In the aftermath of the succession of abortive planning schemes and the indiscriminate destruction of war (1975-1991), it is the self-inflicted pattern of destruction that has caused the most damage to the urban fabric of Beirut, Lebanon: the reconstruction process itself. Through the examination of pre- and postwar plans and strategies, this study establishes destruction as a framework in the urban history of Beirut. The eradication of cultural heritage and urban memory is evident in the demolition of half the city fabric and the privatization of reconstruction, and continues through the implementation of the proposed market-led rebuilding strategy. / This thesis frames the reconstruction of Beirut within comparative methodologies of urban rebuilding in the twentieth century, namely those of post-W.W.II Europe (as manifested in Warsaw and Rotterdam) and those of contemporary market-led urban regeneration (as exemplified by London Docklands). As a critique of the proposed rebuilding of Beirut, it contributes to the re-negotiation of the process and policy of urban reconstruction at the national and international levels.

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Magistro teoriniame darbe yra nagrinėjama post-traumatinė teritorina esanti Libano sostinėje Beirute. Atliktų analizių išvados nurodo tolimesnę praktinio darbo eigą. / This Master thesis project analyzes post-traumatic area situated in Beirut, Lebanon. Conclusions taken from analysis are used to elevate the practical part of MA project.

Magistro teoriniame darbe yra nagrinėjama post-traumatinė teritorina esanti Libano sostinėje Beirute. Atliktų analizių išvados nurodo tolimesnę praktinio darbo eigą. / This Master thesis project analyzes post-traumatic area situated in Beirut, Lebanon. Conclusions taken from analysis are used to elevate the practical part of MA project.

The proposed thesis deals with Beirut's urban development from a maritime town to a provincial capital in the 19. and early 20. centuries. It does so in the context of physical, politico-administrative and socio-cultural inscriptions on the city by a centralizing Ottoman state. The center-periphery relations in the Ottoman Empire are examined in terms of the forces of political integration and social cohesion as well as challenges to them. The empire-city nexus that is maintained throughout this thesis posits Beirut both as the site of Ottoman imperial discourses and practices and as the site of local appropriation of- and resistance to - them. Local power was articulated in arenas of negotiation between Istanbul and Beirut (e.g. municipal councils, bureaucratic and personal networks, production of space, practices of urban management). At the same time, the quality of the city's growth and wealth created discontent and resistance among these sectors of society that were excluded from, or threatened by, Beirut's development as a port city and provincial capital (e.g. strikes, boycotts, demonstrations, riots). The condition of Beirut at the turn of the century was commented and reflected upon in contemporary Arabic journal editorials, newspaper articles, poems and speeches whose transformative power, it will be argued, affected the very physical form of Beirut's urban fabric.

La guerre du Liban (1975-1990) a vu émerger dès son commencement une littérature féminine caractérisée par le décentrement du regard et de la représentation, qui inspira le nom donné par Miriam Cooke aux auteures femmes ayant écrit la guerre à Beyrouth : les "Beirut Decentrists". Ces dernières sont à l’origine d’un corpus prolifique et hétérogène, dont les œuvres, pour la grande majorité hybrides et polyphoniques, se rejoignent dans une interrogation sur l’espace urbain comme protagoniste, et sur la place occupée par l’auteure dans un paysage en perpétuel devenir. Ce travail de recherche, qui s’inscrit dans la géocritique, se propose d’explorer les espaces investis par ces femmes pendant la guerre. Que peuvent-ils nous apprendre sur la ville en guerre ? Surtout, quelles Beyrouth(s) possibles peuvent naître après la tentative organisée d’un urbicide par la société de milices qui a contrôlé la ville pendant quinze ans ? Le corpus couvre la totalité de la durée de la guerre, mais il comprend aussi des textes écrits dans les années qui ont suivi, indiquant la prégnance de la guerre dans le temps de l’après-conflit. En quoi le point de vue des "Beirut Decentrists" peut-il contribuer à la construction de la mémoire dans un pays qui cultive l’amnésie tout en croulant sous un « excès de mémoire » ? Ces territoires traversés et transgressés où ville, écriture et expérimentation poétique s’entrecroisent, nous permettent de mettre en perspective les notions de frontières et les considérations binaires de centre et de périphérie. En proposant une lecture géographique des textes des Beirut Decentrists, nous espérons renouveler la perspective sur la guerre, sur les femmes dans la guerre, sur la perception de la ville et la façon de faire avec la mémoire de celles-ci. / When the Lebanese war broke out in 1975, many women scattered in Beirut started writing about their feeling of being decentered. Miriam Cooke called them the "Beirut Decentrists". Their texts about the war in Beirut experiment with a variety of literary genres and devices such as hybridity and polyphony, yet all intersect around one interrogation: urban space as a protagonist and the woman writer’s role in this ever-changing landscape. This research inspired by geocriticism explores the spaces wandered by these women during the war. What can we learn about the war-torn city? Moreover, is it possible for new Beirut(s) to emerge from a fifteen-year militia-lead organized urbicide? Our corpus covers the entire war along with texts written during the postwar years. The latter giving us precious indications of how war still influences the conflict’s aftermath. What contribution can the "Beirut Decentrists" unique perspective bring to the construction of a collective memory in a country where amnesia and an excess of memory still coexist? Urban landscape, writing and poetic experimentation intersect and blend in these traveled and transgressed territories, thus allowing us to challenge the notion of border and binary narratives of center and periphery. Through a geographical reading of the Beirut Decentrists’ texts, we wish to renew the perspective on the war, on women in war, as well as the perception of the city and the ways to deal with memory.

L’histoire de la Bourse de Beyrouth ne se différencie pas de celle des autres nations. Créée en 1920, cette institution sedistingue cependant des autres bourses mondiales par un phénomène singulier. Elle a attendu 34 ans pour être dotée d’uneréglementation spéciale.La fonction la plus traditionnelle de la bourse est de collecter l’épargne en vue de contribuer au financement de l’économie, touten exerçant un rôle primordial de liquidité des capitaux investis à long terme.Donc, mon étude de recherche doit se baser sur l’histoire financière de la Bourse de Beyrouth dès sa naissance en 1920 et lesétapes qui les a surmonté jusqu’à présent.Elle devra se faire suivant quatre axes principaux :§ Une série d’études et de recherche (qualitative et quantitative) concernant les sociétés cotées depuis 1920 avecdes tableaux et des statistiques basées sur les informations boursières (cours et actions) et leur évolutiontemporelle ainsi que leur contribution au développement de l’économie.§ La création de deux indices généraux d’actions : mensuel et annuel§ Etude de la microstructure du marché boursier libanais et de sa nature à travers les différentes sous périodesanalysées§ Une étude financière basée sur des tests économétriques dans le but de vérifier l’efficience, ou non, du marchébeyrouthin des actions.La problématique dans cette étude de recherche est d’utiliser les outils théoriques et techniques de la finance moderne pourcomprendre les phénomènes relevant de l’histoire financière.L’objectif sera de fournir un éclairage sur quelques exemples caractéristiques dans l’histoire de la Bourse de Beyrouth résultantde la tentative d'application concernant sa contribution dans l’économie libanaise.Le rôle de la Bourse de Beyrouth dans le financement de l'économie locale demeure pour le moment négligeable. Depuis sanaissance en 1920, jamais la Bourse de Beyrouth n'est parvenue à jouer le rôle que l'on pouvait en attendre dans l'Economielibanaise.Est-ce encore le signe d'un manque de confiance dans le pays, d'une inadéquation entre les fortes structures familiales dans laplupart des entreprises et l'ouverture du capital qu'elle induit? Toujours est-il que les efforts structurels entrepris dès sa fondationpour relancer cette institution ne sont pas encore récompensés ? / The history of the Beirut Stock Exchange does not differ from that of other nations'. Founded in 1920, this institutiondistinguishes itself from other international stock exchanges through a unique phenomenon. It awaited 34 years to be endowedwith special regulations.The most traditional function of the stock market is to collect savings to contribute towards financing growth. It holds anessential role of liquidity on long-term investments.My research study must build itself on the history of the Beirut Stock Exchange, going back to its birth in 1920 and followingthe steps it has overcome through its evolution so far.It shall be developed through four principal axes:§ A series of studies and research (qualitative and quantitative) pertaining to companies listed since 1920, with chartsand statistics based on stock information (courses and activities) as well as their temporal evolution and theircontribution to the development of the Economy.§ The creation of two general stock indexes: the monthly index and the annual index.§ The study of the microstructure of the Lebanese Stock Market and its nature through the various analyzed periods.§ A thorough analysis of the problems confronting the development of the Stock Exchange at the administrative,structural and conceptual levels.The problematic of this research study are the use of theoretical and technical tools of modern finance to understand thephenomena linked to financial history.The objective is to provide insight into some typical examples in the history of the Beirut Stock Exchange resulting from theattempt of application relative to its contribution in the Lebanese economy.The role of the Beirut Stock Exchange in financing the local economy remains negligible. Since its birth in 1920, the BeirutStock Exchange has never succeeded in holding the role it may have been expected to play in the Lebanese Economy.Is this another reflection of a lack of confidence in the country or an unsuitability between the strong family structures in mostbusinesses and the resulting opening of the capital? Nonetheless, the structural efforts undertaken since the founding of thisinstitution have yet to be rewarded...

Filmmakers first received widespread academic attention as case studies into the increasing casualisation of labour in post-industrial economies. Their precarious existence in project-based labour markets provided much food for thought about the future of work, while their status as artists and producers of culture entered them into debates around just what art is and how to approach it. But in light of recent transformations in the cultural industries and the accompanied blurring of boundaries between production and consumption, academic understandings of the lives filmmakers lead have also been somewhat blurred. This ethnography of networks of cultural production in Beirut re-introduces filmmakers into the very sociological debates that they helped spark. Might a return to the situated experience of these theoretically and methodologically challenging people, who form workgroups and collaborate with each other repeatedly across projects as they craft their own careers, shed productive light on academic understandings of precarity, cultural production and indeed our increasingly confusing relationships with the objects around us? With that in mind, in this thesis I ask the following research question: how are networks of film production formed and maintained in Beirut? Based on an 'insider' ethnography of various film projects weaved into a mixed-methods social network analytic methodology, I adopt a relational sociological approach that conceives of production networks as akin to social worlds and find three analytic planes to delve deeper into: markets, objects and relationships. In relation to markets, I echo the argument that current classification systems of cultural production are too consumption-based and adopt a social network markets framework more sensitised towards production. Here, I find that the cyclical, project-based relationship of patronage that ties production networks to their clients is highly varied and contingent, shaping not only the process of cultural production but also its organisational structure. Further, I argue that the management of these contingencies is key to the potential repeat collaboration not just with clients (and their own social networks), but fellow producers as well. But past projects do not simply disappear once completed, they might well come back to haunt their makers. Drawing upon ethnographic and recent historical data on a number of web-series that emerged out of Beirut between 2009 and 2012, I compare using two-mode networks the past and more recent projects my interlocutors were involved in. Here, I find that one's past projects shape one's future by conducing or hindering their chances of finding new work. Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, I find that filmmakers (and those around them) increasingly define themselves (and are defined by others) in relation to the past projects they have done. Over time, though, as filmmakers collaborate on an increasing number of films, their relationships take on deeper characteristics than monochrome economic considerations. Here I draw upon the notion of embeddedness to shed light on emergent meaning at the network level across a number of projects and, therefore, the emergent social world-ness of networks. While the first set of findings relates to debates in the sociology of work and the second to those in the sociology of cultural production, my final analysis shows just how intimately the two are connected. I conclude by highlighting the potential of empirically-grounded relational sociological approaches to finessing our understandings of cultural work in its economic, social, but also material and technical contingencies.

No description available.

Although free improvised music (FIM) originated in Europe and the United States in the 1960s, it has come to possess meanings and roles unique to its individual contexts of production in todays transnational scene. By focusing on the Lebanese free improvised music scene which emerged in Beirut in 2000, my study aims to address the gap in scholarship on Lebanese expressive culture, particularly music, as a tool to negotiate identity. My thesis addresses the way FIM in Lebanon allows four musicians of the war generation (Mazen Kerbaj, Sharif Sehnaoui, Bechir Saade, and Raed Yassin) to express their individual identities as well as their complex relationship with conflict. I propose that, in a society still coming to terms with the atrocities of civil war and constant political instability, the practice of FIM may have a role in reflecting conflict, facilitating inter-cultural dialogue, as well as breaking aesthetic, socio-economic, and sectarian barriers.