Sophie Chamas (Lebanon)

I’m in my last year as a DPhil candidate in Oriental Studies (Modern Middle East). After spending two years carrying out ethnographic fieldwork in Beirut, I’m back in the UK to finish writing up my dissertation. My work focuses on the development and growing popularity of a new form of contentious politics in Lebanon, where anti-status quo activists are increasingly adopting a pragmatic approach to politics that takes uncontroversial issues rooted in questions of general livability and wellbeing as its focus. I investigate the appeal of this approach, contextualizing it within the global popularity of ‘rights to the city’-based discourses, which have increased over the last decade. Furthermore, I meditate on the limitations of pragmatic approaches to anti-status quo agitation in Lebanon and elsewhere, questioning this approach’s ability to achieve the kinds of long-term transformational changes its adherents aspire to, grounding my criticisms in the rich critical literature on what is broadly termed ‘post-politics’. Drawing on a compelling body of theoretical work that grapples with ‘utopia’, I examine the alternatives that exist along the fringes of Lebanon’s civil society.