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| Tunisia Protests, AP |
Readers probably already know that anti-western attacks are spreading beyond Egypt and Libya, and to non-US facilities. In Sudan, the German embassy is “in flames.”And so on.
How would someone committed to relational social analysis understand what’s happening? Here’s an ‘analytical snap judgment’:
- We have an event — the emergence of the anti-Muslim film — that fits a particular pre-existing script concerning identity relations: “Americans/Westerners hate/disrespect Islam/Muslims.”
- We have a script about what happens next: ‘Believers protest.’
- We have pre-existing scripts and repertoires for how to engage in protest at various levels of specificity ‘attack institutions representing and/or affiliated with Americans/westerners,’ ‘set them ablaze,’ ‘raise Islam-oriented flags,’ etc.
- Actors attempt to mobilize/channel/co-opt/suppress responses to the event by issuing proclamations, directing core supporters to act our those scripts/repertoires, deploying the infrastructure of the state, and so forth.Â
- Demonstration effects operate at the level of regimes, entrepreneurs, and ordinary people.
- In this case, the trigger has the potential to activate and polarize specific identity boundaries: Islam/West, Muslim/Christian, Radicals/Moderates, Religious/Secular, and so forth.” The dynamics at stake involve broader wars of position and maneuver within specific countries, in transnational religious politics, and in interstate relations.
Fragile regimes worry about becoming included in the “affiliated with American/westerners” category; moderate and establishment Islamists worry about being outbid — losing their positions of leadership and cross-boundary brokers to more radical elements — and also about irreparably harming their relations with the United States and Europe; radicals hope to make such a balancing act impossible. Transnational jihadist hope to expand their core supporters, sway the opinions of fence-sitters, and cow their opponents. Action-reaction dynamics in one country impact those in others.
That being said, I expect that the immediate effect of the protests, attacks, and riots to be relatively small. We’ve seen this story before — albeit with two major differences: after the Arab Awakening (1) the stability of many Middle Eastern regimes is much more precarious and (2) Islamist parties have a stake — sometimes a dominant one — in a number of governments. Still, my gut instinct is that these differences won’t change the underlying trajectory: one of an ephemeral trigger for mobilization in the context of movements that lack sufficiently broad networks or support to sustain mass protest and large-scale violent action. If that diagnoses is correct, then what we’re looking at is another series of episodes in a much longer-term struggle — one in which the local, regional, and international stakes are very high indeed. [ed note: I should note that these two differences are rather significant… and that they raise serious questions about my ‘snap’ prognosis. I also don’t want to sound like I am minimizing the ongoing violence, loss of life, and property damage. This is serious stuff.]
*Note that these dynamics also operate outside of the Muslim and Arab worlds: consider the partisan political dimensions of the debate in the United States over these attacks, as well as the aims of specific right-wing groups in the United States and Europe.
Great post. I would add that there seems to be anecdotal evidence to support your analysis, at least on the first point. Apparently the rumor had that the offending video is widely circulated in the United States. On first blush, this claim of widespread dissemination seems ludicrous…except that it taps into the existing script well. So the survival of the widespread dissemination claim suggests that the whole thing was wrapped up in a a social script.
Yes, finally I found someone who read his Harrison White books thoroughly and knows how to apply the methodology. However, I would argue, that these events have the potential to alter the underlying scripts, as the regimes in the arab world are no longer able to make use of them. They, too, are in a crisis as their strategic narrative is experiencing a peripety.
I’ll take that as a compliment :-). Of course, you are right. I thought I had language in their about alterations and innovations… but apparently not so much.
It most definitely is a compliment, and yes there is word on change in it, but my perception was rather, that your argument was, that those events are but minor skirmishes. They might be, but I am not sure, whether people in “the west” see it similarly. In the German media for example the reporting rather overexaggerates current events, keeping up the clichee of a backward culture, instead of recognizing fundamental changes, which might be caused by an identy crisis similar to what we had during the times of reformation.
I so rarely publish articles that are in any way relevant to current affairs, that I only feel half guilty for promoting my 2011 ISQ piece on the Danish Cartoons Riots: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2478.2010.00634.x/abstract
The argument works nicely for the current case.
That article looks very interesting. I don’t suppose theres a version not behind a paywall for those without access? Thanks!
Found the ungated version, btw. Very noice
I’m just reading this now, Dan, but it’s a really helpful post, whether or not your forecast is correct. One of the frustrating things in the coverage of these events has been the tendency to mistake those frames and repertoires for deep causes, and this approach makes the distinction clearer.
I used to live in Egypt and this seems all too spot on. The only thing missing is that Egyptians are famed for their sense of humour (which admittedly tends to have a lacuna in the area of international events). One wonders why THAT script didn’t get turned on more (I know, I know, the “facts” came out later). While trigger events are often ….ummm…”ephemeral”.. as you mention, they also have a tendency to be absurd,…a extraordinarily schlocky film clip that seems to have been created, while he was on parole for some variant of check kiting, by a renegade immigrant Copt recently released from jail and ordered to stay away from he Internet, and posing as an Israeli Jew, assisted by an elderly, reportedly very-down-on-his-luck porn and zombie film specialist, and with a cast partly of porn actors…. what more could a haunter of Fishawi’s ask for? Even hardened Salafis have senses of humour and of the utterly absurd….
I think part of the problem was that the origins of the … ummmm…. “offending media object” are so absurd, so outside any known script (which run to media production rooms in the CIA’s or Mossad’s secret sub-sub-basement), as to trigger a “this beggars belief” script, and it took a few days for the facts to sink in, even allowing for the delay until they became known. One wonders what the demonstrators think now?
As one of the commentators alludes to, while Westerners are not out on the street responding by burning down museums featuring King Tut exhibitions (I hesitate to even mention it), I imagine a lot of intrapsychic scripts about “the Arab World” and “Muslims” are none the less running furiously, and could at in some way impact on foreign policy in the form of pressures which wouldn’t necessarily be for the best. Where someone might do a service is to use the interest generated by the current incident to examine them so that everyone becomes (….how fatuous can one get….) more self-conscious.
What were those lines in the Kingston Trio song of my Cold War undergraduate days so long ago?
They’re rioting in Africa,
Tra, la la la la la la. …..
Same old wine, slightly new and bearded bottles nowadays, clean-shaven “Nasserists” (and McCarthyists) earlier. Scripts, scripts, scripts! Haruumpf! You’d think people would learn…..