1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910791338003321

Autore

Sawalha Aseel <1966->

Titolo

Reconstructing Beirut [[electronic resource] ] : memory and space in a postwar Arab city / / Aseel Sawalha

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Austin, : University of Texas Press, 2010

ISBN

0-292-79283-2

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (193 p.)

Collana

Jamal and Rania Daniel series in contemporary history, politics, culture, and religion of the Levant

Disciplina

307.3/40956925

Soggetti

City planning - Lebanon - Beirut - History - 20th century

Urban renewal - Lebanon - Beirut

Lebanon Economic conditions 1990-

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Beirut : a city in transition -- Downtown in "the ancient city of the future" -- 'Ayn el-mreisse : the global market and the apartment unit -- "Beirut is ours, not theirs" : neighborhood sites and struggles in 'Ayn el-mreisse -- Cafes, funerals, and the future of coffee spaces -- Placing the war-displaced -- Afterword : reclaiming downtown again.

Sommario/riassunto

Once the cosmopolitan center of the Middle East, Beirut was devastated by the civil war that ran from 1975 to 1991, which dislocated many residents, disrupted normal municipal functions, and destroyed the vibrant downtown district. The aftermath of the war was an unstable situation Sawalha considers "a postwar state of emergency," even as the state strove to restore normalcy. This ethnography centers on various groups' responses to Beirut's large, privatized urban-renewal project that unfolded during this turbulent moment. At the core of the study is the theme of remembering space. The official process of rebuilding the city as a node in the global economy collided with local day-to-day concerns, and all arguments invariably inspired narratives of what happened before and during the war. Sawalha explains how Beirutis invoked their past experiences of specific sites to vie for the power to shape those sites in the future. Rather than focus on a single site, the ethnography crosses multiple urban sites and social groups, to survey varied groups with interests in particular spaces. The book



contextualizes these spatial conflicts within the discourses of the city's historical accounts and the much-debated concept of heritage, voiced in academic writing, politics, and journalism. In the afterword, Sawalha links these conflicts to the social and political crises of early twenty-first-century Beirut.