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How does political polarization occur under repressive conditions? Drawing on psychological theories of social identity, the author posits that the nature of repression drives polarization. Repression alters group identities, changing the perceived distance between groups and ultimately shaping the level of affective and preference polarization between them through differentiation processes. The author tests the proposed causal relationship using mixed-method data and analysis.The results of a laboratory experiment reveal that exposure to a targeted repression prime results in greater in-group identification and polarization between groups, whereas exposure to a widespread prime results in decreased levels of these same measurements. The effect of the primes appears to be mediated through group identification. Case-study evidence of polarization between political opposition groups that were differently repressed in Egypt and Tunisia reinforces these results. The findings have implications for understanding how polarization, as conditioned by repression, may alter the likelihood of the cooperative behavior among opposition actors necessary for the success of democratic politics.

How do we explore the relationship between the urban poor and large-scale revolutions? What kind of politics do they espouse in such extraordinary times? In this article I narrate the story of the poor people’s struggles for sustenance and citizenship during and after the Arab uprisings, focusing on Egypt and Tunisia. I suggest that while the abject poor and rural migrants avoid direct involvement in large-scale uprisings, the nature of which they do not comprehend, the “middle-class poor,” a product of the neoliberal restructuring, tend to engage in and lead others to these broader revolts. But most take advantage of the collapse of state control to extend their everyday struggles to secure life chances in their immediate environs—neighborhoods and work sites. This is also a time when they engage in extraordinary mobilization and organized protests to demand collective consumption and recognition as legitimate citizens of the city. Yet in the aftermath of the revolutions, when the new elites show their inability or unwillingness to respond to the rising demands, the subaltern retreat to their strategy of “quiet encroachment,” but with new capability and clout.

The Tunisian revolution of 2011 marked a partial reconfiguration of the political elite and the beginning of a protracted democratization process whose long-term success is far from secured. In this article, I discuss societal/political/cultural transformations toward democracy in Tunisia since 2011 through the prism of its tiny Jewish minority. The perceived homogeneity of Tunisian society has come under increasing scrutiny since the revolution, and this includes a heightened visibility of the country's Jewish community and a degree of public debate on related topics. I focus on three cases: the preservation of Jewish cultural heritage, the demise of an NGO designed to fight racism and antisemitism in Tunisia, and the commemoration of the German occupation of Tunisia during World War II. Addressing contemporary Tunisian history \"from the margins\" enables a more nuanced understanding of political struggles that accompany processes of de-/re-territorializing Tunisian collective identities.

In recent years many non-democracies have witnessed the rapid growth of new social media that have, in a number of instances, become vehicles for civic activism, even in the presence of anemic \"conventional\" civil society association. Using evidence from Russia, Tunisia, Egypt, and Ukraine, this article explores the implications of \"virtual\" civil society for opposition politics in autocratic regimes. The rise of \"virtual\" civil society potentially presents autocratic regimes with new challenges for control over the streets. But a robust \"virtual\" civil society combined with a weak \"conventional\" civil society has a series of less positive consequences for oppositional politics, reinforcing weak political organization, breeding a false sense of representativeness, diluting collective identities within oppositions, and rendering mobilization over extended periods of time more difficult.

In this paper we examine the identity negotiation processes of North African immigrant women in France. Participants engaged in various forms of identity work, including selective association and management of appearance, as well as resisting others' attempts to categorize them as immigrants. Given that these women have chosen to move to France and remain there, this finding is surprising. Using the concept of the Not-Me identity, we explore how people can redefine and refuse labels that seem to be self-evident and to lack room for negotiation. At the same time, we examine how class and educational resources and other structural factors influence these immigrant women's ability to control others' perceptions of their identity.

Over the past three decades North Africa has experienced a wave of Islamic activism. From the emergence of groups such as Shabiba Islamiya in Morocco in the 1970s to the recent appearance of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the region has been home to a plethora of different Islamist movements, each with its own national characteristics. As such the region has displayed a general propensity to Islamist activism. However, certain areas within each North African state have proven particularly receptive to the ideology of political Islam. Although this trend is by no means universal, given the strong appeal of the Islamist ideology that has been able to transcend geographical boundaries, these areas have nonetheless been a key source of recruitment not only for the more moderate strands of the Islamist opposition, but also to the militant movements and networks that espouse violence. As such there would appear to be a correlation between localism and Islamist activism in North Africa. Focusing on Morocco, Tunisia and Libya, this article will examine some of these local issues and will argue that in order to understand better the causes of radicalization in the region, the rise of Islamism in North Africa should be considered within the broader historical context of political and cultural resistance by certain peripheral regional elements to a delegitimized and stagnated central authority.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to highlight the dangers of Orientalist framing. Orientalism (Said, 1979/2003) shows how “the West” actually creates “the Orient” as an inferior opposite to affirm itself, for instance by using imaginative geographical frames such as “East” and “West” (Said, 1993). Design/methodology/approach Qualitative interviews were conducted with the members of a German-Tunisian project team in research engineering. The interview purpose was to let individuals reflect upon their experiences of difference and to find out whether these experiences are preframed by imaginative geographical categories. Findings Tunisian researchers were subjected to the dominant imaginative geographical frame “the Arab world.” This frame involves ascribed religiousness, gender stereotyping and ascriptions of backwardness. Research limitations/implications Research needs to investigate Orientalist thought and imaginative geographies in specific organizational and interpersonal interactions lest they overshadow managerial theory and practice. Practical implications Practitioners need to challenge dominant frames and Orientalist thought in their own practice and organizational surroundings to devise a truly inclusive managerial practice, for instance, regarding Muslim minorities. Social implications In times of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim sentiment in “the West,” this paper highlights the frames from which such sentiments might originate, and the need to reflect upon them. Originality/value The theoretical value lies in introducing a critical framing approach and the concept of imaginative geographies to perceived differences at work. For practice, it highlights how certain individuals are constructed as “Muslim others” and subjected to ascriptions of negative difference. By this mechanism, their inclusion is obstructed.

It has become something of a commonplace to argue that music played an important role in the revolutionary upheavals that overthrew the Bin ʿAli regime in Tunisia and forced Husni Mubarak from power in Egypt. This recognition let the larger scholarly community—indeed, the world—in on a secret that a small group of MENA scholars have for decades been trying to share: it's not merely that music is society, as Jonathan Shannon argues in his contribution to this roundtable; it's society in “Real 3D,” at once a microcosm, mirror, and prism of “all the social forces and contradictions of culture, politics, and history.” As a mirror, music reflects society's contending forces back onto itself. Under the right conditions it also refracts them prismatically, acting as a filter and an amplifier that brings (and sometimes forces) subaltern sentiments into the public consciousness. Music, like other art forms, can help foster and sustain social and political change.

Over the course of 1933 and 1934, tens of thousands of Tunisian Muslims participated in a movement protesting against a fatwa allegedly pronounced by the sharia court of Tunis, whereby the court had supposedly declared that Muslims who became naturalized French citizens could be buried in Muslim cemeteries. In fact owing to disagreement between Tunisia's two Sunni factions no fatwa had been officially decreed, but encouraged by a militant faction of the Destour nationalist party led by the future founder of the Neo-Destour party and president of independent Tunisia, the young Habib Bourguiba (1903?-2000), participants in the movement contended that Islam and French nationality were incompatible. They did this through petitions, strikes, boycotts and, most dramatically, intimidating vigils outside the homes of dying naturalized persons, attempts to block burial on the day following death, and even the occasional vandalism of tombs. Yet this was not only a fight over souls, it was a dispute over land and who controlled it, i.e. who was sovereign over Tunisia. (Quotes from original text)

La révolution tunisienne s’est accompagnée de l’émergence de nouvelles mobilisations de femmes qui inscrivent leur militantisme dans une défense de « l’identité arabo-musulmane ». Au regard de l’histoire particulière de la forte répression de l’opposition islamiste sous les gouvernements successifs de Bourguiba et de Ben Ali, l’expérience de la répression est devenue une source de légitimité et d’illégitimité dans l’espace de la cause des femmes, appropriée par divers acteurs. L’émergence et l’évolution des identités collectives des associations de femmes à référent islamique montre comment cette expérience a été productrice d’un réseau informel de femmes maintenu par des relations de solidarité sous le régime autoritaire. Cette expérience devient par la suite un enjeu central de leurs stratégies de légitimation et d’action collective dans le paysage associatif des femmes par le biais de la figure de « victime », produit par la rencontre entre ces dernières et les acteurs nationaux et internationaux de la justice transitionnelle.