ABSTRACT
The preceding chapters sought to contribute to broadening the scope of social scientific explanations of the relationship between sectarianism and nationstate formation by exploring and appraising this relationship from a political science perspective in the case of modern Iraq. This relationship highlights the relevance of primordial sectarian attachments for the study of state-making and nation-building. But the primordialism line of analysis is undoubtedly not without its limitations. Recognizing the limitations of an essentialist understanding which conceives of primordial attachments as being ascribed and innate, in other words givens or fixed data, this exploration proceeded from a constructivist standpoint that sought to capture how primordial attachments are continuously reconstructed and articulated against the backdrop of historical change. By jettisoning the essentialist approach to the claims of primordialism, I argued for a reconfigured concept of primordialism governed by a shift to an understanding of primordial attachments as socially constructed realities. Thusly reconfigured, primordial attachments mesh with the socio-political, ideational, institutional, and other contexts in which they operate. They ebb and flow as they are continuously reconstructed and rearticulated in tandem with developments at the socio-political level.
