Politics, Agriculture and Labour in Syria (1921-1963)
My project examines the construction of ethno-religious and socio-economic difference in north-eastern Syria (Jazira) during the French Mandate and early post-colonial period (1921-1963), with particular attention to migration, property, and agricultural labour. It explores how French colonial and post-colonial Syrian state policies governing agriculture and settlement—and their appropriation, negotiation, and contestation by local actors—shaped new political, social, and economic hierarchies. In the aftermath of the First World War, Jazira, with its vast expanses of sparsely populated and uncultivated land, became home to diverse local and refugee populations of different ethnic, religious, and social backgrounds, including Kurds, Arabs, and Christians of different denominations. In this predominantly rural region, access to land became a crucial means of survival, socio-economic advancement, and political claim-making. At the same time, through their labour and cultivation of the land, these populations became central to Jazira’s agricultural expansion and wider economic transformation. Situated at the intersection of the politics of difference and the history of capitalism, the project moves beyond conventional political and imperial histories of Syria. It investigates how access to property and participation in agricultural labour contributed to the making of ethnic, sectarian, and class subjectivities, while situating Jazira’s transformation within the intertwined histories of Syrian state-making and global capitalism.
2018/ 2019
The Making of Modern Syria: Sect, Land, Politics and Violence (1915–1946)
This study aims to investigate the governing of ethno-religious difference through exploring the management of the land issue in Syria under the French mandate and its aftereffects in the postcolonial period. “The land question” addresses a set of political, economic, ideological, judicial and cultural issues. Viewed in this way, the land issue is a question not only of economic history, but also of social history, implicating a redefinition in the relationship between land and the individual/community/nation. The practices and discourses surrounding the land issue are also formative in the making of modern state power and citizenship practices as well as in claims of sovereignty at all levels. The nature of the struggle over the use, revenue and distribution of land where the colonial agency is claimed to have played a marginal role leads to the second theme of this project: sectarianism, namely the governance of cultural (ethnic or religious) difference that often, but not always provided the political and social underpinnings of the contest over land. The field of ethno-religious difference, in the Syrian case, is one where the role of the colonial power is overrated and is primarily dominated by political and intellectual history accounts. One of the intentions of this project, then is to draw out how ideas about cultural difference (i.e. ethnic and religious identifications) have been bound up with political, economic, social and even epistemological projects of difference-making. This study, in particular, will focus on the socio-economic project of difference-making. It will hold a multi-sited archival research and delve into the debates on land dispute and settlement in three frontier regions with politically contested new settlements and mixed land tenure systems in French-Syria.
2017/ 2018
Governing Land and Politics of Difference in Syria (1920-1946)
This study intends to investigate the workings of colonial politics of difference and management of population through the governance of land and property in French-Syria. Seemingly a pure political-economic issue, the land question is intrinsically linked to the maintenance of political order and management of populations. It addresses a set of political, economic, judicial and social issues. Providing the political and social underpinnings of the nature of the contest over land and property is the field of ethno-religious difference. In the Syrian case, the field has been dominated by “primordialist” assumptions. However, ethnic and religious identifications are not fixed social categories; their significance is bound up with political, economic, social and even epistemological projects of difference-making on the imperial and national levels. This project will deal with the economic project of difference-making by investigating the politics of new settlements and mixed land tenure systems in the city of Homs, and in two multi-ethnic frontier regions in Syria during the French Mandate.