Destructive creations: social-spatial transformations in contemporary Baghdad

This working paper examines social-spatial transformations in contemporary Baghdad by zooming in on two of the city’s most frequented consumer districts, Karada and Mansour. By way of ethnographic fieldwork, I foreground the entanglements between violence, property and consumption. Baghdad’s transformations over nearly two decades are not simply a product of urban violence; nor are they only a result of the privatisation of formerly public property; nor are they merely a consequence of changes in everyday consumer patterns. Rather, the city’s transformations stem from the co-constitution of all three forces. In Baghdad, violence, property and consumption are inextricably linked. Their enmeshment has in turn spawned social-spatial transformations benefitting the political-economic interests of an elite few at the expense of the urban commons.