Norma Oficial Mexicana NOM-022-SEMARNAT-2003, Que establece las especificaciones para la preservación, conservación, aprovechamiento

Since the reputation of the kin group provides, as it were, the social masks behind which

13 A Hussainiyah is a Shiite religious charitable organization.

people in Lebanon meet, social status is closely linked to one’s membership in a kin group, as socioeconomic advantages accrue to those with the most prestigious family name. This is a stronger determinant than even educational attainment. In their attempt to measure social class in Lebanon, Zurayk et al. (1987) argue that like other developing countries, “the baseline conceptual and methodological work by social stratification specialists to develop relevant scales and rankings of social class position is still in its early stages” (Zurayk et al. 1987: 174). Therefore, they resorted to proposing a family-level measure of social class as measured by the family head's educational characteristics.

While I agree with their use of the family level to determine social class, I argue that the relationship should be inversed – that family status grounds the striving for educational achievement rather than vice versa. Thus, family status transcends the head’s education and constitutes a strong determinant of the individual’s social status.

The family’s position in society —which can be attained by coercion, wealth or charisma (similar in principle to Weber’s types of leadership)— facilitates the individual’s

economic, political and social affairs (El-Khoury and Panizza 2005). People establish their credibility in the society through their family’s name and the position it occupies;

they influence it and are influenced by it. Social status is viewed within the “lieu”

(Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992) that the family occupies publically. This lieu is

established based on the recognition of family name which endows people at birth with widely varying amounts of social capital. Those who have more, use it, and those who have less, seek either to create it or find alternatives to it.

Although I emphasize the social force of the family name as opposed to any other variable of social achievement, the system is dynamic enough that family names can rise or fall. Mostly, however, the position of the extended family in the society is passed on to members, whose actions are judged within the perimeters of the family reputation.

Endogamy and homogony are highly encouraged and rewarded. Additionally, the extended family determines its members’ social status and provides them with solidarity and networks.

My emphasis on the positionality of family status might suggest a static description of the Lebanese social scene; again, this is definitely not true, or only part of my claim. Many historical and political incidences have caused a shift in social status. However, this shift rarely happens on the individual level. Historical shifts such as the civil war and rise of Hezbollah caused the replacement of one set of families with another. The civil war, for instance, forced upper and middle class families to emigrate and gave more clout to previously deprived families. Still, Lebanese social scientists refused to blame Lebanon’s social stratification problem entirely on the war. “Nowadays, there is a common belief that the expansion of poverty is a result of the war. This is only half the truth. There are structural causes particular to Lebanon's social and economic systems that have

engendered serious discrepancies in the society, particularly as regards income distribution” (Haddad 1996). El Khoury and Panizza (2005) show that, on average, Lebanon is characterized by extremely low levels of social mobility, comparable to those of the least socially mobile Latin American countries. However, they did find differences in social mobility across religious groups especially among the Christian Maronite and

the Muslim Shiite who, were more socially mobile than the Muslim Sunni.

Lebanese themselves do not use the concept of social class; they tend to think of stratification more in term of social status. Using the concept of class to describe the Lebanese society of the late 1960s, Fuad Khuri (1969) observes the presence of four social classes in the Lebanese society of the 1960s. These socioeconomic categories have to a great extent remained till modern times. He labels the most affluent social class as the notables (al-wujaha'), who are distinguished individuals that belong to "established houses.” Among these notables are those who control their extended kin group as well as other classes, who are thus called zoama. The two middle classes, the affluent and the honorable poor, compose the majority of the Lebanese population. The affluent (al-mubhabahin) include “wealthy landowners and merchants, university graduates and the

professional class of medical doctors, engineers and lawyers.” The honorable poor (al-masturin) include “small landowners and shopkeepers, teachers, technicians, tradesmen”

and “clerks, secretaries and ordinary soldiers…”(Khuri 1969: 37). Finally, the needy (al-muhtajin) comprise the poorest social group which is dependent on the assistance of other social groups.

My fieldwork led me to classify the family’s social status in the following four socio-economical categories: Four of my respondents (two Christians and two Muslims) were from the elites (al-wujaha'), or as I shall call them later the Velvet society; twenty one were “bourgeois”, five Muslims and three Christians in the intellectual category, and 13 from middle class families (four Christians and eight Muslims) that are similar to Khuri’s

category of (al-masturin). Five of the respondents descended from working class families (four Christians and one Muslim), although these were also different from the needy category that Khuri observed in 1969.

Table 4: Activists by Class and Community Origin

CLASS COMMUNITY ORIGIN

C= Christian; Sh=Shiite; S=Sunni and D=Druze

a. The Velvet Society

The elite families, or as Princess Arlan calls them the “Velvet families –
ا ت2ا” (in reference to the silky luxurious fabric which has historically been worn by royalty) are the remnants of Lebanese aristocracy that ruled in the Ottoman era; these are the Emirs, the Beys and the Sheikhs.¹⁴ Members of the Velvet elite kin groups are automatically provided access to the public sphere through their kinship structure. According to Princess Arslan, only about 100 elite families remain in Lebanon today.

Within the eighteen recognized denominations, the ex-officio feudal and the nouveau riche have seized control over many of the political, economic and social aspects of

14 Note that while the Bey and Emir are titles still used by the Druze community, merely assigned to Jumblat Bey and Emir Arslan, the title Sheikh is used by the Gemayel Maronite family and the Harriri Family among Sunnis. No Shiites use these titles.

Lebanese society, creating in the process the Zoama¹⁵ phenomenon. Zoama translates into leaders, chiefs, lords, masters and heads of a people, and their political significance is hard to overstate. A handful of Zoama speaks on behalf of their confessional groups and represents them politically. In exchange for alliance and loyalty, people benefit from close association with these leaders. Officially, the most influential of these Zoama headed political parties enjoy constituencies selected by their confession and region.

Candidates, who wish to run on the ballots of any of these parties, pay these Zoama thousands and sometimes millions of dollars.

Current Zoama acquired their political leadership status by being descendents of

traditional feudal families, religious leaders, financial giants or old war lords. The Druze Zoama are Talal Arslan (head of the Lebanese Democratic Party) and Jumblat (head of Progressive Socialist Party). The Shiites leaders are Al-Sayyed Hasan Nassrallah, the leader of Hezbollah and Nabih Berry with his Amal movement. While both Hezbollah and Amal are proletariat movements meant to empower the Shiites, Nassrallah’s title, al-Sayyed, indicate his religious status as an heir of the Prophet Mohammad. The majority of the Sunnis support the nouveau riche Hariri and his Future Movement (Mustaqbal), whereas traditional Sunni leaders like Huss and Karami play less significant roles and do not head political parties. The Maronites who previously formed the “Qurnet Shehwan”

coalition with the Maronite Patriarch Mar Nasrallah Boutros Cardinal Sfeir, include leaders like Samir Geagea and his Lebanese Forces and former President Sheikh Amine Gemayel, head of the Phalange party. Other Maronites follow former military leader

Michel Aoun, who heads the Free Patriotic Movement (al-Tayyar al-Hurr – +ا ر3ا), or give their loyalty to the son of the Franjieh family and their heir Suleiman who heads the Maradah Movement.

b. The Fortunate Intellectuals

Historically, many of the same intellectual families have held positions of intellectual leadership in a tradition that goes back hundreds of years. Members of these kin groups are born into a tradition of public leadership maintained through their kin’s cultural capital, which is “institutionalized in the form of educational qualifications” (Bourdieu 1986: 243), ¹⁶ for it was their high levels of educational attainments which separated them from other middle class families, not their incomes. The extended family afforded a tradition and security that allowed activists in this category to feel privileged as a group.

Those who have had a long history of higher level of educational attainments among their kin groups considered themselves fortunate. I was told by one of my informants that there are about 1000 families of this sort in Lebanon. For them, patriotism and service become natural byproducts of education and a path for gaining fame and significance among traditional and new competitors. A family tradition of intellectual attainment can even be carried across borders. In substantiating the accomplishments of family who emigrated from Palestine in Lebanon, Orthodox Anita Nassar attributes the reason to education:

“They were educated, they came from Palestine educated. Yeah they were privileged.

16 Bourdieu argues that cultural capital exits in three forms: in the embodied state, i.e., in the form of long-lasting dispositions of the mind and body; in the objectified state, in the form of cultural goods (pictures, books, dictionaries, instruments, machines, etc.), which are the trace or realization of theories or critiques of these theories, problematic, etc.; and in the institutionalized state, a form of objectification which must be set apart because… it confers entirely original properties on the cultural capital which it is presumed to guarantee Bourdieu, Pierre. 1986. "The Forms of Capital." Pp. 241-58 in Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education, edited by J. G. Richardson. New York: Greenwood Press.

They were the bourgeoisie there. They were from the bourgeoisie from Jerusalem. This is why they could afford to go to best schools, the British schools. They came here and they had at least in their hand a diploma from a university, something. This is what made them. This was their passport to work and to start all over again.”

c. The Middle Class

According to the standard social movement paradigm, this group should encourage the most individualistic autonomy among its members. The individualistic ethos of the middle class in conjunction with capitalism overcame the aristocracy in England and France, and similarly overcame the planter aristocracy in the early American republic to build the United States’ civil society in its own image. As middle class’ autonomy is justified functionally, in terms of upward social mobility and widening democracy, one might assume that that Lebanese middle class will be similarly oriented. However, in Lebanon the middle class faces the choices of a continuing economic deterioration, emigration, or inertia, according to one of my interviewees, Orthodox Ugarit Younan.

Her perception is based in recent history as documented by Kubursi (1999) who surveys the net effect of the war on the skilled and professional class: “Professionals and skilled workers with international transfer prices (i.e., with skills that are easily transferable in the international market) emigrated, leaving semi-skilled or unskilled workers behind to fend for themselves. Losses in productivity were experienced in most sectors and real incomes of the unskilled plunged sharply, exacerbating an already iniquitous and skewed income distribution system.” Kubrusi cites Labaki’s estimates that a total of 740,000 people left Lebanon between 1975 and 1988 and Kubursi (1999) claims that an additional

240,000 “emigrated in the first eight months of 1989.”¹⁷ Another quarter million left during the Syrian occupation in the 1990s and more after the 2006 war.

Even before the civil war, the Lebanese middle class had not been the engine of the struggle against colonialism, a role they played in other decolonizing countries. Rather, it was the elite families who led the battle, and even today the descendents of the fathers of Lebanon’s independence are Lebanon’s current sectarian leaders. Historically, it has been very difficult for the middle class to penetrate this holdover of feudal and sectarian aristocracy, which is entrenched in what Ibn Khaldoun (1967) called Assabiya based on kinship and religious memberships. In my interview with her, Professor Azza Charara Beydoun explains that the political system in Lebanon is not necessarily intrinsically hostile to women, but is rather a system closed to all nontraditional groups:

Beydoun: Our political system is exclusive, allowing only traditional families into politics. It excludes new and unconventional groups like women, the youth¹⁸, the proletariat and even new community gatherings because it is a very exclusive system. Our political system is designed for confessions and families that turned the state into a herd of sheep and allocated resources and powers among

themselves, thus closing the door in the face of those outside this system, including women.

17 Labaki, Butros. 1989. "L'emigration externe." Maghreb, Machrek 125 (July-September): 40-52.) and Labaki, Butros. 1990. "Lebanese Emigration During the War, 1979-1989." Manuscripts were cited in Kubursi 1999, p.72.

However, Orthodox Amal Dibo, one of Laure Moghaizel’s former associates, feels that the bourgeoisie in Lebanon is very alive and a very interesting agent of social

advancement. Although they do not possess the zoama status, the bourgeois have been able to live a freer life and play an important role in liberating women. A bourgeois woman is emancipated in Dibo’s opinion because: “She’s educated, she’s identifying, I mean, there is more possibility of equality.” So, education, equality and “identifying” ¹⁹ are among the five elements that describe the Lebanese bourgeoisie: social mobility through education; freedom from tradition; a livelihood and ability to reinvent

themselves; openness and “identifying” with people who come from different paths and faiths; and producing high caliber NGOs and businesses:

First in the bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie is actually in Lebanon made of people who have come through the system of social mobility. They were either rich, and they become a little bit poorer, so they are bourgeois or they were very poor and they could [ascend] the ladder of society through education… So the bourgeoisie therefore in Lebanon is certainly an educated class. [Second, the bourgeoisie is]

free in the sense that they are not bound by the traditions of the aristocracy or by complexes of the poor. [Third] they like to live and show off and display… This is part of our resistance so when people say well the Lebanese are too much show off; I think that the Lebanese tried to make the best of what they have... Then number four, I think that [within] the bourgeoisie you have a lot mixture between Christians and Muslims, because at this level you don’t keep, you are not the

18 Voting age in Lebanon is 21 although some proposals are being considered currently to lower the voting age to 18.

holder of traditions and you have to put a face as the rich would be, nor are you from the people who go by dictat of the religion and therefore have to abide [by it]. So there is more freedom in that sense and more identification and similarities especially when we meet at universities and in schools. And the fifth one is I think that the bourgeoisie has given us the best NGO members and even the

[politicians] and the business people. It’s the part of the country that is most alive.

And that can [envision] a future and project progress.

d. The “Less Fortunate”

Living a good life is a Lebanese characteristic as Dibo explained, even among the less fortunate. Poverty rates have persisted in Lebanon at 28% since 1993 (earning $4 per day), while the rates for people in absolute poverty fluctuate around 8% (earning $2.40 per day) (Laithy et al. 2008).In Lebanon, the poverty level is set at approximately $618 earning per month for a family of five (to meet its food requirements and other basic needs such as health, education, housing and clothing); extreme poverty is set at $306 earning per month for a family of five (meeting only its food requirements) (Haddad 1996).Haddad (1996) suggests that “around one million Lebanese live in poverty, while 250,000 of them live in extreme poverty. In rural areas, 75% of families whose primary provider works in agriculture are poor, and 40% of these are extremely poor. Two thirds of the extremely poor - around 165,000 - live in rural areas and represent more than a quarter of the population in these areas. In urban centers, namely Beirut, Tripoli, Sidon, Tyre, Zahleh, and their suburbs, there are around 750,000 poor, around 90,000 of whom are extremely poor…” (Haddad 1996).

19

The “less fortunate” are typically the uneducated poor families who receive financial support and services offered to them through philanthropic initiatives funded by the elites, and are offered their only educational opportunities by development projects that are parachuted into the country by international NGOs and foreign aid. Evidently, the Lebanese government is not a welfare state. To help alleviate poverty, the Lebanese state reinforces kinship power structures by earmarking pork barrel projects for regionally elected representatives. The government uses “temporary financial transfers, or transfers in kind, to establishing mechanisms entrusted with an empowering or developmental role” (Haddad 1996).Most of these establishments are either religious or private ones run by a one of the elites, especially Zoama politicians, who help the poor on a local level.

For instance, the René Moawad Foundation (RMF), which is headed by former President Moawad’s widow PM Nayla Moawad, operates a health clinic for the poor in the

Maronite town of Zgharta, which, as it happens, PM Moawad represents in the parliament. According to its website, “RMF's objectives focus on providing health services to the disadvantaged in North Lebanon. The services are centered in the community clinic in Zgharta. The clinic offers medical consultations, a laboratory, a pharmacy, a dental clinic and runs a mobile dispensary service.”²⁰ The Moawad Foundation receives financial and in-kind transfers from the Lebanese Ministries of Agriculture, Economy, Education, Environment, Public Health, and Labor among other national and international funders.²¹

20 http://www.rmf.org.lb/main/main/default.html 21 http://www.rmf.org.lb/pdf/2004letters&donors.pdf

The poor’s kin groups do not provide their members with cultural or social capital, yet they still exercise a lot of control over them. In fact, working class rural families, or urban families of rural origin, are typically larger than the national average, ranging between 6.5 and 7 members. Their illiteracy rates are higher (For instance, according to RMF, the average illiteracy rate in the north is at 16.7% compared to the 11.6% national average; and for women it is 21.2% in the north compared to the 16% national average for women²²). “Poverty places an additional burden on women and exacerbates

discrimination against them. Thus, poor working women's salaries and incomes are lower than those of their male counterparts... Moreover, poor women and young girls are discriminated against regarding access to health care and nutrition” (Haddad 1996).

“The urban poor mainly belong to families whose primary provider works in the civil

“The urban poor mainly belong to families whose primary provider works in the civil