scholarly journals The Magic Potion of Austerity and Poverty Alleviation: Narratives of political capture and inequality in the Middle East and North Africa

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana Kallas
Keyword(s):  
Social Services ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Poverty Alleviation ◽  
Civil Society Organizations ◽  
Mena Region ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
The Right ◽  
Dominant Narratives ◽  
Media Concentration ◽  
Civic Space

Dominant narratives promoting economic growth at the expense of state institutions and basic social services have long underpinned a neoliberal model of spiralling debt and austerity in the MENA region. This exacerbates political capture and inequality and takes shape in an environment of media concentration and shrinking civic space. It is important for change movements to understand dominant narratives in order to challenge and shift them. With the right tools, civil society organizations, activists, influencers and alternative media can start changing the myths and beliefs which frame the socio-economic debate and predetermine which policy options are accepted as possible and legitimate, and which are not.

scholarly journals Claiming and Reclaiming the Digital World as a Public Space: Experiences and insights from feminists in the Middle East and North Africa

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca El Asmar
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Young Women ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Mena Region ◽  
Feminist Organizations ◽  
Digital World ◽  
Civic Space ◽  
Digital Spaces

This paper seeks to highlight the experiences and aspirations of young women and feminist activists in the MENA region around digital spaces, safety and rights. It explores individual women’s experiences engaging with the digital world, the opportunities and challenges that women’s rights and feminist organizations find in these platforms, and the digital world as a space of resistance, despite restrictions on civic space. Drawing on interviews with feminist activists from the region, the paper sheds light on women’s online experiences and related offline risks, illustrates patterns and behaviours that prevailed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Resistance Movements, the State, and National Identities

2011 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 390-390 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malika Zeghal
Keyword(s):  
North Africa ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
Young Generation ◽  
Mena Region ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Resistance Movements ◽  
Authoritarian State ◽  
Deep Exploration

The uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) were primarily centered on profound economic grievances, which protestors addressed directly to state institutions, thereby making the grievances political. As a political scientist, I ask: under what conditions does economic protest transform into political demands? How and why did this happen in the MENA region, and why now? A deep exploration of authoritarian state institutions will be necessary to understand how a young generation that graduated from public educational institutions was unable to find economic opportunities and eventually lost all trust in an inefficient and corrupt state. Workers’ protests and resistance movements had started to organize in the decade before the uprisings and need to be studied as well.

scholarly journals POVERTY ALLEVIATION THROUGH ETHICAL PHILANTHROPY IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA (MENA) REGION

2020 ◽  
pp. 176-186
Keyword(s):  
North Africa ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Poverty Alleviation ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Mena Region ◽  
Phenomenological Hermeneutics ◽  
The People ◽  
Ethical Role

Poverty using the United Nations’ criteria refers to denial of choices, opportunities, and the lack of capacity as a result of low income for a person to effectively participate in society. Poverty creates problems such as ill-health, inability to acquire the basic necessities of life, deprivation of full exercise of civic and political rights, and so forth. In spite of the enormous wealth in both human and natural resources in MENA, many people in the region are living in abject poverty. Using phenomenological hermeneutics and existential critical analysis, the paper argues for ethical philanthropy to be used to alleviate the poverty in the region. Poverty is an ethical issue for it affects the quality of lives that humans can live as moral beings and impacts human behaviour. It is unacceptable that the enormous wealth of the region is not used for the benefit of all. Outside government efforts and the imperative of efficient political leadership, wealthy individuals and non-governmental groups have a moral responsibility to help to alleviate poverty in the region. It is this ethical role of individuals and groups in rendering philanthropic help to alleviate and if possible end poverty in the region that is the thrust of this paper. The paper affirms that abject and other forms of poverty are present in the region. The paper concludes that individuals and groups have an ethical duty in philanthropy to alleviate poverty in the region. The people of the region will become better and achieve a higher level of happiness and peace through the practice of ethical philanthropy.

scholarly journals Od Berberów do Amazighe, czyli ukształtowanie się nowoczesnej tożsamości berberskiej

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-196
Author(s):  
Ryszard Vorbrich
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Civil Society Organizations ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Culture And Language

The Berbers, an indigenous people of North Africa, belong to the group of “nations without a state.” For centuries, they were marginalized by the Arab majority or manipulated by European colonizers. Since the mid-twentieth century in North Africa, a movement for a Berber and Pan-Berber identity has been growing strongly. The movement has disseminated the neologism “Amazigh” as the endoethnonim of this group of peoples. The process of building (creating) a Berber identity has been slightly different in Morocco (where the stabilizing role of the monarchy has been highlighted) and in Algeria (where it has taken more violent forms). With the rise of Berber self-awareness in North Africa and the activity of the Berber diaspora in Europe (mainly in France), civil society organizations (associations) were established in Morocco and Algeria to defend the rights of the Berber minority. After many attempts and despite the resistance of Arab elites the Berber language and culture were recognized by the state authorities as equivalent to the Arabic component of the Algerian and Moroccan identity. State institutions (the Institut royal de la culture Amazighe–the IRCAM–in Morocco, and the Haut Commissariat à l’Amazighité–the HCA–in Algeria) were established for the revitalization of the Berber culture and language (tamazight).

scholarly journals Claiming Equal Citizenship: The Campaign for Arab Women's Right to Nationality

1970 ◽  
pp. 10
Author(s):  
Lebanese American University
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
International Law ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Mena Region ◽  
Crucial Component ◽  
The Right ◽  
Equal Citizenship

Women's right to equal citizenship is guaranteed by the majority of Arab constitutions, as well as by international law. Yet across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and the Gulf, women are denied the right to pass on their nationality to their husbands and children – a crucial component of citizenship.

The elimination of violence and terrorism in Iraq strategy

2019 ◽  
pp. 375
Author(s):  
Mona Ali Duaij ◽  
Ahlam Ahmed Issa
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
The State ◽  
Civil Society Organizations ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Terrorist Organization ◽  
The Media ◽  
Causes Of Crime ◽  
Religious Aspect

All the Iraqi state institutions and civil society organizations should develop a deliberate systematic policy to eliminate terrorism contracted with all parts of the economic, social, civil and political institutions and important question how to eliminate Daash to a terrorist organization hostile and if he country to eliminate the causes of crime and punish criminals and not to justify any type of crime of any kind, because if we stayed in the curriculum of justifying legitimate crime will deepen our continued terrorism, but give it legitimacy formula must also dry up the sources of terrorism media and private channels and newspapers that have abused the Holy Prophet Muhammad (p) and all kinds of any of their source (a sheei or a Sunni or Christians or Sabians) as well as from the religious aspect is not only the media but a meeting there must be cooperation of both parts of the state facilities and most importantly limiting arms possession only state you can not eliminate terrorism and violence, and we see people carrying arms without the name of the state and remains somewhat carefree is sincerity honesty and patriotism the most important motivation for the elimination of violence and terrorism and cooperation between parts of the Iraqi people and not be driven by a regional or global international schemes want to kill nations and kill our bodies of Sunnis, sheei , Christians, Sabean and Yazidi and others.

Transitions Within Queer North African Cinema

Screen Bodies ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 64-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter S. Temple
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Film Festivals ◽  
Global Awareness ◽  
Critical Factors ◽  
North African ◽  
Mena Region ◽  
African Cinema ◽  
Queer Cinema

In recent years, North African queer cinema has become increasingly visible both within and beyond Arabo-Orientale spaces. A number of critical factors have contributed to a global awareness of queer identities in contemporary Maghrebi cinema, including the dissemination of films through social media outlets and during international film festivals. Such tout contemporain representations of queer sexuality characterize a robust wave of films in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, inciting a new discourse on the condition of the marginalized traveler struggling to locate new forms of self and being—both at home and abroad.

Art, Idleness and Food: The Ethics of War Communism and the Origins of Production Art, 1918–1919

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 273-287
Keyword(s):  
Theory And Practice ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Early Production ◽  
Policy Measures ◽  
Soviet Ideology ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City ◽  
Further Development ◽  
Theory Of Production

The article examines the impact of the discourses concerning idleness and food on the formation of “production art” in the socio-political context of revolutionary Petrograd. The author argues that the development of the theory and practice of this early productionism was closely related to the larger political, social and ideological processes in the city. The Futurists, who were in the epicenter of Petrograd politics during the Civil War (1918–1921), were well acquainted with both of the discourses mentioned, and they contrasted the idleness of the old art with the dedicated labor of the “artist-proletarians” whom they valued as highly as people in the “traditional” working professions. And the search for the “right to exist” became the most important goal in a starving city dominated by the ideology of radical communism. The author departs from the prevailing approach in the literature, which links the artistic thought of the Futurists to Soviet ideology in its abstract, generalized form, and instead elucidates ideological influences in order to consider the early production texts in their immediate social and political contexts. The article shows that the basic concepts of production art (“artist-proletarian,” “creative labor,” etc.) were part of the mainstream trends in the politics of “red Petrograd.” The Futurists borrowed the popular notion of the “commune” for the title of their main newspaper but also worked with the Committees of the Rural Poor and with the state institutions for procurement and distribution. They took an active part in the Fine Art Department of Narkompros (People’s Commissariat of Education). The theory of production art was created under these conditions. The individualistic protest and “aesthetic terror” of pre-revolutionary Futurism had to be reconsidered, and new state policy measures were based on them. The harsh socio-economic context of war communism prompted artists to rethink their own role in the “impending commune.” Further development of these ideas led to the Constructivist movement and strongly influenced the extremely diverse trends within the “left art” of the 1920s.

scholarly journals Health needs: a temporary analysis of the social representations of the concept

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
M Winckler ◽  
F Zioni ◽  
G Johson
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Health System ◽  
Social Representations ◽  
Public Policies ◽  
Civil Society Organizations ◽  
Health Needs ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Right ◽  
Brazilian Health System ◽  
Universal Health

Abstract Background This study aims to analyse the social representations of health needs in a Brazilian municipality, questioning the capacity that public policies developed and implemented by the Brazilian Health System (SUS) had to meet these needs. Methods Qualitative case study in which the data were analysed by: 1) the Health Needs Taxonomy (Matsumoto, 1999), as an instrument for assessing health needs, formatting the interview guide and organizing the empirical data; 2) the Theory of Social Representations (Jovchelovitch, 2000), to capture health needs; 3) Content Analysis (Bardin, 2004), as an instrument of analysis and comparison of perceived needs. The methodological path used was the same in the two moments in which this research is based (2009 and 2016). The entire municipal territory was analyzed and 26 representatives of civil society organizations were interviewed. Results Based on the results given, we state that health is a permanent and timeless need, but the mediations for its satisfaction have changed historically. The interface between quantitative indicators and subjectivity in assessing needs reveals the authoritarian architecture of its decision-making process, which has ruined the necessary democracy for prioritising and meeting those needs. The asymmetrical relationships present in the Brazilian society have both undermined the collective character of health needs and promoted the distance between who care and who are cared for. Most of the priorities listed by the interviewees in 2009 remain composing the social context of the municipality in 2016. Conclusions The challenges for comprehensive health care remain critical given both the decrease in popular political participation and in institutional spaces, which leads to the annulment of the right to a universal health. Interdisciplinary and participatory diagnostics remain essential to understand the complexity of social changes and the challenges for the consolidation of meeting health needs. Key messages The capacity that public policies developed and implemented by the Brazilian Health System (SUS) had to meet these needs. The challenges for meeting health needs remain critical given both the decrease in political participation and in institutional spaces, which leads to the annulment of the right to a universal health.

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