Procedimiento para el diagnóstico de los procesos logísticos en el objeto práctico

In an effort to expand the conceptualisation of political agency in the Middle East, a body of literature – contemporaneous with that on authoritarian resilience - has focused on political engagement beyond the formal electoral sphere (Abu-Lughod 1990; Singerman 1995; Hoodfar 1997; Bayat 2005, 2010; Albrecht 2008, 2010; Alhamad 2008; Lust-Okar 2008; Beinin and Vairel 2011), in what has been termed a ‘post-democratization’ approach (Cavatorta and Durac 2011). This scholarship does not conceive of agency as confined to the manoeuvrings of political elites within pseudo-democratic institutions, but explores agency in own right: as ‘everyday’ and symbolic, manifested in informal social networks, undertaken by rural or less- educated actors, and existing in an ‘enmeshed’ (Abu-Lughod 1990: 41) relationship with authoritarian power. Such texts attempt to transcend the structuralist and cyclical orientation of the autocracy literature, which was caught between the polarity of detecting democratisation and affirming authoritarian stability.

The first insight contained within this Middle East politics literature is that ‘informal channels of political participation’ are significant outlets for political activity (Alhamad 2008). Such channels are defined as loosely-based, informal groupings that are indigenous to the region, based mainly on kin, religion,

neighbourhood, occupation, and commercial interests (ibid: 36). By imbuing these ‘everyday’ social vehicles with political significance, Alhamad purposefully shifts the focus of analysis from elite political activity to popular engagement, while

emphasising that such vehicles are shaped by the historical contexts of the

communities in which they originate. Diane Singerman (1995) also illustrates the way in which a range of everyday spheres of activity in Egypt– such as marriage and educational networks - still have ‘political’ import, structuring the boundaries and interests of the political and economic order. This is echoed in Homa Hoodfar’s (1997) ethnographic study of low-income Egyptian households, in which the

household serves as a socially situated institution that both protects individuals from radical state policies, and enables women to access economic resources and personal security. For Asef Bayat (2010: 11), urban public space, not democracy, is the ‘key theatre’ of popular political participation in the Middle East.

In addition to expanding the discussion on participatory vehicles of action, these studies also strive for a nuanced understanding of the motivations underpinning political behaviour in the Middle East. Informal channels of participation undoubtedly serve a material purpose, enabling citizens to further their personal interests (Alhamad 2008: 36), and facilitating popular ‘survival strategies’ in light of economic

liberalisation policies (Hoodfar 1997). However, this is not their sole purpose. Singerman (1995: 8) argues against reducing political agency ‘to mere self-interest and cost benefit analysis’, and instead develops the argument that contentious collection action is pursued for its own sake, in order to enhance interpersonal relationships. People forge identities and enlarge solidarities in the process of furthering their individual and collective interests (Bayat 2010: 12). In this view, political agency - despite the trappings of authoritarianism – remains a potent force

for social transformation, mediated through a complex web of institutions, cultural norms and personal and collective interests.

Finally, these studies strongly advocate for recognising the potency of political agency even when it is understated, latent or otherwise concealed. Bayat (2010: 41) concedes that ordinary urban subjects in the Middle East, such as the unemployed and housewives, structurally lack the power of disruption, but they are nevertheless able to make ‘silent’ and modest claims against ‘the state, the rich, and the powerful’. The actions described by Bayat – which include survival strategies such as the unlawful acquisition of land and shelter - signify ‘interstitial manoeuvres in the gaps and fissures of the power structure’ rather than direct, collective, clearly articulated opposition to that structure itself (Chalcraft 2016: 2). Nevertheless, Bayat proposes that this form of agentive action is ambitious in its scope, contesting state prerogatives such as the meaning of order and control of public space, and is potentially

transformative, with such quiet and widespread actions eventually triggering social change through the power of big numbers. Singerman (1995: 4) has also advocated this view, arguing that political action can be subterranean and concealed, particularly under repressive conditions, but that popular political activity can predate and

ultimate give rise to ‘peak moment such as demonstrations’. Laila Alhamad (2008) emphasises the importance of context in defining the significance of outwardly ‘non- political’ activities, such as the growing of a beard as an act of defiance in Algeria. Through these studies, political agency is represented as circumspect but persistent in its occupation of social, political and symbolic structures, and as strategic as well as cooperative in its motivations. However, in understanding agency ‘as it is’, it is firmly located within the political status quo, and its radical potential is deferred to an

This literature on camouflaged forms of political engagement develops

conclusions about political agency principally as a by-product of its empirical claims. Its insights can be bolstered with reference to a branch of literature that has sought to understand the relationship between agency and structure (or power/subject relations) in a much more targeted sense (Mitchell 1988; Massad 2001; Makdisi and Silverstein 2006; El Shakry 2007). Such texts are also positioned outside of the democratisation paradigm, but they emphasise the way in which political agents are discursively constructed by powerful systems and practices in the Middle East, whether authoritarian or colonial in nature.

Focusing on power as it is exercised and diffused by the mechanisms of the modern state, Timothy Mitchell (1988: 174) argues that new technologies of

‘disciplinary power’ in Egypt, from the Egyptian army’s system of rural discipline to the national programme of schooling, worked directly on the bodies of individuals in order to produce a habit of obedience. Omnia El Shakry (2007) also elaborates upon processes of knowledge production by examining the impact of colonial discourses on the production of social-scientific inquiry in Egypt. Joseph Massad (2001), in the case of Jordan, focuses on the manner in which national identities were producedand even imposed by state institutions, arguing that they were internalised by nationalistic discourses and came to appear as eternal essences in the self-understandings of subjects. These studies are bound by their insistence on the mediating and shaping role of structure on political subjectivities. Power is articulated as having a ‘hold’ on subjects for whom ‘reality is simply that which is capable of representation’ (Mitchell 1988: 178). Whereas Bayat (2010) spoke of agentive capacity as enabling and

progressive politics’ altogether, and understands it ‘only from within the discourses and structures of subordination that create the conditions of its enactment’.

The limitation of studies on power/subject relations is that they risk depicting subjects as fully determined by the discursive structures that they occupy, thereby rendering them speechless and lacking in agency. Lisa Wedeen (1999) indirectly counters this argument. Although she outlines the constitutive rhetorical and coercive universe of the Syrian cult of Hafiz Al-Asad, she also draws attention to the way in which the populace was able to subvert the cult’s meanings, mock its grandiosity and exploit its apparent contradictions in everyday acts of political engagement, even while participating in its rituals. Above all, she challenges the implication – explicit in the authoritarian resilience literature, and suggested in studies on power relations – that subjects come to ‘believe’ in, or be entirely defined by, the proclaimed

‘legitimacy’ of authoritarian regimes (ibid: 12). While conceding that under

authoritarianism, the empowering capacity of political agency remains circumscribed because of its fundamentally covert nature, Wedeen suggests that moments of radical contestation can potentially lead to the reconfiguration of constitutive authoritarian discourses.

Other studies on Middle East politics have purposefully foregone a top-down approach to political agency, instead using frameworks such as social movement theory, and drawing on the phenomenon of civil society activity in the region (Garon 2003; Cavatorta 2006, 2013; Pratt 2007; Cavatorta and Durac 2011). One such strand of literature has challenged the claim of depoliticisation through the phenomenon of Islamism, which is described as a ‘recurring phenomenon that affects the lives of millions of people in the Muslim world’ (Hafez 2003: 3 - see also Wiktorowicz 1999; Ismail 2001; Takeyh 2003). This literature usefully expands the remit of the

institutional political arena in the region, but it too often presents Islamist opposition movements as distinctive political entities, understanding ‘activism’ as principally comprising ‘Islamist activism’ (Wickham 2002; Clark 2004). This analytical slant is not extended to the broader populace, or channelled towards investigating political agency in a more general sense. Moreover, this literature’s deployment of social movement frameworks – largely for the study of the organisational, networking and recruitment patterns of Islamist activists - is too often overlaid onto the socio-political context of the Middle East rather than purposefully adapted or critiqued.

As with the comparative politics literature on authoritarian resilience, the Middle East politics literature begins from the premise that the politics of the region must be grasped on their own terms, beyond transitology frameworks. Both literatures challenge (using a range of theoretical frameworks) the claim that the Middle East is depoliticised, apathetic or devoid of political agency. However, where the

comparative politics literature sketched a constricted understanding of political agency, as exercised by dictators, ruling elites and political coalitions, the latter has expanded the scope of enquiry to include latent, contentious and collective forms of political agency. In doing so, it addresses some of the gaps raised by the comparative politics literature, even if it lacks the typological precision in categorising varieties of authoritarianism. Indeed, studies by Mitchell (1988), Wedeen (1999), and Mahmood (2005) are insightful in suggesting the non-coercive means by which autocrats can assert their control over society, thereby adding nuance to comparative legitimation theory (Gerschewski 2013).

Despite characterising the Middle East as an agentive political environment, the thrust of the literature, prior to the Arab Spring, depicts political activity as bound, and even constrained by, resilient authoritarian regimes. Even a study that affirms the

strength of civil society activism and associational life in the Arab world concludes by declaring that such activity ultimately encourages a ‘restructuring of political

authority which remains profoundly authoritarian’ (Cavatorta and Durac 2011: 143). As noted above, there is a suggestion that popular political activity can predate and lead to the emergence of ‘peak moments such as demonstrations’ (Singerman 1995: 4), thereby transforming both agency and structure in the process (Wedeen 1999) but the scarcity of open contestation in the region deferred further exploration of this theory.

The literature during and subsequent to the ‘Arab Spring’ shifted the parameters of the debate. It paved the way for renewed discussion of the democratisation

paradigm, but it also generated compelling assertions regarding the transformative impact of radical political contestation.