In my ten-year long fieldwork, conducted between 2006 and 2016 mostly in the South Lebanese city of Tyre, I have often looked at conflicting loyalties and the subsequent legitimate illegality proper of a pluri-ethnic and multi-religious society. Here, moralities may be in conflict with each other, while overlapping with specific loyalties that may lie outside of the nation state, in which case they are mostly religiously-driven. Thus, when these loyalties clash the clash is about the very essence of the state. However, in a consociational model like the Lebanese ‘confessional’ system, this kind of conflict is institutionally mitigated by a (multi-religious) share of power (Kerr 2005). I submit that it is precisely in the representation of the tension between a democratic system and a consociational one that the ethnographer’s contribution must lie, since he must academically contextualize the borders of this often-overlooked tension.
Fearing the Intrusion: Illegal but Legitimate Ethno-religious dynamics in Lebanon
marcello mollica
2018-01-01
Abstract
In my ten-year long fieldwork, conducted between 2006 and 2016 mostly in the South Lebanese city of Tyre, I have often looked at conflicting loyalties and the subsequent legitimate illegality proper of a pluri-ethnic and multi-religious society. Here, moralities may be in conflict with each other, while overlapping with specific loyalties that may lie outside of the nation state, in which case they are mostly religiously-driven. Thus, when these loyalties clash the clash is about the very essence of the state. However, in a consociational model like the Lebanese ‘confessional’ system, this kind of conflict is institutionally mitigated by a (multi-religious) share of power (Kerr 2005). I submit that it is precisely in the representation of the tension between a democratic system and a consociational one that the ethnographer’s contribution must lie, since he must academically contextualize the borders of this often-overlooked tension.File | Dimensione | Formato | |
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