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Stockholm Studies in Politics 187 Karim Zakhour While We Wait Democratization, State and Citizenship among Young Men in Tunisia's Interior Regions While We Wait We While Karim Zakhour ISBN 978-91-7911-106-9 ISSN 0346-6620 Department of Political Science Doctoral Thesis in Political Science at Stockholm University, Sweden 2020 While We Wait Democratization, State and Citizenship among Young Men in Tunisia's Interior Regions Karim Zakhour Academic dissertation for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science at Stockholm University to be publicly defended on Thursday 17 September 2020 at 13.00 in sal G, Arrheniuslaboratorierna, Svante Arrhenius väg 20 C. Abstract This dissertation has sought to develop new ways of understanding democratization, and by extension democracy, by attempting to capture the experience of democratic transitions. The thesis has investigated the Tunisian democratization processes that followed the overthrow of Ben Ali in 2011. This transition, while on many levels successful, has also been hampered by widespread frustration and disappointment, particularly among the young. More specifically, the study has looked at young men in Gafsa and Kasserine, Tunisia's historically marginalized, interior regions. The study is the result of fourteen months of fieldwork in Tunisia between 2015 and 2019. Building on the work of French political thinker Claude Lefort, the study understands democracy as a destabilizing of certainty on the level of symbolic power. It treats democratization as a heightened experience of this breakdown of symbolic power, and posits that the democratic dissolution of certainty is more visible, pronounced and perilous in transitional periods. Symbolic power comes to be articulated as political imaginaries, which are formed and informed by the past and current relationship between the state and its citizens. During democratization processes, the emergence of a free public space opens up for new political imaginaries. Through participant observation this thesis has sought to capture the quotidian aspects of young men's lives, looking at public space, particularly cafés, as important spaces of waiting. Such waiting, the study argues, makes the expectations of the democratization process visible. The study shows that, for the young men, the Tunisian political imaginaries are informed by expectations of a state that can provide the basics of (male) citizenship, understood primarily in terms of state-employment. The inability of the state to provide, tied to both neoliberal and demographic factors, was a major motivator behind the 2010-2011 Tunisian revolution. These unfulfilled expectations also come to impact the young men’s experience of the democratic transition, centered on a continued demand for “bread and dignity”. Democratization has given rise to vibrant public spaces, spaces that have simultaneously allowed for the articulation of frustrations. The general experiences of democratization that are expressed in these public spaces is one of chaos, loss of personal and economic security, as well as a sense of collapse in national solidarity. Democratization is, in many ways, understood to amplify a neoliberal logic premised on state-retreat, which leaves the young men to their own devices. This has led to a large-scale epistemological crisis, understood as falling away of meaning-making frameworks. This epistemological uncertainty has spawned attempts by the young men to recover a meaningful interpretive framework, whether democratic or not. Keywords: Democratization, state, citizenship, Tunisia, youth, Claude Lefort, neoliberalism, waiting. Stockholm 2020 http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-183698 ISBN 978-91-7911-106-9 ISBN 978-91-7911-107-6 ISSN 0346-6620 Department of Political Science Stockholm University, 106 91 Stockholm WHILE WE WAIT Karim Zakhour While We Wait Democratization, State and Citizenship among Young Men in Tunisia's Interior Regions Karim Zakhour ©Karim Zakhour, Stockholm University 2020 ISBN print 978-91-7911-106-9 ISBN PDF 978-91-7911-107-6 ISSN 0346-6620 Cover Photo: 'The Demon Seated' by Mikhail Vrubel (1890) Printed in Sweden by Universitetsservice US-AB, Stockholm 2020 Always has the world grappled with tyranny Neither their rituals, nor our rebellion, is new Always have we made flowers bloom in fire Neither their defeat, nor our final victory, is new Faiz Ahmed Faiz Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ..................................................................................... IV 1. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................ 1 SETTING THE STAGE ........................................................................................... 1 RESEARCH AIM & QUESTION ............................................................................... 4 PREVIOUS RESEARCH ......................................................................................... 7 STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS ................................................................................ 20 2. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK AND SCHEMATIC ARGUMENTS ...................... 23 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................... 23 THEORETICAL ENTRY-POINTS ............................................................................. 24 TOWARDS A FRAMEWORK FOR DEMOCRATIZATION AS EXPERIENCE ............................. 42 OPTICS OF DEMOCRATIZATION ........................................................................... 55 SUMMARY..................................................................................................... 73 3. METHODS AND THEIR INTERPRETATIONS .................................................. 75 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................... 75 METHOD OF INTERPRETIVE ETHNOGRAPHY ............................................................ 76 CASES .......................................................................................................... 78 MATERIAL GATHERING ..................................................................................... 80 INTERPRETING “DATA” ..................................................................................... 83 REFLEXIVITY ................................................................................................... 95 ETHICS OF AMBIGUITY ...................................................................................... 99 4. THE ROAD TO REVOLUTION ..................................................................... 107 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................. 107 THE AGE OF BOURGUIBA ................................................................................ 108 THE ERA OF BEN ALI ...................................................................................... 120 REVOLUTION AND AFTER ................................................................................ 138 CONCLUSIONS .............................................................................................. 151 5. CAFÉ COMMUNITAS ................................................................................. 153 ETHNOGRAPHIC INTERLUDE 1: JUST ANOTHER DAY ................................................ 153 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................. 155 A HISTORY OF COFFEE .................................................................................... 156 i ii CAFÉS AND MARGINALITY ............................................................................... 158 GENDERED PUBLIC SPACES .............................................................................. 171 CONCLUSIONS .............................................................................................. 178 6. COUNTER-PUBLIC CAFÉS .......................................................................... 181 INTERLUDE 2: ACTIVE WAITING ........................................................................ 181 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................. 183 EVERYDAY REVOLUTIONS ................................................................................ 184 EXCLUSIONS ................................................................................................. 191 CONCLUSIONS .............................................................................................. 198 7. ENTREPRENEURS OF DESPERATION.......................................................... 201 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................. 201 POET OF DESPAIR .......................................................................................... 202 SEARCHING FOR THE KEY ................................................................................. 208 WAITING TO ESCAPE ...................................................................................... 214 POLITICAL LABOR .......................................................................................... 218 THE STRUGGLE FOR MEANING .......................................................................... 222 CONCUSIONS ............................................................................................... 227 8. DEMOCRATIC DOUBT ............................................................................... 233 INTERLUDE 3: HUNGER ..................................................................................