Youth, the "Arab Spring," and Social Movements

Author(s): Charles W. Anderson

Source: Review of Middle East Studies , Winter 2013, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Winter 2013), pp.
150-156
Published by: Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA)

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43741449

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Review of Middle East
Studies

This content downloaded from

216.249.49.4 on Mon, 04 Dec 2023 18:09:56 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Essays

£
Youth, the "Arab Spring," and Social Movements
Charles W. Anderson
Georgetown University

of its primary constituencies remain enigmatic. To a certain degree, this

Dlmost of is an itsiseffect
an effectprimary two years
of previous of constituencies
scholarly previousregimes'
interest in various after thestrategies
scholarly inception remain interest of enigmatic. the in so-called various To a "Arab certain regimes' Spring" degree, strategies some this
for maintaining their monopolization of critical resources, and, ultimately, of
state power. The literature on "durable authoritarianism" has taught us much
about autocratic longevity and the structures and dynamics that underpinned
the management of the populace, as well as marginalization of challengers in
a variety of regimes throughout the region. As some scholars have recently
observed, however, the focus on authoritarian regimes' staying power led to
overestimations of their strength and, correspondingly, to underestimations
of their publics.1 Of course studies of social movements, resistant populations,
and opposition groups are plentiful and trends like the growth of Islamist
groups have received copious attention. Yet certain social cleavages and
constituencies have, in hindsight, garnered insufficient scrutiny. This is
certainly true of the nebulous social category of "youth."
At the official level, the Obama administration has shown blithe disregard for
youth as a meaningful social force. During the uprising in Egypt, for instance,
one unnamed senior official derisively remarked: "I don't think that because
a group of young people get on the street that we are obliged to be for them."2
On the other hand, the banner of youth as a force for social change has, at
moments, been superficially raised and ballyhooed in mainstream American
news outlets.3 While neither the dismissive tones from the White House, nor
the sudden discovery of restive young currents by media conglomerates long
accustomed to presenting two-dimensional views of Middle Eastern societies
is surprising, youth haven't always fared much better in scholarly circles.
With the exception of some recent innovative work," youth have of late
been subject to a reductive statistical and economically-deterministic lens. In
150

This content downloaded from

216.249.49.4 on Mon, 04 Dec 2023 18:09:56 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 MESA I ROM ES I 47 2 I 2013

the contemporary moment, they have perhaps been apprehended foremost

as part of a demographic "bulge" whose hefty scale, combined with dim
employment prospects- the worst in the world by region according to the
UN- have made it a harbinger of potential instability.5 Although the changing
demography of regional societies undoubtedly carries serious implications,
the rush to equate youth with disorder oddly echoes the approach of local
authoritarian states, which have in recent years regarded the youngest
generation as a site for supervision, surveillance, and intervention.6
Moreover, the salience of youth as a political factor does not derive primarily
from its increasing demographic weight, but from its capacity for stimulating
the development of new types of associational activity, cultural and political
discourses, and novel subjectivities and social networks. The conditions
under which these capacities develop fruitfully and provide a basis for
mobilization should draw more attention than they have.
A second pitfall in the study of youth is the common presumption that
those deemed by scholars, and by their own societies to not yet bear the full
attributes of adults, similarly lack the capacity or wherewithal for independent
action and agency. Youths are, in this view, an adjunctive social element,
following the cues or lead of elders. For instance, this conception abounds
in the historical literature on anti-colonialism and nationalist movements
during the interwar period from Egypt to Iraq.7 Youth were often affiliated
with specific political parties, of course, as the various "shirt movements" in
Egypt and elsewhere at the time illustrate.8 Yet the growth of youth wings of
various parties or national movements has too often been portrayed as a top-
down affair. The politicians are seen to draw strength from their sometimes
rowdy shock troops, but the deepening politicization of youth and their
increasing weight within nationalist politics is only rarely portrayed as lending
them leverage- vis-à-vis their social superiors- much less as reconfiguring
the internal dynamics and orientations of their "parent" movements. This
proclivity has recently been exacerbated (or at least re-inscribed) by discursive
approaches, which focus on the ideals of personhood, masculinity (typically),
and national identity promoted by youth formations such as boy scouts, to the
exclusion of virtually all else.9 A renewed round of deconstructing the elitist
narratives and tropes of much of the literature on nationalist movements in
the Arab world- using methods that do not fetishize discourse- is overdue,
and may have the additional benefit of acting as a corrective against such
presumptions in examinations of the contemporary revolts.
Revolutions are, it is a truism to say, the product of contingent historical
circumstances. Yet they are also based in patterns of social and political unrest
and mobilization that may, until they serendipitously transform into regime-
151

This content downloaded from

216.249.49.4 on Mon, 04 Dec 2023 18:09:56 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 MESA I R o M E S I 47 2 I 2013

shaking forces, be passed over as unremarkable. In this light, scholars of the

Mexican Revolution have emphasized that revolutionary upsurges are best
seen not just as extraordinary events, but as the culmination or continuation
of deeper social processes.10 With this insight in mind, we might usefully see
the now-familiar laundry lists of critical conjunctures and macroeconomic
factors (rising international food prices, regime defections, mutinies among
security forces, rising unemployment among youth and other groups, etc.)
as incomplete explanations for the present. Beyond more immediate causes,
scholars might turn their gaze towards mid- to longer-term changes in
constituency formation, associational culture, and organizing patterns and
styles, as well as toward transformations in the rhythms and repertoires of
contention and subversive activity. Scholarship which takes up these questions
may well help redirect our attention back to the agency of youth, which has
at times been sidelined or effaced by many of the prevailing optics.
Scholars will likely long debate the specific roles of youth, labor, and other
social forces in the tide of regional insurrections that began in Tunisia.11
If the revolutionary current that swelled in 2011 spurs a renaissance or,
more modestly, new directions in the study of both contemporary and
historical social movements, as might be hoped for, the tools of a nuanced,
anti-elitist, historical sociology should help to widen our view beyond the
present moments of rupture and bring longer-term arcs of social change
and transformation into sharper focus. Perhaps what such studies could
offer would be to further develop a more dynamic and profound sense of the
sometimes meandering, and frequently unglamorous, struggles of ordinary
people to remake their worlds.
Postscript
Since this article was originally drafted in early 2012, much has changed with
regard to the Arab uprisings. Rebellion in Syria has turned into a protracted
and catastrophic civil war, exacerbated by the competing agendas of foreign
powers and interests; the once-vaunted regime change cum revolution in
Libya has left the country in a chaotic shambles; and in Egypt the resurgence
of the old regime security apparatus and the military coup against the failed
presidency of Muhammad Morsi has drenched the post-Mubarak era in
bloody repression. Elsewhere in the region, upheaval has similarly given way
to doubts, disappointment, and fears that the once gleaming revolutionary
promise of 2011 will remain unfulfilled.
The generalized downturn in events, and the visible setbacks suffered by
popular struggles against authoritarian regimes have led to considerable
pessimism, so much so that some fashionable diagnoses, perhaps particularly
inside policy circles and the punditocracy in the US, believe that the "Arab
152

This content downloaded from

216.249.49.4 on Mon, 04 Dec 2023 18:09:56 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 MESA I R O M E S I 47 2 I 2013

spring" has given way to an "Arab winter." Aaron David Miller, a frequent
guest and commentator on NPR programs and in other media, has been an
early and insistent purveyor of this discourse. Where the winter metaphor
typically stands for the ascent or victory of counterrevolutionary currents,
in Miller's handling it has an additional meaning. In his view the uprisings
present American statecraft with a dilemma, as the "growing influence of
Arab public opinion on the actions of Arab governments and the absence of
strong leaders will make it much tougher for the United States to pursue its
traditional policies," which have long included, as he acknowledges, support for
many of the region's besieged dictatorships. Hence, in an analysis redolent of
his former home at the State Department, the prospect of democratic change
and more accountable government in the Arab world is seen as an alarming
development, and in this sense, an "Arab winter" for the US.12
Beyond the matter of questionable metaphors, uncertainty abounds and
there is undoubtedly much cause for concern. Yet scrutiny of prior revolutions
and world historical revolutionary upsurges gives cause for caution before
rushing to hasty conclusions and postmortems. Major transformations,
like those ongoing in the Middle East, have seldom unfolded in a unilinear,
uncomplicated, or easily predictable fashion. Most pass through a complex
variety of phases in which competing forces continue to vie with one another
and contend to shape the outcomes, norms, and expectations of the new era.
In cases where a regime or its top figures are dislodged, the initial cycle(s) of
mobilization and opposition typically find greater consensus (around limited
or first-order aims, such as toppling dictators) than do their aftermaths
when the revolutionary camp often splinters as debate, division, and conflict
reemerge among its constituent elements.13 For revolutionary campaigns
that fail to attain the ouster of a regime or its key leaders, such as in Syria
to date, circumstances (and the prognostications of observers) may well be
substantially more acute or bleak. In both cases, clear-cut results can be elusive,
especially in the near term, and struggles over the state and its relationship
to society may wind up in a protracted, grinding series of confrontations,
episodes, or moments. Victories by one party or another, such as the capture
of state power, might be only temporary, as the Muslim Brotherhood has
bitterly learned in Egypt. By the same token, movements and struggles that
outwardly appear dead or defeated may later give rise to new incarnations,
or otherwise help lay the groundwork for further contention in the future.
If the short-term indeterminacy of many revolutionary contests calls our
attention back to the multiple time scales or temporalities over which they
unfold,14 some of the best scholarship on contemporary youth activism in
the region also suggests the need to rethink other conventional assumptions.
153

This content downloaded from

216.249.49.4 on Mon, 04 Dec 2023 18:09:56 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 MESA I R o M E S I 47 2 I 2013

Among the most interesting new research is that of exploring "horizontalism,"

an amalgam of organizing principles and practices that emphasizes
decentralized, collaborative, participatory, and leaderless approaches to socio-
political mobilization.15 Where the classic objective of revolution has been
to seize state power and unseat old regimes, youth and other constituencies
engaging in "horizontal practice" partake in, and help to create, a broader
and less top-heavy vision of how to make meaningful political change and
begin to deconstruct and remedy some of the pathologies of authoritarianism.
Their investment in deliberation, consensus-building, individual participation,
diversity, novel technologies, and creative engagement stands as a self-
conscious counterpoint to doctrinaire and hierarchical models of mobilization,
political, and religious sectarianisms, polarizing debates over national identity,
and even representative forms of democracy.16 As in the case of autonomist
movements in Euro-American contexts, to which they bear considerable
resemblance, their attentions are greatly concentrated on negating and
dissolving the old regime, rather than on attaining power themselves.17 In
the process, new activist identities, both collective and individual, are forged
along with new methods of struggle. Together the practices of horizontalism
produce networked and "rhizomic" models of organization.18 The effectiveness
of these ensembles was amply displayed, as John Chalcraft has illuminatingly
argued, in the "astonishing coordination amid spontaneity" that enabled
the occupation of Tahrir square and the ensuing victory of the decentralized
protest movement in forcing the removal of Hosni Mubarak from power.19
It hardly bears underscoring that work on horizontalism, and other
organizing methodologies, foregrounds the agency of youth and demonstrates
their capacity for creative and innovative engagement with the myriad of
conundrums they face. Exploration of contemporary youth activism in such a
fashion illustrates their place in conceiving new modes of collective action and
redrawing the bounds of the political imagination in the Arab world. Insight
into the dynamic roles of youth in the era of the uprisings, it might be added,
could be usefully expanded through comparative work, which remains a little-
explored approach in recent scholarship. The currents of hope and outrage that
traveled so electrically from country-to-country and from people-to-people
in 2011 were a remarkable, shared feature of the new regional landscape. A
closer look at the relations, borrowings, and distinctions between different
youth formations has the potential virtue of deepening both our perspectives
on youth in the current moment, and our understanding of the processes by
which the tide of insurrection ultimately spreads to its many destinations.

154

This content downloaded from

216.249.49.4 on Mon, 04 Dec 2023 18:09:56 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 MESA I ROMES I 47 2 I 2013

End Notes

*Mona El-Ghobashy, "Theories of the Egyptian Revolution," The Hagop Kevorkian Center
for Near Eastern Studies, NYU, 14 November 2011. See also: El-Ghobashy, "The Praxis of the
Egyptian Revolution," Middle East Report 258 (Spring 2010): 2-13.

2Quoted in Ryan Lizza, "The Consequentialist: How the Arab Spring Remade Obama's Foreign
Policy," The New Yorker , 2 May 2011.

3For a critique, see Greg Burris, "Lawrence of E-Rabia: Facebook and the New Arab Revolt,"
Jadaliyya E-zine , October 2011.

"For example, Ted Swedenburg, "Imagined Youths," Middle East Report 245 (Winter 2007):
4-11; Asef Bayat, Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2009).
international Labour Organization, "Global Employment Outlook September 2012: Bleak
Labour Market Prospects for Youth," conclusions in brief at UN News Centre: http://www.
un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=42797&Cr=Youth&Crl=#.UMYSMpPjnCZ.
6Swedenburg, "Imagined Youths," 5.
7The youth field in Palestine, for instance, has long been considered an elite preserve of
one variety or another, e.g., Yehoshua Porath, The Palestinian Arab National Movement, 1929-1939:
from Riots to Rebellion (London: Frank Cass, 1977). This is true even in newer scholarship that
expressly revises older perspectives on the early Palestinian national movement, such as Weldon
Matthews's important volume, Confronting an Empire, Constructing a Nation: Arab Nationalists and
Popular Politics in Mandate Palestine (London: LB. Tauris, 2006). My dissertation research rebuts
such presumptions, "From Petition to Confrontation: The Palestinian National Movement and
the Rise of Mass Politics, 1929-1939," New York University, 2013.

8On Egypt, relevant studies include: Richard P. Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brothers
(London: Oxford University Press, 1969); James Jankowski, Egypt's Young Rebeb: 'Young Egypt':
1933-1952 (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1975); Ahmed Abdalla, The Student Movement
and Nationalist Politics in Egypt, 1923-1973 (London: Al-Saqi Books, 1985); and more recently, Israel
Gershoni and James Jankowski, Confronting Fascism in Egypt: Dictatorship versus Democracy in the
1930s (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009). Regarding Syria, see: Philip Khoury, Syria and
the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920-1945 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1987); Keith Watenpaugh, Being Modern in the Middle East: Revolution, Nationalism, Colonialism,
and the Arab Middle Class (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006); and Jennifer Dueck,
The Claims of Culture at Empire's End: Syna and Lebanon under French Rule (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2010).

9For example: Peter Wien, "'Watan' and 'Rujula': the Emergence of a New Model of Youth
in Interwar Iraq," in Jorgen Baek Simonsen, editor, Youth and Youth Culture in the Contemporary
Middle East (Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 2005), 10-19.

10Gilbert Joseph and Daniel Nugent, "Introduction" in G. Joseph and D. Nugent, editors,
Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico (Durham:
Duke University Press, 1994), 5.

"Juan Cole has recently argued that the Arab uprisings are in fact "youth revolts," a
designation sure to stir further contention, "Mobilization and Collective Action in the Arab
Spring," 10 November 2011, UCLA; available as a podcast through the G.E. von Grunebaum
Center for Near Eastern Studies: http://www.international.ucla.edu/cnes/podcasts/article.
asp?parentid=122955.

155

This content downloaded from

216.249.49.4 on Mon, 04 Dec 2023 18:09:56 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 MESA I ROM ES I 47 2 I 2013

12See Aaron David Miller, "For America, an Arab Winter," The Wilson Quarterly (Summer 2011):
36-42; quote from 38.

13Charles Tripp, The Power and the People: Paths of Resistance in the Middle East (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2013), 15-16.

14For somewhat varied considerations on temporality and social movements, see for instance:
George Katsiaficas, The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Social Movements and the
Decolonization of Everyday Life (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2006 [1997]); Doug McAdam and William
H. Sewell, Jr., "It's About Time: Temporality in the Study of Social Movements and Revolutions,"
in Ronald R. Aminzade, editor, Silence and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001), 89-125; Tripp, The Powerand the People.

15John Chalcraft, "Horizontalism in the Egyptian Revolutionary Process," Middle East Report
262 (Spring 2012): 6-11.
16lbid.

170n this point, compare Chalcraft with Katsiaficas.

18The rhizome as organizing rubric makes analogy to plants with horizontal and interlinked
rather than vertical and individualized root systems, and is a mindful reinvention of notions
of the grassroots.
19Chalcraft, "Horizontalism," 6.

156

This content downloaded from

216.249.49.4 on Mon, 04 Dec 2023 18:09:56 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms