Islamic visibility in Lebanon, the banking sector and Eurocentric modernity: erasure, development, and the post-colonial nation-state

Abstract

This paper is based on in-depth reflexive and qualitative fieldwork conducted in 2018 thinking alongside visibly Lebanese Muslim women. Based on participants' shared experiences, the paper argues that visibly Muslim women are excluded from employment in the Lebanese banking sector in line with this sector's pursuit and larger alignment with Eurocentric modernity. It identifies powerful narratives of development, progress, and the Lebanese nation-state with its post-colonial imaginary as key forces underlying this exclusion as well as key horizons it pursues. Accordingly, it posits that private capitalist financial institutions such as Lebanese banking function as apparati of Eurocentric Modernity's contemporary hegemonic establishment and reproduction through everyday lived experiences. Challenging the dominant representations of Lebanese banking as emancipatory and progressive, it examines contemporary national banking ‘from below’ as a contribution to emerging decolonial research in political economy, international political economy (IPE), everyday IPE, and cultural IPE.