The ideological positions of engineers in Syria

Abstract

In this article I examine the potential ability of engineers to assert themselves as modernizers, i.e. to define themselves from the viewpoint of their profession, relative to their country's economic development. In this perspective, the position of Syrian engineers is not only the result of a reaction to the economic crisis or to the political situation. Instead this refers to the complex space where social, political, religious and national factors are combined. I also attempts to consider engineers as a heterogeneous group rather than a coherent one. They form several sub-groups, each of which combines a modernizing position in the guise of technocratic and technicist aims with identity orientations: professional, corporate, Islamic disengaged and/or vanguard identity.