Listening as a citizenship practice post-Arab Spring: mediated civic listening as a struggle, duty and joy in Urban Morocco

Abstract

Where options to speak out and to find recognition are limited, it is tempting to explore citizens’ engagement from an angle of self-expression. With the so-called Arab Spring, narratives about ‘Arabs speaking out’ gained prominence in Western publics, highlighting Arabs’ civic engagement, and also countering long-standing Western images of Arabs as passive and/or violent. In contrast, building on ethnographic research with Moroccan urban women affiliated with the Islamic-oriented Justice and Development Party, this article identifies and discusses listening as a critical media practice. Notably, this article suggests recognising listening as a valuable active citizenship practice next to practices of voice. As a critical part of emerging civic cultures in the Arab world, listening helps revealing understudied links between civic knowledge, listening, civic engagement and empowerment. In this endeavour, this article discusses the interviewees’ mediated listening practices for civic knowledge as a duty, struggle and joy pertaining to authoritarianism, class and gender issues, illustrating how reciprocal listening and knowledge redistribution are used as a civic engagement and empowerment strategy. The article aims to contribute to debates on Arab-mediated civic cultures as well as the concept of listening that has previously been discussed mainly in the context of Western democracies.