Browsing by Subject "Tunisia"

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Information and computer technology and the digital divide in the post-revolution Tunisia
(2016-05) Toumi, Ikram; Straubhaar, Joseph D.; Charrad, Mounira; Chen, Wenhong; Tyner, Kathleen; Wilkins, Karen
The goal of this study is to better understand the dimensions of the digital divide in Tunisia in the context of the post-revolutionary phase. The significant role of information and communication technologies (ICT) during the revolution and in the post-revolution democracy process raises questions about the inclusiveness of the digital sphere to all Tunisian social groups and about the overall interactions with the ICT and their domestication into the Tunisian households. This study was designed to answer three main research questions: what are the implications of gender, age, and class for (1) ICT access and usage? (2) Attitudes towards ICT? And (3) ICT usage for political participation? An ethnographic semi-structured interview study was conducted in three neighborhoods of the city of Sousse in Tunisia over a two-week period of intensive field work, and was complemented by observations of the locals’ interactions with ICT during multiple visits to Tunisia. Respondents were recruited through snowball and convenience sampling. The study focused on those considered to be vulnerable social communities: women, the elderly, and socioeconomically disadvantaged Tunisians. The interview analysis revealed that demographic factors did not have a significant influence on the gaps between the users and non-users, except for age in certain instances. The concept of social capital made the difference and had a significant effect on balancing issues related to economic and cultural capitals. For most of the informants, social capital, mainly family and community members, played an integral role in domesticating the technologies and brokering techno-competencies to those without economic and educational means. On the other hand, perceived relevance and cultural values emerged as the most significant divide factors. This project makes a theoretical contribution to the literature about the digital divide by emphasizing the role of the cultural values and the social landscape in reducing or widening the gap between the connected and non-connected. This dissertation stresses on the importance of conducting more ethnographic research in small Arab world community contexts in order to reveal more culturally embedded factors that directly affect the interaction between the culture and information technologies.
Local-national relations and the politics of property rights in Algeria and Tunisia
(2011-05) Parks, Robert Patrick; Henry, Clement M., 1937-; Boone, Catherine; Charrad, Mounira; Madrid, Raul L.; Trubowitz, Peter
Most models of property rights assume they are supplied by the state on demand from society. Property rights are strong when state institutions enforce the law. The strength of state institutions in the provinces determines how well property rights will be enforced on the ground. The penetration of state institutions from the capital city to the provinces is a part of long state building processes. These processes pit centralizing elites against local notables who want to protect their authority and privileges. In the West, state building processes took centuries; in post-colonial states like Algeria and Tunisia, these processes have occurred over the last fifty years, and have occurred unevenly This dissertation asks why property rights are relatively strong in Tunisia, and why they are so weak in Algeria. To answer this question, it focuses on the development of local political and state institutions in the years immediately following independence. At independence, rulers in both states used their anti-colonial nationalist parties to buttress the state-in-formation. Their ability to do so, however, was conditioned on the development of those parties during the colonial period, and affected their rural state building strategies. The choices they made in the first decades of independence defined the parameters of local-national relations and the degree to which they can implement property rights on the ground. Using the Neo-Destour Party, which had developed into a mass-mobilizing movement by independence, the Tunisian state was able to project authority into the periphery. In return for vertical mobility opportunities, party cadres enforced national legislation during the early state building period. Property rights are strong. In Algeria, authority collapsed when close to a million European settlers fled in 1962. The French excluded Muslims from the political and economic sphere fearing they would subvert the foundation of the colonial system: strong settler property rights. At independence, the new regime had few cadres to staff the new state institutions, and an amorphous nationalist movement. The regime chose a two-tiered state building strategy. From the top-down, it placed its few cadres for the central and provincial administration. Its bottom-up strategy was to form a new set of party-administrators that could act as proxy agents on the ground through the municipalities. The top-down, bottom-up powersharing agreement turned on its side, however, as local notables infiltrated the local party organizations and municipalities. The party-administrators entered alliances with notables, creating localized political arenas independent of Algiers. Subsequent efforts to run land and property reform through the municipalities were undermined by these alliances, and have been since. In Algeria, property rights are nationally legislated, but they are enforced according to local dictates. Property rights are weak.
The Jasmine Revolution : causes in synthesis
(2018-05-02) Burt, Evan Whiteside; Suri, Jeremi
The Tunisian Revolution sparked a major wave of unrest culminating in the broader Arab Spring. This study attempts to identify primary causes of the Tunisian Revolution and situate it in broader discourse on revolutionary theory through a synthesis of the currently existing literature on the Tunisian uprisings, and to propose a new concept to view the revolution through: emulsifying internationalization. Emulsifying internationalization describes the aspects of globalization under capitalism which facilitate cross-regional and cross-class sympathies to emerge, reducing barriers to revolutionary identification. The study recompiles an account of the Tunisian Revolution and discusses policy implications for the region and the United States.
The social base of divide-and-rule : left-Islamist opposition alliances in North Africa’s Arab Spring
(2013-08) Buehler, Matthew J.; Brownlee, Jason, 1974-; Henry, Clement; Boone, Catherine; Charrad, Mounira; Stacher, Joshua; Pedahzur, Ami
Under what conditions do opposition political parties cooperate across ideological cleavages? Why do such opposition alliances collapse or endure over time? I address these questions by comparing alliances between leftist and Islamist opposition parties in Tunisia, Morocco, and Mauritania. In Tunisia, leftists have joined forces with Islamists on the national-level. In Morocco and Mauritania, such alliances have formed and endured in municipalities and labor unions but they have collapsed on the national-level. Why do these Arab states, despite their similar culture, demography, and French colonial heritage, have such different histories of left-Islamist alliances? Using a multi-method approach, including over 100 Arabic field interviews and an original dataset, this paper argues that left-Islamist alliances form as a mutual-defense strategy against a threat and endure when both parties have a similar social base – urban, educated social classes. If one of the two parties draws on a rural and illiterate social base, however, it becomes vulnerable to co-optation that causes alliance collapse. When leftists and Islamists had similar social origins and class interests in urban areas, they were more likely to build enduring opposition alliances during the 2011 Arab Spring. This finding leads to one overarching point: authoritarian regimes that monopolized rural politics and employed co-optation to fend-off opposition alliances proved more resilient during the Arab Spring
Urban Mediterranean dialects of Arabic : Tangier and Tunis
(2015-05) Montes, Valerie Susana; Brustad, Kristen; Magidow, Alexander
This thesis compares two urban Mediterranean dialects of Arabic in North Africa: the Arabic dialect of Tangier, Morocco and the Arabic dialect of Tunis, Tunisia. Both of these dialects have traditionally been classified as "pre-Hilalian" varieties, which originated with the first wave of Arab Muslim invasions of North Africa in the late 7th century CE. Tangier and Tunis not only underwent similar historical developments; the Arabic dialects of these two cities also underwent similar developments, in addition to sharing the features used as criteria for the pre-Hilalian dialect grouping. This thesis shows the similarities between the language contact situations in Tangier and Tunis historically in order to explain the parallel development of the morphosyntactic features--specifically the paradigms for the 2nd person category in pronominals as well as perfective, imperfective, and imperative verb inflections--shared by the Arabic dialects of these two cities today.