Lebanon / Liban

Lebanon / Liban
Author: Nadia Tuéni
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Total Pages: 166
Release: 2006-04-25
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 9780815608165

This bilingual anthology, edited by Christophe Ippolito, contains Samuel Hazo's complete translation of Lebanon: Twenty Poems for One Love and Paul B. Kelley's selections from the never-before-translated Sentimental Archives of a War in Lebanon. The Francophone poet Nadia Tueni has devoted readers in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East and has quickly achieved poetic distinction in France. The fluency of her poetic language and motifs—reflecting Tueni's love of her people and country—is illuminated in Ippolito's introduction: "She chose to create a new poetic language that captured the fragile essence of her troubled country and exposed the many crises of identities present in the war. By identifying with her country, she placed herself beyond all parties and created a sacred river that irrigates her poems." Drawn from two collections that were published during the civil war in Lebanon in 1979 and 1982, these poems are haunted by the Lebanese war: some transcend famous Lebanese locales as the symbolic incarnations of the land's eternal essence; others, illuminated at first by nostalgic memories, take on a prophetic tone. Tueni's work merges the poetic with the political landscape of her country. She writes: " I belong to a country that commits suicide every day, while it is being assassinated." The languages of Rimbaud, Lautreamont, and surrealist poetry have had a decisive influence on Tueni's poetry. But she also owes a great debt on the Arabic side to the avant-garde poets, for example, the celebrated Adonis. Like many Lebanese writers, Tueni was active in political circles, particularly after the war in 1967. Her poems tell of suffering—"memories of an abandoned garden slip away"—of her own life slipping away, and in the end, the reader is invited to reflect on the mimesis of identity: identity of a country, identity of a woman, each echoing the other.

Banking on the State

Banking on the State
Author: Hicham Safieddine
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2019-07-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1503609685

In 1943, Lebanon gained its formal political independence from France; only after two more decades did the country finally establish a national central bank. Inaugurated on April 1, 1964, the Banque du Liban (BDL) was billed by Lebanese authorities as the nation's primary symbol of economic sovereignty and as the last step towards full independence. In the local press, it was described as a means of projecting state power and enhancing national pride. Yet the history of its founding—stretching from its Ottoman origins in mid-nineteenth century up until the mid-twentieth—tells a different, more complex story. Banking on the State reveals how the financial foundations of Lebanon were shaped by the history of the standardization of economic practices and financial regimes within the decolonizing world. The system of central banking that emerged was the product of a complex interaction of war, economic policies, international financial regimes, post-colonial state-building, global currents of technocratic knowledge, and private business interests. It served rather than challenged the interests of an oligarchy of local bankers. As Hicham Safieddine shows, the set of arrangements that governed the central bank thus was dictated by dynamics of political power and financial profit more than market forces, national interest or economic sovereignty.

The Republic of Lebanon

The Republic of Lebanon
Author: David C. Gordon
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 187
Release: 2016-03-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317246179

Torn by civil war, its major city in shambles, and occupied by foreign peacekeeping forces as well as foreign armies, the Republic of Lebanon in the 1980s was struggling to regroup, rebuild and resolve its problems under new leadership. In this analytical survey, first published in 1983, Professor Gordon addresses such questions as why the republic – rooted in the distant past – succumbed to such disintegration. Lebanon’s multi-ethnic character and the Palestinian presence are considered fully, and Lebanon is examined in the international context, inevitably with particular reference to the creation of Israel and its consequences. The country is viewed both in its own right and also as a small skiff on a very rough regional and international sea.

Lebanon

Lebanon
Author: International Monetary Fund
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 55
Release: 2009-04-23
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1451822758

The Lebanese financial system has so far weathered the global financial crisis. The 2009 Article IV Consultation highlights that deposit inflows decelerated briefly in the aftermath of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, but have resumed at a rapid pace since then. Executive Directors have welcomed the remarkable resilience of the Lebanese economy in the face of the global financial crisis. Directors have also supported the authorities’ monetary policy aimed at safeguarding the exchange rate peg and facilitating a further buildup of international reserves.

The Breakdown of the State in Lebanon, 1967–1976

The Breakdown of the State in Lebanon, 1967–1976
Author: Farid El Khazen
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 441
Release: 2020-12-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 075560377X

Why did the Lebanese state, the most open and democratic political system in the Middle East, break down between 1967 and 1976? In this major contribution to the debate, Fazel el-Khazen rejects the standard explanations of the Lebanese Civil War and argues instead that the causes were due to the official state ideology, which recognized diversity, dissent and a highly pluralistic population, and then specific external factors: pressures from the Arab-Israeli Conflict, inter-Arab rivalries, and the Palestine Liberation Organization's close connection to Lebanese politics. Using an historical analysis, el-Khazen sheds light on the political situation of the country in the lead up to the conflict and the major role Lebanon's neighbours had in the events. The detailed and comprehensive account uses interviews with the key protagonists in the civil war and analysis of unpublished sources to reveal how and why the breakdown took place.

Lebanon

Lebanon
Author: William W. Harris
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2012-07-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 0195181115

The book explores the affairs of Mount Lebanon and its surrounds through fourteen centuries, beginning with the emergence of its Christian, Muslim and Islamic-derived communities between the sixth and eleventh centuries. Against this backdrop, it interprets the modern republic of Lebanon from Ottoman antecedents to present day crises.

Stability and the Lebanese State in the 20th Century

Stability and the Lebanese State in the 20th Century
Author: Tarek Abou Jaoude
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2022-08-25
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0755644166

Explaining state-building failures in Lebanon during the 20th century, this book looks at the relationship between legitimacy and stability in the country since the creation of the state in 1920. The presence of legitimacy is considered necessary to any successful state-building endeavour. This book argues that the Lebanese state failed to achieve any meaningful form of legitimacy from its inception in 1920 to its near-collapse during the civil war. However, by analysing different eras of Lebanese history, throughout the different presidential terms, the author challenges the general understanding of stability and governance to show that the absence of legitimacy and society support actually contributed to the persistence of the Lebanese state. More than this, the evidence shows that Lebanese state was at its most stable when it was regarded as illegitimate. The wider, implicit question thus asked in the book revolves around a case where illegitimacy within the state is what ensures its stability and survival. Based on primary sources including national archives and collections, institutional documents, personal memoirs, newspapers and journals, this book provides a rich survey on the development and functioning of Lebanese political institutions.

The labour movement in Lebanon

The labour movement in Lebanon
Author: Lea Bou Khater
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 173
Release: 2022-02-22
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1526159422

The labour movement in Lebanon: Power on hold narrates the history of the Lebanese labour movement from the early twentieth century to today. Bou Khater demonstrates that trade unionism in the country has largely been a failure, for reasons including state interference, tactical co-optation, and the strategic use of sectarianism by an oligarchic elite, together with the structural weakness of a service-based laissez-faire economy. Drawing on a vast body of Arabic-language primary sources and difficult-to-access archives, the book’s conclusions are significant not only for trade unionism, but also for new forms of workers’ organisations and social movements in Lebanon and beyond. The Lebanese case study presented here holds significant implications for the wider Arab world and for comparative studies of labour. This authoritative history of the labour movement in Lebanon is vital reading for scholars of trade unionism, Lebanese politics, and political economy.

The Media in Lebanon

The Media in Lebanon
Author: Nabil Dajani
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2019-02-28
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1786736578

Lebanese society is famously, and even notoriously, fragmented, along both class and sectarian lines. Here, Nabil Dajani looks at how this societal division impacts on the nature of the mass media in Lebanon. Implementing the wider theory that the structure and content of mass media is unique to the society within which it operates, he looks at how Lebanese media have often helped to sustain the sectarian divisions within Lebanese society. Dealing with newspapers, radio and television as well as new and emerging forms of communication, such as the internet, social media websites and blogs, he examines how the media both reflect societal realties as well as the ways they influence social consciousness. Beginning with an analysis of the socio-political context of modern-day Lebanon, Dajani critically examines the historical and current realities of the media in this country.