BOOK
Bahrain's Uprising
Ala'a Shehabi | Marc Owen Jones | Bill Marczak | Fahad Desmukh | Frances Hasso | John Horne | Luke Bhatia | Amal Khalaf
(2015)
Additional Information
Book Details
Abstract
Amid the extensive coverage of the Arab uprisings, the Gulf state of Bahrain has been almost forgotten. Fusing historical and contemporary analysis, Bahrain’s Uprising seeks to fill this gap, examining the ongoing protests and state repression that continues today.
Drawing on powerful testimonies, interviews, and conversations from those involved, this broad collection of writings by scholars and activists provides a rarely heard voice of the lived experience of Bahrainis, describing the way in which a sophisticated society, defined by a historical struggle, continues to hamper the efforts of the ruling elite to rebrand itself as a liberal monarchy.
Alaʾa Shehabi is a Bahraini writer and researcher. She is a co-founder of Bahrain Watch, an NGO that advocates for accountability and social justice in Bahrain. She previously worked as a policy analyst at RAND Corporation and as a lecturer at the Bahraini Institute for Banking and Finance during the 2011 uprising. Various parts of the book were written during a visiting position at Lund University and a fellowship at the Arab Council for Social Sciences.
Marc Owen Jones is a writer researching political repression in Bahrain at Durham University. In addition to teaching Middle East politics, Marc is a member of the advocacy NGO Bahrain Watch and writes a blog on Bahrain. In 2011, he helped to expose fake journalist Liliane Khalil and appeared on Al Jazeera and France 24 to discuss how PR companies are using such figures to spread government propaganda.
'What binds the essays is, first of all, that they are remarkably well crafted and share a sense of immediacy... (At least one of the contributors is currently imprisoned.) The essays also share an overarching sense of humanity, in that the book focuses on the experience of people, not members of specific religious or national groups.'
Journal of Shi'a Islamic Studies
'In an effort to address a large hole in Arab Spring analysis, Ala’a Shehabi and Marc Jones have assembled an enlightening compilation of essays addressing the popular Bahraini revolts of 2011.'
The Middle East Journal
'Brings together a powerful group of voices, observers and activists, who have worked not only to make sense of events in Bahrain, but who have also tirelessly advocated for justice in one of the region's most tyrannical states. A timely and important volume.'
Toby Jones, Rutgers University
'An outstanding volume that fills a chasm in the scholarship on the Arab revolutions and uprisings. Beautifully written, empirically rich, theoretically provocative and meticulously researched, it is a must-read for scholars interested in social movements in Bahrain and more broadly. The book includes compelling activist testimonies and pointed editorial cartoons, also making it an ideal text for classroom teaching.'
Frances S. Hasso, Duke University
'An essential addition to scholarship on the revolts and counter-revolutionary backlashes that have roiled the Arab world since 2011. Through first-person accounts and rigorous analysis, this book teaches us a great deal not only about contentious politics and social movements in Bahrain but about regional geopolitics writ large.'
Lisa Hajjar, University of California, Santa Barbara
Table of Contents
| Section Title | Page | Action | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Front Cover | Front cover | ||
| About the Editors | ii | ||
| Title Page | iii | ||
| Copyright Page | iv | ||
| Contents | v | ||
| Acknowledgements | vii | ||
| About the contributors | ix | ||
| Foreword: On the prelude to the 14 February Uprising | xiii | ||
| Prelude | xiii | ||
| A shift in tactics of protest and repression | xiv | ||
| Changes in protest repertoires | xv | ||
| A final note | xvii | ||
| Introduction: Bahrain’s uprising: The struggle for democracy in the Gulf | 1 | ||
| Part I: Voices of the condemned | 10 | ||
| Part II: Configuring dissent – charting movements,space, and self-representation in Bahrain | 12 | ||
| Part III: Suppressing dissent in an acceptable manner – modes of repression, colonial legacies, and institutional violence | 20 | ||
| Future directions: prospects of democratisation and social justice | 35 | ||
| This book | 38 | ||
| Part One: Voices of the condemned | 41 | ||
| Chapter 1: A trial of thoughts and ideas | 43 | ||
| A trial against ideas | 44 | ||
| The causes of the political crisis | 44 | ||
| An ethical stance against violence | 47 | ||
| A charge of violence to suppress and exclude the opposition | 48 | ||
| Malicious charges | 49 | ||
| First: the charge of overthrowing the regime by force | 51 | ||
| Second: the charge of inciting hatred and contempt of the regime | 53 | ||
| Third: the charge of broadcasting and disseminating fabricated news and false rumours | 56 | ||
| Fourth: the charge of insulting the army | 58 | ||
| Chapter 2: God after ten o’clock | 61 | ||
| The State Security Building: the first arrest of the seagull | 61 | ||
| The seagull’s plea before the sea | 64 | ||
| Cages for seagulls that might be born | 66 | ||
| Chapter 3: A room with a view: An eyewitness to the Pearl Uprising | 69 | ||
| Part one: the ‘cleansing’ of the Pearl Roundabout | 69 | ||
| Part two: unarmed and shot in the back – there turn to the Pearl Roundabout | 76 | ||
| Part three: the classroom, the protests, and a foreign army | 80 | ||
| Part four: back to Bahrain and goodbye | 84 | ||
| Part Two: Configuring dissent: Charting movements, space, and self-representation in Bahrain | 91 | ||
| Chapter 4: Shifting contours of activism and possibilities for justice in Bahrain | 93 | ||
| Bahrain’s ‘advocacy revolution’ | 96 | ||
| Beyond borders: internationalising the human rights struggle | 101 | ||
| A history of a rights-based social movement | 103 | ||
| False hopes and the mirage of liberal democracy | 108 | ||
| From tactics to enshrining secular rights principles: the attraction of human rights and the proliferation of NGOs | 111 | ||
| A brief topography of opposition actors | 116 | ||
| Upgrading authoritarianism | 124 | ||
| Is human rights advocacy enough? Where do we go from here? | 127 | ||
| New realms, new possibilities, new times | 132 | ||
| Chapter 5: The many afterlives of Lulu: The story of Bahrain’s Pearl Roundabout \r | 135 | ||
| The birth of Lulu | 136 | ||
| Roundabouts and amnesia | 137 | ||
| Lulu rising | 143 | ||
| The splintered image | 145 | ||
| Chapter 6: Tn Tn Ttn and torture in Bahrain: Puncturing the spectacle of the ‘Arab Spring’ | 151 | ||
| Tn Tn Ttn: a short film | 154 | ||
| The ‘visual rush’ and the problematic ‘spectacle’ of the Arab uprisings | 155 | ||
| Controlling the ‘field of representability’ of the national self-image | 160 | ||
| Puncturing the ‘field of representability’ with state violence | 166 | ||
| Puncturing the ‘field of representability’ with creative resistance | 169 | ||
| Part Three: Suppressing dissent in an acceptable manner: Modes of repression, colonial legacies,and institutional violence | 173 | ||
| Chapter 7: On the side of decency and democracy: The history of British–Bahraini relations and transnational contestation\r | 175 | ||
| Bahrain’s long ‘friendship’ with Britain | 177 | ||
| Outside Bahrain but inside the people: Bahrain’s opposition abroad | 185 | ||
| Bahraini activism in the UK | 193 | ||
| ‘A right way to frame things’: contesting British–Bahraini relations | 196 | ||
| Conclusion | 204 | ||
| Chapter 8: Rotten apples or rotten orchards: Police deviance, brutality, and unaccountability in Bahrain | 207 | ||
| The absence of consent: the emergence of colonial, tribal, and ethnic policing in Bahrain | 211 | ||
| The Al Khalifa and the post-independence police state | 214 | ||
| The institutionalisation of deviance and sectarian policing | 216 | ||
| The quality of recruits: from villains to mercenaries | 219 | ||
| Mercenaries, ancillaries, and baltajiyya | 221 | ||
| Brutal redux: policing the Bahrain Uprising of 2011 | 225 | ||
| State unaccountability and impunity | 228 | ||
| The role of society | 231 | ||
| Asymmetric policing and systemic police deviance | 235 | ||
| Chapter 9: Social media, surveillance, and cyberpolitics in the Bahrain Uprising | 239 | ||
| The growth of web activism and control in Bahrain | 241 | ||
| Surveillance and sousveillance | 243 | ||
| Social media, surveillance, and counter revolutionary vigilante sousveillance | 246 | ||
| The anti-social movement surveillance state | 257 | ||
| Concluding remarks | 259 | ||
| Notes | 263 | ||
| Bibliography | 304 | ||
| Index | 329 |