Moving in the margins : hope and the politics of change in student elections in Beirut

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Moving in the Margins

Hope and the politics of change in student elections in Beirut

Brigit Ronde, 10647511 Research Master Social Sciences Department: GSSS brigit.ronde@student.uva.nl Supervisor: Asst. Prof. Dr. Vivienne Matthies-Boon Second reader: Dr. Martijn Dekker Word Count: 30245 August, 17 2019 Amsterdam

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Plagiarism Declaration

Declaration: I have read and understood the University of Amsterdam plagiarism policy [http://student.uva.nl/mcsa/az/item/plagiarism-and-fraud.html?f=plagiarism]. I declare that this assignment is entirely my own work, all sources have been properly acknowledged, and that I have not previously submitted this work, or any version of it, for assessment in any other paper.

Brigit Ronde 16/08/2019

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Abstract

In this thesis I look into the politicisation of students in the student elections of the American University of Beirut. These elections are the most explicit political event in these students’ lives and have to be located in Lebanon’s current environment of radical insecurity. This environment is comprised by a continuum of violence and kept in place by a system of political manipulation that pervades Lebanese politics. Based on five months of ethnographic fieldwork, I come to an understanding of students’ politicisation in this this context. The radically insecure environment and the involvement of national politics in student politics creates a sense of volatility around the student elections. This heatedness is accompanied by students’ feelings of hopelessness and the sentiment that Lebanon’s current ‘system of absurdity’ is unlikely to change. By using a phenomenological approach and focussing on students’ lived experiences, I provide insight into students’ politicisation in relation to their political sentiments of hopelessness and disillusionment with the system. I argue that rather than being blind followers of Lebanon’s political elite or active reproducers of the system, students are partially co-opted into a system they condemn. They feel entrapped in the structures around them which they cannot make their own, but they also do not see room for action to establish change. In the absence of the possibility to realise themselves in a self-determined way in Lebanon, students have to move in the margins. By navigating themselves in Lebanon’s radically insecure environment, students reproduce the system they dislike in an attempt to create a limited sense of freedom and security, in a place where no such thing as basic security exists.

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Acknowledgements

I would briefly like to take the time to thank all those who have helped me in so many ways to conduct my research and write this thesis. First and foremost, I want to thank everyone in Lebanon who has been willing to participate in this research and for taking the time to meet with me, open up to me and trust me with your story. I have aimed to do justice to all the stories you have told me. Ghina, I have to thank you in particular. You saved me in the service the very first time we met and you have been nothing but supportive ever since. Thank you for all your help and kindness, and for being my friend. I also want to thank my supervisor Dr. Vivienne Matthies-Boon. I am grateful that I got to work with you, and thank you for the time, interest and enthusiasm you put in my research. During our many (skype) conversations, you have not only helped me with your research and analytical skills, but also with your warmth, personal touch, passion for research and dedication to humanity. Thank you for being an inspiration. To all my wonderful friends, thank you for the many ways in which you have been there for me throughout the last year and half of preparing, executing, and writing up this research. Sara, having you as my roommate made all the difference. Thank you for the many coffee and beer sessions, and the fact that I could always knock on your door. Mirthe, thank you for the many phone calls, for keeping me grounded and for reminding me who I am when I felt lost. Linda, our anthropological interests connected us from the first phone call. Thank you for all your research wisdoms and the many laughs we shared. My three RMSS heroes: Els, Tania, and Simone. I could not have wished for better company in this master. Our days in the library and our lunches were an anchor during the writing process. Thank you for all the hugs, the dances, the dinners and the many beautiful and heart-warming conversations about our researches and our lives over coffee and wine. Last but definitely not least, my family. Thank you for the infinite support and trust in me, and always having an extra place to come home to, where a delicious meal, a fantastic sense of humour, and a shoulder were always ready for me.

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Overview of Main Clubs and Parties

These are the main clubs that participate in the elections for positions in the Student Representative Committee (SRC) that is elected per faculty, and the University Student Faculty Committee (USFC) which represents all students and serves as the central student government.

1_{The AUB alliances switch almost every year and are not definitive. They often, but not always, follow the}

national alliances that are divided between the 8 March Alliance and 14 March Alliance.

2_{These alliances came into being in 2005 during the Cedar Revolution (or Independence Intifada) in Lebanon}

and are named after their formation dates during the mass protests in Beirut. The protesters demanded the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, and a more independent government with less Syrian influence. The 8 March alliance is a coalition of parties that aligned themselves with the Syrian regime and took a pro-Syrian stance. They became the opposition to the 14 March alliance. The 14 March alliance, formed one month after the assassination of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri, took an anti-Syrian stance. During this month and the months to follow, these political blocs would become the two main political actors in Lebanon (Monroe 2016: 7; Hermez 2017: xiv). Like the AUB alliances, the parties within these coalitions change. The most stable parties in these coalitions are Hezbollah and Haraket Amal in 8 March, and the Future Movement and the Lebanese Forces in 14 March.

Club AUB National Party Sect Alliance AUB1 _National

Alliance2

Youth Club (YC)

Future Movement

(FM) Sunni Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow 14 March Lebanese Mission Club

(LMC) Haraket Amal (HA) Shi’a Muslim Students for Change 8 March Cultural Club of the

South (CCS)

Hezbollah Shi’a Muslim Students for

Change 8 March

Social Club

(SC) Lebanese Forces (LF) Christian Leaders of Tomorrow 14 March Freedom Club

(FC) Free Patriotic Movement (FPM)

Christian Students for

Change 8 March Communication Club (Progressive Youth Organisation) (PYO) Progressive Socialist Party (PSP)

Druze Students for

Change 8 March

Secular Club

(SEC) - - Campus Choice -

Independent

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Note on Transliteration

I spoke English with students and other people I met in Lebanon. However, the use of Arabic (in Lebanese dialect) and French words during these conversations was very common, especially among Lebanese students. Arabic words or sentences, spoken in Lebanese dialect and not Modern Standard Arabic, have been transliterated according to the International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES) system for transliteration. All translations are my own unless stated otherwise.

Words that are often used: Yaʿnī: I mean; You know, like ʾinnū: Like; Ehm

Hayk: So; Like this Bas: But

ʾay: Yes Lā: No Shū: What Fī: There is

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Chapter 1: Introduction

ʾākhadhna al-jāmiʿah: We got the university

So everything will continue on the same line. It’s really bad. Unfortunately, yeah. We say that change may [come], we think that it will change. But if you see at AUB, thís university, the American University of Beirut, especially concerning the religion thingie, the elections, the political thing, you go and think that no, nothing will change. If AUB students do that in the elections, they walk in the streets and yell ‘we got the university’ and they say this religion thingie [then nothing will change]. … A lot of Facebook posts they shame on it: ‘it’s AUB, you are AUB students, why would you do that?’. ... But at the same time, these students, they are very smart, they are very clever, good students. But there is something in them, there is this thing about religion, about the political, unfortunately. Sometimes I say it's a really bad atmosphere, I wish that AUB's elections weren't that big. … The bad about it [is] that it's following what's happening in the country. And what's happening in the country is not something that encourages you to follow it actually.

While making passionate gestures with her hands and speaking rapidly, I can feel Aliya’s frustration. We are having coffee in one of Beirut’s hipster cafés in Hamra, a lively and bustling neighbourhood that is close to American University of Beirut. Aliya is an engineering student at AUB who will graduate next semester. She is 20 years old and exudes an air of confidence, ambition, and drive. In addition to almost finishing her bachelor’s degree, she is also the president of one of AUB’s political clubs.

While talking about her personal life, her experiences at AUB, and the club, Aliya keeps digressing to the topic of national politics and via this detour back to the student elections. With a sense of exasperation and desperation she depicts the unstable situation in Lebanon. After multiple periods of war and violence, and living in a context where it feels as if conflict is always boiling underneath the surface, many people in Lebanon experience a constant threat of new violence or war breaking out. Moreover, their basic human rights are neglected by a largely corrupt political body that combines sectarianism with clientelism (which I call political manipulation)3_{, and they live}

in an environment where no basic security is present: an environment of radical insecurity. As we discuss these topics, I ask Aliya if she thinks anything could change. Without hesitation she sighs ‘No.

3_{For those unfamiliar with these concepts, I explain them in-depth later in this introduction, on page sixteen}

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9 No. Now, no. Or a bad change, a change for the bad’. I ask her if she is afraid of a bad change, but she tells me that she is used to it and that

After violence I think something new will happen. So here we're walking in the same line, there is nothing changing, but I think if something major happens in Lebanon I hope that something will change for the good.

Aliya’s sentiments are telling for the feelings of hopelessness that many Beiruti youth experience. During my five months of fieldwork in Beirut on the AUB student elections, I spoke to multiple ambitious students, who also expressed their desperation about the instable and insecure situation in Lebanon. If they expect any societal or political change at all, they feel that (initially) it will most likely be for the worse rather than for the better.

This intricate connection between national politics, AUB student politics, personal ambitions and feelings of hopelessness puzzled me. How can we understand this absence of hope for change among these ambitious and educated students? Where do these feelings of hopelessness come from? How does this relate to their political subjectivity and political agency? How do students experience their politicisation in the context of the university? How do they navigate themselves in their complicated circumstances? This intertwinement forms the central focus of this thesis and resulted in the following research question:

How do AUB students experience their politicisation in an environment of radical insecurity and political manipulation?

Based on 5 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Beirut and in-depth interviews with AUB students, I explorethis question. I use the AUB elections as a lens to understand the lived experience of AUB students of the political environment and radical insecurity in Lebanon, and how this relates to their ideas about their future. In this thesis I show that instead of actively resisting and striving for change, students are preoccupied with saving themselves, securing their own future, and creating a sense of security for themselves in an environment where no such thing as basic security exists.

One might wonder, why this focus on student elections? Each year, the various political clubs on campus, of which all but one are directly affiliated with a national political party, compete to become the biggest within the university and to be able to say ‘ʾākhadhna al-jamiʿah – we took the university’. Nuri, an independent USFC-candidate, explained how loaded the word ʾākhadhna is:

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10 It is very consuming, it's very concrete. Like something to be taken for yourself, it's like being your own. Like when you say university for mé, it's a big thing. It's making this institute your own. Your own is also like feeding it, it's your mentality, beliefs, whatever and doing things that only come in your benefit. Because everything is by voting in the USFC-cabinet. So when you have the majority, every proposal you would submit, would get accepted. So you are again in power.

In his explanation, Nuri refers to being in power, making the university your own, and benefitting yourself. This seemingly simple statement ‘we took the university’ thus expresses a certain heaviness and sensitivity that surrounds the AUB elections. During these elections, tensions among students, national political parties, and its supporters, run high, and are heightened up to the point that the Lebanese army stands outside the university gates as a security measurement. Winning these student elections and appropriating the university to gain political dominance is essential to both students, and the national political parties, which makes these elections the most explicit political event in these students’ lives.

In the remainder of this introduction I elaborate on the main theoretical concepts that are used in this thesis. In the second chapter I discuss my methods, positionality, and ethics. Chapter three focusses on Beirut as a city and AUB’s place in it. In the next three chapters, I explore students’ experiences of radical insecurity and political manipulation, and I discuss the notion of resilience as a response to this volatile context. In chapter seven I tie everything together and I discuss the need to go beyond previous research’ focus on either structure or agency. Lastly, I end with a brief conclusion and recommendations for further research.

Lebanon and the concepts of Youth and Change

In both public and scholarly debate, youth are often considered to ‘be the future’ and to play a leading role in bringing about social change (e.g. Honwana 2012; Ginwright et al. 2006; Taft 2011; Ho et al. 2015; International Institute for Child Rights and Development 2010). During the Arab Spring, youth in various countries in the Middle East actively revolted against the system to establish change (Bayat 2017). Feelings of hope and the possibility for change dominated among youth, and although the revolutions did not have the desired effects and outcomes in most countries, there was a moment where positive change seemed like a true possibility. These events were followed by a rise in youth studies to shed light upon the experiences, feelings, motivations, and beliefs of these young people who demanded change (ibid.; Khalaf and Khalaf 2011; Laiq 2013; Herrera and Sakr 2014).

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11 However, youth do not necessarily (try to) bring about change. Despite strong feelings of discontent, youth in Lebanon have not participated in similar revolutions as those during the Arab Spring. The last big uprising in Lebanon, the Cedar Revolution, took place in 2005. Although there were small protests in recent years (e.g. the You Stink! Movement in 2015), and initial demonstrations in 2011 (Hermez 2011) none of them are comparable to the uprisings and revolutions that started in 2011 in the rest of the region. Many scholars considered the lack of uprisings striking, especially because Lebanon is often seen as one of the more ‘democratic’ and ‘free’ countries in the region (Bray-Collins 2016: 300; Di Peri 2014; Fakhoury 2014). Moreover, considering the discontent of AUB students (and many other Lebanese), a revolt would not have been surprising.

The students who are the focus of this research are highly educated. In many academic and public debates education is seen as the solution for many problems (Glaeser et al. 2007; World Bank 2005; Naidoo 2007; Lerch and Buckner 2017): universities are seen as a place of political socialisation where students are encouraged to think critically and develop a progressive, tolerant, and pro-democratic mindset. From this perspective, socialisation in universities results in a type of civic engagement that supports democratic institutions (Barakat 1977: 20; Parreira et al. 2019: 3). However, these accounts are often dominated by a focus on Western countries. Countries that are faced with continuous low-simmering conflict such as Lebanon are mostly neglected in these studies (ibid.: 4; Harik and Meho 1996: 68). By looking into the lived experiences of AUB students, I want to shed light upon the politicisation of students outside Western countries to gain insight into the political sentiments of a future generation living in a situation of radical security and low-simmering conflict.

As an analytical concept ‘youth’ should be understood as a category that is constructed and of which the meaning differs across place and time. Johanna Wyn (2011) argues that youth is a social process: ‘a way of defining individuals that is linked to complex social, political, and economic processes, much in the same way as gender and class are also social processes’ (35). It is a process ‘in which young people engage with institutions such as schools, the family, the police, welfare, and many others. The outcomes are shaped by the relations of power inherent in the social divisions of society’ (Wyn and White 1997: 3). The meaning of (being part of) ‘youth’ differs depending on the place one is in, e.g. Egypt, The Netherlands, or Lebanon. Even within Lebanon, the living conditions that are formative for (the meaning of) youth, differ between Beirut, Baalbek, or in a village close to the border with Israel. The given ‘historical’ context also makes a difference: the social process of youth differs if one finds oneself in 1975 on the outbreak of the war in Lebanon, in 2012 Lebanon when faced with the threat of ISIS and a spill-over of violence from Syria, or in 2018 Lebanon when parliamentary elections were held for the first time in nine years. Youth can therefore not be

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12 understood as an isolated and universal category, but as contingent and intersecting with other parts of people’s identity. As Bayat (2017) states:

The fact is that most youth are students, most students are young, and almost all are at the same time citizens carrying broader concerns. In other words, young people’s politics encapsulate contentions that derive from their multiple positionalities as youth, students, and citizens, filtering through class, gender, racial, and other identities (21).

The intersection is relevant to gain insight into AUB students’ ideas and feelings. They are not just students or youth, but their identities and politicisation are influenced by the broader circumstances in which they are situated. This interplay is a central element in this thesis and helps to understand students’ politicisation.

One of these intersections is age and social-economic position. This research focusses on students within an elite university, with an undergraduate tuition fee that ranges between 10.000 and 40.000 dollars per year.4_{These students are – in a context of radical insecurity – relatively}

privileged and secure. Since anthropologists predominantly focus on those who live in poverty or what Laura Nader (1972) calls ‘the culture of the powerless’ (289), this study offers a new perspective by studying those (who are likely to come) in power, or who belong to the upper or middle class. This does not mean that the AUB students I conducted my research with are fully powerful and do not experience powerlessness or insecurity. On the contrary, their feelings of powerlessness and insecurity prevail, which creates an interesting ambiguity: students experience strong feelings of impotence, while they belong to a select group of people in Lebanon that is able to go to one of the Middle East’s most prestigious universities.

Students themselves are aware of the privilege and political importance of AUB, as Hakim, a LMC cabinet-member, explained:

If you look at AUB, it's the best university not only in Lebanon, in the Middle East. Basically it has bred a lot of success-, not successful people but political leaders have graduated from this university.

Similarly, another student told me that ‘The young leaders [are] being crafted right now in the university’. From these expressions it becomes clear that these students might become future politicians with access to power. One of the main concerns in this research is how they are politicised

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13 in this privileged university. How can this politicisation be understood in relation to students’ above-mentioned discontent and desire for change, but also feelings of hopelessness and disillusionment? Politicisation

Politicisation should be understood as a process that concerns ‘the political’. It refers to

‘the acquisition of practical and theoretical knowledge about “the political” – a set of power relations and the attempts to modify them (Balandier 1967 cited in Lefort 2017) concerned with the experience and organisation of interbeing, the ‘living together’’ (Lefort 2017: 408). Politicisation here is understood as similar to ‘political socialisation’,5_{and both denote the process}

through which political attitudes and behaviour are learned and shaped (Petrović, van Stekelenburg and Klandermans 2014: 404; Quintelier 2009: 20). In these conceptualisations, ‘politics’ should be understood as ‘a ceaseless negotiation of the ways of living together that employs the capacities for human agency, such as attentiveness, reflexivity, affectivity, improvisation, interrogation, and the production of change’ (Häkli and Kallio 2018: 64).

Häkli and Kallio (2018) already point to the element of agency in politics and politicisation. In congruence with their analysis, I understand politicisation as constituted by political subjectivity and political agency. Subjectivity refers to ‘the felt interior experience of the person that includes his or her position in a field of relational power’ (Das and Kleinman 2000: 1). Similarly, Sherry Ortner (2005) sees subjectivity as ‘the inner states of acting subjects’ while embedded in the social world (ibid.: 31). Political subjectivity then means the felt interior experience of the political, which is culturally and socially constituted and shaped within a field of power-relations. Political subjectivities are thus both personal and social, and emerge through relational (power) dynamics, yet cannot be reduced to being determined fully by power structures (Häkli and Kallio 2018: 58). More simply put, political subjectivity refers to the ways in which people feel about, ‘understand and practice their membership of the political community’ (Boekelo 2016: 247).

Political subjectivity is both the ‘premise of and constraint to political agency’ (Häkli and Kallio 2018: 65). Following Ortner (2005), agency is formed by (culturally constituted) subjectivity, rather than it being a natural or primary will. Understood as such, the concept of agency helps to come to an understanding of how people ‘act on the world even as they are acted upon’ (ibid.: 5). Political agency is thus not something that is ‘given’, but something that is achieved (Feldman 1991: 1). Like political subjectivity, political agency is relational and embedded in the social world. Political

5_{I use these two terms interchangeably to refer to the same process because the authors I work with vary in}

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14 agency then is the ‘effect of situated practices’ (ibid.) and is based on ‘self-reflexive, interpersonal framings of power’ (ibid.). Following Häkli and Kallio (2018: 58, 65), there is a dynamism between political subjectivity and political agency whereby political subjectivity forms (and constrains) political agency. At the same time, political agency gives rise to and constitutes political subjectivity.

Political subjectivity and agency are crucial to come to an understanding of AUB students’ politicisation in the context of radical insecurity: how does their politicisation relate to their feelings of hopelessness and their inability to see possibilities for change? How can their politicisation be connected to the way they navigate themselves in the radically insecure environment in Lebanon? Because my research is grounded in the everyday experiences of students, I follow Häkli and Kallio (2018), who emphasise the need to understand political subjectivity – and agency - as located in everyday experiences. By looking into everyday political agency, they have a subtle approach that opens up possibilities to see less clear-cut modes of agency than for example explicit resistance.6

To understand (the constitution of) political agency and political subjectivity, it is essential to look at ‘people’s experiences of events and situations they encounter, and focus on issues that stand out as important to them’. (Häkli and Kallio 2018: 65). In my research I use the dynamic approach advocated by Häkli and Kallio (2018), and focus on experience and the issues that students themselves consider to be important (for their politicisation). Two overarching themes repeatedly returned during the conversations I had. First, the insecure and unpredictable environment in Lebanon in which the students live their lives and move from adolescence to adulthood. Secondly and partially making up this radically insecure environment, the state that governs through a combination of clientelism, sectarianism and corruption, which I call political manipulation. It is to these two issues that I turn next.

Radical Insecurity

Lebanon’s current situation can be understood as an environment of radical insecurity (Moodie 2010: 15, 111).7_{This notion helps to overcome a prevailing image in both public and scholarly}

debates that war and peace are two clearly separated states (Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois 2004: 4; Das and Kleinman 2000: 16). Like several scholars who have argued against such a simplistic understanding, I focus instead on the ways in which the boundaries between violence, conflict, and

6_{See also Scott 1985; Scott 1990; Constable 2007 [1997]; Abu-Lughod 1990; Scheper-Hughes 1992: 471-472,}

533.

7_{Throughout her work Moodie (2010) mostly refers to radical uncertainty instead of radical insecurity to}

describe a prevalent sense of ‘not-knowing’ experienced by people in El Salvador after the formal end of the war. Although life in Lebanon comes with feelings of uncertainty and not-knowing, I prefer to use the term radical insecurity because many Lebanese people do know what the causes of their insecurity are and how to navigate themselves within this insecure environment, where there is no sense of a basic security (hence the term radical insecurity).

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15 peace are obscured. Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois (2004) emphasise the need to look into the ‘little violences’ that are produced in the structures and mentalities of everyday life (also during ‘peacetime’), because these types of violence are directly linked to larger forms of violence and ultimately mass violence (ibid.: 19-21). They therefore argue in favour of understanding violence as a continuum that consists of different types of violence (ibid.: 1). This continuum blurs the division between wartime and peacetime violence, and connects violent acts that occur in these different times and ‘in times that can best be described as neither war nor peace in so many parts of the world’, such as in Lebanon (ibid.: 4, 19-20). Similarly, anthropologists Das and Kleinman (2000) claim that we have to ‘analyse not only the explicit acts of bodily harm that occur in violent conflict but also the more subtle forms of violence perpetrated by institutions of science and state’ (ibid.: 2).

By criticising the division between wartime and peacetime violence, this thesis also complicates the concept of ‘post-conflict’. A formal peace agreement does not automatically indicate a post-conflict situation that entails the absence of violence. A strict dichotomy between ‘before’ and ‘after’ a conflict can disguise a repetition of, or renewed forms of violence. Rather than in a state of post-conflict, Lebanon is in a state of continuous low-simmering conflict. Therefore, it is more relevant to look at how ‘conditions of war both past and present shape everyday life in the contemporary space and society in Beirut’ (Monroe 2016: 54).

Furthermore, I follow Hermez (2017), who deconstructs the homogeneous notion of what war entails, and instead proposes a wider understanding of war that takes into account the invisible forms (similar to Das and Kleinman’s subtle forms of violence) of political violence (ibid.: 3-4, 9). Hermez explicates one form of invisible political violence; the sense of threat that ‘the war is coming’ (ibid.: 4). By breaking down the sentiment of being and living ‘in the meanwhile’, expressed by many Lebanese people, Hermez looks into the everyday experience of this threat (ibid.: 2). This sentiment signifies a temporary state that exists between the longer and more enduring periods before and after the ‘meanwhile’. The notion can refer to two different time periods of both past and future violence. First, it can refer to a period during the war, where one lives between one political violent act and the next. Second, it can refer to the period that exists between the old war that is said to have ended, e.g. via a peace agreement, and the new war that has not yet begun. Although one formally lives in a time of peace, the new war is expected and ‘an anticipated inevitability’ (ibid.: 15). In Lebanon, the meanwhile has become the norm, and the anticipation of violence is a sentiment that is widely shared within Lebanon and affects the everyday lives of many Lebanese. It makes war an absent presence: while the physical aspect of war and violence is (experienced as) absent,

talk of war, imagining it, sensing it, being tense and frustrated by it, feeling despair, resignation, fear, and hope by it, these are some of the ways that war remains constantly

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16 present (conceptually and not necessarily physically) as a structuring force in social life (ibid.: 4).

Such an absent presence entails the remembrance and recollection of past violence, but also the imagination and anticipation of future violence (ibid.). According to Hermez, this constant anticipation of violence and thus living in the radical uncertainty of a war looming at the horizon, is the result of top-down, elite reconciliation politics in Lebanon8_{. Moreover, even today these anxious}

feelings about renewed violence are actively stimulated by Lebanese politicians, who almost uninterruptedly speak in a discourse of fear of the Other, and possible dangers and threats (Seidman 2012: 11, 30-31).

Hermez’s notion of the anticipation of violence, but also the political manipulation that partially constitutes Lebanon’s radically insecure environment discussed in the next paragraph, are subtle and invisible forms of violence, yet violence nonetheless. Such (structural) violence transforms the everyday as it can cause one to lose trust in the world as one knew it, and in one’s everyday life. The everyday then grows into something fearful and distressing, and in their everyday lives people continuously experience ‘feelings of extreme contingency and vulnerability’ (Das and Kleinman 2000: 8). In such cases violence seems like ‘business as usual’ (ibid.: 15). This normalisation and routinisation of more implicit forms of violence disrupts the distinction between peace and war and the violence that occurs in it, and creates an environment of radical insecurity. However, this environment is not ‘just there’: it is actively kept in place. It is to the power and structures that keep this environment in place that I turn next.

Political Manipulation

In order to refer to the intricate intertwinement and system of sectarianism, clientelism and corruption of the Lebanese state, I use the term ‘political manipulation’. These three processes are so inextricably interwoven in the context of Lebanon that it becomes empirically untenable to separate them. Because sectarianism is a contentious and sensitive topic, it deserves some brief attention (Larkin 2012: 40; Weiss 2010: 11). One could argue that as an analytical concept it has been overused to explain phenomena in Lebanon (Di Peri 2017: 426-427). However, since it is in fact a structuring force in the everyday lives of Lebanese people, it can also not be ignored. Sectarianism in Lebanon refers to a political system, namely the power-sharing between various sects, but also to a socio-cultural identity-marker and a system of rules and values (ibid.: 427). Often, sectarianism is viewed from an essentialist perspective and is understood as describing primordial cultural identities that

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17 make for a priori existing differences between groups of people. As opposed to such primordial, culturalist and ahistorical explanations, I understand sectarianism from a non-essentialist, historical perspective (Di Peri 2017; Bray-Collins 2016; Kiwan 2018): Rather than indicating static and unchangeable categories, sectarianism denotes a dynamic process and praxis of which its specific form changes over time and is dependent on its specific socio-economic, and political context (ibid.: 6-7).

Sectarianism is first and foremost a political and modern phenomenon that runs through (and for a large part governs) economic and social spheres of the Lebanese society. In Lebanon, sectarianism is deeply intertwined with power structures and it ‘contributes to maintaining “stable networks of privileges” (Heydemann 2004 cited in Di Peri 2017), which are the basis of the reproduction of the balance of power in neo-patrimonial systems’ (Di Peri 2017: 427). In addition, this sectarian system is sustained and reproduced through a wide array of structural, institutional and clientelist practices that pervade the everyday, and result in political subjectification and domination of Lebanese people (Sallouhk et al. 2015: 3; Hermez 2011: 527). This makes that the state is experienced as an absent presence: the state considered to be weak by many Lebanese and barely provides any public services, nor does it guarantee basic rights. Simultaneously, through the system of political manipulation, the state creates relation of dependency and political subjects that rely on the state, and is thereby able to reproduce the system and maintain its power (ibid.: 527, 531; Hermez 2015). In chapter three I elaborate more on political manipulation and the ways this is experienced by AUB students.

Self-Realisation

As said, throughout this thesis I look at the ways in which students are politicised in the AUB elections, which has to be understood in the context of radical insecurity and the everydayness of violence, and political manipulation. However, what is the relation between the process of politicisation, and students’ feelings of hopelessness and the impossibility of change? In order to shed light upon these sentiments, I use the concept of self-realisation (Jaeggi 2014). This concept, related to notions of personhood and freedom, revolves around the (in)ability to manifest oneself in the world and ‘the capacity to give oneself reality in the world in a self-determined way’ (ibid.: 200). In the final chapter I demonstrate how the context in which these students find themselves shapes their experiences of self-realisation and how this is connected to the process of politicisation.

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Chapter 2: Methodology, positionality, and ethics

This thesis is based on five months of ethnographic research in Beirut where I conducted twenty-five in-depth interviews with AUB students, two in-depth interviews with recently graduated AUB students, several follow-up interviews, and engaged in informal conversations with students, and two professors at AUB. I spent many hours at AUB observing the everyday lives of students on campus, while writing fieldnotes and preparing interviews which gave me an informal and casual way to observe student-life at AUB. In addition, living in Beirut for five months allowed me to engage in the anthropological method of participant observation and, in a very small way, to ‘experience’ what these students face on a daily basis because they are living in Lebanon. It also allowed me to have daily interactions and informal conversations with people in Lebanon, for example with service9 -drivers, cashiers, waiters and waitresses, people who worked for NGO’s, and those people who over time became my friends. These interactions and conversations helped me to reflect upon my research and continuously reconsider assumptions made in the process.

Unfortunately, I was unable to be present at the elections and observe and experience them myself. One AUB professor and several students asserted that I would not be allowed on campus since I did not have an AUB student-card: to make sure that outsiders do not enter campus and cause problems or start fights, only AUB students with a legitimate student-card are allowed on campus during election’s week. This was unfortunate, but immediately made me aware of the importance and heatedness of the elections. It was not until much later in my research process that some students told me that they, as participants in the elections, could have helped me entering campus by giving me a press card. However, at this point the elections were already over. Being aware of the lack of this experience and data, I tried to follow the elections as much as I could by walking along Bliss Street, the street on which AUB’s campus is located, and through livestreams on Facebook.

9_{A taxi shared with people that are standing on the streets and are picked up along the way, and who are going}

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19 These were made by AUB Outlook.10_{In addition to watching livestreams of the election debate and}

the election results, I also analysed pictures of the elections and Facebook comments to these pictures and livestreams to get a general feel of the elections. However, these pictures and livestreams are made by people who can only show a part of what is happening and I can only account for what I saw and heard. Nevertheless, the combination of livestreams, pictures, and comments provided valuable information and insights.

In this research I used a phenomenological approach, whereby my main focus is on people’s experiences with, understanding of, and relation to the world (Markham 2014: 92). Inspired by Heidegger, I understand people as being-in-the-world, meaning that ‘human existence is always embedded’ within an intersubjective context (Stolorow 2011: 144; Heidegger 1962 [1927]). People’s experiences are thus situated and have to be understood within their wider social, political, economic, and cultural contexts. Moreover, I follow Heidegger’s emphasis on people’s everyday existence in, and experience of the world (ibid.).In addition, I employed a phenomenology of politics as developed by Merleau-Ponty11_{, namely ‘the description of the involvement of the subjects in}

political affairs through their relation to the world, to history and to others’ (Melancon 2010: 623). Using such an intersubjective phenomenology of politics meant that the interviews I conducted were semi-structured only in the sense that they were planned in advance and that I had a short list of questions and themes I wanted to cover. In particular, I wanted to give students the space to tell me their personal story and elaborate on what they deemed important in their personal narrative. This approach allowed me to come to an understanding of ‘the inner experience of individuals, how they interpret, understand, and define the world around them’ (Faraday and Plummer 1979 in Bryman 2012 [2001]: 488-489).

Positionality

Ethnography as a research method comes with disadvantages and limitations that require brief attention. Most notably, as is often the case with ethnographic research, the findings of this research are not generalizable to a wider population due to convenience sampling. Surveys, focus groups, or short and structured interviews could have been alternative methods to include students from other,

10_{The independent student publication of AUB.}

11_{Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty are both existential phenomenologists, who understand our existence as}

intersubjective, and who focus on the lived experience in the everyday (Priest 1998; Ram 2015: 32; Downey 2015: 118). There are however differences between the two philosophers. The main one is that Merleau-Ponty focuses on the bodily aspects of existence and the embodied perception of the world, while Heidegger’s ‘being-in-the-world supersedes the body’ (Low 2009: 273). For a more in-depth discussion of this and other differences I refer to the work of Kevin Aho (2005) and Douglas Low (2009). In addition, while Heidegger preferred his work to remain apolitical, Merleau-Ponty (and later Bourdieu) sees this as impossible and considers ‘thinking’ and ‘philosophy’ as activities that are politically and socially situated (Ram and Houston 2015: 7; Melancon 2014: 2).

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20 private but also public, universities. These methods would have resulted in a more representative sample. However, choosing depth over breadth, I focus on AUB students to come to a ‘thick understanding’12_{of students’ personal experiences and the issues that matter most to them. Another}

criticised aspect of ethnography is its subjective (as opposed to an objective or more neutral) nature due to the close personal relations that are formed and the data that is ‘produced in human interaction’ (Scheper-Hughes 1992: 25). In these personal interactions and through participant observation, the anthropologist uses ‘oneself’ as a research-instrument to collect and interpret data (Murchison 2010: 13). This method would result in ‘subjective’ and biased data. I have tried to overcome these issues by explicitly positioning myself within the research, by providing in-depth descriptions of the research-context, and by including a multiplicity of, sometimes contradictory, voices. Moreover, from a constructivist epistemology, I consider researchers as co-constructors of meaning: as a researcher one is continuously co-constructing through selection, in -and exclusion, and interpretation. This means that research is necessarily flawed and partial. Following feminist scholar Donna Haraway (1988), I believe that all knowledge is situated.13_{‘Situated’ does not mean}

that ‘anything goes’, but rather that it is vital to reflect upon one’s positionality. Not doing so leads to un-locatable and therefore irresponsible knowledge claims (ibid.: 581-583).

As a white, western woman who is a foreigner in Lebanon, people’s response to me and in turn my perspective on, and experience with Lebanon is very different than if I was for example a woman of colour, a man, or a Lebanese person. The fact that I am an outsider gave me the advantage of not suffering from ‘home blindness’, and not taking the ordinary for granted (Hermez 2017: 26). Often, people were eager to explain ‘Lebanese matters’ to me and to tell me a different story than what they assumed I heard in the media. Moreover, I am beyond grateful for the kindness that I experienced and received from many Lebanese, but the fact that I am a white girl, privileged enough to conduct research abroad, has been of influence. Had I been e.g. a woman of colour, my experiences would have been very different, as (everyday) racism and discrimination against refugees and people of colour in general predominates in Lebanon. My foreignness also meant that it occasionally took people longer to trust me: some considered me a naïve neo-colonial western girl who never experienced large-scale violence, or in extreme cases a spy. The fear of engaging in a neo-colonial project through my research is something that I struggle with myself. I have been unable to

12_{Referring to Geertz’ conception of thick description to provide in-depth accounts of the details of people’s}

cultures and life worlds (Geertz 1973).

13_{Haraway explains that claiming that knowledge is objective is ‘a god trick’ (Haraway 1988: 582): only God has}

a gaze from nowhere meaning that, unless you are God you are situated somewhere, which results in situated knowledge (ibid.).

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21 resolve this struggle, but I try to ‘deal with’ the issues of neo-colonialism through a consistent self-reflexivity and critical attitude towards myself and the research throughout the research process.14

People’s wariness was ‘countered’ by that fact that I do not have political or sectarian affiliations, which seemed to make it easier (and sometimes relieving) for students to open up to me about politically-sensitive topics. Aliya, who opened this introduction, texted me after our conversation to thank me and said ‘I really needed to talk about these topics in that way’. This text, in addition to other students’ comments, made me realise that the sensitive topics I researched are actually topics students want to talk about, but they lack space to do so in their daily lives. My positionality as a student, not much older than the students I spoke with, helped to establish rapport. These aspects supported my aim to create a relationship and atmosphere of trust during the conversations.

Ethics (of Writing about Violence)

Before starting interviews, I explained people what my research was about, and I ensured that they felt safe to not answer a question or to end the conversation at any point. Planned interviews were recorded, for which I asked everyone permission, and the recording was stopped upon request. Lastly, everybody in this research is anonymised via pseudonyms, and for this reason I do not disclose students’ positions in the clubs. Instead, if they are or were more than a regular club-member (because of a cabinet-position and/or SRC-position), I refer to them as ‘cabinet-member’ or ‘important member’. USFC-candidates and representatives are referred to as such, or also as ‘important member’. Lastly, cabinet-positions, and candidacy or representative-positions are not mentioned by year of position, and all positions are written in present tense to make it more difficult to recognise people.

In this thesis I write about students’ experiences, which is connected to the everydayness of violence and the grey zone between war- and peacetime violence. Writing about violence should not be taken lightly. As a concept violence is ambiguous and difficult to define (Moghnieh 2017: 6): it ‘defies easy categorization. It can be everything and nothing; legitimate or illegitimate; visible or invisible; necessary or useless; senseless and gratuitous or utterly rational and strategic’ (Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois 2004: 2). This elusiveness resulted in many accounts in which violence is reified and portrayed in essentialist ways. However, many academics argue against such arguments, and instead favour a more dynamic approach. Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois (2004) state the importance of not solely focussing on violence’s physical aspects, e.g. the use of force or the cause of pain, to

14_{This was done through memo-writing, prioritising students’ topics of interest, giving people my undivided}

attention for as long as they wanted, verifying my understanding of their stories with them, and continuously moving back and forth between the gathering of and my interpretations of the data.

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22 avoid engaging in a ‘pornography of violence’ (ibid.: 1). Such an approach not only neglects the social and cultural elements of violence, but also results in a voyeurism or sensationalism that ‘subverts the larger project of witnessing, critiquing, and writing against violence, injustice, and suffering’ (ibid.; Hermez 2017: 5). Likewise, Hermez (2017) warns against a totalization of people’s experience of violence, which makes (the endurance of) violence the only concern of those who live in a conflict zone (ibid.: 5). As many of her interlocutors told Theidon (2012): ‘although violence can horribly reduce life, life cannot be reduced to that violence’ (ibid.: 394). In this research I want to avoid an essentialist and sensationalist approach by focussing on AUB students’ experiences of the insecure environment in which they find themselves, rather than on physical elements of this insecurity. Moreover, instead of condemning the behaviour and sentiments of these students as either good or bad, I want to show how their acts and feelings come into existence.

Chapter 3: Setting the Scene

Lubnan mā bīeswā shī, bas mā min bīʿū bi knūz al-denīā: Lebanon is worth nothing, but we would not sell it for the treasures of the world

The picturesque view of Beirut, located on the Mediterranean Sea and flanked by Mount Lebanon’s mountains, while flying into Lebanon is contradictory to the chaos that awaits me. Leaving the airport and heading into rush hour, my taxi-driver Hassan introduces me to Beirut’s hectic traffic, which includes standing still often, and drivers honking for no apparent reason since moving is impossible. Hassan and I discuss the football world-cup that took place earlier in the summer while I enjoy the disorder and my first impressions of Lebanon. As we drive into Beirut, I see politicians’ pictures and flags of political parties decorating the streets and buildings. Suddenly, I notice the immense Mohammad Al-Amin Mosque with Saint George Cathedral right next to it. I realise we are overlooking Martyr’s Square, and I am right in the middle of Beirut. The square was on the demarcation line that divided the city in two during Lebanon’s war15_{, and is now the heart of}

Downtown Beirut.

15_{The war from 1975 – 1990 is now best known as the Lebanese Civil War. However, the term ‘civil war’}

ignores all external influences and the fact that the war could be considered as a proxy war by regional and global powers, including - but not limited to - the United States, Israel, Syria and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) (Monroe 2016: 36-46; Boekelo 2016: 18-19). Moreover, the war was not one continuous war, but in fact a series of battles, that are each recognised as a war on their own and that Lebanese people refer to with specific names. The war was thus not ‘lived and experienced homogeneously throughout’ (Hermez 2017: 22). The name of the war is contested in Lebanon and in academic debates and there is no agreed upon name (ibid.: 24). Although ‘Lebanese civil war’ is the name that is employed predominantly, I feel uncomfortable using this name because of the above-mentioned elements. Instead, I follow Monroe (2016) and Hermez (2017) who argue in favour of using the name ‘Lebanon’s war’. Moreover, there is still no agreed upon narrative on the war and the causes remain contested. The aim of this thesis is not to provide an analysis

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23 When moving through Beirut, one feels in a ‘globalised’ and cosmopolitan city that is incredibly chaotic and disorganised, but also has a communal-like atmosphere. Friendly interactions between strangers create a sense of warmth, which contributes to Beirut’s energetic character (ibid.: 3). Such friendliness can be found everywhere on the street and is described by Beirutis as ilfeh, closeness or familiarity (Monroe 2016: 18).16_{However, ilfeh stands in stark contrast to my feelings of}

people being reserved and guarded. Although extremely outgoing and social, initially people were hard to read, and it took me some time to feel that I was establishing a ‘real’ connection with people. Over time, I learned that these feelings were justified, but not necessarily related to my foreignness. Many Lebanese people to whom I opened up about this struggle confided in me that they felt similarly. Seidman (2012) states that in Beirut ‘underlying the steady, quick circulation of bodies and vehicles is an almost studied indifference to others, a walling off of one’s emotional life … [there is] a disposition of inwardness and indifference’ (12). He relates this attitude to individualist mentalities that can come with globalisation, but also to the violence that many Lebanese endured (ibid.: 7, 25): ‘Beirut’s urban dweller assumes the pose of a battle scarred, war weary self who still dwells inside a war culture’ (ibid.: 31). Mouna, a SEC USFC-candidate explained: ‘what I see usually [and] as I was growing up, because I also walk home from school and from uni[versity], I noticed that people are very depressed here … you can see on their faces there is this lack of hope’.

The sense of guardedness and individuality, but also sociability and willingness to help kept puzzling me throughout my fieldwork. It made me conscious of the ways in which Lebanon’s war, and the multiple periods of violence after, play a role. Unlike many other ‘post-conflict’ nations, Lebanon has not undertaken any official, state-sanctioned truth and reconciliation process after Lebanon’s war (Monroe 2016: 46).17_{The absence of such a process made it impossible}

of these contested causes, nor of the complexities of Lebanon’s war. However, not wanting to neglect the horrible events that took place during this time I refer to (among many others) the works of Khalaf (2002), Salibi (1976) Fisk (2001 [1990]), Haugbolle (2010), Kassir (2010) for a history and contextualisation of Lebanon’s war. The war came to an end via the 1989 Taʾif Accord, but coincided with, and was followed by, conflicts between Hezbollah and Israel in Southern Lebanon. These conflicts formally ended in 2000 by the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Southern Lebanon (Najem 2012: xvi). However, in 2006 the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel erupted into a full-scale war that lasted for 33 days (known as the Lebanon War, the Israel-Hezbollah war, or the July war) (ibid.: xi-xvi; Monroe 2016: 98; Larkin 2012: 7).

16_{As mentioned in the previous chapter, this friendliness is often not expressed towards for example Syrian}

refugees or immigrants from Ethiopia. If I had been a woman of colour my experiences would have been very different and most likely more negative.

17_{In an attempt to move away from the war, the Lebanese government chose to issue a general amnesty for}

war crimes in 1991, which included media censorship laws, no criminal tribunals or compensation schemes, nor truth and reconciliation committees (Monroe 2016:46; Larkin 2012: 5). These decisions were partially made because the post-war ruling elite (often former militia leaders and warlords, and traditional elites) had no interest in exploring the details of the war as this could lead to their indictment and/or loss of current power (ibid.). The official narrative to legitimise these policies was lā ghālib, lā maghlūb - No Victor, No Vanquished (ibid.). The war resulted in neither conqueror, nor conquered, neither winner, nor loser. Therefore, in the

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24 to forget about the war and its traumatic experiences, and left many people’s grievances unaddressed (Hermez 2012: 329). After Lebanon’s war, Lebanon suffered from repeated periods of violence.18_{Continuing social and political tensions, ongoing foreign influences, occasional outbursts}

of violence, contested war memories in the absence of national reconciliation, and the visible destruction in people’s physical surroundings ensures that war is not a thing of the past. On the contrary, it is carried into the present as many Lebanese are concerned with a possible future war (Hermez 2017: 6).

While walking in Beirut, remnants of violence are also recognisable more explicitly than in people’s dispositions. The many bullet-ridden buildings such as the infamous Holiday Inn hotel and the Burj Al Murr (Murr tower) that now functions as an army post, are a physical indication.19_Nadine,

an AUB-student, mentioned she felt tense when passing war-torn buildings: ‘when you pass by a building that has bullet traces on it, it haunts you’. Moreover, during Lebanon’s war Beirut was divided into East and West Beirut, and although this division was removed years ago, many people still talk in terms of East and West. Wadih, a CCS USFC-candidate explained that

Lebanon is so divided. In the West and the East, especially in Beirut, like for Muslims when they go to the East it's like a different country. And they don't know where they are and they feel like in the enemy's territory and the same with regards to the Christians when they are in West Beirut. So it's really deep.

He extended these divisions beyond Beirut and expressed his feelings that there are ‘6 or 7 Lebanons, and they don't care about what happens in the other parts of the country, so the North doesn't care about the South, the South doesn't care about the North’. According to Bou Akar (2018) there is not just one (invisible) dividing line in Beirut, but there are hundreds of them. These are the result of urban planning that is based on the logic of ‘the war yet to come’ (ibid.).

When in Beirut for a longer time, these tensions, connected to people’s guarded disposition, become palpable. After being in Beirut for a little over a month I wrote the following excerpt in my fieldnotes:

government’s perspective, Lebanese people would be able to both forgive and forget, and instead of holding on to grudges move forward as one nation (ibid.; Monroe 2016: 46).

18_{These periods include – but are not limited to - the many assassinations and bombings between 2004 and}

2008, the 2007-conflict in the Palestinian refugee camp Nahr al-Bared, the July 2006-war with Israel, the May-2008 battles in Beirut, and the spill-over of violence from the Syrian conflict between 2011 and 2017 (Hermez 2017: xi-xii, 40; Salloukh 2017).

19_{Other buildings such as ‘Beit Beirut’ and ‘The Egg’ have become the symbol for discussions between those}

who want to renovate Beirut and remove everything that has been affected by Lebanon’s war versus those who want to preserve it as a visual reminder to ‘never forget’ (Springer 2013).

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25 It’s a quiet Sunday morning, which is weird considering that I am in Beirut where nothing ever gets quiet. Last night in a service I remember thinking this is ‘the city that never sleeps’, and I’ve had that thought more often. It’s weird how alive this city is, while at the same time not being alive at all.

After writing the last sentence I stopped and wanted to delete it. Why did I write this and what did I mean? I decided to keep it, hoping that one day I would be able to clarify this feeling. Even now, several months after returning, I am still not fully able to do this, but it shows that Beirut is a city hard to grasp. One week after writing the excerpt, I met Nabil, who left Syria during the war and is now studying in Beirut. Over dinner he told me that although he was happy to be here for now, he had no intention to stay:

‘Beirut is a fake city. It’s a transitional city where people from poorer regions temporarily go to and stay before moving on to for example Europe or the States. It’s not a city to settle in. It’s superficial. I miss Syria, the tradition and the history and the depth. Even at the most intense point of misery and destruction, I could still feel that history, that liveliness, that tradition and depth. This is something I can’t feel here in Beirut’.

While I understood what he meant, it also contradicted my own (paradoxical) feelings about Beirut’s other side that I had gotten to know. Beirut is chaotic and exhausting, but also energetic and vigorous. It is (spatially) divided by race, religion and social class, and a sense of cautiousness mixes with kindness and warmth. Detachment and spiritedness coincide. These contradictory feelings remain unresolved and characterise my experiences with Beirut as a city.

The American University of Beirut

In Beirut’s hectic neighbourhood Hamra, AUB’s campus feels like an oasis of tranquillity. Once I go through AUB’s main gate, leaving frenzied and cluttered Bliss Street behind, I enter a calm space. Students walk to their classes in one of the historic buildings and sit on benches overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, and AUB’s lower campus and sports centre. Students I spoke with appreciated AUB’s beautiful campus, and felt privileged (and proud) to be part of the university. They stressed that AUB was unlike the rest of Lebanon, but its distinctness was experienced differently. Sahar, president of one of AUB’s non-political clubs, disclosed:

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26 Whenever we debate about something I feel like I'm more free to express my opinion. Like I don't really care whether a girl is a virgin or not, or whether a guy is virgin or not … So if I say that outside AUB they would think that I'm stupid. … Once I go outside of here, then I feel very different. So yeah I feel like I'm more protected here.

When I asked if she felt that AUB was a safe environment she emphasised that it was ‘safér’:

Because you would still have the other side. For example, the Sexuality and Gender Club in AUB was organising a queer like, during Halloween, where you'd wear a costume and then you would go and date other people. But it was not just for straight people but for all people. Which is something that is technically against the law, but they had the approval from the university. Then other people started to criticise it like ‘why are we allowing this to happen and this is against all of our beliefs’ and people started fighting. … So this is why I would say safér and not safe, because you would still be attacked, like your identity would be attacked only because you don't accept the views of other people.

Hakim, a LMC cabinet-member, expressed a different outlook:

AUB at the end is an American university and follows American standards. … But you're in Lebanon. In Lebanon there is a lot of stuff where we disagree with the United States. … And there is a lot of stuff where we agree on. So the problem is in the stuff that we disagree with, because here you cannot actually do anything as an AUB student. Because like it is against AUB law, but according to Lebanese law it's normal. For example, in Lebanon the law is against gay rights and these type of stuff. While at AUB it's okay to have these stuff, and AUB is against people who discriminate against them. … Okay so here like you have a problem … An AUB club was having a speed-dating night but it was for transgenders and transsexuals. So these stuff, these people are not accepted if you want still in the Lebanese society. By Lebanese law, the law is against them. By AUB law, you should, ʾinnū, you cannot even talk against them, because it will be discrimination. So here as an AUB student you are in a dilemma, like where you stand then as an AUB student. You cannot say I'm against. And let's say you are against, but you cannot be against. But when you go back to your society, like you sit in your neighbourhood, and you speak freely, you're like against. So I don't know, it's sort of schizophrenic.

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27 Sahar and Hakim’s stories show how AUB, as an American university in Lebanon, has an ambiguous position that is experienced in different and sometimes contrasting ways. Because of this ambiguity, the university becomes ‘a borderland’ (Haugbolle 2013: 428). It is a place that requires a constant crossing of physical, but also symbolic or imagined borders (ibid.; Lefort 2017: 412). In addition to AUB’s external borders, related to the university’s ties with the United States, there are also internal boundaries. These boundaries are, on a smaller scale and less connected to power and money, similar to the earlier-mentioned invisible lines that divide Beirut’s neighbourhoods (Bou Akar 2018). As George, an important SC-member, and I overlook the cars in Hamra Street and have coffee, he expresses his frustration about these divisions:

So I live with it. It's unjust what you see, that you live with every day, and it's more emphasis on how bad things are. Because even in AUB you can see that there is sort of this division, the same way if you've lived in Lebanon, you realise that [there is] a division in zones or regions among religions. Hon [here] in this region fī [there is] Sunnis, in this region fī Maronites, in this region you see Shi’ites, … and in AUB it is the same. So you go to the engineering cafeteria, which is Oxycaff, people mention that ʾinnū this is the cafeteria for Christians. When you go to the Jafet Library, and this is not just me speaking, this is me speaking and many people know this, many people say this the Dahiyeh20_{of AUB, which means for Shi’a.}

And then you go to the upper cafeteria, to the back-caff … we used to know it as the Sunni area. So you see that here this is the place for this sector, this sector is here, this sector here. And then that's sometimes how complicated things go.

These territorial divisions are usually implicit and the ‘symbolic’ or ‘imagined’ divisions that accompany them stay beneath the surface. However, these boundaries become much more overt and palpable during one of the biggest events of the year at AUB: the student elections.

AUB Student Elections: Technicalities and Importance

The AUB elections are considered to be the most important student elections of Lebanon and are of national importance. They are watched by many people in the country, including politicians, and are covered in newspapers and broadcasted on all television channels. The reason for this is that the elections are seen as representative for national politics, and a forerunner of future political sentiments. AUB is demographically representative for Lebanon’s sectarian divisions, but it is not representative for Lebanon as whole (often stated by students) because this crudely neglects social

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28 class differences. Nevertheless, the future political elite is (believed to be) created here which is why the elections are followed carefully. Because students are unable to vote until they are twenty-one, these elections are also (one of) the only outlet(s) to express political sentiments.

The elections take place each year in the fall semester, usually in October or November. Students can vote for the Student Representative Committee (SRC) and the University Student Faculty Committee (USFC). The SRC represents the various faculties, and each faculty elects its own SRC. In total there are 81 seats available for the SRC, which are not only divided per faculty but also per year. Each eligible voter has 4 different votes for the SRC. The USFC is considered more important than the SRC, because there are only 19 student-seats, and the committee represents the whole university instead of one faculty: the body functions as an intermediary between students and the university’s administrators. USFC-seats are also divided per faculty, depending on the faculty’s size. Unlike the SRC, they are not divided per year and students only have one USFC-vote. In the 2018 elections, there were 177 candidates for the SRC and 43 for the USFC. 67.3% of the eligible voters cast their votes for both committees. This ‘first round’ is (informally) followed by two other rounds. In round two newly elected student-representatives for SRC choose the president, vice-president, treasurer and secretary for each faculty. Round three revolves around the election of USFC-positions of vice-president (the highest position a student can reach in the university), treasurer, and secretary. Some students disclosed that these USFC-positions were negotiated and divided by the national parties rather than by students. There is no student-president in the USFC, because this position is taken by the president of AUB. In addition to the president and the students, there are 6 faculty members present in the USFC, one from each faculty in AUB.

All clubs that participate in the elections are affiliated with national political parties, except for the SEC and the independent candidates. Hakim explained that the club and the party are not simply affiliated, but that ‘the club is the party’ and they are the same: ‘the club is a young part of the party’. Officially however, AUB’s administration has banned national politics from campus. This seems hardly possible since AUB, as an American university in Lebanon, is inherently political as Hakim and Sahar’s words in the previous paragraph illuminated.21_{Students circumvent these}

regulations by ‘fooling the university-administration’ and giving clubs different names than the national party, as Elie, an important FC-member, clarified. Yet amongst students it is public knowledge which club represents which party. To win the elections clubs, except the SEC and independent candidates, form yearly-changing alliances that often follow the national alliances. Mounir, a SEC-member, elaborated:

21_{For more information on the history of (student movements at) AUB and AUB’s changing (political) role in}

Moving in the margins : hope and the politics of change in student elections in Beirut