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toby dodge/bassel salloukh talk (2020-12-22)

Tags: grad school, sectarianism

Salloukh - lebanon

  • sectarian order was not guarenteed
  • sectarianism was never the dominant mode of affilication, neither before 1861 or after
  • created in 1920 as a country for sects
  • intra-maronite debates dominated the early discussions of lebanon
  • post-1960 demands of sectarian identities came as a result of the post-war pheonom
  • constructs around sectarianism?
    • coexistience without association
    • hourani’s “views of lebanon”
    • lebanon’s sectarianism as a result of convience
    • the understanding of sectarianism (even if it does have power) does not imply that it holds historical value
  • elites depend on violence and growing army as a result of a weak tax base, weak institutional capacity based on the british empire focused on extraction, and a new ruling elite without legitimacy
  • mobilization of people among socialeconomic lines to challenge the system (students and labor)
    • pre-war economy dominated by the christians
  • labor movements after pax-syriana (1990’s)
    • literally colonized by the sectarian parties
  • “bureacrry of the state becomes an archipeligo of clientalist networks”
    • financing of the bloated public sector and reconstruction
    • how to finance the debt?
  • hairiri’s reconstruction and elite usage of the state as a tool for clientialist recruitment
    • public sector amounts to 300,000+ employees
    • only capital inflows maintained this state
    • lebanon benefited from 2008 financial system
  • is Lebnaon an “rentier” state? With the resources being the clearinghouse of the financial system?
  • creation of the independent political movement
    • took the 2017 protests to accerlate the destruction
    • problem with these protests intentionally try to not politize themselves
      • failure to organization along political lines plays into the hands of the sectarian system
        • sectarian system is particularly good at disaggregating non-sectarian political systems
    • 2019 crisis
    • as long as opposition is ngo lead, sectarian leaders are confortable with that
    • many ngo’s are focused on survival

Dodge - iraq

  • southern iraq still houses world’s oldest churches
  • sabians?
  • percy cox?
  • french played an instrumental role in weaponizing sects, french groups saw lb as a place composed of sectarian groups
  • most interesting battles in lebanon’s formation are intra-sect, not inter-sect
  • 48 - civil war presented as a battle b/w christians & muslims, but
  • shia marjia -> formation of the dawa party
    • Muhammad Baqir as-Sadr -> recgonition that society has been radically transformed by urbanization and integration into a regional and global economy
      • his writings and economic systems are influenced by marx and european sociology
  • 68-2003
    • ideaology transfomration to arab nationalism to iraq nationalism
    • sanctions stabilized the ba’athist regime
    • salah al-din forumla/principals (1992 conference)
      • ahmed chalabi
        • exiles who created development of iraq that was sectarian
      • elevation of these exiles into government in 2003
    • dual process of 2003
      • unapologically imperial mission to transformation into a neoliberal state by ignoramouses
      • fueled by the exiles’s views
      • bremmer’s need to put an iraqi face on
      • strictly view of Iraq that was sectarian
      • even if you don’t see yourself as sectarian, access to state services must require sectarian understnadings
      • sectarianization from above, through the gifting of the state after the 2003 invasion
        • reproduction and regeneration of the sectarian system from above
        • “delays” as a parlimentary tactic
    • reprodcution of sectarianism via a social issue
  • nouri al-maliki
    • was the government built to strip the state and disaggregate it?
    • contract four
      • head of integrity
      • senior civil servants raise tender and pay these contracts
        • these senior civil servants became divided among the political parties
        • each minister is aligned, but the senior civil servants are aligned to all major parties
        • negotiated after each elections
          • over 500 after the 2018 elections
            • spigots for state corruption
    • before 2006
      • prime minister as a weak coordinator
      • maliki was originally seen as weak and controllable
      • maliki disinterrs a republican era law, he begins to appoint senior civil servants
        • expands his network below the ministerial level
        • expands to be at the heart of network of power
        • knits together the archiplego of networks
          • same in army
    • 2010 elections
      • elites threatened by maliki and also non-sectarian movements
      • barzani democratizes maliki’s network in civil servants
        • walkala system
          • allocates the senior civil servants to the system
      • “democratizes” the ability after each election to asset strip the state after each election
    • this system gets reapportioned, at its source, a corrupt complicitly
      • senior teirs of civil servants raise and commission the contracts
    • electoral particpation has dropped dramatically
      • broad population has turned thier back on the asset stripping
      • sectarian rhetoric no longer works, overt sectarian rhetoric has declined, but sublimial mobilziation is no longer there
  • production of oil in iraq from 2005-2010
    • far more resource into iraq than lebanon
  • ngo’s as an industry
    • professor escobar altorouas in the ngo industry
    • wealth from oil transferred into ngo’s?
    • separate from the iraqi state, dispersing foreign aid, who do they empower?
    • ngos have not managed to gain autonomy from the system
  • is the titanic sinking in iraq?
    • finance minister is suggesting structurala djustment