المنتدى

MESA 2016 Panel Proposal

State, Market and Youth Subjectivities in the Middle East

Organizers:

Ayca Alemdaroglu (Northwestern) ayca@northwestern.edu

Daniele Cantini (MLU Halle, Orient-Institut Beirut) daniele.cantini@scm.uni-halle.de

 

This panel aims to explore the formation of youth subjectivities in a number of institutional contexts at the intersection of the market and the state in the Middle East. Being young and becoming an adult in contemporary times take place in socio-economic contexts marked by increasing levels of education, widespread unemployment and underemployment, changing family relations, and gender roles and sexuality, wide sense of precariousness and anxiety about the future. In the meantime, the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, the widespread protests in Turkey, the civil war in Syria, and the terror of ISIS reanimated the concern for youth radicalization, hence efforts to keep youth in line. It is true that nation states always have a stake on molding youth subjectivities to achieve the desired citizen, to ensure loyalty and unity, for which education serve as the primary medium. However, in a context where increasing marketization take over education and young people are reportedly inflated with growing feelings of boredom, despair and stuckedness; how do governments manage and control youth? We are interested in papers that approach this question from a number of institutional vantage points such as the family, higher education, the military and labor market.

 

In case of interest, please send an abstract to the organisers by February 10, 2016.