Economic adversities and cultural coping strategies: Impacts on identity boundaries among Druzes in Lebanon

Abstract

Druze communities throughout Lebanon utilize culturally influenced strategies to cope with their economic pressures. As a group, their unique political and historical role in Lebanese society has exposed them to a broad spectrum of economic issues similar to those experienced by ethnic and religious minority groups elsewhere. This article discusses a number of economic concerns they face, with a focus on how cultural values, traditions, and practices are employed to navigate optimal outcomes at individual and communal levels. Traditions and practices common to Druzes, such as dissimulation or the strict obligation to protect one another from outside threats, provide examples to analyze Trouillot's discussion on silences and Chambers's theories on public and private heritage. This research is primarily based on ethnographic and qualitative fieldwork in Lebanon and, using secondary sources, offers a cross‐cultural comparison of disparate economic issues faced by Druzes in Israel to identify similarities and differences in cultural coping strategies. Examples of how public images relate to financial opportunities and how these images are brokered by insiders and outsiders provide a nuanced approach to understanding the economic burdens that affect Druzes and the resulting impact on conceptualizations of self, nationality, and shared identity.