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This dissertation argues that a particular kind of experience of memory, what I call an appeal to a non-secular justice, became available at a bakery in Tripoli, Lebanon by means of the work of bread. This bakery was a site where Syrian, but also Lebanese and Palestinian, migrant and refugee workers labored under conditions of modern capitalism amidst neoliberal collapse. Such experience, I argue, had its condition of possibility in the foreclosure of other kinds of politics due to violence, including the nation-state and revolutionary horizons. But it also had its condition of possibility in the iterative, embodied practices of bread-making, or what I call ‘the work of bread.’ Crucial to this approach is bread’s associations with ‘life’, ‘rights,’ and ‘justice’ in the Arab world. Amidst cycles of what bakery workers call the “life and death of dough”—the temporalizing force of the work of bread—another experience of memory became possible, one that gestured to a justice other than that of secular politics. The bakery thus became a site of the activation of an Islamicate archive of theology, philosophy, and poetics—a space of religious and aesthetic experience and experimentation giving form to life.My dissertation takes a two-fold approach, organized into six chapters. On the one hand, I argue that the specific political importance of subsidized bread as a modality of sovereign power mediating between the state and its citizens is a modern, post-colonial phenomenon in the Levant —part of the twentieth century formation of the nation-state and its discourse of political rights in the region. I argue that this relationship is actively being reworked amidst the post-2011 popular uprisings, neoliberal austerity measures, and global food shortages due to war and climate change. On the other hand, I argue that the bakery is a space of memory and, for its Syrian workers, of mourning. Such an approach is made possible by the symbolic polyvalence of dough and bread—a figural plasticity that transforms the bakery into the site of a dreamwork, often spoken of amongst the bakery workers in terms of the ethical-spiritual heart [al-qalb] and the imagination [al-khayal]. This vision reveals the bakery as a scene of struggle by which the practices organized around bread’s production—stories, pedagogical lessons, jokes—give shape to efforts to reconstruct a sociality born from a life in flight.

Lorsque l’État du Grand Liban prit forme en 1920, les structures politiques de la communauté juive se transformèrent. Le conseil communal israélite libanais trouvait désormais son siège à Beyrouth, plaçant les autorités des autres communautés juives du pays dans une position subalterne par rapport à la capitale libanaise. En partant d’une analyse de la communauté juive dans la ville de Sidon (ou Saïda), ses relations avec d’autres communautés religieuses, notamment arménienne, de même qu’avec les autres communautés juives établies à Beyrouth et Tripoli, cette contribution montre que ces transformations ne se firent toutefois pas sans difficultés. Cette réflexion sur la primauté des dynamiques locales sur la logique communautaire conduira à une réflexion critique sur la grille de lecture du communautarisme (al-ṭā’ifiyya) libanais, souvent dominante dans l’historiographie sur la région. When the State of Greater Lebanon was created in 1920, the Jewish community’s political structures were transformed. The Israelite Community Council was officially centralized in Beirut, placing Jewish communities established in other cities of the country in a subaltern position. Through an analysis of the Jewish community in the city of Sidon (or Saida), considering its relations with the city’s other religious communities such as the Armenians, as well as with other Jewish communities in Beirut and Tripoli, this contribution aims to shed light on the many difficulties these political changes brought about. By showing how local dynamics of power often prevailed over religious solidarities, the author delivers a critique of the sectarian paradigm (al-ṭā’ifiyya) of Lebanese history, which is often dominant in the historiography of the region.

This fieldwork report documents key findings for the TRAFIG case study of Tripoli, Lebanon. The research in Lebanon took place in the context of TRAFIG’s comprehensive research on displaced Syrians in Jordan, the results of which can be found in TRAFIG Working Paper No. 6. The key findings explored in this report relate to TRAFIG Theme 3: Following the networks, and engage with Theme 1: Navigating through governance regimes and Theme 2: Living in Limbo to a more limited degree. Summary Living conditions among Syrians in Tripoli, Lebanon, have deteriorated since 2011. Syrian refugee households that achieved some degree of stability after self-settlement reported an upheaval in livelihoods amidst declining economic conditions that intensified after October 2019. The 2020 Global COVID-19 Pandemic and associated measures attempting to limit the spread placed additional stress on an increasingly growing number of vulnerable households. You can download the report here., CMI Report No. 5 ISBN 978-82-8062-790-2 (print) ISBN 978-82-8062-791-9 (PDF)

The large influx of Syrians displaced into urban areas in Lebanon strained infrastructure and available services. Based on a survey of 450 displaced Syrians in Beirut, Tripoli, and Tyre, this CMI Insight sheds light on the challenges and opportunities of urban self-settlement and the benefits for instituting area-based solutions.

Journal of Urban Culture Research, 22, -, 50-64

consultable sur http://www.cairn.info/article.php?ID_ARTICLE=FLUX_075_0027; International audience; The article deals with the relationships between the territorial splinterring and the changes of the network provision services. It shifts from linear explanations and claims the necessity to take into consideration the retroactions between territorial differenciation and the management practices. The Lebanese case, despite its apparent specificity linked to the effects of the civil war, is interresting because iseveral explicatory registers have to be combined, among which the undettered relevance of the universal network as a goal for the sector's policies, as well as neoliberal reforms. The article focuses on the electricity sector, a State monopoly whose performance is very weak, but that is still waiting for reforms to be conceived, and the drinking water sector, managed at the local level, but the target of a sound reform since 2000, including a limited privatisation attempt. The article first remembers the unachieved implementation of the universal model, than outlines the territorial differentiation resulting from the war, and that the reconstruction policies have not fully fixed and, otherwise, sometimes accentuated. The current neoliberal reforms are adding new factors of differenciation according to the local results of the reforms.; S'inscrivant dans le débat sur les relations entre la fragmentation territoriale et les mutations des services urbains en réseau, cet article s'écarte d'explications de nature linéaire et plaide pour une prise en compte des rétroactions entre la différenciation territoriale et les pratiques gestionnaires. Le cas libanais, en apparence spécifique en raison des effets perturbateurs de la guerre civile, permet de combiner plusieurs registres explicatifs, comme la persistance du modèle universel comme référence des politiques publiques et les tentatives de réforme de type néolibéral. Deux secteurs sont étudiés : l'électricité, organisée comme un monopole public national aux performances très médiocres, mais sans qu'un projet de réforme clair soit mis en œuvre, et l'eau potable, géré de manière décentralisée, mais qui connaît depuis 2000 une profonde transformation, dont une expérience limitée de privatisation. L'article analyse d'abord la mise en place inachevée du modèle universel, puis s'attache à la différenciation territoriale qui résulte des transformations géographiques et sociales de la guerre, et que la reconstruction n'a que partiellement réduite, et au contraire parfois accentuée. Les tentatives actuelles de réforme de type libéral introduisent de nouveaux éléments de différenciation en fonction des résultats des réformes par secteur et selon les lieux.

Texte présenté à la conférence (et légèrement repris). Soumis à la revue Arab World Geographer en vue d'une publication dans un numéro reprenant les actes de cette conférence; After the 2006 summer war and the 2007 assault of Nahr el Bared, the issue of energy and water supply is once again one of the main issues the Lebanese have to cope with. It is a consequence of the damages inflected by both conflicts (mostly during the 2006 war) as well as a result of the State paralysis, which is hindering the necessary reforms. But the recovery of the energy and water delivery, deeply affected by the civil war (1975-1990), had never been fully achieved during the reconstruction process. Strangely, while the crisis of these infrastructures has been recognized as one of the dimensions of the civil war urban crisis (Awada 1988, Davie 1991), urban scholarship has mostly overlooked the public service supply issue during the 1990's. In this paper we would like to address it and, specifically, to understand how the water and electricity supply is linked to the process of territorial fragmentation in post civil war Lebanon. Since the end 1990's, several attempts at reforming both sectors have been launched. They seem to be part of a wider global trend of neoliberal reforms affecting urban utilities. Since the social and territorial impacts of such reforms are usually strong, we will also try to assess their effects in the Lebanese cities. Lastly, we have to examine how the recent cycle of violence and of political unrest has heightened the problems, which is one of the currently most disputed political issues.

Cette communication présente la méthode d'une enquête en cours sur les usages et les perception de l'eau à Tripoli

Cette communication présente la méthode d'une enquête en cours sur les usages et les perception de l'eau à Tripoli

The author examines the notion of public space through the study of power relationships as defined by Foucault. Understanding the different forces at work in the transformation of the urban coastal area of Tripoli, following the development of a comiche, will be the opportunity to present the first defining elements of a group project entitled Tripoli society'. This preliminary study will then allow us to understand better the analysis of the negotiation processes related to the creation of a zoo adjacent to the corniche. From this case study a number of conclusions can be suggested with respect to the notion of urban public space in the Lebanon., L'auteur se penche sur la notion d'espace public par le biais de l'étude des relations de pouvoir telles que M. Foucault les avait définies. La compréhension des mécanismes de pouvoir qui concernent la transformation du littoral de l'agglomération de Tripoli au Liban, suite à l'aménagement d'une corniche, sera l'occasion de présenter les premiers éléments de définition d'un ensemble pratique : "société tripolřtaine". Ce travail préparatoire nous permettra de mieux investir, dans un second temps, l'analyse des processus de négociation autour de l'implantation d'un parc zoologique contigu à cette corniche. A partir de cette étude de cas, quelques éléments de réflexions pour penser la notion d'espace public urbain au Liban pourront être avancés., Dewailly Bruno. L'espace public à travers le prisme du pouvoir : quelques éléments de réflexion à partir d'un cas tripolitain (Liban). In: Géocarrefour, vol. 77, n°3, 2002. L'espace public au Moyen-Orient et dans le monde arabe. pp. 297-305.