Autonomy as a third mode of ordering: Agriculture and the Kurdish movement in Rojava and North and East Syria

Abstract

AbstractWhile the fight of the Kurdish movement against Islamic State (IS) received much coverage, almost no attention was or has been given to the reconstruction efforts of Rojava after its liberation from the Ba′ath regime and the defeat of the caliphate, let alone the political principles underlying the reconstruction of the agrarian economy. This contribution discusses the agricultural policy in Rojava from the perspective of autonomy. It focuses on the ways in which autonomy as a mode of ordering interrupts the ordering by state and capital. Moreover, the article will show how this third mode of ordering, autonomy, produces alternatives for a political economy in Syria in which the state's organization of production and markets had become vehicles of de‐development and dispossession, demographic engineering, and cultural homogenization.