Lse Middle East Centre Podcasts

This webinar was the launch of Omar Sirri's paper 'Destructive Creations: Social-Spatial Transformations in Contemporary Baghdad' published as part of the LSE Middle East Centre Paper Series. This working paper examines social-spatial transformations in contemporary Baghdad by zooming in on two of the city’s most frequented consumer districts, Karada and Mansour. By way of ethnographic fieldwork, Sirri foregrounds the entanglements between violence, property and consumption. Baghdad’s transformations over nearly two decades are not simply a product of urban violence; nor are they only a result of the privatisation of formerly public property; nor are they merely a consequence of changes in everyday consumer patterns. Rather, the city’s transformations stem from the co-constitution of all three forces. In Baghdad, violence, property and consumption are inextricably linked. Their enmeshment has in turn spawned social-spatial transformations benefitting the political-economic interests of an elite few at the ex