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Author: Edward Ziter
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2014-11-04
Total Pages: 251
ISBN-13: 113735898X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Political Performance in Syria, charts the history of a theatre that has sought the expansion of civil society and imagined alternate political realities. In doing so, the manuscript situates the current use of performance and theatre by artists of the Syrian Revolution within a long history of political contestation.
Author: Samer N. Abboud
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Published: 2018-08-08
Total Pages: 304
ISBN-13: 1509522441
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →With more than 500,000 people killed and at least half the population displaced, Syria’s conflict is the most deadly of the twenty-first century. Russia’s decision to join the war has broken the long military and political stalemate but it looks unlikely to deliver any of the core demands that spawned the original uprising against the Ba’athist regime. In this fully revised second edition of his acclaimed text, Samer Abboud provides an in-depth analysis of Syria’s descent into civil war, the subsequent stalemate, and the consequences of Russian military involvement after 2015. He unravels the complex and multi-layered drivers of the conflict and demonstrates how rebel fragmentation, sustained regime violence, international actors, and the emergence of competing centers of power tore Syria apart in wholly irreversible ways. A resolution to the Syrian catastrophe seems to have emerged in the aftermath of Russia’s intervention, but, as Abboud argues, this “authoritarian peace” contains the seeds of continued and future conflict in Syria. While the Assad regime has so far survived, the instability, violence, and insecurity that continue to shape everyday life for the Syrian people portend an uncertain future that will have repercussions on the wider Middle East for years to come.
Author: Jehan Bseiso
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2021
Total Pages: 241
ISBN-13: 0197514642
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →"In February 2012, in its first public position on the unfolding armed conflict in Syria, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) published a series of testimonies gathered from Syrian doctors working in the country. The testimonies described the challenges and horrors facing doctors trying to treat wounded patients and protesters injured by Syrian authorities (MSF 2012). In its report, MSF denounced the use of "medicine as a weapon of persecution" in Syria and called on the government to "re-establish the neutrality of healthcare facilities" (Ibid.) In a press release published a year later, MSF further decried that aid was not being distributed "equally" between government- and opposition-controlled areas and argued that "areas under government control receive nearly all international aid, while opposition-held zones receive only a tiny share." (MSF 2013) In an opinion piece, two MSF staff members criticized humanitarian actors working with the authorization of the Syrian government and called on those aid agencies to recognise "the de-facto partitioning of the state" (Weissman and Rodrigue 2013). Such calls from humanitarian actors, which on other occasions claimed neutrality, played into the polarization of the Syrian conflict. The Syrian government actively controlled aid delivery and distribution from Damascus, with the support of Russia and Iran. Aid from Damascus was distributed by the United Nations, the Syrian Arab Red Crescent society, and a handful of other organizations working in government-controlled areas. Meanwhile, aid was delivered across the borders from neighboring countries by opposition groups, civil society activists, and Western humanitarian actors"--
Author: Lisa Wedeen
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2015-09-09
Total Pages: 271
ISBN-13: 022634553X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Treating rhetoric and symbols as central rather than peripheral to politics, Lisa Wedeen’s groundbreaking book offers a compelling counterargument to those who insist that politics is primarily about material interests and the groups advocating for them. During the thirty-year rule of President Hafiz al-Asad’s regime, his image was everywhere. In newspapers, on television, and during orchestrated spectacles. Asad was praised as the “father,” the “gallant knight,” even the country’s “premier pharmacist.” Yet most Syrians, including those who create the official rhetoric, did not believe its claims. Why would a regime spend scarce resources on a personality cult whose content is patently spurious? Wedeen shows how such flagrantly fictitious claims were able to produce a politics of public dissimulation in which citizens acted as if they revered the leader. By inundating daily life with tired symbolism, the regime exercised a subtle, yet effective form of power. The cult worked to enforce obedience, induce complicity, isolate Syrians from one another, and set guidelines for public speech and behavior. Wedeen‘s ethnographic research demonstrates how Syrians recognized the disciplinary aspects of the cult and sought to undermine them. In a new preface, Wedeen discusses the uprising against the Syrian regime that began in 2011 and questions the usefulness of the concept of legitimacy in trying to analyze and understand authoritarian regimes.
Author: Nikolaos Van Dam
Publisher: I.B. Tauris
Published: 1996-05-15
Total Pages: 248
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Van Dam provides an in-depth analysis of the role of sectarian, regional and tribal loyalties in contemporary Syrian history, and focuses attention on developments within the military and civilian power elite and the Ba'th Party organization.
Author: Raymond Hinnebusch
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Published: 2015-01-02
Total Pages: 360
ISBN-13: 0815653026
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →When Bashar al-Asad smoothly assumed power in July 2000, just seven days after the death of his father, observers were divided on what this would mean for the country’s foreign and domestic politics. On the one hand, it seemed everything would stay the same: an Asad on top of a political system controlled by secret services and Baathist one-party rule. On the other hand, it looked like everything would be different: a young president with exposure to Western education who, in his inaugural speech, emphasized his determination to modernize Syria. This volume explores the ways in which Asad’s domestic and foreign policy strategies during his first decade in power safeguarded his rule and adapted Syria to the age of globalization. The volume’s contributors examine multiple aspects of Asad’s rule in the 2000s, from power consolidation within the party and control of the opposition to economic reform, co-opting new private charities, and coping with Iraqi refugees. The Syrian regime temporarily succeeded in reproducing its power and legitimacy, in reconstructing its social base, and in managing regional and international challenges. At the same time, contributors clearly detail the shortcomings, inconsistencies, and risks these policies entailed, illustrating why Syria’s tenuous stability came to an abrupt end during the Arab Spring of 2011. This volume presents the work of an international group of scholars from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. Based on extensive fieldwork and on intimate knowledge of a country whose dynamics often seem complicated and obscure to outside observers, these scholars’ insightful snapshots of Bashar al-Asad’s decade of authoritarian upgrading provide an indispensable resource for understanding the current crisis and its disastrous consequences.
Author: Derek Hopwood
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-11-26
Total Pages: 208
ISBN-13: 1317818423
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Syria has often lacked sympathetic observers. This book tries to interpret the country and its people in terms of how they see their own history and of what they are trying to achieve. More than a political or diplomatic history, it discusses the economy, society, education and culture to help the reader understand and explain modern Syria. A description of the country deals with the physical and other factors which have influenced Syria’s development. An historical survey concentrates mainly on the period after the Second World War and explains why a knowledge of Syrian history is important and why Syrians look at their history in the way they do. The achievements, problems and failures of President Asad are fully discussed. Further chapters explain the ideological factors which have been of vital importance in Syrian politics, the development of education, the economy and society. The author looks at examples of contemporary Syrian literature and the way in which writers view the problems of their society and culture. This is a clear, succinct and readable account of modern Syria which will be essential for all those studying the Middle East, the developing world or international relations.
Author: Sulayman N. Khalaf
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2023-01-09
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9780367506278
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Studying a rural village in northern Syria during a period of tremendous social and political change (1940s to 1970s), this book offers a unique perspective on how agrarian transformations in land distribution and its use deeply affected social and political relations among a rural community. Embedding the personal with the local and the global, this work traces the seeds of social, political and economic struggles that are still important and unfolding in Syria forty years on: changes in social relations brought about by land policy and technological modernization, divisions and connections between urban and rural locations, shifts in education and immigration. Thematically, the study is divided into two parts: the first concerns the historical, socio-economic and political changes occurring in Syria from the beginning of the twentieth century, and the second concerns the life histories of particular actors and their perspectives on social changes. This book is the edited and updated version of Khalaf's original work, including an 'updating chapter' which brings invaluable insight about the village and its people at the aftermath of ISIS and the destruction of the war in Syria. Focusing on the village community of Hawi Al-Hawa, this intensely knowledgeable and personal account - a rare combination - brings village life in Syria strikingly close. The volume is an important contribution to the fields of anthropology, social sciences, Syrian and Middle East studies.
Author: Richard T. Antoun
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 1991-09-10
Total Pages: 198
ISBN-13: 0791495078
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This book provides a multi-disciplinary understanding of the processes of change in contemporary Syria as well as its historical, social, and cultural underpinnings. A number of distinguished anthropologists, historians, political scientists, and literateurs examine key issues such as the changing Syrian family, political factionalism, the sedentarization of nomads, bureaucratic corruption, rural-urban migration, the development of the Ba'th Party, Syria's political isolation, religious resurgence, and the continued importance of sects in Syrian life. This book strikes a balance between examining the consequences of Syria's geographical and strategic position in international politics and the implications of its internal and highly complex ethnic and class structure and culture. It argues that the religious culture of Syria is as important as the leadership of Asad and, more generally, that an understanding of Syrian politics must be matched by an understanding of Syrian society and culture.
Author: Raymond Hinnebusch
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2004-08-02
Total Pages: 317
ISBN-13: 1134497873
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This study examines the development of the Syrian state as it has emerged under thirty-five years of military-Ba'thist rule and, particularly, under President Hafiz al-Asad. It analyzes the way in which the fragility of the post-independence state, unable to contain rising nationalist struggle and class conflict, opened the way to the Ba'th party's rise to power and examines how the Ba'th's 'revolution from above' transformed Syria's socio-political terrain.
