The Struggle of Past Identity in Modern Lebanon - Essay Example

Ahmad Harb ANTH 400 J. Snead 03/22/2008 The Struggle of Past Identity in Modern Lebanon Anthropology is the study of humanity. It hasits origins in natural science, the humanities and the social sciences (Eric 1994, Herbert 1998). The anthropologist Eric Wolf (1994) once described anthropology as "the most scientific of the humanities, and the most humanistic of the sciences." One of the foremost scholars to conduct comparative ethnographic-type studies in person was the medieval Persian scholar Ab Rayhn al-Brn in the 11th century, who studied and wrote about the Indian subcontinent and the peoples, customs, and religions (Ahmed 1984). He also wrote detailed comparative studies on the religions and cultures in the Middle East, Mediterranean and South Asia (Walbridge 1998, Tapper 1995). Some of the authors also argue that anthropology is a study of cultures. Indeed, on a broader scale, anthropology is defined as a holistic discipline, centered on the study of human cultures. Using methods from both the sciences and the humanities, anthropology helps us to understand the world around us. Anthropologists work in a wide variety of settings around the globe, including rain forests, high-altitude environments, rural villages, and large cities. (Headrick 2007) Anthropology studies all facets of society and culture is it tools, techniques, traditions, language, beliefs, kinships, values, social institutions, economic mechanisms, cravings for beauty and art, struggles for prestige. This includes, by way of example, but is not limited to Linguistics is the study of human languages, their synchronic structure,and their diachronic evolution, and linguists dedicate themselves to the description and documentation of live and extinct languages. Linguistic Anthropology is the study of the interrelation of language, culture, and human cognition. It describes the impact of humans on other humans. It basically studies human characteristics generated and propagated by humans themselves. Different areas of anthropology The area of anthropology is divided into three basic categories Physical Anthropology: It studies human biological evolution, contrasting our present physical form and thinking skills to ape man. Archaeology Anthropology: It focuses on the reconstruction of societies and cultures of the past, from the earliest use of stone tools to the evolution of civilizations. Cultural Anthropology: for anthropologists and other behavioral scientists, culture is the full range of learned human behavior patterns. The term was first used in this way by the pioneer English Anthropologist Edward B. Tylor in his book, Primitive Culture, published in 1871. Tylor said that culture is "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." Of course, it is not limited to men. Women possess and create it as well. Since Tylor's time, the concept of culture has become the central focus of anthropology. Culture is a powerful human tool for survival, but it is a fragile phenomenon. It is constantly changing and easily lost because it exists only in our minds. Our written languages, governments, buildings, and other man-made things are merely the products of culture. They are not culture in themselves. For this reason, archaeologists can not dig up culture directly in their excavations. The broken pots and other artifacts of ancient people that they uncover are only material remains that reflect cultural patterns--they are things that were made and used through cultural knowledge and skills. It provides in depth studies of and comparisons between living cultures and traditions. It also studies the social organization of people by studying and analyzing the language, economic and political organization, law and conflict resolution, patterns of consumption an exchange, gender relations, kinship and family structure, individuals and their relationship with the past. Different subfields under this category include psychological anthropology, folklore, anthropology of religion, ethnic studies, cultural studies, anthropology of media and cyberspace etc. For the purpose of this paper our focus would be on social and cultural anthropology wherein we will examine past relations of human by comprehending abuses of history, collective memory, invented traditions and preconceptions of the past. It basically focuses on a person's relationship with its past and the example of Lebanese people and their suffering due to their relation with the past is taken to lend more mature understanding to the subject. Lebanon's past is explored in the paper from different social, political and educational perspectives. Impact of vague history and its misuse is highlighted and influence of the past is reflected on the shaping of modern Lebanon. Literary exploration It is through the practice of cultural and social anthropology, that we may hope to reach some answers to the questions surrounding Lebanon's history. Cultural and Social Anthropology as applied to Lebanon is the study of living societies and their life-ways. It is usually based on long-term field research and intimate knowledge of communities and individuals. The major result of this work is a vastly expanded knowledge of the human condition in Lebanon.(Headrick 2007). As the anthropological study of humanity through material remains, archaeology is uniquely equipped not only to illuminate the spectacular achievements of past Lebanesesocieties, but also the more everyday-but just as fascinating-aspects of the human experience that would otherwise go unnoticed. As a subdiscipline of anthropology, archaeology is both a set of investigative methods and an ever-changing body of knowledge and theory about human socio-cultural diversity and change. Archaeologists document not only the global diversity of human cultures, but also the full scale of human history, from the emergence of homo sapiens to the present. In this sense, archaeology is matchless in its geographical breadth and chronological reach in the quest for understanding human diversity in all its expressions. Taken one step further, Biological anthropology is the study of human behavior from a bio-cultural perspective, and includesthe subdisciplines of paleoanthropology (study of hominid evolution), primatology, analyses of modern human health and disease, forensic anthropology, molecular anthropology (genetics), and bioarchaeology. One relatively new focus isin bioarchaeology: the study of archaeological human skeletons and mummies to address anthropological questions about past societies. As such, there are strong links between biological anthropology and archaeology. (Headrick 2007)In order to understand the relationship of people with their past it is important to understand some important terms and their relative correlation with subject the under analysis. For this purpose we will explore the concept of collective memory, invented traditions and abuses of history. Collective Memory Maurice Halbwachs introduced the term collective memory, which means separating the notion from the individual memory. Collective memory is constructed by the society and is often shared and passed. To give an example, memorials of nations are a representation of the collective memory, whatever a nation chooses to memorize in the form of physical monument or any incident which needs not to be memorized as forms of collective memory. It is generally sustained through a continuous production of representational forms. With the passing of time the collective memory about an incident fades away since the coming generation may not attach the same importance to that event or the other thing that can happen is the coming generation may highly get influenced. Arthur Neal says "in the telling and retelling the stories of our past, the events in question become stereotyped and selectively distorted as they become embedded in our collective memory." The importance of collective memory lies in remembering the meaning of the incident and not the details. In digital age second hand memories are generated, particular images and events are reproduced and reframed, they are also questioned and contested through new changes and reformations. We incorporate textbooks to learn history, even movies are made to make us learn about our past, but the basic concept of the original emotion is missing in different mediums that are used. Televisions and other forms of media do pass on the historic information but at the same time they fill in the details with not so necessary information, many times defocusing the history. As theoretical reproduction of an event is done the feel of the event is distorted, with dramatization it starts to loose its original meaning, the event as it unfolded would generally carry more meaning and immediacy. The people present at the time of the event and people who would have witness the live footage will always give more importance to the event. To give an example of September 11, the memory of that dramatic and one of the most important event will always remain with us but with passage of time the memory will start to fade. This incident is more significant to us than any other future generation because we have witnessed the time but it may not hold that much significance for the future generation to come ('Collective memory', 2008). Invented traditions The "invented traditions" are "a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behavior by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past." Hobsbawm writes, invented traditions "are responses to novel situations which take the form of reference to old situations, or which establish their own past by quasi-obligatory repetition." Lebanon and its past Modern Lebanon is a small country in the Middle East with about 210 kilometers from north to south and between 30 to 90 kilometers from in width. For some intellectuals, Lebanon is a country of "the Precarious Republic " ( Michael Hudson ), "The Country of the Sectarian Mosaic State ",( Albert Hourani ), "The House of many Mansions " ( Kemal Saliby ) For others, Lebanon is "The country of "Modernization without Revolution" (Elie Adib Salem), "The country of the economic miracle" (Michel Asmar) and the "The Lebanese Cenacle Club". Lebanon in the past was inhabited by seventeen sects and several ethnic groups which include the Sunnies, Shittes, Druzes, Maronites, Greek, Catholics, Latins, Protestants, Armenian orthodox, chaldeans, Syria catholics, Assyrians, Jews, Alawittes and others. But among all these communities none of the community had a supreme rule, which has made Lebanon one of the few ethno-religious minority countries. Sahibi (1988) stated "All that Lebanon needed to be a success was political accord and an even social development... However, for exactly these two reasons, it was exactly these two conditions that proved hard to reach." Some of the historians call the history of modern Lebanon as the "Eastern Question" which is a problem in the relationships between the great European states whereas some of the historians or anthropologists view the history of this region as the history of Muslim societies who had their own communal norms for which the modern Lebanon has been attacked by the foreign powers or by the local ruling groups being unfaithful to their tradition to impose an artificial order on the society. The long history of Lebanon is that of a native population which absorbed differet communities coming from different parts of the world at the same time resisted different conquerors, safeguarded it independence and perpetuated its civilization. Hourani states that "it would be better to see the history of this period as that of a complex interaction: of the will of ancient and stables societies to reconstitute themselves, preserving that they have of their own while making the necessary changes in order to survive in a modern world increasingly organized on other principles and where the centers of world power have lain for long and still lie outside of the Middle east". Civil war Source: BBC News UK The civil war that changed the present and future of Lebanon took place between 1975 to 1990 for almost 15 long years. There were different factors that contributed to the civil war, some of them were Lebanon's changing demographic trends, the Palestine refugee movement between 1948 and 1982, Strife between Christian and Muslims, and the involvement of Syria, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Lebanon even today bears deep scars from the civil war. According to the estimation done by experts around 900,000 people which represent almost one fifth population of Lebanon relocated from their home, 100000 people were actually killed and the similar numbers of people were injured during the war (Julinda 1996). Due to intensive longevity of the war, the psychological and socio-cultural impacts are propounded the memory of the people of Lebanon specially Women and Children who were completely disregarded from the beginning and end of the civil war. Apart from that there have been many changes since the mid nineteenth century, these changes are social, economic transformations, decline in feudal economy and regime, large commercialization, urbanization, growing disparities between various Lebanese communities and the emergence of a literate and mobile middle class. Social Impact Families and communities are still the strongest aspect of the society in Lebanon due to deep influence of the Arab, Muslim and Turkish culture in the country. The secratarian mind and the absolute individualism, the confessional mind shapes their thinking orders, their lives and governs their relationships. There are various ethnic communities and sects playing a key role in the social laws. For example it was suggested by some of the Lebanese leaders that civil marriages should be made compulsion but the suggestion was highly opposed and attacked. Lebanon is segmented by various communities and highly segmented on social and political lines due to influence of its past. The country is still not being able to standardize or centralize power due to various communities claiming their share. There is existence of independent jurisdiction in the field of personal status and they maintained it ever since. Women at the time of the civil war had to act as head of the family due to no men left which increased their participation in the workforce and their. The civil war also stimulated extensive literary activity, and with females turning to active writers (Julinda 1996). Lebanon today is seen as one of the most western country in the Middle East due to its connection with the west still it has not been able to learn from its mistakes during the wartime. Talking about the war is considered impolite in conversation, in universities the mention about the war goes unexamined and UN mentioned. When a talk show on the television decided to discuss the legacy of the war it was canceled at last moment on orders from above. People are shattered psychologically from the mention of the war, they are too traumatized even to think of it. The impact of the war is too far and wide that even language itself is made to altered to avoid direct interaction with the past event. Lebanese people call the civil war as "the events" if at all they have to mention it in their conversation. The country wants to demolish any connection, correlation or say their collective memory of the civil war. In Beirut, where hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested to raze and rebuild the shell-shattered downtown, there is almost no visible memorial to the war. Political influence The political life in Lebanon was termed by the eternal conflicts between the Lebanese communities or sects and ethnic groups. With that influence, religion is still an important factor in forming the political attitude of the country. Sectarianism is one of the most outstanding characteristics and it is the ill that heavily weights on the mind of the Lebanese people. The basic pattern of value allocation in Lebanon has been set by the formal and informal institutionalization of sectariaism. Salibi (1988) states the reason for the political failure is the collision of two forces in Lebanon: Arabism vs Lebanism. He further states that Lebanism was mainly lead by the Maronites and the Arabism was mainly led by the Muslims. Public Sector Public sector in Lebanon is still suffering from the negative effects of the long civil war. The majority of qualified personnel were attracted to the private sector or abroad. Militia leaders with their affiliated bureaucrats still have strong posts in the executive central administration .The public sector suffers of very low wages since 1975 and an over unqualified personnel at low-level posts. Impact on youth and students Modern schools laid the foundation of modern Lebanese society. Education in Lebanon benefited immensely from the "Laissez- Faire" philosophy which allowed every community to conduct its own schools and cultural centers. The role of these institutions had a negative influence on education in the public sector and on the Lebanese feeling of unity and patriotism. One of the severe drawbacks in the education system is the demolition of the history about the civil war which is creating negative waves in the educational circuit. The main purpose of teaching history in the classes is to educate the young children so that they shape the national identity. Controversies are often avoided in history or attempts are not made to memorize the incidents. An article in New York Times talks about the impact of prevented past on the mindset of students. The historical events in the school text books came to a halt in the early 1970s. The youth here does not have a universal version of the history or the past. Scholars in Lebanon fear that failure to provide a universal version of historical events is creating a negative impact on the students. Students or the youth are learning different version of history from their immediate families, from their surroundings and at times even political leaders are using the ignorance about past to their advantage and misguiding the youth. Students in private schools are learning different things about their history. Students are getting frustrated by the omissions with the distorted view of the past. Taha a ninth grade student at Hara International college in Beirut says "We keep asking them when we are going to learn the real history" according to Taha the history suddenly stops after 1970. Private schools, in charge of country's half million students used history textbooks of their own choice, public schools teach around two hours of history classes each week from the textbook that are around 38 years old and written probably in the 1960's or 1970's. Students in one of the textbooks learn that Ottomans were the occupiers whereas in other text book its claims the Ottomans to be the administrators. One of the textbook claims the French as the colonialists while the other book portrays them as an example to emulate. Some of the books start their history with the ancient Phoenicians, who are believed to be the original root and dawn of Christianity in the country. Some of the muslin text books pay more emphasis on the Arab history and the arrival of Muslim in the country thus overshadowing the Phoenicians (Bakri 2007). Thus different religions are coming out with their tailored version of history leaving the youth in utter vagueness. Jawad al Haj, Hara's principal says "If they would just give us a national history, this country's entire outlook would change". Mr. Haj, who says two of his students were killed while fighting Israel last summer, has banned his students from attending protests in Beirut, fearing they could be indoctrinated by various political parties. A professor of sociology at the University of Lebanon Milhem Chaoul says "Typically the victor writes the history and the problem with the civil war was that nobody won, and you still can't write its history because we are still not at peace" (Bakri 2007). Apart from that, the influence of various cultural and ethnic identities has made the Lebanese education system an open door modern policy with inclusion of science, higher technology, and best training. " Globalization challenges and human development requirements underline a need to rethink the role ,function ,and social philosophy of the Lebanese state.In today's global environment, Lebanese enterprises need a great deal of support to develop a new business culture based on information, innovation, quality management, and strong corporate governance." (Globalization: Towards a Lebanese Agenda, 2002, pp. 18 -19) The past has had deep impact on the economy, social behavior, and political representation of the country. Lebanese in general are paying the price in good and bad form because of their tormented relation with the past of civil war. However experts suggest that the risk in Lebanon's indifference to its recent history is that it may intensify the danger of repeating the past if they do not go ahead and learn the mistakes they made during the civil war which changed the course of life for the country and its people. There is importance of bad events in life because they provide us the opportunity to learn from it but if we for lay that then the occurrence of such event go in waste exposing us to more dangers in the coming future. A Current Measurement of Progress of Archaeology in Lebanon It's been almost 18 years since Lebanon's bloody civil war came to an end with the Taif Accord. In that time much of the country has been rebuilt with new roads, buildings and infrastructure emerging in all the major cities especially the capital. Yet as important as the reconstruction has been for Lebanese citizens today it has had an equally important effect for the Lebanese citizens of the past - or rather what it tells us about the people who lived in this land thousands of years ago. As buildings have been torn down and foundations dug for new edifices countless archaeological sites have been found revealing new facts and confirming already-known theories about the nation's past. In 2005 all the postwar archaeological discoveries have been collected in a new book published by the Lebanese-British Friends of the National Museum with the aid of Byblos Bank, ADIR, Assurances Banques Populaires Francaises and the Philippe Jabre Association and launched in Beirut. "Decade - A Decade of Archaeology and History in The Lebanon 1995-2005," edited by Claude Doumet Serhal, contains photographs, maps and detailed essays on numerous historical sights in the country and all the digs that have occurred since the end of the civil war. A scientific study of one of two big symbols associated with Lebanon: the purple [the ancient dye made from the shells of murex mollusks so prized in the ancient world] and the Cedar is presented. Some of those exciting discoveries were made in Lebanon's second city of Sidon. There, in a location near to the Soap Museum, an archaeological excavation has been taking place for the last five years aiming to tell the full story of this ancient Mediterranean merchant city. "Sidon was one of the most important metropolises of the Near East from the earliest of times. It is mentioned 38 times in the Old Testament and appears in Genesis as the oldest Canaanite city, 'the firstborn of Canaan,'" explains the chief archaeologist on the site. Moreover, the Old Testament, like Homer, often uses the term 'Sidonian' to refer to all Phoenicians. This usage shows that at a certain time Sidon was the most characteristic of Phoenician cities. But archaeologists never had any remains of this past to work with. Ever since Sidon was founded, it has been continuously occupied - people kept building on top of their ancestor's houses, new quarters were simply laid on the previous ones. Before the British Museum excavation had started, the history of Sidon was known only from old texts. "We now have a continuous stratigraphy [the layers of rock strata in the earth indicating age] for Sidon, from the beginning of the third millennium until the end of the second millennium around 1300-1250 B.C - the Bronze age period named as Canaanite period," says Serhal. "As for the Phoenician period (1200-333 B.C) known also as Iron Age, we have found these levels and we hope to continue to excavate them." Clearly, the mysteries of Lebanon's past are becoming uncovered. Indeed it is thanks to marvels of archaeology that we can now reconcile the past with the invented traditions and collective memories discussed above. References Abu-Nasr, Julinda. (1996) The Effects of War on Women in Lebanon In Arab Women Between Defiance and Restraint. (ed). Suha Sabbah. New York: Olive Branch Press. Headrick, Annabeth . "The Field of Anthropology." Vanderbilt University . 2007. 19 Apr 2008 . Lewis, Herbert S. (1998) The Misrepresentation of Anthropology and its Consequences American Anthropologist 100:" 716-731 Kamal Salibi (1988) A house of many mansions The history of Lebanon reconsidered, University of California press , London Wolf, Eric (1994) Perilous Ideas: Race, Culture, People. Current Anthropology 35: 1-7. p.227 Akbar S. Ahmed (1984). "Al-Beruni: The First Anthropologist", RAIN 60, p. 9-10. T. Walbridge (1998). "Explaining Away the Greek Gods in Islam", Journal of the History of Ideas 59 (3), p. 389-403. Richard Tapper (1995). "Islamic Anthropology" and the "Anthropology of Islam", Anthropological Quarterly 68 (3), Anthropological Analysis and Islamic Texts, p. 185-193. 'Collective memory' (2008) url : http://www.uic.edu/classes/comm/comm200am/teamprojects/MemoryTechnologies/Collective_Memory.htm accessed 20th March 2008 Nada Bakri ( 2007), A Nation With a Long Memory, but a Truncated History, New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/10/world/middleeast/10textbooks.html_r=1&pagewanted=2&ref=world&oref=slogin 'All things scotish : Material culture and scottish revival in North America : Invented Tradition', 2008 url : http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/history/material_culture/rmclean/html/trad.htm Republic of Lebanon, Office of the Minister of State for Administrative Reform: E-Government Strategy for Lebanon . Beirut December 2002 United Nations Development Programme: Globalization, Towards a Lebanese Agenda. National Human Report, Lebanon 2001 -2002. Beirut, Lebanon. Bibliography Gilmour, David. Lebanon: The Fractured Country. New York: St. Martins Press, 1983. Gordon, David C. Lebanon: The Fragmented Nation. London: Croom Helm, 1980 Salibi, Kamal. The Lebanese Identity Journal of contemporary history 1971: 76-86 Jstor. George Mason University Library. 02/22/2008. Read More