ABSTRACT
National and regional security issues have been of paramount importance to International Relations analysis of the post-2010 Arab uprisings. However, how danger and safety have been conceived and negotiated by citizens in the Middle East has received less attention. Following anthropologist Farha Ghannam’s (2012) exploration of Egyptian citizens’ “structures of feeling” (Williams, 1977) about their security in early 2011—for example their collective lived experience in a particular time and place—this chapter briefly explores two contrasting cases, Egypt and Jordan. While the Libyan and Syrian civil wars are the more obvious regional examples, I have chosen Egypt and Jordan as case studies through which to excavate some less headline-grabbing manifestations of violence and nonviolence. I suggest that liminality and moderation are, respectively, important structures of feeling within the security assemblages that have emerged in the space of struggle and consensus between these regimes and their citizens. In doing so, this chapter aims to build on the emerging literature on “vernacular security” in IR, calling attention to phenomenologies of violence. Additionally, the security assemblage is a useful rubric for exploring vernacular conceptions of security as it allows for multiple possible relationships between ontologically and politically heterogeneous phenomena. This chapter aims not so much to fill a gap as to prompt further discussion among critical IR scholars of how safety and danger have been conceived by those living through the uprisings.
