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This research focuses on how we should define the energy that empowers rebellion and generates appealing frames and imposes change, and whether one can claim some correlation between this bottom-up shift and weak leadership, institutional fatigue, public discontent, or social malaise. As seen now in several Arab countries at the height of the collective emotional commitment among the revolutionaries, this energy remains one of the main weaknesses of social theory in the new century. Richard Rubenstein (1990: 321) argues that it is, above all, this poverty of philosophy with respect to the individual that vitiates our understanding of group solidarity and intergroup conflict.
Dominant structural theories still perceive their units of analysis as static social data, not as dynamic processes and accumulative syntheses. However, power systems and dominant narratives are increasingly contested through bottom-up insubordination.
This research is a case study of the Hamas-Fatah split across two distant cultural, political, and territorial entities despite the assumptions of social identity theory about social unity with the presence of a common enemy. It focuses on the fluidity of social cohesion and multi-causality of rebellious action against the state within the growing sphere of social movements in framing, promoting, and imposing change. The emerging solidarities among rebel groups like Hamas, their respective narratives of collective action, frames of morality, and emotional attachment to their causes seem to defeat rational theory and contest the assumptions of social contract theory. We need to think about multiple dimensions of social capital, and focus the analysis on the interaction between the micro motivations and the macro institutions in any society, and monitor the high and low points of any social cohesion over time.
This research showcases some fascinating interconnectedness between structural deficiencies, transformative solidarities, framing opportunities, and fluid power relations. To address these political and moral shifts, I argue for a nuanced framework, which can detect the multiple layers of causality of social split, and how they build on structural dynamics, socio-cultural transformation, behavioral orientation of the new political stakeholders, and the trajectory of their narratives. I use the framework of Ibn Khaldun’s Asabiya, a six-century old theory which assembles the properties of social groups either through phases of cohesion and solidarity or conflict and fragmentation, and depicts the socio-cultural stimulants of embracing an alternative identification among members of the dissident group. I also explore the possibility of quantifying the trends of stability or fragmentation of social systems, and designing an asabiya index, to measure the fluctuations of social capital within societies. As a conclusion, I propose eight aspects of the utility of asabiya in Conflict Resolution.
Part 1: The Presentation