Governance of Resistance in Northern Syria: The Experience of Rojava

(Hardback)

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Description

This book examines governance developments in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (also known as Rojava) ten years after the emergence of the de facto Kurdish administration.

The governance of Rojava has attracted scholarly and popular interest due its revolutionary beginnings and radical political agenda, which promotes democratic confederalism, gender equality, social ecology and libertarian socialism. Here, contributions from a wide range of scholars assess the processes and challenges of this administration, providing a unique case study of governance in a conflict context characterized by alternative political ideologies.

Based on on-the-ground fieldwork and theoretical analysis, chapters explore how the community grapples with the challenges of the new administrative structures, the experiences of its different communities Kurdish and non Kurdish and the construction of political and social identities. Specific governance challenges relating to gender equality, education, migration and displacement are highlighted and juxtaposed with the resistance narrative that underpins the administrations governance style. The book, crucially, also takes a wider analytical frame to understand what the Rojava experiment means, assessing its radically different nature from conventional nation-state structures, and discussing the new meanings of citizenship it puts forward.

Reviews

This is a comprehensive, scholarly, and accessible account of Kurds in Syria and their attempt at radical democracy amid the chaos of the Syrian civil war. Must read for anyone interested in Kurds, Syria, and
beyond.

-- Mehmet Gurses, Professor, Florida Atlantic University, USA

The rapidly changing conditions in North and East Syria make this a hotspot that is likely to be of grave
concern both to European and American policy makers and to the wider public... The book promises to cover many other aspects than are covered in the Allsopp/van Wilgenburg book, which will be its major competitor. The fieldwork-based chapters will be especially valuable in offering more realistic insights...A must-read for anyone interested in Kurdish politics, in the Syrian conflict, in Turkeys role in the Middle East.

-- Martin van Bruinessen, Utrecht University, the Netherlands

Author Bio

Zeynep Kaya is a Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Sheffield, UK. She is the author of
Mapping Kurdistan: Territory, Self-Determination and Nationalism (2020). Zeynep is co-editor of I.B. Tauris's Kurdish Studies Series and is also a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre, UK, and an Academic Associate at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, UK.

Robert Lowe is Deputy Director of the LSE Middle East Centre, UK. He is co-editor of I.B. Tauris's Kurdish Studies Series. He has co-edited two collected volumes and has published extensively on Kurdish politics, particularly in Syria.