Between Hegemony and Resistance: Towards a Moral Economy of the Tunisian Revolution

Speaker: Sami Zemni, Middle East and North Africa Research Group Chair: John Chalcraft, LSE In this seminar, Sami Zemni presents his paper, co-written with Habib Ayeb, titled: Between Hegemony and Resistance: towards a moral economy of the Tunisian Revolution. The revolutionary upheavals in Tunisia and across the MENA which began in 2011 have fundamentally challenged the frameworks traditionally used to define and interpret Arab political life, namely ‘authoritarian resilience’ and/or ‘democratization studies’. The paper uses a ‘moral economy’ approach in order to understand the massive mobilizations that led to Ben Ali’s disappearance, and to make sense of the nature of political change in the post-Ben Ali era. Recorded on 20 October 2015. This event forms part of the Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA event series.