SOLIDARITY IN CRISIS – PERSPECTIVES FROM THE MIDDLE
EAST
A Discussion Jointly Organized by Bruno Kreisky Forum for
International Dialogue & The Striking from the Margins
Project at Central European University
The end of the Cold War ushered in a period in which social,
political and national solidarities everywhere were subjected to
severe stresses arising from the consequences of neo-liberal
transformations. These stresses are associated with the recession
of Keynesian and allied regimes of solidarity and social
protection, and the rising salience, often to a position of
centrality, of the politics and mobilisation of identity and its
associated ideologies of the authentic and the foreign.
These stresses were felt keenly in the central parts of the Arab
World to an aggravated extent due to institutional fragility and
precarious economic and social arrangements. This saw political
and social regimes of solidarity succumb largely to the strains
that arose globally after the Cold war. The present condition of
the Arab world east of the Mediterranean, and in Libya as well,
is one of political and social fragmentation with lingering
conditions of post-conflict instability. Hitherto marginal
religious, tribal, sectarian and other forms of solidarity have
been striking at the centre and reconstituting national consensus
along lines of patrimonialist fragmentation. Newer solidarities
are being generated by regimes of military control, the
distribution of benefits and spoils, and appeal to ancestral
rights and wrongs. The challenge of political reconstitution of
state and society makes novel demands on social political and
national solidarity under new and, to many, unfamiliar post-war
conditions.
This discussion will bring together Middle East experts who offer
insights into the connected political processes and the demands
for political and social solidarity arising from the specific
circumstances of Arab states and societies in crisis.
Initial comments on Solidarity in Crisis
Aziz Alazmeh, University Professor at CEU,
Vienna and Co-Director Striking from the Margins, CEU
Vienna
Interventions by Fellows of Striking from the Margins project:
Strangers, diasporas and transregional connections
Valentina Zagaria, Post-doctoral research Fellow
Striking from the Margins, CEU Vienna and Visiting Fellow IRMC,
Tunis
Sectarian and anti-sectarian solidarities in the Arab Mashriq: A
decade in review
Harout Akdedian, Senior post-Doctoral research
Fellow Striking from the Margins, CEU and Visiting Scholar
Portland State University, Middle East Studies Centre
National fragmentation and tribal solidarity: Lessons from Syria
and Iraq
Haian Dukhan: Post-Doctoral Research Fellow
Striking from the Margins, CEU and Fellow of the Centre for
Syrian Studies at the University of St Andrews
Recorded at Bruno Kreisky Forum on September 16,
2021
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