FOREWORD
Ethnicity, nationalism and the unitary state in the Middle East: The case of the Kurds
Faleh A. Jabar and Hosham Dawod
With the advent of the 21 st century, ethnic relations are assuming the central role that nationalism occupied at the beginning of the 20th century, when the principle of self-determination was heralded by two contrasting leaders: the revolutionary Russian Vladimir Lenin and the liberal American Woodrow Wilson. Since more than 8000 languages dot the planet, and dozens of religions and races mix with them, these markers of ethnicities are trapped in fewer than 200 states, the very political units that may satisfy nationalist yearnings. Ethnicity may prove to be thornier and more problematic. The case of the Kurds is now to the fore. And Iraq, the focus of international politics, is its arena.
This volume approaches the ethnic question in a specific region, the Middle East, and on the basis of a specific case, the Kurds, focusing most attention on Iraq, where the first Kurdish federal polity is taking shape.
The book examines ethnicity from a wider theoretical perspective, scrutinizing the long-accepted underpinnings of what ethnicity is and is not. Most importantly, it develops, through a diversified critique of modernist, essentialist and historical schools, a more complex and fluid understanding of ethnicity. The role of language, material culture and religion is examined, together with the role of social organization — tribe, sect, Sufi lodges and city — in defining the ethnic self. Cases are drawn not only from Iraq but also from the modem or recent history of Iraq, Turkey and Iran.
The authors of this volume include, among others, Fred Halliday, Martin Van Bruinessen, Joyce Blau, Maria O'Shea, Sami Zubaida, Gareth Stansfield and Michael Gunter, each authors of works on the Kurds or the Middle East.
They hail from various disciplines that combine history, anthropology and sociology with politics, geography and linguistics, lending the debate a rich and intricate character.
Faleh A. Jabar is Director of the newly established Iraq Institute for Strategic Studies. His books include The Shi'ite movement in Iraq (Saqi).
Hosham Dawod is an anthropologist at the Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique and co-editor with Faleh A. Jabar of Tribes and Power: Nationalism and Ethnicity in the Middle East (Saqi).
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