The Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon , livre ebook

Pluto Press - Shoghig Mikaelian , Lara. W Khattab , Jinan S Al-Habbal , Rabie Barakat , Bassel F Salloukh

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162 pages

English

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The wave of popular uprisings that swept across the Arab world starting in December 2010 rattled regimes from Morocco to Oman. However, Lebanon's sectarian system proved immune to the domestic and regional pressures unleashed by the Arab Spring. How can this be explained? How has the country's political elite dealt with challenges to the system? And, finally, what lessons can other Arab states draw from Lebanon's sectarian experience?

This book looks at the mix of institutional, clientelist, and discursive practices that sustain the sectarian nature of Lebanon. It exposes snapshots of an ever-expanding sectarian web that occupies substantial areas of everyday life and surveys struggles waged by opponents of the system - by women, teachers, public sector employees, students or coalitions across NGOs - and how their efforts are often sabotaged or contained by numerous systematic forces.
Preface

1. Introduction

2. A Political History of Sectarian Institutions

3. Institutions, Sectarian Populism and the Production of Docile Subjects

4. Neoliberal Sectarianism and Associational Life

5. Sectarianism and Struggles for Socio-economic Rights

6. Elections, Electoral Laws and Sectarianism

7. Between Sectarianism and Military Development: The Paradox of the Lebanese Armed Forces

8. The Postwar Mediascape and Sectarian Demonizing

9. Overlapping Domestic/Geopolitical Contests, Hizbullah and Sectarianism

10. Conclusion

Notes

Index

Sujets

Political Process

Comparative Politics

Political Science

HISTORY

Hezbolá

History of the Middle East

General officer

Middle East

Politics of Lebanon

General

Lebanon

Informations

Publié par	Pluto Press
Date de parution	20 juillet 2015
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781783713431
Langue	English

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The Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon

The Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon
Bassel F. Salloukh, Rabie Barakat, Jinan S. Al-Habbal, Lara W. Khattab, and Shoghig Mikaelian

First published 2015 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright © Bassel F. Salloukh, Rabie Barakat, Jinan S. Al-Habbal, Lara W. Khattab, and Shoghig Mikaelian, and Aram Nerguizian 2015
The rights of Bassel F. Salloukh, Rabie Barakat, Jinan S. Al-Habbal, Lara W. Khattab, and Shoghig Mikaelian, and Aram Nerguizian to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN  978 0 7453 3414 1  Hardback
ISBN  978 0 7453 3413 4  Paperback
ISBN  978 1 7837 1342 4  PDF eBook
ISBN  978 1 7837 1344 8  Kindle eBook
ISBN  978 1 7837 1343 1  EPUB eBook

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
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Simultaneously printed by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, UK and Edwards Bros in the United States of America

It seems to me that the real political task in a society such as ours is to criticize the workings of institutions, which appear to be both neutral and independent; to criticize and attack them in such a manner that the political violence which has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight against them.

Michel Foucault *

* Arnold I. Davidson (ed.), Foucault and his Interlocutors (London: University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 130.

CONTENTS
Preface
1.
Introduction
2.
A Political History of Sectarian Institutions
3.
Institutions, Sectarian Populism, and the Production of Docile Subjects
4.
Neoliberal Sectarianism and Associational Life
5.
Sectarianism and Struggles for Socio-economic Rights
6.
Elections, Electoral Laws, and Sectarianism
7.
Between Sectarianism and Military Development: The Paradox of the Lebanese Armed Forces
8.
The Postwar Mediascape and Sectarian Demonizing
9.
Overlapping Domestic/Geopolitical Contests, Hizbullah, and Sectarianism
10.
Conclusion
Notes
Index

PREFACE
This book had its origins first in seminar debates and later in transcontinental dialogues among friends and now colleagues. Preoccupied by similar analytical questions, we set out to unpack the Lebanese sectarian system’s disciplinary practices at multiple sites and levels of analysis. Yet despite the often grim stories we recount, of a sectarian system always ready to reproduce itself and neutralize challenges to its political economy and ideological hegemony, this book is intended principally as a liberating personal and public experience. In the spirit of Michel Foucault’s opening quote, the critical reflections we undertake here on the myriad operations of the sectarian system are meant to unmask its ensemble of practices in the hope of opening up possibilities to fight them and ultimately to transcend sectarianism altogether. We recognize that this is invariably a very long and difficult battle. Some of the heroines and heroes in this battle can be found throughout the pages of this book. To be sure, the current domestic and regional deck is stacked against them as geopolitical battles camouflaged by the mantle of sectarianism wreak havoc in regional states and societies. Their perseverance against the overwhelming odds and at immense personal costs inspires hope for a far brighter, just, and democratic future than the present darkness and discontents.
We have incurred many debts of gratitude throughout the writing of this book and we would like to acknowledge them upfront. Aram Nerguizian generously contributed Chapter 7 on the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), making the story we tell in this book much more potent and complete. Johnny Jeha worked laboriously but always in good spirits to produce the comparative tables in Chapter 6 . We thank Adam Chamseddine, Ibrahim Halawi, and Wadood Hamad for the many conversations they shared with us about Lebanese politics and the constructive comments they offered on different parts of this book. The team at Pluto Press led us by the hand through the publication process. We especially thank David Shulman for his patience as the manuscript neared completion and Robert Webb for guiding us through the copy-editing process. We gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in Canada. We would also like to thank the many individuals who shared with us the details of their struggles against the sectarian system. Had it not been for their kindness and energy, we would not have been able to tell their stories and reproduce their heroic struggles against the sectarian system’s ever-expanding complex ensemble. A final word of infinite gratitude goes to our families who always supported us with their unwavering love throughout the solitude of the writing process.
Like every co-authored book, this one aims for a single voice but is borne out of different personal sensibilities. We hope that negotiating these differences in the course of writing this book has enriched the analysis of the sectarian system undertaken here. A particular division of labor governed the writing process, however. Bassel Salloukh wrote Chapters 1 , 5 , and 10 , and co-wrote Chapters 2 and 6 with Rabie Barakat and Jinan al-Habbal, respectively. Barakat wrote Chapter 8 ; al-Habbal wrote Chapter 3 ; Lara Khattab wrote Chapter 4 and contributed to Chapter 10 ; and Shoghig Mikaelian wrote Chapter 9 . With these provisos in mind, and despite Salloukh’s role as a main contributor and overall coordinator of the project, the names of the remaining co-authors appear in alphabetical order on the cover of this book. Be that as it may, we consider this book to be a truly collective effort, whose inception and writing were motivated by common intellectual predilections and methodological choices, but, more importantly, by shared practical concerns and aspirations.
Bassel F. Salloukh
Rabie Barakat
Jinan S. al-Habbal
Lara W. Khattab
Shoghig Mikaelian

1
INTRODUCTION
The wave of popular uprisings that swept across the Arab world starting in December 2010 left no Arab state unscathed. The deafening anthem leading these uprisings, “ Al-sha‘b yurid isqat al-nizam ” (people want to overthrow the regime), rattled authoritarian regimes from Morocco to Oman. Prospects for those long-anticipated democratic transitions seemed bright in the immediate aftermath of authoritarian regime collapse in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. Soon enough, however, what had commenced as genuinely peaceful uprisings in Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria mutated into regime-manufactured sectarian or tribal contests. Authoritarian regimes deployed sectarian conflicts at home or aboard either to insulate themselves from domestic pressures, militarize otherwise peaceful uprisings, or, alternatively, advance their geopolitical objectives. 1 Nowhere was this overlapping use of sectarianism more striking than in Syria. An authoritarian regime sectarianized what had commenced as a national and peaceful popular uprising, while an external actor, Saudi Arabia, deployed sectarianism to topple the Syrian regime as part of a realist strategy aimed at compensating for Riyadh’s geopolitical losses in Iraq after the 2003 USA invasion. 2 Tehran also used sectarian symbolism to rally Shi‘a fighters from across the Arab world in defense of its Syrian bridgehead into the Arab world and its larger geopolitical interests. 3
Paradoxically, however, the explosion of sectarianism in the Arab world after the popular uprisings underscores the malleability of sectarian identities and modes of political mobilization. Far from being immutable and ahistorical essences, sectarian identities, like other vertical cleavages, are historical constructions; their intensity and centrality to modes of political mobilization is based on specific political, ideological, and geopolitical contexts. Domestic and regional dynamics in the Arab world have not always been driven by sectarian calculations; nor has sectarianism been the most important marker of political identities and group mobilization. Sectarian cleavages overlapped or cross-cut with other cleavages throughout the process of state formation; their primacy and intensity in a number of Arab states was a result of authoritarian regime strategies. 4 Moreover, sectarian modes of political mobilization thrive on state weakness and ideological vacuums. The lesson of the hitherto short history of the Arab states system is unequivocal in this respect: the salience of sectarian, tribal, ethnic, regional, or any other vertical or sub-national identity rises as the ideological and material power of the state declines. 5 Across the Arab world, dormant sectarian, tribal, religious, or ethnic affiliations flared up because of state collapse caused by the 2003 USA invasion of Iraq and, later, the militarization and sectarianization of the Arab uprisings.
Lebanon is quintessential in this respect. Since independence, sectarianism was institutionalized in the form of multiple corporate consociational power-sharing arrangements, namely the 1943 National Pact and the 1989 Ta’if Accord, in the context of a centralized but institutionally weak state. 6 Control of state institutions and revenues by an overlapping alliance of sectarian/political and economic elite consecrates a sectarian institutional s