1023
Power, Violence, and Justice: Comparative Arab Readings
Language: English and French
Joint session of the Palestinian, Algerian and Tunisian Sociological Associations.
In the past decade, Arab societies have witnessed political, economic and social struggles that have engendered a number of significant transformations in forms of governmentality, political participation and representation, and the retardation of democratization. Transformations in social and economic policies, of regional and global scopes, have also had their impact on the political field and its actors in these societies. New classes, groups, and actors have entered the stage, and power relations are being transformed. In addition, the relative positions of social groups have changed, as have their modes of intervention. We are also increasing inequalities in different social spaces and fields in response to these changes. New forms of communal and social resistance have emerged that encompass pressure groups and other collective actors, and that are based on demands for equality in terms of class, gender, ethnicity, nationality, sectarian affiliation, and other attributes.
This session will include papers focusing on social, political and economic inequalities and the production of marginality and exclusion of different groups; among the aims are deconstructing and questioning the discourses that accompany these processes (constructing and re-constructing inequalities, producting marginality and its reproduction, and the creation of exclusion and its re-creation), and the universal, national, and religious bases of such discourses. The session will also examine emerging social and political demands about citizenship, social justice, participation, social mobilization, and the role of new actors, articulated in a range of global, local, neoliberal, and religiously-inspired discourses.