Synopses & Reviews
After the fall of Mubarak, Ben Ali, and Qadafi, the Arab World faces multiple challenges especially with regard to political transformation and governance. The diverse experiences highlighted the vital role of the periphery and of seemingly marginal actors. Although the political landscape of the region changed within months, such developments were rooted in long-term transformations of governance structures. This volume examines the questions of how politics and the state in the MENA is shaped and challenged beyond the center. It develops a novel perspective in Middle Eastern studies center on micro-politics, assess its contribution to the understanding of authoritarian rule and its transformation. It closely links innovative (anthropologically inspired) analytical concepts and ethnographic in-depth case studies from the Arab world. Based on the debates on politics from below and dynamic concepts of state, all the chapters focus on informal institutions, non-elite actors, and the dynamic and contradictory relationship between state and society.
Synopsis
The contributors link innovative analytical concepts and ethnographic in-depth case studies from the Arab world. Based on the debates on politics from below and dynamic concepts of state, all the chapters focus on informal institutions, non-elite actors, and the dynamic and contradictory relationship between state and society.
About the Author
Malika Bouziane is a research associate at the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Politics and Research Associate at the Collaborative Research Center 700 'Governance in Areas of Limited Statehood' at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. Her current research focuses on participation in parliamentary and municipal elections in rural Jordan.
Cilja Harders is the director of the Center for North African and Middle Eastern Politics at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. She has published on Middle Eastern Politics and Societies, Transformations and Authoritarianism, Politics 'from below,' Local Governance, Euro-Mediterranean relations, and Gender and Violence.
Anja Hoffmann is a research associate at the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Politics and Research Associate at the Collaborative Research Center 700 'Governance in Areas of Limited Statehood' at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. Her current research focuses on decentralisation processes, local politics, and local perceptions of politics and reforms in Morocco.
Table of Contents
1.Analyzing Politics beyond the Center in an Age of Transformation; Anja Hoffmann, Malika Bouziane and Cilja Harders
PART I
2.Contemporary Governscapes: Sovereign Practice and Hybrid Orders beyond the Center?; Finn Stepputat
3.The Bureaucratic Mode of Governance and Pratical Norms in West Africa and Beyond; Jean-Pierre Olivier De Sardan
4.Beyond the 'Radicalism-Pragmatism Dialectic' in the Study of Local Politics: Contrasting Privatizing, Communitarian, and 'Vulgar' Expressions in Revolutionary Cairo; Paul Amar
5.The Inward Turn and its Vicissitudes: Culture, Society and Politics in Post-1967 Arab Leftist Critiques; Fadi A. Bardawil
PART II
6.Bringing the Local Back In: Local Politics between Informalization and Mobilization in an Age of Transformation in Egypt; Cilja Harders
7.Negotiating (Informal) Institutional Change: Understanding Local Politics in Jordan; Malika Bouziane
8.Morocco between Decentralization and Recentralization: Encountering the State in the 'Useless Morocco'; Anja Hoffmann
9.Revisiting Politics in Spaces 'Beyond the Centre:' The Case of the Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp in Lebanon; Hala Caroline Abou-Zaki
10.Political Participation in Algeria beyond the Polling Stations: Insights from Tizi-Ouzou; Naoual Belakhdar
11.Tribes, Revolution, and Political Culture in the Cyrenaica Region of Libya; Thomas Hüsken
CONCLUSION
12.Conclusion; Cilja Harders, Anja Hoffmann and Malika Bouziane