Leyla Dakhli – författare

In the Middle East and Africa, deteriorating living conditions have given rise to a variety of social movements and unrest since the 1970s. Although each of these events and movements had its own logic, they all took place in the context of the implementation of neoliberal economic policies, generally referred to as structural adjustment reforms. Structural adjustments have been the subject of extensive literature, but most existing studies have focused on the logic of international financial institutions, national governments, and private enterprises. By focusing on the revolts against, and more generally on the multiple social responses to structural adjustments policies, this volume suggests that the perspective should be reversed. It investigates the ways in which the upheavals brought about by this new liberalization were actually experienced by the people of Africa and the Middle East in their daily and material lives and their shared concepts of fairness and unfairness.

The question of dignity is central to the popular revolts and revolutions that have characterized the Mediterranean Arab world from the 1950s to the present. Whether demanded, declared or chanted, dignity – karama in Arabic – stirs up emotions and political aspirations. It also reveals the intrusion of the political into the personal, and the multiple forms of dispossession faced by populations attempting to live their lives (or merely survive) under authoritarian regimes. Yet if we look at the literature on the Arab revolts, there is very little discussion of dignity. Commentators focus mostly on the pursuit of freedom, democracy and justice, while the desire for dignity has been largely ignored.The aim of this book is to redress this neglect by exploring the revolts in the Mediterranean Arab world through the lens of struggles for dignity. The volume includes a wide range of case studies, from Syria, Lebanon and Egypt to Tunisia and Algeria, and offers a rich and illuminating perspective on the struggles for dignity in the region, both in the dramatic moments of revolutionary upheaval and in the cooler times of everyday struggles. All the contributors to this volume adopt a micro-historical approach, observing the relations between places and experiences of revolt and using maps to show how revolts are embedded in people's lives. By giving a central place to the spatial dimension, this mode of representation proves to be particularly effective as a means for grasping the multiplicity of entanglements between the terrain of life, territory and revolt. By placing life experiences at the centre, it thereby offers a novel way for observing and describing the meanings of a dignified life.

The question of dignity is central to the popular revolts and revolutions that have characterized the Mediterranean Arab world from the 1950s to the present. Whether demanded, declared or chanted, dignity – karama in Arabic – stirs up emotions and political aspirations. It also reveals the intrusion of the political into the personal, and the multiple forms of dispossession faced by populations attempting to live their lives (or merely survive) under authoritarian regimes. Yet if we look at the literature on the Arab revolts, there is very little discussion of dignity. Commentators focus mostly on the pursuit of freedom, democracy and justice, while the desire for dignity has been largely ignored.The aim of this book is to redress this neglect by exploring the revolts in the Mediterranean Arab world through the lens of struggles for dignity. The volume includes a wide range of case studies, from Syria, Lebanon and Egypt to Tunisia and Algeria, and offers a rich and illuminating perspective on the struggles for dignity in the region, both in the dramatic moments of revolutionary upheaval and in the cooler times of everyday struggles. All the contributors to this volume adopt a micro-historical approach, observing the relations between places and experiences of revolt and using maps to show how revolts are embedded in people's lives. By giving a central place to the spatial dimension, this mode of representation proves to be particularly effective as a means for grasping the multiplicity of entanglements between the terrain of life, territory and revolt. By placing life experiences at the centre, it thereby offers a novel way for observing and describing the meanings of a dignified life.