From Recognition to Redistribution? Protest Movements in Iraq in the Age of ‘New Civil Society’

ABSTRACT

Based on in-depth fieldwork, this article explores protest movements in Iraq drawing on theorizations on NGOization, civil society and social movements. I situate the protests within the country's social, political and economic contexts. Then, I look at women and youth's involvement showing the importance to consider the traumatic experience of sectarian and political violence to understand their organizing and demands. I argue that Iraqis have experienced the collapse of a strong authoritarian welfare centralized state, a process that started in the 1990s and was accelerated by the 2003 US invasion. Thus, instead of neoliberal politics, the country has experienced ‘shock doctrines’ with aggressive privatizations coupled with exacerbated militarization.

KEYWORDS:

• Iraq
• civil society
• protests
• social movement
• Tahrir Square
• feminism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 I conducted fieldwork research in March–April 2016, May 2017 and in February–March 2019. This research is also informed by a former ethnography of women’s political and social organizations conducted in Baghdad (mostly) and in Erbil and Sulaymaniyah (Iraqi Kurdistan) between October 2010 and June 2012.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by British Institute for the Study of Iraq and Social Science Research Council.

Notes on contributors

Zahra Ali

Zahra Ali is a sociologist and Assistant Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University-Newark. Her research explores dynamics of women and gender, social and political movements in relation to Islam(s) and the Middle East and contexts of war and conflicts with a focus on contemporary Iraq. She is the author of Women and Gender in Iraq: between Nation-building and Fragmentation published by Cambridge University Press in 2018.