Abstract
As the dust of the early optimism has started to settle down, the perception of the uprisings as a straightforward equation of ‘disenchanted youth against authoritarian state equals democracy’ crumbles against the complexity of the reality. After the youth as the revolutionary and the Islamist groups as the political subjects of the uprisings, the new actor to catch the imagination of the Arab Spring observers is ‘tribes’. The resurrection of this pre-modern mode of organization bewilders the hopes of progressive post-modernity, illustrated in the social media totem; however, this anthropological
entry in the Arab Spring discourse brings a little-examined actor in the ‘political field’ of the uprising-affected states.
