ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book aims to shed light on the grassroots participation of social groups in mobilizing resources for protests in repressive contexts. The protests that erupted in Tunisia in December 2010 and in Egypt in January 2011 were the product of large cross-class coalitions in which young people and students joined middle-class professionals, government employees, workers, housewives, and the unemployed. Since the 1970s, the mainstream literature on social movements has argued that SMOs are among the most critical groups capable of mobilizing resources for collective actions. In Egypt, LGBT activists have challenged repression thanks to the use of social networks as alternative venues for socialization, while in Tunisia and Turkey, LGBT activists, drawing on more established meso-level mobilizing structures, have built and implemented new strategies with the intention of increasing their cooperation with other political challengers.
