Understanding the Political in Arab Youth Civic Engagement

This collective volume contributes to the conceptual understanding of Arab youth and their relationship to politics by making explicit how civic engagement in seemingly ‘apolitical’ fields can be conceived as a form of political activism. Using the analytical tools of practice theory, ‘youth’ is reconceptualized as a generational practice of politics, meaning a ‘competent performance’ of shared knowledge and understandings of politics and the political, that informs their various forms of engagement. In conceiving of youth in these terms, the pieces here bring to the fore how youth comprehend and indeed dichotomize their action with ‘politics’.