WHAT CAUSED THE ARAB UPRISINGS?

Like many major events in world politics—such as the outbreak of World War I or the fall of the Soviet Union—the Arab uprisings that began in late 2010 may have taken much of the world by surprise, but that does not mean that they came out of nowhere. In the way that the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand is said to have started World War I, the Arab uprisings are now commonly said to have begun with the self-immolation of Tunisian fruit-cart vendor Mohamad Bouazizi on December 17, 2010.Footnote ¹ Within weeks, protests then spread throughout Tunisia, culminating in the resignation of president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali on January 14, 2011. From there, the revolutionary spirit spread to Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria, seeing serious challenges to repressive regimes that just months earlier appeared as stable as they had been for decades.

But, of course, the story is not so simple. In Tunisia, at least two other citizens had self-immolated in the months before Bouazizi, and yet those brutal deaths sparked nothing. In Egypt, protests and demonstrations had been escalating almost steadily since at least 2004, notably as more than a million organized laborers participated in strikes and marches that brought portions of the country to a standstill (Beinin and el-Hamalawy Reference Beinin and el-Hamalawy2007). The 2011 protests may have escalated to revolutionary proportions unexpectedly, but they did not emerge out of thin air. Although no one predicted the precise timing of the uprisings or that they would begin in Tunisia and spread so quickly, many scholars of the region, in fact, had been documenting what appeared to be growing expressions of dissent, particularly over the past decade (Bayat Reference Bayat2009; Beinin and Vairel Reference Beinin and Vairel2011; Chomiak Reference Chomiak, Lust and Khatib2013; Haddad Reference Haddad2011; Ketterer Reference Ketterer2001; Schwedler Reference Schwedler2003). And despite common perception, virtually no regime “escaped” the Arab uprisings. Saudi Arabia (Jones Reference Jones2012), Jordan (Lynch Reference Lynch2011; Ryan Reference Ryan2011), Morocco (Silverstein Reference Silverstein2011), and Oman (Worrall Reference Worrall2012) have all seen unprecedented challenges to their regimes, even though as of this writing they do not appear in imminent danger of falling. They have responded in ways ranging from the distribution of vast sums of money (Saudi Arabia) to implementing constitutional reforms (Morocco, Jordan, and Oman). Of course each regime is trying to bribe or reform only as much as necessary to stay in power, but they all realize that to do nothing would be highly unwise.

ANALYTIC FRAMEWORKS

Looking at how the uprisings have been analyzed provides some ideas about how the Middle East might be fruitfully incorporated into a wide variety of courses. As clear instances of contentious politics, those debates are an obvious place to start. Two specific bodies of literature provide ready frameworks for understanding the uprisings: the literatures on social movements and revolutions and on political transitions and democratization. As Agnieszka Paczynska argues in her piece for this symposium, cross-case and cross-regional comparison are particularly useful in allowing students to explore the relationship between global and local dynamics in either facilitating or hindering political transitions.

Another dominant framework for the Middle East in general has been the study of robust or durable authoritarianism. Although the uprisings have clearly challenged at least part of this literature, Khalid Medani argues in this symposium that the uprisings also provide the opportunity to critically reassess this literature. Bringing a reexamination of the theoretical and methodological misconceptions into the classroom allows students to explore the politics behind the production of knowledge, while encouraging them to work through the process of generating or examining new analytical frameworks. Labor unions and other civil society organizations, for example, prove to be much stronger than the literature had anticipated.

Pete Moore's examination of political economy in this symposium illustrates that teaching about the uprisings through two analytic lenses—the politics of economic development/reform and resource politics—provides productive frameworks for students to make sense of the uprisings as well as regional politics more generally. By challenging students to think beyond an abstract world divided between politics and economics, students can develop knowledge of the region through conceptual frameworks that highlight comparative insights as well as global connections. Protesters in the Arab uprisings brought a wide range of grievances to the table, but economic issues were front and center in every case far more than demands for democratization.

GLOBAL CONNECTIONS AND LOCAL COMPARISONS

Thematic courses—for example, on social movements, political transitions, institutions, political economy, states and regimes—lend themselves particularly well to cross-regional and cross-case comparisons. Country-to-country comparisons have been indeed proliferating as scholars explore the variations in trajectory and outcome across the Middle East since the Arab uprisings began (Amar and Prashad Reference Amar and Prashad2013; Gelvin Reference Gelvin2012; Lust and Khatib Reference Lust and Khatib2013; Lynch Reference Lynch2012; Noueihed and Warren Reference Noueihed and Warren2012). These comparisons often obtain analytic traction, in part, by clustering countries into types—of regimes, of revolutions, of social movements, of successes and failures, and so on. Indeed, many overall assessments of the uprisings focus on sorting the individual cases into different columns: Egypt and Tunisia are examples of W, Jordan and Morocco are examples of X, while Syria, Libya, and Yemen are examples of Y, Algeria is an outlier, and the Gulf monarchies are something else entirely, except for Bahrain, which is a different kind of outlier, and so on.

These sorts of exercises can be particularly useful in the classroom, as students can be encouraged to brainstorm by using typological theorizing to generate clusters and patterns across cases (George and Bennett Reference George and Bennett2005). At the same time, one limit of this approach to exploring the Arab uprisings is that we simply do not know what we are looking at yet, not in a macro, big-picture sense. As Jillian Schwedler argues in this symposium, one of the main problems with the regime-type and other state-as-unit forms of comparison is that they fail to capture really interesting dynamics within cases, including in-case variation across time and space. We tend to know a lot about what has and is happening in urban centers, for example, and less about the rural or small town mobilizations. She suggests that attention to in-case variations and to spatial issues in particular will uncover interesting new patterns and insights that will be productive in the classroom as well as in generating new substantive theoretical insights and knowledge of individual cases.

Perhaps one of the most thorny issues for the study of Middle East politics, both in scholarship as well as in the classroom, has to do with the role of religion. Islam is still commonly held to be exceptional even to other monotheistic religions, and recent scholarly debates have both reinforced this argument and challenged it head-on. Within the field of Middle East studies, few scholars continue to argue that “Islam” explains anything at all about the region (or even Muslim societies, 75% of which are located outside of the Middle East). As Peter Mandaville argues in this symposium, political actors that embrace Islam should be understood as individuals, social movements, civil society organization, political parties, and so on, rather than as part of some whole entity “Islam” or even “political Islam.” The challenge for the classroom as well as scholarship, however, is to recognize and address the deep production of Islamophobia in America and its affect on the kinds of questions we ask about the role of Islam in shaping Middle East politics. Students seldom come to the classroom without any preconceived notions about Islam or the Middle East, so the politics of the region cannot simply be introduced without helping students to recognize and unpack the complex ways in which what we understand as “Islam” has been produced in the West through very political and politicized processes. Mandaville provides some clear frameworks for moving scholarship as well as classroom discussions in more productive directions.

PRODUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE

Perhaps the biggest elephant in this virtual room involves the cumulative impact of knowledge production on the Middle East. This is not just about knowledge production in political science. Disciplinary boundaries are porous, and the production of knowledge in political science is often a reflection of worldviews developed in the broader contexts that political scientists inhabit. These views often make their way into the analytical frameworks and claims made within the discipline, despite the pretense of objectivity and adherence to the scientific method. Bassam Haddad addresses in this symposium the enduring impact of these worldviews when examining otherwise positive phenomena such as the Arab uprisings. He addresses the pessimistic shift in knowledge production on the region that took place after a series of violent events, notably ones that involved American citizens and officials as victims. Haddad emphasizes the importance of comparative analysis in bringing Middle Eastern cases out of their analytical ghetto, and cautions against the false satisfaction that comes with only critiquing the dominant discourse. The challenge ahead in terms of knowledge production lies more in problem-solving than in problem-raising.

Adel Iskandar explores knowledge production from the angle of Arab media studies. The uprisings coincided with an explosion in new media in the region as well as globally, which have provided new resources for activists in the region as well as for scholars and students. He offers a critical reassessment of Arab media studies for political science, suggesting practical exercises for how media can be used productively in a wide range of courses. Delving deeply in the critical case of Egypt, Hesham Sallam illustrates the value of resisting the solidification of a single narrative for each uprising. He shows how using multiple sources provide complex but revealing understandings of the microprocesses of the uprisings, including discussion of sources that could be adopted for course use.

RESOURCES FOR THE CLASSROOM

For any teacher incorporating new cases into their classrooms, the initial challenge is how to frame the discussion. We hope that this symposium provides some practical and innovative suggestions. The next challenge is determining what materials to use. As noted previously, the Arab uprisings have come at a time of unprecedented access to high-quality primary and secondary resources from and about the Middle East, many in English. The individual contributions to this symposium make specific suggestions while also examining substantive issues concerning knowledge production. We conclude this introduction by noting some key sources as well as by highlighting specific exercises we have used successfully.

Given the production lag for scholarly books and articles, it is not surprising that refereed articles and books on the Arab uprisings are only now emerging. Of what is being published, much of it is necessarily dated by the time it appears. This is a common problem for scholarship that attempts to analyze events that are still unfolding, but it does not necessarily limit current material available on the Arab uprisings. Several excellent books have emerged in recent months (Dabashi Reference Dabashi2012; Haddad, Bsheer, and Abu-Rish Reference Haddad, Bsheer and Abu-Rish2012; Sowers and Toensing Reference Sowers and Toensing2013). The evolution of the Internet and new media, however, has also created outlets for the quick publication of serious analyses by scholars of the region. Many of these materials are available for free or for very minimal charges. Two great resources are the Middle East Research and Information Project,Footnote ² which publishes the quarterly Middle East Report as well as periodic online articles that work extremely well in the classroom,Footnote ³ and Jadaliyya,Footnote ⁴ both of which include a wide range of materials authored by political scientists as well as by activists within the region. Other useful sites for online English-language materials include Al-Jazeera English, the Middle East Channel at Foreign Policy Footnote ⁵, and many blogs written by scholar-activists in the region.Footnote ⁶

We routinely encourage students to consult online media from the region, as most countries have both official and opposition English language media easily found online.Footnote ⁷ We sometimes assign a journal for which the students select a given topic or country to follow during the semester, with students required to consult and compare a wide range of sources: a mainstream US newspaper, a European newspaper such as the Guardian, a newspaper or two from the region, articles from MERIP.com and Jadaliyya.com, blogs written by activists in the region, YouTube videos, and Twitter feeds and Facebook pages. In addition to focusing on specific countries, obvious topics include gender, religion, foreign relations, labor, protests, and so on; however, we also encourage students to explore topics such as music (especially heavy metal and rap), art, sports, and film, which helps them to discover the political dimensions of topics that they seldom connect with the discipline of political science. This exercise of triangulating data sources can be equally productive for short assignments and in-class exercises. Facebook is an interesting resource when used in connection with scholarly and other online materials because students can find pages on their own, choose which ones to join, and follow informal discussions as events unfold. The Facebook page most famously associated with the Egyptian revolution is “We are all Khaled Said,”Footnote ⁸ which continues to be a site for political activism. But even more exciting for students (and scholars) is the ability to use the timeline feature to access the thousands of postings made in real time as the revolution was unfolding. Many Facebook pages and Twitter feeds include postings in Arabic, but enough are in English to keep students interested and to make the source useful for teaching. YouTube videos cover protests and other contentious politics but also all manner of arts and even mundane videos of people driving through cities and filming a favorite barista at a cafe. We are not suggesting a reliance on these social media, but for topics ranging from gender to revolutions to Islamic heavy metal, there are innumerable resources to help generate debates in the classroom that consider Middle East politics from the perspective of the discussions taking place within and across regions.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are grateful to many people for their comments to earlier drafts of this article. In addition to the contributors of this symposium, we would like to thank Ryan King, Sam Fayyaz, and the editors of PS for their extremely helpful input. All errors and weaknesses are certainly our own.