Arab revolt
Arab Spring
Arab uprisings
Category=JP
democracy
dignity
dignity and protest
dignity and struggle in the Arab world
dignity in everyday life under oppressive regimes
Egypt
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
forthcoming
honour
karama
Lebanon
liberty
Mediterranean Arab world
microhistories of the Arab people
Middle East
North Africa
political aspiration
revolt in Syria
Tunisia and Algeria
Product details
- ISBN 9781509571802
- Publication Date: 04 Dec 2026
- Publisher: Polity Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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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 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.
Leyla Dakhli is a Research Fellow at the CNRS (Centre d'Histoire Sociale des Mondes Contemporains, Aubervilliers).
Laurence Dufresne Aubertin holds a doctorate in political science and is currently a lecturer and researcher at Toulouse Capitole University.
Laurence Dufresne Aubertin holds a doctorate in political science and is currently a lecturer and researcher at Toulouse Capitole University.
