Spaces of Participation: Dynamics of Social and Political Change in the Arab World, edited by Randa Aboubakr, Saraj Jurkiewicz, Hicham Ait Mansour, and Ulrike Freitag, is a timely contribution to contemporary urban studies on the spatial politics of the Arab Spring. Consisting of thirteen contributions and the editors’ introduction, the book successfully incorporates interdisciplinary theoretical and methodological approaches from various fields. The chapters read social transformation through participatory spatial practices while highlighting several interrelated issues: the making of everyday spatial routines both in formal and informal settlements; the role that bottom-up activism and protest movements play in initiating urban change; and the multi-layered forms of interaction and negotiation between state actors and protesters, NGOs, and local communities. What truly distinguishes this book from its peers however is its nuanced focus: it is concerned less with the vast social movements unfolding during the Arab Spring than with the factors which eventually led to those events and their aftermath. In the introduction, the editors set out to explain their formulation of the edited volume as well as the main theoretical underpinnings that bring the chapters together. They critically raise the following questions: In what kind of art, sports, and cultural activities did the youth come together to build personal ties and social networks preceding the protests? How have such spaces been gradually transformed and appropriated by diverse actors across the region? What role did space-related activism, virtual or otherwise, play in the reclaiming of public spaces? And finally, what new meanings have the city spaces and squares been imbued with in popular imagination since 2011?

Following the introduction, the book is structured into four main sections. The first, “Rethinking Participation in Formal and Informal Spaces,” tackles the question of how we dwell in spaces, accommodate them in diverse ways, and mobilize their potential for community empowerment through “mechanisms of participation and contestation” (17). In the first chapter, Hicham Ait-Mansour reevaluates Mohamed V Avenue in Rabat, a major venue of protests and activism in Tunisia during the Arab Spring, as a place for learning and socialization among the youth. In chapter 2, Azzurra Sarnataro investigates the role that local networks of power and forms of governance play in participatory practices through a study of one of Cairo's overcrowded informal areas. In chapter 3, Yasmine Berriane discusses “controlled” and “normalized” forms of dissidence – negotiated spaces of contestation and participation – in the case of the Youth Center of Hay Mohammadi in Morocco. Here the space falls within the purview of the state but also works to foster civil society and alternative cultural practices. In chapter 4, Dorota Wroniecka-Krzyzanowska takes a close look at al-Am'ari Palestinian refugee camp. The author probes into the role of local forms and networks of governance in shaping participatory practices, asking how certain spaces become a center of attention more than others as a place of convergence and social engagement, which has potential to induce social change.

The second section, “Reconfiguring Space through Contestation,” turns to the question of how we act on spaces, how we negotiate them through protest movements, resistance, and space-based activism, and finally, how we reconstruct them in popular discourse and through participatory practices. In chapter 5, Mokhtar El Karras and Youness Benmouro underline the political, symbolical, and spatial dynamisms of Mohamed V Avenue, which acquire different meanings for different activist groups participating in protests movements whether in person or through virtual platforms. In chapter 6, Mai Ayyad explores the appropriation of public monuments and open areas of symbolic importance in Nasr City by Muslim Brotherhood supporters after the regime change in Egypt. With different groups in presence, space is transformed both physically, through renewal and erasure, and in popular memory, through sit-ins and the movement of crowds. In chapter 7, Mouloud Amghar inquires into the production of alternative discursive spaces during the protests as an act of resistance, which, in turn, extends the scope of the public sphere.

The third section, “Alternative Spaces of Cultural Production,” delves more specifically into the ways in which “ordinary citizens” across the region have sought alternative ways to reappropriate existing spaces, both digital and physical, and build community-based practices through art and cultural production. In chapter 8 Randa Aboubakr brings to light the “digital protests” of the Arab Spring, namely, the use of social media to ridicule the hegemonic forms of media representations and content by tactics such as mock-translation, mock-reportage, meming, remixing, and parodic translation. As “spaces of cultural participation,” these tactics have proven to be effective means of contestation despite their temporal limits, especially because they provide anonymity, a horizontal relationship among participants, and global connectedness. In chapter 9 Fadma Ait Mous illustrates how power has shaped cultural and artistic practices in Casablanca. The author introduces two cultural spaces that emerged in response to the elite forms of cultural production in the city and discusses the reasons why they have so far proved inadequate as spaces of interaction between diverse groups or communities. Finally, in chapter 10, Mona Khalil shows the transformation of cultural activism in post-2011 Egypt through an analysis of citizen collectives, highlighting the empowering nature of participation for ordinary citizens.

The fourth and final section, “Space Reclamation and Cultural Activism,” revisits the major themes covered in the first three parts with a more pronounced focus on art- and culture-led spatial transformation, the sense of place, and the uneasy relationship between entrepreneurship and activism. In chapter 11 Yazid Anani adopts the concept of heterotopia as a key to unpack everyday cultural practices mediated by multiple, competing, actors and authorities. The chapter explores the ways in which cultural criticism and visual art and practices tackle the question of the political in the case of “a persisting Israeli colonialism” as well as in response to “a neoliberal postcolonial state-building project” spearheaded by the Palestinian Authority (PA) (231). The discussion unravels the disparity between contemporary art practices that are tied to the “global cultural knowledge production” – a postcolonial condition – to local discourses that dwell within a condition of coloniality. In chapter 12, Renad Shqeirat addresses, through the example of Jaba’ Village in Palestine, the question of how communities could reconstruct a “sense of place” and re-establish a lost connection with nature through renewal, both by restoring the physical environment and the way they connect to it emotionally. In chapter 13, the final chapter of this section and the book, Sarah Jurkiewicz critically assesses the limits to space-based cultural activism and political participation through the story of an urban gardening project in Kuwait City: Could there be less commercialized, critical forms of urban engagement under neoliberalism? Would activism and entrepreneurship ally in generating, less overtly political, but alternative spatial practices?

The utmost strength of the volume – its thesis that space is situated as the focus of debates on participation and urban change – is also where its scope also falls relatively short of fulfilling its promise. In one of the subheadings of the introduction the editors ask an important question: “Why a Spatial Approach to Participatory Change?” (4). Their answer is essential in understanding the main premise of the book: There is a growing need for “profound research on the spatial dimension of participation” and that “walls, streets, and public squares, as well as platforms in digital space, had important functions during the wave of demonstrations and protests in the region.” Indeed, there are physical spaces that the chapters examine in relation with the notions of participation, appropriation, and activism, such as art and cultural centers, clubs, public plazas, and refugee camps. Certain places are mentioned in detail and diagrams explain the arrangement of buildings nearby.Footnote ¹ But except for several chapters that tackle the damaging impact of neoliberal policies on public spaces and touch on the contribution of urban activists to the emergence of alternative practices,Footnote ² the physicality of architectural and urban spaces, that is, their layouts, arrangement and directionality, the boundaries and thresholds which they define, and the symbolism they would evoke through their form and material quality, are almost totally absent from the otherwise rich content and broad scope of the edited volume. To this end, the collection could have made more extensive use of such critical approaches that treat space not only as a backdrop to mass protests or cultural production, but also as a force that shapes their formation.Footnote ³ Further, the inherent globality of the very timely issues discussed in this book is not particularly emphasized by the editors. The connection of the mass protests sprung in the MENA region during the Arab Spring to other anti-austerity and occupy movements around the world, from New York to Madrid to Istanbul, would have further enriched their discussion. Finally, like in any edited volume, the addition of an index would be of great convenience for its readers.

Overall, this is a well-structured, inspiring collection and a must-read for those who are interested in the spatial politics of contemporary social and cultural movements in the MENA region. Its chapters delve into the complex layers behind the “temporal and transformative quality of participatory spaces”Footnote ⁴ and practices. Authors not only cover the story of diverse social groups who seek to intervene in the urban realm against hegemonic cultural models and representations, both in city centers and peripheral neighborhoods, but they also examine “the political functions of space” from the perspective of gender, class, and citizenship. I think that we need more studies like this book that speak from the ground and yet critically addresses a global audience.