Paper Short Abstract:

Syria's Afrin region has long been famous for its agricultural produce, first and foremost olives. Relying on oral narratives about the past 50 years, the paper asks how agrarian skills and knowledge have been accumulated, circulated and transmitted across generations, and if and how this changed with the increasing accessibility of formalised education and agrarian institutions of Baathist Syria (agricultural colleges, agricultural extension offices, etc.). How did the encounters between different kinds of knowledge play out, how were they negotiated and translated into practice, and who were the relevant actors?

Paper Abstract:

Syria's Afrin region has long been famous for its agricultural produce, first and foremost olives. At the same time, the region has seen considerable social change: similar to dynamics in other rural regions of Baathist Syria, Afrin's villagers moved increasingly to the cities, notably nearby Aleppo, since the 1970s. Among other reasons, the pursuit of better educational opportunities was an important factor for this trend, as formalised education became and increasingly important and accessible means of upward social mobility for rural youth. As one of Syria's Kurdish regions, however, urbanisation and increasing formal education also entailed a strong linguistic shift, since Arabic (and not Kurdish) was the language of instruction and science. Urbanisation and the increasing numbers of formally educated youth led to marked intergenerational shifts, as urban-based youth often lacked practical knoweldge grounded in year-round involvement in agrarian tasks, but could potentially act as mediators of scientific, Arabic- or English-language-based information and resources. Relying on oral narratives about life in Afrin during the past 50 years, the paper maps how different forms of agricultural knowledge were negotiated, contested, and translated into practice. Who were the actors involved in such encounters? How were agrarian skills and knowledge accumulated, circulated and transmitted across generations between embodied and practical experiences, orally transmitted knowledge, and agrarian institutions of Baathist Syria (agricultural colleges, agricultural extension offices, etc.)? And what methodological means do we have to access these encounters and negotiations in retrospect, given the relative dearth of accessible written sources ?