SMC Global Citizenship

Like its annual predecessors dating back to at least the 1880s, the first day of May in 2012 is again proving to be an international day of protest, focused primarily around the issues and interests of labor and the working classes. The New York Times and The Atlantic are just two of the many media outlets today presenting collections of May Day protest images online. In recent decades, such protests have been much more a tradition in Europe and elsewhere around the world, but the origins of this international labor day actually are mostly rooted here in the United States, focused around the infamous “Haymarket Affair” that took place in Chicago, 1886-87. Here are just a handful of additional links, written in three different historical contexts, that discuss the origins of our modern, global May Day:

• Alexander Trachtenberg (1932), “The History of May Day“ 
• Eric Chase (1993), “The Brief Origins of May Day”
• Richard Seymour (2012), “May Day is not about maypoles: the history of international workers’ day”

Today’s politics of “austerity”, the “Tea Party”, the “99%”, “Occupy”, “Arab Springs”, and more, make 2012 a particularly ripe year for broad social protest both within the USA and beyond. Many of the issues under debate today resonate strongly with the issues around which the first modern May Days were organized, but our interconnected global context makes today’s protest movements different as well. These differences include the ways in which ideas and images are crafted and shared, as well as the ways in which public spaces are surveilled, law and order enforced, and disturbed senses of “peace” restored. Thus, in the context of a lengthier article on the “science of civil war,” The Economist described the work of MIT’s Peter Gloor using “sentiment analysis” of social-media postings to track the momentum of social protest movements:

Dr Gloor has found that, in Western countries at least, non-violent protest movements begin to burn out when the upbeat tweets turn negative, with “not”, “never”, “lame”, “I hate”, “idiot” and so on becoming more frequent. Abundant complaints about idiots in the government or in an ideologically opposed group are a good signal of a movement’s decline. Complaints about idiots in one’s own movement or such infelicities as the theft of beer by a fellow demonstrator suggest the whole thing is almost over.

While this is not exactly the spin that Gloor had in mind, in light of our annual theme, it’s hard to avoid the simplistic conclusion that happy protesters are successful protesters. While driven by frustration with the status quo and tapping into reservoirs of passionate anger, perhaps the movements that ultimately prevail are the ones that best harness the indomitable spirit of hope. Certainly, few statements of protest have resonated through the generations as powerfully as, “I have a dream” and “Sí, se puede.”

The current issue of Foreign Policy magazine features a provocative cover story by the Egyptian-American author and activist, Mona Eltahawy—and it’s not just the cover that’s provocative.

Much of the early attention that Eltahawy’s essay has received has been critical. Eltahawy is accused of painting with a very broad and simplistic brush. Which she does. The “they” whom she describes as hating women are variously identified as Arab, Muslim, and/or Middle Eastern, three diverse and overlapping communities who—in the context of this article—seem to be defined by little else than their apparent misogyny.

A closer, more sympathetic reading of the essay reveals that Eltahawy really isn’t trying to suggest that there is something essentially misogynistic woven, sine qua non, into the fabric of Arab, Muslim, and/or Middle Eastern culture. Indeed, Eltahawy argues quite passionately toward the end of the piece that to believe as such is to submit ourselves to a cultural relativism that apologizes for actions and attitudes we would never tolerate in the liberal, modern West. (Or at least we like to think we wouldn’t.)

First we stop pretending. Call out the hate for what it is. Resist cultural relativism and know that even in countries undergoing revolutions and uprisings, women will remain the cheapest bargaining chips. You — the outside world — will be told that it’s our “culture” and “religion” to do X, Y, or Z to women. Understand that whoever deemed it as such was never a woman. 

But if Eltahawy isn’t exactly saying women are systematically discriminated across the Middle East because of Arab and/or Muslim culture, she also fails to provide an alternative explanation. This is where Max Fisher’s response, posted today at The Atlantic, is a  welcome contribution. Fisher provides neither a defense nor a rebuttal, but rather a reinforcement, of Eltahawy. Despite his headline, Fisher, too, fails to provide a definitive explanation of ”…Sexism in the Middle East,” but he appropriately emphasizes that its “Real Roots…” can be found in the dynamics of colonial and post-colonial society. Fisher’s essay is not without its own problems, in particular a redefinition of the often-used concept of a ”patriarchal bargain“ that strays rather far from the original definition developed by Deniz Kandiyoti, which emphasized the agency of women around the world in negotiating a wide variety of distinct patriarchal systems. But that is a topic for another post, perhaps several more posts. For now, here are a handful of suggestions for additional, more academically oriented, reading on patriarchy, colonialism, Islam, and the Middle East. If you have additional suggestions, please share them below!

• Deniz Kandiyoti, ed., Women, Islam, and the State (1991)
• Inger Marie Okkenhaug and Ingvild Flaskerud, eds., Gender, Religion And Change In The Middle East: Two Hundred Years Of History (2005)
• Sherifa Zuhur, “Women and empowerment in the Arab world,” Arab Studies Quarterly, 25 (Fall 2003)