Beirut, a City of Contrast

Beirut, a City of Contrast

Author: Nina Jidejian

Publisher:

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 9789953536026

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Book Synopsis Beirut, a City of Contrast by : Nina Jidejian

Download or read book Beirut, a City of Contrast written by Nina Jidejian and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:


The For the War Yet to Come

The For the War Yet to Come

Author: Hiba Bou Akar

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2018-09-11

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 1503605612

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“Through elegant ethnography and nuanced theorization . . . gives us a new way of thinking about violence, development, modernity, and ultimately, the city.” —Ananya Roy, University of California, Los Angeles Beirut is a city divided. Following the Green Line of the civil war, dividing the Christian east and the Muslim west, today hundreds of such lines dissect the city. For the residents of Beirut, urban planning could hold promise: a new spatial order could bring a peaceful future. But with unclear state structures and outsourced public processes, urban planning has instead become a contest between religious-political organizations and profit-seeking developers. Neighborhoods reproduce poverty, displacement, and urban violence. For the War Yet to Come examines urban planning in three neighborhoods of Beirut’s southeastern peripheries, revealing how these areas have been developed into frontiers of a continuing sectarian order. Hiba Bou Akar argues these neighborhoods are arranged, not in the expectation of a bright future, but according to the logic of “the war yet to come”: urban planning plays on fears and differences, rumors of war, and paramilitary strategies to organize everyday life. As she shows, war in times of peace is not fought with tanks, artillery, and rifles, but involves a more mundane territorial contest for land and apartment sales, zoning and planning regulations, and infrastructure projects. Winner of the Anthony Leeds Prize “Upends our conventional notions of center and periphery, of local and transnational, even of war and peace.” —AbdouMaliq Simone, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity “Fascinating, theoretically astute, and empirically rich.” —Asef Bayat, University of Illinois — Urbana-Champaign “An important contribution.” —Christine Mady, International Journal of Middle East Studies


Book Synopsis The For the War Yet to Come by : Hiba Bou Akar

Download or read book The For the War Yet to Come written by Hiba Bou Akar and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-11 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Through elegant ethnography and nuanced theorization . . . gives us a new way of thinking about violence, development, modernity, and ultimately, the city.” —Ananya Roy, University of California, Los Angeles Beirut is a city divided. Following the Green Line of the civil war, dividing the Christian east and the Muslim west, today hundreds of such lines dissect the city. For the residents of Beirut, urban planning could hold promise: a new spatial order could bring a peaceful future. But with unclear state structures and outsourced public processes, urban planning has instead become a contest between religious-political organizations and profit-seeking developers. Neighborhoods reproduce poverty, displacement, and urban violence. For the War Yet to Come examines urban planning in three neighborhoods of Beirut’s southeastern peripheries, revealing how these areas have been developed into frontiers of a continuing sectarian order. Hiba Bou Akar argues these neighborhoods are arranged, not in the expectation of a bright future, but according to the logic of “the war yet to come”: urban planning plays on fears and differences, rumors of war, and paramilitary strategies to organize everyday life. As she shows, war in times of peace is not fought with tanks, artillery, and rifles, but involves a more mundane territorial contest for land and apartment sales, zoning and planning regulations, and infrastructure projects. Winner of the Anthony Leeds Prize “Upends our conventional notions of center and periphery, of local and transnational, even of war and peace.” —AbdouMaliq Simone, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity “Fascinating, theoretically astute, and empirically rich.” —Asef Bayat, University of Illinois — Urbana-Champaign “An important contribution.” —Christine Mady, International Journal of Middle East Studies


Beirut, Imagining the City

Beirut, Imagining the City

Author: Ghenwa Hayek

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2014-10-29

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0857725327

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Beirut is the cultural, commercial and economic hub of Lebanon. But to what extent has the city affected and shaped the formation and perceptions of Lebanese national identity? Ghenwa Hayek here explores how anxieties over the past, present and future of Beirut have been articulated through a sense of dislocation present in Lebanese writing since the 1960s. Drawing on theories of cultural studies, geography and history, the author uses an interdisciplinary framework to explore the role that spaces - from rural to urban - have played and continue to play in the defining, and re-defining, of national identity in the seventy years since the creation of the Lebanese nation state. This theoretical perspective coupled with a close reading of little-explored contemporary writings lead Hayek to question the predominant assumption that Lebanese novelists only became engaged in discourses about place identity and individual and social belonging with the start of the fifteen-year civil war and the destruction of Beirut's city centre. Instead, the book shows that particular geographical imaginaries have been mobilized to describe, question and debate Lebanese identity since the 1960s and that some go back even further into the late nineteenth century. This re-reading calls for a re-evaluation of some of the most predominant assumptions about Lebanon and the processes of Lebanese identity formation across the country's modern history. Examining a wide range of modern and contemporary literature, Hayek charts the rise to cultural prominence of the city of Beirut as a significant player in shaping perceptions of Lebanese culture and identity.


Book Synopsis Beirut, Imagining the City by : Ghenwa Hayek

Download or read book Beirut, Imagining the City written by Ghenwa Hayek and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-10-29 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beirut is the cultural, commercial and economic hub of Lebanon. But to what extent has the city affected and shaped the formation and perceptions of Lebanese national identity? Ghenwa Hayek here explores how anxieties over the past, present and future of Beirut have been articulated through a sense of dislocation present in Lebanese writing since the 1960s. Drawing on theories of cultural studies, geography and history, the author uses an interdisciplinary framework to explore the role that spaces - from rural to urban - have played and continue to play in the defining, and re-defining, of national identity in the seventy years since the creation of the Lebanese nation state. This theoretical perspective coupled with a close reading of little-explored contemporary writings lead Hayek to question the predominant assumption that Lebanese novelists only became engaged in discourses about place identity and individual and social belonging with the start of the fifteen-year civil war and the destruction of Beirut's city centre. Instead, the book shows that particular geographical imaginaries have been mobilized to describe, question and debate Lebanese identity since the 1960s and that some go back even further into the late nineteenth century. This re-reading calls for a re-evaluation of some of the most predominant assumptions about Lebanon and the processes of Lebanese identity formation across the country's modern history. Examining a wide range of modern and contemporary literature, Hayek charts the rise to cultural prominence of the city of Beirut as a significant player in shaping perceptions of Lebanese culture and identity.


Precarious Imaginaries of Beirut

Precarious Imaginaries of Beirut

Author: Judith Naeff

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-12-01

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 3319659332

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This book investigates a shared experience of time and space in the post-civil-war city of Beirut: “the suspended now”. Based on the close analysis of a large corpus of cultural objects; including visual art, literature, architecture and cinema; the book argues that last decades have witnessed a gradual shift in understanding this temporality from being a transitional phase to a more durable experience of precariousness. The theoretically rich analyses take us on a journey through Beirut’s real and imagined geographies, from garbage dumps to real estate advertisements, and from subterranean spaces to martyr’s posters. For scholars of cultural analysis, urban studies, cultural geography and critical theory, the case of post-1990 Beirut offers a fascinating case of neoliberal urban renewal, which challenges existing theories. For scholars of Lebanon and Beirut, this study complements existing work on post-civil-war Lebanese cultural production rooted in trauma studies by its focus on the city’s continual exposure to violence.


Book Synopsis Precarious Imaginaries of Beirut by : Judith Naeff

Download or read book Precarious Imaginaries of Beirut written by Judith Naeff and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-12-01 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates a shared experience of time and space in the post-civil-war city of Beirut: “the suspended now”. Based on the close analysis of a large corpus of cultural objects; including visual art, literature, architecture and cinema; the book argues that last decades have witnessed a gradual shift in understanding this temporality from being a transitional phase to a more durable experience of precariousness. The theoretically rich analyses take us on a journey through Beirut’s real and imagined geographies, from garbage dumps to real estate advertisements, and from subterranean spaces to martyr’s posters. For scholars of cultural analysis, urban studies, cultural geography and critical theory, the case of post-1990 Beirut offers a fascinating case of neoliberal urban renewal, which challenges existing theories. For scholars of Lebanon and Beirut, this study complements existing work on post-civil-war Lebanese cultural production rooted in trauma studies by its focus on the city’s continual exposure to violence.


City of Beginnings

City of Beginnings

Author: Robyn Creswell

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2019-01-08

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0691182183

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How poetic modernism shaped Arabic intellectual debates in the twentieth century and beyond City of Beginnings is an exploration of modernism in Arabic poetry, a movement that emerged in Beirut during the 1950s and became the most influential and controversial Arabic literary development of the twentieth century. Robyn Creswell introduces English-language readers to a poetic movement that will be uncannily familiar—and unsettlingly strange. He also provides an intellectual history of Lebanon during the early Cold War, when Beirut became both a battleground for rival ideologies and the most vital artistic site in the Middle East. Arabic modernism was centered on the legendary magazine Shi‘r (“Poetry”), which sought to put Arabic verse on “the map of world literature.” The Beiruti poets—Adonis, Yusuf al-Khal, and Unsi al-Hajj chief among them—translated modernism into Arabic, redefining the very idea of poetry in that literary tradition. City of Beginnings includes analyses of the Arab modernists’ creative encounters with Ezra Pound, Saint-John Perse, and Antonin Artaud, as well as their adaptations of classical literary forms. The book also reveals how the modernists translated concepts of liberal individualism, autonomy, and political freedom into a radical poetics that has shaped Arabic literary and intellectual debate to this day.


Book Synopsis City of Beginnings by : Robyn Creswell

Download or read book City of Beginnings written by Robyn Creswell and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How poetic modernism shaped Arabic intellectual debates in the twentieth century and beyond City of Beginnings is an exploration of modernism in Arabic poetry, a movement that emerged in Beirut during the 1950s and became the most influential and controversial Arabic literary development of the twentieth century. Robyn Creswell introduces English-language readers to a poetic movement that will be uncannily familiar—and unsettlingly strange. He also provides an intellectual history of Lebanon during the early Cold War, when Beirut became both a battleground for rival ideologies and the most vital artistic site in the Middle East. Arabic modernism was centered on the legendary magazine Shi‘r (“Poetry”), which sought to put Arabic verse on “the map of world literature.” The Beiruti poets—Adonis, Yusuf al-Khal, and Unsi al-Hajj chief among them—translated modernism into Arabic, redefining the very idea of poetry in that literary tradition. City of Beginnings includes analyses of the Arab modernists’ creative encounters with Ezra Pound, Saint-John Perse, and Antonin Artaud, as well as their adaptations of classical literary forms. The book also reveals how the modernists translated concepts of liberal individualism, autonomy, and political freedom into a radical poetics that has shaped Arabic literary and intellectual debate to this day.


City Edge

City Edge

Author: Esther Charlesworth

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2006-08-11

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 1136417184

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This series of essays outlines a number of case studies from Europe, North America, Australia and Asia and provides first hand accounts of the experiences that planners, architects and politicians have had in reshaping cities. These insights provide a pragmatic assessment of the challenges and constraints posed by changing patterns of urban growth in a broad spectrum of urban environments. The reader will discover, through these multiple voices and views, the diverse forms of global cities, and will have a grasp of where the debate on urban design stands today, and where it may be going in the future.


Book Synopsis City Edge by : Esther Charlesworth

Download or read book City Edge written by Esther Charlesworth and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-08-11 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This series of essays outlines a number of case studies from Europe, North America, Australia and Asia and provides first hand accounts of the experiences that planners, architects and politicians have had in reshaping cities. These insights provide a pragmatic assessment of the challenges and constraints posed by changing patterns of urban growth in a broad spectrum of urban environments. The reader will discover, through these multiple voices and views, the diverse forms of global cities, and will have a grasp of where the debate on urban design stands today, and where it may be going in the future.


B as in Beirut

B as in Beirut

Author: Iman Humaydan Yunus

Publisher:

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 9781906697204

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The four interlocking narratives that make up this extraordinary novel belong to four women who live in the same apartment building in Beirut during the Lebanese civil war. There is Lilian with her two children, desperate to emigrate, with or without her husband. Warda cannot recover from the loss of her daughter, and finds that no matter how many times she goes over it, the story of her life no longer makes sense. Camilia has returned to Beirut to make a film about her former homeland, but becomes irrevocably caught up in its violence. Maha remains in the building even as her family, her neighbours, her city, and her country fracture around her. As the war continues each day, unending, divisions between past and present begin to break down. Younes’ intimate, haunting attention to these women’s lives creates an unforgettable portrait not only of her characters but of the nature of war. Here, loss is the city’s most constant resident, and its story will inevitably overcome all the rest.


Book Synopsis B as in Beirut by : Iman Humaydan Yunus

Download or read book B as in Beirut written by Iman Humaydan Yunus and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The four interlocking narratives that make up this extraordinary novel belong to four women who live in the same apartment building in Beirut during the Lebanese civil war. There is Lilian with her two children, desperate to emigrate, with or without her husband. Warda cannot recover from the loss of her daughter, and finds that no matter how many times she goes over it, the story of her life no longer makes sense. Camilia has returned to Beirut to make a film about her former homeland, but becomes irrevocably caught up in its violence. Maha remains in the building even as her family, her neighbours, her city, and her country fracture around her. As the war continues each day, unending, divisions between past and present begin to break down. Younes’ intimate, haunting attention to these women’s lives creates an unforgettable portrait not only of her characters but of the nature of war. Here, loss is the city’s most constant resident, and its story will inevitably overcome all the rest.


The Radicals' City: Urban Environment, Polarisation, Cohesion

The Radicals' City: Urban Environment, Polarisation, Cohesion

Author: Ralf Brand

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-02-24

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 1317018281

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Bringing together comparative case studies from Belfast, Beirut, Amsterdam and Berlin, this book examines the role of the urban environment in social polarisation processes. In doing so, it provides a timely and refreshingly innovative voice in the confusing babble on (counter-)terrorism, urban conflict and community cohesion. Despite their socio-political differences, these cities are telling cases of how the location and shape of very mundane objects such as rubbish bins, bridges, clothes’ stores, shopping malls and cafés - in addition to the obvious fences, walls and barbed wire - are often subject to heated controversies and influence the way urban conflict is 'lived' and practised. Within a Science and Technology Studies (STS) theoretical framework, the authors provide a systematic analysis of these four cities and provide many concrete and richly illustrated examples of ’material agency’ without losing sight of their specific historical, political, geographical and social conditions. The STS angle permits some surprising, yet extremely convincing, conclusions which are of use not only for a range of practitioners but also to scholars interested in the social shaping processes and the consequences of urban artefacts. The authors argue that, although architecture and urban design is clearly not the sole cause of conflict and polarisation, neither is it completely innocent. Conversely, it cannot be the silver bullet to solve related problems and to create community cohesion. However, the materiality of our cities must not be ignored; in fact, it can and should be ’enrolled’ in our efforts. The book contains detailed descriptions of such positive cases as inspiration for practitioners as diverse as policy makers, architects, urban designers, planners, community workers, consultants or police officers.


Book Synopsis The Radicals' City: Urban Environment, Polarisation, Cohesion by : Ralf Brand

Download or read book The Radicals' City: Urban Environment, Polarisation, Cohesion written by Ralf Brand and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-24 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together comparative case studies from Belfast, Beirut, Amsterdam and Berlin, this book examines the role of the urban environment in social polarisation processes. In doing so, it provides a timely and refreshingly innovative voice in the confusing babble on (counter-)terrorism, urban conflict and community cohesion. Despite their socio-political differences, these cities are telling cases of how the location and shape of very mundane objects such as rubbish bins, bridges, clothes’ stores, shopping malls and cafés - in addition to the obvious fences, walls and barbed wire - are often subject to heated controversies and influence the way urban conflict is 'lived' and practised. Within a Science and Technology Studies (STS) theoretical framework, the authors provide a systematic analysis of these four cities and provide many concrete and richly illustrated examples of ’material agency’ without losing sight of their specific historical, political, geographical and social conditions. The STS angle permits some surprising, yet extremely convincing, conclusions which are of use not only for a range of practitioners but also to scholars interested in the social shaping processes and the consequences of urban artefacts. The authors argue that, although architecture and urban design is clearly not the sole cause of conflict and polarisation, neither is it completely innocent. Conversely, it cannot be the silver bullet to solve related problems and to create community cohesion. However, the materiality of our cities must not be ignored; in fact, it can and should be ’enrolled’ in our efforts. The book contains detailed descriptions of such positive cases as inspiration for practitioners as diverse as policy makers, architects, urban designers, planners, community workers, consultants or police officers.


Re-Membering Beirut

Re-Membering Beirut

Author: Erin Elizabeth Cory

Publisher:

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13:

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More than 20 years after the end of Lebanon's civil war (1975-1990), reconciliation remains elusive. A number of factors contribute to this stasis. No agreed-upon historical narrative exists by which Lebanon's 18 ethnoreligious groups can make sense of the war, and the state has interests--both economic and political--for burying common memories and erasing common spaces. In light of these erasures, the capital Beirut, like much of the country, remains divided along spatial, ideological, and mnemonic lines. The extant literature has generally considered the perils of what Samir Khalaf (2006) calls Beirut's "geography of fear." By contrast, this dissertation considers the city a realm of possibility. "Re-membering Beirut: Performing Memory and Community Across a 'Postwar' City," fuses ethnographic research, analysis, and performative writing to introduce the ide of "re-membering," a term I use to describe how people engage the residual material of the city-at-war--its textures, tempos, routes, and representations--to render legible the shared pasts and current political claims of historically divided communities. Through case studies including a walking tour, a protest, and street art, I argue for considering the city's in-between spaces as loci for emergent cross-communal politics, and for movement as both object of analysis and method. The sometimes ephemeral publics that take shape around these performances and practices reconfigure how Beirutis understand themselves in relation to their city and each other, while simultaneously revealing the city's persistent ideological and spatial terrain. The project contributes to a fuller picture of how people across the Middle East and North Africa (the MENA region) are using urban space and cultural production--in the wake of the Arab revolutions and most urgently in the midst of the ongoing Syrian crisis--to communicate shared pain and dissent, and to mobilize in the face of failing or oppressive political systems. As the region once again divides itself along both old and new fault lines, the study explores the perils of occluding violent histories, as well as the critical role of culture in inter-communal postwar healing.


Book Synopsis Re-Membering Beirut by : Erin Elizabeth Cory

Download or read book Re-Membering Beirut written by Erin Elizabeth Cory and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than 20 years after the end of Lebanon's civil war (1975-1990), reconciliation remains elusive. A number of factors contribute to this stasis. No agreed-upon historical narrative exists by which Lebanon's 18 ethnoreligious groups can make sense of the war, and the state has interests--both economic and political--for burying common memories and erasing common spaces. In light of these erasures, the capital Beirut, like much of the country, remains divided along spatial, ideological, and mnemonic lines. The extant literature has generally considered the perils of what Samir Khalaf (2006) calls Beirut's "geography of fear." By contrast, this dissertation considers the city a realm of possibility. "Re-membering Beirut: Performing Memory and Community Across a 'Postwar' City," fuses ethnographic research, analysis, and performative writing to introduce the ide of "re-membering," a term I use to describe how people engage the residual material of the city-at-war--its textures, tempos, routes, and representations--to render legible the shared pasts and current political claims of historically divided communities. Through case studies including a walking tour, a protest, and street art, I argue for considering the city's in-between spaces as loci for emergent cross-communal politics, and for movement as both object of analysis and method. The sometimes ephemeral publics that take shape around these performances and practices reconfigure how Beirutis understand themselves in relation to their city and each other, while simultaneously revealing the city's persistent ideological and spatial terrain. The project contributes to a fuller picture of how people across the Middle East and North Africa (the MENA region) are using urban space and cultural production--in the wake of the Arab revolutions and most urgently in the midst of the ongoing Syrian crisis--to communicate shared pain and dissent, and to mobilize in the face of failing or oppressive political systems. As the region once again divides itself along both old and new fault lines, the study explores the perils of occluding violent histories, as well as the critical role of culture in inter-communal postwar healing.


A Game for Swallows

A Game for Swallows

Author: Zeina Abirached

Publisher: Graphic Universe ™

Published: 2012-09-01

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 1467700479

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When Zeina was born, the civil war in Lebanon had been going on for six years, so it's just a normal part of life for her and her parents and her little brother. The city of Beirut is cut in two, separated by bricks and sandbags and threatened by snipers and shelling. East Beirut is for Christians, and West Beirut is for Muslims. When Zeina's parents don't return one afternoon from a visit to the other half of the city, and the bombing grows ever closer, the neighbors in her apartment house create a world indoors for Zeina and her brother where it's comfy and safe, where they can share cooking lessons and games and gossip. Together they try to make it through a dramatic day in the one place they hoped they would always be safehome. Zeina Abirached, born into a Lebanese Christian family in 1981, has collected her childhood recollections of Beirut in a warm story about the strength of family and community.


Book Synopsis A Game for Swallows by : Zeina Abirached

Download or read book A Game for Swallows written by Zeina Abirached and published by Graphic Universe ™. This book was released on 2012-09-01 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Zeina was born, the civil war in Lebanon had been going on for six years, so it's just a normal part of life for her and her parents and her little brother. The city of Beirut is cut in two, separated by bricks and sandbags and threatened by snipers and shelling. East Beirut is for Christians, and West Beirut is for Muslims. When Zeina's parents don't return one afternoon from a visit to the other half of the city, and the bombing grows ever closer, the neighbors in her apartment house create a world indoors for Zeina and her brother where it's comfy and safe, where they can share cooking lessons and games and gossip. Together they try to make it through a dramatic day in the one place they hoped they would always be safehome. Zeina Abirached, born into a Lebanese Christian family in 1981, has collected her childhood recollections of Beirut in a warm story about the strength of family and community.