{"title":"Revolution and counter-revolution in the Middle East and North Africa. global politics, protesting and knowledge production in the region and beyond","authors":"Paola Rivetti, F. Cavatorta","doi":"10.1285/I20356609V14I2P511","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1285/I20356609V14I2P511","url":null,"abstract":"This paper discusses the current political phase in South West Asia and North Africa (SWANA) or Middle East and North Africa (MENA) by contextualising it in global politics. First, the transformations of the nation state and neoliberal capitalism are discussed along with the mobilisational strategies shared among social movements in the region, Europe and North America, Africa, and Latin America. Second, the paper discusses how such transnational developments have influenced the scholarship on SWANA/MENA politics, highlighting a number of epistemological breaks in the content and process of knowledge production.","PeriodicalId":45168,"journal":{"name":"Partecipazione e Conflitto","volume":"14 1","pages":"511-529"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45047809","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sunni Ideology, Contention and the Islamic State in Iraq","authors":"F. Merone","doi":"10.1285/I20356609V14I2P727","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1285/I20356609V14I2P727","url":null,"abstract":"This article discusses the emergence, development and trajectory of ISIS in Iraq through the lenses of Social Movement Theory. It deploys the political process model and outlines both structural and agency factors. The article argues that the Sunni regions of Iraq developed a separate political community after 2003, against the backdrop of the sectarian politics that the coalition of Shia parties that supported the al-Maliki government in Baghdad were perceived to be pursuing. The political process unfolded in three phases from 2003 to 2014. While Sunni political parties tried to compromise with the al-Maliki government in 2010, the latter's uncompromising stance created the context for more radical forces to come on the scene. In 2013, Baathists and Salafi-jihadists formed a revolutionary front, which led to a generalised uprising in the Sunni regions of the country. The article explains how ISIS was able to take advantage of the political opportunities on the ground and provides analytical insights for its transformation from an isolated organisation to a hegemonic revolutionary force.","PeriodicalId":45168,"journal":{"name":"Partecipazione e Conflitto","volume":"14 1","pages":"727-742"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47451599","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Relation Between Direct Social Action and Repoliticisation: The Case of the New Case del Popolo in South Italy","authors":"Florian Pietron","doi":"10.1285/i20356609v14i2p896","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1285/i20356609v14i2p896","url":null,"abstract":"This contribution aims to analyse the political effects of direct social action through the case of Potere al Popolo, a young radical left movement born in Italy. The strategy of this movement is based on a network of Case del Popolo where activists participate in direct social action such as free legal advice, alternative cultural activities or food distribution. Focusing our research on South Italy, this form of collective action will be analysed through the concepts of the actionalist theory. This will allow us to understand to what extent these new Case del Popolo can act as hubs for repoliticisation. The data used in this article are based on a qualitative method including interviews in the sites under investigation, a participant observation and the analysis of the communication of the political movement.","PeriodicalId":45168,"journal":{"name":"Partecipazione e Conflitto","volume":"14 1","pages":"896-913"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44516442","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Michelle Pace, M. MuhammadShehada, Ziad Abu Mustafa
{"title":"Interpolating Gazans' Non-Violence: Responsibilities in the Academy and the Media","authors":"Michelle Pace, M. MuhammadShehada, Ziad Abu Mustafa","doi":"10.1285/I20356609V14I2P584","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1285/I20356609V14I2P584","url":null,"abstract":"Since the creation of Israel in 1948 its strategies of suppressing Palestinian resistance reveal a conscious scheme of slow elimination of the natives. What concerns us in this article is that, in light of all Israel's intentional violence, episodes of Palestinian non-violence do not capture and sustain the world's attention in the way that violent acts do. In order to fill this gap, and conceptually, we draw upon the rich works of Puar and de Sousa Santos, as well as others, to show how Gazans' heterogeneous ontologies and experiences with Israel's settler colonialism have, over the years, shaped a multiplicity of strategies for resistance. Empirically, we draw upon ethnographic observations and interviews conducted with Gazan Great March of Return (GRM) protesters to analyze their strategies of non-violence. We conclude that, in spite of the lack of sustained focus by academics and the media (in general) on the embedded resilience of Palestinians to Israel's settler colonial regime, and in spite of Israel's targeting of resistance itself, Palestinians' resolve remains as alive as ever in pursuit of their right to have rights. Our analysis in turn has implications for how the media and the academy interpolate and write about non-violence.","PeriodicalId":45168,"journal":{"name":"Partecipazione e Conflitto","volume":"14 1","pages":"584-603"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47826391","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Political Economy of a Collusive Urban Regime: Making Sense of Urban Development Projects in Rome","authors":"Edoardo Esposito, Giulio Moini, Barbara Pizzo","doi":"10.1285/I20356609V14I2P806","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1285/I20356609V14I2P806","url":null,"abstract":"The relative hegemony of land rentiers and real estate developers over the process of urban socio-economic reproduction is a defining characteristic of the \"collusive regime\" of Rome. Through the analysis of a case study, we tried to establish if the realisation of Urban Development Projects in this regime favours the unequal distribution of the benefits deriving from urban development. Applying a neo-Gramscian lens to urban political economy, we identified an interpretative model for explaining the role of UDPs in the urban regime of Rome. First, UDPs are suitable occasions for realising accumulation strategies based on the capture of rent gaps and the valorisation of urban assets. Second, the actors involved in UDPs mobilise ideational and material resources for gathering consensus for a project, that rewards their specific interests, by framing their investment as the best solution for localised collective needs. UDPs in Rome, therefore, facilitate the concentration of benefits and the generalisation of costs of urban development. Our research contributes to the understanding of Rome's fragile trajectory of growth and offers insights on the mechanisms reinforcing unequal urban development.","PeriodicalId":45168,"journal":{"name":"Partecipazione e Conflitto","volume":"14 1","pages":"806-828"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41433133","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Activism as a Way of Life: The Social World of Social Movements in Middle-Class Beirut","authors":"Sophie Chamas","doi":"10.1285/I20356609V14I2P530","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1285/I20356609V14I2P530","url":null,"abstract":"This article concerns itself with why and how activists persevere and manage to reproduce themselves as activists in contexts where they experience what is described as routine \"failure\", taking Lebanon's activist scene as its focus. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork carried out when Lebanon's civil society was dominated by members of the country's cosmopolitan professional middle class, I emphasise the affective dimensions of activism, the role that personal desires, emotions and anxieties play in enabling activists to persist in the most stagnant of conjunctures but that also, at the same time, keep them from advancing their agendas.","PeriodicalId":45168,"journal":{"name":"Partecipazione e Conflitto","volume":"14 1","pages":"530-546"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44999000","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Militant Kites and Balloons: Anti-Colonial Resistance in Palestine's Great March of Return","authors":"P. Stefanini","doi":"10.1285/I20356609V14I2P663","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1285/I20356609V14I2P663","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines the Palestinian use of incendiary kites and balloons that emerged during Gaza's Great March of Return. Kites and balloons are rarely thought of as unstoppable weapons in contemporary theatres of war and resistance. Yet, for an extended period the Israeli military was unable to halt these aerial explosives from burning large quantities of agricultural fields and natural forests surrounding the Gaza Strip. The article critiques the security literature that discusses this new method of Palestinian resistance as another instance of terrorism. Instead, by drawing on Palestinian and Fanonian theorisations of violence in anti-colonial movements, I attempt to make the kites and balloons legible as a form of indigenous resistance to settler colonialism that can be an internally mobilising tool for Palestinians. The paper argues that the low-tech aerial explosives were mobilised as a response to high-tech militarism and long-standing settler colonial processes still shaping dynamics on the ground. These innovative forms of resistance momentarily broke the siege imposed on the Gaza Strip and in burning trees planted to cover destroyed Palestinian villages open up questions surrounding the struggle over land in Israel/Palestine. The paper concludes by delineating how despite some immediate breakthroughs, it remains questionable whether these militant kites and balloons are long-term politically viable techniques of resistance.","PeriodicalId":45168,"journal":{"name":"Partecipazione e Conflitto","volume":"14 1","pages":"663-680"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46110862","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Morocco's Hirak al-Rif Movement: \"Youths of the Neighbourhood\" as Innovative Protesters?","authors":"Ahmed Chapi","doi":"10.1285/I20356609V14I2P604","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1285/I20356609V14I2P604","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines how protesters produce new tactics by focusing specifically on Hirak Al-Rif, a protest movement which took place in Morocco in 2016–2017. Drawing on several sources (e.g. semi-structured interviews, non-participant observations, live-streamed Facebook videos, and digital traces), the article shows how new tactics can derive from routine activities and, by focusing on the role of newcomers, suggests to go beyond a strictly top-down model of mobilisations. Newcomers relied on everyday routines at the neighbourhood level and amplified the dynamic of protests in a way that went beyond the initial expectations of core activists. Tactical innovations can thus be fostered through pressures and reappropriations enacted \"from below\", which bind core activists to the wider base of the movement through moral obligations. Biographical experiences, prior bonds, and the individuals' positions in the mobilisation networks also prove to be relevant matters in the plural and contingent making of tactical innovations.","PeriodicalId":45168,"journal":{"name":"Partecipazione e Conflitto","volume":"14 1","pages":"604-620"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45214419","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Laura Centemeri, La Permaculture ou l'art de réhabiter. Versailles: Éditions Quæ, 2019. 147 p. ISBN 978-2-7592-2988-8","authors":"Mischa Gabowitsch","doi":"10.1285/I20356609V14I1P499","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1285/I20356609V14I1P499","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45168,"journal":{"name":"Partecipazione e Conflitto","volume":"14 1","pages":"499-506"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42726736","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Fabrizio Di Mascio, Michele Barbieri, A. Natalini, Donatella Selva
{"title":"Covid-19 and the Information Crisis of Liberal Democracies: Insights from Anti-Disinformation Action in Italy and EU","authors":"Fabrizio Di Mascio, Michele Barbieri, A. Natalini, Donatella Selva","doi":"10.1285/i20356609v14i1p221","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1285/i20356609v14i1p221","url":null,"abstract":"Action against disinformation has become more important than ever in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. This is due to the synchronous global scale of the problem and its potentially deadlier consequences as the public seeks out guidance regarding what they might do to lower the risk of infection. This article investigates the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on the regulation of social media platforms as it is mediated by the legacy of previous responses to disinformation. It shows that the Covid-19 crisis has catalyzed the shift to co-regulatory approaches that imposed reporting obligations on platforms at the European level. It also raises concerns about the implementation of the new European regulatory package that will largely depend on the initiatives of individual Member States such as Italy, where the low level of societal resilience to disinformation increases the incentives for political leaders to ignore the problem of disinformation.","PeriodicalId":45168,"journal":{"name":"Partecipazione e Conflitto","volume":"14 1","pages":"221-240"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43629044","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}