Defeated Revolutionaries, Lasting Legacies: the social afterlives of revolution in Dhufar, Oman

Abstract:

What are the legacies of a defeated revolution? Prevailing narratives depict defeated revolutions as examples of successful counter-insurgency campaigns. This project’s ethnographic research with former revolutionary families from the liberation movement of Dhufar, Oman (active 1965-1975), nevertheless shows how, forty years on, ex-militants and relatives use kinship and mundane socialising to reproduce revolutionary networks and values of social egalitarianism. Foregrounding the social afterlives of defeated revolution, this research contributes to a counter-history of defeated revolutionaries. The project highlights the limitations of post-conflict patronage to win and change hearts and minds, and the potential of family and everyday relations during and after revolution to challenge dominant norms.

Bio: Alice Wilson is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Sussex. Her research focuses on transformations of the relationship between governing authorities and governed constituencies in revolutions and liberation movements in the Middle East and North Africa. She is author of Sovereignty in Exile: a Saharan liberation movement governs (Pennsylvania, 2016). 

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Meeting ID: 910 7505 6246
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