The fourth round of the ACRPS Winter School, on the theme of “Political Culture Revisited: How Values Drive Politics” concluded on 16 January 2023. This year’s Winter School, which ran from 7-16 January 2022, was held in-person at the ACRPS lecture hall. The second half of the Winter School included four lectures, a workshop, and nine participant presentations.

Lectures

The lectures covered a diverse range of issues. The fifth day of the Winter School, 11 January 2023, began with a lecture by professor of Modern Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford, Walter Armbrust, titled “Patterns and Events: The Anthropology of Revolution.” Armbrust noted how the anthropology of revolution mirrors tensions between structural and contingent explanations in those disciplines with a longstanding tradition of researching revolutions, while remaining distinct from such fields in its methodological orientation to “participant observation.” The sixth day of the school began with a lecture by Wenfang Tang, Dean of the School of the Humanities and Social Science at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in Shenzhen, on “How Political Culture Can Prevent the Clash of Civilizations” drawing on World Values Survey data from China. The eighth day started with a lecture by Honorary Fellow of the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University, Stephen Welch, titled “Political Culture Research: Conceptual Problems and Research Opportunities.” In the lecture, Welch demonstrated the range of difficulties that the concept continues to generate and the ways in which these can stimulate further research. The final lecture of the school was given by professor of Sociology at the American University of Beirut, Sari Hanafi. In his lecture, “Understanding Political Culture in the Arab World through Religious and Moral Congruence,” Hanafi laid out the complexities associated with understanding religiosity in the region by pointing to the contradictions between beliefs, attitudes and practices. He subsequently introduced an action plan on how to bridge the gap between secularists and Islamists, in which he emphasized the importance of moral reasoning.

 Participant Presentations

Each of the lectures was followed by one or two presentations from the participants of the Winter School. On the fifth day, Haya Mahanna Al-Nuaimi and Narmin Butt presented their papers. Haya Mahanna Al-Nuaimi’s paper focused on the strategic narratives employed by small Arab states. Narmin Butt research was on the determinants of voting for former collaborators of Taliban in Afghanistan. On the sixth day, Robert Asaadi presented his paper “Political Culture, Crisis, and Attitudinal Change in Contemporary in Iran,” discussing popular reactions and attitudes towards the repression of the protests in Iran, and Carmen Fulco presented her paper “When Value-Systems Constrain Pact-Making: The Case of the Tunisian Opposition Coordination Failures in the Post-July Order of 2021,” which looked at elite political culture and the legacy of failed cross-party alliances in Tunisia. On the seventh day, Joseph Rodriguez presented his paper “Education for Democracy: Political Formation for Undemocratic Times.” On the eighth day, Giulia Macario discussed her research on women’s participation in the Muslim Brotherhood, titled “Challenging the Order of Subjugation: Female Political Participation within the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood,” and Marko Jovanovic discussed his paper “Indicators of Anti-American Attitudes in Arab Countries.” On the last day, Ayfer Erdogan Safak discussed her comparative account in her paper “Post-Islamism in Tunisia and Turkey: Divergent Trajectories” and Paulina Warsza presented her research “State-Society Power Struggle in Iraq: Between the “Non-State” and “We Want a Homeland” where she drew on data from her interviews with some of the protestors in the October Revolution.

Workshop

In addition to the roundtable which was held in the first half of the Winter School, the second half included a workshop. The seventh day of the school began with a workshop led by Mohammad Almasri, Abdelkarim Amengay, and Ammar Shamaileh which gave insights about the difficulties encountered when measuring different aspects of political culture, while drawing on the experience of the Arab Opinion Index.

Conclusion

Concluding the Winter School Program, which is the first of its kind in the region, the organizers thanked the Winter School participants, lecturers, discussants, chairs, and volunteers. A feedback session was also held where the participants highlighted how they benefited from the program and gave suggestions as to how it could be improved in the future.

Building on the notable success of the four rounds of the Winter School, the ACRPS seeks to continue with this academic tradition, which provides researchers around the world the opportunity to connect and exchange ideas with scholars and researchers in the Arab region.