Shami 17conflict is ever-present in the foreground or background of these chapters.
Historical and contemporary processes of political mobilization and resis-
tance are also given central focus. Additionally, it should be noted that
each section is organized to map out the different dimensions of the four
themes of the volume and to open up future theoretical discussions and
research agendas.
e first section, Th Philosophical Frames, offers alternative concep-
tions of the public sphere as evidenced in the region. The chapters focus
on the role of collective action, the relationship between nationalism and
democracy, and the notions of the public employed by socio-religious
movements. These highlight different aspects of the public sphere, com-
paratively, historically and in the light of new and changing political con-
figurations of states, citizenship, participation and discourse.
n the first chapter of this section, Fawwaz Traboulsi discusses what I
he finds most valuable in the Habermasian notion of the public sphere,
namely its relationship with the democratic process and thus its motiva-
tional, rather than instrumental, potential. Criticizing the tendency to
multiply terminology and redefine social reality in new and fashionable
terms rather than to accumulate social knowledge, the chapter provides
an instance of a historical, critical and comparative approach to the pub-
lic sphere, through a focus on the Arab region. The emphasis quickly
shifts from a (dichotomous) opposition between non-democratic and
democratic public spheres and the “lacks” characterizing the former, to
a processual understanding of the democratizing public sphere. Such an
approach necessitates not only looking at non-Western societies through
their own historical and social specificities but also questions dominant
interpretations of Western and European history. In Traboulsi’s perspec-
tive, this means understanding the non-bourgeois and non-urban roots
of modern democracies, distinguishing between revolutions for liberty
and revolutions for equality and, finally, acknowledging the role of “pop-
ular power.”
n their chapter LeVine and Salvatore also emphasize the impor-I
tance of popular power and explore challenges to “the hegemony of lib-
eral norms of the public sphere” in notions of the public, social justice
and the common good utilized by socio-religious movements, specifically
in Muslim countries. They remind us that in these cases resistance goes