Reclaiming Watani Work: Young Activists’ Challenge to Hegemonic Identity Logic in Jordan
Description
Almost all discussions on Jordan quickly point to the divide to so called Jordanian-Jordanians and Palestinian-Jordanians in trying to explain internal matters. Despite the little attention Jordan’s popular movement (2011-2012) (Hirak in short in Arabic) received compared with other popular movements during what has been referred to as the ‘Arab Spring’, here too most analysts used identity rational to explain the events. Doing so I argue, the literature failed to capture major discussions and events in Jordan’s popular movement. Even when the literature does not privilege identity as a means of understanding the Hirak, no study -that I am aware of- has studied the real ways in which Hirak activists have challenged the identity paradigm that was used to understand them. Particularity for young Hirakis class was a far more important mobilizing element than ‘place of origin.’ In this chapter that is based on over three years of ethnographic research, I lay out the way Hirakis have conceptualized their identity in terms of class. The lens of class is important to understand political mobilization in Jordan.
Key speakers
- Dr Sara Ababneh - University of Sheffield