Abstracts Category : Other

Seeking Middle-Classness : University Students in IraqiKurdistan

by Katrine Scott

Narratives of middle-classness are often missingfrom Western representations of wartorn regions in the Global Southmore generally and from the Middle East in particular. This thesisis concerned with stories of desires for ordinary everydaymiddle-class lives among young adult university students in urbanIraqi Kurdistan.The study is inspired by feminist ethnography andconsists of participant observation and in-depth interviews with agroup of university students in Sulaimani, Iraqi Kurdistan in 2012at the University of Sulaimani and the American University of Iraq,Sulaimani.With the central concept of storytailoring, the thesispresents a plurality of stories from students that destabiliseWestern-centric notions of what it means to be modern, middle-classand so-called normal. The study is located in urban(post-)conflict Sulaimani, a bubble of relative peace withhistorical and present violence close by. Three central themesstructure the analysis of students stories: politics, temporalityand gendered middle-class respectability. Central questions guidingthe analysis are: What are the narratives of desired middle-classordinary life? How are narratives of gendered figurations shapedand performed? And what do these narratives say about life for asection of relatively privileged university students in a(post-)conflict society? How can narratives about desiredmiddle-class ordinary lives tell other stories about a wartornregion?Through the concept of normality-seekers, the study showshow narratives of desired middle-classness play a specific roleamong university students at the crossroads between their memoriesof war and political conflict and their dreams of a peaceful andsuccessful middle-class future. The theoretical framework for thestudy is postcolonial, queer theory and feminist epistemologicalquestions of critical knowledge production and analysis.Autoethnographic writing situates the study in both urban IraqiKurdistan and in a Scandinavian academic and political context.Poetry, fiction, media texts and photographs are also included inthe analysis.