Beirut

The architect and planner Michel Ecochard has had a long career in developing countries, from its first works in Syria under the French rule, until the 1970s. He represented the modernist and functionalist approach to planning in a time of modernization. In this article, we concentrate on his work in Lebanon and Syria between the end of the 1950s and the 1960s. He prepared the master plans of Beirut and of Damascus. Those works represented the end of an era rooted in colonial planning. It was also the beginning of a new time, with the local planners taking on, sometimes sharing, sometimes contesting Ecochard's visions. Building on recent scholarship on the circulation of planning ideas, we focus on the reception of Ecochard's proposals. Though most political elites and planning professionals shared most of Ecochard's views, the political circumstances and the changing social conditions led to adjustments and reorientations. The new planning framework was also a major factor of change.

In this interview with the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies  (LCPS),  Ziad Abu-Rish discusses the history of electricity service provisioning in Beirut in the context of state institutions, economic development, decolonization, and early independence.

In the developing world and unstable regions, illicit non-state actors often become involved in planning activities such as providing basic services, managing land use, and organizing the real estate market. This paper will look at the scholarly and journalistic conversations surrounding criminal groups engaged in planning activities that are traditionally seen as the government’s province. The first section of the paper will explain the rationale for treating criminal 1 groups as planners and provide an overview of existing literature on criminal planning. The second section will propose a typology of illicit non-state actors based on their structure, planning involvement, and relationships with the formal government, finding commonality among these disparate groups. It will discuss three broad types of criminal planners—traffickers, mafias, and militant groups—using the examples of Brazilian trafficking gangs and militias, the Medellín cartel, Indian mafias, ISIS, and Hezbollah. The third section will look at two forms of criminal involvement in planning: first, as a replacement for an absent government, and second, as an obstacle to government planning. Both are designed to assert and maintain the criminal group’s territorial and social control, and they rarely exist independently of each other. In fact, they are usually intertwined, creating complex symbiotic relationships between official and unofficial authority.

This paper explores processes of urban change and gentrification that have materialized over the past five years in the neighborhood of Mar Mikhael in Beirut, Lebanon. We employ the concept of gentrification as a main way of explaining these changes. However, there exists no universal blueprint for this process: every model derives from a specific location. In the case of Mar Mikhael, the process is characterized by a presence of the creative classes and a surge in new pubs and restaurant openings, as well as the beginnings of high-end, high-rise real estate projects. We argue that in many ways, however, these developments can be seen as a linear extension of Lebanon's laissez-faire politico-economic history and tradition of rule by an elite of bankers and merchants. To demonstrate this we will, first, explicate how and why gentrification is taking place in Mar Mikhael, including the settlement of the creative class; second, scrutinize the application of global aspirations for highly creative and internationally competitive cities in the local context of Beirut; and third, explain why these processes, while fitting a general explanatory framework of gentrification, should be seen as specific to the Lebanese context by pointing towards the country’s politico-economic history

La reconstruction du nouveau Beyrouth, un nouveau front de mer (quartier) : urbanisme, identité, tourisme et immobilier de luxe

En 1999, j’ai rendu un rapport de fin d’étude UV Géographie de la Méditerranée sur deux semestres, Université Le-Mirail, Toulouse, UFR de Géographie.
Analyse et présentation critique de quatre articles-thèses scientifiques. Section : urbanisme, paysage, tourisme.
Dossier de recherche bibliographique à partir de articles scientifiques ainsi que des recherches complémentaires :
- L’évolution urbaine et paysagère de la ville de Beyrouth.
- Des projets innovants : mer cas du « talus Normandy ».
- Beyrouth, une ville sous « haute-tension », les fractures identitaires de la ville post guerre civile,
- Une architecture beyrouthine renouvelée ou appauvrie ?
- Les évolutions du modèle de la maison libanaise.
- La vie dans les rues de Beyrouth
- Pour un nouveau Beyrouth international ?
- Un front de mer touristique (tourisme de loisirs, d’affaires ou de shopping mall ?).
- Interview du commandant du 3e RPIMa de Carcassonne sur la vision d’un militaire du Beyrouth de la guerre civile et d’une ville en reconstruction.
- Analyse des brochures publicitaires et d’un dépliant publicitaire du comité touristique.
- Archive du groupe SOLIDERE

The reconstruction of the new Beirut, a new waterfront (district): town planning, identity, tourism and luxury real estate

In 1999, I submitted an end of study report UV Geography of the Mediterranean over two semesters, Le-Mirail University, Toulouse, UFR of Geography.

Analysis and critical presentation of four scientific thesis articles. Section: town planning, landscape, tourism.
Bibliographic research file from scientific articles as well as additional research:
- The urban and landscape evolution of the city of Beirut.
- Innovative projects: sea case of the “Normandy embankment”.
- Beirut, a city under "high tension", the identity divides of the city after the civil war,
- Renewed or impoverished Beirut architecture?
- The evolutions of the model of the Lebanese house.
- Life on the streets of Beirut
- For a new international Beirut?
- A tourist seafront (leisure, business or shopping mall tourism?).
- Interview with the commander of the 3rd RPIMa in Carcassonne on the vision of a Beirut soldier of the civil war and of a city in reconstruction.
- Analysis of advertising brochures and an advertising leaflet from the tourist committee.
- SOLIDERE group archive

Winner of  the 2019 Nikki Keddie Book Award from the Middle East Studies Association, and the 2019 Anthony Leeds Prize from American Anthropological Association’s Society for Urban, National, and Transnational / Global Anthropology (SUNTA) section.

Beirut is a city divided. Following the Green Line of the civil war, dividing the Christian east and the Muslim west, today hundreds of such lines dissect the city. For the residents of Beirut, urban planning could hold promise: a new spatial order could bring a peaceful future. But with unclear state structures and outsourced public processes, urban planning has instead become a contest between religious-political organizations and profit-seeking developers. Neighborhoods reproduce poverty, displacement, and urban violence.

For the War Yet to Come examines urban planning in three neighborhoods of Beirut's southeastern peripheries, revealing how these areas have been developed into frontiers of a continuing sectarian order. Hiba Bou Akar argues these neighborhoods are arranged, not in the expectation of a bright future, but according to the logic of "the war yet to come": urban planning plays on fears and differences, rumors of war, and paramilitary strategies to organize everyday life. As she shows, war in times of peace is not fought with tanks, artillery, and rifles, but involves a more mundane territorial contest for land and apartment sales, zoning and planning regulations, and infrastructure projects.

Some books may have been written about the history of AUB, but no one has yet attempted to collect the histories of this University, with their intertwining perspectives and complexities.

To mark this year’s 150th anniversary, however, scholars from AUB and other academic institutions, as well as independent researchers have come together to tell some of the stories of this resilient and ever-evolving institution.

The result is One Hundred and Fifty, AUB’s main published academic work related to the sesquicentennial celebrations, which goes on sale this week with a book launch on Wednesday, March 2.

Edited by AUB Associate Provost Nadia El Cheikh and Professors Lina Choueiri and Bilal Orfali, the book includes 26 chapters highlighting various aspects of the history of the American University of Beirut. 

This book is for anyone curious about the history of the University and some of its remarkable personalities. The book is available for purchase through AUB Press.

La Venere degli stracci (Vénus aux Chiffons), une oeuvre majeure de l'art de la seconde moitié du XXe siècle a fait partie de  'Michelangelo Pistoletto in Beirut', présentée en 2014 au Beirut Exhibition Center. Ce texte, publié dans le catalogue de l'exposition aborde cette icône de l'Arte Povera à travers des pistes issues de l'histoire, l'art et la culture populaire.

This article investigates how rent gaps are created in Beirut, Lebanon, and makes a two-fold argument. First, it argues that rent gaps are created by state-legitimized power and agents of capital through the legal framework, and that the role of location in deter- mining differences between potential ground rents, so salient in Beirut, demonstrates the complementarity of neoclassical land rent theory and rent gap theory. Second, it argues that beyond the legal framework, rent gaps in Beirut are formed through informal, illegal and exceptionalist practices as well as civil, sectarian conflict and forced displacement. This extends the range of forces to consider when thinking about what creates and shapes rent gaps. The paper emphasizes the necessity of a critical perspective on the ways in which value in urban space is created in the interests of the state and agents of capital, while attuning rent gap theory to a more global perspective.

Encouraging intersections between reflection and intervention, via a better understanding of how different kinds of public spaces and spatial practices can provide possibilities and opportunities for collective action. Such procedure is particularly challenging in the case of cities like Beirut where spatial practices are largely restricted by regulations and practices prioritizing private property rights, at the expense of a substantive understanding of the commons. Interest groups dominating the neoliberal spatial production process in the Lebanese capital may well rapidly shut down potentials for mobilization and collective action within procedural spaces and by civil society initiatives.

Despite a few scholarly and popular contributions, the story of the Jews of Lebanon remains outside dominant narratives of the country’s recent past and the recent revival of memory studies on the Jews of the Arab world. The Lebanese Jewish story does not fit the chronology of other populations which saw major declines after the creation of Israel in 1948, as Beirut in particular became a home for other displaced communities. Exploring the richness of recent documentary films on the subject, the present study argues that the very category of ‘Lebanese Jew’ became increasingly difficult to articulate after Israel’s creation, despite Jews’ profound participation in the Lebanese mosaic and Beirut’s geography and cultural life. Examining the nuances in narratives of why Jews left, both from their own perspectives and from those of other Lebanese, we find that the efforts to recreate the memory of the community are very much connected with those to articulate a national project for all Lebanese.

An overview of the architectural public and private developments in Fouad Chehab's era in Lebanon (1958-1964), and the internal and external influences on these developments varying from political, religious, and economic.

The research was done in 2016, and it includes an architectural and political analysis of a variety of different types of projects that were done in Lebanon's golden age.

"What can we learn about the regional and global history of Beirut through an investigation of the history of mapping? Maps are traces left behind by the operation of power, and they reflect the
production of spatial relations and exclusions. The way in which Beirut has been understood as a symbol first for the promise, then the failure, of a secular, liberal multi-ethnic city in the Arab Middle East is revealing both of the geography of Eurocentric historical imaginaries and of the strengths, incoherence, and frailties of modern forms of power. Drawing on original archival research in Beirut, this article examines maps, urban plans, and aerial photography as a key site of translation—a term from actor–network theory that refers to the processes whereby one actor (not necessarily human) in some way affects another. It works toward a history of the translation of space by examining how maps, territories, and populations have been coproduced in three periods important to the mapping of Beirut: the French Mandate (1920– 46), the early years of Lebanese statehood in the Chehabist development era (late 1950s–60s), and the civil war (1975–1991)."

Designed by Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA), the Issam Fares Institute (IFI) is the American University of Beirut's most controversial building. It drew both praise and criticism due to its contrast with the traditional aesthetics of the neighboring Daniel Bliss Hall, Fisk Hall and Nicely Hall.

In December 1866 the Syrian Protestant College (hereafter SPC) opened its doors with four professors and sixteen students. The College soon became a recognized center of higher education in the Ottoman Empire, and attracted without discrimination a large number of students from all over the Empire. Daniel Bliss, the founding father of the college, quickly organized a medical department to fulfill the needs of the region. After the language change in the medical department from Arabic to English, non-Arabic speaking students, among whom were Armenians, started enrolling in the College.

This thesis, “A Portrait of Armenian Student Life at the Syrian Protestant College: 1885-1920,” examines the denominational, social and economic background of more than 230 Armenian students who came from Anatolia, anxious to study medicine at the SPC. The aim of this study is to evaluate the impact of SPC education on those students in the construction of an Armenian national consciousness. Besides exploring an important aspect of the College’s history and reconstructing student life during a challenging era, this thesis also highlights the exceptional but marginalized role played by the Armenian medical Alumni of the University during the First World War.

French rule over Syria and Lebanon was premised on a vision of a special French protectorate established through centuries of cultural activity: archaeological, educational and charitable. Initial French methods of organising and supervising cultural activity sought to embrace this vision and to implement it in the exploitation of antiquities, the management and promotion of cultural heritage, the organisation of education and the control of public opinion among the literate classes. However, an examination of the first five years of the League of Nations-assigned mandate, 1920-1925, reveals that French expectations of a protectorate were quickly dashed by widespread resistance to their cultural policies, not simply among Arabists but also among minority groups initially expected to be loyal to the French. The violence of imposing the mandate 'de facto', starting with a landing of French troops in the Lebanese and Syrian coast in 1919 - and followed by extension to the Syrian interior in 1920 - was met by consistent violent revolt. Examining the role of cultural institutions reveals less violent yet similarly consistent contestation of the French mandate. The political discourses emerging after World War I fostered expectations of European tutelages that prepared local peoples for autonomy and independence. Yet, even among the most Francophile of stakeholders, the unfolding of the first years of French rule brought forth entirely different events and methods. In this book, Idir Ouahes provides an in-depth analysis of the shifts in discourses, attitudes and activities unfolding in French and locally-organised institutions such as schools, museums and newspapers, revealing how local resistance put pressure on cultural activity in the early years of the French mandate

`This excellent study is a welcome addition to the scholarship on the inter-war mandates of Syria and Lebanon. Ouahes focuses on the cultural institutions through which the French authorities imposed their rule, ably demonstrating the ways in which the mandate system was transformed into a political and cultural framework akin to colonialism. While tracing the disillusion and contestations that ensued, he nonetheless discusses the impact and disparate legacy of the period on both the French and the diverse populations of the two mandates.' - Patricia M.E. Lorcin, Professor of History and Samuel Russell Chair in Humanities, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, `Resisting the imposition of French imperial control in 1920s

'Syria was never solely a matter of violent opposition. Ranging from classrooms and museums, to archaeological sites and vernacular journalism, in this richly evocative text Idir Ouahes reveals how Syrians contested the imposition of French Mandate rule in the realms of cultural heritage, educational provision and print media.' - Martin Thomas, Professor of Imperial History, University of Exeter

In March 2015, the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs and the Master’s in Urban Planning and Policy (MUPP) in the Department of Architecture and Design, Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, American University of Beirut (AUB), contributed to a workshop titled Creative Economy, Social Justice and Urban Strategies: The Case of Mar Mikhael. The workshop was conducted in partnership with GAIA Heritage, a heritage consulting company based in Beirut, and the Master’s in Regional and Urban Strategy at Sciences Po, Paris. Seven students participated in this workshop: three from the AUB- MUPP program and four from the Master’s in Regional and Urban Strategy at Sciences Po, Paris. The overall goals were to assess current urban transformations in the neighborhood of Mar Mikhael (Beirut, Lebanon) and investigate the impacts of creative industries on the area. The AUB-MUPP and the Issam Fares Institute contributions focused on social justice and the right to housing in a context of ongoing gentrification.

Given Professor Fawaz was on sabbatical leave for the AY2014-15, Professor Mona Harb, MUPP-MUD programs coordinator, was the administrative coordinator of the workshop. The scientific coordination was led by Ms. Marieke Krijnen, former AUB MUPP graduate student and currently PhD- candidate at the University of Ghent. Ms. Krijnen produced a concept note and fieldwork guidelines to orient the data collection process during the workshop. She also authored the present report, which synthesizes under the SJC’s framework the workshop’s data with her ongoing research about gentrification in the neighborhood. Graduate students participation was limited to collecting data from field visits in Mar Mikhael over one week’s time, and producing analytical mapping—available at the end of this report.

This document aims to report on the workshop context, actors, and findings. Following a brief background outlining current transformations in the neighborhood in the context of gentrifying Beirut, the report outlines the goals and methods adopted by the workshop and relays the main discussions and findings that occurred.

Bâ#ments du XX e siècle à Beyrouth City Center et Holiday Inn, témoins d'une époque glorieuse, vic#mes d'une guerre indélébile SOMMAIRE Bâ#ments du XX e siècle à Beyrouth City Center et Holiday Inn, témoins d'une époque glorieuse, vic#mes d'une guerre indélébile 1 BUCHAKJIAN Grégory, Habitats abandonnés -Une histoire de Beyrouth, Beyrouth, Kaph books, 2018, 239p. 2 9 Thèse Professionnelle Mastère Spécialisé Architecture et Patrimoine Contemporain KAHI Chirine Bâ#ments du XX e siècle à Beyrouth City Center et Holiday Inn, témoins d'une époque glorieuse, vic#mes d'une guerre indélébile

Cities can be critical agents in the development of a multiethnic tolerance. They are crucibles of difference, constituting a necessary and stringent test of whether, and how, group identity conflicts can be effectively managed. (Bollens 2007: 248). This citation by Scott A Bollens outlined the potential role of cities in their capacity to reunite divorced societies. Whilst Bollens' broader discourse has given credence to the constructive role of urban planning for reuniting divided cities, the capacity for urban design to do the same remains unclear. Based in notions outlined in the 'contact hypothesis' (Allport 1954) and 'culture-distance hypothesis , this paper aims to evaluate ways by which urban design can stimulate cross-cultural, pluri-social and pluri-ethnical interactions by increasing physical and mental access to public places. It expands on the role of planning and design processes in relation to the engagement of polarised groups in conversation. Looking at Beirut as a metropolis divided across cultural boundaries, this study analyses the non-efficacy of Solidere's reconstruction project for the Lebanese capital's CBD. The systematic criticism of this case exemplifies by default how the practice of urban design can create new divisions in cities instead of effectively participating in cultural conflict resolution. To support the capacity of the field of urban design in playing a positive role in conflicted cities, it shows through examples and theoretical assessments how this practice could have in fact contributed in creating spaces of inclusion where cross-cultural interactions would have been most likely to occur. In turn, as with the two aforementioned hypothesises, this typology of interaction between antagonists could have facilitated the evolution of pluri-cultural cities along the continuum towards the cosmopolitan city.

(for English scroll down)
Aus der bauhistorischen Untersuchung großer Wohnhäuser und einem breiten Fundus zeitgenössischer Quellen entwickelt die vorliegende Arbeit eine detailreiche Architektur- und Sozialgeschichte des bürgerlichen Wohnens in Beirut zwischen 1860 und 1930. Sie verfolgt Veränderungen in Architektur, Raumstruktur und Möblierung und spürt dem spannungsreichen Wandel von Wohnpraxis, Gastlichkeit, Geschlechter­beziehungen und Beziehungen zwischen Familie und Dienerschaft nach.

Based on building-historical surveys of large middle- and upper-class houses and a broad range of contemporary sources, this book presents a detailed architectural and social history of domestic culture and the bourgeois home in Beirut between 1860 and 1930--bridging the late-Ottoman and the early-Mandate periods. It identifies significant changes in architecture, spatial structure, and furnishings, and traces tension-fraught dynamics in domestic practices and the spatial manifestation of hospitality, gender relations, and relations between family and servants.

FRENCH - - - (english below)
La recherche prend pour cas d'étude la ville de Beyrouth. Elle a pour but de traiter les multiples représentations subjectives de la ville et de son espace public, questionner comment ces imaginaires se traduisent en différentes formes de pratiques urbaines et sociales, et de révéler les rôles et les limites de la mobilité informelle dans la construction de l'identité urbaine et dans la relation de l'individu au territoire. La question qui anime cette enquête est celle de la capacité de la mobilité à régénérer l'espace public dans le contexte d'une urbanité fragmentée.

ENGLISH - - -
The research takes as a case study the city of Beirut, addressing the multiple subjective representations of the city and of its public space, questioning how these imaginaries translate into different forms of urban and social practice, and shedding light on the roles and limits of informal mobility in shaping the relationship to the territory. The underlying question behind these investigations is whether and how mobility can (re-) generate public space in the context of a fragmented urbanity.

(full book available upon request (french))

The Middle East heritage in the last century has been suffering of war disasters, terrorist attacks, immigration and therefore squatting... People loose their homes, their cities, a part of their history, their heritage and consequently their identity as a population. In this thesis, Beirut, capital of Lebanon, my country, is the case study taken to analyze Post war reconstruction in the Middle East.
Beirut, one of the oldest cities in the world, in 1990 had just gotten out from a 15 year devastating Civil War. In the first part, the urban development of the city will be studied to understand how a private company called Solidere took control of the Post War Reconstruction Process. We will also see what were the main aspects of the proposed master plan and the critiques it received. Due to political instability the Project failed, consequently many buildings that were expropriated waiting to be demolished or redeveloped into a private entity remained closed down, namely the Grand Theater.
In the second part of the thesis, we will take a look at this edifice that raised the curiosity of many passers through the years. This eclectic building has always reflected the conditions of the city; it represents memory, identity and hope of a cultural building, since Solidere’s masterplan doesn’t comprise one.
At the very end of this research work, and after thorough analysis, a re-use design will be proposed. This proposal will take into consideration the actual state of the building after the attempts of renovating and reuse of Solidere.

Throughout the centuries Beirut has had an endless capacity for reinvention and transformation, a consequence of migration, conquest, trade, and internal conflict. The last three decades have witnessed the city center's violent self-destruction, its commercial resurrection, and most recently its national contestation, as oppositional political forces have sought to mobilize mass demonstrations and occupy strategic space. While research has been directed to the transformative processes and the principal actors involved, little attention has been given to how the next generation of Lebanese are negotiating Beirut's rehabilitation. This article seeks to address this lacuna, by exploring how postwar youth remember, imagine, and spatially encounter their city. How does Beirut's rebuilt urban landscape, with its remnants of war, sites of displacement, and transformed environs, affect and inform identity, social interaction, and perceptions of the past? Drawing on Henri Lefebvre's analysis of the social construction of space (perceived, conceived, and lived) and probing the inherent tensions within postwar youths’ encounters with history, memory, and heritage, the article presents a dynamic and complex urban imaginary of Beirut. An examination of key urban sites (Solidère's Down Town) and significant temporal moments (Independence Intifada) reveals three recurring tensions evident in Lebanese youth's engagement with their city: dislocation and liberation, spectacle and participant, pluralism and fracture. This article seeks to encourage wider discussion on the nature of postwar recovery and the construction of rehabilitated public space, amidst the backdrop of global consumerism and heritage campaigns.Rehaciendo a Beirut: Desafiando la memoria, el espacio y el imaginario urbano de la juventud libanesa (Craig Larkin)Rehaciendo a Beirut: Desafiando la memoria, el espacio y el imaginario urbano de la juventud libanesa (Craig Larkin)ResumenA través de los siglos, la ciudad de Beirut ha mostrado una capacidad ilimitada para reinventarse y transformarse a sí misma como consecuencia de la migración, las conquistas, el comercio y los conflictos internos. En las últimas tres décadas, el centro de la ciudad ha pasado por momentos de violenta auto-destrucción, de renovación comercial y, más recientemente, de apropiación como espacio de disputas nacionales a medida que las fuerzas opositoras llevan a cabo protestas multitudinarias y luchan por ganar espacio estratégicamente importante. Aunque en investigaciones anteriores se han estudiado estos procesos de transformación y los principales actores involucrados, se ha prestado poca atención a la forma en que la nueva generación de libaneses se relaciona con la reconstrucción de Beirut. Este artículo se propone llenar este vacío a partir de la exploración de cómo la juventud de la posguerra recuerda, imagina y se encuentra con su ciudad en términos espaciales.¿ De qué forma el panorama de reconstrucción urbana de Beirut con sus vestigios de guerra, sus reasentamientos y la transformación de sus entornos afecta y nutre la identidad e interacciones sociales y las percepciones sobre el pasado? A partir del análisis de Henri Lefebvre sobre la construcción social del espacio (percibido, concebido y vivido) y la exploración de las tensiones inherentes en el encuentro entre la juventud de la posguerra y el pasado como historia, memoria y legado, este artículo presenta un imaginario urbano dinámico y complejo de Beirut. El análisis de lugares urbanos clave (Solidère's Down Town) y momentos significativos en el tiempo (la Intifada de Independencia) revela tres tensiones recurrentes evidentes en la forma en que la juventud libanesa interactúa con la ciudad: dislocación y liberación, espectáculo y participación, pluralismo y fragmentación. Este artículo busca motivar un debate más amplio sobre el carácter de la recuperación después de la guerra y la construcción de espacios urbanos rehabilitados en el contexto del consumismo global y las campañas de revalorización del patrimonio.A través de los siglos, la ciudad de Beirut ha mostrado una capacidad ilimitada para reinventarse y transformarse a sí misma como consecuencia de la migración, las conquistas, el comercio y los conflictos internos. En las últimas tres décadas, el centro de la ciudad ha pasado por momentos de violenta auto-destrucción, de renovación comercial y, más recientemente, de apropiación como espacio de disputas nacionales a medida que las fuerzas opositoras llevan a cabo protestas multitudinarias y luchan por ganar espacio estratégicamente importante. Aunque en investigaciones anteriores se han estudiado estos procesos de transformación y los principales actores involucrados, se ha prestado poca atención a la forma en que la nueva generación de libaneses se relaciona con la reconstrucción de Beirut. Este artículo se propone llenar este vacío a partir de la exploración de cómo la juventud de la posguerra recuerda, imagina y se encuentra con su ciudad en términos espaciales.¿ De qué forma el panorama de reconstrucción urbana de Beirut con sus vestigios de guerra, sus reasentamientos y la transformación de sus entornos afecta y nutre la identidad e interacciones sociales y las percepciones sobre el pasado? A partir del análisis de Henri Lefebvre sobre la construcción social del espacio (percibido, concebido y vivido) y la exploración de las tensiones inherentes en el encuentro entre la juventud de la posguerra y el pasado como historia, memoria y legado, este artículo presenta un imaginario urbano dinámico y complejo de Beirut. El análisis de lugares urbanos clave (Solidère's Down Town) y momentos significativos en el tiempo (la Intifada de Independencia) revela tres tensiones recurrentes evidentes en la forma en que la juventud libanesa interactúa con la ciudad: dislocación y liberación, espectáculo y participación, pluralismo y fragmentación. Este artículo busca motivar un debate más amplio sobre el carácter de la recuperación después de la guerra y la construcción de espacios urbanos rehabilitados en el contexto del consumismo global y las campañas de revalorización del patrimonio.

Co-curated with Ahmad Barclay
Dar El-Nimer for Arts and Culture, October - November 2016 |
Qalandiya International, This Sea Is Mine |

The story of the archives of the Palestinian national movement reveals a narrative of exile and fragmentation that reflects the Palestinian experience itself. Building on archival and ethnographic research, this project reconstructs the journeys of these archives across the Mediterranean, connecting locations including Beirut, Haifa, Algeria, Cyprus and Italy. The project explores how much of these archives have been lost, why the remaining fragments are yet to be repatriated, and the ramifications of an archival absence on Palestinian narratives of past, present and future. |

http://www.darelnimer.org/en/events/sea-of-stories-voyages-of-the-palestinian-archives/ |

Interview by Samar Kanafain, contains content from exhibition:
http://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/34623/Voyages-of-the-Palestinian-Archive-An-Interview-with-Hana-Sleiman-and-Ahmad-Barclay  |

The German lacuna in Edward Said’s 'Orientalism' has produced varied studies of German cultural and academic Orientalisms. So far the domains of German politics and scholarship have not been conflated to probe the central power/knowledge nexus of Said’s argument. Seeking to fill this gap, the diplomatic career and scholarly-literary productions of the centrally placed Friedrich Rosen serve as a focal point to investigate how politics influenced knowledge generated about the “Orient” and charts the roles knowledge played in political decision-making regarding extra-European regions. This is pursued through analyses of Germans in British imperialist contexts, cultures of lowly diplomatic encounters in Middle Eastern cities, Persian poetry in translation, prestigious Orientalist congresses in northern climes, leveraging knowledge in high-stakes diplomatic encounters, and the making of Germany’s Islam policy up to the Great War. Politics drew on bodies of knowledge and could promote or hinder scholarship. Yet, scholars never systemically followed empire in its tracks but sought their own paths to cognition. On their own terms or influenced by “Oriental” savants they aligned with politics or challenged claims to conquest and rule.

On May 7, 2008, armed militias took to the streets of Beirut, Lebanon, in the worst sectarian fighting the city had seen since the end of the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990). This paper argues that critical to the understanding of the contestations of post-civil war Beirut are the ways in which the production of mundane geographies (such as housing, roads, and industrial zones) by religious-political organizations have transformed Beirut's peripheral spaces into frontiers of conflict. These geographies are produced within planned and imagined geographies of local and regional wars that are “yet to come.” Based on ethnographic and archival research, this paper maps the transformation of what used to be a peripheral area into a religiously-contested frontier zone, where spatial contestation has become less about war maneuvering and more about the production of a spatial order of political difference through land markets, building and infrastructure construction, and urban regulations and zoning. The study provides insights into how the geographies of the civil war, economic post-war restructuring, resistance to Israel's incursions, the regional rise of Hezbollah's military power, the post-war crisis of war militias such as the PSP, along with the skyrocketing prohibitive costs of land and housing in municipal Beirut have been articulated in new robust, shifting divide lines that configure the urban politics of Beirut's peripheries. I illustrate how the practice of urban planning in Beirut involve innovative techniques to continuously “balance” a spatiality of political difference in order to keep a war at bay while simultaneously allowing for urban growth and development profit.

Through the study of Beirut as a palimpsest, the paper aims to shed light on the interactions between unseen factors and driving forces that, at the urban and archaeological levels, produced the palimpsestic nature of this city. It tackles the palimpsest metaphor at the second level, thus shifting focus from the metaphor itself to the essential paradigms lying behind the observation and interpretation of past materiality, paying close attention to their ontological and epistemological dimensions.
In addition, it attempts to understand the interplay of all these different factors within the social realm to produce subjective meanings through the various narratives proposed by different actors. For this purpose, three case studies from Beirut’s post-war reconstruction experience are examined and discussed. Through these case studies, an attempt to bring together both theoretical and more tangible aspects of the palimpsest metaphor is made by bridging the social facts to the social actions in a real-world scenario.
The paper debates the uses and abuses of the archaeological record in the creation of biased heritage and historical narratives. It also tackles the various aspects of religious conflicts as well as religious identity and pluralism. It critically confronts conflict archaeology, ideology, and historiography within the framework of the politics of the present pasts within historic cities as well as the problems of ethnicity and identity politics.

Beirut and Sarajevo share antagonistic urban imaginaries of cosmopolitanism and contestation, as well as a recent experience of urban warfare, segregation, and post-war reconstruction.  This chapter scrutinizes how, despite these similarities, the process of urban reconstruction after the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990) and the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992-1995) respectively, produced very different urban outcomes through a planning framework resulting from contrasting post-war political settlements.  While Sarajevo’s post-war political configuration institutionalized forms of spatial segregation, the Lebanese government’s vision for downtown Beirut aimed to represent religious diversity and coexistence, but installed nonetheless new divisions, based on fear, security and class differences. The chapter argues that in these particular contexts, the city does not emerge as an autonomous body that can circumvent national politics, but becomes instead an arena of at times conflicting geopolitical articulations of state-level politics and local dynamics.

On 15 January 1926, an Iranian graduate of the American University of Beirut (AUB) by the name of Soheil Afnan wrote a letter to the Alumni monthly magazine, Al-Kulliyah, to criticize the university's Bachelor of Arts curriculum. He noted that 'government administrative posts, graduate and post-graduate work in universities abroad, [and] teaching in primary and secondary schools are among the most promising careers for the "B.A. man" in the East' . He complained, however, that the BA degree 'has been to most of its graduates a brilliant path that led you nowhere' . In response, Arthur A. Bacon, a university administrator involved in the curricular reform, took umbrage to this assessment and pointed to successful AUB graduates as evidence. Afnan conceded that there had been success stories, like the editors and proprietors of the Arabic newspaper Al-Muktataf and local administrators in the Sudan, but he attributed this to their '[p]ersonal capacity' rather than the university's curriculum.