ABSTRACT
Syria’s problems of development lay in the neo-feudal agrarian social conditions and the great inequalities which kept the majority of the peasantry in a state of subordination and poverty. Social dislocation in rural communities in Syria was not only the product of economic growth and an unequal distribution of wealth; it was also the result of the radical reorganization of social and economic life. This chapter focuses on the impact of state politics on rural communities from the 1950s to the 1970s. It documents and analyses the socio-economic and political processes which led to new structures of community-nation integration. To achieve rural transformation and modernization the regime relied on three institutional pillars: agrarian reform, the cooperative movement and the state agricultural sector. This chapter describes the rise of the Ba’th Party, the formation of the Peasants’ Union, state land reform and land distribution, the Euphrates Dam and the formation of state farms. It also discusses political socialization as an institutionalized state policy, with education seen as pivotal to creating new types of national and political identities.
