80/ Syria, State Ideology and Climate Politics (With Marwa Daoudy)

This is a conversation with professor Marwa Daoudy, associate professor at Georgetown University and the author of the recently published book The Origins of the Syrian Conflict: Climate Change and Human Security.

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Topics Discussed:

• Climate change did not cause the Syrian revolution, despite this  narrative continuing to dominate in many circles, and why this  deterministic narrative strips away the agency of Syrian revolutionaries

• The  ‘securitization’ of language, how refugees and migrants going to global  north countries are treated through militarized language, and how  calling them ‘climate migrants’ can be problematic

• How did the pre-2011 drought affect the uprising, if at all?

• Bashar Al-Assad urban/rural divide and conquer strategy

• Assad’s neoliberal reforms and their impacts on water and food politics

• The role of ideology (baathism, neoliberalism etc) in Syria

• The  issue of ‘state security’ rhetoric and how a  Human-Environmental-Climate Security (HECS) framework can help  understand reality better

• The relationship between the World Bank and the Syrian regime

• Neo-Malthusian politics and its presence in international politics

• Europe’s extractivist economies and the complicity in scapegoating ‘climate migrants’

• The idea of ‘climate security’ and why it’s problematic

Book Recommendations:

• Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse

• Martin Eden by Jack London

• The Crossing by Samar Yazbeck

• The Impossible Revolution by Yassin Haj-Saleh

• The Shell by Mustafa Khalifa

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• Samira’s Letters on Al Jumhuriya

Music by Tarabeat.