14 Introduction
The “Arab Street,” the reports of whose death had been greatly exaggerated
by the Wall Street Journal in 2001,^1 became a virtual transnational high-
way with the Al Jazeera network playing a key role in linking commentary
and responses from across the globe while making good their claim of
being the only international network reporting directly out of Gaza.
ogether with the world financial crisis, which especially impacted T
the oil economy and markets of the Gulf States in ways that have yet to
reveal themselves fully, the close of the first decade of the 21st century
seems to be heralding a re-regionalization and a shifting landscape of
state and society across the Middle East and North Africa. The dramatic
elections in Lebanon and Iran indicate both the waning and the waxing
of Islamic politics and power. Publics made visible through street demon-
strations and protests, old and new forums for regional and inter-regional
deliberation and decision-making, the media-tion of information and
political response—all these point to the increasing relevance of locating
the public sphere in this region, not only for understanding the under-
lying dynamics of public mobilization and the means through which it is
achieved, but also for clarifying the implications for state, society, politics
and participation.
Locating the public sphere in the Middle East and North Africa
The Middle East and North Africa region may seem an unlikely candi-
date for a successful exploration of the concept of public spheres, heav-
ily inflected as this concept is with normatized Habermasian principles
of critical debate, communicative consensus, deliberative reason and
bourgeois democracy. The Middle East and North Africa region has long
being characterized by its Orientalizers, past and present, as not only
lacking in civility but also in public-ness and public-ity. Historically the
region was represented as one where the state was an extension of the
private realm of the ruler, where even economic and religious space was
subjected fully to political authority. Social and economic groups were
seen as lacking in autonomy such that Orientalists often argued that
the teeming historical urban settlements of the region were not, socio-
logically speaking, “cities.”^2 Thus, both the historical and contemporary