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Pensée 1: Youth and Generational Renewal in the Middle East

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2009

Linda Herrera
Linda Herrera*
Affiliation:
Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, Netherlands; e-mail: herrera@iss.nl
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Extract

Certain conditions of the contemporary period are bringing to the fore a shifting regional politics in which today's young people, the most numerous and educated generation in history, are recognized simultaneously as critical objects and agents of change. Youth in the Muslim Middle East are struggling to exert their youthfulness in the present and prepare for life transitions in the future in a context of ubiquitous neoliberal reforms, authoritarian regimes, and ongoing regional conflicts with no resolution in sight. At the same time, due to their sheer numbers and the meteoric spread of ever mutating youth-led cultures and movements via horizontal spaces made possible by the new media and information and communication technology (ICT), youth embody a force of cultural regeneration.

Type
Quick Studies
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 41 , Issue 3 , August 2009 , pp. 368 - 371
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

NOTES

1 Herrera, Linda, “What's New About Youth?” Development and Change 37 (2006): 1425–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), World Youth Report 2005: Young People Today and in 2015 (New York: UNDESA, 2005).

2 The young do not simply make up an age cohort with future potential; they are active social agents in their own right. As proponents of the “new social studies of childhood” emphasize, children and youth should be understood simultaneously as “beings and becomings,” not merely as works in progress. See Qvortrup, Jens, Studies in Modern Childhood: Society, Agency, Culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 For comprehensive coverage of these issues, see Linda Herrera and Asef Bayat, eds., Being Young and Muslim: New Cultural Politics in the Global North and South (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

4 Ragui Assad and Ghada Barsoum, “Youth Exclusion in Egypt: In Search of ‘Second Chances”’ (working paper, Middle East Youth Initiative, Wolfensohn Center for Development and Dubai School of Government, 2007); World Bank, Unlocking the Employment Potential in the Middle East and North Africa: Toward a New Social Contract (Washington, D.C.: World Bank Publications, 2004).

5 Lolita Baldor, “Under Obama ‘War on Terror’ Catchphrase Fading,” Associated Press, 31 January 2009, http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090131/ap_on_go_pr_wh/war_on_terror (accessed 1 February 2009).

6 Lionel Beehner, “The Effects of ‘Youth Bulge’ on Civil Conflicts,” Council on Foreign Relations, 27 April 2007, www.cfr.org/publication/13093 (accessed 30 November 2008); Cincotta, Richard P., Engelman, Robert, and Anastasion, Danielle, The Security Demographic: Population and Civil Conflict after the Cold War (Washington, D.C.: Population Action International, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gunnar Heinsohn, “Islamism and War: The Demographics of Rage,” Open Democracy, 16 July 2007, http://www.opendemocracy.net (accessed 18 March 2008).

7 See Esposito, John and Mogahed, Dalia, Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think (New York: Gallup Press, 2007)Google Scholar; Magali Rheault and Dalia Mogahed, “Young Arabs Poised to Maximize their Potential,” Gallup, Inc. 2009, http://www.muslimwestfacts.com/mwf/108028/Young-Arabs-Poised-Maximize-Their-Potential.aspx (accessed 25 March 2009); Brookings Institution, “Arab Youth between Hope and Disillusionment: Toward a New U.S. Strategy in the Middle East,” event summary, 10 November 2008, http://www.brookings.edu/events/2008/1110_arab_youth.aspx (accessed 28 March 2009).

8 Linda Herrera, “Young Egyptians' Quest for Jobs and Justice,” in Herrera and Bayat, Being Young and Muslim.

9 World Bank, World Development Report 2007: Development and the Next Generation, (Washington, D.C.: World Bank Publications, 2007)Google Scholar; Egypt Human Development Report 2005: Choosing our Future: Towards a New Social Contract (Cairo: UNDP and Institute of National Planning, 2005).

10 Wolfsensohn Center, Brookings Institution, From Oil Boom to Youth Boon: Tapping the Middle East Demographic Gift, conference proceedings, 7 January 2008, http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/events/2008/0107_youth/20080107_youth.pdf (accessed 15 April 2008); Ragui Assad and Farzaneh Roudi-Fahimi, “Youth in the Middle East and North Africa: Demographic Opportunity of Challenge?” Population Reference Bureau, 2007, http://www.prb.org/pdf07/YouthinMENA.pdf (accessed 31 March 2009); Hillary Silver, “Social Exclusion: Comparative Analysis of Europe and Middle East Youth” (working paper, Middle East Youth Initiative, Wolfensohn Center for Development and Dubai School of Government, 2007).

11 {There is evidence, for example, that the economic growth of the Asian “tiger” countries from 1960 to 1990 was possible in part because of education and economic policies that capitalized on the youth bulge and turned it into an advantage. World Bank, World Development Report 2007, 4–5.

12 On global generations and generational consciousness, see Cole, Jennifer and Durham, Deborah, Generations and Globalization: Youth, Age, and Family in the New World Economy (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2007)Google Scholar; Edmunds, June and Turner, Bryan S., Gene-rational Consciousness, Narrative, and Politics (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002)Google Scholar; idem, “Global Generations: Social Change in the Twentieth Century,” British Journal of Sociology 56, no. 4 (2005): 559–77; Mannheim, Karl, “The Problem of Generations,” in Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge, ed. Kecskemeti, Paul (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., 1952)Google Scholar.

13 Vinken, Henk, “Young People's Civic Engagement: The Need for New Perspectives,” in Contemporary Youth Research: Local Expressions and Global Connections, ed. Helve, Helena and Holm, Gunilla (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate Publishing, 2005), 147–57Google Scholar.

14 There have been many instances of new youth cultural politics in the region. See Swedenburg, Ted, “Imagined Youths,” Middle East Report 245 (2007)Google Scholar, http://www.merip.org/mer/mer245/swedenburg.html (accessed 20 March 2009); Joel Beinin, “The Militancy of Mahalla al-Kubra,” Middle East Report Online, 29 September 2007, http://www.merip.org/mero/mero092907.html (accessed 31 March 2009); Samantha M. Shapiro, “Revolution, Facebook-Style,” New York Times, 22 January 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/magazine/25bloggers-t.html (accessed 23 January 2009).