Mona Harb

Faith-Based Organizations as Effective Development Partners? Hezbollah and Post-War Reconstruction in Lebanon

Defining Hezbollah as a faith-based organization (FBO) may seem unusual as it is normally labelled by many Westerners as a terrorist organization and is thus rarely examined as an ‘ordinary’ or legitimate political player. Yet, this is the position I adopt here. This chapter considers Hezbollah as a Lebanese political party which has been in charge of the elaboration and implementation of development policies for middle and lower-income Shi’i groups for over 25 years. I will also analyse the role of Hezbollah’s affiliated institutions as FBOs and will argue that their successes in service provision and management makes them, in certain conditions, effective and accountable partners for development stakeholders. Before proceeding, I will briefly relate Hezbollah to the Lebanese political context.

Living Beirut's Security Zones: An Investigation of the Modalities and Practice of Urban Security

Over the past decade, security has gained enormous attention in the urban literature, reflecting its visibly increasing presence in cities worldwide. It is now widely acknowledged that security is a structuring force for cities both historically and now. Few scholars have however looked at the implications of security on the daily practices of urban dwellers. Based on extensive fieldwork during which we developed a street by street survey of security mechanisms in Beirut (Lebanon), interviewed city dwellers, and worked with artists and local writers reflecting of “security issues”, this paper describes “security” as the accumulation of a set of constructed threats that bring together a multiplicity of forms and agents of securitization, both public and private, and generate new forms of social hierarchies with unequal repercussions on city dwellers. Far from the coherent symbol of an independent sovereign, we argue that security acts in Beirut as a reflection of and a catalyst for social and political divisions.

Choosing Both Faith and Fun: Youth Negotiations of Moral Norms in South Beirut

Challenging both polarized depictions of Muslim youth and scholarship that over-privileges piety as a focal point in Muslims’ lives, this article highlights the complexity of the moral worlds of Shi‘i youth in Lebanon. Through ethnography of youth choices when going out, we argue that youth practices and discourses of morality are multiple and flexible in their deployments, perhaps especially when it comes to ideas about leisure. This interpretive flexibility may work to redefine ideas about leisure within a framework of religiosity such that some of the rules of piety itself are perceived as flexible.

Contesting urban modernity: Moral leisure in south Beirut:

The urban scholarship on Beirut often focuses either on the reconstruction of its downtown area controlled by the private real estate company Solidere, or on its poor southern suburbs (Dahiya) dominated by the Shi‵i Islamic political party, Hizbullah. Downtown is strongly associated with an urban ‘modern’ model that generates pride for Lebanese, while Dahiya is defamed as a less modern urban space, unworthy of consideration as part of Beirut’s urban modernity. This article explores the contested urban modernity of Beirut through an investigation of the new moral leisure sector that has spread across the southern suburb. It challenges the simplistic distinction and valuation of urban spaces in Beirut, and argues for a more complex understanding of urban modernity that encompasses spaces of the city where the features that produce urban modernity are multiple and contested.

Politics, Culture, Religion: How Hizbullah is Constructing an Islamic Milieu in Lebanon

What might the wreckage of a former prison in south Lebanon that was destroyed during Israeli bombardment in 2006 have in common with a series of “family-oriented” amusement parks built by a corporate investment group? How might these sites be related to an ecotourism facility high in the mountains above Saida and the 70-some cafes and restaurants that have opened in the southern suburbs of Beirut since 2000? Aside from being fieldsites in our ongoing research on Islam and leisure in Lebanon, these places are significant to the political party Hizbullah. They tell us something about the relationship of culture to politics in the Hizbullah community, and they can be considered part of a recently emergent “Islamic milieu” in Lebanon.

New Forms of Youth Activism in Contested Cities: The Case of Beirut

Abstract Lebanese youth are constructed through fragmented lenses, and are recipients of partial, unresponsive, and often irrelevant policies. Despite these constraints, many youth have become actively engaged in political life, especially since 2005. Three types of youth engagement can be identified: i) the ‘conformists’, who privilege their sectarian belonging, ii) the ‘alternative groups’, who engage in professional NGOs, and iii) the new ‘activists’, who prefer loose organising centred on progressive and radical issues. New forms of youth activism in the contested city of Beirut have been able to exploit interstitial openings for seeds to grow into potentially “disruptive mobilizations”. While these resistances may have been limited up to now in time and space, youth activist groups still embarrass, hold accountable and constrain hegemonic politics. They may be generating seeds of collective action that still have to be further structured and organised.

Eco-City Projects: Incorporating Sustainability Requirements during Pre-Project Planning

ABSTRACT International standards exist for evaluating building or neighborhood sustainability. Nonetheless, they are still not available for large-scale developments. Of special interest to practitioners is how to ensure that sustainability requirements of large-scale projects are well integrated in a master plan. This paper provides design managers of new eco-cities with a framework to integrate sustainability in the pre-project planning phase. A case study of a planned eco-city is investigated to delineate its pre-project planning practices, compare them to the proposed framework, and infer lessons learned. The case study highlights the importance of regular interactions between business planners and master planners to incorporate sustainability requirements at early planning phases.