A Message from Social Inquiry (Under Curfew)

This first dispatch is coming to you from a quarantined kitchen table in Erbil. The Social Inquiry team along with the rest of Iraq has been under a curfew for about a month now. We have put all fieldwork on pause while also ensuring the safety of our field teams and are getting used to a new routine.  

The pandemic-imposed halt allows us time to reflect on how to carry forward now with the type of social science research we do and the questions we ask. In seeking to understand the everyday dynamics of ordinary citizens, including some of the most vulnerable, in fragile contexts like Iraq, we are cognizant of the fact that change is the constant – and the answers to the questions we pose are often shaped by immediate events.

Taking a step back and thinking about Iraq’s history specifically in even the past 20 years, it’s hard to miss how many upheavals there have been, how many stops and starts people have had to endure and overcome. For the time being (if not longer), COVID-19 is forcing yet another wave of change in how people interact, come together, work, and move. Dynamics may evolve as a result and perceptions may entrench or shift in response. Such ruptures, reconfigurations, and their ramifications are important to document and examine on their own as well as in the broader context of social cohesion and fragility, justice and redress, and post-conflict political economy that we currently study.

How to incorporate this new dimension of the human condition into the work we have on hold and the work we plan for going forward is something we are thinking deeply about. Our aim remains to bring citizens’ voices to bear on policy and practice within the country and contribute to wider discourse and debate to promote equity, dignity, human rights, and accountability in a time when these principles hang even more perilously in the balance. 

As we continue to work through these issues, communities will, as they always do, persevere and figure out ways to connect again. We will be watching and listening and sharing what we learn. 

Stay safe, and if you can, stay home.

Nadia Siddiqui is Co-Director of Social Inquiry.