The liberalization of Jordanian political culture: The new Maan
The Arab Spring showed that democratization in the Arab world seldom follows from an uprising against an authoritarian regime. Rather, democratization depends on slower changes. But what kind of changes? The project answers that question by studying a case where political liberalization is connected to a broader cultural change: the transformation of the political and social culture of Maan, a desert town in southern Jordan. This transformation is about the emergence of political parties, but also of certain forms of education and social life. The change is not only about a new national identity or a stronger civil society, but about something else, which several of Maan’s young residents call infitāḥ (openness), and which they contrast with the social and political landscape their parents grew up in. What is the character of infitāḥ? What can it teach us about the cultural foundations of political liberalization in the Arab world? And how does this “openness” differ from ideals that are associated with liberalism in a European context?
These are the questions this project wants to answer.
Final report
The Project’s Purpose, Development, and Implementation
The Arab Spring showed that what follows from an uprising against an authoritarian regime is seldom democracy. The process of democratization depends on slower changes. But what kind of changes? This project responds to that question by exploring how Jordanian political activists, officials, and educators reimagined democratic culture in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, focusing on what they call infitah (openness). Rather than signaling a new national identity or stronger civil society, infitah describes transformations in political movements, education, and urban life that Jordanians contrast with the social and political landscape of the past.
During the project, I have conducted fieldwork in Ma’an, a desert town and provincial capital in south Jordan, which had been relatively isolated until a university opened there two decades ago, attracting students and academics from all over Jordan. The opening of the university has changed the province, a change which several of Ma’an’s residents call infitah. Gender roles, the local economy, and the tribes’ legal functions are all changing, and the university is supporting ideas about tolerance and cultural relativism. While most residents view this opening positive, even the most liberal acknowledge that openness can be dangerous: it is good to be open to new perspectives, but some core values must remain protected. I have studied these changes and how actors in Ma’an, such as the university management, deal with the resulting challenges.
During the project, I have also come to focus on three changes in Jordanian education, all grounded in an idea of openness (infitah): First, the rewriting of the school textbooks. Since the mid-2010s, but especially during the early 2020s, the Ministry of Education has gradually changed the religious content in the textbooks, The aim, according to Minister of Education Mohammed Thnaibat, was to teach students “how to be a moderate Muslim, how to respect others, how to live in an environment that has many nationalities and different ethnic groups.” The deputy prime minister was blunter: “We want to review the curricula because we have discovered that some of them motivate terrorism.” The changes have been controversial, sparking protests and perceptions of Western intervention in the education sector.
Second, the promotion of philosophy. Philosophy has been a controversial subject since the rise of political Islam from the 1970s. It had a reputation of being atheistic—since it was built on secular rather than Islamic sources—and it was removed from the school curricula in the mid-1970s. A short course in the subject is now obligatory for all students at Jordan’s largest university and school textbooks contain sections about philosophy (logic, critical thinking, and concepts from Plato, Aristotle, and Averroes) since the early 2020s. This change is part of a broader pattern. Since the Arab Spring, philosophy has gained a more prominent role in the education systems of several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Third, a push by various schools to expose students to a more pluralistic way of thinking.
I have conducted interviews and attended university lectures with academics, senior officials, and university presidents who promoted this series of liberal educational reforms, and I have conducted fieldwork at a school engaged in promoting infitah through student debates and other forms of teaching.
During the course of this project, I have also studied the role of tribes in Jordanian elections through ethnographic fieldwork in Maan among campaign workers and through interviews with candidates for mayor, city council, and parliament. In Jordan, tribes have win more parliamentary seats than political parties do. But how do they win elections? While scholars often emphasize the role of patronage, my research shows that while deploying patronage remains a central strategy, a tribe’s organizational capacity, sense of group solidarity, and internal politics can be equally decisive. By focusing on these broader aspects, it also becomes clear how electoral competition is reshaping tribes—democratizing their internal decision-making, shifting norms around women’s political participation, and even redefining what a tribe is in contemporary Jordan.
Main results
Democratic theory often maintains that civil society, public debate, and political inclusion serve the democratic function of exposing individuals and groups to the concerns, beliefs, and reasoning of others. This project shows that this function can also be found in three broader structures of openness, which are not defined by their location outside the state or by their basis in publicness or inclusion.
First, a structure of places, where openness stands in contrast to isolation. Places associated with infitah, such as university campuses, have a cultural diversity that distinguishes them from more isolated places. Yet the mere presence of people with different backgrounds does not, in itself, mark a place as open. Other factors—such as the place’s sociality—also matter and typically require deliberate actions by those who manage these places to be sustained.
Second, a structure of ideas, where openness stands in contrast to rigidity. In Jordan, initiatives such as the introduction of philosophy as a school subject, liberal reforms of the curriculum, and the opening of political parties’ ideological schooling have been driven by a similar idea: to shift away from an all-encompassing framework to one that is more open to reality and to other voices. In educational contexts, this is not primarily about encouraging students to speak freely but about teaching them specific ways of listening, arguing, and understanding.
Third, a structure of authority and decision-making where reasoning (e.g., justification, counterargument, and persuasion) plays a role. Openness here stands in contrast to military discipline as well as to power as a personal prerogative, where decisions do not require justification.
A focus on openness offers an alternative to some of the more common frameworks for understanding democratic change. The most dominant concept in analyses of democratization in the Arab world as well as more globally, is not openness but power, along with related notions such as resistance. In this school of thought, analytical work centers on the balance of power between autocrats and their opponents. Some have focused on the societal side of this equation—examining factors such as the role of organized labor, civil society, or opposition techniques initially developed in Eastern Europe. Others have focused on autocrats’ sources of power, including state apparatuses capable of stealing elections, controlling media, and repressing dissent.
In contrast to other famous concepts of “opening”—such as apertura, abertura, and glasnost—that refer to the opening of a closed political system (i.e., the increase of political and civil liberties), infitah refers to the opening of a previously isolated mentality or society. And unlike “civil society,” it does not refer to a sphere that should be protected from a too-intrusive state. Instead, its focus is an opening that can happen within a state as well as within a family or society.
Although infitah, as the concept is understood in Jordan, is partly about openness to dialogue and reasoning, it can be distinguished from other notions that invoke a relationship between democracy and reasoning, such as the “liberal public sphere” or “deliberative democracy.” In these instances, the ideal deliberation is framed as inclusive, public, rational, and foundational to a political society.
In contrast, political and educational actors in Jordan emphasize that discussions characterized by infitah often cannot take place publicly. Instead, they must occur in environments protected from security services and hostile social forces, relying on a rhetoric of flattery, half-truths, and concealment rather than on straightforward argument. Even when proponents of infitah uphold ideals of openness and rationality, they struggle with the vulnerabilities inherent in these ideals, with the sense that public, truthful speech is perilous.
In summary, this project:
• Introduces “openness” (infitah) as an analytical framework for understanding how individuals and groups are exposed to the concerns, beliefs, and reasoning of others—a function that democratic theory normally analyze through concepts such as civil society, public debate, and political inclusion.
• Offers an alternative to frameworks that analyze democratic change and authoritarian resilience in the Arab world by focusing on power.
• Bridges social anthropology, political science, and Middle Eastern studies by linking political activism, education reform, and urban transformation within a single ethnographic account.
The findings of this project have so far resulted in a book manuscript (currently under review), two published articles, and a third article under review. I have also presented the research at academic conferences, to the Swedish Embassy in Jordan, and to student associations focused on foreign affairs.
The Arab Spring showed that what follows from an uprising against an authoritarian regime is seldom democracy. The process of democratization depends on slower changes. But what kind of changes? This project responds to that question by exploring how Jordanian political activists, officials, and educators reimagined democratic culture in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, focusing on what they call infitah (openness). Rather than signaling a new national identity or stronger civil society, infitah describes transformations in political movements, education, and urban life that Jordanians contrast with the social and political landscape of the past.
During the project, I have conducted fieldwork in Ma’an, a desert town and provincial capital in south Jordan, which had been relatively isolated until a university opened there two decades ago, attracting students and academics from all over Jordan. The opening of the university has changed the province, a change which several of Ma’an’s residents call infitah. Gender roles, the local economy, and the tribes’ legal functions are all changing, and the university is supporting ideas about tolerance and cultural relativism. While most residents view this opening positive, even the most liberal acknowledge that openness can be dangerous: it is good to be open to new perspectives, but some core values must remain protected. I have studied these changes and how actors in Ma’an, such as the university management, deal with the resulting challenges.
During the project, I have also come to focus on three changes in Jordanian education, all grounded in an idea of openness (infitah): First, the rewriting of the school textbooks. Since the mid-2010s, but especially during the early 2020s, the Ministry of Education has gradually changed the religious content in the textbooks, The aim, according to Minister of Education Mohammed Thnaibat, was to teach students “how to be a moderate Muslim, how to respect others, how to live in an environment that has many nationalities and different ethnic groups.” The deputy prime minister was blunter: “We want to review the curricula because we have discovered that some of them motivate terrorism.” The changes have been controversial, sparking protests and perceptions of Western intervention in the education sector.
Second, the promotion of philosophy. Philosophy has been a controversial subject since the rise of political Islam from the 1970s. It had a reputation of being atheistic—since it was built on secular rather than Islamic sources—and it was removed from the school curricula in the mid-1970s. A short course in the subject is now obligatory for all students at Jordan’s largest university and school textbooks contain sections about philosophy (logic, critical thinking, and concepts from Plato, Aristotle, and Averroes) since the early 2020s. This change is part of a broader pattern. Since the Arab Spring, philosophy has gained a more prominent role in the education systems of several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Third, a push by various schools to expose students to a more pluralistic way of thinking.
I have conducted interviews and attended university lectures with academics, senior officials, and university presidents who promoted this series of liberal educational reforms, and I have conducted fieldwork at a school engaged in promoting infitah through student debates and other forms of teaching.
During the course of this project, I have also studied the role of tribes in Jordanian elections through ethnographic fieldwork in Maan among campaign workers and through interviews with candidates for mayor, city council, and parliament. In Jordan, tribes have win more parliamentary seats than political parties do. But how do they win elections? While scholars often emphasize the role of patronage, my research shows that while deploying patronage remains a central strategy, a tribe’s organizational capacity, sense of group solidarity, and internal politics can be equally decisive. By focusing on these broader aspects, it also becomes clear how electoral competition is reshaping tribes—democratizing their internal decision-making, shifting norms around women’s political participation, and even redefining what a tribe is in contemporary Jordan.
Main results
Democratic theory often maintains that civil society, public debate, and political inclusion serve the democratic function of exposing individuals and groups to the concerns, beliefs, and reasoning of others. This project shows that this function can also be found in three broader structures of openness, which are not defined by their location outside the state or by their basis in publicness or inclusion.
First, a structure of places, where openness stands in contrast to isolation. Places associated with infitah, such as university campuses, have a cultural diversity that distinguishes them from more isolated places. Yet the mere presence of people with different backgrounds does not, in itself, mark a place as open. Other factors—such as the place’s sociality—also matter and typically require deliberate actions by those who manage these places to be sustained.
Second, a structure of ideas, where openness stands in contrast to rigidity. In Jordan, initiatives such as the introduction of philosophy as a school subject, liberal reforms of the curriculum, and the opening of political parties’ ideological schooling have been driven by a similar idea: to shift away from an all-encompassing framework to one that is more open to reality and to other voices. In educational contexts, this is not primarily about encouraging students to speak freely but about teaching them specific ways of listening, arguing, and understanding.
Third, a structure of authority and decision-making where reasoning (e.g., justification, counterargument, and persuasion) plays a role. Openness here stands in contrast to military discipline as well as to power as a personal prerogative, where decisions do not require justification.
A focus on openness offers an alternative to some of the more common frameworks for understanding democratic change. The most dominant concept in analyses of democratization in the Arab world as well as more globally, is not openness but power, along with related notions such as resistance. In this school of thought, analytical work centers on the balance of power between autocrats and their opponents. Some have focused on the societal side of this equation—examining factors such as the role of organized labor, civil society, or opposition techniques initially developed in Eastern Europe. Others have focused on autocrats’ sources of power, including state apparatuses capable of stealing elections, controlling media, and repressing dissent.
In contrast to other famous concepts of “opening”—such as apertura, abertura, and glasnost—that refer to the opening of a closed political system (i.e., the increase of political and civil liberties), infitah refers to the opening of a previously isolated mentality or society. And unlike “civil society,” it does not refer to a sphere that should be protected from a too-intrusive state. Instead, its focus is an opening that can happen within a state as well as within a family or society.
Although infitah, as the concept is understood in Jordan, is partly about openness to dialogue and reasoning, it can be distinguished from other notions that invoke a relationship between democracy and reasoning, such as the “liberal public sphere” or “deliberative democracy.” In these instances, the ideal deliberation is framed as inclusive, public, rational, and foundational to a political society.
In contrast, political and educational actors in Jordan emphasize that discussions characterized by infitah often cannot take place publicly. Instead, they must occur in environments protected from security services and hostile social forces, relying on a rhetoric of flattery, half-truths, and concealment rather than on straightforward argument. Even when proponents of infitah uphold ideals of openness and rationality, they struggle with the vulnerabilities inherent in these ideals, with the sense that public, truthful speech is perilous.
In summary, this project:
• Introduces “openness” (infitah) as an analytical framework for understanding how individuals and groups are exposed to the concerns, beliefs, and reasoning of others—a function that democratic theory normally analyze through concepts such as civil society, public debate, and political inclusion.
• Offers an alternative to frameworks that analyze democratic change and authoritarian resilience in the Arab world by focusing on power.
• Bridges social anthropology, political science, and Middle Eastern studies by linking political activism, education reform, and urban transformation within a single ethnographic account.
The findings of this project have so far resulted in a book manuscript (currently under review), two published articles, and a third article under review. I have also presented the research at academic conferences, to the Swedish Embassy in Jordan, and to student associations focused on foreign affairs.