On 17 December 2010, the self-immolation of a young street vendor in Sidi Bouzid, a town in inland Tunisia, instigated the uprisings that became known as the Arab Spring or the Arab Revolutions – a wording that I will use here as a translation from the Arabic al-thawrât al-`arabiyya. Observers were shocked at the radical protests arising in these regions, where authoritarian regimes had crushed all serious opposition over the decades. Conflicts governed by geopolitics, in particular the ongoing Israeli–Arab and Israeli–Palestinian hostilities, and the focus on political Islam and jihadism as the only globalized locus of political protest, have arrogated any attention for societies, their transformation, and their mobilization.

2010 年 12 月 17 日，在突尼斯内陆小镇西迪布兹德 （Sidi Bouzid） 一名年轻的街头小贩自焚，引发了后来被称为阿拉伯之春或阿拉伯革命的起义——我在这里将这个措辞作为阿拉伯语 al-thawrât al-'arabiyya 的翻译。观察家们对这些地区出现的激进抗议活动感到震惊，几十年来，威权政权镇压了所有严重的反对派。受地缘政治支配的冲突，特别是正在进行的以色列-阿拉伯和以色列-巴勒斯坦敌对行动，以及将政治伊斯兰和圣战主义作为政治抗议的唯一全球化场所的关注，已经傲慢了对社会、社会转型和动员的任何关注。