Theorizing Revolutionary Practice: Agendas for Research on the Arab Uprisings

This article serves as an introduction to the special issue of the journal Middle East Critique on the Arab uprisings of 2011. It presents a summary of the main ideas that were analyzed and debated at a unique conference that brought together in April 2012 several academic experts and several activists who had participated in the revolutionary events that the international media dubbed the ‘Arab Spring.’ The aims of the conference were to encourage dialogue between scholars of the Middle East and the activists in order to reach some degree of common understanding about the factors that precipitated the mass protests, especially in Tunisia, Egypt and Bahrain; to assess the dynamics of the uprisings; and to explore ways to conduct research on and to apply theories to the revolutionary practices that emerged during the uprisings.