Towards an exclusionary social contract: Narratives of a revanchist city in (post)war Syria

This article asks to what extent national narratives drive changes in social contracts on both national and local level. Societal and especially state actors can use narratives to underline or omit specific rights and duties in social contracts, or to privilege particular contracting parties. In the Syrian case, repression and foreign intervention triggered changes in the national social contract, yet the exclusionary narrative functioned as a catalyst for these changes and entrenched them on both, the national and the city level. We show that housing, land and property (HLP) policies in (post-)war Damascus have an urban scope but a national impact. Not only wartime destruction but also post-war demolition have been particularly high in selected neighbourhoods and (re-)construction favoured upscale urban mega projects. This approach to urban planning reflects an exclusionary national narrative, which stigmatizes parts of the population as 'terrorists' and suspects them of stirring up public disorder. In consequence, these groups are marginalized or even 'evicted' from the social contract. For those Syrians still covered by the social contract, the narrative seeks to offer a justification for the large-scale exclusion of fellow citizens. Our analysis is based on an extensive review of literature from human geography, with a focus on the physical and social urban fabric, and political science, on intra-societal power relations.