GLOBAL CAPITALISM AND RURALITY: AGENCY, COMMODIFICATION AND THE SOCIO-ECOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATION OF THE MIDDLE EASTERN COUNTRYSIDE, 1870-1945

Introduction

The Middle East is rarely associated with global capitalism. And yet, capitalist expansion had a substantial impact on its modern history. While previous works address issues such as ‘dependency’ and ‘coloniality’, state building, human-environmental interaction, and connectivity, there is little recognition of the influence of global capitalism on the socio-ecological transformation of the rural Middle East.

Project Overview

CAPITALEAST therefore compares tribes of diverse origins, examining the ‘capitalization’ of their agriculture and the commercialization of their livestock. It adopts a translocal and global approach to reveal the connectedness of the diverse social entities to the wider world, including:

• Nomadic tribes
• Semi-settled tribes
• Settled tribes living in cultivable, desert, and mountainous ecologies

Key Arguments

The project argues that intertwined processes such as:

1. Commodification
2. The scientification of cultivation and animal breeding
3. Mechanization of agriculture
4. ‘Automobilization’
5. New patterns of land ownership

resulted in an impressive repositioning of tribal agency in the physical environment and a noticeable increase in urban-rural and global-local relations. States, urban elites, tribal leaders, and global capitalists all emerged as active participants in this process.

Methodology

The project proposes an ambitious longitudinal enquiry, combining an analysis of digitized and published sources with extensive work in regional and central archives. This ground-breaking research will create an online database including:

• Interactive maps
• Network graphs
• Structured data about spatial locations

These resources will offer multiple avenues of interpretation of the sources.

Expected Outputs

In addition, the project will produce:

• 5 monographs
• 2 conferences
• 2 edited volumes

These will constitute the other major project outputs.

Conclusion

This project promises to recast the field of Middle Eastern history, contribute to the extra-European story of capitalism, and open new frontiers in studying the history, sociology, economy, and anthropology of rural peoples.