The ‘Arab Spring’ in Global Perspective: Social Movements, Changing Contexts and Political Transitions in the Arab World (2010–2014)

Abstract

The objects of this chapter are to investigate the pertinence of the use of the concept of ‘social movement’ for analysing the developments that the Arab world has been the theatre of during the last few years and, through a critical reading of such developments, to re-frame the role of such movements in comparison with other determinants. The definition of a social movement adopted here relates to the existence and action of a network of individuals and groups that share a certain sense of collective destiny and collectively ask for social and political change though various forms of protest. The interpretation of what happened in the Arab world since 2010 is, however, a highly delicate operation, as the processes initiated by social movements often turned into civil wars, coups d’etat and/or conservative political developments. Both local claims and international geo-strategy are also entangled in the determination of the various chains of events and so it is difficult to judge the precise role of social movements in sparking the events that led, or not, according to the place, to regime change. The more time passes after the events the more investigators are becoming suspicious regarding the role of social movements. It seems that the season of revolutionary romanticism that accompanied and immediately followed the events is becoming the object of much more circumspect interpretations. A further difficulty is added by the fact that the perception of the existence and characteristics of a civic sphere in the cultural context of the Arab world has been the object of lasting culturalist cliches. The very existence and role in society of expressions coming from the civic sphere is thus to be analysed historically and anthropologically in order to assess the nature of contemporary protests. In this chapter I argue that one of the conditions necessary in order to explain the logics of mobilization of social movements is to re-evaluate the historical dimension of the civic sphere in the region. Contemporary social movements, but also their evolution since 2011, cannot be understood without a look at the history of mobilization in this cultural context. I will thus study here the roots of the civic dimension in the Arab world and follow its developments and limits throughout the events which marked the region since 2010.