City and Identity in Modern Iraq

Baghdad and Nation Building
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-1-032-94777-8
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 268 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 573 g

Reihe: Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Geography

City and Identity in Modern Iraq examines the role of Baghdad in the process of shaping collective identity and analyzes how different visions of citizenship have changed the face of the city. Since the establishment of the modern state in 1921, the capital city was central to questions of belonging and the country’s social stability. Each phase of the city’s history offers insights into processes of identity and nation-building that can be found nowhere else.

The book traces Baghdad’s evolution from being a “melting pot” for all Iraqis to becoming an epicenter of division after 2003. The focus is on the era following the American occupation and how the city regained its role in constructing inclusive visions of nationality in recent years. Due to the lack of suitable methodologies, the new concept of “cultural capacity” is developed and implemented here. It serves as a tool to analyze the city’s cultural heterogeneity, the accessibility of its spaces for social interaction and the visibility it offers to different forms of belonging on the micro, mezzo and macro levels. The spaces with the highest relevance for these processes are thoroughly documented to provide insights from the everyday perspective of life. Findings are used to anticipate Baghdad’s role, especially after the end of the last wave of ethnoconfessional violence and the Tahrir uprising in October 2019.

The book will be useful for readers and institutions with an interest in Iraq, “the Middle East” or the Arabic-Islamic World. Furthermore, it aims to appeal to researchers and professionals from the disciplines of geography, architecture, urban studies, sociology, political sciences, history, heritage and cultural studies.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate and Undergraduate Advanced

Autoren/Hrsg.

Obaid, Mustafa

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Naher & Mittlerer Osten
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Stadt- und Regionalsoziologie
• Geowissenschaften Geographie | Raumplanung Humangeographie
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Regionalwissenschaften, Regionalstudien
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Studien zu einzelnen Ländern und Gebieten

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction

1 Cities’ Role in Nation and Identity Building

1.1 Cities as Centers of Social Changes

1.2 Understanding Identity

1.3 Cultural Capacity

1.4 The Dialectics of City and Identity in Iraq

2 Baghdad’s Cultural Capacity Since 1920: One Century of Nation Building

2.1 The Initiation (1920–1963): The Birth of Iraq’s Modern Capital

2.2 The Disintegration (1963–2003): The Decline of Cities

2.3 The Division (After 2003): Polarized Baghdad

3 The Cultural Infrastructure of Baghdad: Spaces of Identity and Nation Building

3.1 The Cultural Corridor: Iraq’s Heart of Social Integrity

3.2 The Tahrir Hub and Its Influential Uprising

3.3 Thematic Networks

Conclusions and Future Perspectives

Über Autor(innen)

Mustafa Obaid earned his doctorate at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, on the role of cities in the development of ethnic and cultural identities in 2024. Since September of the same year, he has been teaching and researching at the department of urban planning at the BTU-Cottbus-Senftenberg, Germany.