The Press in the Arab World

The Press in the Arab World a Bourdieusian critical alternative to current perspectives on the role of the media in the public sphere Hicham Tohme A thesis submitted to the Department of Politics in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy October 2014 1 Abstract The current literature on the role of media in the public sphere in general, and particularly politics, is divided among two opposing trends. The liberal/pluralists argue that media is playing a democratic role consisting of either representing public opinion and/or informing it. The critical theorists argue that media is in fact controlled by and represents elite interests. But even critical theories of the role of media in politics are driven by the belief that media ought to play a democratic and liberal role in society. Both theories therefore share a common normative understanding of what the role of media ought to be and are therefore the product of a common normative ideological framework, the liberal paradigm. This prevents them from properly framing the question of what media actually do in societies which lie beyond the scope of the experience of liberal Europe. This dissertation seeks to transcend this debate, and the liberal paradigm along with it, by arguing that, given a different historical context than the European one, the practice and ethos of media develop differently, and cannot therefore be understood from the lens of the European experience and the liberal paradigm born from within it. To do that, I use Bourdieu's theory of fields to trace the birth and evolution of the private press in Beirut and Cairo from 1858 till 1916. I look at journalism as a practice, both in terms of production and consumption, within a social space in constant upheaval. The major metamorphosis of this social space, whether at the level of politics, the economy, society, and ideas, helped constantly shape and reshape this practice throughout this period. The journalist moved from being an educator, to being a spectator, and ultimately a politician. His role in society changed with the changes affecting the field of journalism which was born out of the struggles within the field of education, to become an autonomous field, ending up being absorbed into the field of politics, therefore losing its autonomy. The ultimate conclusion is that the question of the role of the media in the public sphere can only be answered with the more appropriate and precise question of what is the role of what media in what context. i Table of contents Abstract i Table of contents ii Acknowledgements iii Chapter I: Introduction 1 Chapter II: Literature review 10 Chapter III: Theory and method 33 Chapter IV: The journalist educator 57 Chapter V: The journalist spectator 86 Chapter VI: The journalist revolutionary 113 Chapter VII: The journalist politician 127 Chapter VIII: The role of the Arabic press, a path to a social theory of media 162 Chapter IX: Conclusion 190 Bibliography 203 ii Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Inanna Hamati-Ataya and Jonathan Joseph. They were supportive, patient, and inspirational beyond what anyone can hope for from their supervisors. Inanna was always there to advise, support, and guide me, not only throughout the past two very tumultuous years, but for almost a decade now, ever since she taught me about Gilgamesh and Thucydides during that fateful summer of 2006. Jonathan Joseph went above and beyond of what is required of a second supervisor and his commitment and wits were always most welcome, especially during the last dreadful months before submission. I would also like to thank my examiners Professors Noha Mellor and Colin Hay for the time and effort they put into reviewing this thesis. I also cannot but thank Mrs. Sarah Cooke, a true guardian angel, for all her support and encouragement. This research project could have never seen the light without the financial support of Mr. Nabil Chartouni and the Chartouni Scholarship Trust, and the Open Society Foundations. I was lucky enough to be supported by people and organizations that not only supplied me with funds, but also cared for my personal and professional development throughout these past years. A special thank you goes to Martha, Bekky, Sotiris, and Jad, the friends who offered their constant support for the past two years, and also to the friends who had to endure me and be there for me for an even longer time. Thank you Karl, Hamelkart, Hussein, Ramzi, Mihran, Alexandre, Ali, Sahar, Tamara, Oussama, and Najat. Few people in the world are lucky enough to have friends like you. My gratitude also goes to the crew of my favorite coffee shop where I sat for endless hours reading and writing while they cared for me. Last but not least, the biggest thanks go to my family, especially my mother Samia, without whom I could not have been where I am, nor the person I am today. iii Chapter I Introduction "My people and I have come to an agreement that satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please." - Frederick the Great (Knowles, 1999: 324) Frederick the Great was an enlightened despot. He ruled with an iron grip, but allowed his people to "say what they please" in the bourgeoning Prussian press. But was the freedom of the press in eighteenth century Prussia the same as the one John Milton advocated for in his Areopagitica? Why was it important for people in Western Europe to speak freely, even when they could not impact politics in any meaningful way? What then was the role that the press and mass communication had to play in these societies? These questions led to the rise of a heated debate between two camps, pluralists and critical theory. Pluralists, following in the footsteps of Milton and Mill, argued that the media played a liberal democratizing role in society, spreading information on political developments to people, and thus keeping the executive and legislative branches of government in check. Critical theorists opposed this argument and claimed that media in fact acted as a tool of elite propaganda, creating a perspective of the world that served elite interests and cemented the dominant socio-political worldviews. Even today, no synthesis ever came out of this duality, and both sides remain entrenched in their camps. The few recent attempts at bridging this rift (Robinson, 2000; Lawrence, 2000) only managed to present models of media that allow actors to jump from one archetype to the other. This could be explained by a second-level reading of this debate, where both sides agree on a key assumption about the role of the press in society. Pluralists and critical theorists both seem to assume that theoretically, media should play a democratic, pluralist, and liberal role in society. They disagree only on whether or not media actually plays this role. This normative assumption about the function of media can be traced across disciplines and theories, a fact which escapes almost all of the scholars and academics interested in media. In fact, I have only managed to find one statement criticizing this uncritical assumption about the role of media. Dominique Marchetti 1 (2002b: 8) wrote that one of the major obstacles facing sociologists of media is their ethical investment in the rhetoric of media as a fourth estate, which makes all their work revolve around the assessment of whether or not journalists perform this supposed function, if they "did their job well" and thus served the public good. Marchetti never went beyond this point though. The liberal paradigm remains prevalent in the literature. The only form of dissent comes from a marginal approach that criticizes the current literature for being Eurocentric. Alternative and radical media studies recognize that media theories are always constructed around empirical evidence provided by Western case studies; these theories, as a result, are incompatible with the realities of non-Western media operating in non-Western societies. So far, the answer to this academic Eurocentrism has been restricted to the introduction of non-Western media as an object of study in the English language, producing enough evidence to show that Western media theories truly cannot explain non-Western media, their behavior, and their social function (see Downing, 2011; Curran and Park, 2000). At a time when the media are rapidly and radically changing, technology allowing global access for both producers and consumers of the news, and new mediums providing platforms for the individual to become a producer of news from the comfort of his home, social theories of media need to come to grips with the reality that they have been incapable of delivering satisfying answers, nor of constructing a framework that can be used to assess the role of media and the social and political function it performs beyond the sterile duality that currently characterizes the literature. This thesis addresses the shortcoming in the literature on the role of media in society, and more specifically politics, by challenging the basic assumption around which it is founded. It seeks to formulate an alternative framework, beyond the liberal paradigm, through which we can conceptualize and identify the role media play in a particular society. The research question that will guide such demonstration is: what was the social and political role of the private Arabic press in Beirut and Cairo from its inception in 1858 till the outbreak of World War I? This question will be answered using Bourdieu's theory of fields. A social field, like journalism, is a particular space within the broader social space, where a social activity is conducted by sets of agents and governed by a set of rules and capitals which are specific to it.

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