Remembering the old good days: The reconstruction of urban space in postwar Beirut.
Item
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Title
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Remembering the old good days: The reconstruction of urban space in postwar Beirut.
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Identifier
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AAI3063879
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identifier
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3063879
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Creator
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Sawalha, Aseel.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Vincent Crapanzano
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Date
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2002
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Anthropology, Cultural
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Abstract
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This work is an ethnography of place and memory in post war Beirut. It examines the rebuilding project of downtown Beirut in terms of the competing discourses surrounding and driving the process.;After the end of a long civil war, Beirut is rebuilding its decimated downtown, once a vibrant, heterogeneous regional center. The official reconstruction---executed by the private real estate company, Solidere---provoked multiple conflicts involving 18 ethno-religious groups, as well as intellectuals, planners, architects and historians over conserving historically valuable spaces and the definition of the city's past(s) and future. This ethnography examined the use of, and narratives of city space before, during, and after the war. Through close study of multiple urban sites and groups, I examined the competing discourses about place, history and identity, asking how participants use the past (pre-war and wartime) to claim future urban space.;Drawing on 18 months of fieldwork in Beirut between 1996--1997, this study explores the ways in which various readings of the past informed and shaped debates over identity, culture, and history in the context of urban reconstruction and recovery in postwar Beirut. It present ethnographic and textual accounts of multiple locales: the urban reconstruction project centered in downtown Beirut, a multi-ethnic-religious neighborhood adjacent to the project area, and public sites of nostalgia throughout the city as remembered and narrated by different individuals and groups.;Applying and questioning theories of post-modernity, globalization, urban studies, and anthropological approaches to narrative and oral history, I presented concrete examples of how urban reconstruction projects and the discourses they produced participated in the formation of urban culture and the production of knowledge about space and time.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
