The Practice of Politics and Revolution: Egypt's Revolutionary Youth Social Movement

Sammanfattning: The dissertation analyzes a recognized collective political actor in Egypt, the shabāb al-thawra – the revolutionary youth. The thesis posits that in order to understand the shabāb al-thawra political actor, it is necessary problematize “revolutionary youth” beyond its nominative sense. Instead, the concepts of “youth” and “revolutionary” are conceived as communities of practice, whereby “youth” represents a generational practice of activism and contestation, while “revolutionary” represents a prefigurative practice of the actor’s conception of revolution. Proposing a theoretical framework that lies at the nexus of practice theory and social movement theory, the dissertation assesses the role of practices of “youth” and “revolutionary” in the construction of the shabāb al-thawra through culturalist analysis of the social movement. The analytical framework operationalizes social movement construction processes in order to understand how these are informed by practices of generational activism and prefiguration, using six key concepts directly derived from social movement theory: grievances, emotions, resources, collective identity, political opportunity, and strategy. Through narrative analysis of empirical materials gathered from fieldwork and qualitative techniques, the dissertation assesses three distinct chronological periods of the revolutionary youth movement’s development: the period of 2005-2010, during which the movement’s earliest organizations emerged; the 18 days of the 2011 uprising; and the period of 2011-2014, in which the social movement became a dominant actor in Egypt’s political scene. By introducing practice theory into culturalist social movement analysis, the dissertation puts forth new conceptual and analytical tools that contribute both to the empirical study at hand as well as the literature on social movements in general, on youth movements more particularly, and the state of the art on the shabāb al-thawra.