In December 2010 an out-of-work Tunisian street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire and precipitated the Arab Spring. Popular interpretations of Bouazizi's self-immolation presented economic and political oppression by the Ben Ali regimes as the root causes of widespread social despair that triggered the Tunisian revolution. Yet as Julia Clancy-Smith points out, Tunisia's long history of organized political activism and protest movements suggests a far more complicated set of processes. Proposing a conceptual framework of "coastalization" vs. "interiorization," Clancy-Smith examines Tunisia's last two centuries and demonstrates how geographical and environmental and social factors also lie behind that country's modern political history. Within this framework Clancy-Smith explores how Tunisia's coast became a Mediterranean playground for transnational elites, a mecca of tourism, while its interior agrarian regions suffered increasing neglect and marginalization. This distinction has had a profound impact on the fate of Tunisia and has manifested itself in divisive debates over politics, the state, and religion as well as women’s socio-legal status that have led to a series of mass civic actions culminating in revolution. Clancy-Smith proposes a fresh historical lens through which to view the relationship between spacial displacements, regionalization, and transnationalism.

Georgetown Shorts—longer than an article, shorter than a book—deliver timely works of peer-reviewed scholarship in a fast-paced, agile environment. They present new ideas and original texts that are easily and widely available to students, scholars, libraries, and general readers.

Julia Clancy-Smith is professor of history at the University of Arizona. She is the coauthor of The Modern Middle East and North Africa: A History in Documents and author of Mediterraneans: North Africa and Europe in an Age of Migration and Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Populist Protest, Colonial Encounters.

Julia Clancy-Smith is professor of history at the University of Arizona. She is the coauthor of The Modern Middle East and North Africa: A History in Documents and author of Mediterraneans: North Africa and Europe in an Age of Migration and Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Populist Protest, Colonial Encounters.

Introduction

1. Preludes and Postscripts: Of Baguettes and Social Protest2. Coastalization: Agriculture, Colonialism, and the Granary of Rome 3. Coastalization and Globalization: Tourism, Profane and Sacred 4. Mediterranean Women, Politics, and Islam 5. Mediterranean Games, Politics, and Dissent6. From Sidi Bou Said to Sidi Bouzid: Targets and Symbols

Conclusion

Notes