4 Dissertationen und Habilita- tionen / Dissertations and Habilitations

VORTRÄGE 18. DAVO-KONGRESS PAPERS DAVO CONGRESS 2011
to be counterproductive for AQAP in the current “battle
of perception” for political legitimacy in Yemen.
Luay Radhan (Marburg): Saudi Democrat Turki
al-Hamad: Politics between Religiously Allowed
and Religiously Forbidden
In 2000 Saudi Arabian journalist and writer Turki al-
Hamad published a book titled as-siyasa bain al-halal
wa al-haram (Politics between Religiously Allowed
and Religiously Forbidden). The subtitle is antum
a´lam bi-umuri dunyakum (“You know more about
the affairs of your world”), which is a famous saying
attributed to Messenger Muḥammad.
Al-Ḥamad believes politics should be the art of the
possible, not the choice between halal and haram. Religion
determines the grand goals of social life (justice
and equality) but the realization of these goals (practical
politics) must be left to the people. The policies of
heresy accusation and religious prohibition cause conflicts
between different groups and might even led to
the collapse of society. In the Battle of the Camel
(656 AD) Muhammad’s son-in-law Ali and his widow
Aisha were in a military conflict, yet despite the
bloodshed both remained Muslim. Ergo, the community’s
wellbeing should be the standard: Whoever
makes a better contribution to it is Islamically better.
The rulers were always eager to take the pledge of
loyalty because legitimacy emanates from the community.
Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali became caliphs
not because of their religious credentials but because
they were considered the most appropriate political
leaders. There is an eternal contradiction between
morals, which are based on personal conviction,
and amoral “state logic” for which all means are
justified. Forcing virtue on the people spreads hypocrisy
and threatens state legitimacy because they will
either reject the values or outdo the state and disclose
the state’s vice.
Christian Wolff (Erlangen): Web 2.0 und die politische
Straße
Die arabischen Revolutionen 2011 haben die Möglichkeiten,
aber auch die Begrenzungen der Medien
des Web 2.0 eindrucksvoll aufgezeigt. In manchen europäischen
Medien wurden Facebook, Twitter und
YouTube gar als Auslöser der Umstürze benannt. So
falsch diese Behauptung ist, so deutlich zeigt sie auch,
welche Rolle das Web 2.0 für neue diskursive politische
Räume und die bestehenden Aushandlungsprozesse
politischer, religiöser und sozialer Normativität
spielen kann.
Interaktivität sowie die Überwindung der in traditionellen
Medien vorhandenen Grenze zwischen Rezipient
und Inhaltsanbieter sind die wesentlichen
Merkmale des Web 2.0. So ist es möglich, Inhalte
zeitnah, ortsunabhängig, in globaler Reichweite und
in größtmöglicher Anonymität zu erstellen, zu diskutieren
und zu verändern. Gerade im Kontext autoritärer
Systeme wie Ägypten vor der Revolution, ist diese
Diskursoption faktisch nicht zu kontrollieren oder gar
zu zensieren. Diese genannten Funktionen des Web
2.0 erlauben es individuellen, alltäglich geäußerten
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Meinungen zu einer Aggregation zu verhelfen, die politischen
Druck entfalten kann. Ein systemkritischer
Diskurs schafft sich so im Spannungsfeld autoritärer
Herrschaftsstrukturen eine neue Öffentlichkeit. Politische
wie auch religiöse Normativität wird im gesellschaftlichen,
politischen und sozialen Aushandlungsprozess
der neuen Medien des Web 2.0 durch die
Einbindung neuer Akteure einer offeneren Diskussion
als in den traditionellen Medien ausgesetzt. Verschiedene
Akteure, beziehungsweise Akteursgruppen können
durch die erhöhte Reichweite und Interaktivität
des Web 2.0 bis in die traditionelle Diskurslandschaft
hineinwirken und die vorhandenen Aushandlungsprozesse
beeinflussen.
Hierzu eröffnet Asef Bayat’s Theorie der politischen
Straße und des „Social Non-Movement“ im Kontext
des Web 2.0 eine Möglichkeit, die Aggregationsprozesse
von alltäglich geäußerten Meinungen, Gefühlsäußerungen
und Stimmungslagen theoretisch zu analysieren.
Tina Zintl (St Andrews, UK): Researching Syria
between Authoritarian Upgrading and Revolution:
Using Methodological Approaches and Constraints
for Generating Results
Ethical considerations, sampling procedures, reflexivity
are not just bureaucratic and compulsory exercises
for every researcher. Using her PhD research on foreign-educated
Syrians' political role as an example,
the presenter demonstrated how methodological issues
are intrinsic to and, indeed, useful for social science
research projects. While all methodological issues
seemed ‘sorted’ during her first fieldstay in Syria
in 2010, another stay in 2011 triggered a re-evaluation
of these questions and allowed for new conclusions:
Declined interview requests showed that snowball
sampling is a temporary snapshot of wasta: Contacts
acquired through this method can lose value quickly
because they rely not only on trust between researcher
and potential interviewee but also trust between potential
interviewees. The Syrian regime blamed protests
on foreign infiltrators, so foreign contacts were
immediately devaluated: While in 2010 many ‘cosmopolitan’
Syrians willingly shared their views with a
foreign researcher, in 2011 most kept a lower profile
for fear of losing privileges. Likewise, trust depends
on whether the researcher is perceived as “outsider”
or “insider”. Foreign-educated respondents spent considerable
time abroad and felt as “insiders” to Western
culture, which in 2010 helped building rapport. In
2011, however, they mostly emphasized the differences,
effectively treating the researcher as an “outsider”.
These methodological challenges helped to show
how authoritarian Syria welcomed foreign-educated
returnees’ knowledge transfer but granted them, at
best, the role of junior partners. Methodological difficulties
thus can be used to generate more results: By
contextualizing the research process social sciences
should thrive on “human” factors instead of seeing
them as a drawback in comparison to “hard” natural
sciences.