Concrete sectarianism: Revisiting the Lebanese civil war through Beirut’s built environment

Abstract

During the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990), Beirut’s built environment was taken over by militias and used for sniping and launching military offensives. These operations took place across demarcation lines that cut through mixed neighbourhoods, eventually dividing the city into an ideologically Christian East and Muslim West. Due to Beirut’s excessive urbanization, navigating the built environment during the war became a necessity of survival. However, on a more imperceptible level, the years of repetitive navigation between, under, and around Beirut’s buildings contributed to learning scripts of othering, where sectarian ‘others’ were assigned to concrete structures that represented danger and foreignness. This article explores Lebanon’s sectarian war by analyzing how survivors interacted with Beirut's built environment. Using the ethnographic approach of considering built matter, alongside humans, as co-constitutive of social phenomena, the article shows how matter can shed light on the emergence of sectarian thinking and behavior.