Urban Violence in the Middle East: between Empire and Nation-State - Städtische Gewalt im Nahen Osten: zwischen Imperium und National Staat
Final Report Abstract
This joint Anglo-German research project investigated the emergence and different forms of public and popular violence in selected Ottoman, Arab and Iranian cities from the early 19th century to the 1960s in a synchronic comparative approach. It addressed the diachronic question of the role of processes of nation building beginning in the late 19th century and national politics of the 20th century with regard to the question of differences in the ways in which urban conflict played out. In following the motto that 'context matters', the project avoided simplistic and generalizing labels of Middle Eastern cities as 'violent societies' and integrated its findings into discussions on urban violence which were developed with regard to other world regions. The joint team effort included the organization of two international conferences in Berlin (2011) and London (2013) which was preceded and followed-up by regular team meetings, and the compilation of two edited volumes, the first of which was compiled by the team in Berlin, the second in London. Besides their conceptual work on and contributions in the two volumes, the 6 project members conducted individual research projects which included extensive field work. The first volume contains a comprehensive theoretical and conceptual introduction to the thematic of urban violence in the Middle East including a reflection on the so-called Arab Spring of 2011 and the historical (dis-) continuities revealed in the events. The second volume problematizes the nature of textual sources and their use for historical analysis in a section that specifically deals with semantic reflections on violence, space and event. In presenting and contextualizing a broad variety of case studies (select conference contributions and the individual research of the project members), the two volumes stress the importance of urban space as an element of public violence and a tool to analyse it; they fine-tune the understanding of the relationship between different forms of violence which cannot be understood without considering their symbolic meanings and the structural and systemic forms of abuse embedded in urban polities and societies; and they highlight the importance of scales in the study of public violence and hence the colonial/national and international orders that played a crucial role in defining patterns of violent mobilisation inside urban centres.
Publications
- 2013. 'Violence factueuse, enjeux internationaux et regulation ottomane de la confictualité urbaine à Tripoli d'Occident entre XVIIIe et XIXe siècles', in Rémi Dewière and Gunes Isiksel "Tripoli, port de mer, port de désert". Hypothèses Université Paris I Sorbonne, 395-404
Lafi, N.
- 2014. Urban Governance Under the Ottomans. Between cosmopolitanism and conflict. London, New York: Routledge (SOAS/Routledge studies on the Middle East ; 21)
Freitag, U., Lafi, N. (eds.)
- 2015. Urban Violence in the Middle East. Changing Cityscapes in the Transition from Empire to Nation State, New York: Berghahn (Space and place ; 14)
Freitag, U., Fuccaro, N., Ghrawi, C, Lafi, N. (eds.)
- Violence and the City in the modern Middle East. Stanford University Press, 2016
Fuccaro, N. (ed.)
