This chapter examines the mechanisms through which revolutionary contention turned increasingly ethnic and violent during the second half of 2011 and early 2012. It argues that ethnicization of challenge was the indirect result of regime violence, used primarily to confront exigencies it could not address through its informal social linkages rather than as a tool to rend the social fabric. The chapter begins with a quantitative analysis of Syrian regime violence, demonstrating that the regime attempted to avoid harming many of its clients. Then it takes a deeper look into how and why the regime used violence when it did, inductively theorizing the exigencies the regime faced and how it dealt with them. The remainder of the chapter examines the second-order effects of this repression, using in-depth studies of localities that exemplify each of the types identified earlier in the chapter. State violence changed the composition of the challenger group and the content of its claims, making the challenger group more ethnically homogeneous, pushing claims to focus on ethnic demands and employ ethnic symbols.

This chapter narrates the events of the first year of the Syrian uprising, drawing on an original newspaper event catalog, activist-generated databases of non-state actor fatalities, and numerous town-specific reports composed by Syrian and other Arab research organizations. In doing so, it describes the outcome to be explained in subsequent chapters: variation in forms of challenge to the Syrian regime over time and space. The picture of contention in Syria presented in this chapter suggests that there was no lockstep progression from nonviolent, urban civic protests to ethnic insurgency in the countryside during the first year of the Syrian uprising. Rather, violence erupted almost immediately following the onset of challenge at some sites, while remaining absent at others throughout the entire first year of the uprising. Claims advanced by challengers varied similarly; they remained focused on civic demands throughout the first year in some areas, while quickly jumping from local to ethnic grievances in others.

This chapter focuses on populations that did not participate in the uprising. It uses quantitative event data to identify sites and local communities that stayed out of contention or entered it significantly later than others with similar characteristics. One of the clearest trends in the data is that non-Sunni communities participated little in the uprising. The chapter highlights the role of mechanisms of “in-group policing” enabled by group-level institutions and networks in generating this quiescence. It then examines mechanisms impelling nonparticipation among segments of the ethnic majority population; the event data indicate that many Sunni Arab localities saw strikingly little contentious activity in the early weeks and months of the uprising. These populations include local communities structured around extended family and tribal networks and individuals linked to the state through its corporatist economic development strategies. Finally, the chapter examines countermobilization, including counterdemonstrations, “popular committees” formed to defend neighborhoods from shadowy enemies, and pro-regime paramilitaries known colloquially as shabbiha.

This chapter visits sketches the contours of an “Ottoman lighting system,” that is, a centrally regulated network that procured lighting materials from the provinces and channeled them to Istanbul and other crucial points in the imperial power grid and set lighting priorities in line with its political needs. The main argument is that lighting was considered a basic commodity and its regular supply therefore concerned the state. Yet, access to light was extremely unequal, which, as shown in the next chapter, made light a shiny index of power.

Hearing without seeing, or without seeing well, was one of the defining experiences of the preindustrial night. This chapter seeks to capture something of this experience. It follows darkness as it fell, from sunset to bedtime, beginning with an attempt to “listen around,” or to reconstruct the aural texture of the everynight. While hearing was much more important than during the day for information and orientation, it could not compensate for the loss of vision. The deep darkness of the early modern city undermined people’s sense of control, aggravating fears of very real nocturnal dangers. Discussion accompanies people as they were readying themselves to sleep and shows that even at home, fears and real dangers could shake people’s security and disturb their peace. But while nocturnal threats, fears, and nuisances seem universal, their effect was highly differential, since it depended on the means one could use to cope with them. My second argument is therefore that sleep did not necessarily emancipate people from diurnal social hierarchies and material conditions. They remained unequal even in their beds.

This chapter gives an overview of the book in how it deals with dignity in the 2011 Egyptian Revolution in the context of the Arab Uprisings. Dignity or karama in Arabic is a nebulous concept that challenges us to reflect about various issues such as identity, human rights, and faith. This chapter shows that the research to write this book was prompted by the complexity of dignity demands at a time when the region of North Africa and the Middle East was drifting in the socio-political event of the “Arab Spring” or Arab Uprisings. The main motivation in the research was to investigate understandings of karama in the specific context of Egypt during the 2011 protests. To do so, the focus was on interviews with participants in the 2011 protests and analysis of art forms that emerged during protests and in which there was an explicit expression of dignity/lack of dignity. The chapter presents the argument and contribution of the book, the importance of terminology and layers of meanings, and finally the wider context for dignity slogans. The chapter ends by presenting the book structure and the thematic chapters.