Introduction: Understanding the Political in Arab Youth Civic Engagement
Introduction: Understanding the Political in Arab Youth Civic Engagement

Author(s): Sarah Anne Rennick
Subject(s): Civil Society, Governance
Published by: Transnational Press London
Keywords: Understanding; political; Arab youth; civic engagement;
Summary/Abstract: Among the many outcomes of the Arab uprisings of 2011 was the collective recognition that we had not been paying enough attention to our conceptual understanding of youth or the variety of forms that political activism can take in a region that seemed to have grown morose under its authoritarian yoke. The vibrancy of the social movements that manifested in public spaces across the region in 2011 demonstrated the limitations of analytical frameworks such as ‘waithood,’ ‘bulge,’ and ‘apathy’ for understanding the region’s youth and their relationship to politics. These gaps in knowledge drove forth numerous studies and multilateral research projects that have added significant conceptual depth to the notion of ‘youth’ that move well beyond age-based cohort definitions, as well as critical insight into the indirect or seemingly ‘non-political’ forms of Arab youth political activism. Such works have allowed us to conceive of youth within the frames of Mannheimian generational analysis, and have allowed us to see political participation outside of formal instances such as elections and parties. Yet at the same time, there remain conceptual gaps with regards to the analysis of ‘youth politics’ as well as the various factors that mediate a distinctly youth political behavior.

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