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Dodge - Bourdieu goes to Baghdad [91f18e55]

Tags: papers

  • Argues against the primordialist and ethnosymbolic theories, alongside the analysis of artificial state theories of iraq

  • Poposes forward 4 identities that are rooted in history and not just the past 15 years:

    • Kurdish identity

    • Shia

      • Subsequent Sunni
    • Iraqi
    • Pan Arab

1. Bourdieu Influences

  • Uses the key analytical concepts of 'field' and 'capital'

    • Field is what comprises society, society is made up of various autonomous social microcosms

      • Political field -> is this dominated by secular nationalism or islam umma?
      • Bureaucratic/administrative field -> politicans play here

    • Capital is what people can deploy to contest a field

      • Economic capital
      • Social capital -> extent of one's network
      • Cultural capital -> Culture's stratifying power in society

      • Symbolic capital -> "It is the struggle for symbolic power within Iraq's political field that has the main explanatory focus"

        • Symbolic power legitimize power relations -> writers, teachers, journalists weild symbolic capital

2. Arab Nationalism

  • Post mandate
  • Largely formed to drive the british out
  • British actually re-invaded after 1941 and stamped this out

  • Social capital was fracatured between senior military and Baath party post 1958 coup

3. Iraqi Identity

  • Emphasized by the ahali (the People) group after 1931, mostly Leftism, Liberal Democracy, and Iraqi nationalism
  • Also promoted by the iraqi communist party
  • abdul karim qasim helped solidify the Iraqist place within the political field

  • Baath's seizure of power in 1968 shut out the communists, and reinterpreted iraqists for itself

    • "Mesopotamianism"
    • Incorporated parts of the Kurdish identity post 1975 Algiers Agreement
    • Incorporated parts of the shia identity post 1977 mass protests of the Marad al-Ras

4. Shia identity

5. Kurdish nationalism