Everyday Sectarianism in Urban Lebanon

Abstract

In Everyday Sectarianism, anthropologist and filmmaker Joanne Nuchoexamines the inextricable links between sectarian belonging, Lebanon’sconfessional system of governance, and neighborhood infrastructures developedin the absence of the state (a refrain throughout the book is waynal dawleh?). Departing from orientalist accounts that represent sectarianismas a static and primordial conflict of identities, Nucho argues thatsectarianism in Lebanon is a modern, relational, and political process ofcontinual (re)construction. In this sense, her account draws from existingliterature on the Lebanese state that emphasizes sectarianism’s contingentcharacter (see, for example, Ussama Makdisi 2000; Max Weiss 2010; SuadJoseph 2008). For these scholars, sectarianism is not a given mode of being in the world. Rather, it is a project inseparable from questions of gender,class, geography, and the state, and cannot be “collapsed onto religion ortheology” (4).