Ebook: COVID-19 and Risk Society across the MENA Region: Assessing Governance, Democracy, and Inequality

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic – at the interlocking levels of politics, economy, and society – have been different across regions, states, and societies. In the case of the Middle East and North Africa, which was already in the throes of intense tumult following the onset of the 2011 Arab Spring, COVID’s blows have on the one hand followed the trajectory of some global patterns, while at the same time playing out in regionally specific ways.
Based on empirical country-level analysis, this volume brings together an international team of contributors seeking to untangle how COVID-19 unfolds across the MENA. There is special reference to issues of (self) governance and democracy, and the enormous challenges heightened by the pandemic in many Arab settings: inequality, human indignity and resurgent authoritarianism. The analyses are framed through Ulrich Beck’s famous concept of “risk society” that pinpointed the negative consequences of modernity and its unbridled capitalism, and the book traces how this has come home in full force in the COVID-19 pandemic. The editors, Larbi Sadiki and Layla Saleh, use the term "Arab risk society" to refer to the short-term and long-term repercussions on Arab societies across the areas of socio-economic inequality, a revitalized state that is more securitized than ever before, and the relentless democratic aspirations and civic-political freedoms.
But the analyses are attuned to problem-solving research. The "ethnographies of the pandemic" included in this book investigate transformations and coping mechanisms within each country case study and provide an ethically-informed research praxis that can respond to the manifold crises crashing down upon Arab states and societies.