Date: 23 Jan. 1999
Place: Conference room , Faculty of Letters Annex, The University of Tokyo
Lecturers: IWASAKI Erina, ONO Hitomi

�@Social movements in Tunisia seem to be in a peculiar situation in the 1990s. Until the 1980s, various social movements such as the labor movement, the student's union, the feminist movement, the Islamist movement and the bread riot had played important roles in Tunisian society. But in the 1990s, the Islamist movement, for example, which had demonstrated a high mobilizational power in the 1980s, has weakened its power and grown silent. Other movements also tend to be in a similar situation.
Why is this tendency? Is it because the existing movements are incapable of incarnating the people's desire for social improvement? Or is it because of the socio-political situation which does not necessitate-- even prohibits-- the emergence of movements? To best explain this question, we must analyse:
(1) each movement itself: its ideology, organisation, active members and supporters
(2) the socio-economic situation
(3) the mechanism of the state's rule.
In this presentation, we have surveyed aspects of (1) and (3), using bibliographical data on Tunisia which we collected on behalf of the project entitled "The Development in Maghreb and Social Movements".
The Islamist movement was treated by Ono as an important example of topic (1), above. After giving a precise explanation of the Islamist organisation in Tunisia, she presented some important arguments on the current situation of the Tunisian Islamist movement. Topic (3) was treated by Iwasaki; she surveyed chronologically, the trends of studies dealing with the politic/ state.
Details of our presentation will appear in a Project report along with the bibliographical data.