2017 WINNER: DR. PASCAL MENORET (BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY)
"THE SUBURBANIZATION OF ISLAMIC ACTIVISM IN SAUDI ARABIA" (CITY & SOCIETY, VOL. 29, ISSUE 1, APRIL 2017)
"THE SUBURBANIZATION OF ISLAMIC ACTIVISM IN SAUDI ARABIA" (CITY & SOCIETY, VOL. 29, ISSUE 1, APRIL 2017)
Each year the editors, copyeditors and others involved in City & Society select the top articles from the year. The article that receives the most votes is given the Best Paper Prize. This award is always announced at the SUNTA Business Meeting at the American Anthropological Association (AAA) Meeting and the recipient is given $100.00 and a plaque. City & Society wants to thank SUNTA for supporting this award that was initiated in 2016.
INTERVIEW (AUDIO)
BY DR. DEREK PARDUE (ASSOCIATE EDITOR, CITY & SOCIETY) AT THE AAA ANNUAL MEETING IN WASHINGTON D.C. ON
NOV. 30, 2017
BY DR. DEREK PARDUE (ASSOCIATE EDITOR, CITY & SOCIETY) AT THE AAA ANNUAL MEETING IN WASHINGTON D.C. ON
NOV. 30, 2017
INTERVIEW (TRANSCRIPT)
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Derek Pardue [DP]: Hi Pascal. Please, go ahead.
Pascal Menoret [DM]: So, my name is Pascal Menoret. I teach anthropology at Brandeis University, near Boston. I have been working on Saudi Arabia since 2001. I first went there to teach French as a second language. I was a Philosophy student, doing my Masters on Hegel. And, in the midst of all that, I started conducting fieldwork and I really loved it. I started reading about Riyadh and I was trying to understand the environment of Riyadh. So, my interest in the urban environment dates back to this time, 2001. I have been interested in the question of how people engage in political activism in a country that practices political repression on a very large scale…a place in which there are no authorized ways to participate in the public sphere. No political parties, no independent associations. There are very few elections; they are local, with no real clout. There are no trade unions, so I was really interested in how you engage in political activity in such an environment. It was almost a political science question that I was posing. I have been working in a very interdisciplinary way, looking at archives…and also conducting years of fieldwork in Riyadh…Does this make sense? DP: Yes, of course. Perfect sense. What do people do where there are no political venues? I get it. PM: Right, another line of thought was to look at the broader historical question, which is about the Saudi Left, which existed in the 50s and 60s…it was composed of unionists, socialist activists, communists, Baathists, Arab nationalists…That Left totally disappeared during the period of the 70s and 80s, and so the question is: how did the political landscape change to cause this vanishing? That brings us to the current moment, in which the only opposition is a very strong Islamist movement that shares some characteristics with the Left. It is very much an anti-imperialist movement. But, at the same time, it comes to the political question from a very different angle. So, that’s the second line of thought. The third line is looking at the space itself. Again, it started with a historical puzzle. I mean, the space of Riyadh looks very North American. You don’t need to close your eyes to imagine that you are in Phoenix, Arizona. It looks very similar, but it’s been designed by Europeans, Greeks and French…I was very intrigued by this. How did this transformation happen, from a self-contained, dense city into this very vast, American-looking suburb? So the article published in City and Society is like a blueprint for my next book, which is called Graveyard of Clerics. It’s an ethnography of Islamist movements in Saudi Arabia, and Islamist activists in high schools and colleges, in particular. In that book, I study them from the vantage point of the environments in which they operate. One of the big ideas I am pursuing in the book is to stop looking at Islamist movements from a theological and ideological perspective and look at them from an environmental and urbanistic perspective. It’s about understanding the shift from the Saudi Left to Islamism as not only a political but also a spatial shift. It’s a shift from the urban to the fully suburban. Islamists try to turn these arid landscapes, made of roads, parking lots and shopping malls, suburban high schools and meager parks into a political landscape, a landscape of contestation…and that’s the conundrum Saudi activists are facing… DP: That makes a lot of sense. I am reminded of the images in your article of the narrow, alleyways harking back to the old Saudi Left, a particular combination of urban space and political mobilization and this is then contrasted with images of blueprints detailing mega, urban planning and urban sprawl. So, yes, it makes a lot of sense. I want to ask you about your choice to publish in City and Society. PM: I have been doing quite interdisciplinary work since I started studying Saudi Arabia, working mainly as a historian and an anthropologist but also as an urban studies specialist…I wouldn’t say an urban theorist, because I am more interested in urban history than in urban theory…and in geography more than theory per se…and when I say ‘geography,’ it’s in the very empirical sense of the word. And, so, in that piece I was really looking for a venue that was anthropological but also interested in question of space, urban geography…and so City and Society had the perfect balance… DP: Well, that’s good to hear. Excellent! Could you speak to how this article fits within the scope of your upcoming book? PM: Yes, of course. So, the book is very empirically based. I am trying to feature as much as possible the voices of my interlocutors, who are young Islamic activists, either in their last year of high school or their undergrad years of college and their mentors, the people who were running these religious groups and summer camps. The mentors are roughly my age and our tone was quite conversational…The book is centered on a set of very long interviews and I provide copious context to address the question of what it means to be politically engaged in this sort of environment. The CS article was strategic. When I write a book, I try to put all of my ideas down in a short format, to articulate them together and to see how they fit with each other...to try the succession of bits… So, the CS article was an experiment in this sort of combination. That’s why in the article the text goes in certain directions of work, which are fully developed in the book…and that’s why you have a scene about the suburbanization of Aramco in the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia, the oil province, you have a bit about the suburbanization of Riyadh, you have a bit about the suburbanization of the Western province of Mecca, you have a bit about Islamist activists winning elections, you have a bit about Islamist activists creating Salafi networks in the suburbs of Mecca and Medina and you have a last bit about summer camps, these very suburban structures of activism. So, it was very important for me to try these ideas and to see if the narrative line would hold together. DP: So, this is a good sign then. Your assemblage is working quite well. PM: Well, I will keep my fingers crossed. DP: Thanks so much for your time and congratulations on a wonderful article! I will see you soon to receive your prize at the SUNTA meetings later today. PM: Thanks, Derek. |