Lebanon Facing The Arab Uprisings: Constraints and Adaptation

166 Pages·2017·2.434 MB·English

by  Rosita Di Peri, Daniel Meier (eds.)

LEBANON
FACING THE ARAB
UPRISINGS

Constraints and Adaptation
Edited by
Rosita Di Peri and
Daniel Meier
Lebanon Facing The Arab Uprisings
Rosita D i Peri • Daniel Meier
Editors
Lebanon Facing The
Arab Uprisings
Constraints and Adaptation
Editors
Rosita Di Peri Daniel Meier
University of Turin CNRS (PACTE)
Turin , Italy Grenoble, France
ISBN 978-1-352-00004-7 ISBN 978-1-352-00005-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-352-00005-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016943268
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2 017
The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identifi ed as the author(s) of this work
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-
lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the
material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.
Cover illustration: Cover pattern © Harvey Loake
Printed on acid-free paper
This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by Springer Nature
The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. London
A
CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The editors would like to thank the Italian Society for Middle Eastern
Studies (SeSaMO)—in particular, President Matteo Legrenzi and General
Secretary Paola Rivetti—for enabling us to bring together a group of
researchers on a panel called “Lebanon facing the Arab uprisings: between
internal challenges and external constraints” during its annual confer-
ence held in Venice in January 2015. We are also indebted to the Institut
français du Proche-Orient (IFPO) in Beirut and to Myriam Catusse, the
director of its “Etudes contemporaines” department, for giving us the
opportunity to set up a workshop in Lebanon a few months later thanks to
the European Research Council’s WAFAW (When Authoritarianism Fails
in the Arab World) programme. We were privileged to receive a warm
welcome at the Orient-Institut Beirut (OIB) and would like to convey
our warmest thanks to its director, Stefan Leder. Our gratitude also goes
out to Sarah Roughley and Jennifer Timmins at Palgrave for their patience
and kindness throughout the process. We were fortunate to receive the
support of the University of Turin’s Department of Culture, Politics and
Society, and of the PACTE Laboratoire in Grenoble to fund the outstand-
ing copy-editing carried out by André Crous, and we wish to express our
gratitude to all of them. Warm regards to Anne-Laure Amilhat-Szary, the
EUBORDERSCAPES programme, and the “Understanding the Middle
East” summer school project for funding Daniel Meier’s trips to Venice,
Catania, and Turin in 2015, which led to discussions and eventually this
collaborative project with Rosita Di Peri.
We also want to acknowledge the help of a few individuals in particu-
lar who assisted us at various stages during the preparation of this book.
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to Nicolas Dot-Pouillard, Elizabeth Longuenesse, and Bruno
Lefort for actively taking part in our workshop in Beirut and helping
us to frame the topic and strengthen our arguments. Thanks to Hélène
Laffont for correcting several drafts and to Khalil Chemayel in Beirut for
his friendly support at the workshop. Last but not least, we are indebted
to all the contributors for their active participation in the project, their
insightful comments and suggestions both during and after the seminars,
and the patience they showed at all times during the review and fi nalisa-
tion process of their chapters.
C
ONTENTS
1 Introduction 1
Rosita Di Peri and D aniel Meier
Part I From Identifi cation to Social (Dis)order 1 3
2 “Willy-Nilly We Have to Live Side by Side”:
Relationships Between Locals and Newcomers
at the Syria–Lebanon Border 1 5
Lorenzo Trombetta
3 The Sunni Community in Lebanon: From “Harirism”
to “Sheikhism”? 3 5
Daniel Meier and R osita Di Peri
4 Rebordering the Lebanese Shi’i Public Sphere 55
Francesco Mazzucotelli
vii
viii CONTENTS
Part II From (Re)-ordering to Nationhood 7 1
5 From i sqat an-nizam at-ta’ifi to the Garbage
Crisis Movement: Political Identities
and Antisectarian Movements 7 3
Marie-Noëlle AbiYaghi , Myriam Catusse , and Miriam Younes
6 “The People Want the Army”: Is the Lebanese Military
an Exception to the Crisis of the State? 9 3
Vincent Geisser
7 Rethinking Lebanese Welfare in Ageing Emergencies 1 15
Estella Carpi
8 Syria’s Refugees in Lebanon: Brothers, Burden,
and Bone of Contention 135
Are John Knudsen
Index 155
N C
OTES ON ONTRIBUTORS
Marie-Noëlle   AbiYaghi i s a founding member and the head of the research at
Lebanon Support. She is also an associate researcher at the Institut français du
Proche-Orient (IFPO). She specialises in collective action, activists’ engagement
and gender dynamics in social movements. Marie-Noëlle holds a PhD in Political
Science from the Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne.
Estella   C arpi received her PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of
Sydney (Australia). She is presently a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the
University College London, and Humanitarian Affairs Advisor at Save the Children
UK. Her research interests lie primarily in humanitarianism, refugee migration,
and politics of aid.
Myriam   Catusse i s a political scientist and a CNRS research fellow. From 2013 to
2017, she heads from Beirut the department of contemporary studies at the IFPO
(Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Palestine). She is one of the core team members of
the European research Council-funded WAFAW (When Authoritarianism Fails in
the Arab World) programme and the Power2Youth project.
Rosita   Di Peri is Lecturer in Political Science and International Relations in the
Department of Culture, Politics and Society at the University of Torino. She published
Lebanon and the Middle East on “Rivista Italiana di Politiche Pubbliche”, “Rivista
Italiana di Scienza Politica”, “Politics Religion and Ideology”, “The British Journal of
Middle Eastern Studies”, “Oriente Moderno” and “Mediterranean Politics”.
Vincent   Geisser i s a political scientist and research fellow at the CNRS (National
Center for Scientifi c Research) based at the Institute of Research and Studies on
the Arab and Muslim world (IREMAM). He is core- researcher in the European
Program “WAFAW” managed by François Burgat. He is President of the Center
of Information and Studies on International Migrations (CIEMI, Paris) and editor
of the journal Migrations Société .
ix
x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Are   John   Knudsen i s Research Director at the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI).
Knudsen specialises on peacebuilding, micro-confl ict, and forced migration in the
Middle East. His most recent co-edited books are: Palestinian Refugees: Identity,
Space and Place in the Levant (2011), L ebanon: After the Cedar Revolution (2012)
and Popular Protest in the New Middle East: Islamism and Post-Islamist Politics
(2014).
Francesco   Mazzucotelli t eaches History of Turkey and the Middle East at the
University of Pavia, Italy. He holds a PhD in Political Institutions from the Catholic
University in Milan, and has previously studied at the American University of
Beirut. With a specifi c reference to the post-Ottoman space, his main lines of
research are the formation of sectarian identities in the public sphere; the relation-
ship between religions, modernity, and post-modernity; and the role of urban
spaces in contemporary politics.
Daniel   Meier is a research fellow at CNRS, Grenoble in the EUBORDERSCAPES
Research Programme and teaches at the University of Geneva. He holds a PhD in
Political Sociology from the Graduate Institute for International and Development
Studies (Geneva). His research interest focuses on border and identity issues in the
Middle East. He recently published S haping Lebanon’s Borderlands. Armed resis-
tance and International intervention in South Lebanon (2016).
Lorenzo   Trombetta i s a Beirut-based scholar and journalist specialized on con-
temporary history of Syria. He authored two books, focusing mainly on the struc-
ture of the Syrian power during the last decades. He has won the Syrian Studies
Association prize for best article on Syria published between 2014 and 2015.
Miriam   Y ounes i s the research coordinator at Lebanon Support. Her research
focuses on modern intellectual history, ideology theory, and notions of commu-
nism, secularism, leftism, and revolution. She is conducting her PhD at the
Department of Society and Globalization at Roskilde University entitled “Living
leftism in Lebanon. A historical anthropology of leftist intellectuals in Lebanon,
1960–1990.”