Bourdieu in Beirut: Wasta, the State, and Social Reproduction in Lebanon

Martyn Egan (corresponding author) Paul Tabar European University Institute. Lebanese American University. 50014 (FI), Italy. 13-5053 Beirut, Lebanon.

(+39)347 711 6020 (+961) 70 045729 [email protected] [email protected]

Abstract

This paper uses Bourdieusian theory to analyse the relation between the Lebanese state and the reproduction of unequal power relations, in particular through the phenomenon of wasta (an Arabic word referring to the use of connections to obtain scarce goods or services). We attempt to demonstrate how social reproduction in Lebanon has come to rely on the clandestine exchange of certain symbolic and material resources, exemplified in practice by the ways in which different social agents make use of wasta. We further attempt to show how such exchange, rather than the negation of the state, is in fact intimately connected to effects produced by the state in the organisation of these resources.

We achieve this by analysing the particular configuration of resources and reproduction mechanisms produced by the Lebanese state, and demonstrating how these objective structures lead to determinate effects in the habitus of agents. These effects are expressed through variance in agents’ (social) reproduction strategies, which can be most vividly demonstrated by comparing the habitus of agents firmly embedded within the

Lebanese social space to the “destabilised” (or “tormented”) habitus of agents less adjusted to it. In this way, we demonstrate how Bourdieusian analysis can reveal the means by which even supposedly “weak” states such as

Lebanon’s may nonetheless produce strong social effects.

Keywords: Lebanon; wasta; Bourdieu; state; habitus.

1 - Introduction

Until relatively recently, few social scientists have taken the Lebanese state seriously as an independent unit of analysis, focussing instead on the nature of its consociational division of power (Leenders, 2012: 8). Yet the state is clearly of import for analysts: for what is the structure providing the spoils (monopoly positions, jobs, economic resources) over which the Lebanese elite so fiercely struggles? What gives force to the bewildering (and frequently demeaning) framework of rules and regulations which tell Lebanese how they can marry, inherit, and even make use (or not, as is more frequently the case) of their property?

And what is the mechanism (or mechanisms) which ultimately reproduce Lebanon’s particular brand of sectarianism, and with it the specific structure of inequality prevailing there?

In this paper, we argue that what is lacking in Lebanon is not so much a state, as an appropriate framework for analysing the state - that is, as a structure whose formal rules are seldom followed, and yet whose effects (in terms of the distribution of power and resources) are felt everywhere. We thus attempt to offer a theoretical tool for locating and analysing the

Lebanese state as a social object: that is, as a structure producing regulated practices in social agents, and contributing toward the reproduction of a determinate social order (and especially that social order’s particular structure of inequality). It is a tool based upon Bourdieusian theory, and as such it locates the determinants of practice not in formal rules, but in the distribution of resources and power relations within an unequal social space.

In particular, we analyse the interaction between what Bourdieu called reproduction mechanisms and reproduction strategies—respectively, the configuration of structures and practices which exist within a given social space, and which, taken together, constitute the system which tends to play the role of reproducing that space. As a particular instance of this

2 interaction in the Lebanese context, we analyse in detail the phenomenon of wasta, and especially its (variable) role in the exchange of scarce social resources, and hence— ultimately—in social reproduction.

We are particularly interested in demonstrating how the disposition toward certain wasta-like practices varies according to an agent’s habitus. This habitus, we argue, is the product of an agent’s position and trajectory within Lebanon’s particular social space—a space which is structured according to the specific nature of the resources (forms and guises of capital, in Bourdieu’s terminology) produced and regulated by the reproduction mechanisms of the state.

In this way, we provide a new way of looking at the Lebanese state: one located not so much in formal rules that are largely disregarded, or in structures and organisations which have been entirely subverted; but rather as a series of effects, which are most clearly manifested in the specific relation of agents both to each other, and to social practice. Such a model, we argue, can help explain some of the more persistent and enduring aspects of

Lebanon’s social order, despite (according to prevailing Western norms), the apparent

“weakness” of its state.

As such, the paper is structured as follows: in the next section (two) the theoretical model is introduced, including the basic conceptual tools of Bourdieusian analysis and

Bourdieu’s theory of the state. Once outlined, this model is then applied in section three to the Lebanese state, with allowances made for the specificity of Lebanon’s particular context.

In section four we then present the findings of field interviews which we conducted on the topic of wasta, in order to demonstrate the effect of the structures outlined in section three on the practices of social agents. In this section we highlight in particular variations which emerged between the practices and perceptions of various social agents, and attempt to

3 demonstrate how these correspond to effects of field produced by Lebanon’s ‘state effect’.

The paper then concludes by summarising the benefits which a Bourdieusian mode of analysis can bring to the study of states such as Lebanon’s.

2 - Theoretical Model

Conceptual Tools

We begin by briefly outlining the ‘conceptual tools’ which comprise Bourdieu’s sociological approach, and explaining how these may be used to analyse the (Lebanese) state.

There are, essentially, three master concepts in Bourdieusian theory, which form the units of analysis in the majority of research inspired by his work. These are: habitus, field and capital.

Habitus is ‘an acquired system of generative schemes objectively adjusted to the particular conditions in which it is constituted’; as such, it ‘engenders all the thoughts, all the perceptions, and all the actions consistent with those conditions, and no others’ (Bourdieu,

1977: 95). Fields, by contrast, are ‘systems of relations’ which produce a specific logic such that ‘the external determinations that bear on agents situated in a given field […] never apply to them directly’, but are rather re-structured according to that logic—Bourdieu’s preferred analogy was with a magnetic or gravitational field (Bourdieu and Wacquant,1992: 102-105).

Finally, capital is understood in an enlarged sense as any socially efficient resource (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 11), over the possession of which agents engage in struggles within the field. While somewhat of a simplification, it is perhaps easiest to think of all three concepts in terms of relations: habitus is the embodiment, in schemes of perception and dispositions, of relations which exist objectively in fields. Inequalities in these relations are expressed through the variable possession of capital, which may take different forms and guises

4 according to the type of field in which such capital is produced, and the degree of that field’s autonomy.

Following from this, Bourdieu’s major theoretical proposition (and hence the lodestone upon which his work either stands or falls) is that there is a correspondence between social structures and mental structures (Bourdieu, 1996: 7), i.e., the distribution of agents’ dispositions and perceptions—their habitus—varies according to their position within an objective social space (comprised of fields) governed by the possession of scarce, socially efficient resources (species of capital). It is this basic proposition which guides all

Bourdieusian research, and which we rely upon in our exploration of the relation between reproduction mechanisms and reproduction strategies in the Lebanese context.

Bourdieu’s Theory of the State

Having briefly outlined the key units of analysis in Bourdieusian theory, we now turn to their use in analysing (and conceptualising) the state. While always concerned with social effects relating to the state, it was only towards the end of his career that Bourdieu began specifically addressing ‘that something we call the state’ as an object of enquiry in its own right (Bourdieu 1999; 2004; 2012). For Bourdieu, ‘the state is the culmination of a process of concentration of different species of capitals’ (Bourdieu 2004: 41) - a process which, in the

Western examples he studied most deeply, occurred within the household of the dominant ruler. The process involved, essentially, the transmission from a principle of rule following the logic of social relations (‘the King’s House’), to one based upon the logic of a universal interest (‘the Reason of State’), fought out as a result of concrete struggles for power taking place within the royal household between nobles and clerks. For Bourdieu, the universal interest in a public good emerged as a ‘fictio juris’ [legal fiction] among these latter non- hereditary agents of the state, who would eventually come to monopolise the symbolic profits accruing from the monopolistic control of public goods (Bourdieu, 2004: 31-34).

As a corollary to this transformation in the logic of rule, a similar transformation occurred in the dominant form of capital, and in the reproduction mechanisms through which the elite reproduced its monopoly of such capital. Previously, state elites had dominated through their possession of institutionalised social capital (more specifically in the form of titles of nobility), a dominance reproduced through the mechanism of inheritance laws. As the logic of rule passed toward the universal interest, however, elite domination instead came to be effected through the possession of institutionalised cultural capital (more specifically in the form of academic qualification)—a dominance reproduced through the combined mechanism of the educational system (which produced and regulated such capital) and the labour market (which recognised it as a legitimate principle of distinction).1

Thus, the formation of the state in the West finds its corollary in two broad transformations in the dominant capital: first, within ‘the King’s House’ social capital came not only to be increasingly concentrated, but also increasingly institutionalised, in the form of titles of nobility which amounted to a legal claim. Second, institutionalised cultural capital eventually overcame this institutionalised social capital as the dominant capital within the

‘Reason of State’.

While its presentation here is somewhat stylised, Bourdieu’s approach to thinking about state formation is nonetheless highly useful. First, it presents state formation as a contingent, but not teleological, process (that is, some developments must follow a certain order, but there is nothing inevitable in them doing so). Second, it associates certain logics of rule with specific reproduction mechanisms and types of capital—thus giving symbolic systems a material basis. Third, by taking a relational approach to social order (i.e., as a phenomenon distributed according to the different capitals produced and circulated within a given social space), it becomes possible to imagine societies in which the field of power2 may

6 be simultaneously divided according to fractions which reproduce themselves by any or all of these means.

This last observation is important. For instance, in his brief analysis of the Soviet state, Bourdieu noted that—in the absence of any prominent role for economic capital—the dominant capital division within the field of power was between institutionalised cultural capital and a particular kind of institutionalised social capital, which he termed political capital. This situation produced an intelligentsia/nomenklatura divide, with the latter basing their power upon the transformation of positions within the party and state bureaucracy into a form of institutionalised social capital (Bourdieu, 1998: 14-18).

In the case of the Soviet Union (as also with the People’s Republic of China and, for different reasons, Lebanon) the dominance of this particular kind of capital among a certain fraction of the elite created the conditions for what has been termed an ‘economy of favours’

(Ledeneva, 1998): rather like a modern-day version of the ‘King’s House’, in social spaces where the field of power is at least partially governed by the possession of such resources, personal loyalty, friendship and kinship become the means through which inequalities in institutionalised social capital come to serve as the means for acquiring scarce resources. Blat

(in the Soviet Union), guanxi (in the P.R.C.)3 and wasta (in Lebanon) were—or are—the names given to the social practices which constitute such strategies of acquisition.

An Analytical Framework

To move from analysing processes of state formation to analysing the social effects of the state (in terms of the practices and dispositions which the state produces in social agents, and the particular forms of inequality these reproduce), it is thus necessary to develop a comparative framework for the analysis of two variables: first, the socially efficient resources

7 produced by (or within) a given state system; and second, the structures responsible for producing such resources.

Based on the processes of state formation outlined in the preceding subsection, we have seen that the relevant socially efficient resources through which a state may regulate the social order may vary along two principal axes: the guise of capital (i.e. cultural, social, economic, etc.) and the form of capital (which follows a trajectory running from embodied to objectified to institutionalised).4 Table 1 provides an illustration of the relation between these axes, and includes practical examples of each.

[Table 1 here]

It should be noted here that, according to the dominant logic governing the field of power, the precise iteration of a capital may vary. Thus, in the ‘King’s House’ (whereby, as we have noted, domination was—at least initially—reproduced through the logic of affective social relations) institutionalised social capital took the form of legal titles of nobility; by contrast, within the ‘Reason of State’ (governed, again as we have noted, according to the logic of the universal interest, or merit), institutionalised social capital more typically takes the form of positions in the labour market. Thus, when considering capitals it is important to also consider the legitimate interest upon which their utility as a socially efficient resource is based—which may typically be revealed by analysing the structures producing and regulating them.5

Regarding these structures (or mechanisms), a complete taxonomy of possible variations among them is to be found in Stratégies de Reproduction et Modes de Domination

[Reproduction Strategies and Modes of Domination] (Bourdieu, 1994, 3-12), alongside a similar taxonomy of reproduction strategies, which are the practical response—in the form of the dispositions of habitus—which agents produce in relation to such mechanisms, as they

8 struggle to defend and improve their position in social space. Figure 1 is a schematic which attempts to illustrate the relation between these two kinds of ‘structures’: the one embodied in habitus, and the other objectified (or institutionalised) in laws, rights, regulations, bureaucratic systems, etc.

[Figure 1 here]

It is important to think of these mechanisms as capable of a relatively arbitrary production of different capitals: thus, whereas one may assume that the educational system would ostensibly be the reproduction mechanism responsible for the regulation and production of institutionalised cultural capital (in the sense of academic qualifications), it may be of equal importance in producing a form of institutionalised social capital (in the sense of creating positions of permanent employment within the school system), which could even become the more significant resource, depending upon which is the more dominant capital within the field of power (as indeed has arguably become the case in the Lebanese public school system).

To summarise, in analysing the effects of the state as a social object, it is thus necessary to examine the system of reproduction mechanisms which prevails in a given case, and to determine the socially efficient resources (forms and guises of capital) through which such mechanisms reproduce the social structure. It goes without saying that such an analysis must be performed at the objective, rather than normative, level: it would be of no practical use, for instance, to study the Lebanese educational system from the assumption that it merely (or even) produces education (and thus institutionalised cultural capital) as a resource, in the same way that it would be useless to study the Lebanese armed forces and police as merely (or even) producing public order. Rather, what is necessary is an analysis based upon those resources emerging from such mechanisms which tend to function as a principle of

9 inequality, and hence as a form of power. It is over the possession of such resources that agents struggle, and to which they ultimately adjust their reproduction strategies (as we shall see in section 4 on wasta).

3 - Specifying the Lebanese State Effect

With this theoretical model in mind, we turn now to its application in the Lebanese case, and in particular to how it may be of use in deepening our understanding of the social effects of the Lebanese state. To recap, in this section we attempt to briefly outline the most relevant reproduction mechanisms in the Lebanese context, and the most dominant socially efficient resources through which they (re)produce the social order. Such an analysis is intended to prepare the way for the following section, in which we attempt to illustrate how agents adjust their reproduction strategies to such structures, and how such an adjustment produces social practice (and social reproduction) which we argue varies, in a regular way, according to the relation of agents to those mechanisms and resources. In such a way we are able to see how even the supposedly ‘weak’ state of Lebanon can produce significant effects, albeit not those aligned with the normative precepts typically associated with the bureaucratic rationalism of ‘state thought’ (Bourdieu, 1999).

Reproduction Mechanisms

As was noted in figure 1 in the previous section, Bourdieu divided reproduction mechanisms into four ‘grand orders’: inheritance laws, property rights, the labour market, and the educational system. Given that in modern state systems inheritance laws and property rights fall under a similar judicial/bureaucratic mode of regulation, for the purposes of the present analysis we will treat them simultaneously. Further, given that our object of analysis is the state—which Bourdieu, in an extension of Weber’s famous maxim, defined as holding

10 the monopoly over both legitimate physical and symbolic violence (Bourdieu, 1998: 40) --- we also briefly take into consideration the degree to which the Lebanese state is able to maintain such a monopoly of violence, in the sense of the production of both physical and symbolic order. a) Inheritance Laws and Property Rights

The first observation to be made about the Lebanese legal system is that it is constitutionally structured according to a division between religious and civil competences, the boundary between which falls (dependent upon sect) precisely over the regulation of inheritance and (real) property rights6---a legacy which dates back to the Ottoman millet system, and the subsequent manner in which it was incorporated into the French mandate.

Thus, despite article 7 of the Lebanese constitution7 (which states that ‘all Lebanese shall be equal before the law. They shall enjoy equal civil and political rights … without any distinction,’) there remains no clear legal framework through which Lebanese may access civil jurisdiction over personal status issues. In effect, article 9 of the constitution (in which

“the state in rendering homage to the God Almighty … guarantees that the personal status and religious interests of the population, to whatever religious sect they belong, shall be respected,”) has ensured the de facto precedence of communal over civic status.

The precise mechanisms through which this communal (i.e. sectarian) ascendancy is maintained speak volumes about the objective—as opposed to normative—bases of power in

Lebanon. Technically, a legal instrument exists8 by which Lebanese from any sect may lay aside communal law over personal status, and access civil jurisdiction. In practice, making use of such an instrument is not only uncertain, but—by necessitating the removal of an individual’s sect from public records—effectively leaves such individuals outside any legal framework (there is no civil code regulating marriage, for instance). Thus, recent attempts to

11 establish the right of Lebanese to civil marriage9 have been constantly exposed to bureaucratic, judicial and political fiat. The grudging acceptance of a civil marriage contract in 2013 by then Minister of the Interior Marwan Charbel demonstrates that current advances do not represent any significant victory for the principle of civil status: his approval of the marriage contract of K. Sukkarieh and N. Darwish was made only on the proviso that the couple retain their sectarian status, and follow the personal status law of their sects when it came to matters of ‘inheritance, divorce and children.’10

Moving on from personal status, the regulation of property rights hardly presents the

Lebanese civil state in a better light. State oversight of liquid assets is famously lax (the

Banking Secrecy Law of 1956 was modelled on the Swiss, hence giving rise to Lebanon’s sobriquet of ‘Switzerland of the East’). Regulation of real property, however, has produced complete disorder: Tenancy Laws of 1944 and 1974, as well as the Rental Law of 1992, have led to a dual system of ‘old’ and ‘new’ rent, in which an estimated 150,000 families in Beirut alone live in properties for which (owing to hyperinflation during the 1990s) they pay only nominal rent.11 Owners wishing to re-establish usufruct over such property must pay ‘old’ rent tenants compensation typically equivalent to more than a third of present market value

(which in some areas approaches $10,000 per square metre). Upon inheriting such ‘old’ rent properties, the state also assesses inheritance taxes on owners calculated at present market value. Meanwhile, inheritance itself is subject (for certain sects) to religious personal status law: properties continue to be divided according to the old Ottoman system of 2,400 shares

(ashum), of which each family member receives an allotted portion (Fawaz, 2009: 105).

Modifications to, or sale of, properties cannot proceed without the agreement of all inheritors which, given the large number of Lebanese missing since the civil war, can often represent an impossible hurdle. The resulting quagmire of competing claims, coupled with the weakness of Lebanon’s legal system, creates ample opportunities for corruption and graft.

The only area of Lebanon where this Gordian knot of inheritance and ownership of property has been effectively severed is Beirut Central District (BCD, also known as Solidere after the private company responsible for redeveloping it). As Leenders (2012: 58-64; 101-

116; 209-216), Baumann (2012) and Balanche (2012) have amply demonstrated however, this rationalisation of ownership (by which all physical shares in property were liquidated into ‘A’ shares in Solidere)12 has chiefly enriched a nexus of politicians and developers (a

“contractor bourgeoisie”, in Baumann’s phrase), at the expense of pre-war middle class professionals and property owners:13 a prime example of institutionalised social capital being used to acquire holdings of institutionalised economic capital, through a one-off subversion of the reproduction mechanism governing property rights (in this case a subversion which covered a geographically limited area of Beirut).14 b) The Educational System

Lebanon’s educational system is subject to the same kind of tension between civil and communal rights that obtains regarding personal status. Article 10 of the constitution states that ‘education shall be free insofar as it is not contrary to public order and morals and does not affect the dignity of any of the religions or sects. There shall be no violation of the right of religious communities to have their own schools provided they follow the general rules issued by the state regulating public instruction.’

In this spirit, the Lebanese educational system has perhaps become most notable for the extent to which the civil state has abrogated its privileges regarding the provision and regulation of public instruction (and hence—in Bourdieusian terms—its monopoly over the regulation of institutionalised cultural capital).15 For instance, 80% of Lebanese 3-4 year olds are educated in private institutions (free and fee-paying), a figure which—though falling to

60% among 10-14 year olds—remains elevated across all age groups, and only falls below

50% among 15-24 year olds (due in large part to the numerical dominance of the public

Lebanese University).16 Moreover, control over the charitable foundations which run many of

Lebanon’s private schools has long been a source of patronage among the country’s political elite, which in turn serves to reinforce and reproduce Lebanon’s sectarian system.17

Indeed, it is at the level of Lebanese higher education that the dynamics of the system as a whole are best expressed: the Lebanese University has over 70,000 students, yet these are distributed across a campus system which—dating back to the civil war—has become highly geographically fragmented according to sectarian bases,18 while academic appointments within the LU have become entirely subordinated to the logic of sectarian allotment.19 By contrast, the private university sector—despite originating in the nineteenth century through the missionary activities of Catholic and Protestant societies—is less visibly riven by

Lebanese sectarianism. What is most significant, however, about institutions such as the

American University of Beirut (AUB), the Lebanese American University (LAU), and the

Université Saint-Joseph (USJ) is that they are entirely autonomous from regulation by the domestic bureaucratic or political fields: degrees awarded by these institutions are accredited by foreign bodies (currently the US-based NEASC for the AUB and the LAU, the US-based

MSCHE for AUB, and the French-based AERES for the USJ),20 while the Lebanese state limits its role to determining the correspondence (i.e. the rate of conversion) of these degrees through its equivalence committee.

Thus, to summarise: the most elite institutions in Lebanon (and hence the most dominant producers of institutionalised cultural capital) are entirely autonomous of the Lebanese civil state, while those institutions controlled by the state are geared more to the (re)production of institutionalised social capital (in the form of teaching positions) than institutionalised cultural capital (in the form of academic qualifications).21

14 c) The Labour Market

The Lebanese labour market should not be considered as a unified system, in the sense that the allocation of positions and the general structure of the division of labour does not follow any absolute coordination. There are however several important mechanisms and structuring principles—some of which have already been referred to in passing—which will be dealt with here.

First, it should be noted that—while comparing favourably with regional standards—

Lebanon’s labour force participation rate is nonetheless low in comparison with the OECD average: indeed, at 47.2 percent, it is 12.5 points lower.22 The labour market also appears to present high barriers to entry for young people: youth unemployment has been recently estimated at 34 percent, while a large number of young and highly educated Lebanese leave

Lebanon to find work elsewhere.23

Coupled with these figures are those relating to the methods which Lebanese rely on to obtain work: only 4.3 percent of Lebanese admit to relying upon national (state) hiring offices, whereas 71.5 percent call upon relatives and friends for help in finding work (CAS,

2007: 282); among well-qualified Lebanese, this recourse to personal connections remains highly pronounced: 68.1 percent of all salaried first-time employees admitted in a recent survey to obtaining their position as a result of family or personal contacts.24

Fitting within this general structure, the sectarian spoils system (an aspect of which has been briefly related above with respect to the Lebanese University) enables Lebanon’s political elite to reinforce and reproduce their dominance through monopoly control of public appointments. Despite article 12 of the Lebanese constitution (which states that every

Lebanese has the right to hold public office, and that ‘no preference shall be made except on the basis of merit and competence, according to the conditions established by law’) all public

15 appointments are made through an unwritten system of sectarian allotment, with the quota for each sect divided out among Lebanon’s political parties.25 The precise mechanisms through which this system of allotment is effected remain—perhaps surprisingly—an under- researched area, although the abundance of veto positions within Lebanon’s consociational system makes it relatively easy for disgruntled politicians to cause problems.26 The result is a public sector (comprising 15.7 percent of the labour force, or 175,991 people) ( CAS, 2007) in which positions are traded either for support or—in some cases—simply sold to the highest bidder.27 And while this is perhaps a lower figure for state appointments28 than other heavily clientelist regimes in the region, the value of such positions is reinforced by a relatively permissive migration regime for low and semi-skilled workers (equivalent to around 36 percent of the male Lebanese labour force),29 which—we would argue—serves to depress wages in the private sector, and hence further increase the desirability of a public post. d) The Monopoly of Violence

The final mechanism relating to the Lebanese ‘state effect’ which we will consider is the monopoly of violence—not precisely a reproduction mechanism, but nonetheless significant to the study of reproduction mechanisms and the state, given that a state must be capable of credibly enforcing the symbolic and material order which it attempts to produce. Where this is not (or not entirely) the case—such as with Lebanon—we rather find instead that other groups or structures are able, at least partially, to enforce their own order.

Regarding physical violence and the Lebanese state, there are three principle dynamics to be noted: first, the incomplete monopoly—and fragmentation—of the state’s public order structures (including the armed forces, the police, and the criminal justice system);30 second, the competing capacity for violence of sectarian militias;31 and third, the “privatisation” of elements of the state’s monopoly of violence to private security groups.32

Rather than discrete, bounded trends, these dynamics should instead be considered as interrelated tendencies, and they combine with a similar inability of the state to enforce a monopoly of symbolic violence, in the sense of a spontaneous adherence to the state’s authority. Thus, the widespread prevalence of corruption and the lack of public trust in both the state and its institutions (even sometimes reaching the level of disdain), demonstrate the limited extent to which the Lebanese state is able to enforce a credible monopoly of legitimate violence at the symbolic level.33

Dominant Socially Efficient Resources

From the investigation of reproduction mechanisms carried out above, we can identify the following characteristics regarding the dominant socially efficient resources produced by the Lebanese ‘state effect’.

First (and most importantly) the dominant capital in Lebanon is institutionalised social capital. Possession of this capital determines the terms for conversion of all other capitals (chiefly economic and cultural), which are subordinated to social capital within the field of power. Unlike the former Soviet Union and the P.R.C., (in which blat and guanxi emerged), whereby positions in the party system and state bureaucracy became the objective basis for such institutionalised social capital, in Lebanon it is the sectarian system which provides the objective basis for such domination. The institutionalisation of sectarianism within the Lebanese constitution, and its continuing role as the distributional and regulatory basis (formal or informal) for the labour market, inheritance laws, and property rights—not to mention important aspects of the educational system—ensures that institutionalised cultural capital (qualifications, merit) remains completely subordinated in such roles. Further, the fundamental importance of this distributional and regulatory principle to the current dominant fraction of Lebanon’s dominant class can be demonstrated through the tenacity with which

17 that fraction continually reinforces legal sectarianism (and in particular communal personal status) as the overriding juridical identity of Lebanese citizens.

Second, the dominance of institutionalised social capital has significant implications on the capacity for the Lebanese civil state (such as it is) to enforce its monopoly of either legitimate physical or symbolic violence. On the one hand, not only are Lebanon’s armed forces and police forces subordinated internally to the logic of sectarianism, they are also unable to establish a monopoly of legitimate physical violence across Lebanese territory.

Moreover, so long as institutionalised social capital remains the dominant capital within the field of power, the normative qualities associated with equality and merit contained within the Lebanese constitution (and representative of what Bourdieu called the universal interest), will remain purely hypothetical: that is, lacking a clear objective basis in the form of a substantial fraction of the Lebanese field of power whose dominant capital is institutionalised cultural capital, and who identify an interest in the logic associated with such capital, above and beyond the competing claims of social capital, and the associated logic of sectarian allocation.

4 - Wasta and Social Reproduction

Having thus outlined the nature of the objective structures constituting the Lebanese

‘state effect’—that is, in terms of reproduction mechanisms and resources—we now turn to examine the effects of these structures at the level of social practice, and in particular in relation to the practice of wasta.

Defining Wasta

In this study we define wasta minimally as the use of connections to obtain scarce resources. However, such a (necessarily) dry, academic formulation hardly does full justice to the significance of wasta in Lebanese34 society. As Farsoun (1970) elaborates:

One needs a wastah [sic.] in order not to be cheated in the market place, in

locating and acquiring a job, in resolving conflict and legal litigation, in winning

a court decision, in speeding governmental action and in establishing and

maintaining political influence, bureaucratic procedures, in finding a bride…

(270)

As well as being widespread, wasta is also hard to pin down. Writing of blat in the

Soviet Union (which, to all intents and purposes, was functionally the same as wasta),

Ledeneva (2000) notes: ‘interestingly, every Russian knows what blat is, but finds it difficult to define’. The same may be said of wasta: attempts to define what does or does not constitute it can vary substantially. Indeed, we would go further and argue that a good deal of the social utility of wasta derives from its very ambiguity.35

Because of this, and because for the current study we are interested more in practices than representations, we have preferred a relatively broad definition of wasta which, in keeping with Bourdieusian principles, we do not treat in a substantialist or culturalist manner

(that is, as a relatively autonomous manifestation of timeless cultural norms). Rather, we consider wasta theoretically as the practice by which potential resources (specifically, institutionalised social capital) are converted into actual resources (embodied social capital or

19 economic capital) and vice versa, as agents attempt to address concrete problems relating to their reproduction strategies. For this reason, rather than speaking simply of wasta, we also include what we have termed ‘wasta-like’ practices: that is, all social practices which involve making use of connections to obtain scarce resources, and in particular where the distribution of such resources should otherwise follow the normative principles of merit or universality.

Figure 2 illustrates our theoretical definition of wasta in relation to the conceptual framework already outlined in section two.

[Figure 2 here]

To investigate Lebanese wasta further, and in particular to see whether and to what extent wasta practices vary among social agents (and hence whether such variance relates in any structured way to the Lebanese ‘state effect’ outlined in section three), we designed a structured interview questionnaire asking respondents about their reproduction strategies and attitudes to wasta. The sample (n = 14) was drawn from the Ras Beirut area, and was targeted according to pre-determined criteria separated broadly along cultural, economic and political capital dimensions.

Analysis of Findings

It is perhaps useful to begin by analysing respondents’ general attitudes towards wasta: how do they feel about it, and in what circumstances do they admit to using it? First, all respondents considered wasta to be negative in some respect, with the majority (nine) considering it corrupt, and a minority (five) prepared to distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ wasta, but nonetheless tending to view even ‘good’ wasta as the least worst option in a bad system. Typical in this respect was respondent 3, a female professor, who described wasta as a good thing despite being corrupt, as it represents ‘a necessary evil’ which ‘protects us from the government’. Similarly, respondent 4 (a retired male draftsman) argued that individuals

20 are obliged to rely upon wasta for survival: ‘it is absolutely necessary [to use wasta] to put your foot in… I think it has to do with surviving’. Respondent 8 (a retired male accountant) was also typical in describing a preference for following the legitimate route—‘I prefer to go to the state and there is no wasta,’—nonetheless, ‘sometimes they treat you unfairly, and the one with wasta is treated better.’ In such situations, ‘if I need it [wasta] I would be obliged to look for anyone who could oblige interest.’

Thus, rather than respondents differing according to their opinion of the moral quality of wasta, the most significant variation which the interviews revealed in this respect related to the degree of choice or compulsion they associated with it. Agents fell into roughly four categories: those who would under no circumstances use wasta; those who would use it by choice; and, somewhere in the middle, two categories relating to necessity: those who would use it only when needed, and those who would use it only in absolute need.

Arguably, the most interesting findings arising from analysis of the interviews related to the specific reproduction mechanisms in which agents would admit to using wasta. The interviews were coded according to whether agents admitted, denied or did not mention36 using wasta or wasta-like practices in four categories: three relating specifically to reproduction mechanisms, and one relating to the state’s monopoly of legitimate violence

(i.e. the police, armed forces, criminal justice). The reproduction mechanisms were: the educational system; the labour market; and the bureaucratic/fiscal apparatus of the state

(relating to inheritance laws and property rights). Table 2 provides the results of the coding.

[Table 2 here]

As table 2 demonstrates, there is a particularly stark difference between the labour market and the bureaucratic/fiscal fields (relating, as mentioned, to inheritance laws and property rights). Only one individual admitted to using wasta to obtain a work position;

21 among the other respondents, nine explicitly denied the use of connections to obtain work or—more generally—integration in the labour market. This was even the case when it was evident from elsewhere in the interview that family connections or friends had been determinant in securing labour market integration: respondents nonetheless explicitly denied that they had relied on any recourse except merit or, where they had tried wasta, had failed ignominiously.

The contrast with those reproduction mechanisms relating to the state is thus marked: more than half of respondents freely admitted to using wasta in relation to dealings with the state bureaucracy, with many happy to recount how they had paid bribes to secure a lower inheritance tax assessment on inherited property, or (most commonly and more mundanely) a driving licence. Among the other two categories (the educational system and public order bodies) the picture was more mixed: respondents divided roughly equally among the three potential response categories.

Thus, a preliminary analysis seems to indicate that it is among those reproduction mechanisms most closely associated with the civil state that the use of wasta is most marked

(or, at least, most readily admitted to). In other words, it is within the civil state that institutionalised social capital is most readily converted either to the favours and obligations associated with embodied social capital, or alternatively to the overt bribery associated with economic capital. Further, we may note that the educational system—despite its partial autonomy from the civil state—is nonetheless vulnerable to wasta, a finding in keeping with the observations made in section three concerning that reproduction mechanism’s subversion to Lebanon’s sectarian logic. Equally, the mechanisms responsible for enforcing public order would seem to suffer from a lack of credibility: the fragmentation of these institutions, coupled with their penetration by the logic of sectarian allocation, make them vulnerable to wasta. Finally, it is with regard to the labour market—the reproduction mechanism which

22 arguably maintains the greatest autonomy both from the state and its sectarian logic—that use of wasta is seen as least acceptable (if not necessarily least practised).

The Variable Structure of Habitus

Having provided a general picture of Lebanese wasta, it is important to demonstrate some of the variance which the structured interviews demonstrated among respondents with respect both to their use of wasta, and their perceptions of it.

First, detailed analysis of respondents’ practices and position-takings revealed subtle though important differences relating to agents’ reproduction strategies, and the role which wasta or wasta-like practices play in them. An ideal example is respondent 7, a 21 year old male student of a private Lebanese university. In the course of his interview this respondent mentioned eight instances wherein the use of connections was either admitted to or strongly implied; nonetheless, he considered wasta to be corrupt, and emphasised that both he and his family used it only for necessity:

Alright, and normally when you use wasta…is your wasta a friend, family

member [etc.]? No, it’s usually one of my parents, or one of my friends who has

his dad, or his connections, but not personally. It’s neither my dad not [sic.] my

mom personally nor my friends. They personally don’t have power in their lives.

Here, the manner of the respondent’s reply is as important as the content. First, he answers ‘no’ to an open question. He then continues this emphatic negation in order to distance himself and his family as far as possible from the concept of wasta (and the implications of unmerited power associated with it): ‘they personally don’t have power in

23 their lives.’ This assertion comes despite the respondent recounting earlier in the interview at least two instances in which his father had intervened with contacts in the police department to protect his friends.

This tension between practice and perception was apparent throughout the respondent’s interview, and indeed followed a structured nature which—in keeping with

Bourdieusian theory—we attribute to the concept of misrecognition.37 Misrecognition was least pronounced in those practices relating to the fiscal and bureaucratic functions of the state, and reproduction strategies relating to social investment (i.e. helping out friends, etc.)

In such instances the respondent was relatively unabashed in recounting the (implied) payment of bribes and use of connections.

By contrast, misrecognition grew progressively greater as practices approached the respondent’s ‘core’ reproduction strategies: specifically educational strategies and succession strategies, which related to the educational system and the labour market. In these cases, the respondent denied relying on any other principle than merit, despite—for instance—obtaining work placements among organisations with which his mother had a close relation. Indeed, respondent 7’s capital profile was strongly dominated by institutionalised cultural capital (his mother is the country director of a major international organisation, and he held the ambition of working in law); thus, we would argue that his tendency to emphasise what could be seen as the ‘legitimate’ narrative of social reproduction for such a capital structure (gaining qualifications, working hard, and obtaining a position through merit) reflects the influence of such capital upon his habitus.

As we have seen, the labour market is perhaps the only reproduction mechanism in

Lebanon not completely subverted to the logic of sectarian allotment: it thus stands to reason that it is one of the few domains in which the expression of the logic associated with the

24 universal interest (merit, qualification) maintains an objective basis, at least among certain fractions external to the sectarian allotment system. Hence, the possible influence of the respondent’s mother in integrating him in the labour market (through obtaining work placements and—in his brother’s case—a job position) was explicitly denied, whereas by contrast her role in “buying” his driving licence (i.e., within the state domain) was admitted to without any difficulty.

In this sense, respondent 7 differed in subtle yet substantial ways from two of his peers at the same university. Respondents 10 and 11 were brothers whose capital profiles were more strongly dominated by economic capital (their father is a successful businessman with an inherited business employing several hundred people). In keeping with respondent 7, the brothers were relatively open in their use of wasta-like practices for strategies of social investment (for instance, relying vicariously on a cousin’s wasta to gain admission to an exclusive nightclub roughly once a month). By contrast to respondent 7, however, respondent

11 in particular was lacking in any strong sense of misrecognition toward the educational system: he freely admitted that he had failed several grades at school, and that his father had used his contacts at the Ministry of Education to ‘look after him’ during the resits (in one case a teacher was brought in who sat the exam for him).

Further, perhaps in keeping with the particular requirements of the economic and political fields (their father was also well-connected in certain political networks), respondents 10 and 11 also demonstrated a much keener awareness of the potential for losing out in the wasta game: ‘if someone asks you for wasta, later he needs to do something for you in return. If he’s able to and he doesn’t do it, it’s as if he steps on you and keeps on walking—“who are you?” you’re alone, he doesn’t know you.’

For respondents 10 and 11, wasta is thus ‘like a sword—it can help you and damage you.’ This attitude would seem consistent with the particular exigencies of the social game which their father’s position has exposed them to. Whereas respondent 7’s core reproduction is through the accumulation and conversion of institutionalised cultural capital, assisted (at the very least) by the mother’s embodied social capital, respondents 10 and 11 operate in a field in which ‘charisma’ (the word they use to describe their father’s ability to garner respect) is more determinate. As we can see from table 1 in section two, attributes such as charisma and talent are forms of embodied capital (social or cultural), which Bourdieu has described as requiring a constant, uncertain labour to keep up; these contrast with the more permanent gains secured through the acquisition of institutionalised capitals (Bourdieu, 1990:

130). The greater sensitivity of respondents 10 and 11 to the potential inequalities that may arise from wasta is thus in keeping with the particular requirements of Lebanon’s political and economic fields.

However, while the differences in perceptions and practices revealed by close analysis of respondents 7, 10 and 11 point toward some subtleties in the possible variations of wasta usage in reproduction strategies among Lebanese, it is in comparison with agents standing at some remove to Lebanese social space that the most significant consequences of Lebanon’s

‘state effect’ can be best seen. That is, while Lebanon’s ‘state effect’ produces variance between habitus according to specific capital profiles (and the reproduction mechanisms such profiles rely upon), there is perhaps a more significant general requirement (expressed in habitus) which that ‘state effect’ produces in the form of a relatively uniform adjustment to practice visible across all social agents endogenous to that space.

Thus, analysis of respondent 1—a 32 year old female research assistant who, despite being Lebanese, had nonetheless grown up outside of Lebanon—reveals notable differences with respect to the practices and perceptions of respondents 7, 10 and 11 (not to mention

26 other respondents whose interviews have not been analysed in depth here). For instance, despite the families of both respondents 1 and 7 employing a male driver as a general factotum, respondent 1 was much more resistant to what she saw as the threat to her autonomy which this entailed—admitting she got ‘really mad’ at the driver once for taking her car to wash without her permission, and refusing his help in solving a problem with the electricity bill at her apartment. Respondent 7, by contrast, seemed to make frequent recourse to the family driver, in particular relying on him to cancel parking tickets (according to the respondent the driver’s son worked for military intelligence, although he seemed unsure— and unconcerned—by the precise modalities involved). Similarly, when taking their driving tests the two respondents differed markedly: respondent 7 did not even turn up to take his test, his mother simply settled matters on his behalf; respondent 1 by contrast said that ‘my parents ended up—interestingly behind my back because I would have refused it—to pay off the driver who’s teaching me, in order to ensure that if I make a tiny mistake they won’t have to cancel it off [and repeat the test].’

Indeed, respondent 1 seemed to consciously define herself against wasta and the tendencies associated with it, explaining that she had ‘pulled herself away’ from the use of such connections, even within her close family. She rather chose to distinguish between

‘hard’ and ‘soft’ tools, identifying her own practice with the latter, and explicitly distancing herself from the former, which she associated with ‘a very negative Lebanese overdone form’ of connections.

Beyond any other criteria, we argue here that what distinguishes respondent 1 most substantially from the other respondents discussed here is the long period of time (including her formative years) which she spent outside of Lebanon. In his later works, Bourdieu spoke of ‘destabilised’ habitus, in which ‘dispositions are out of line with the field and with the

“collective expectations” which are constitutive of its normality’ (Bourdieu, 2000: 160). We

27 would argue that the dispositions and perceptions of respondent 1 relating to wasta are in particular the result of hysteresis (i.e. inertia) between the expectations produced by the particular configuration of resources and mechanisms of the ‘state effect’ in which she was raised, and those of the Lebanese context. The phenomenon is in effect a reverse of the

‘tormented’ ethnic habitus which Tabar, Noble and Poynting (2010: 170-173) demonstrated among Lebanese migrants in Australia, and which Noble (2013: 341-343) further illustrated as manifesting itself in particular in agents’ body hexis (the bodily relation to social practice).

Thus, not only was respondent 1 more likely to consciously identify against the use of connections, she was also objectively less able to use the social connections she did have to make concrete advances in the social game. In particular, she admitted to struggling with managing reciprocity among friends (she described herself as holding back from asking favours of others, and being too quick to offer assistance herself). In contrast to respondent

7—who claimed he could call on all 8 of his close personal friends in difficulty—respondent

1, despite being active in the ‘volunteering and activism’ community, believed there was only one such person she could call upon. A similar lack of adjustment to the particularities of

Lebanese social space can also be noted in respondent 6 (a 20 year old Lebanese male student who also grew up outside Lebanon) who, for instance, made the faux pas of taking a Sunni

Muslim friend to the driving test centre in (Shia) Nabatieh which he himself had used (and in the process paid a bribe to “secure” his test). The examiner refused to give his friend the test.

5 - Conclusion

We have attempted to demonstrate in this paper that a Bourdieusian mode of analysis can bring significant insight into the study of the social effects of supposedly ‘weak’ states such as Lebanon’s. This mode of analysis is predicated upon identifying the most important

28 socially efficient resources within a given state system, and the reproduction mechanisms responsible for producing and regulating those resources. Within the Lebanese case, we attempted to show how a particular form of institutionalised social capital has become the dominant socially efficient resource, and how the majority of Lebanon’s state and non-state institutions have become subordinated to the logic of this capital, and to the principle of legal sectarianism upon which its circulation is based.

Indeed, so important has this institutionalised social capital become as a dominant resource that the Lebanese elite exert substantial efforts to close down any reform which might weaken it, in particular through defence of the system of legal sectarianism, and the primacy of sectarian (as opposed to civil) status for Lebanese. By contrast, the production and regulation of institutionalised cultural capital (i.e. through academic qualifications) is of practically no concern to the political field.

We then attempted to illustrate how this objective configuration of resources and reproduction mechanisms produced determinate effects in the practices of social agents, specifically in the sense of the (social) reproduction strategies they pursued to maintain or improve their position in Lebanese social space. We showed how wasta—the use of connections to obtain scarce resources—was the means by which agents were able to convert institutionalised social capital into concrete advances in their reproduction strategies.

Furthermore, agents were most ready to admit to using wasta in those reproduction mechanisms most closely associated with the civil state, which the majority of respondents considered as obliging them to use such practices.

We concluded by attempting to demonstrate how use of wasta and wasta-like practices—not to mention agents’ attitudes towards and perceptions of such practices—varied according to their capital structures and their relation to the reproduction mechanisms

29 outlined in section three. However, while subtle differences between cultural capital and economic/political capital were noted, the most substantial difference was between agents exogenous and endogenous to Lebanese social space. The ‘destabilised’ habitus of agents whose formative experiences have taken place outside of Lebanese social space renders them, we argue, not only different in terms of their attitudes toward and perceptions of wasta and wasta-like practices, but more importantly less able to make use of such practices in achieving concrete goals. In this way, we argue that the Lebanese ‘state effect’ can best understood in terms of the system of relatively durable relations which it embeds within the habitus of social agents, understood in the twofold sense of their relation both to each other, and to practice.

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Table 1: The Guises and Forms of Capital38

GUISE FORM

Economic Social Cultural

Labour, Time Obligations Talent EMBODIED

Money Social Goods Cultural Goods OBJECTIFIED time

Property Titles; Positions Qualifications INSTITUTIONALISED

Figure 1: Reproduction Mechanisms and Strategies (Egan, 2014: 135)

embodiment

Biological Investment Inheritance Laws

Succession Strategies Labour Market

habitus state effect Reproduction Reproduction (embodied Practice (objectified structure) Strategies Mechanisms structure)

Investment Strategies Property Rights

Educational Strategies Educational System

objectification

Figure 2: Wasta in Relation to Reproduction Mechanisms and Strategies

Reproduction Reproduction wasta Strategies Mechanisms [practice] [habitus] [resources]

Table 2: Use of Wasta by Reproduction Mechanisms

Educational Labour Market Bureaucratic/Fiscal State Monopoly System of Violence Admit 4 1 8 5

Deny 4 9 4 5

Did Not 6 4 2 4 Mention

1 This transition is referred to several times within Bourdieu’s work, see Bourdieu (1986: 255) and Bourdieu (1994: 7). 2 The field of power is understood as a ‘meta-field … not situated at the same level as other fields … since it encompasses them in part,’ in which the rate of conversion between all forms of capital is established (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 18 n.32). 3 See Yang (1994) and Kipnis (1996) for an overview of the Chinese phenomenon of guanxi. 4 The distinction between guises and forms of capitals is made clear in Bourdieu (1986: 248-250). 5 The relation between the ‘interest’ or ‘logic’ produced by a particular form of domination, and the (objective) mechanisms and resources through which such domination is effected, is a particularly complex area of Bourdieusian theory. See Egan (2014: 107-132) for a detailed discussion, as well as Bourdieu (1990: 129-130) on the two fundamental modes of domination. 6‘Matters relating to personal status [are] for Islamic religious courts’ jurisdiction, and matters relating to personal property [are] for the judicial courts’ jurisdiction’ (in reference to Beirut Court of Appeal, Tenth Division: judgement no. 235/2003), Comair-Obaid (2003). As Mallat (1997: 31) notes, for Muslims all matters pertaining to personal status (marriage, divorce, custody, inheritance and wills) are dealt with by religious tribunals; for non-Muslims (i.e. Jews and Christians), inheritance and wills fall under civil jurisdiction. 7 For an English translation of the Lebanese Constitution see Salem (1991). 8 Decree 60 L.R. of 1936 (from the French mandate period). 9 Beginning with the case of Kholoud Sukkarieh and Nidal Darwish in 2012. 10 See Rajana Hamyeh, “Lebanon: Civil Marriage Stuck in the Interior Ministry,” Al-Akhbar English, January 12th 2014 (available at http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/18204, accessed July 8, 2014.) 11 For a discussion of the ‘old’ rent and ‘new’ rent systems, see Ghazzal (2012). 12 The precise legal instrument was Law 117 of 1991, which gave the Council for Development and Reconstruction (CDR)—a body exempt from usual government oversight through the Central Inspection Board of the Civil Service—the authority to secure funding to enable a private real estate company (Solidere) to carry out reconstruction in a delimited area of downtown Beirut. As Leenders notes (2012: 105-113), the process by which prior property holdings were liquidated was not so much legal as having the appearance of legality. While ‘senior CDR personnel were drawn primarily from [Rafik] Hariri’s personal entourage and his business contacts’ (Leenders 2012: 105). 13 Leenders, Baumann and Balanche all seem to concur that the reconstruction of BCD favoured an emerging class against a declining one. Leenders (2012: 214) notes that ‘Harirism’—‘was as much directed against small ownership and middle-class capitalists as it was hostile to state institutions,’ while Baumann (2012: 128-129) talks of ‘new contractors’ such as Hariri belonging to a fraction of the ‘transnational capitalist class.’ Balanche (2012: 155-158) meanwhile makes the contrast between a global/local class division, with BCD becoming a secure zone for a global elite. The general conclusion would seem to be that the rationalisation of ownership laws resulted in the prior middle-class property owners’ position declining. 14 In Bourdieusian theory such an action would fall under the category of a reconversion strategy: a one-off transformation involving ‘the relinquishing of former resources and their recomposition on different bases’ (de Saint Martin, 2011). See also Bourdieu, Boltanski and de Saint Martin (1973). Such reconversion strategies are

typical following revolutions, wars, etc., and the timing of the BCD reconversion (following the conclusion of the Lebanese civil war) is in keeping with this interpretation. 15 See in particular Nimer (2013). 16 Figures are available in the Central Administration of Statistics (CAS) Survey on Living Standards (2007: 218). These figures also demonstrate the extent to which public schooling is correlated with poverty: rates of inscription in the private system are lowest in “the most damaged south” (including Nabatiyeh, Sour and Bint Jubayl) at 44.1%, and highest in the wealthiest municipalities of Beirut and Mount Lebanon (respectively 75.4% and 72.9%). See, p. 219. 17 Both Johnson (1986) and Baumann (2012) have noted this phenomenon, specifically with regard to the Sunni Maqasid foundation. Baumann in particular highlights the interesting case of Rafik Hariri, whose foundation initially began by handing out scholarships to study abroad on a non-sectarian basis. He eventually changed strategy to funding domestic sectarian-based schools as a better means of maintaining political support. According to Baumann ‘the confessional system had disciplined the new contractor’ (Baumann, 2012: 134). 18 As noted by Kassir (2010: 545), who argued that since the civil war the Lebanese University has been ‘deliberately sacrificed in favour of the reinvigorated forces of confessionalism and mercantilism.’ 19 See, for instance, the long impasse between October 2001 and July 2014, during which the government failed to appoint any permanent deans to the university’s faculties. In their growing absence the university council’s powers were transferred to the university president and the education ministry—crippling the institution’s independence. The deadlock was eventually resolved only through political horse-trading by the various sectarian parties. See Hassan Lakkis, “Lebanese University Bill Finally Approved”, Daily Star, July 25th 2014 (available at http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2014/Jul-25/265084-lebanese-university-bill- finally-approved.ashx, accessed March 1st 2015). 20 Information relating to accreditation can be found on the internet sites of each institution; see Egan (2014: 187-188). 21 Again, this last point is amply demonstrated by the statistics: the ratio of students to teachers in the public school system is 7:1, against 13:1 in the private sector. The latter, however, continuously outperforms the former in terms of exam performance. See Blom Investment Bank, The Lebanon Brief 868, 16. 22 This is the International Labour Organisation (ILO) modelled estimate for 2012. A comparison of ILO figures for Lebanon, Jordan, Tunisia and the OECD may be found at http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.ZS/countries/LB-JO-TN-OE?display=graph, accessed July 23, 2014. 23 See Robalino and Sayed (2010: 2) and American University of Beirut, et. al (2009: 35). 24 According to a study conducted by Kasparian at the USJ, and referenced in American University of Beirut, et. al (2009: 25). 25 This is not as straightforward a division as it might at first appear: in the recent power struggle over appointments at the Lebanese University, for instance, Walid Jumblatt (a Druze leader) took the part of the Greek Catholic community against the combined Maronite forces of Amine Gemayel and Michel Aoun, over the appointment of the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine (Lakkis, Daily Star, 2014). 26 For instance, the “mithaq al munaṣifah” [parity charter] governs the sectarian distribution of almost all bureaucratic positions; the charter was a product of the National Pact of 1943, as modified by the Taif Agreement of 1989. However, it can hardly be said that Taif provides a legal basis for such a “gentleman’s agreement”, given that the Accords enshrined a commitment to the abolition of political sectarianism, and, where they mentioned sectarianism, dealt only with the political representation awarded to Lebanon’s varying sects (i.e. not their bureaucratic representation in the public administration). 27 The sale of public appointments—for instance, places in the military academy—was mentioned by several respondents, whom we have decided not to identify further. 28 While low, we should not assume these figures to imply efficiency: the state Railway and Public Transport Authority, for instance, employs 350 people, despite the railways closing in 1976. See Rebecca Whiting, “Lebanese Railways: Searching for a Locomotive”, Al-Akhbar English, May 12th 2013 (available at http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/15778, accessed March 1st 2015) which claims 120 of these are involved in bus operations, and a further 20 in administration. The remaining 210 would thus appear to be employed ‘to guard the 60 disused stations dotted along the country’s three defunct lines, protecting them from thieves and property developers’—an activity which, given the degree of theft and development to which this property has succumbed, they would appear to have prosecuted with only limited success. 29 The figure is derived from comparing estimates provided by Chalcraft with CAS figures for the total male labour force (834,697 persons in 2007, CAS, 2007: 239, and Chalcraft (2009: 147). On the effect of low and semi-skilled migration causing a deflationary effect on wages (and assisting the capacity for capital accumulation among certain fractions), see Chalcraft (2009: 158-161; 179-183; 188-192).

30 See in particular Nashabe (2009: 5-6), who details the sectarian division of security forces in Lebanon. 31 Not only do militias compete externally with state security forces for the monopoly of violence, they have also at times internally colonised these organisations. See for instance Picard (1999: 7), and Fawaz, Harb and Gharbieh (2012). This preference for integrating competitors to the state’s monopoly of violence within state institutions continues to manifest itself, with then caretaker PM Najib Mikati proposing in 2013 that armed Sunni militants in Tripoli be integrated into the Internal Security Forces (ISF, the Lebanese police). See Mohammed Nazzal, “Lebanon: Dangerous Proposal to Integrate Gangs into Security Forces”, Al-Akhbar English, November 23rd 2013 (available at http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/17684, accessed August 1, 2014.) 32 The ‘privatisation’ of public order is most visible in BCD, but a related phenomenon can be seen in the widespread prevalence of illegal ‘valet parking’ companies, which take possession of public streets at night in busy nightlife districts. More generally, the qabadayat—or local strongman—phenomenon seems to feed into this dynamic for the supply of non-state violence (Fawaz, Harb and Gharbieh, 2012). See Kassir (2010: 233- 234) and Johnson (1986: 82-96), for a discussion of the qabaday. 33 See for instance the recent Dekkenet el Balad [national store] campaign produced by the NGO Sakker el Dekkeneh [Close the Shop]. The campaign featured a mock store in which customers could buy ID cards, exam papers, degree certificates—in short, any official document produced by the state. See Maya Gebeily “Dekkenet al-Balad open in Gemmayze”, May 15th 2014, Now Media (available at https://now.nmedia.me/lb/en/reportsfeatures/547427-dekkenet-al-balad-opens-in-gemmayze, accessed March 1st, 2015).(Leenders, 2012) is the definitive academic study of Lebanon’s system of bureaucratic corruption. 34 Wasta is also present (in the sense both of the term and the practices associated with it) in other Levantine and Arab societies (see, for instance, Cunningham and Sarayrah (1993), which deals with Jordan, and more recent articles such as Barnett, Yandle Naufal (2013), which deals primarily with the Gulf states. However, we would concur with the general precaution of Leca and Schemeil (1983) against treating superficially similar terms and practices as resulting from the same phenomena. For this reason, none of the claims we make in this paper concerning Lebanese wasta should be considered as automatically holding true for wasta in other contexts. 35 In Bourdieusian terms, such ambiguity can be partially understood in relational terms: perceptions of wasta function as a ‘prise de position’ [position-taking], which varies according to an agent’s position in social space (see Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992: 105) and, more generally, Bourdieu (1989)). Accounting for such variance in a consistent manner, however, is a theoretically tortuous process, which for the goals of the present study would render only a minor gain in understanding. 36 We consider the category ‘did not mention’ as potentially significant in its own right, as respondents were prompted extensively in each category. 37 Misrecognition is a complex, second-order construct within Bourdieusian theory. In brief, a relation or practice is misrecognised when an agent denies (in good faith) the objective inequality upon which it is based, and instead recognises it according to a differing (symbolic) logic. ‘I call misrecognition the fact of recognising violence when it is wielded precisely inasmuch as one does not perceive it as such.’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 167-168.) 38 Taken from Egan (2014: 117).