craig larkin

Throughout the turbulent history of the Levant the ‘Alawis — a secretive, resilient and ancient Muslim sect — have aroused suspicion and animosity, including accusations of religious heresy. More recently they have been tarred with the brush of political separatism and complicity in the excesses of the Assad regime, claims that have gained greater traction since the onset of the Syrian uprising and subsequent devastating civil war.

The contributors to this book provide a complex and nuanced reading of Syria’s ‘Alawi communities — from loyalist gangs (Shabiha) to outspoken critics of the regime. Drawing upon wide-ranging research that examines the historic, political and social dynamics of the ‘Alawi and the Syrian state, the current tensions are scrutinised and fresh insights offered. Among the themes addressed are religious practice, social identities, and relations to the Ba’ath party, the Syrian state and the military apparatus. The analysis also extends to Lebanon with a focus on the embattled ‘Alawi community of Jabal Mohsen in Tripoli and state relations with Hizballah amid the current crisis.

This book examines the legacy of Lebanon’s civil war and how the population, and the youth in particular, are dealing with their national past. Drawing on extensive qualitative research and social observation, the author explores the efforts of those who wish to remember, so as not to repeat past mistakes, and those who wish to forget.

In considering how the Lebanese youth are negotiating this collective memory, Larkin addresses issues of:

    - Lebanese post-war amnesia and the gradual emergence of  new memory discourses and public debates
    - Lebanese nationalism and historical memory
    - visual memory and mnemonic landscapes
  -  oral memory and post-war narratives
  -  war memory as an agent of ethnic conflict and a tool for reconciliation and peace-building.
  -  trans-generational trauma or postmemory.

Shedding new light on trauma and the persistence of ethnic and religious hostility, this book offers a unique insight into Lebanon’s recurring communal tensions and a fresh perspective on the issue of war memory. As such, this is an essential addition to the existing literature on Lebanon and will be relevant for scholars of sociology, Middle East studies, anthropology, politics and history.

The deliberate targeting and violent destruction of cultural heritage in Iraq's ancient city of Mosul by the Islamic State (2014-17) has recently given way to the emergence of heritage initiatives aimed at restoring its urban character and reviving its cosmopolitan spirit. Such restoration projects invariably stir debates over timing, funding and local consultation, as well as their potential to contribute to postwar social cohesion and communal healing. This article argues that in post-conflict settings heritage restoration is always an ambivalent and contingent process, involving the selective use of emotive historic symbols to create new realities. Based on 50 in-depth interviews with a diverse section of Moslawi society and site observations from Mosul (2022-23), the article explores local perspectives and the ongoing dynamic negotiation of heritage restoration. Amidst conflicting communal perceptions of large-scale internationally funded reconstruction projects, the article highlights the potential for grassroots heritage initiatives to offer a new impetus towards communal rehabilitation. The paper focuses on three less examined but locally championed Moslawi heritage sites-the souqs, Qila'yat district and heritage homes. These civic spaces may offer greater opportunity for social recovery through economic development, cultural exchange and everyday coexistence .

The Arab uprisings may have contributed to a newly “sectarianized” Middle East, yet more broadly this must be recognized as part of resurgent identity politics in which state exclusion, repression, and violence occur across ethnic, religious, and political divides. The mobilization of ethnic identities—the creation of distinct collectivities based on narratives of common descent—is as evident in nationalist diatribes throughout the region as it is in minority rights campaigns for equality or cultural autonomy. Ethnic identity formation requires both mnemonic discourses and specific sites in which social memories, imaginaries, and practices can be embedded and collectively performed. This chapter examines how geographies of violence—sites of historic trauma, loss, and displacement—are reappropriated through commemorative practice and martyr memorialization, which help shape contemporary ethnic narratives of identity and resistance. From Kurds in Irbil to Copts in Egypt to Palestinian...

As Syrian refugee numbers in Lebanon have increased, so has the
hostility directed towards them, with targeted attacks against informal encampments and public restrictions on Syrian mobility
through localized curfews and military checkpoints. The Syrian
experience is constrained by both their precarity as refugees and
the volatility of Lebanese urban politics. Syrians must navigate the
complex terrain of moral and socio-spatial Lebanese boundaries:
when to keep silent or remain publicly invisible, how to navigate
sectarian street dynamics, and how to respond to heightened public sensibilities. This article, based on six months ethnographic
research (2017–2018) among Syrian refugees in Tripoli (Bab alTabbaneh) and Beirut (Nab’a) examines how Syrian refugees navigate Lebanese urban spatial realities—adapting and responding to
its complex hybrid sovereignties, sectarian atmospheres and everyday security practices. The findings attest to how Syrian refugees
seek ‘security within borders’ through practices of rootedness, invisibility and ‘safe space’ boundary marking, while also accepting that
crossing boundaries—physical military checkpoints and immaterial
social barriers—can result in public confrontations, detention, and
violence. Although Syrian refugees attempt to remain apolitical and
deliberately disengaged from Lebanese sectarian networks of
power, their everyday choices (rent, electricity fees) and physical
presence connect them to local political contests and rivalries.

https://doi.org/10.1080/13530194.2022.2123782  (open access)

Literature on faith-based responses to forced displacement has described, but not fully unpacked or theorized cross-religion humanitarian aid in 'South- South' contexts. This article interrogates the various ambiguities, particularly spiritual ambiguities, inherent in faith-based humanitarianism where local providers are the minority religion. In unpacking these, we identify three modes of faith-based aid to Muslim Syrian refugees by local churches and Christian charities in Lebanon and Jordan: hospitality, humanitarian, and spiritual development. These may present successively deeper opportunities for fostering openness to spiritual pluralism. We argue for greater appreciation of what we call spiritual ambiguity in interfaith humanitarianism. While humanitarian space is always shaped by a web of power relations, it is vital to develop new, more nuanced ways of thinking about cross-religious faith-based humanitarianism beyond Western neo-colonialism or refugee strategizing.

https://doi.org/10.1093/migration/mnab024  (open access)

The inclusion-moderation thesis posits that radical movements can be moderated through participation in democratic pluralist politics. Repeatedly applied to Islamist movements questions remain over its conceptual ambiguity and empirical veracity. Despite such weaknesses this thesis continues to be utilized to explain the diverging trajectories of the Islamic movement within Israel – its Southern accommodationist parliamentary branch (IMSB) and its separatist Northern branch (IMNB), now officially banned by Israel. This article examines this significant yet understudied movement, as a means of challenging the reductionist reading of Arab Islamist politics in Israel while at the same time rethinking the perimeters of inclusion-moderation theory. The case suggests that Islamist strategic moderation may be a result of both state repression and political inclusion but rarely does it lead to complete ideological transformation. This research suggests the IMSB’s pragmatic evolution, owes less to Knesset participation and more to internal organizational debate, a convergence of broader Arab-Israeli positions, and a response to the failings of post Arab Spring Islamist politics. Conversely, the IMNB’s perceived radicalism, is less to do with its extreme ideology but rather its own strategic framing and Israel’s ongoing fears of the mobilizing potential of Al-Aqsa mosque.

The Arab uprisings may have contributed to a newly “sectarianized” Middle East, yet more broadly this must be recognized as part of resurgent identity politics in which state exclusion, repression, and violence occur across ethnic, religious, and political divides. The mobilization of ethnic identities—the creation of distinct collectivities based on narratives of common descent—is as evident in nationalist diatribes throughout the region as it is in minority rights campaigns for equality or cultural autonomy. Ethnic identity formation requires both mnemonic discourses and specific sites in which social memories, imaginaries, and practices can be embedded and collectively performed. This chapter examines how geographies of violence—sites of historic trauma, loss, and displacement—are reappropriated through commemorative practice and martyr memorialization, which help shape contemporary ethnic narratives of identity and resistance. From Kurds in Irbil to Copts in Egypt to Palestinians inside Israel, each community attests to spatial exclusion and violence and finds ways of inhabiting and reimaging past trauma, to shape historical narratives and contemporary political expediencies. This chapter explores some of the key scholarship around this theme before examining the growing proliferation of martyr museums in the region.

In Lebanon, civil society organisations engaging youth in interreligious activity face a twofold challenge: how to build a rich, sustainable, socially engaged religious pluralism based on mutual empathy and trust among young people, and how to do so against a backdrop of often-ossified post-war identities, geographies and patterns of living. This chapter contributes to the academic literature on interreligious engagement in Lebanon by presenting a snapshot of the most recent youth work of two of the most active organisations in this area: Adyan and Dialogue for Life (DLR). We argue that these organizations help to build a third way between calls for the re-confessionalisation and de-confessionalisation of Lebanese politics. A challenge remains of how to translate values of emotionally engaged religious pluralism, cultivated in ‘spaces apart’ within civil society, into both everyday life in Lebanon and into the state’s institutions.

This article seeks to address how Lebanese youth are dealing with the legacy of civil war (1975–90), given the national backdrop of official silence, persisting injustice, and competing memory discourses. Drawing on Marianne Hirsch's concept of postmemory, it explores the memory of a generation of Lebanese who have grown up dominated not by traumatic events but by narrative accounts of events that preceded their birth. This residual form of memory carries and connects with the pain of others, suffusing temporal frames and liminal positions. The article examines how postmemory is mediated and transformed through the mnemonic lenses of visual landscapes and oral narratives. Consideration is given to the dynamic production of “memoryscapes”—memories of violence localized in particular sites—and to narrative constructions of the past implicated in the ongoing search for meaning, historical truth, and identity. This article seeks to challenge pervasive notions of Lebanese postwar amnesia and of a generational detachment from the residual effects and future implications of war recollections.

Throughout the centuries Beirut has had an endless capacity for reinvention and transformation, a consequence of migration, conquest, trade, and internal conflict. The last three decades have witnessed the city center's violent self-destruction, its commercial resurrection, and most recently its national contestation, as oppositional political forces have sought to mobilize mass demonstrations and occupy strategic space. While research has been directed to the transformative processes and the principal actors involved, little attention has been given to how the next generation of Lebanese are negotiating Beirut's rehabilitation. This article seeks to address this lacuna, by exploring how postwar youth remember, imagine, and spatially encounter their city. How does Beirut's rebuilt urban landscape, with its remnants of war, sites of displacement, and transformed environs, affect and inform identity, social interaction, and perceptions of the past? Drawing on Henri Lefebvre's analysis of the social construction of space (perceived, conceived, and lived) and probing the inherent tensions within postwar youths’ encounters with history, memory, and heritage, the article presents a dynamic and complex urban imaginary of Beirut. An examination of key urban sites (Solidère's Down Town) and significant temporal moments (Independence Intifada) reveals three recurring tensions evident in Lebanese youth's engagement with their city: dislocation and liberation, spectacle and participant, pluralism and fracture. This article seeks to encourage wider discussion on the nature of postwar recovery and the construction of rehabilitated public space, amidst the backdrop of global consumerism and heritage campaigns.Rehaciendo a Beirut: Desafiando la memoria, el espacio y el imaginario urbano de la juventud libanesa (Craig Larkin)Rehaciendo a Beirut: Desafiando la memoria, el espacio y el imaginario urbano de la juventud libanesa (Craig Larkin)ResumenA través de los siglos, la ciudad de Beirut ha mostrado una capacidad ilimitada para reinventarse y transformarse a sí misma como consecuencia de la migración, las conquistas, el comercio y los conflictos internos. En las últimas tres décadas, el centro de la ciudad ha pasado por momentos de violenta auto-destrucción, de renovación comercial y, más recientemente, de apropiación como espacio de disputas nacionales a medida que las fuerzas opositoras llevan a cabo protestas multitudinarias y luchan por ganar espacio estratégicamente importante. Aunque en investigaciones anteriores se han estudiado estos procesos de transformación y los principales actores involucrados, se ha prestado poca atención a la forma en que la nueva generación de libaneses se relaciona con la reconstrucción de Beirut. Este artículo se propone llenar este vacío a partir de la exploración de cómo la juventud de la posguerra recuerda, imagina y se encuentra con su ciudad en términos espaciales.¿ De qué forma el panorama de reconstrucción urbana de Beirut con sus vestigios de guerra, sus reasentamientos y la transformación de sus entornos afecta y nutre la identidad e interacciones sociales y las percepciones sobre el pasado? A partir del análisis de Henri Lefebvre sobre la construcción social del espacio (percibido, concebido y vivido) y la exploración de las tensiones inherentes en el encuentro entre la juventud de la posguerra y el pasado como historia, memoria y legado, este artículo presenta un imaginario urbano dinámico y complejo de Beirut. El análisis de lugares urbanos clave (Solidère's Down Town) y momentos significativos en el tiempo (la Intifada de Independencia) revela tres tensiones recurrentes evidentes en la forma en que la juventud libanesa interactúa con la ciudad: dislocación y liberación, espectáculo y participación, pluralismo y fragmentación. Este artículo busca motivar un debate más amplio sobre el carácter de la recuperación después de la guerra y la construcción de espacios urbanos rehabilitados en el contexto del consumismo global y las campañas de revalorización del patrimonio.A través de los siglos, la ciudad de Beirut ha mostrado una capacidad ilimitada para reinventarse y transformarse a sí misma como consecuencia de la migración, las conquistas, el comercio y los conflictos internos. En las últimas tres décadas, el centro de la ciudad ha pasado por momentos de violenta auto-destrucción, de renovación comercial y, más recientemente, de apropiación como espacio de disputas nacionales a medida que las fuerzas opositoras llevan a cabo protestas multitudinarias y luchan por ganar espacio estratégicamente importante. Aunque en investigaciones anteriores se han estudiado estos procesos de transformación y los principales actores involucrados, se ha prestado poca atención a la forma en que la nueva generación de libaneses se relaciona con la reconstrucción de Beirut. Este artículo se propone llenar este vacío a partir de la exploración de cómo la juventud de la posguerra recuerda, imagina y se encuentra con su ciudad en términos espaciales.¿ De qué forma el panorama de reconstrucción urbana de Beirut con sus vestigios de guerra, sus reasentamientos y la transformación de sus entornos afecta y nutre la identidad e interacciones sociales y las percepciones sobre el pasado? A partir del análisis de Henri Lefebvre sobre la construcción social del espacio (percibido, concebido y vivido) y la exploración de las tensiones inherentes en el encuentro entre la juventud de la posguerra y el pasado como historia, memoria y legado, este artículo presenta un imaginario urbano dinámico y complejo de Beirut. El análisis de lugares urbanos clave (Solidère's Down Town) y momentos significativos en el tiempo (la Intifada de Independencia) revela tres tensiones recurrentes evidentes en la forma en que la juventud libanesa interactúa con la ciudad: dislocación y liberación, espectáculo y participación, pluralismo y fragmentación. Este artículo busca motivar un debate más amplio sobre el carácter de la recuperación después de la guerra y la construcción de espacios urbanos rehabilitados en el contexto del consumismo global y las campañas de revalorización del patrimonio.

The past ten years have witnessed the collapse of Palestinian political authority and leadership in East Jerusalem. Evidence suggests that the Islamic Movement is beginning to fill this vacuum from within Israel. This article examines the growing involvement of the Islamic Movement of Israel in Jerusalem, both in terms of discourse and specific facts on the ground. It explores how the al-Aqsa mosque has been employed, particularly by Shaykh Ra'id Salah, as a symbol for political empowerment, a site for public contestation, and a focus for religious renewal. It debates whether their presence should be perceived as a growing strategic threat, part of an Islamizing trend, or rather as a consequence of weak local leadership, the unintended consequences of the separation wall and the non-recognition of the Hamas government

http://issuu.com/lefkos/docs/beirut_-_martyrs_and_massacres
This photo-essay is based on fieldwork in Lebanon that commenced in 2006. It seeks to capture how episodes of violence are inscribed and memorialised within Beirut’s urban cityscape. The images capture two distinct periods and sets of events: the prolonged bloody civil war of 1975-1990; and subsequent violent occurrences, such as the Israeli attack on Qana in 1996 and the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri in 2005. The historical readings of these events remain contested and disputed, resulting in multiple discourses and commemorative approaches. The images and snapshots explore how ‘martyrs’ and ‘massacres’, have given rise to diverging memory narratives and are exploited and politicised by various Lebanese actors and agents.

Although mythological debates and discourses are not entirely under-researched in the field of Jerusalem studies1, Reiter offers a detailed, well documented account, which explores both the historic rise of a new Islamic understanding of the city, and also its complex ...

Craig Larkin, a research fellow of political science at the University of Exeter, is currently working on a project titled Conflict in Cities and the Contested State. ambitious but engaging edited volume offers a trilateral perspective (Israeli, Palestinian, and international) and a ...