Constructing Impossible Uprisings
This chapter introduces the ‘eventful sociology’ that characterizes the emergence of protest episodes in the four North African countries. Events are non-routine sequences of actions that reshape the routine forms of governance (and opposition) structuring everyday social and political life. Transformative events initiate a transformation of behaviors that is both strategic and reactive, and that reshapes social and political life first at the local level. This chapter qualifies the emergence of new causal processes and how they interact with preexisting practices of governance. The narrative places side by side the views and strategies of different pro- and anti-regime actors in the face of unexpected events and their consequences. The chapter outlines how sequences of events produced new practices, arenas and actors of contestations, often as unintended consequences of interactions. This event-centric account of protest episodes highlights the transformative role of protest in the construction of newly effective forms of political behaviors.