Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures Polish Academy of Sciences Hemispheres Studies on Cultures and Societies Vol. 29, No. 1 Wydawnictwo Naukowe ASKON Warszawa 2014 Editor-in-Chief Board of Advisory Editors JERZY ZDANOWSKI GRZEGORZ J. KACZYÑSKI Subject Editor OLA EL KHAWAGA MAHNAZ ZAHIRINEJAD MILO MENDEL English Text Consultants HARRY T. NORRIS JIM TODD STANIS£AW PI£ASZEWICZ STEPHEN WALLIS EVARISTE N. PODA Secretary MARIA SK£ADANKOWA AGATA WÓJCIK MICHA£ TYMOWSKI This edition is prepared, set and published by Wydawnictwo Naukowe ASKON Sp. z o.o. ul. Stawki 3/1, 00193 Warszawa tel./fax: (48) 22 635 99 37 www.askon.waw.pl [email protected] © Copyright by Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw 2014 PL ISSN 02398818 ISBN 9788374520744 HEMISPHERES is indexed in The Central European Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, ProQuest Database and Index Copernicus Contents Beata Kowalska, A Womans Touch in the Arab Spring. The Struggle of Jordanian Mothers for Equality in Citizenship................ 5 Barthélémy Courmont, Pierre-Alain Clément, When Geopolitics Meets the Game Industry. A Study of Arabic Video Games and What They Teach Us ..................................................................................31 Magdalena Koz³owska, Who Am I? Mizrahi Discourse on Identity in Contemporary Israel ...........................................................47 Mahnaz Zahirinejad, The State and the Rise of the Middle Class in Iran ..............................................................................................63 Jerzy Zdanowski, The Arab Uprisings in Historical Perspective.................................................................................................79 Mohamed S o f f a r, Epistemological Shifts in Sayyid Qutbs Discourse of the Early 1940s ....................................................................99 Magdalena Zaborowska, A Contribution to the Study of the Persian Concept of Âberu ....................................................................... 113 Editorial Principles .......................................................................................... 127 A Womans Touch in the Arab Spring 5 Beata Kowalska* PL ISSN 02398818 HEMISPHERES Vol. 29, No. 1, 2014 A Womans Touch in the Arab Spring The Struggle of Jordanian Mothers for Equality in Citizenship1 Abstract The Arab Spring has opened new channels for expressing political demands. Under the liberal guise covered by the international media, a number of political struggles of different citizens groups are hidden. Womens groups are often one set of main actors that remain backstage. The subject of my research concerns new grassroots groups, which started their own struggle during the mass protests in Amman. They are the Jordanian mothers struggling for equality in citizenship law. Motherhood is an inspiration for their political activity, which challenges authoritarian government and exclusion politics. It allows women to enter public areas reserved for men and transform the political domain. Todays march is more than a call for the release of our sons; it is a call on the government and the King to listen to Jordanian womens demands for reform. Um Ammar, organizer of the first all-women demonstration in Jordan2 1. Background The Arab Spring has opened new channels for expressing political demands. Under the liberal guise covered by the international media, a number of political struggles of different citizens groups are hidden. The members of trade unions, unemployed youth, Muslim groups and women are the main actors that remain backstage. While public attention is directed to Egypt, Yemen or Syria, Jordan is regarded as a reliable Western ally with a relatively stable system. However, during the first year since the beginning of the Arab Spring in March 2011, 1,300 demonstrations have taken place in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan against corruption and unemployment, * Associate Professor at the Institute of Sociology at Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland, e-mail: [email protected]. 1 This paper is based on research that I conducted while working with Jordanian organizations and womens groups during two field research trips in 2008 and 2011, as part of the scholarship in the American Centre of Oriental Research in Amman. I would like to thank all of my interviewees for their warm welcome and all the help they provided. 2 On March 16, 2012 about 150 women, led by the mothers of six jailed political activists, urged authorities to release the detainees, making this the first all-female demonstration since the launch of Jordans protest movement. The march aimed to add womens voices to the male-dominated calls for reform. 6 Beata Kowalska poverty, arrests of political activists and lack of freedom. One of the new grassroots groups, which started its own struggle during the mass protests, was composed of Jordanian mothers struggling for equality in the citizenship law. Jordan is a country that is facing two opposing forces. On the one hand, the rapid socioeconomic as well as political changes have resulted in transformations of gender relations (but we cannot say that the womens share in the democratization process one of the main fruits of the political transformation has been equal). On the other hand, the desire in the pro-reform movement as well as in governmental politics to preserve traditions and maintain the status quo is still very strong. These contradictions influence the position of women very deeply. All were reflected in recent discussions about amendments to the Jordanian constitution (the part concerning equality despite sex was not accepted). The concept of citizenship is at the center of the debate on womens rights in Jordan. There are currently a number of different initiatives that promote changes in the citizenship law. Such open discussion about this very sensitive topic was previously not possible. In the theoretical section of my research I refer to interdisciplinary and comparative studies on citizenship considered as an attribute of every person. Seldom, therefore, do we realize what theoretical complexities the notions of citizenship may imply. Citizens of the modern state are in the opinion of representatives of classical social thought autonomous and abstract individuals. The constitutional law should be neutral with regard to sex, ethnicity, race and class. However, if we discuss the problem not only through the prism of legislative acts, but also that of practice, we can see the complicated tangle of political, economic and cultural elements, which locate people differently in respect to the law. Sex is a category that reveals a large number of such dissimilarities within the legal rules. From the perspective of my topic, the feminist debate on citizenship is the most inspiring aspect. Feminism refined the analyses of citizenship, rejecting the false (male) universalisms, opening them to the social context in which this notion is shaped. By describing one type of exclusion, based on the difference of sex, it sensitized the theoretical and political imagination to other types of exclusion and made them an integral element of the analysis of citizenship. The feminist debate about citizenship reflects the discussion in the social sciences about the relations between the individual and community. Similarly to other trends in social thought, there is no single feminist paradigm. The main line of the division is an expression of tensions between equality and the differences, which have existed in feminism from the very beginning. As a consequence, there are different concepts of citizenship: the first concentrated on equality is gender neutral, and the second puts pressure on the significance of gender differences, which are reflected in different duties and goals. And so, motherhood is situated in the center of the discourse on equality and difference. And last but not least, the idea of citizenship was created in a Western cultural context. Is this useful in the analyses of postcolonial states? Although the idea of citizenship is nearly universal today, what it means and how it is experienced are not. In the Middle Eastern context we should bear in mind some important characteristics. A Womans Touch in the Arab Spring 7 The division between private and public that influenced Western discourses on citizenship is not a reliable analytical tool in the regional social environment. The critical differences between family-based categories of citizenship and individual-- based notions of citizenship have to be examined. In Arab states, goods, services and rights are dispensed through a family system. Family is central to political and social identity. All this is followed by some crucial implications on civic activities. In my research on the struggle for more equal access to citizenship I have found the concept of politicized motherhood particularly interesting. Motherhood is an inspiration for political activity that challenges authoritarian government and exclusion politics. It allows women to enter public areas otherwise reserved for men. My interviewees do not locate themselves in opposition to their husbands or sons. They present themselves as protectors of their families the main source of their identification. Political activity plays an important role in the process of negotiating citizenship. It links citizenship to public practice and status. Acting as a citizen allows for the use of the status of citizenship, as well as