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Nurturing Life and Propelling the Revolution: Water, Oil and Radical Politics in North and East Syria
Abstract
Following the footsteps of anthropologists of the Anthropocene and climate catastrophe, I will argue that communities of North and East Syria are living the realty of environmental catastrophe. Thus the revolutionary experiment unfolding in the region since 2012 can be viewed as a radical feat in securing life on a dying planet. This life affirming trajectory is even more visible when juxtaposed with the necropolitics of both Syrian regime and Turkish state. Through focus on the revolutionary politics in North-East Syria/Rojava, my research perspective aims to bring up the political dimension to the discussion of the impacts of climate catastrophe on local communities. In my paper I will focus in particular on the relations between two basic, yet contradictory on even symbolic level, resources, namely water and oil. I will analyse what seems to be a paradox of relative scarcity of water compared with relative abundance of oil. I’ll argue that water forms the most important nexus of environment and the political in greater Kurdistan region due to the mutually enforcing effects of climate change and “weaponization” of water by Turkish state. While lack of water forms an existential threat to the political project of AANES, the accessible oil reserves have, as I will argue, dual capability of both keeping the revolution alive and undermining its radical and ecological potentials. Following the Marxist and materialist approach, combined with ethnographic observations, in course of my paper I will unravel the ways in which those basic resources shape political landscape of North and East Syria and influence lives of the people and grassroots forms of organisation. In conclusion I will reframe my observations form Syria in the wider context of radical politics in late capitalism and Anthropocene.
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
Kurdistan
Syria
Sub Area
None