Arab Revolutions and Beyond

Arab Revolutions and Beyond

Sabah Alnasseri Editor Arab Revolutions and Beyond The Middle East and Reverberations in the Americas

Editor Sabah Alnasseri York University Toronto, Ontario, Canada ISBN 978-1-137-59239-2 ISBN 978-1-137-59150-0 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59150-0 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016948752 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Cover image Jan Wlodarczyk / Alamy Stock Photo Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Nature America Inc. New York

To the memory of Mohamed Bouazizi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The realization of the Arab Revolutions and Beyond edited volume is the culmination of the efforts of a multitude of dedicated individuals. As such, I take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to the Organizing Committee of the Arab Revolutions and Beyond conference: Jeremy Kowalski, Nima Nakhaei, Hessam Daryani, Ilirjan Shehu, Ali Behran-Ozcelik, Omri Evron, Angela Fargo, Justin Panos, and Faiz Ahmed. Without their work, this project would have remained in its ideational stage. Equally, I thank the participants, keynote speakers, and the presenters at the conference. The contributors for this volume deserve my utmost thanks for their commitment and for helping to shape this project into its present form. The multidimensional perspectives generated in this volume would not have been possible without their invaluable insights. Likewise, I thank Dr Jeremy Kowalski for reading, commenting on, and indexing the first draft of the manuscript. Certainly, any project of this scope requires a publishing house. In this respect, I extend my highest admiration to Milana Vernikova, Alisa Pulver, and Farideh Koohi-Kamali at Palgrave Macmillan. They are an honour to their profession. Lastly, I thank my wife Anne and our two sons Younis and Anas for their enduring love, support, and, above all else, patience. If it were not for them, nothing would have been possible; because of them, nothing is impossible. vii

CONTENTS 1 Introduction 1 Sabah Alnasseri 2 The Geopolitical Economy of the Arab Revolutions 13 Radhika Desai 3 Dignity as Glocal Civic Virtue: Redefining Democracy Through Cosmopolitics in the Era of Neoliberal Governmentality 31 Fotini Tsibiridou and Michalis Bartsidis 4 The Arab Revolutions of 2011 and Iran 2009: Identities and Differences 55 Kevin B. Anderson 5 Human Rights from Below and International Poverty Law: Comparative Aspects of the Arab Spring and the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, and Their Lessons for Latin America and Mexico 69 Camilo Pérez-Bustillo ix

x CONTENTS 6 Public Space Without Demands: Understanding Traveling Theory and Practice in Occupy and Transnational Protests 95 Martha Balaguera Cuervo 7 Class, State, and the Egyptian Revolution 119 Sabah Alnasseri 8 A War of Position in Palestine 161 Philip J.M. Leech 9 Resistant Rationalities? Some Reflections on Shi i Movements in Lebanon 181 Sarah Marusek 10 Coda 201 Sabah Alnasseri Index 205

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Sabah Alnasseri, born in Basra, Iraq, earned his doctorate at the Johann- Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, and teaches at the Political Science Department, York University, Toronto. His publications cover topics in political economy, Marxist state theory in the tradition of Gramsci, Poulantzas, and Althusser, regulation theory, and Middle East politics and economy. Kevin B. Anderson is a professor of Sociology, Political Science, and Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has worked in social and political theory, especially Marx, Hegel, Marxist humanism, the Frankfurt School, Foucault, and the Orientalism debate. Among his most recent books are Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism (with Janet Afary, 2005) and Marx at the Margins (2010), both published by the University of Chicago Press. His current projects include a study of Western theoretical perceptions of Islam and the Middle East, and a coedited volume (with several collaborators) of the Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe, an international project to publish the entire writings of Marx and Engels. Martha Balaguera Cuervo, PhD student, Department of Political Science, University of Massachusetts Amherst. Michalis Bartsidis currently teaches Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy and Pedagogy, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He has also taught extensively on postgraduate level, at Panteion University, at MITHE, and in other departments of various universities. His research interests are Political Philosophy, and Modern and Contemporary Continental Philosophy, both areas on which he has been publishing since 2001. His core interest lies in the concepts of transindividualité and internal border within the philosophical context of subjectivity (as in the volume: Transindividuality, Texts on a Relational Ontology, Nissos Publications, 2013). xi

xii LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Radhika Desai is Professor at the Department of Political Studies and Director, Geopolitical Economy Research Group, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. She is the author of Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire (Fernwood, 2013). Philip J. M. Leech is a university teacher in International Relations: University of Liverpool, Department of Politics. Sarah Marusek, PhD, Social Science, Maxwell School of Syracuse University, New York. Camilo Pérez-Bustillo is founding Executive Director of the Human Rights Center at the University of Dayton (Ohio) and Research Professor of Law and Human Rights; he is also a Fellow of the Comparative Research Programme on Poverty, a project of the International Social Sciences Council based at the University of Bergen in Norway, Research Associate of the program on migration and poverty at FLACSO-Guatemala, and coordinator of the secretariat of the International Tribunal of Conscience of Peoples in Movement (ITCPM). Fotini Tsibiridou teaches Economic and Political Anthropology, Gender and Power Issues, and Middle East and Balkan Ethnographies, at the Department of Balkan, Slavic and Oriental Studies, University of Macedonia (Thessaloniki, Greece). She was an academic scholar at EHESS, Paris (1996); Harvard, Massachusetts (1999); and Bilgi, Istanbul (2008). Her research interests focus on power relations and political economy, ethnic minorities, and gender identity politics in late modernity. She is currently working on state culture issue and urban anthropology, focusing on governmentality, citizenship gendered experiences, and social movements. She is conducting ethnographic fieldwork in Greece, Turkey, and the Middle East (the Sultanate of Oman), and she has produced a number of ethnographic documentaries.