The Islamic Resurgence

Civil Society Strikes Back

Bibliographic Data

ID10076553
AuthorsEmanuel Sivan (corresponding author)
Year1990
Volume25
Issue2
Pages353-364
Publication date1990-04-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Contemporary History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-0094 • E-ISSN: 1461-7250
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/002200949002500210
OpenAlexW2060643641
LanguageEN
Citations received15

During the 1950s and 1960s in the Middle East and North Africa, the highwater mark of the mass-mobilizing state was reached, with its allpervasive bureaucracy, mass production factory system and official culture. This marked the pinnacle of an evolution begun in the 1820s and greatly catalysed since decolonization. That process involved the redrawing of the age-old boundaries between state and civil society with the former, which until the early nineteenth century had largely been a 'watchdog state', invading domains hitherto deemed the reserve of voluntary associations and institutions: education, welfare, economic activity (especially production), popular culture and even family life. A combination of factors made the state's assault upon the already shrinking boundaries of civil society in the 1950s and 1960s both effective and devastating. First, the new nationalist state was characterized by sincere and combative anti-imperialism, and hence could not be impugned as 'collaborationist' and openly 'westoxicated' as the old upper-class rulers used to be. Second, the elite of the new state was plebeian in origin and thus able to address the masses in their own idiom; it was, furthermore, the proponent of a new and galvanizing indigenous ideology, Pan-Arabism, capable of attaining cultural hegemony and developing into a sort of secular religion with its own symbols, rituals and calendar (Gregorian rather than Islamic) all in all, shaping the notions of time and space, basic values and everyday behaviour. Third, the new ruling class was usually military by profession, with all that this implies in terms of relative efficiency, cult of order, and penchant for ruthlessness and disrespect of legality. It had at its service new population control techniques learnt from like-minded European regimes of both the right and left (as evidenced in the reorganization of the secret police

Archaeology · Bureaucracy · Civil society · Elite · Hegemony · Ideology · Islam · Nationalism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science · History · Islamic Studies and History · Law

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