master's thesis [d00c1bfb]

What is a ritual? Literature review on the main ideas

• I depart from these because

  • permanent/recurring pilgrimage (Shikoku pilgrims)
  • looking at people who service pilgrims, and how they see it as a permanent pilgrimage
  • ritualistic voyeurism
  • the confrontation of moral life and actual life create the space and confirm and create the power of religious symbols
  • symbols are imposed yet not seen to be created

Main character

• Ali Qazwini
• Ali the radood school teacher

The physical space of the shrines, where rituals perform next to each other, where funerals are next to other rituals, children running around as others bury the body

• graduation ceremonies as well

Radood, poet, mowkeb, radat

• radoods work with certain poets

  • each pmowkeb has a few poets that stay with them and write
  • anywhere there is a shrine there is a radat, in kathimiya, in najaf
  • taraf abassiyya is famous for having political mowkebs, even though everyone says they're political
• hasan kathim interview here

mowkeb facts

• 3000 service mowkebs in Karbs
• 75 from karbala itself
• 115 majalis al-aza
• people visit the administration for all sorts of reasons
• each mowkeb is from a historical place, sometimes there is an expansion from the baladiyya

• permissions needed:

  • interior ministry within the city
  • baladia
  • local permission
  • polics
• each mokweb collects money from people
• donations start the day after arabeen for the next year's mowkeb
• 90% (sus number) are wrong
• new ones learn from the old ones
• 200 make majlis
• 3000 for services

Majlis experience, radoods

• Zaman Hawnawi, again threats of being wal'ai
• register of vernacular
• majlis husseni and majlis aza

talk about the differences between ritual shaabi and ritual 3di

• hajj sayyid interview here

main character, taraf abassiyya

• list out the main old mowkebs here

How is it voyeuristic? How does this create a different future?

• self flattering notions, such as the guy faked who sings about putting dirt in their eyes

Because it is an oral tradition, it must be constantly reproduced

• Under saddam years, it's noted that these rituals survived through houses

Because one has to be recognized as a pilgrim and a servant through this public nature

• through this mutual recognition, we can see…something
• they access a particular time through this harmonization
• it's not just about being a good pilgrim, but about being seen as a good pilgrim
• finding husbands for women and showing off for men

Karbala offers a platform for the surival of rituals, people can envision a variety of futures (watan, hosa, religion, etc)

• Azerbaijani flag, Iraqi flags

future studies

• Register of tradgey is particularly susceptible to notions of the future?
• al-shur, ulema, criticisms of how people believe what the radood instead of what the shiekh says, contention of authority
• tatbir and it's fitna
• zangeel
• discrimination of karbala and baghdad

Lead in: evoking the Imam as a nearhuman construction (Johnson - Automatic Religion)

• Various rituals of approaching the shrine

Main questions to answer:

• How do ritual participants view themselves? Do they see rituals as subsuming the self?
• What about the "violent" nature of specific rituals?
• How are these rituals sustained?

Main questions to answer:

• What is it like to be in a ritual? Radood audience interaction to draw in the audience

• Where do the rituals happen? What contexts are they performed in?

  • What are the casual forms of difference (between Pakistani, Iraqi, Indian, etc)
• What is invoked and evoked with the ritual? Is it saddness for Hussein (as some ritual participants have said), or is it something more?

• Banal nature of the rituals, and how it is not necessarily different than music festivals

  • The banality of these rituals actually make it much more interesting, because it reveals how easily new views of the world are fashioned even without a clear sacred/profane distinction

• Look to Geertz here, what symbols are floating around? For Sahlins, what kind of kinship is being produced in this moment? How are the symbols alive here (al-Shur?)

  • Also potentially useful to look at Tanya Luhrmann's work on Evanglicial Christian prayers and esoteric mental states of trance

Main character: Ali the radood school teacher

• How does Ali engage by creating the institution of radoods
• Who comes to school? What are their backgrounds?

Questions to answer

• What seemingly non-religious work needs to be done to sustain this structure?
• How is authority created? Who creates these authorities, and are they done by the "religious" or "secular"? Is that even an useful distinction to draw here?

Main character: Fathal the security guard

• Karbalaei native, but not particularly religious
• Goal is to show how "regular" people engage with religion

Reintegration of Iraqi Militias

• PMF Command Structures

  • PMF command structures are vastly different, from KH's Hezbollah-like situation to brigade 30

    • Money laundering and ghost soldiers
    • Who is lining their pockets and benefiting from different command structures?

• Sectarian conflicts

  • PMF cross cuts class, race, and religion

    • Shia Turkmen, Christians, pro-sistani vs pro-iran
  • What kind of nationalism is being created? Alternatively, what kinds of sub-state nationalism (borrowing Toby Dodge) is being created?

• Similar reintegration histories?

  • Peacebuilding in

    • Balkans

      • Reintegration of Bosnia mujahadeen?
      • "Recyled" militia in Serbia armed groups?

    • Lebanon

      • Hezbollah and similarities there?

    • Nepal

      • Ideaologically driven - were maoist. Does this hold similarities?

    • Afghanistan

      • Taliban
    • Namibia

    • Colombia

      • Paramilitary demobilization, and it's failures

    • Chechnya

      • Militias as spoilers of the Chechen state, does this occur in Iraq?

    • Ivory Coast

      • "Warrior generation", political violence similar levels, are there models to be drawn here?

• Post-conflict peacebuilding within formal state structures

  • The Iraqi state did not totally collapse and fought off an insurgency, is this different than integrating militias in newly formed states?

  • External actors

    • UNAMI
    • US
    • Iran
    • etc

• Mechanics of peacebuilding

  • Combants to civilains -> Has this happened?
  • Post-conflict state -> Has Iraqi society reached "post-conflict"? What determines post-conflict?

• "Big" questions

  • Current government framing of Iraq

    • Lack of legitmacy on several key institutions

      • "Supreme" court has no constitutional legitmacy

  • KRG

    • Resolved issues of KRG disputes, how do the peshmerga fit into this equation?

  • What constitutes as "rehabilitation" and "reintegration"?

    • UN has often sought "reintegration" by waiting it out, which has rarely worked. Succesful examples are Nepal and Namibia, which sought greater reintegration via massive state-sponsered jobs programs

      • How does this change in a world of low interest rates? Namibia and Nepal had difficulties borrowing money, does the shift in the global markets affect this?

    • "Big" reintegration - who are the funders of reintegration for previous states? Who funds reintegration for the Iraqi state?

      • Who directs reintegration? Often times funded and directed in DC, but acted upon in other states

    • What do we reintegrate back into? Reintegration implies return to prewar "normalcy" – the same conditions that gestated the conflict.

      • Sierra Leone of 2005 looks like the Sierra Leone of 1991

      • What structural changes are available?

        • What does this look like in the backdrop of Arab Spring? Of the 2019/2020 protests?

• Unknown quesitons

  • War veterans in post-war situations

    • Refusal to reintegrate?

      • Similarities to societal groups like Turkey's war vets?

  • External communities

    • How do the communities reintegrating the militia members feel?
    • What about disapora?

  • Generational questions

    • "Reintegration" implies that there is a life to go back to. Are militia members who spent their lives in conflict have this open as an opportunity?

how are they building infrastructure

• weapons depots, telecommunications, etc
• osint on their locations, monitor communications