![Sample our Area Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5922/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Area-Studies.jpg"})
Abstract
This article uses Pierre Bourdieu’s theory to analyze the relation between the Lebanese state and the reproduction of unequal power relations, in particular through the phenomenon of wasta (an Arabic word referring to the use of connections to obtain scarce goods or services). We attempt to demonstrate how social reproduction in Lebanon has come to rely on the clandestine exchange of certain symbolic and material resources, exemplified in practice by the ways in which different social agents make use of wasta. We further attempt to show how such exchange, rather than any negation of the state, in fact is connected intimately to effects produced by the state in the organization of these resources. We achieve this by analyzing the particular configuration of resources and reproduction mechanisms produced by the Lebanese state and demonstrating how these objective structures lead to determinate effects in the habitus of agents. These effects are expressed through variance in agents’ (social) reproduction strategies, which can be demonstrated most vividly by comparing the habitus of agents firmly embedded within the Lebanese social space to the ‘destabilized’ (or ‘tormented’) habitus of agents less adjusted to it. In this way, we show how Bourdieu’s analysis can reveal the means by which even supposedly ‘weak’ states such as Lebanon nonetheless may produce strong social effects.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to take this opportunity to express their thanks to the three anonymous reviewers who offered their critique of this paper and made several helpful suggestions for improvement. As always, any remaining errors or omissions are entirely our responsibility.
Notes
16 Egan, Clandestine Circulation, p. 117.
1 Correspondence Address: Martyn Egan, European University Institute, San Domenico di Fiesole 50014, Italy. Email: [email protected]. Paul Tabar, Lebanese American University, Beirut 13-5053, Lebanon. Email: [email protected]. R. Leenders (2012) Spoils of Truce: Corruption and State-Building in Post-War Lebanon (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press), p. 8.
2 Our use of the term ‘state effect’ should not be confused with that of T. Mitchell (1999) Society, Economy, and the State Effect, in: G. Steinmetz (ed.) State/Culture: State-Formation after the Cultural Turn (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press), pp. 76–97, which we see as lying more in the Michel Foucault tradition, whereby the state is presented as ‘an effect of mundane processes of spatial organization, temporal arrangement, functional specification, supervision and surveillance, and representation that create the appearance of a world fundamentally divided into state and society or state and economy’ (ibid., p. 95). Bourdieu’s approach, in contrast, focuses more on accounting for the mechanisms and relations that could drive such a process.
3 P. Bourdieu (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 95.
4 P. Bourdieu & L. Wacquant (1992) An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Cambridge: Polity Press), pp. 102–105.
5 Ibid., p. 11.
6 P. Bourdieu (1996) The State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Field of Power (Cambridge: Polity Press), p. 7.
7 See P. Bourdieu (1999) Rethinking the State: Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field, in: G. Steinmetz (ed.) State/Culture, pp. 53–75; idem (2004) From the King’s House to the Reason of State: A Model of the Genesis of the Bureaucratic Field, Constellations 11(1), pp. 16–36; and idem (2012) Sur L’Etat: Cours au Collège de France, 1989–1990 [On the State: Lectures at the College of France, 1989–1990] (Paris: Editions du Seuil).
8 Bourdieu, From the King’s House, p. 41.
9 Ibid., pp. 31–34.
10 This transition is referred to several times within Bourdieu’s work, see his (1986) The Forms of Capital, in J. E. Richardson (ed.) Handbook of Theory of Research for the Sociology of Education (New York: Greenwood Press), p. 255, and Bourdieu (1994) Stratégies de Reproduction et Modes de Domination [Reproduction Strategies and Modes of Domination] Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales, 105(1), p. 7.
11 The field of power is understood as a ‘meta-field … not situated at the same level as other fields … since it encompasses them in part,’ in which the rate of conversion between all forms of capital is established (Bourdieu and Wacquant, An Invitation, p. 18 n.32).
12 P. Bourdieu (1998) Practical Reason (Cambridge: Polity Press), pp. 14–18.
13 Al. Ledeneva (1998) Russia’s Economy of Favours: Blat, Networking and Informal Exchange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
14 See M. M. H. Yang (1994) Gifts, Favors and Banquets: The Art of Social Relationships in China (Ithaca: Cornell University Press), and A. Kipnis (1996) The Language of Gifts: Managing Guanxi in a North China Village, Modern China 22(3), pp. 285–314, for an overview of the Chinese phenomenon of guanxi.
15 The distinction between guises and forms of capitals is made clear in Bourdieu, The Forms of Capital, pp. 248–250.
17 The relation between the ‘interest’ or ‘logic’ produced by a particular form of domination, and the (objective) mechanisms and resources through which such domination is effected, is a particularly complex area of Bourdieu’s theory. For a detailed discussion on the two fundamental modes of domination, see M. Egan (2014) Clandestine Circulation: Social Reproduction in the Shadow of the State (PhD thesis, European University Institute), pp. 107–132; and Bourdieu (1990) The Logic of Practice (Cambridge: Polity Press), pp. 129–130.
18 Stratégies de Reproduction et Modes de Domination [Reproduction Strategies and Modes of Domination], pp. 3–12.
20 Bourdieu, Rethinking the State.
21 Bourdieu, Practical Reason, p. 40.
22 ‘Matters relating to personal status [are] for Islamic religious courts’ jurisdiction, and matters relating to personal property [are] for the judicial courts’ jurisdiction’ (in reference to Beirut Court of Appeal, Tenth Division: judgement no. 235/2003); see N. Comair-Obaid (2003) Lebanon, Yearbook of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law, pp. 231–241. As noted by C. Mallat, for Muslims all matters pertaining to personal status (marriage, divorce, custody, inheritance and wills) are dealt with by religious tribunals; for non-Muslims (i.e., Jews and Christians), inheritance and wills fall under civil jurisdiction; Mallat (1997) The Lebanese Legal System, The Lebanon Report, p. 31.
23 For an English translation of the Lebanon’s constitution, see P. Salem (1991) Commentary on the New Constitution and the Taif Agreement, The Beirut Review 1(1), pp. 119–160.
24 Decree 60 L.R. of 1936 (from the French mandate period).
25 Beginning with the case of Kholoud Sukkarieh and Nidal Darwish in 2012.
26 See R. Hamyeh (2014) Lebanon: Civil Marriage Stuck in the Interior Ministry, Al-Akhbar English, January 12, 2014. Available at: http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/18204, accessed July 8, 2014.
27 For a discussion of the ‘old’ and ‘new’ rent systems, see Z. Ghazzal (2012) The Case of Low Rents in Contemporary Beirut: A Case Study of a Leased Property Recuperation (unpublished manuscript. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/1927848/old_rents_in_contemporary_beirut), accessed March 15, 2016.
28 M. Fawaz (2009) Contracts and Retaliation: Securing Housing Exchanges in the Interstice of the Formal/Informal Beirut (Lebanon) Housing Market, Journal of Planning Education and Research, 29(1), p. 105.
29 See Leenders, Spoils of Truce, pp. 58–64, 101–116, 209–216; H. Baumann (2012) The ‘New Contractor Bourgeoisie’ in Lebanese Politics, in A. Knudsen & M. Kerr (eds) Lebanon: After the Cedar Revolution (London: Hurst and Company), pp. 125–144; and F. Balanche (2012) The Reconstruction of Lebanon or the Racketeering Rule, in ibid., pp. 145–162.
30 The precise legal instrument was Law 117 of 1991, which gave the Council for Development and Reconstruction (CDR)—a body exempt from usual government oversight through the Central Inspection Board of the Civil Service—authority to secure funding to enable a private real estate company (Solidere) to carry out reconstruction in a delimited area of downtown Beirut. As Leenders notes, the process by which prior property holdings were liquidated was not so much legal as having the appearance of legality. While ‘senior CDR personnel were drawn primarily from [Rafik] Hariri’s personal entourage and his business contacts.’ See Leenders, Spoils of Truce, pp. 105–113, quoted text at p. 105.
31 Leenders, Baumann & Balanche all seem to concur that the reconstruction of BCD favoured an emerging class against a declining one. Leenders notes that ‘Harirism … was as much directed against small ownership and middle-class capitalists as it was hostile to state institutions’ (Spoils of Truce, p. 214); H. Baumann describes ‘new contractors’ such as Hariri as belonging to a fraction of the ‘transnational capitalist class’ (The ‘New Contractor Bourgeoisie,’ pp. 128–129); while Balanche highlights the contrast between a global/local class division, with BCD becoming a secure zone for a global elite (The Reconstruction of Lebanon, pp. 155–158). The general conclusion would seem to be that the rationalization of ownership laws resulted in a decline in the prior middle-class property owners’ position.
32 In Bourdieu’s theory such an action would fall under the category of a reconversion strategy: A one-off transformation involving ‘the relinquishing […] of former resources and their recomposition on different bases’ (M. de Saint Martin (2011) Towards a Dynamic Approach to Reconversions, Social Science Information 50, 3–4, pp. 429–441, quoted text at p. 436. See also P. Bourdieu, L. Boltanski & M. de Saint Martin (1973) Les Stratégies de Reconversion, [Reconversion Strategies] Social Science Information 12(5), pp. 61–113. Such reconversion strategies typically follow revolutions, wars, etc., and the timing of the BCD reconversion (following the conclusion of the Lebanese civil war) is in keeping with this interpretation.
33 See Salem, Commentary on the New Constitution, p. 127.
34 See in particular M. Nimer (2013) Liban: ‘Misère’ de l’Ecole Publique [Lebanon: ‘Poverty’ of Public Schools] Carnets de l’IFPO. Available at: http://ifpo.hypotheses.org/4871, last accessed March 15, 2016.
35 Figures are available in the Central Administration of Statistics (2007) Survey on Living Standards, p. 218. These figures also demonstrate the extent to which public schooling is correlated with poverty: Enrolment rates in the private system are lowest in ‘the most damaged south’ (including Nabatiyeh, Sour and Bint Jubayl) at 44.1 percent, and highest in the wealthiest municipalities of Beirut and Mount Lebanon (respectively 75.4 and 72.9 percent); see ibid., p. 219.
36 Both M. Johnson and Baumann have noted this phenomenon, specifically with regard to the Sunni Maqasid foundation. Baumann in particular highlights the interesting case of Rafik Hariri, whose foundation initially began by handing out scholarships to study abroad on a non-sectarian basis. He eventually changed strategy to funding domestic sectarian-based schools as a better means of maintaining political support. According to Baumann ‘the confessional system had disciplined the new contractor.’ See M. Johnson (1986) Class and Client in Beirut: The Sunni Muslim Community and the Lebanese State 1840–1985 (London: Ithaca Press); and Baumann, The ‘New Contractor Bourgeoisie’, p. 134.
37 Samir Kassir has argued that since the civil war, the Lebanese University has been ‘deliberately sacrificed in favour of the reinvigorated forces of confessionalism and mercantilism.’ See his (2010) Beirut (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press), p. 545.
38 See, for instance, the long impasse between October 2001 and July 2014, during which the government failed to appoint any permanent deans to the university’s faculties. In their growing absence the university council’s powers were transferred to the university president and the education ministry—crippling the institution’s independence. The deadlock eventually was resolved only through political horse-trading by the various sectarian parties. See H. Lakkis (2014) Lebanese University Bill Finally Approved, Daily Star, July 25, 2014. Available at: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2014/Jul-25/265084-lebanese-university-bill-finally-approved.ashx, accessed March 1, 2015.
39 Information relating to accreditation can be found on the Internet sites of each institution; see Egan, Clandestine Circulation, pp. 187–188.
40 Again, this last point amply is demonstrated by the statistics: The ratio of students to teachers in the public school system is 7:1, against 13:1 in the private sector. The latter, however, continuously outperform the former in terms of exam performance. See Blom Investment Bank, The Lebanon Brief, 868, p. 16.
41 This is the International Labour Organization (ILO) modelled estimate for 2012. A comparison of ILO figures for Lebanon, Jordan, Tunisia and the OECD may be found at: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.ZS/countries/LB-JO-TN-OE?display=graph, accessed July 23, 2014.
42 See D. Robalino & H. Sayed (2010) Republic of Lebanon Good Jobs Needed: The Role of Macro, Investment, Education, Labor and Social Protection Policies (‘Miles’), World Bank Report, 76008, p. 2; and American University of Beirut and Hariri Foundation for Sustainable Human Development (2009) Higher Education and Labor Market Outcomes in Lebanon, p. 35.
43 CAS, Survey on Living Standards, p. 282.
44 According to a study conducted by Kasparian at the USJ, and referenced in American University of Beirut, Higher Education, p. 25.
45 See Salem, Commentary on the New Constitution, p. 12.8
46 This is not as straightforward a division as it might appear: In the power struggle over appointments at the Lebanese University, for instance, Walid Jumblatt (a Druze leader) took the part of the Greek Catholic community against the combined Maronite forces of Amine Gemayel and Michel Aoun, over the appointment of the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine (see Lakkis (2014) Daily Star).
47 For instance, the ‘mithaq al munaṣifah’ [parity charter] governs the sectarian distribution of almost all bureaucratic positions. The charter was a product of the National Pact of 1943, as modified by the Taif Agreement of 1989. However, it hardly can be said that Taif Agreement provides a legal basis for such a ‘gentleman’s agreement,’ given that it enshrined a commitment to the abolition of political sectarianism, and, where mentioned, sectarianism dealt only with the political representation awarded to Lebanon’s varying sects (i.e., not their bureaucratic representation in the public administration).
48 CAS ‘Survey on Living Standards.’
49 Several respondents, whom we decided not to identify further, mentioned the sale of public appointments, for instance, places in the military academy.
50 While low, we should not assume these figures to imply efficiency: The state Railway and Public Transport Authority, for instance, employs 350 people, despite the railways closing in 1976. Rebecca Whiting claims that 120 of these employees are involved in bus operations, and a further 20 in administration. The remaining 210 thus appear to be employed ‘to guard the 60 disused stations dotted along the country’s three defunct lines, protecting them from thieves and property developers’—an activity which, given the degree of theft and development to which this property has succumbed, they would appear to have prosecuted with only limited success; see Whiting (2013) Lebanese Railways: Searching for a Locomotive, Al-Akhbar English, May 12, 2013. Available at: http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/15778, accessed March 1, 2015.
51 The figure is derived from comparing estimates provided by John Chalcraft with CAS figures for a total male labour force of 834,697 persons in 2007; see CAS, p. 239; and J. Chalcraft (2009) The Invisible Cage: Syrian Migrant Workers in Lebanon (Stanford: Stanford University Press), p. 147. On the effect of low and semi-skilled migration causing a deflationary effect on wages (and assisting the capacity for capital accumulation among certain fractions), see ibid., pp. 158–161, 179–183, 188–192.
52 See in particular O. Nashabe (2009) Security Sector Reform in Lebanon (Arab Reform Initiative), pp. 5–6, which details the sectarian division of security forces in Lebanon.
53 Not only do militias compete externally with state security forces for the monopoly of violence, but also they at times have internally colonised these organisations. See further E. Picard (1999) The Demobilization of the Lebanese Militias (Oxford: Centre for Lebanese Studies), p. 7; and M. Fawaz, M. Harb & A. Gharbieh (2012) Living Beirut’s Security Zones: An Investigation of the Modalities and Practices of Urban Security, City & Society, 24(2), pp. 173–195. This preference for integrating competitors into the state’s monopoly of violence within state institutions continues to manifest itself, with then caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati proposing in 2013 that armed Sunni militants in Tripoli be integrated into the Internal Security Forces (ISF, the Lebanese police). See M. Nazzal, Lebanon: Dangerous Proposal to Integrate Gangs into Security Forces, Al-Akhbar English, November 23. Available at: http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/17684, accessed August 1, 2014.
54 The ‘privatization’ of public order is most visible in BCD, but a related phenomenon can be seen in the widespread prevalence of illegal ‘valet parking’ companies, which take possession of public streets at night in busy nightlife districts. More generally, the qabadayat—or local strongman—phenomenon seems to feed into this dynamic for the supply of non-state violence. For a discussion of the qabaday, see Fawaz, Harb & Gharbieh, Living Beirut’s Security Zones, pp. 173–195; Kassir, Beirut, pp. 233–234; and Johnson, Class and Client, pp. 82–96.
55 See for instance the recent Dekkenet el Balad [national store] campaign produced by the NGO Sakker el Dekkeneh [Close the Shop]. The campaign featured a mock store in which customers could buy ID cards, exam papers, degree certificates—in short, any official document produced by the state. See M. Gebeily (2014) Dekkenet al-Balad open in Gemmayze, Now Media, May 15, 2014. Available at: https://now.nmedia.me/lb/en/reportsfeatures/547427-dekkenet-al-balad-opens-in-gemmayze, accessed March 1, 2015). Leenders’s Spoils of Truce is the definitive academic study of Lebanon’s system of bureaucratic corruption.
56 Wasta is also present (in the sense both of the term and the practices associated with it) in other Levantine and Arab societies. See, for instance, R. Cunningham & Y. Sarayrah (1993) Wasta: The Hidden Force in Middle Eastern Society (Westport: Praeger), which deals with Jordan; and more recent articles such as A. Barnett, B. Yandle & G. Naufal (2013) Regulation, Trust, and Cronyism in Middle Eastern Societies: The Simple Economics of Wasta, The Journal of Socio-Economics, 44, pp. 41–46, which deals primarily with the Arabian Peninsula states of the Persian Gulf. However, we would concur with the general precaution of J. Leca & Y. Schemeil (1983) against treating superficially similar terms and practices as resulting from the same phenomena (Clientélisme et Patrimonialisme dans le Monde Arabe [Clientelism and patrimonialism in the Arab World], International Political Science Review 4(4), pp. 455–494). For this reason, none of the claims we make in this paper concerning Lebanese wasta should be considered as automatically holding true for wasta in other contexts.
57 S. Farsoun (1970) Family Structure and Society in Modern Lebanon, in: L. E. Sweet (ed.) People and Cultures of the Middle East (New York: Natural History Press), p. 270.
58 A. Ledeneva (2000) Continuity and Change of Blat Practices in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, in S. Lovell, A. Ledeneva & A. Rogachevski (eds) Bribery and Blat in Russia: Negotiating Reciprocity from the Middle Ages to the 1900s (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 181–204, quoted text at p. 183.
59 In Bourdieu’s terms, such ambiguity partially can be understood in relational terms: Perceptions of wasta function as a ‘prise de position’ [position-taking], which varies according to an agent’s position in social space. See Bourdieu & Wacquant, An Invitation, p. 105; and, more generally, P. Bourdieu (1989) Social Space and Symbolic Power, Sociological Theory, 7(1), pp. 14–25. Accounting for such variance in a consistent manner, however, is a theoretically tortuous process, which for the goals of the present study would render only a minor gain in understanding.
60 The relatively small, focused sample was related to the demands of the structured interview format, which was based on prior interviewing of different subjects and which followed a semi-structured format. The geographical restriction to the Ras Beirut area may have posed some problems, owing to the somewhat unique characteristics of that neighbourhood (generally speaking, more cosmopolitan, relatively wealthy). Nonetheless, the sample drew from a relatively wide socio-economic base (including not merely residents, but those who came to Ras Beirut to work). We also consider the results presented here to be a basis for more detailed field work in the future. Interviews were conducted in April and May 2013.
61 We consider the category ‘did not mention’ as potentially significant in its own right, as respondents were prompted extensively in each category.
62 Misrecognition is a complex, second-order construct within Bourdieu’s theory. In brief, a relation or practice is misrecognized when an agent denies (in good faith) the objective inequality upon which it is based, and instead recognizes it according to a differing (symbolic) logic. ‘I call misrecognition the fact of recognizing violence when it is wielded precisely inasmuch as one does not perceive it as such.’ See Bourdieu & Wacquant, An Invitation, pp. 167–168.
63 Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, p. 130.
64 P. Bourdieu (2000) Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity Press), p. 160.
65 P. Tabar, G. Noble & S. Poynting (2010) On Being Lebanese in Australia: Identity, Racism and the Ethnic Field (Beirut: Lebanese American University Press), pp. 170–173.
66 G. Noble (2013) ‘It is Home but it is not Home’: Habitus, Field and the Migrant, Journal of Sociology, 49(2–3), pp. 341–343.
19 Egan, Clandestine Circulation, p. 135.