What does it mean to be a revolutionary in the Syrian context? And what is the place of ideology? Historically, revolutionaries have not only acted upon social and political injustice – they have also both been driven by ideologies and produced them. Yet few accounts exist of the process of ideology-making and its function in the revolutionary process. This paper draws on five months of multi-sited ethnography (including more than 150 interviews) of transnational, activist networks with members in Beirut, Turkey and Paris and analysis of their social networking sites. The paper tracks how distinct networks of Syrians, collectively belonging to the “peaceful movement” (harakeh silmiyyeh) emerge in Damascus during 2011, how their collective experiences and activism evolved and it explores the consequences of the geographically displacement of these networks as the crisis increasingly militarizes. The paper highlights two crucial questions pertaining to revolutionary ideological saturation; did the revolution end for the peaceful movement during 2012, and how does ideology differ from identity in the Syrian case? The paper argues that the revolutionary moment of 2011 did endure in spite of increasing militarization. Although each interlocutor’s experience is unique, a common pattern of revolutionary stages and a lasting ideological commitment emerges; firstly – strong, affective experiences of uprooting social conventions and the imaginaries sustaining them spark a revolutionary zeal as well as a new political, revolutionary ideology. Secondly, this ideology is saturated and contributes to the gradual evasion of other aspects of mundane life – such as work, family and friends – in tandem with externally imposed structures (i.e. increasing surveillance and harassments by mukhabarat). Established social navigation, relationships and imaginaries were thus radically transformed. And thirdly, intensification of violence and personal threat leads to flight. New strong “revolutionary friendships” were forged in the process of ideology-making. A new horizon of expectations (Koselleck 1979) ascribed by revolutionary ideology kept being enacted despite increasing militarization. And despite disagreements over key political issues (including the place of Islamism) and despite the eventual geographical displacement of these networks, revolutionary solidarity among the members stayed strong and became nurtured through personal interactions and mobility across borders, affective virtual iconography, commemorations and – most importantly – a continuation of revolutionary activism. Finally, the paper seeks to qualify the term “ideology” as a particular theoretical category to grasp ongoing transformations in Syria – one which transcends sectarian and ethnic identities and accumulates differently among Syrian revolutionaries in comparison with other cases of revolution.

Since March 2011, the Syrian revolution has been shaped by a discursive battle between, first, the regime and its peaceful opponents and, under conditions of escalating violence, an array of opposition forces. In the media, state and non-state actors have vied for the right to tell an authoritative story of events in Syria. This struggle has been reflected among intellectuals and activists of various generations, who have drawn on political theories of revolution to frame the chaos of events in Syria within narratives of sociopolitical transformation that have recognizable ends and implicit legitimacy. The sources for these narratives of revolution reflect a range of sources, from classical leftist thought to contemporary social theory. Meanwhile, Syria’s creative producers – makers of literature and film – are typically seen to provide the raw material for these theories by bearing witness to a nation’s devastation, on one hand, and its people’s unfaltering resolve, on the other. But can events in Syria be so smoothly translated into existing theories of revolution? If we can acknowledge the possibility of breakdowns in this process, then how might we engage with Syria’s cultural actors not just as witnesses, but as creative participants in the task of theorization itself? More broadly, what insights into Syria’s ongoing transformation might be lost when scholarship limits itself to reproducing accounts of seamless revolutionary witnessing and theorization? This paper combines readings of short documentary films by the Abounaddara Collective and a recent wave of sociological studies by a new generation of secular, anti-regime activists. It suggests that the micro-focus of these works reflects a turn among Syrian intellectuals and cultural producers towards documenting the local after decades of dictatorship supported by macro-ideologies. Through its readings, this paper complicates the above account of revolutionary theorization by drawing attention to two points of tension that unsettle these sociological and creative works: Syria’s Islamic movements, on one hand, and pro-regime Alawite communities, on the other. It does so in order to draw our attention to the difficult but necessarily innovative intellectual and creative labor these activists are performing to theorize a Syrian revolution that does not - even, for some, cannot - conform to pre-existing narratives of sociopolitical change. Rather, this paper suggests that it is around these sites of purported revolutionary breakdown in Syria that truly localized narratives of sociopolitical transformation are emerging.

What does the revolution mean to Syrian refugees? While perspectives are as numerous and contested as are parties to the conflict, a shared understanding is coalescing among the subset of the pre-revolution population that has fled the homeland. My ethnographic research and extended interviews with more than 150 Syrians in Jordan and Turkey show how individuals’ narratives coalesce into a collective narrative whose arc emphasizes change in the source, functions, and consequences of political fear. In this telling, the meaning of revolution is marked in a chronology of four phases of fear. Before the uprising, fear was a pillar of the coercive authority of the state. Surveillance and repression generated obedience by instilling in citizens a dread of punishment and sense of the futility of resistance. In spring 2011, popular demonstrations generated a new experience of fear as a personal barrier. In mustering a capacity to act despite or through fear, many protestors discovered a sense of self and purpose that had been subjected. Subsequently, as the rebellion militarized and the regime responded with indiscriminate violence, fear emerged as a way of life. Relentless danger of physical death was alternatively terrorizing and normalized as the encompassing context of the everyday, yet not with the subjugating effects of the pre-revolutionary system. Finally, flight from the homeland and protraction of devastating war gave rise to new fears of an uncertain future. Personal instability, as well as threats to the very existence of state and nation, produced anxiety and a struggle to counter it with hope and faith. This trajectory – from an imposed, silencing fear to a self-referential, transformational fear, to a (partly) normalized fear and then an existential, exilic fear – reveals how some Syrians understand the meaning of revolution. Moreover, it shows how, after decades of authoritarian rule, ordinary people’s narration of their own history is an act of voice and agency paralleling the act of protest itself. Their testimonials help us understand events in Syria, and also what constitutes revolutions in general.

In the context of the Syrian Revolution, we will look at the transformation of the social capital. We define “revolution” as a brutal and unanticipated transformation of the various capitals (social, economic, cultural) and of the relations between various fields such as the political, religious, judiciary and economic ones. Moreover, we use Bourdieu (1980)’s definition of social capital as opposed to Putnam (2003)’s or Coleman (1988)’s. This paper is based on a qualitative methodology and derives from two fieldworks undertaken in December 2012-January 2013 and August-September 2013 in the rebel-held areas of Northern Syria and in Turkey. In total, more than 150 semi-structured interviews were realized with Syrians from all over the country. First, we show that the activists in the first (peaceful) phase of the mobilization do not mobilize their social capital. Faced with a repressive regime, protesters had to hide their identity when they mobilize, making weak links ineffective, and even cutting ties with their friends and relatives to get involved in the movement. In addition, prerevolutionary social positions in Syria do not predict participation in the 2011 mobilization. Second, during the peaceful protests, new social networks were forged, creating effectively a "revolutionary social capital". When rebels took control of the first areas, from 2012 onwards, this revolutionary capital played then a central role in the formation of the insurgent civil institutions. Syria in that sense shows that institutions can be the result, in revolutionary contexts, of a formalization of social networks. At the same time, for those who did not participate in the protest, the civil war led to a tremendous loss of social capital. In consequence, Syrians in rebel-held areas have two social capitals, one pre-revolutionary and one revolutionary, which, according to the setting, can strengthen, weaken or have no effect on one another. Third, we show that pre-revolutionary social positions play a role later in accessing the institutions created by revolutionaries. Indeed, previous social hierarchies influence the conversion of revolutionary social capital into institutional positions (and economic resources). While the most modest groups have largely engaged in the insurgency, the middle class quickly monopolized the civil institutions in Syria and the representative institutions, outside Syria, were mostly staffed with people from the internationalized elite. In other words, the mobilization and the civil war changed radically the social structure in Syria, creating a rift in the new revolutionary elites.