The Challenge of Citizenship after the Arab Spring - PowerPoint

Gal Levy University of Kansas

The Arab Spring in a Global Context Iowa State University

2015

THE CHALLENGE OF CITIZENSHIP AFTER THE ARAB SPRING

! Why do the analytical frameworks of the post-WWII – NSMs, civil society, radical democracy - no longer explain the struggle for citizenship and social change?

! How looking at politics as a game-like activity sheds a new light on the struggle of and for democracy?

! What are the new trajectories for citizenship in the post-2011 era?

MY QUESTIONS

WHY AND HOW DID THE OLD FRAMEWORKS FAIL?

! New Social Movements as a means of mass mobilisation beyond class and political parties

! civil society expanded in the face of the shrinking of ‘the political’

! radical democracy was called upon to modify liberal democracy.

THE ROAD TO RIGHTS BEARING CITIZENS

The struggles for modifying the ethos of citizen participation, had their effects in contemporary societies, ‘… on the cultural relations of intersubjective recognition, on relations of political power and on the distribution of economic power.’

(Tul ly 1999, p. 176)

WHAT INSTEAD?

! erupted July 14, 2011 => a small group of young Ashkenazi middle class => move to tents to protest rising rent in Tel Aviv.

! “the people demand social justice” chanted in a (bi)weekly rally of tens and hundreds of thousands.

! 2,350 tents pitched in 41 cities everywhere ! De-politicised and embraced from all quarters

(including the capitalists)

J14 OR THE TENTS PROTEST

! In peripheral towns => a protest of the spoiled and well off.

! two competing experts committee on the high cost of living (government appointed committee; and the protests’ experts committee)

! dying out by the end of the summer => dismantled by municipal authorities

! 2013, the great winner was the Ashkenazi middle class centrist party Yesh Atid (lit. There’s a future).

The neoliberal order was restored for the time being

! The Not Nice ! It’s al in the name, or

why are they not nice? ! Origins in the 2011

protest ! Who are they? ! Form ! Tactics ! Goals

! Hiraq al-Shababi ! One name or many

names? ! Origins in the Arab

Spring ! Who are they? ! Form ! Tactics ! Goals

NEW FORMS OF POLITICAL ACTIVISM

THE NOT NICE

I didn’t find myself [in Rothschild]. I saw it as a guys-like experience. They came, pitched tents, feeling cool and hype, in the evenings they drink beer, getting drunk and partying. There was nothing, no feeling that they are fighting for their lives. And it’s okay, they weren’t fighting for their lives, only to get the rent prices down a little in Tel Aviv. It’s not that they had no homes. When it all ended, there was left behind this group of those who were really homeless, and they turned into a nuisance.

Carmen Elmakiyes -Amos

HIRAQ AL-SHABABI

We began organizing […] towards the Land Day, because we didn’t want these speeches, [from] the traditional leadership with whom we don’t really agree. In parallel, we saw that the struggle against the Prawer plan legislation proposal [to re-settle the Bedouins] is not conducted at the level that we thought it should be. Then we said, if the youth don’t come, don’t participate and boycott everything, then, yalla, it’s the end of the Negev and of the future of our children. Then we decided to get organized.

(Huda)

Photos by Yotam Ronen Activestills

! Rejecting known structures of political activity ! Non-violence alongside defiance of authority ! Autonomy and rejection of partisan patronage ! Non-hierarchical, leaderless, fluid, rhizome-

like networks ! Technological-driven (social media) but with

physical-spatial presence ! Non-ideological and yet well informed

FORMS OF PARTICIPATION

CONCLUSION: BETWEEN SHAKING THE TREE AND ROCKING

THE BOAT