Social Mobilization in Morocco: Lessons Learned for a Historically Informed Activism edited by Natalia Ribas-Mateos et al

This collected volume investigates the ways in which historical training supports current activism and advocacy in global times by highlighting models of social activism and political representation in different parts of the world, with diverse social actions, strategies, and protest spaces.

Morocco is a fascinating society to examine protest movements in an authoritarian regime. For the first time ever, the contributors reply in detail to questions, challenges and findings regarding the implications of historically informed activism in Morocco. The cooperative perspective is the key to a better understanding as it reinvigorates a conversation between social scientists--sociologists, anthropologists, and political scientists--and historians about how to analyse social and political activism.

The main findings relate to the great structural transformations that have shaped the current power regimes in a longue durée perspective. How are social movements born, how do they mature, and how do they die? Through the dynamics of social mobilisation, we discover the structure of the power regime, the responses (strategies), and its forms of survival (resources and capacities).

How does history inform and empower current activism? The book covers 22 scenarios of popular revolts -urban, rural, and peripheral. Casablanca (1907, 1965, 2000), Fez (1907, 1990), the Eastern Rif (1909, 1921, 1958, 1984, 2004), Meknes (1937, 2011), Tangiers (1952, 2011, 2015), Salé, (1930, 2008), Taza (1915), and Imider (2011). 

Natalia Ribas-Mateos -MESOPOLHIS, Aix-Marseille Université. Since the early 1990s, Natalia has taught in various universities and conducted wide-ranging fieldworks around the world, most particularly in Mediterranean Europe (MigCities, TMR, Marie Curie, INSTRAW, Ramón y Cajal Programmes). She has published extensively in different languages, including Spanish, French and Arabic. In English she is the author of the 'The Mediterranean in the Age of Globalization' and 'Border Shifts. New Mobilities in Europe and beyond', and more recently of various collections of works related to age, gender and mobilities. Through her work she has been able to manage a new perspective on international social sciences linking grounded empirical engagement at multiple levels, by introducing new critical theoretical challenges and approaching a close dialogue with gender and border activists.

Laura Feliu is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations (UAB) and has been a human rights activist in Morocco since the early nineties. She has worked and published extensively in international human rights promotions in the MENA Region. She travels frequently to Morocco to participate in different encounters about social movements. She has recently lead two different research projects (Spanish Ministry) related to social activism in the MENA Region and has already published these results internationally with Spanish, French, Moroccan and British publishers. As an activist she has been president of the Committee for Ali Lmrabet liberation (2003-2004), president of Elcalam (Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in the Maghreb 2005-2010).

Josep Lluís Mateo Dieste, Ph.D. (2002), European University Institute (Florence), is Serra Hunter Associated Professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. His main publications focus on contemporary Morocco, colonialism, religion and power, including Health and Ritual in Morocco. Conceptions of the Body and Healing Practices (Leiden: Brill, 2013) and La "hermandad" hispano-marroquí (Barcelona: EdicionsBellaterra, 2003). He has also formulated a critical approach based on historical anthropology, as revealed in (with Alexandre Coello) In Praise of Historical Anthropology. Perspectives, Methods, and Applications to the Study of Power and Colonialism (Routledge Approaches to History, 2020). As an activist he is engaged in different activities with the Muslim Community in Catalonia and with cultural activists in the North of Morocco.

Ferran Izquierdo Brichs currently works at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. His research is focused on the Sociology of power and the Arab world, within the role of an activist scholar. He has published numerous articles on these issues, and recently the books: Izquierdo Brichs, F., J. Etherington, L. Feliu (eds.) (2017). Political Islam in a time of revolt. London: Palgrave / Macmillan / Springer. Izquierdo Brichs, F. y J. Etherington (2017). Poder global. Una mirada desde la Sociología del Poder. Barcelona: Bellaterra. Ferran Izquierdo Brichs (ed.) El islam político en el Mediterráneo. Radiografía de una evolución., Barcelona, Cidob/Bellaterra, 2013. Ferran Izquierdo Brichs (ed.) Political Regimes in the Arab World. London: Routledge, 2012. As an activist he has been a member of the Palestine resistance in Catalonia and he is also a trades union representative.

2023