Protestation and Mobilization in the Middle East and North Africa: A Foucauldian Model
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22439/fs.v0i0.5240Schlagworte:
Foucault, Social Movement Theories, Arab Spring, MENA, Political Spirituality, Iran’s Green Movement, 1979 Iranian revolution, Middle East, North Africa, Bahrain’s Uprising of Dignity, Social Movements, Counter-conductAbstract
Michel Foucault has inspired a rich body of work in the field of critical social theory and the social sciences in general. Few scholars working in the area of social movement studies, however, have applied a Foucauldian perspective to examining the twin phenomena of social mobilization and collective action. This may stem, in large part, from the commonly held assumption that Foucault had far more to say about ‘regimes of power’ than ever about mobilization and collective action or contention politics in general. Be that as it may, a close interrogation of his work reveals the broad contours of a theoretical framework for analyzing social movements whose chief merit lies in a sensitivity to the sociopolitical context within which oppositional movements form, develop and conduct their operations. This paper aims at delineating what a Foucauldian model of social movements would entail, with specific reference to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), a region traditionally consigned to the margins of social movement studies. An enquiry of this kind is important because, as I argue, the leading mainstream social movement theories that have been applied to contemporary MENA cases invariably fall short of fully elucidating the phenomenon of mass mobilization. Specifically, leading mainstream theories are prone to certain universalistic assumptions and ‘West-centric’ orientations that render them incapable of accounting for the specificities of MENA cases. I shall demonstrate how a Foucauldian perspective on social movements can bypass the problem of applicability to the MENA region by mapping out a theoretical framework whose chief merit lies in a sensitivity to the sociopolitical context within which oppositional movements form, develop and conduct their operations. At the same time, I argue that a Foucauldian model transcends social movement theories with their linear conception of social and political progress, their exclusivist understanding of sociopolitical ‘development’ and ‘modernist’ assumptions by advancing an account of ‘multiple modernities.’Literaturhinweise
A. Bayat, 'Islamism and social movement theory,' Third World Quarterly, 26(6), 2005 https://doi.org/10.1080/01436590500089240
A. Bayat, Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2013)
A. Bayat, Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2007) https://doi.org/10.5117/9789053569832
A. Escobar, 'Imagining a post-development era? Critical thought, development and social movements,' Social Text, 31(32), 1992 https://doi.org/10.2307/466217
A. Melucci, Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511520891
A. Mirsepassi, Democracy in Modern Iran (New York: New York University Press, 2010) https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814795644.001.0001
A. Touraine, quoted in A. B. Bakan & E. MacDonald. Critical Political Studies: Debates and Dialogues from the Left, (eds.) (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2002)
A. Touraine, The Return of the Actor: Social Theory in Postindustrial Society (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988)
A. Touraine, The Voice and the Eye. An Analysis of Social Movements (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)
Afshari, 'An interview.' For a further discussion of this point, see J. Afary, Sexual Politics in Modern Iran (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009)
B. Klandermans, 'New social movements and resource mobilization: The European and American approaches revisited,' in D. Rucht (ed), Research on Social Movements: The State of the Art in Western Europe and the USA (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag; Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1991)
C. Barnett, 'Culture, government, and spatiality: Re-assessing the 'Foucault effect' in cultural-policy studies,' International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2(3), 1999 https://doi.org/10.1177/136787799900200306
C. Death, 'Ungoverned spaces, heterotopia, and counter-conducts,' Unpublished Manuscript. BISA 40th annual conference, London, 2015
C. Kurzman, 'Conclusion: Social movement theory and Islamic studies,' in Q. Wiktorowicz (ed), Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Theory Approach (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2004)
C. Kurzman, 'Structural opportunity and perceived opportunity in social movement theory: The Iranian revolution of 1979,' American Sociological Review, 61(1), 1996 https://doi.org/10.2307/2096411
C. McCall, 'Ambivalent modernities: Foucault's Iranian writings reconsidered,' Foucault Studies, 15, 2013 https://doi.org/10.22439/fs.v0i15.3989
C. McCall, 'Autonomy, religion, & revolt in Foucault,' Journal of Philosophy & Scripture, 2(1), 2004
C. Tilly, 'History and sociological imagining,' in K. Erikson (ed.), Sociological Visions: With Essays from Leading Thinkers of Our Time (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997)
C. Tilly, 'Social movements and national politics,' in C. Bright & S. Harding (eds.), State-Making and Social Movements: Essays in History and Theory (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984)
D. Davis, 'The power of distance: Re-theorizing social movements in Latin America,' Theory and Society, 28(4), 1999 https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007026620394
D. Harraway, 'Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective,' Feminist Studies, 14(3), 1988 https://doi.org/10.2307/3178066
D. J. McCarthy& N. M. Zald, 'Resource mobilization and social movements: A partial theory,' American Journal of Sociology, 82(2), 1977 https://doi.org/10.1086/226464
D. J. McCarthy& N. M. Zald, The Trends of Social Movements in America: Professionalization and Resource Mobilization (Morristown, N.J: General Learning Corporation, 1973)
D. McAdam, D. J. McCarthy, & M. Zald, Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements; H. Kitschelt, 'Political opportunity structures and political protest: Anti-nuclear movements in four democracies,' British Journal of Political Science, 16(1), 1986
D. McAdam, D. J. McCarthy, & M. Zald, Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings (eds), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)
E. Larana, H. Johnston, & J. R. Gusfield, (eds.), New Social Movements: From Ideology to Identity (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997)
E. P. Oliver, J. Cadena-Rao, & D. K. Strawn, 'Emerging trends in the study of protest and social movements,' Research in Political Sociology, 12(1), 2003
Foucault, quoted in J. W. Crampton & S. Elden, Space, Knowledge, and Power: Foucault and Geography, (eds.) (Burlington, USA: Ashgate, 2007)
H. Dabashi, The Green Movement in Iran (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2011)
J. Beinin & F. Vairel, Social movements, Mobilization, and Contestation in the Middle East and North Africa, (eds.), (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2011)
J. Butler, 'Bodies and alliance and the politics of the street,' European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies, 2011
J. C. Jenkins, 'Resource mobilization theory and the study of social movements,' Annual Review of Sociology, 9(1), 1983 https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.so.09.080183.002523
J. Cohen, 'Strategy or identity? New theoretical paradigms and contemporary social movements,' Social Research, 52(4), 1985
J. Goodwin & J. M. Jasper, Contention in Context: Political Opportunities and the Emergence of Protest, (eds.), (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2012)
J. Goodwin & J. M. Jasper, Rethinking Social Movements: Structure, Meaning, and Emotions, (eds.), (New York: Littlefield Publishers, 2004)
J. Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975)
J. Simons, 'Power, resistance, and freedom,' in C. Falzon, T. Oleary & J. Sawicki (eds.), A Companion to Foucault (Malden Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013) https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118324905.ch14
Jeff Goodwin, James Jasper and Charles Kurzman, Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow and the late Charles Tilly in Dynamics of Contention (2001)
M. Foucault & G. Deleuze, 'Intellectuals and power,' in D. F. Bouchard (ed.), Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977)
M. Foucault, 'Is it useless to revolt?' In J. D. Faubion (ed.), Essential Works of Foucault: Volume 3 (NY: New York Press, 2000)
M. Foucault, 'Questions of method,' in G. Burchell, C. Gordon, & P. Miller, (eds.), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991)
M. Foucault, 'The subject and power,' Critical Inquiry, 8(4), 1982 https://doi.org/10.1086/448181
M. Foucault, 'What are the Iranians dreaming about,' in J. Afary & K. B. Anderson, Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005)
M. Foucault, 'What is Critique?' in J. Schmidt (ed.), What is Enlightenment? Eighteenth Century Answers and Twentieth Century Questions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996)
M. Foucault, Dits et Ecrits t. ll, (Paris: Gallimard, 1974)
M. Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and other Writings, 1972-1977, in C. Gordon (ed.), (New York: Pantheon, 1980)
M. Foucault, Resume des Cours, 1970-1982 (Paris: Julliard, 1989)
M. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977-1978, in M. Senellart (ed.), (NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)
M. Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France 1978-1979, trans G. Burchell (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)
M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality: Volume 1, trans R Hurley (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978)
M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality: Volume 1, trans R Hurley, New York: Pantheon Books, 1978
M. Gallagher, 'Foucault, power and participation,' International Journal of Children's Rights, 16 (3), 2008 https://doi.org/10.1163/157181808X311222
M. Moslem, Factional Politics in Post-Khomeini Iran (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2002)
McCarthy & Zald, 'Resource mobilization,' pp. 1215-1217; see also A. Oberschall, Social Conflict and Social Movements (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973)
N. Ahmadi Khorasani, Iranian Women's One Million Signatures Campaign for Equality: The Inside Story (Women's Learning Partnership, Washington, DC, 2009)
N. Pourmokhtari, 'Understanding Iran's Green Movement as a 'movement of movements,' Sociology of Islam, 2(3), 2014
N. Tohidi, '"Islamic feminism": Negotiating patriarchy and modernity in Iran,' in I. M. Abu-Rabi (ed.), The Blackwell companion to contemporary Islamic thought (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2006) https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470996188.ch36
N. Tohidi, 'Student movement: The harbinger of a new era in Iran,' ISIM (International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World Newsletter), 4(1), 1999
O. Roy, 'Islamic revival and democracy: The case in Tunisia and Egypt,' in C. Merlini & O. Roy (eds.), Arab Society in Revolt: The West's Mediterranean Challenge (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2012)
Q. Wiktorowicz (ed), Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Theory Approach (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2004)
R. Garner, and J. Tenuto, Social Movement Theory and Research (London, MD: The Scarecrow Press, 1997)
R. Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic, and Political Change in 43 Societies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997)
R. Meade, 'Foucault's concept of counter-conduct and the politics of anti-austerity in Ireland,' Concept: The Journal of Contemporary Community Education Practice Theory, 5(3), 2014
S. Buechler, 'New social movement theories,' The Sociological Quarterly, 3(3), 1995 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1533-8525.1995.tb00447.x
S. Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005)
S. Tahmasebi, 'The One Million Signatures Campaign: An effort born on the streets,' Amnesty International, Middle East and North Africa Regional Office, 2011
S. Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1998) https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511813245
S. Vinthagen & A. Johansson, '"Everyday resistance": Exploration of concepts and its theories,' Resistance Studies Magazine, 1, 2013
T. May, Between Genealogy and Epistemology: Psychology, Politics and Knowledge in the Thought of Michel Foucault (The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993)
T. Osborne, 'Critical spirituality: On ethics and politics in the later Foucault,' in S. Ashenden & D. Owen (eds.), Foucault Contra Habermas: Recasting the Dialogue between Genealogy and Critical Theory (Sage Publications, 1999) https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446221822.n3
Walters, Governmentality Critical Encounters: Critical Issues in Global Politics (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2012)
Z. Mir-Hosseini, 'The conservative-reformist conflict over women's rights in Iran,' International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, 16(1), 2002 https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1016530427616
Downloads
Veröffentlicht
Zitationsvorschlag
Ausgabe
Rubrik
Lizenz
Authors retain copyright to their work, but assign the right of the first publication to Foucault Studies. The work is subject to a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, but despite these restrictions, authors can take for granted that Foucault Studies will permit articles published in Foucault Studies to be translated or reprinted in another format such as a book providing a full reference is made to Foucault Studies as the original place of publication.
