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Synopsis and book structure Institut Franais du Proche-Orient, Damascus Coordinators: Baudouin Dupret, CNRS Zouhair Ghazzal, Loyola University Chicago The main purpose of our collective project La Syrie au
prsent is to propose new horizons
for research, based on the social sciences, on contemporary Syria. As already
noted during our Damascus meeting on 10 and 11 December 2004, the rarity of
publications on contemporary Syria poses a problem. Moreover, the bulk of
current research focuses mainly on broad political and economic phenomena,
and at times, their social and cultural underpinnings. We would therefore
like to explore the possibility of doubling the broad political and economic stakes
with a dmarche that would take into consideration major social
transformations from the vintage point of view of the social actors (or
users) themselves. A rapid look at recent articles extracted from Internet
databases (see bibliographical annex) points to a certain desire, coming from
researchers which at some point focused on Syria, to transcend the purely
political and economic towards more precise objects of research which would
require a fieldwork experience at a micro level. What we would therefore like
to attempt would be to integrate and experiment with various levels of macro
research in conjunction with smaller fieldwork experiences. In short, our
book shall be composed of broad chapters of synthesis on politics, the
economy, law, society and religion, in conjunction with much shorter
fieldwork experiments. More specifically, the book will be structured around
a dozen articles of synthesis to which will be added some
frames on an image, which are much shorter pieces, and whose
number will finally depend on adequate volunteers with adequate fieldwork
experience. In the final conception of the book, the two partsthat of
syntheses and frames on an imagewill not
be, however, necessarily separated: we are thinking more in the direction of
intermixing the long articles of synthesis along with the other much shorter
ones, so that the latter would act as a counterpoint to the former (the work
directed by Pierre Bourdieu, La Misre du monde, could serve as a model in the way it combines
various texts with different tonalities). Let us illustrate our dmarche with an example.
Syria goes as one of those Arab countries which failed its
transition from a feudal and decentralized Ottoman system towards a liberal
and national Syrio-Arabism. Upon the dismemberment of the
Ottoman Empire, the period of the French mandate pushed for a broadening and
a better hold on the political and economic bases of the urban Syrian
bourgeoisie. Syrias independence was, however, marked by a series of
coups dՃtat, a three-year union with Egypt, suddenly conceived
and then aborted (1958-1961), and then, since 1963, came the accession of the
Baath party to power and its consolidation as an authoritarian rgime.
What is important for us would be to determine which were the most significant
breaks at several levels: the juridical sphere constitutes, for
instance, most probably the easiest level to delimit: since 1949, the sudden
promulgation of the Syrian Code civil
introduced a break within juridical reasoning, as well as in
civil and penal procedures, even though, during the mandate, a quasi-official
French code de facto imposed itself at the margin of the
Ottoman Majalla. Since 1949, Syria did not, however, witness any major
juridical transformation. Would a similar transformation apply as well to the
political and economic? Would that date-event of 1949, which, as far as the
juridical is concerned, was a major breakthrough, apply as well to the
political and economic? And what about the social? It was in
effect not before 1958the union with Egypt and the beginnings of
nationalizationsthat the political and economic foundations of the
Syrian bourgeoisie began a major shakeup for the worse: a process that was
instituted with Nasser in 1958, then consolidated in 1963, prior to its
completion in 1965. In the last four decades, the states control over
the political and economic has considerably weakened the public sphere and
cultural production. But if the period between 1958 and 1965 constituted all
by itself a break which at the same time was political and economicthe end of the
bourgeoisie of the mandatewould the same apply to the
social? It is in effect at this level that all messes
uphence the necessity for fieldwork studies that would bypass the
general framework of synthesis. It is also at this level that
experimentation has no limits, because all would depend on the
access (or lack thereof) that researchers would have for their
respective fieldworks. While at this historical juncture Syria is commonly
represented as undergoingwith so many hesitations and constraintsa
liberal turn, it is the social per se which is
directly implicated. In effect, a great deal of the current research on Syria
proceeds with a methodological shortcut: the state control over the economic
and cultural would imply an effective and total social control
(similar to the notorious total institutions of Erving Goffman).
We find, for instance, that kind of shortcut in Lisa Wedeens Ambiguities
of Domination (Chicago UP, 1999). In her
attempt to study political representations as having a direct
effect on the behavior of individuals, Lisa Wedeen commits a
common error in assuming that the so-called representations act
as if they were Foucauldian disciplinary strategies over the
(apolitical?) subjects who end up in taking them for granted.
But a great distance separates such representations from their
interiorization as normative values. Even if we
assume, for the sake of experimentation, that such
representations consolidate as norms, which would
help organizing the political strategies of assimilation propagated by the
state apparatuses, they would nevertheless be assimilated very
differently among individuals, groups, and regions. In sum, even if what remains of the public sphere seems
much constrained by the state representations, which we normally assume as
corresponding to the dominating political norms, the social and
cultural are overflowing in all directions. Which is precisely
what we expect from the contributions that we have labeled frames on an
image: to bring visibility to housing, the family, sexuality,
education, labor, the arts, tribunals and prisons, the city and its licit and
illicit neighborhoods, the countryside and its villages and
tribes. So many unexplored zones, among many others, but through which we can
discern the life that agitates them, in face of a public
silence that traverses them in every direction. It is that kind of silence
that we would like to break. Tentative schedule -
End of January 2005: Distribution of the present circular,
and authors of the synthesis section are to be individually
solicited. For the section on the frames on an image, other
authors will be solicited, while hoping to receive proposals for additional names
and topics. A call for shorter papers will also be distributed
simultaneously. -
End of July 2005: All articles that have been individually
solicited must be received by that date, either as an email attachment, or
else as hardcopy addressed to the Institut Franais du Proche-Orient,
Damascus. The possibility of circulating all articles among all contributors
remains open. Another possibility: the creation of a website with a password
for the consultation of all contributions as soon as we receive them, and
once all revisions are complete. -
End of December 2005: Communication of commentaries and
suggestions by the coordinators (and, if possible, by other contributors) in
order to redraft the articles for their final versions. -
February 2006: Deadline for submitting the final drafts. -
December 2006:
Publication of La Syrie au prsent. Plan and structure 1. Major presentations (6 to 10 contributions of
30 pages) -
Internal political transformations -
The country and its regional and international insertion -
Economic evolutions and transformations -
The territory, city, rural world, their planning and
transformations -
Cultural anthropology -
Religious practices and representations -
The law, formal and practical structures 2. Frames on an image (20 to 30 contributions of 1 to 5
pages) -
The waqfs -
Tribal structures in the badiya -
Language today -
Demography -
Aleppo -
The bookkeepers -
Fieldwork on public health in Aleppo -
Translation -
Eco-project -
The planning of the neighborhood of the Dummar project -
New trends in the theater -
The provincial towns: the example of Raqqa -
Mobilities between the province and Damascus -
Development of the littoral and djebel Ansariyeh -
Parental authority in the Aleppo souq -
The Conseil dՃtat -
Literary production today -
The cinema -
Muftis and ifta -
Salafism in Aleppo -
The magistrates of Damascus -
The Ghouta -
Water -
Law and the economy -
New information technologies -
Political iconography -
Psychoanalysis today Recent publications We have limited ourselves in this selective list of recent
publications, ordered by date of publication (beginning with the most recent
in 2003), only the articles on contemporary Syria (ca. 1993-2003) with a
sociological or anthropological inclination. Weve mainly relied on the
Sociological Abstracts Internet database (Cambridge Scientific Abstracts).
With an average of 4 to 5 articles a year, the scientific production on Syria
is at best extremely poor. What nevertheless remains memorable in such a list
is the desire, particularly in the last few years, to bypass the traditional
frameworks of research towards less conventional social and cultural topoi.
Hence the interest that such articles might bear on our frames on an
image. We should note, however, that the majority of these authors,
which often work in teams, are not known as students of Syria, and that in
general their contribution for the last decade has been limited to a single
project-article. Moreover, and putting aside few well known cases (e.g.
Wedeen, Perthes and Batatu), such fragmented projects on such themes as
labor, identity, the family, health, and prisons, regrettably did not lead to
a synthesis in the form of a monograph or book. Sato, Noriko, On the
Horns of the Terrorist Dilemma: Syrian Christians' Response to Israeli
"Terrorism", History and Anthropology, 2003, 14, 2, June, 141-155. Rubin,
Michael, Are Kurds a Pariah Minority?, Social Research, 2003, 70, 1, spring, 295-330. Abdelali-Martini,
Malika; Goldey, Patricia; Jones, Gwyn E; Bailey, Elizabeth, Towards a
Feminization of Agricultural Labour in Northwest Syria, The Journal of
Peasant Studies, 2003, 30,
2, Jan, 71-94. Hijazi,
Hussain Mohammad, A Survey of Women in the Informal Sector of Rural Syria, Journal
of Social Affairs, 2003, 20,
79, fall, 291-316. Frisch,
Hillel, The Role of Religion in the Militaries of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, Orient
- Deutsche Zeitschrift fur Politik und Wirtschaft des Orients, 2002, 43, 2, June, 207-224. Maziak, Wasim;
Asfar, Taghrid; Mzayek, Fawaz; Fouad, Fouad M; Kilzieh, Nael,
Socio-Demographic Correlates of Psychiatric Morbidity among Low-Income Women
in Aleppo, Syria, Social Science and Medicine, 2002, 54, 9, May, 1419-1427. Al-Rajab,
Buthaina T; Rahim, Amal Abdel, Unemployment and Deviant Behavior: A Field
Study in Damascus Prisons, Journal of Social Affairs, 2002, 19, 74, summer, 266-298. Turkeya, Baha
El Din, The Influence of Education in Shaping Environmental Awareness among
Housewives: A Field Study in Tartous, Syria, Journal of Social Affairs, 2002, 19, 76, winter, 326-356. Arnon, Sara,
The Influence of a Continuous State of Uncertainty on Social Processes in the
Golan Heights, International Sociological Association, Brisbane, Australia (ISA), 2002. Ngaido,
Tidiane; Shomo, F; Arab, Georges, Institutional Change in the Syrian
Rangelands, IDS Bulletin,
2001, 32, 4, Oct, 64-70. Mouawad, Ray
J, Syria and Iraq-Repression, Middle East Quarterly, 2001, 8, 1, winter, 51-60. Rabinowitz,
Dan; Khawalde, Sliman, Demilitarized, Then Dispossessed: The Kirad Bedouins
of the Hula Valley in the Context of Syrian-Israeli Relations, International
Journal of Middle East Studies, 2000, 32, Nov, 511-530. Hivernel,
Jacques, Bab al-Nayrab, A Suburb of Aleppo, outside the Town and in the City,
tudes rurales,
2000, 155-156, July-Dec, 215-237. Lawson, Fred
H, Explaining Outbreaks of Islamist Revolt in Syria and Nigeria, International
Journal of Contemporary Sociology, 2000, 37, 1, Apr, 7-25. Haklai, Oded,
A Minority Rule over a Hostile Majority: The Case of Syria, Nationalism
& Ethnic Politics, 2000,
6, 3, autumn, 19-50. Kedar,
Mordechai, "Arabness" in the Syrian Media: Political Messages
Conveyed by Linguistic Means, International Journal of the Sociology of
Language, 1999, 137,
141-146. Wedeen, Lisa,
Acting "As If": Symbolic Politics and Social Control in Syria, Comparative
Studies in Society and History, 1998, 40, 3, July, 503-523. Sagy, Shifra,
Effects of Personal, Family, and Community Characteristics on Emotional
Reactions in a Stress Situation: The Golan Heights Negotiations, Youth and
Society, 1998, 29, 3, Mar,
311-329. Hanafi, Sari,
The Ideological Positions of Engineers in Syria, International Sociology, 1997, 12, 4, Dec, 457-473. Lawson, Fred
H, Private Capital and the State in Contemporary Syria, Middle East
Report, 1997, 27, 2(203),
spring, 8-13,30. Sato, Noriko,
'We Are No More in Bondage, We Are Peasants': Memory and the Construction of
Identity in the Syrian Jazirah, Journal of Mediterranean Studies, 1997, 7, 2, 195-217. Winckler, Onn,
Syrian Migration to the Arab Oil-Producing Countries, Middle Eastern
Studies, 1997, 33, 1, Jan,
107-118. Bhinda, Nils,
Economic Liberalisation as "System Maintenance": Economic and
Political Reforms in Syria since 1970, Scandinavian Journal of Development
Alternatives, 1996, 15, 3-4,
Sept-Dec, 233-264. Watenpaugh,
Keith D, "Creating Phantoms": Zaki Al-Arsuzi, the Alexandretta
Crisis, and the Formation of Modern Arab Nationalism in Syria, International
Journal of Middle East Studies, 1996, 28, 3, Aug, 363-389. Jouejati,
Hazar S, Women and Work in Syria, Mid-South Sociological Association
(MiSSA), 1985. Alrabaa, Sami,
Sex Division of Labour in Syrian School Textbooks, International Review of
Education/ Internationale Zeitschrift fur Erziehungswissenschaft/ Revue
Internationale de pedagogie,
1985, 31, 3, 335-348. Drysdale,
Alasdair, The Syrian Political Elite, 1966-1976: A Spatial and Social
Analysis, Middle Eastern Studies, 1981, 17, 1, Jan, 3-30. |