Inclusion Theories and the Global South: Why Civil Sphere Theory Couldn’t Understand the Egyptian Revolution

Muhammad Amasha, Yale University

The dominant historical narrative of inclusion in Europe starts with the French Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man (Brubaker 1998), followed by civil, political, and social citizenship rights (Marshall and Bottomore 1992). In settler colonies, the dominant narrative speaks of three phases of incorporation: assimilation, hyphenation, and multiculturalism (Alexander 2008). Globally, the narrative goes with the liberal democracy’s defeat of fascism and socialism and the gradual spread of democracy across the globe (Alexander 2022; Fukuyama 1992; Huntington 1993). Though dominant, proponents of that narrative barely study the rest of the globe. Jeffrey Alexander’s attempt to globalize his Civil Sphere Theory is an exception. This article engages with his work, especially his essay on the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, to show why the dominant Global North narrative is hardly equipped to understand coexistence/inclusion/solidarity in the Global South. I provide an alternative that centers four issues silenced in Civil Sphere Theory: empire, domination, violence, and partiality.

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 Presented in Session 178. On History and Historical Sociology