of political exiles and long-time expatriates in Bahrain. This seminar forms part of the 'Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA Research Theme'. Recorded on 3 June 2015.

This seminar forms part of the 'Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA Research Theme'.

Image credit: humanrightstv.com. Bahraini human rights activists Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja (left) and Nabeel Rajab (right).

Bahraini Activism in Exile: Legacies and Revolutionary Ruptures

Speaker: Andrew Hammond, University of Oxford          
Chair: Courtney Freer, LSE Kuwait Programme

Despite the large presence of Salafism in Arabic political and religious discourse today, the term remains in fact highly contested and its history unclear. Yet Salafism, with its semantic confusions, is finding its way from Arabic and the Saudi sphere into Turkey and the Turkish language, which had been as a last bastion against its ideological spread. How did it happen, what are its consequences? Recorded on 1 March 2016.

Image Credit: Ekremsaringoz, Pixabay.

The Notion of Salafiyya: Between Saudi Arabia and Turkey

How has the idea of a social contract been interpreted in the MENA region? Did the uprisings in the Arab world in 2010-11 come as a surprise to economists? Listen to the latest episode of Pocket Economics with the EBRD’s Chief Economist Sergei Guriev and the World Bank’s Chief Economist Shanta Devarajan.

Pocket Economics: A new social contract for the Middle East and North Africa

Speaker: Michael Stephens, RUSI
Chair: Courtney Freer, LSE Kuwait Programme

As the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen moves into its eighth month, the country shows little sign of returning to stability. GCC operations in the country have swung the tide against the Houthi militias and their backer Ali Abdullah Saleh, however there appears little ability to connect military action to political reconciliation. The talk will focus on the ability of the GCC coalition to forge a political consensus in Yemen, on the back of a highly controversial military operation. Recorded on 17 November 2015.

This is an LSE Kuwait Programme event.

LSE Kuwait Programme

GCC intervention in Yemen: A Pathway to Peace and Security?

Speaker: Aisha Al-Sarihi, LSE Kuwait Programme
Discussant: Michael Mason, LSE
Chair: Dr Courtney Freer, LSE Kuwait Programme

The entry of the Paris Agreement into force in November 2016 coincides with the Gulf states’ acceleration of economic diversification strategies driven by the pressure to adjust fiscal deficits as a result of low oil prices. Aisha Al-Sarihi explains how economic diversification strategies create a window of opportunity for Gulf countries to progress towards the goal set in the Paris Agreement. Capturing these two challenges in a single policy could bring about ‘win-win’ outcomes that ensure both long-term benefits for climate and development. Using specific examples from Oman and the UAE, Aisha discusses the drivers of climate change action in the GCC, and potential challenges to including climate change in economic diversification strategies. Recorded on 25 April 2017.

This is an LSE Kuwait Programme event.

The Paris Climate Change Agreement and The GCC

This event launches The Kurds of Northern Syria: Governance, Diversity and Conflicts, written by Harriet Allsopp and Wladimir van Wilgenburg and published by Bloomsbury in July 2019. Based on unprecedented access to Kurdish-governed areas of Syria, including exclusive interviews with administration officials and civilian surveys, The Kurds of Northern Syria sheds light on the socio-political landscape of northern Syria. The first English-language book to capture the momentous transformations that have occurred since 2011, the authors move beyond idealized images of Rojava and the PYD to provide a nuanced assessment of the Kurdish autonomous experience and the prospects for self-rule in Syria. The book draws on unparalleled field research, as well as analysis of the literature on the evolution of Kurdish politics and the Syrian war.

The event is the first in the LSE Middle East Centre Kurdish Studies Series programme for 2019–20.

Wladimir van Wilgenburg is an analyst of Kurdish politics and a journalist living in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan. 

Robert Lowe is Deputy Director of the Middle East Centre. He joined the Centre when it opened in 2010. Robert is responsible for running the Centre's operations, research activities, fundraising and development.

This event is part of the Kurdish Studies Series at the LSE Middle East Centre. Convened by Zeynep Kaya and Robert Lowe, the series will encourage dissemination and discussion of new research on Kurdish politics and society and provide a network for scholars and students with shared research interests. Public lectures and research seminars will be held regularly during term-time. If you wish to join the mailing list for the series, please contact Robert Lowe: r.lowe@lse.ac.uk

The Kurds of Northern Syria: Governance, Diversity and Conflicts

In this episode of “Ventures,” Professor Fadi Bardawil of Duke University discusses his new book, Revolution and Disenchantment: Arab Marxism and the Binds of Emancipation. Bardawil traces the rise and fall of the Lebanese New Left during the 1960s. He focuses mainly on the Marxist organization Socialist Lebanon, a small group of militant intellectuals who mostly left political practice for the academy after the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War. Interview by Professor Angie Heo, University of Chicago.

Revolution and Disenchantment with Fadi Bardawil

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