Scholarship on the Middle East and North Africa almost Seteney always engages with politics, yet the assumed absence of Shami public spaces and fora has led many to think that debate, consensus, and concerted social action are antithetical to the heritage of the region. Publics, Politics and Participation Publics, Politics and Participation and Politics Publics, demonstrates not only the critical importance of the public for the Middle East and North Africa, but how the term and notion of the public sphere can be used productively to advance understandings of collective life and, moreover, how conflict and resistance are generative forces in public discourse. At a time when commentaries in the West reduce the Middle East to rubble, violence, and intolerance, it is a healthy reminder that public debate and deliberation, however fragile, occupy an important place in that stigmatized political region, now as in the past. Seteney Shami and her colleagues have done a great service in disrupting one more layer of Orientalism. —Michael Burawoy, University of California, Berkeley How are publics linked to politics? The Middle Eastern context provides the rich texture of this book as it moves through time and space—from the surveillance of public conversations in the Ottoman Empire to the Teheran bazaar and the role of the market in public-making to the ways in which present-day national public spheres are expanded and disrupted by new forms of resistance, such as Arab poetry in Iraq and the Munzur cultural festival in an Eastern Kurdish province. The authors engage a conceptual Publics, Politics framework that is constantly questioned, revisited and enriched by both ordinary experiences and layers of historical heritage. They contribute to the opening up of “Western” social science and invite us to think differently and Participation about politics and publics. —Nilüfer Göle, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris locating the public sphere in the middle east and north africa Seteney Shami is director of the program on the Middle East and North Africa at the Social Science Research Council. edited by seteney shami SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL NEW YORK WWW.SSRC.ORG Publics, Politics and Participation Publics, Politics and Participation Locating the Public Sphere in the Middle East and North Africa Edited by Seteney Shami Social Science Research Council New York 2009 © 2009 Social Science Research Council All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher. Published by the Social Science Research Council Printed in the United States of America Designed by Debra Yoo Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Publics, politics, and participation : locating the public sphere in the Middle East and North Africa / edited by Seteney Shami. p. cm. ISBN 978-0-9790772-5-8 1. Political participation—Middle East. 2. Political participation— Africa, North. 3. Civil society—Middle East. 4. Civil society—Africa, North. 5. Middle East—Politics and government—1979—6. Africa, North—Politics and government—21st century. I. Shami, Seteney Khalid. JQ1758.A91P83 2010 323’.0420956—dc22 2010009671 Contents 9 acknowledgments 13 introduction Seteney Shami Philosophical Frames 45 Public Spheres and Urban Space: A Critical Comparative Approach Fawwaz Traboulsi 65 Religious Mobilization and the Public Sphere: Reflections on Alternative Genealogies Mark LeVine and Armando Salvatore 91 Conflict, “Commun-ication” and the Role of Collective Action in the Formation of Public Spheres Zeynep Gambetti Between Private and Public 119 Counterpublics of Memory: Memoirs and Public Testimonies of the Lebanese Civil War Sune Haugbolle 151 Migrant Domestic Workers: A New Public Presence in the Middle East? Annelies Moors, Ray Jureidini, Ferhunde Özbay and Rima Sabban 177 Surveillance and Constituting the Public in the Ottoman Empire Cengiz Kırlı 205 Places in Shadows, Networks in Transformation: An Analysis of the Tehran Bazaar’s Publicness Arang Keshavarzian Mediated Publics 237 The “Voice of the People” [lisān al-sha‘b]: The Press and the Public Sphere in Revolutionary Palestine Michelle U. Campos 263 Seeking Liberty and Constructing Identities: Algerian Publics and Satellite Television Ratiba Hadj-Moussa 299 Moral Citizenship in Morocco’s Technogenic Public Sphere Bahíyyih Maroon 325 Weblogistan: The Emergence of a New Public Sphere in Iran Masserat Amir-Ebrahimi Resisting Publics 359 Students on Soapboxes: The Metropole in Anticolonial Nationalist Activity Noor-Aiman Khan 383 The Historical Genesis of the Public Sphere in Iraq, 1900–1963: Implications for Building Democracy in the Post Ba‘thist Era Eric Davis 427 Conflict, Space and the Public Sphere: Renegotiating Rules of Coexistence in a Postwar Context Marie Le Ray 457 A Tug of War: Hizbullah, Participation, and Contestation in the Lebanese Public Sphere Joseph Alagha 489 contributors A Note on Transliteration The transliteration of Arabic, Persian and Turkish terms follows the standards established by the International Journal of Middle East Studies, with a small number of exceptions. Acknowledgments The collection of chapters in this volume represent some of the outstand- ing results of a five-year project (2000–2005) organized by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and funded by the Ford Foundation, entitled “Reconceptualizing Public Spheres in the Middle East and North Africa.” Foremost, therefore, thanks are due to the Ford Foundation Program Officers, Toby Volkman (New York) and Bassma Kodmani (Cairo), for their embrace and support of the project and its programmatic and intellectual promise. The project involved promoting new approaches to the study of public spheres in the Middle East and North Africa region, designing and administering a research awards program to fund collab- orative research (for group projects carried out by researchers residing in different countries) and organizing a series of workshops, conference pan- els and discussion forums. The nine funded collaborative research groups have in turn produced many journal articles and book publications. The project’s capstone conference was held in Beirut on October 22–24, 2004, in cooperation and co-sponsorship with the Center for Behavioral Research at the American University of Beirut, and opened up the dis- cussions to perspectives from beyond the Middle East and North Africa region. (See http://web.archive.org/web/20050204234129/www.ssrc.org/ programs/mena/Beirut_Conference/index.page for the conference agenda and abstracts of the papers presented.) 9 In addition to the “Beirut Conference on Public Spheres,” activi- ties of the project included workshops in Amman (2002) and Cairo (2003), two workshops in Florence, in collaboration with the European University Institute’s Mediterranean Programme annual meeting (2003, 2004), one panel at the World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies in Mainz (2002) and one panel at the Middle East Studies Association meeting in Alaska (2003). The list of individuals deserving of our thanks is long and includes those who contributed to the success of each of the project activities as well as to this volume in particular. The members of the SSRC Middle East and North Africa Regional Advisory Panel oversaw and guided the proj- ect as well as taking on various roles in the workshops and conferences. They included: Dwight Reynolds (chair), Khaldoun Al-Naqeeb, Mona Abaza, Fawwaz Traboulsi, Şemsa Özar, Tsugitaka Sato, Riccardo Bocco, Jocelyne Dakhlia, Michael Fischer, Homa Hoodfar and Anh Nga Longva. In addition, Philippe Fargues, Ann Lesch and Lucine Taminian took the lead in the design of the collaborative grants program, its intellectual sub- stance and its different components. For their collaboration in co-orga- nizing activities, special thanks are due to Samir Khalaf and Peter Heath (American University of Beirut), Imco Brouwer (European University Institute) and the late, and much missed, Cynthia Nelson (American University at Cairo). For active contribution and thoughtful presentations at various events, I would especially like to mention and thank Talal Asad, Michael Burawoy, Craig Calhoun, Ravi Devusevan, Hoda Elsadda, Ray Jureidini, Sumathi Rasmaswamy, Shahnaz Rouse and Judith Tucker. SSRC staff and consultants who ensured the success of the project through over- sight of myriad details include Maureen Abdelsayed, Laleh Behbehanian, Laura Bier, Aziz Isham, Anthony Koliha, Nazli Parvizi, Mary Ann Riad and Shabana Shahabuddin. Melissa Aronczyk was an excellent editor, and Ramona Naddaff also worked closely with several of the chapter authors. SSRC’s editorial director, Paul Price, and production manager, Debra Yoo, put many hours into the actual production of the volume. The introduction was written when I was a Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS), 2008–2009. My thanks to Björn Wittrock, Barbro Klein, directors, and SCAS staff for a most congenial and productive atmosphere. 10 And most of all, of course, my thanks go to the remarkable and talented group of authors assembled in this volume, especially for their patience and good humor throughout the publication process, which inevitably takes much longer than originally envisaged. Their work will inspire new questions and new areas of research and enable us to view the Middle East and North Africa region through new eyes. Seteney Shami SSRC 11 Introduction Seteney Shami As 2008 was drawing to a close and this volume was being finalized, the