RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND CONTEXT

Taking into consideration the rural-urban differences and the ethnic and religious diversity of SyriaFootnote ¹⁵ as well as the nature of the Syrian uprising—which was centered in small cities, towns, villages, and urban and suburban neighborhoodsFootnote ¹⁶—the study applies a case-based research strategy that is focused on the context of the city of Daraa, a small city in the southern part of Syria and my home town. The population of Daraa before the conflict was predominantly Sunni Muslim with a small population of Christians and Shi’a Muslims, yet this population became considerably smaller as a result of demographic changes during the ongoing conflict.Footnote ¹⁷

The study employs a qualitative framework through a particular ethnographic research strategy that utilizes Lila Abu-Lughod’s “ethnographies of the particular” by focusing on a particular group of people at a particular point in time in order to challenge the effects of homogeneity, coherence, and timelessness produced by conventional ethnographic studies.Footnote ¹⁸ In addition, this ethnographic research strategy complies with both James Clifford’s argument that ethnographic representations are always partial and positioned truths,Footnote ¹⁹ and with Donna Haraway’s definition of objectivity as “situated knowledges” that asserts that knowledge and truth are partial, situated, subjective, imbued with power, and relational.Footnote ²⁰ Thus, it should be noted that this study, like all studies, is partial. The study is also situated and reflexive—that is, it is a reading of, and writing from, a particular place, from the perspective of an individual who is personally, intellectually, and politically situated.Footnote ²¹ Practically, the study is based on two ethnographic fieldwork seasons that were undertaken with the Syrian diaspora in Jordan (November 2015) and Lebanon (July 2016), a remote- “fieldwork” research with female interlocutors from Syrian diaspora in Jordan (April 2017), and online interviews with Syrian activists working on cultural projects in Syria (March 2018), although not all of them were based there. The particular group of people who form the focus of the study includes both ordinary people who lived in Daraa and professionals who have worked in the cultural sector in Syria. The 38 interlocutors who participated in the study were from diverse age groups and religious and educational backgrounds.

Before moving to investigate the utilization of heritage by grassroots “civil society” groups (CSGs) in Syria, it is important to illustrate how heritage is understood in the studied context and how this understanding is being changed as these two points shape the framework in which the practices of CSGs should be understood. First, the ethnographic study revealed that what constitutes heritage for the studied group at this moment in time is the shared beliefs, values, and traditions that shape the attitudes, behavior, and habits of people. In other words, the concept of heritage is mainly understood as knowledge, as a cultural process, and as a cultural product imagined and articulated within everyday sociocultural and religious practices. This is not about emphasizing a “local” concept of heritage against a “global” one. Rather, this is in line with what Ciarán Benson discussed during the ICOMOS workshop, an evolutionary “psychological and cultural” heritage of human beings.Footnote ²² Heritage-from-below studies have illustrated similar results in various contexts.Footnote ²³ What is more important in relation to the context of study is that this form of heritage is highly emotional and is always understood as something that can explain, as well as guide, people’s lives by their utilization of it to shape the present and future.Footnote ²⁴ This form of heritage has been a crucial theme in modern Arab thought where the central question is that of cultural authenticity (alasala althaqafia)—in other words, how to maintain an “authentic” connection with the past for all aspects of life while working to catch up with the “developed world.”Footnote ²⁵

Second, the ethnographic study also revealed that the heritage community is not the only strategic cultural player in Syria today but that there are, at least, two other main groups of players—the newly emerged extremist religious groups (ERGs) and the CSGs—who also claim to be working for the benefit of future generations. The ERGs include a large number of subgroups such as Daesh (ISIS), al-Nusra Front, the Syrian Islamic Front as well as other smaller groups that share a similar goal of establishing an Islamic state in Syria but do not share the same means, as they present themselves as “Islamic charity” groups. There are no reliable estimates of the number of these groups, but they number in the hundreds at least,Footnote ²⁶ and they change continuously as they divide, disappear, and appear again. The ERGs are often discussed in relation to the destruction and looting of ancient sites and objects.Footnote ²⁷ However, what is usually overlooked is their extensive ideological reconstruction and manipulation of everyday sociocultural and religious practices as well as cultural expressions and art forms such as poetry, music, hymns (anashid), dance, dress codes, and visual culture.Footnote ²⁸ These ideological reconstruction and manipulation processes function at the same level on which heritage is understood, practiced, and experienced by people, and they are related to collective identity, feelings, emotions, and the production of cultural meanings. The results of these processes are various products such as poems, songs, images, and films as well as practices that usually involve the performance and consumption of these products, such as the singing of a song, the performing of a ritual, or the wearing of certain clothes.Footnote ²⁹ These are the elements of what Thomas Hegghammer calls “jihadi’s culture,” which is produced by ERGs to appear as part of an authentic mainstream local culture through the manipulation of its elements that has some historical precedent.Footnote ³⁰ For example, Elisabeth Kendall analysis of ERGs’ manipulation process of poetry in Yemen shows how an illusion of authenticity and an aura of legitimacy is created around poetry by enabling the primary Arab audience to make connections based on deeply rooted and emotional cultural sensibilities and knowledge.Footnote ³¹

Moreover, two more aspects multiply the impact of “jihadi culture” on conflict-affected communities. The first is that the content of “jihadi culture” products is created to attract conflict-affected people. For example, one of the critical recurring themes in jihadi poetry, anashid, and films focuses on the human pain and suffering of the innocents, the occupied, and the oppressed, particularly Muslims, and how this is ignored by non-Muslims.Footnote ³² This makes “jihadi culture” very appealing in conflict contexts where human suffering is an everyday reality for the whole society. The second reason is that the heritage manipulation processes of the ERGs are part of their comprehensive governance system, which includes departments for religious education, security, sharia courts, humanitarian and relief efforts, infrastructure and public services, media channels including printed magazines and billboards, and even natural resources management.Footnote ³³ That is, the construction of “jihadi culture” is not just part of advocacy projects designed and implemented to persuade conflict-affected communities, but it is also part of ERGs’ coercive policies of public order that people have to adopt as part of their survival strategy.

In short, ERGs work to normalize their concepts in the worldview of the conflict-affected communities and to package, reinforce, and convey specific cultural meanings to them. By this, ERGs seek to change how conflict-affected communities think, feel, act, and interact with others. ERGs provide people with practical and spiritual means to cope with the conflict and to build a new specific identity, an extremist one. By this, they seek to transform how people think about themselves from victims in conflict context to heroes who do not fear death but hope for the best place in heavenFootnote ³⁴ and from passive audiences to active producers of the group’s defined future. The ERGs’ heritage manipulation process is a future-oriented practice that is linked with the production and distribution of hope for what it is made to look like a “better future” (both the short-term one in the world and the long-term one in the hereafter). This side of the ERGs’ heritage practice is what has been overlooked in the conventional discussions of, and responses to, conflict and post-conflict heritage. Yet working within similar parameters of the culture of everyday life, “civil society” groups may represent examples of how to respond to the challenges imposed by ERGs heritage practices as will be demonstrated in the next part.

CSGs

Like ERGs, CSGs also include numerous subgroups. By the end of 2016, more than 800 Syrian CSGs were active within and outside Syria.Footnote ³⁵ The number of these young CSGs also continues to change, and it is extremely difficult to survey all of these groups due to the difficulty in gaining access into the areas where they are operating as well as the inconsistency in the number of groups officially registered in accordance with the different areas of control on the ground. The majority of CSGs in Syria emerged first as activists and community groups committed to non-violent political activism. As violence began to intensify across the country, they turned to focus on providing necessary services and humanitarian aid activities supported by individual donations. Later, a number of these initiatives developed into non-governmental organizations (NGOs), where, in addition to individual donations, they began to receive support from various international NGOs and donors.Footnote ³⁶ The practices of CSGs include diverse sets of programs and activities that utilize culture and heritage as an instrument and resource to provide cultural relief programs that meet the cultural, social, and psychological needs and aspirations of the affected communities, which usually are not covered by humanitarian or heritage agencies. There are several CSGs that undertake this kind of practice in Syria, such as Kesh Malek in Aleppo, My Childhood in Qamishli, and Qabas in Idlib and Olive Branch in Daraa. This part will examine the practices of Olive Branch (OB) in more detail as it operates in this article’s focus area of research—the city of Daraa—and it was possible to conduct interviews with a number of its team members.

OB is a Syrian “civil society” group that was established in November 2012 as a small project in Daraa city in the southern part of Syria. The project was initiated by a few activists from the city with a budget of US $200 collected from individual donations. The activists’ first project was focused on providing education for children in the areas that are out of government control. In later projects, the activists combined educational and entertainment activities and extended their focus to the whole local community. Two years later, OB was registered in Turkey as a NGO that focuses on education, human development, and capacity building and considers that “human beings are the real capital, means and target” of their activities, which seek to build a peaceful society.Footnote ³⁷ As explained by OB managers, the registration as a NGO was mainly needed to manage the financial issues in a professional way after a quick expansion in the funds received.

Today, OB consists of around 900 staff members and volunteers inside and outside Syria. Its organizational chart is typical for a NGO; the top management consists of a Board of Directors, a General Assembly, and an executive director, and there are a number of project departments under them. By transforming to a NGO, OB expanded its sources of funding to include various international donors and NGOs—such as Save the Children and the Norwegian Refugee Council—and, consequently, expanded its programs and activities. By the end of 2017, OB was managing 18 small centers in different towns in the southern part of Syria, publishing a monthly printed children’s magazine, and operating a number of mobile centers hosted in buses in order to reach distant communities. These centers are called Olive Branch Cultural Centers, and they offer various cultural and educational programs that target their local communities with a special focus on children. OB’s staff in every center are usually members of the local community. In addition, OB provides those members who may have previous experience in conducting education and cultural activities with the necessary training to implement its cultural and educational programs and activities. In short, all of OB’s activities and programs are planned, managed, and conducted by, with, and for the local communities.

OB cultural centers offer education for children between the ages of 5 and 13 years old. During the early stages, OB used the curriculum of the official Syrian education system, but they omitted certain curriculum subjects, such as the national education curriculum and parts of the history curriculum because they considered them to be biased and reflect the views of the Syrian government. Later, OB, in collaboration with other organizations, developed a new curriculum for its civil education programs. For OB, civil education can change the future of Syria’s children by providing them with the necessary skills to improve their life and build better futures. The civil education approach of OB seeks to protect children from being mobilized/recruited by extremist religious groups. Yet, in doing so, OB’s civil education does not dismiss Islam and Islamic traditions but, rather, acknowledges them as one of the central aspects of historical continuity in the Syrian culture and the everyday life of the people. For example, Figure 1 shows two pages from OB’s Qaws Quzah (rainbow) magazine. The page to the left introduces the holy month of Ramadan and the Islamic traditions associated with it. The page to the right is a short story that introduces children to the meanings of different colors and how people choose their clothes to represent themselves.

Figure 1.

Two pages from OB’s Qaws Quzah (rainbow) magazine (courtesy of OB, 21 October 2017).

In addition to education, OB centers offer various cultural programs such as children’s theatre shows, poetry and music performances, painting workshops, psychological support sessions, and sport activities. These activities are mainly focused on children, but they are usually conducted in public spaces and involve the participation of parents and relatives (Figures 2 and 3). The content of these activities is usually based on shared common knowledge such as popular songs, poetry, and dances. For example, Figure 4 shows one of the activities that introduce children to traditional professions, clothes, and practices. The focus of this activity is on agricultural practices, which have a key position in local heritage and memory. Figure 5 shows an example of performing the traditional practice of storytelling.

Figure 2.

Local communities participating in OB activities (courtesy of OB, 21 October 2017).

Figure 3.

Children performing poetry and songs to an audience during two OB cultural activities (courtesy of OB, 21 October 2017).

Figure 4.

One of the activities that introduces kids to traditional professions, clothes, and practices (courtesy of OB, 21 October 2017).

Figure 5.

Storytelling activities performed at an OB mobile cultural center (courtesy of OB, 21 October 2017).

In addition to the non-religious traditions of poetry, music, and dance performances, OB also arranges activities to celebrate socio-religious rituals and festivals such as Eid Aladha, Ramadan, and Eid Alfitr. An example of one of these activities was conducted in OB’s bus/mobile cultural center during Ramadan (the holy month for Muslims) where children conducted a show about the traditions of Misaharaty, which they had not experienced during the conflict.Footnote ³⁸ Similar to the above-mentioned example in OB’s educational magazine, this example shows how OB activities address both socio-religious and non-religious traditions. Both the cultural activities and the socio-religious rituals and celebrations emphasize the attitudes, behavior, and habits that reject violence, reconnect children and the audience with traditions of tolerance, and remind them of the importance of education, knowledge, and critical thinking.

The utilization of socio-religious rituals and festivals reflects OB’s deep understanding of the role and position of Islamic traditions in local societies and OB’s intention to protect such traditions from being manipulated by ERGs to advocate extremist actions. What is also important about OB’s activities is that they do not only utilize common knowledge and traditions but also encourage participants and audiences to reconsider them so that they can appropriate and build on them to overcome the challenges of everyday life. Examples of this approach can be observed in the “who am I?” activity, which encourages children to think about their own personal identity and to express and discuss it with the group so that they get to know each other and shape their collective identity accordingly. Another example is observed in the “we try-we discover” activity, which seeks to develop children’s problem-solving skills by encouraging them to search for and try different solutions for simple everyday life issues.

Of note is the fact that OB utilizes cultural heritage sites and monuments to conduct certain activities. For example, Figure 6 shows the utilization of the Bosra world heritage site—in particular, the Roman amphitheater—as a space to conduct a performance where children performed traditional songs, poetry, and dances with the attendance of local communities. Another way of utilizing heritage sites is related to the stories associated with them. Figure 7 shows an activity that included a visit to the Roman Triumphal Arch, which is locally known as the “Gate of Peace,” in the old city of Bosra, where the activity’s facilitators utilize the stories associated with the site to emphasize traditions of tolerance and promote the values of peace. Other examples of activities conducted at heritage sites include painting workshops, a mobile phone film festival, and awareness raising campaigns about the importance and values of these sites (Figure 8). In this way, OB’s activities link heritage sites to the local heritage and the collective identity after decades of linking them to the nationalistic narrative, which is now contested.

Figure 6.

A show performed at Bosra world heritage site as part of the “Back to School” campaign where children performed traditional songs, poetry, and dances (courtesy of OB, 21 October 2017).

Figure 7.

A group of children on a site visit with the activity facilitator to the old city of Bosra (courtesy of OB, 21 October 2017).

Figure 8.

A group of children giving shape with their bodies to the sentence “with knowledge we build” as part of an awareness-raising campaign that was carried out at the Bosra world heritage site (courtesy of OB, 21 October 2017).

Due to a lack of evaluation studies, it is not possible to assess the real impact of utilizing Bosra’s Roman amphitheater on the activities of OB. Yet it should be noted that, by utilizing Bosra’s Roman amphitheater, Triumphal Arch, and the remains of the old city, the OB team has emphasized the important value of knowledge and of learning from the ancient archaeological past to rebuild Syria. A common statement that was repeated by the OB team during my discussions with them was that if our ancestors were able to build these monuments with the knowledge of their time, we have to be able to rebuild our country when the conflict is over.

Additionally, OB’s cultural centers offer capacity-building workshops that seek to support local skills and knowledge and help conflict-affected communities to transform them into income-generating activities so that they can improve the quality of their life. These workshops are usually focused on what is popular in conflict-affected communities such as traditional food industries and handicrafts and on what is needed such as first aid and computer skills. Moreover, OB’s cultural centers organize informal cultural events that take the form of inclusive public talks and seminars (Figure 9). Usually, these events utilize the emotionally charged oral practice of poetry and performance to celebrate and reconnect people with the values and traditions that they value and are proud of. By this, these events acknowledge the past, provide a space for discussing and imagining a common future and emphasizes the civil character of the society.

Figure 9.

Poetry performance event organized by the OB cultural center (courtesy of OB, 21 October 2017).