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Patterns of Social Control at the Lebanese University

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Patterns of Social Control at the Lebanese University FOCUS 64 Introduction Much has been written about sectarianism When Crisis Promotes Proximity: and sectarian clientelism in Lebanon from Patterns of Social Control at the the viewpoint of political history (Sinno; Sharāra; Makdissi). Little has been pub- Lebanese University lished about how it works on the micro- sociological level, certainly when it comes to the country’s highly diverse education system (Nucho; Deeb and Harb). In the context of political systems such as the Lebanese, sectarianism or communal- ism (Arabic: madhhabiyya or ṭāʾifiyya) is a mode of distributing legal, political and administrative power among different reli- gious groups. Beyond this meaning, sec- tarianism is often used to mark a mentality, a pattern of loyalty which channels con- tacts and forges relationships. This con- cept of sectarianism widely overlaps with the one of clientelism. Both concepts, sec- tarianism and clientelism by themselves Jonathan Kriener have little explanatory or illustrative power in order to understand institutional rela- During the Lebanese war of 1975 to 1990, terms of the dynamics of social control tions. To look a bit deeper into the mecha- the only public university of Lebanon that resulted from it. It shows that by the nisms, by which they work, I was searching branched out into more than 40 locations perspective of social control, sectarianism for a different perspective when studying all over the country. While this deed and clientelism can be observed as the Lebanese higher education land- reflects the inner division of Lebanon, it related with, but distinct from one scape. also moved the University nearer to the another. Considering the academic benefits and country’s geographical and social periph- costs of the Lebanese University’s (LU’s) eries. Employing field research, newspa- Keywords: Higher education, Clientelism, institutional change, I got the impression per articles, and grey literature this article Lebanese University, Sectarianism, Social that, besides the scattering of material and gauges the effects of fragmentation in Control intellectual resources, the mode of social Middle East – Topics & Arguments # 13 –2019 FOCUS 65 control is an important standard by which Proximity/collective Anonymity/individual the price for the apparent gain in access and social mobility can be illustrated. Conciliatory Compensatory Penal Therapeutic Browsing sociological theoreticians for Harm Relational Material Value Personality the concept of social control, my attention Liability Shared Group Individual none was drawn to Horwitz (see table 1), who has shown that under conditions of indi- Goal Reconciliation Settlement Retribution Normality viduation and anonymity, groups tend to Solution Negotiation Payment (“deal”) Penalty Treatment rule by values, norms, and judiciary, whereas under conditions of proximity, Table 1: Major styles of social control according to Horwitz Source: Horwitz, Allan V. The Logic of Social Control. Plenum Press, 1990, p. 22. group loyalty is prior to individual legal interest, and the mechanisms of rule are at university. In other words, a student liv- leagues from other universities and from rather negotiation, settlement etc., in ing in a dorm or shared flat in the capital many cultural backgrounds for lunch or which personal social capital has more is less likely to be asked e. g. to take care after work, their daily encounters with col- impact. Hence, with Horwitz, I theorize the of her/his smaller siblings, sick relatives or leagues in al-Ḥadath nowadays are usually modus of social control as a continuum of any communal issue; she or he will restricted to colleagues from the same between proximity and anonymity. more likely spend her/his leisure time with campus and from fewer socio-cultural In the context of higher education these classroom peers talking about issues con- backgrounds (LU Political Science 1 Senior; concepts apply in that the separation of cerning their studies than a student living similar LU Political Science 2 Junior, who the individual university student from her/ at her family’s home far from the capital, taught at three different campuses). his former social context of family, kinship, where only a small section of the university Most importantly, both a professor’s as childhood and school time peers and is situated. well as a student’s academic performance neighborhood releases resources of time Of course, the change in connectivity and personality will less be looked at and energy to have contact with academic affects professors, too. A professor of LU’s through the glasses of their general per- peers in an environment – usually an urban Faculty of Law, Political and Administrative sonality and their personal history when one – where her/his formerly earned repu- Science Branch 1 complained in an inter- anonymity instead of proximity applies, tation is widely disregarded. Basically, view with me that after the relocation of and fewer people at university know them such an anonymous setting levels the the faculty branch from central Beirut to from their pre-academic and extra-aca- playing field for the students’ chances to the new built campus in Ḥadath (about ten demic contexts. build up an academic reputation through kilometers to the South of Beirut) in 2007, academic merit, independent of the social their networking patterns changed con- This article is based on data from two capital each of them had accumulated in siderably. Whereas in the Hamra district in research-projects: one being a collective their native environment before enrolling Beirut they had had contacts with col- project titled “Local, Regional and Middle East – Topics & Arguments # 13 –2019 FOCUS 66 International Borrowing and Lending in From the sources, a picture of communal- The Lebanese war of 1975 to 1990 divided Social Sciences at Egyptian and Lebanese ism as both a legal and an informal mode the country into different regions charac- Universities”, which I coordinated between of social control emerges by focusing LU terized by different religious and ethnic 2010 and 2015 as a research associate at as part of the administrative and service communities through guarded and hard- the Orient-Institut Beirut, later at the apparatus of the Lebanese Republic. The fought demarcation lines. As one of many Department of Oriental & Islamic Studies dialectic of communalism with either calamities that sprang from this, large of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum.1 A group proximity or anonymity will be illustrated. numbers of university students and staff of four researchers and four student assis- To that end, socio-geographical and across the country were not able to arrive tants, we gathered data at four universities administrative changes implemented at at their institutions for work and study any- in Egypt and two in Lebanon, consisting of LU since 1977 are highlighted in the next more. Soon, some universities responded 40 semi-structured interviews with faculty two sections. Section 4 shows a number of by opening branch campuses in regions members and a standardized survey examples of how styles of social control or neighborhoods other than their main administered to several hundred students, impact on decision making at LU in mat- campuses. LU, the largest university of the plus the universities’ bylaws and annual ters of faculty appointment and the orga- country, and its only public one, branched reports. The second project, “History nization of student activities. Section 5 out into more than 40 locations, from Writing at Lebanon’s Universities” I con- gives an outlook on the public debate Tripoli in the north to Tyre in the south and ducted as a research associate of the about the problems resulting from the the Bekaa valley in the east, based on a Orient-Institut Beirut between 2015 and situation of LU and possible policy conse- ministerial decree of 1976.2 As the earliest 2018. For it, I cross-analyzed titles and con- quences in light of the existing patterns of measure of this process, additional tent tables of doctoral theses in history social control. branches were created East of Beirut in from different branches of the Faculty of predominantly Christian areas, whereas Arts and Humanities, and newspaper arti- The Lebanese University Re-Structured before the war, most of LU had been situ- cles from leading daily newspapers of Over Time ated in West Beirut. This measure had Lebanon. The data presented here, namely The Lebanese University (LU), which was been considered already before the war five faculty interviews and a number of founded in the course of the 1950s and with the intention to de-centralize LU, but newspaper articles and reports are but a 1960s with the intention to merge and had been opposed by Muslim and leftist small part of what we collected. integrate the Lebanese communities on stakeholders (al-Amin, “Al-Jāmiʿa” 21). Additionally, I analyzed three lectures and the level of intellectual and professional While it reflects the inner division of two scholarly articles by academics, who leadership, serves a highly illustrative Lebanon, it also moved LU nearer to the had studied LU as a subject of their own example of how communalism dismem- country’s geographical and social periph- research while they belonged to its faculty bered an institution, which was intended eries and enabled a kind of socio-geo- or student cadre. to counteract it and become an integrat- graphical inclusion different from the cul- ing force for the young nation. tural-confessional inclusion initially
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