Although many have tried, the spontaneity of the Arab Spring uprisings and the unpredictability of its diverse geographical outcomes have resisted explanation. For social scientists, part of the challenge has been how to effectively measure and analyze the empirical data, while another obstacle has been a lack of attention to the worldviews, value orientations, and long-term concerns from the people of the Middle East and North Africa.
In order to meet these challenges head-on, Mansoor Moaddel and Michele J. Gelfand have assembled an international team of experts to explore and employ a new and diverse set of frameworks in order to explain the dynamics of cross-national variation, values, political engagement, morality, and development in these regions. To this end, the authors address a wide range of questions, such as: To what extent do recent events reflect changes in values among the Middle Eastern publics? Are youth uniformly more supportive of change than the rest of the population? To what extent are changes in values connected to changes in identities? How do we explain the process of change in the long term?
As Moaddel and Gelfand remark in their book's introduction, "Our hope is that this collective effort will not only contribute to the development of the social sciences in the Middle East and North Africa, but also to practical political actions and public policies that serve social tolerance and harmony, peace, and economic prosperity for the people of the region."
Introduction
Mansoor Moaddel and Michele J. Gelfand
SECTION I: Changes in Values and the Arab Spring
Chapter 1. Changing Values in the Islamic World and the West: Social Tolerance and the Arab Spring
Ronald F. Inglehart
Chapter 2: Youth Perceptions and Values During the Arab Spring: Cross- national Variation and Trends
Mansoor Moaddel and Julie de Jong
SECTION II: Perspectives on Change: Development and Modernization
Chapter 3: National Identity Versus National Pride in the Modalities of Liberal Territorial Nationalism and Islamic Nationalism in Muslim- Majority Countries
Mansoor Moaddel
Chapter 4: Modernization, World System, and Clash of Civilization Perspectives in Lay Views of the Development- Morality Nexus in the United States and the Middle East
Arland Thornton, Kathryn M. Yount, Linda Young-DeMarco, and Mansoor Moaddel
Chapter 5: Lay Accounts of "Modern" and "Traditional" Family in Greater Cairo: A Test of Developmental Models of Family Life
Kathryn M. Yount, Arland Thornton, Sohair Mehanna, and Shilpa N. Patel
SECTION III: Social- Scientific Perspectives on Collective Action, Political Engagement, and Voting Behavior
Chapter 6: The Roots of Political Activism in Six Muslim- Majority Nations
Nancy J. Davis, Robert V. Robinson, and Tom VanHeuvelen
Chapter 7: The Arab Spring and Egyptian Revolution Makers: Predictors of Participation
Mansoor Moaddel
Chapter 8: Change and Continuity in Arab Attitudes toward Political Islam: The Impact of Political Transitions in Tunisia and Egypt from 2011 to 2013
Mark Tessler
Chapter 9: Autocratic Recidivism: Computational Models of Why Revolutions Fail
Andrzej Nowak, Michele J. Gelfand, Wojciech Borkowski, and Arie Kruglanski
SECTION IV: Basic Methodological Issues in the Study of Values
Chapter 10: Best Practices: Lessons from a Middle East Survey Research Program
Julie de Jong and Linda Young-DeMarco
Chapter 11: An Analysis of Subjective Culture in the Middle East: Lessons Learned from a Qualitative Research Program
Janetta Lun, Michele J. Gelfand, C. Bayan Bruss, Lily Assad, Zeynep Aycan, Munqith M. Dagher, and
Abdel-Hamid Abdel-Latif
