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6 *IT also permits “other voices” to influence the ruling circles by diffusing their messages globally. An NGO with an Internet site or access to satellite broadcasters gains attention, and influence, in power centers by channeling its content through centers of global power and legitimation. The leverage of a human rights group is the "value added" that its message picks up from being bounced off Washington or Geneva. *Putting this in American political science terms, we might say that the press as a potential “fourth estate” in Arab political systems has gained new power and dynamism through Internet and satellite TV. *Finally, among the various currents in the region, Islamists, and their surrounding ambit of Muslims whose activism is not directed politically, seem to have been far ahead of others in exploiting the possibilities of IT. Why Maybe because their websites and broadcasts can speak to a well-defined and motivated community of believers, while more abstracted ideological projects (secular socialism and liberalism) make demands on their potential audience that they cannot likewise match in action. III. Networks and New Modalities of Symbolic Contestation In today’s Information Age, says Castells, “Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies, and the diffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of production, experience, power, and culture” (410). He continues: A network is a set of interconnected nodes. A node is the point at which a curve intersects itself. What a node is, concretely speaking, depends on the kind of concrete networks of which we speak…. Networks are open structures, able to expand without limits, integrating new nodes as long as they are able to communicate within the network, namely as long as they share the same communication codes (for example, values or performance goals” (411). Inherent in the network structure or, more precisely, the network experience, is the potential for the production, consumption and investment of social capital. In a definitive article, Coleman (1988, 2000) states that social capital is defined by its function, that it is productive (allowing “the achievement of certain ends that in its absence would not be possible”), and that “Unlike other forms of capital, socialk capital inheres in the structure of relations between actors and among actors….” (16). He offers examples of culturally bound—networked—communities, such as the wholesale diamond market or the Cairo bazaar, in which a sense of community engenders trust and thus promotes collectively productive action. The informal hawala money-transfer networks, now famous as part of the “money trail” thought to support Al-Qa’ida, would constitute a similar example. Social capital and networking are not confined to modern societies with formal rules and institutions: they also operate in what Rose (2000) (referring to Russia) calls anti-modern
7 societies, providing channels for “getting things done” when formal institutions do not work. This brings us to the contemporary Arab world. Our current preoccupation with high-tech networks and “netwars” (as Ronfeldt and Arquilla use the term) notwithstanding, Arab society has always been permeated with networks functioning in a variety of areas. In his valuable comparative study of informal networks in Egypt, Iran and Lebanon, Denoeux argues that such networks can promote either political stability or instability. They can absorb the dysfunctional social atomization and personal anomie that might otherwise cause disruptions in fastmodernizing societies with repressive governments. But by the same token these social dislocations can lead to the formation of networks based on alternatives to the official vision of society and thus come to challenge the political order. Where is the tippingpoint from one to the other The development of the Arab state in the post-colonial period, as noted above, took an authoritarian turn almost everywhere. While socioeconomic development began to establish the infrastructure that might support a vibrant civil society, insecure regimes, avaricious elites, ideological demands, and international influences converged to create a mukhabarat state suspicious of societal autonomy, pluralism, and alternative agendas. Consequently, political parties (other than the regime-sponsored single parties) were weak, elections (when they occurred) were usually rubber-stamp affairs, and interest groups, labor unions and the like came under constant government surveillance and interference. The mass media too, with certain significant exceptions, was coopted into helping frame the regimes’ political agenda. In addition, the rule of law was too feeble to protect civil and political space; and the bureaucracies of state-driven economies were known for opaqueness, inefficiency and corruption. In short, the formal political structures of a vibrant and participant civil society. Significant opposition, even if it professed to be loyal to the system, was forced to be clandestine, to some degree, or at least very low-profile. Is it surprising, then, that such alternative currents that could survive adopted network structures (formal and informal) and cultures In Egypt during the Nasser era, political parties having been banned, the two main opposition currents, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Communist Party, were soon forced into clandestinity. In the absence of formal political organizations, powerful families and social networks (shillas) became key and influential players (Springborg 1982). Beneath the surface of High Politics (oriented around the central government), informal political networks formed in the poor quarters of Cairo and other cities, and in the villages of Upper Egypt, for the purpose of coping with important issues of family and marriage, employment, education, and social services (Singerman, 1995). In “Bilad al-Sham” and Mesopotamia—the region of “new” states constructed mostly from the outside (Syria, Transjordan, Palestine (a non-state national community), Lebanon, and Iraq) political networks took on a transnational quality as well: the Ba’th in all these countries (before it became a ruling hierarchical-bureaucratic party in Syria and Iraq), the Muslim Brotherhood, spun off into satellites of the original Egyptian organization; the Arab Nationalists’ Movement; the Communists; the Syrian Social
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