Using a recurring “celebrity profile” section in a daily newspaper, I argue for reconsidering the historical periodization of post-independence, pre-Ba’ath Syria. While some contemporary scholarship views the 1958 formation of the United Arab Republic (UAR) as the end of a phase of (albeit unstable) parliamentary rule, I argue for the continuous presence of a developmentalist political culture that spans both the pre-UAR and Ba’ath periods. Specifically, I focus on the Damascus-based periodical "al-Ayyām", affiliated with the National Party [al-kutlah al-waṭaniyya] and, by extension, the country’s post-independence elite. In the politically precarious environment of 1962, publications like "al-Ayyām" attempted to personify a vision of technocratic, state-led development and cultural “progress” through a series of recurring interviews with prominent public figures. The politicians, administrators, scholars, and entertainers profiled in the resulting “Chatter on the Go” (dardasha ʼala al-māshī) section serve as more than an attempt to humanize a system whose chronic instability had become unavoidably apparent. Though the interviews follow a similar lighthearted format, each subject provides a unique perspective on the effort to embody a program of state-led, Western aligned societal “development”. These profiles not only serve as a unique testament to a conjunctural moment at which this regime's future remained quite uncertain- they speak to an emerging method of public engagement and mobilization that the Ba’ath Party would adapt to its advantage in the years to come. While contemporary historiography of this period describes an increasingly marginalized Syrian elite rendered incapable of projecting its own legitimacy through either advocacy or coercion, periodicals from over a year after the UAR’s dissolution show the ability of popular media to define and humanize an aura of stability, as well as the resilience of a developmentalist narrative that would transcend this particular political era. The lighthearted interviews of “Chatter on the Go”, and the recurring ethos of state-led popular mobilization and technocratic development that they reflect, testify to a more gradual evolution from what some have termed the “democratic” 1950s to the more explicitly authoritarian order that would follow.

My research focuses on the emergence of a new set of ideas and practices of childrearing in the formative years of modern Turkey (1923-45). I analyze the ways in which the political and the intellectual webs surrounding the Children’s Protection Society (CPS) and their discussions on social hygiene, can provide us with a new understanding on children’s spaces and on children’s health in Turkey. I ask how the newly emerging children’s spaces (like daycare centers, playgrounds, nursing rooms, milk centers, children’s libraries, theaters, pedagogical museums, and specialized medical rooms for infant, child, and mother care) reflect a new understanding of childhood and puericulture that needed specialized, enclosed, and protected spaces of their own. This paper discusses the transformation of the socio-spatial order and focuses on an innovative architectural structure, named Cocuk Sarayi (Children’s Palace). Designed by the CPS, Children’s Palace can be positioned at the center of the modern scientific discourse on social hygiene and childrearing in 1930s. Children’s Palace, acting like a complex, included a daycare center, outdoor playground, a swimming pool, dormitory, a milk center (distributing sterilized milk, and regulating wet nursing), soup kitchen, public and private baths, a library for children, a dispensary for children, and a delivery room (also providing supervision during pregnancy). Children’s Palace can be analyzed as a space of encounter between Ottoman and Turkish forms of charity, a space through which state can control destitute children (“potential juvenile delinquents”), a space of interaction between children, mothers, nurses and state officials, or as a space where the modern state displayed and legitimized its agenda on hygiene and scientific childrearing practices. By analyzing this complex, I try to understand what these newly formed children’s spaces tell us about politics of social hygiene and modernity in 1930s. How they served to the medicalization of childrearing practices in the post-war demographic recovery in Turkey? And, how they acted as performative and symbolic spaces shaping the imagery and the iconography of the nation state? In my research I use ethnographic data, oral accounts, publications, maps, and statistics of the Children’s Protection Society, as well as the newspaper coverages on the CPS’s centers, and try to blend them into a broader theoretical discussion on hygiene, space, and childhood.

With the exception of the French Protestant parish of Beirut established during the interwar period, the presence of French Protestant organizations in mandatory Syria and Lebanon has been given little attention. Explanations for this neglect include the lack of a significant indigenous French protestant community associated with these organizations; and the difficulty to place French protestantism within the geopolitics and sectarian institutional organization of the mandate. Indeed, the epithet “French” could be a practical cover for international social, humanitarian or missionary work in a colonial setting, rather than an apt characterization for these organizations. French Protestant activities developed out of the circumstances created by the departure of German Protestant missions in 1918, and the establishment of the French mandate. It revolved around two poles. The first one, established in 1922, was the Strasbourg-based Action Chrétienne en Orient (ACO), an offshoot of the German Hilfsbund für christliches Liebeswerk im Orient that could no longer access Syria and Lebanon. The ACO prioritized humanitarian help to Armenian refugees, and missionary work within Armenian Protestant communities and towards Muslim. The second pole included the French Protestant Parish of Beirut and the Oeuvres Protestantes Françaises en Syrie et au Liban, which had been created to occupy the buildings of former German missions, in keeping with the terms of the Versailles treaty. This second pole was connected with the Protestant colonial missionary circles in Paris, and was much closer to the mandatory power. This rough description seems to locate both streams of French Protestantism vis-à-vis the colonial authorities, one keeping a distance from them while the other worked in synergy with the French. Yet this simplistic characterization fades for a host of reasons: time, which led the ACO to develop connexions with the colonial authorities; the influence of Catholic organizations over the mandatory authorities; the links between both Protestant circles; and the type of work they did (education, protection of women and children, YMCA-style concern for labor laws, dispensaries, handwork for refugee women…). These organizations present a contrasted outlook on the mandate indeed, but one which helps understand how the colonial authorities subcontracted social matters to a number of organizations, French and otherwise, who could therefore maintain a certain margin of autonomy in the choice of their fieldwork and sources of funding.

In the aftermath of the 1908 Revolution, the province of Aleppo saw a rapid succession of governors. An important, but challenging posting, the province centered on a city that was a bustling commercial center surrounded by fertile plains extending to its north and east. In the west, mountains provided ecological diversity for varied crop production, but also posed an obstacle to more robust infrastructure connecting the city with its closest port in Iskenderun. To the east, marginal lands suitable for dry farming bordered arid scrub pastures where pastoralists held sway. In this linchpin of a province, which facilitating flows between Anatolia and provinces further south, the final decades of the nineteenth century and the first few years of the twentieth had seen local elites consolidate their power through their control of key posts and offices within the provincial administration. Thus, reform-minded governors intent on expanding infrastructure and boosting the regional economy as well as the reach and influence of the centralizing state found themselves facing a myriad of challenges. Yet in-depth research into the dynamics of this state of affairs in Aleppo is largely lacking in the historiography. Using documents from Ottoman, French, and British archives and libraries, this paper seeks to provide perspective on this period by focusing on a series of reports sent by Aleppo’s governors to the central government in the years immediately after the 1908 revolution. In the face of environmental challenges and daunting political dynamics, the paper argues that they prioritized carving out areas of national economic sovereignty and expanding the province’s infrastructure. These reports conveyed both their assessment of the province’s possibilities for development as well as their critiques about the current condition of its infrastructure and administration. Detailing the state of the region’s roads, railroads, schools, and bridges, exploring the possibilities for hydroelectric power and swamp drainage, and issuing proposals to beef up the province’s security and root out corruption, their observations and proposals provide insight not only into how the empire’s project of state centralization had been taken advantage of by local elites, but also how these governors conceived of their roles as representatives of the new constitutional government and intermediaries vis-à-vis the local population. Some were more intent than others on demonstrating to the province’s population that they intended to pursue the ideals of the revolution as they conceived them, which in turn impacted how much they were able to accomplish.

This paper explores the non-elite understanding of public health and investigates popular ideas about what a modern citizen should/can do to stay healthy. Historians of modern Iran have studied the role of public health in the Iranian process of top-down modernization, but these studies mostly inform us of the elite’s view of the society. Thus, we do not know much about the everyday experience of the people who were pressured to change their lifestyle to fit in the new and modernized Iran. To fill the gap, this paper focuses on the medical knowledge that was accessible for a broader non-elite audience. It examines the role of medical knowledge in everyday life of the Iranian modern middle class and explores people’s understanding of medical specialists as a professional group. The previous literature emphasizes that the Iranian modern middle class professionals used their expert knowledge to enhance their social position in the society. This paper complements previous research by suggesting that the modern middle class’s efforts to improve their social status was not completely successful in the case of medical professionals. Although the reference to specialist knowledge is visible throughout mid-20th century magazines, visiting specialists was often not the people’s first course of action, especially for mental issues. Instead, middle class individuals were encouraged to correct and heal themselves on their own, by pursuing science, philosophy, or self-edification, or by reading and communicating with popular magazines to enhance their knowledge. Relying on several issues of Ettela’at weekly and Ettelaat Monthly published between 1941-1951, this paper further argues that the medical knowledge published in these magazines offered an alternative to seeking professional help for the middle class, which is visible in the readers’ communication with the magazines. The offered alternatives ranged from theoretical insights about certain illnesses to providing practical and behavioral solutions for preventing or treating abnormalities. This paper discusses the frequent mocking of physicians and medical specialists in such popular magazines, and puts forwards a hypothesis to partially explain it. I suggest that the popularization of medical knowledge, in turn, could have subverted the social status of medical professionals, which may explain the prevalence of jokes, cartoons, and satire targeted at medical professionals. Thus, by turning the focus away from books written by professionals towards popular magazines, this paper sheds light on an aspect of the history of medicalization and professionalization in Iran deserving of more study.