The subsequent lives of Arab revolutionaries

What are the biographical consequences and the social outcomes of revolutionary activism when the revolutionary moment turns into a civil war, an authoritarian restoration, a fragile democratic transition, or a return to the former 'years of lead'? LIVE-AR will develop a novel and ambitious analytical approach that will focus on the 'subsequent lives' of ordinary revolutionaries in four contrasted case-studies: Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Syria. By articulating the micro and meso levels, it will propose a groundbreaking three-fold shift from the usual viewpoint: a) from the revolutionary moment to the 'subsequent lives' of the women and men who participated in these events and a longitudinal analysis; b) from political and state institutions and macro-political transformations to the ordinary activists and the individual level; and c) from national studies to cross-national comparisons in order to comprehend patterns and variations depending on the political context. This analytical framework will unfold along four intertwined lines of research: 1) activist careers and biographical consequences, 2) 'emotional legacies', 3) revolutionary interpersonal networks, 4) revolutionary organizations. In so doing it will not only contribute to the literature on social movements, activism and contentious politics, by providing if not a collective biography at least a detailed 'mosaic of life-stories' of activists from the Global South, but also to the field of comparative politics to which it will offer original and empirically-grounded data to document the multiple possible social outcomes of revolutionary processes as they unfold in non-democratic contexts. The project will rely on a multidisciplinary skilled team and devise a diversified qualitative methodological 'toolkit' combining life story interviews with life calendars, an analysis of digital social networks and internet archives, ethnographic observations of daily life practices and encounters, and secondary sources.