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The Politics of Memory in Contemporary Baghdad: A Comparative Neighborhood Study
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 August 2023
Extract
Twenty years after the US invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of the Ba‘thist regime, what kinds of historical narratives are starting to emerge among residents of Baghdad about the events of the recent past? How have their experiences with the new Iraqi state over the past twenty years colored Baghdadis’ perceptions of what their lives were like under Saddam Hussein, and how are they making sense of the profound disruptions their city has undergone in the years since 2003? We conducted structured interviews with sixty residents of Baghdad across four different neighborhoods in December 2022 and January 2023 to better understand how Baghdadis are perceiving, interpreting, and narrating changes that have taken place in their neighborhoods during their lifetimes. In light of these interviews, we offer preliminary insights about the politics of memory in contemporary Baghdad: how history, memory, and collective identities intersect in different ways for Iraqis in different parts of the city. How do residents of different Baghdad neighborhoods identify and describe the “good times” and “bad times” of the recent past, and what factors are influencing the construction of their historical narratives?
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press
References
1 Building on the work of Eric Davis's Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005), we seek to emphasize spatially localized and grassroots processes of collective memory and identity formation taking place on a microscale in the city of Baghdad. We also are informed by recent work in the fields of memory studies and oral history to more fully theorize the complicated relationship between personal memories (as expressed in oral history), collective historical narratives held by communities, and the actual events of the past. We draw on Hamilton, Paula and Shopes, Linda, eds., Oral History and Public Memories (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008)Google Scholar; and Anna Laura Stoler with Karen Strassler, “Memory Work in Java: A Cautionary Tale,” in Oral History Reader, ed. Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson, (New York: Routledge, 2016), 370–95.
2 Spatial analysis is increasingly being utilized in history, the social sciences, and adjacent fields of study. Interesting recent examples of this “spatial turn” include a number of Omar Sirri's recent research publications, including Omar Sirri, Destructive Creations: Social-Spatial Transformations in Contemporary Baghdad, LSE Middle East Centre paper series, 45 (London: London School of Economics and Political Science, 2021). We also are influenced by Silver, Hilary, “Divided Cities in the Middle East,” City and Community 9, no. 4 (2010): 345–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mills, Amy and Hammond, Timur, “The Interdisciplinary Spatial Turn and the Discipline of Geography in Middle East Studies,” in Middle East Studies for the New Millennium: Infrastructures of Knowledge, ed. Shami, Seteney and Miller-Idriss, Cynthia (New York: New York University Press, 2016), 152–86Google Scholar; and Gunning, Jeroen and Smaira, Dima, “Who You Gonna Call? Theorising Everyday Security Practices in Urban Spaces with Multiple Security Actors—The Case of Beirut's Southern Suburbs,” Political Geography 98 (2022): 1–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Paula Hamilton and Linda Shopes, “Building Partnerships between Oral History and Memory Studies,” in Oral History and Public Memories, ed. Paula Hamilton and Linda Shopes (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008), x.
4 Snowball sampling is a commonly used approach for identifying potential interviewees in qualitative research studies, and it is a particularly useful method when the selection criteria for a given study is specific enough to make it challenging to find eligible participants. In this case, we sought to speak with long-term residents of specific neighborhoods who were over forty years of age. Given the widespread internal displacement and sectarian cleansing that has taken place within Baghdad, finding long-term residents to interview can be challenging using random sampling methods. Using this sampling method, we asked interviewees to recommend other people that they knew within the neighborhood who met the selection criteria. Each subsequent interviewee then recommended other potential interviewees. For more information about snowball sampling, see Charlie Parker, Sam Scott, and Alistair Geddes, “Snowball Sampling,” Sage Research Methods, 20 September 2019, http://methods.sagepub.com/foundations/snowball-sampling.
5 See, for example, Haddad, Fanar, “‘Sectarianism’ and its Discontents in the Study of the Middle East,” Middle East Journal 71, no. 3 (2017): 363–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 For example, see Jane Arraf, “Fifteen Years after U.S. Invasion, Some Iraqis Are Nostalgic for Saddam Hussein Era,” NPR, 30 April 2018, https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/04/30/605240844/15-years-after-u-s-invasion-some-iraqis-are-nostalgic-for-saddam-hussein-era; and Marsin Alshamary, “Authoritarian Nostalgia among Iraqi Youth: Roots and Repercussions,” War on the Rocks, 25 July 2018, https://warontherocks.com/2018/07/authoritarian-nostalgia-among-iraqi-youth-roots-and-repercussions.
7 Interview S3 (53-year-old man), 6 January 2023, Sadr City.
8 Interview S4 (45-year-old man), 6 January 2023, Sadr City.
9 Interview S3 (53-year-old man), 6 January 2023, Sadr City.
10 Interview S6 (61-year-old man), 5 January 2023, Sadr City.
11 Interview S10 (52-year-old man), 3 January 2023, Sadr City.
12 Interview S2, (58-year-old woman), 26 December 2022, Sadr City.
13 Interview S8 (48-year-old woman), 26 December 2022, Sadr City.
14 Interview S1 (84-year-old man), 26 December 2022, Sadr City.
15 For analysis of historical narratives offered by Iraqi political parties following 2003, see Alaadin, Ranj, Secretarianism, Governance, and Iraq's Future, Brookings Doha Center Analysis Paper (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2018), 7–8Google Scholar, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Sectarianism-governance-and-Iraqs-future_English.pdf.
16 Hamilton and Shopes, “Recreating Identity and Community,” 104, 106.
17 Interview K2 (84-year-old man), 2 January 2023, al-Kadhimiyya.
18 Interview K4 (56-year-old woman), 2 January 2023, al-Kadhimiyya.
19 Interview A9 (41-year-old man), 3 January 2023, al-Adhamiyya.
20 Interview A6 (55-year-old man), 3 January 2023, al-Adhamiyya.
21 Interview S3 (53-year-old man), 6 January 2023, Sadr City; Interview S4 (45-year-old man), 6 January 2023, Sadr City.
22 Interview K4 (56-year-old woman), 2 January 2023, al-Kadhimiyya.
23 Interview K2 (84-year-old man), 2 January 2023, al-Kadhimiyya.
24 Interview K10 (61-year-old man), 7 January 2023, al-Kadhimiyya.
25 Interview K10 (61-year-old man), 7 January 2023, al-Kadhimiyya; Interview K1 (62-year-old woman), 2 January 2023, al-Kadhimiyya.
26 Interview K7 (50-year-old man), 20 December 2022, al-Kadhimiyya.
27 Here we are informed by the theoretical approaches of Gunning and Smaira, “Who You Gonna Call?” 4–5, 9.
28 Interview S8 (48-year-old woman), 26 December 2022, Sadr City; Interview S10 (52-year-old man), 3 January 2023, Sadr City.
29 Interview F1 (58-year-old man), 8 January 2023, al-Fadhil; Interview F3 (56-year-old man), 8 January 2023, al-Fadhil.
30 Interview K1 (62-year-old woman), 2 January 2023, al-Kadhimiyya.
31 Interview F1 (58-year-old man), 8 January 2023, al-Fadhil; Interview F3 (56-year-old man), 8 January 2023, al-Fadhil.
32 Interview K6 (70-year-old man), 20 December 2022, al-Kadhimiyya.
33 Interview K4 (56-year-old woman), 2 January 2023, al-Kadhimiyya.
34 Interview A8 (66-year-old man), 3 January 2023, al-Adhamiyya.
35 Interview S4 (45-year-old man), 6 January 2023, Sadr City.
36 Interview S3 (59-year-old man), 6 January 2023, Sadr City.
37 Interview S10 (52-year-old man), 3 January 2023, Sadr City.
38 Interview S5 (53-year-old woman), 5 January 2023, Sadr City.
39 Interviews S8 (48-year-old woman), 26 December 2022, Sadr City; Interview S9 (63-year-old man), 4 January 2023, Sadr City; Interview S10 (52-year-old man), 3 January 2023, Sadr City.
40 Interview K3 (51-year-old man), 2 January 2023, al-Kadhimiyya.
41 Interview K10 (61-year-old man), 7 January 2023, al-Kadhimiyya.
42 Gunning and Smaira, “Who You Gonna Call?” 4.
43 Interview K1 (62-year-old woman), 2 January 2023, al-Kadhimiyya.
44 Interview K5 (45-year-old man), 2 January 2023, al-Kadhimiyya.
45 Political Scientist Lisa Blaydes also has advanced useful theories about collective identity formation through shared experiences of repression, to which we add an emphasis on how collective experiences are geographically situated and locally experienced. See Blaydes, Lisa, State of Repression: Iraq under Saddam Hussein (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.