Resources and Notability Strategies to the Test of Time. Size and Displacement of Miran Notables from Iraqi Kurdistan

Two observations coming from the field are at the origin of this article. We observed that the historical notables of Shaqlawa, a city from Iraqi Kurdistan, disappeared from the local political area, in the 1990s and were replaced by a new elite stemming from the Kurdish movement. Paradoxically, some Miran succeed in reaching positions of responsibility on the regional political scene. To understand this situation, we adopted a socio-historical reading of the facts and we mixed different angles of analysis by linking the local logics and political stakes at regional level. Moreover we tried not to yield to a regressive reading of the studied process basing our research on what we had known on this result. Taking those methodological precautions as a starting point, we depicted a pallet of strategies (donation, vote-catching, conversion) that the actors display to maintain their social position. Adapted from the source document.