Newsletter: Changing Face of Citizen Action, Issue 2

From Occupy to Mubarakism

The Occupy movement continues to make headlines around the world with frequent reference to Tahrir squares as a key source of inspiration. At the same time in Egypt, tensions between the military government and demonstrators keep on growing. Civic actors in both Egypt and Tunisia are confronted with the more stubborn realities on the long march of institutional change, while protesters in Syria continue to pay a heavy price for their largely peaceful actions. In this newsletter we share some of the recent inside stories, insights and links that we’ve picked up.

 

Read the full journal here, or download the file below.

Introduction

The Occupy movement continues to make headlines around the world with frequent reference to Tahrir squares as a key source of inspiration. At the same time in Egypt, tensions between the military government and demonstrators keep on growing. Civic actors in both Egypt and Tunisia are confronted with the more stubborn realities on the long march of institutional change, while protesters in Syria continue to pay a heavy price for their, largely peaceful actions. In this newsletter, we share some of the recent inside stories, insights and links that we’ve picked up.

 

Mubarak is Gone, Long Live Mubarakism: Egyptian Civil Society Under Attack

A personal reflection by Kawa Hassan

During two visits to Egypt in July and October I had the privilege to get a firsthand account of the tough task Egyptian civil society organisations (CSOs) are facing to further democratize the authoritarian political system. For months the military council has been waging a smear campaign against CSOs for receiving external funding as foot soldiers of the Nile Revolution that led to the down fall of Mubarak. 

These accusations clearly show that “old habits die hard”, namely branding civil society activists and organisations who receive external (Western) funding as agents of the West aiming at regime change and harming national interest. These accusations are not new but show the stubbornness of a deeply-rooted suspicion toward external funding for civil society. Even worse and based on conversations with ordinary people in Cairo who are neither necessarily pro-military nor pro-Mubarak, I got the impression they do ‘buy the commodity of conspiracy theory’.  Egypt doesn’t stand alone. As we know from Hivos’ work in Syria, Iran and Iraq, these kinds of sentiments are widespread. These accusations put civil/political society and their international donors in an extremely defensive position and make their work much more difficult. At the West Asia Knowledge programme we work with regional partners on action research and dialogue to build up the arguments and policy recommendations for a more constructive dynamic. For further reading see The Guardian.

 Also see:

- For a deeper analysis of Middle Eastern perspectives on the ‘Dignity Revolutions’ read the new policy paper by Kawa Hassan

- Women and the Arab Awakening, now is the time – a compelling analysis by the Economist on women’s rights in the Arab region.

 - Free Alaa and the other 8.000 bloggers and activists; The arrest of activist and blogger Alaa has resulted in a massive international outcry to stop military trials for civilians in Egypt. Human Rights Watch reports that since the military rulers have taken over from Mubarak, 12,000 civilians have been arrested and brought before military tribunals. This is in stark violation to the International Covenant on Civil and Political rights, and undermines Egypt’s move from dictatorship to democratic rule. No more military trials for civilians and Access Now are trying to stop these uncivic actions.

 

Occupy Wall street, London, Amsterdam… occupy…occupy… everywhere!

The unfolding of the Occupy movement offers a rich tapestry of insights into the changing dynamics of citizen mobilization for change, argues Jacqueline van Stekelenburg on the Hivos website. The 15M demonstrations in Spain formed the kick off of the indignados (outraged) movement  which took much of their inspiration from the Arab Spring. Occupy Wall street followed suit and soon occupy camps popped up at central squares all over the world.

A comparison between different Spanish demonstrations showed that mobilization through social media managed to channel collective outrage through many small organizations with little mobilization experience and brought an unusual crowd into the streets. Participants had an unusual profile: they were significantly younger, more educated, more likely to be women and unemployed, and less likely to have been previously politically engaged.

People are becoming increasingly connected as individuals rather than as members of a community or group. Traditional ‘greedy’ institutions such as trade unions and churches which made significant demands on members’ time, loyalty and energy (Coser, 1974) are replaced by ‘light’ groups and associations that are loose, easy to join and easy to leave.

Despite this process of individualization people are still committed to collective causes. Underlying this, is what Lichterman (1996) calls ‘personalism’: people feel a personal sense of political responsibility rather than feeling restricted or obliged to a community or group.

The role of social media sites is not that they allow individuals to virtually or in reality meet strangers, but rather that they enable users to publicly display their connections and make visible their social networks (Boyd and Ellison 2007). This public display of connections is a crucial component of social networks sites which can result in connections between individuals that would not otherwise be made. As such, the internet created an additional public sphere; people are nowadays embedded in virtual networks in addition to (in)formal physical networks. This is important and relevant in the context of mobilization, because the more people are socially embedded - formal, informal and virtual - the higher the chances that they will be targeted with a mobilizing message and kept to their promises to participate and the more they participate in protest. As such individualization processes amplified by ICTs made virtual embeddedness - in addition to formal and informal embeddedness - a key factor for mobilization. Individualization and liquefying (virtual) structures have given the world a new look and organizers for social change are faced with new uncertainties and challenges. As these liquefying (virtual) mobilizing structures are more ad hoc, less constraining and usually only exist for a limited amount of time, they fit well with many people’s desire for individuality, autonomy and their flexible modern online-offline hybrid lifestyle.

However, these loose structures may also have their draw-backs. Although they seem a suitable tool for organizers to draw youngsters into the streets, they may be less effective to mobilize older generations. And the fact that these loose structures leave so much room for individuality and own initiative, may make the political claims diffuser and possible less powerful. Moreover, loose structures are - by definition - less long-lasting, less demanding and more diverse.

Taken our empirical observations of the Occupy protests it seems at least safe to conclude that protest is less and less staged by the usual suspects such as the Unions, political parties, or large NGOs. Instead a plethora of social networks and structures develops both online and offline in complex and overlapping patterns. Are organizers therefore less able to draw people into the streets for higher risks, higher costs or more enduring action, when using liquid structures rather than solid ones? It’s too soon to tell and many questions remain. Yet, the Occupy protestors around the world are so far proving the sceptics wrong.

Also see:

- For an extended version of this article read “Mobilizing for change in a changing society” by Jacquelien van Stekelenburg and Marije Boekkooi.

- The recent clearances of various Occupy sites show a growing discontent of governments with the movements. Tents in New York, London and Paris have been removed and also in the Netherlands politicians want the camps to go. But, demonstrators from the cleared sites are coming back. They say: The genie is out of the bottle. However, the resonating question in the media remains, what genie?

- Occupy is not just about the squares. It’s also about the NET, argues Rebecca MacKinnon argues in this special edition of the Netizen report.

 

Explorations

Rap the revolution?

Have we entered an era of Facebook protest, twitter-revolts and streetbook revolutions? Framings that combine on- and offline manifestations of civic actions may be the flavour of the day, yet risk overlooking alternative perspectives that might offer additional insights of relevance. Pop-culture provides one such angle. In a recent conversation, Tunisian activist Sami Ben Gharbia argued that the dominant focus on social media in the Arab Spring disregards the role of graffiti and rap in transitional processes. We will come back to pop-culture in a next issue of civic explorations with Adam Haupt from Western Cape University. As a preview, check out some of his insights on pop culture and subversive behaviour in the books Stealing Empire and Digital Alternatives.

Politicians fail to reach the world’s youth with their 20th century rhetoric

All around the world we are seeing unorganized movements of people who are expressing their anger with our financial and political system, yet the political leaders in these countries dub them as terrorist, hooligan or hippies. Guy Standing  argues that our social democrats fail to recognize that every progressive movement has been built on anger, needs and aspirations of the emerging mayor class, which today are the precariat. Due to the financial crisis this group is only growing. Standing states that if we do not recognize their social insecurities that the inequalities in society keep growing, “The precariat observes with growing anger. The politicians had better respond or we will reap a harvest of discord”.

DRC Citizenship

 The IDS Development Research Centre on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability has now uploaded all their books, case studies and analysis on a very accessible website that allows you to pick and choose readings on region, research theme and specific case study topics or cross cutting issues.

Opposing interests for citizen action

On opendemocracy.org Lisa Veneklasen poses the question in an extensive report: When opposing political interests are using the same terms and tactics in diametrically opposed agendas, how we can transform the power of citizen action into sustained change for justice and equality?

Are we amidst a global crisis or a mere paradigm shift?

It all depends on your perspective, argues Anand Giridharas in this New York Times article. More interesting stuff from Anand on http://anand.ly/.

The rainbow struggle

Follow this series of insightful reports on the global fight for LGBT rights. Find a starting piece by Human Rights Watch’ Graeme Reid in the Global Post that we picked up from Sexual Policy Watch.

Digital Natives with a cause?

Read here the interview “Making a difference, online and offline” with Nishant Shah by Gopal Sathe for Livemint.com on the book Digital AlterNatives with a Cause?

 

Coming Up

• SID special issue

In the coming months we will be working with the Society for International Development to produce a special issue on The changing face of citizen action. This joint venture offers an opportunity to share the contributions to the knowledge exploration of September with a global audience. We will be in touch with all potential contributors in the weeks to come. Publication date: June 2012.

• A Civic Explorations programme

Inspired by the knowledge explorations, we’re turning ‘The changing face of citizen action’ into a longer term ‘civic explorations’  programme. With this programme we intend to offer a space to reflect on the changing dynamics of citizen action in a globalizing world, through research and dialogue. Our action plan for 2012 includes 3 regional knowledge explorations (In Central America, East Africa and South America), the continuation of this newsletter and our involvement in a number of innovative research programmes on civic action.