Tunisian Revolutions: Reflections on Seas, Coasts, and Interiors

In December 2010 an out-of-work Tunisian merchant, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire and precipitated the Arab Spring. Popular interpretations of Bouazizi's self-immolation viewed economic and political despair as the root of the Tunisian revolution, but as Julia Clancy-Smith points out Tunisia's long history of revolutions and protest movements presents a far more complicated set of causes. Proposing a conceptual framework of "coastalization" v. "interiorization," Clancy-Smith examines Tunisia's last two centuries and demonstrates how geographical and environmental and social factors also lie behind that country's volatile history. Within this framework Clancy-Smith explores how Tunisia's coast became a Mediterranean playground for transnational elites, a mecca of tourism, while its interior agrarian regions suffered increasing neglect and marginalization. This distinction has had a profound impact on the fate of Tunisia, and has manifested itself in divisive debates over politics and religion and gender that have lead to a series of mass civic actions that continue to this day. Clancy-Smith proposes a fresh historical lens through which to view the relationship between spacial displacements, regionalization, and transnationalism.