This thesis examines leaders‘ behaviours differential effects on the work/home balance of their followers through a leader/follower fit perspective. The study explores perceived effects of leader‘s actions on followers‘ work/home balance in a Lebanese context. At the individual/dyad level, this research attempts to integrate these two areas of study. It aims to better understand, Lebanese employees‘ perspectives on the Lebanese leaders‘ practice of leadership in the banking industry and the perceived effect of this practice on the followers‘ work and home boundary management. Based on the adoption of a qualitative exploratory approach, the author conducts thirty semi-structured interviews with five leaders and twenty-five followers in different regions and divisions of the XYZ bank. The dissertation makes several theoretical and empirical contributions. First, boundary theory is empirically extended through the identification of one of the antecedents, i.e., polychronicity, of an individual‘s work/home segmentation/integration preference. Second, boundary theory is developed through the exploration of the Lebanese leaders‘ actions‘ impact on the followers‘ management of their work/home boundaries. Third, the literature on fit between the leader and the follower along different dimensions of interest to them is extended and developed. Fourth, the literature on the Middle East and in Lebanon on specific is enhanced. The implications of the Lebanese context, subject of this study, on the leadership and work/home literature are meaningful. In addition to these contributions, this study helps to surface ―actionable knowledge‖ on how to facilitate an employee‘s struggle to reach a harmony between his work and home life. This search for balance is increasingly sought nowadays as a result of the increase in work-related pressures especially for dual-earners.

This dissertation investigates the social world of contemporary filmmakers in the Middle East and the way they use visual media to re-imagine existent forms of identity, envision new modes of social agency, and transform public culture in the face of dramatic instability. In the wake of the Lebanese civil war and through the tenuous postwar period, video art and experimental documentary have critiqued the politics of representation and negotiated the theoretical and structural difficulties in representing the war. These artists have activated intersections where experimental media has generated a vibrant visual culture by both building on local notions of cosmopolitanism and by participating in transnational sites of postcolonial representation. Methodologically, I employ ethnography to grapple with the public culture of Beirut as a site of avant-garde experimentation, but also to examine the city as a contested site affected by periods of rapid growth, intense violence, and urban reconstruction. To explain this cultural phenomenon, I advance the idea of 'post-orientalist aesthetic' to describe a mode of intellectual critique and artistic style that goes beyond Edward Said's critique to give greater attention to self-representation in the post-911 period. This aesthetic interrogates western representational practices and also develops a localized critical analysis of Middle Eastern visual culture. This aesthetic informs a better understanding of postwar subjectivity, particularly in the way memory and lived experience becomes mediated through the materiality of objects, images, and architecture affectively inscribed with destruction and violence. The notion of the archive or the personal collection becomes of particular interest here; especially in the way these artifacts embody personalized narratives and testimonials that push back from abstracted notions of a monolithic historical narrative. Drawing on visual anthropology, media ethnography, and nonwestern film theory, this text examines the way these artists challenge realist modes of representation by utilizing both ethnographic and artistic approaches to grapple with the experience of everyday violence. In order to explore methodologies for conducting visual research in conflict zones, I conclude with an experimental auto-ethnography that appropriates these aesthetics in an effort to interrogate my positionality as an American researcher in the Middle East. / text

This dissertation tracks the social circulation of media scripts and collaborative meaning-making in urban Moroccan and Lebanese families' domestic conversations as ways in which the social imaginary of a differentiated pan-Arab audience imaginary is performed. Media scripts refer to television input or information circulated through entextualization processes, embedded direct and indirect quotations framed by a particular discussion, in household dialogues. They include stories, statistics, historical dates, anecdotal observations, music tunes, quotes, iconic units of language varieties and their attendant identities that Moroccan and Lebanese families managed in interpretive discussions. Scripts are easily detached and mobile sound bites that serve on an affective level as possible identity performances. I argue that Fassi Moroccan and Beiruti families are interpretive communities created and who participate in creating a culture of circulation, which is not just about the objects moving through a culture, but the means, methods, and mechanisms of transmission and interpretation built around and negotiated by the members of that community (Lee and LiPuma 2002). Collaborative in this dissertation draws on the Bakhtinian concept that all interaction involves interlocutors, whether present or not, and a set of interpretive conditions affecting meaning (Bakhtin and Holquist 1982:424). Although the social imaginary of an Arab audience is perceived as unitary enough to merit regional satellite programming, the performances of Moroccan and Lebanese families illuminate the differentiated and fractured construction of a pan-Arab cultural project. Through domestic media ethnography of pan-Arab and national entertainment, talk shows, and news programming reception, I explore functional literacies tied to intervisual cues and the management of intergenerational authority; a pan-Arab language ideology that includes performances of multilingualism and shifting identity alignments linked to specific features of linguistic varieties encountered via television; and the link between language, gender, and confessionalism in morality evaluations of gendered media representations. I focus on the everyday domestic contexts, linguistic mechanisms, and discursive frameworks activated by Moroccan and Lebanese families in media engagements.

This thesis investigates the failed state label on Lebanon. The thesis explores how Lebanon falls under the paradigm and how Lebanon contradicts, at times, the failed state model with the inclusion of Hizbullah.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Abilene Christian University, 2008. / Abstract. Description based on Microfiche version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 79-82).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1969. / Typescript. Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 470-487).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Erskine Theological Seminary, 2005. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 200-204).

Thesis (doctoral)--Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, Netherlands, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [309]-329).

Purpose: The relationship between context and e-governance has been gaining a significant momentum in academic circles due its social and technical complexities. There are many challenges posed by the disparity between the context and the system when it comes to e-governance in developing countries. This research aims to reveal more successful adoption of e-governance initiatives and exposes factors that hinder its implementation. We develop a conceptual framework showing the reciprocity between the context and the system or what is termed “Context-System Gap”. Therefore, this research will study the appropriateness of the context and its influence on the system and the influence of the system on the context. The purpose of this research is to explore the factors that enable successful e-government adoption in Lebanon, where e-governance is still at its initial stage. Most empirical research and theories on the implementation of e-governance in developing countries remain at the macro-level and miss out on the complexities of the context of deployment and the role of the gap between the citizens and the government. The purpose of this thesis is to provide an empirical model differentiating between the electronic context and the electronic system and shed a light over a new gap, government-citizen gap, in the adoption of e-government. Design/methodology/approach: Following previous research on e-government services adoption, this study uses several technology use and acceptance models and literature to examine the elements behind the adoption and use of e-government services in Lebanon from citizen and government perspectives. The research strategy is a quantitative method approach employing questionnaire. Quantitative data will be collected from e-government users (citizens) and statistical tests will be conducted in order to examine the relation between variables. Practical implications: The findings are useful for policy-makers and decision-makers to develop a better understanding of citizens' needs. The proposed model can be used as a guideline for the implementation of e-government services in developing countries. Originality/value: This study is the only one to examine the dimensions influencing citizens’ adoption of e-government technologies in developing countries using a unified model merging context and system elements.

This thesis examines the case of civil marriage in Lebanon as an example of the contestation of sectarian identities and a political system. Sectarianism in Lebanon and in the Middle East has become not only a seemingly naturally-produced social categorisation, but also the hegemonic epistemological concept through which every social and political act is interpreted. In contrast to this, the Lebanese civil married spouses interviewed in this thesis, challenge sectarian practices and discourse. I examined the context and identities civil married spouses practice. I conclude that certain sites of resistance favour the emergence of civil marriage, where individuals perform alternative practices and political identities. Practices of resistance may cycically trigger the emergence of other pockets of resistance where contestation happens. Nonetheless, as ethnographic research shows, isolated cases of civil marriage happen in many different contexts and circumstances. This research also investigates the limits of civil marriage as acts of social change. I have identified intention and consciousness as key drive which allow political acts to become transformative of power. Indeed, spouses that exhibited high levels of political consciousness identified at the same time sectarianism as an oppressive system to which they intended to subvert with their act of civil marriage. Further, politically-conscious-civilly married spouses demonstrated intersectional subversion not only to sectarianism, but also to other oppressing systems such as patriarchy, kinship or social classes. Ultimately, they contested sectarianism in a non-excluive fashion when it came to their choice of marriage. Finally, resistance, as a reflection of power, is never pure. That is, even self-conscious and self-reflexive individuals that contest sectarianism or other systems of powers do it while embedded in the same structures of power. Confronting one form of power in one context does not mean that they will confront the same form of power in another context.