Paul Tabar

''Habiibs'' in Australia: Language, Identity and Masculinity

Tackling the phenomenon of using Arabic words by second-generation Lebanese-Australians when conversing in English, and reading it culturally and sociologically, constitutes the primary aim of this article. In so doing, this paper concentrates on a number of spoken Arabic words with particular emphasis on the word “habiib”, and shows the relationship between these linguistic constructs and the boundary construction of the embattled identity of these youths. Furthermore, the probing into “habiib” and to a lesser degree, into other Arabic terms, reveals the power relations that traverse the linguistic world of the male and female youths examined by this article. In other words, this article shows the extent to which hybrid linguistic constructs constitute, and are constituted by, unequal gender and ethnic relations. They are also shown to be strategic acts of resistance against the broader community, which tends to keep the users of these words at the margin of society.

'Political Remittances': The Case of Lebanese Expatriates Voting in National Elections

This paper examines a particular event that occurred in Australia within the Australian-Lebanese community: it is the political mobilisation of a substantial number of this community to participate in the general elections that took place in Lebanon in June 2009. This event is analysed by looking into the various components of what we call ‘the Lebanese diasporic public sphere’. It is argued that this diasporic public sphere generates different political views and positions entertained by various members of the Australian-Lebanese community and materialised into specific ‘political remittances’ sent to Lebanon. Finally, an analysis of the impact of this political transfer to Lebanon is made in terms of a broader discussion of ‘political remittances’ as represented in the current literature.

Spiritual authority versus secular authority : relations between the Maronite church and the state in postwar Lebanon : 1990–2005

The voluminous literature on religion and politics in the Middle East has paid scant attention to state relations with national Christian churches. In most cases, these churches were in existence for centuries before the appearance of the modern Middle East state. This neglect can be justified partly on the grounds that those churches rarely step into the political domain and, unlike the radical Islamist movements, do not pose any threat to the stability of Middle East regimes. It also reflects the difficulty of conducting research on minorities in the Middle East, due to the sensitivities of Arab governments, most Arab academics, and Arab public opinion at large, toward this subject. Nevertheless, Christian churches in the Middle East represent minority groups, and there is a vital need to examine minority issues in the region, not only because those minorities often are subjected to official (and societal) discrimination, but also because a focus on minorities can help to shatter any lingering myths about the monolithic nature of Middle Eastern societies. A proper analysis of the Maronite church’s relationship to the state requires that this relationship be situated in the context of the dominance of confessional politics in

Strong in Their Weakness or Weak in Their Strength? The Case of Lebanese Diaspora Engagement with Lebanon

This paper seeks to assess when and how the Lebanese Diaspora in Australia, Canada and the USA is most able to affect homeland affairs in Lebanon. Drawing on over 300 in-depth interviews and analysing literature on the Lebanese Diaspora and Lebanon itself, the article seeks to categorise the spectrum of diaspora engagement with Lebanon and more fully define the diasporas homeland participation. Tentative conclusions indicate that the Lebanese Diaspora is most able to affect homeland affairs when the state is absent or unable to perform its functions as well as because the various political factions do not want a state built. However, to date, despite its renowned strength, the Lebanese Diaspora has not been able to affect change in the sectarian nature of Lebanese homeland politics nor in the too often replicated sectarian politics in the diaspora. We conclude that the diaspora is thus both strong and weak vis-à-vis affecting homeland public affairs.

Consociational Democracy and Urban Sustainability: Transforming the Confessional Divides in Beirut

Is ‘consociational democracy’ a sustainable working model for deeply divided societies? Despite its relative success in Lebanon, rapid urbanization has presented serious challenges to the rigid confessional power-sharing arrangement. In the city of Beirut, confessionalism, which is closely associated with urbanization, has led to the polarization, rather than the moderation, of sectarian divides. The results of an opinion survey conducted by the Lebanese American University during 2006–2007 in Beirut and its suburbs demonstrate that political polarization is driven fundamentally by a continual shift in the confessional balance of power. Urban tension has intensified owing to the fluidity of migration and displacement patterns while confronted by a rigid confessional power-sharing arrangement. Confessionally based consociational democracy has been failing to accommodate communities’ self-preservation as well as integration. This article suggests that consociational democracy needs to accommodate secular as well as confessional proportional representation and thus serve as a conflict transformation model. The implementation of a transitional electoral law that synthesizes confessional and secular representations in the Greater Metropolitan Beirut district is proposed as an institutional illustration for moderating rigid confessionalism and helping transform urban relations towards sustainability.

Bourdieu in Beirut: Wasta, the State and Social Reproduction in Lebanon

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.

The Cultural and Affective Logic of the Dabki: A Study of a Lebanese Folkloric Dance in Australia

The dabki is a folkloric dance enacted by Lebanese migrants in Australia. This paper examines this dance and shows that it is invested with many issues pertaining to the harsh realities of Lebanese migrants in Australia. In doing so, it criticises the reified understanding of the dabki that reduces it to a mere spectacle and a metaphor for Lebanese identity. Our analysis of the dabki shows the irreducible complexity of this cultural practice deriving from social processes that surround its production. These processes pertaining to the experience of displacement, discrimination and a change in gender and class relations result in imputing new meanings to the dabki and transforming some of its formal aspects. Overall, these changes alter the dabki and make it a site of contradictory investments: an object of intrusive gaze by the dominant culture, a strategy of building the unity of the Lebanese community, a symbolic reversal of inequality between the migrant and the host society, a site of changing class and gender relations and a strategy of re-connecting with the home of origin.

Wounded Detachments: Cronulla, Social Memory and the Injuries of Racism

ABSTRACT More than a decade since the Cronulla Riots, it could be argued that we are none the wiser about what they meant. Frequently evoked in public discourse, ‘Cronulla’ has become a benchmark for the worst of Australian society (whether that is seen as racism or multiculturalism). This paper reflects upon the representation of the Riots to explore three key ideas. First, we need to think about Cronulla through an exploration of the situated processes of social memory. There is no single ‘meaning’ of the Riots. In fact, the symbolic place of ‘Cronulla’ in public discourse is a contested space in which competing interests, processes and perspectives are at stake. Second, social memory is a complex and dispersed architecture of remembering and forgetting, but analysis typically focuses on the institutional and collective dimensions of social memory at the expense of other domains. Third, and drawing on some of the theoretical literature, we explore a different kind of memory that is forgotten in political and media representations of Cronulla – the embodied memory resulting from the injuries of racism experienced by those of Middle Eastern background. We see Cronulla entailing a violent and existential threat which detaches them from full belonging in Australia.

The Emergence of a ‘Diasporic Political Field’: A Case for Political Remittances

This chapter discusses the concept of ‘political remittances’. It discusses the context in which it first appeared as well as the current writings on this concept and what benefits and (possible) limitations it brings to migration studies. The authors suggest ways to further develop the concept of political remittances similar to what has been done to the concept of ‘social remittances’ as coined by Peggy Levitt. It is argued that, once elaborated, the concept of political remittances could generate new empirical research highly needed to better understand the transformative power of migration not only in receiving but also sending societies. The argument will also show the usefulness of conceptualizing political remittances as part of what the authors call the ‘diasporic field’ as distinguished from ‘transnational field’.

The Lebanese diasporic field: the impact of sending and receiving states

Abstract What is a diaspora? Can it be distinguished from a ‘transnational community’? This paper discusses the Lebanese migrants abroad and their relationships with Lebanon by deploying the Bourdieusian concept of ‘field’. It argues that Bourdieu’s concept of field helps to capture the dynamic character of diasporic relations and the power relations that underpin them. It also enables the researcher to better delineate the boundary of a diasporic community and at the same time to treat this boundary as flexible enough to identify the specific terms for entering and exiting the ‘diasporic field’. It also argues that at a time when diasporic relations are cross-national, that specifically revolve around a real or imaginary ‘homeland’, they encompass individual, group and institutional actors that belong with varying degrees to the country of origin and the countries of settlement. Finally, the paper concludes that the ‘diasporic field’ is a useful analytical tool to capture the complexities of increasingly ubiquitous diasporic relations.