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‘Bourdieu goes to Baghdad’: Explaining hybrid political identities in Iraq
Author(s) -
Dodge Toby
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of historical sociology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.186
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1467-6443
pISSN - 0952-1909
DOI - 10.1111/johs.12189
Subject(s) - vision , politics , nationalism , identity (music) , field (mathematics) , sociology , habitus , capital (architecture) , middle east , gender studies , political economy , epistemology , political science , social science , aesthetics , history , law , anthropology , cultural capital , philosophy , ancient history , mathematics , pure mathematics
This paper critiques the primordial and ethnosymbolic theories of identity that have come to dominate explanations of Iraq's descent into violent instability after the 2003 invasion. It argues that Iraq's contemporary politics can only be understood by examining its history over the longue durée not the past fifteen years. The paper critically interacts with modernist theories of nationalism and their relevance to explaining identities in the Middle East. It then deploys the work of Pierre Bourdieu, specifically his notion of field and capital, to explain the relationship between four ‘principles of visions' that have competed to dominate Iraq's political field.