Middle East : Topics & Arguments (May 2014)

The Politics of Social Action in Morocco

  • Shana Cohen

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2, no. 0
pp. 74 – 82

Abstract

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This paper analyses the attitudes of public sector professionals toward work in order to understand how a neoliberal policy orientation in Morocco has affected the relationship between social identity and political practice. The paper suggests that policy reforms have undermined the association between social identity and the nation-based social and political purpose of public institutions and instigated new dependence in self-identification and political practice on relations with low-income service users. Professionals no longer act to preserve a conceptual identification like the middle class, instead finding political and social meaning through demonstrating the capacity to defy institutional rules and policy expectations of behaviour.

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