Rachid Ouaissa

The impulse for the recent transformations in the Arab world came from the Maghreb. Research on the region has been on the rise since, yet much remains to be done when it comes to interdisciplinary comparative research. The Maghreb is a heterogeneous region that deserves thorough investigation. This volume focuses on Entanglements as a cross-field and cross-lingual concept to generate a new approach to the region and its inner interdependencies as well as exchanges with other regions. Eminent researchers conceptualize Entanglements through the description of various thematic fields and actors in motion, addressing culture, politics, social affairs, and economics.

Including contributions from leading scholars from Algeria, France, Germany, India and the United States this book traces the rise and turn to moderation of the New Cultural Identitarian Political Movements, often labelled in the West as fundamentalists. Arguing that culturally based ideologies are often the instruments, rather than the motivating force though which segments of a rising middle strata challenge entrenched elites the expert contributors trace the rise of these movements to changes in their respective countries’ political economy and class structures. This approach explains why, as a result of an ongoing contestation and recreation of bourgeois values, the more powerful of these movements then tend towards moderation. As Western countries realise the need to engage with the more moderate wings of fundamentalist political groups their rationale and aims become of increasing importance and so academics, decision-makers and business people interested in South Asia and the Muslim world will find this an invaluable account.

? Der Beitrag diskutiert die Rolle der Mittelschichten in den Transformationsprozessen der arabischen Welt in der jüngeren Geschichte. Rachid Ouaissa vertritt die These, dass die arabischen Mittelschichten zwar die Hauptträger von Protesten sind, jedoch keine strukturellen Druckmittel besitzen, um Demokratisierung durchzusetzen. Denn im Gegensatz zu den profitorientierten europäischen Mittelschichten sind die arabischen Mittelschichten klientelisiert und rentenorientiert.