Made to Fall Apart an Ethnography of Old Houses and Urban Renewal in Beirut

1 MADE TO FALL APART AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF OLD HOUSES AND URBAN RENEWAL IN BEIRUT A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE FACULTY OF HUMANITIES 2016 SAMAR KANAFANI DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY, SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES 2 2 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES 5 ABSTRACT 6 DECLARATION 9 COPYRIGHT STATEMENT 9 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 12 INTRODUCTION 15 SETTING THE SCENE 18 BEIRUT: A VERY SHORT URBAN HISTORY 19 DESTRUCTION AND CONSTRUCTION 20 BEIRUT THESE DAYS 22 MY FIELDSITES AND FIELDWORK 28 CONTIGUITY WITH OTHER URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY IN BEIRUT 33 THEMES, THEORIES, AND TERMS 36 URBAN RENEWAL 36 PRACTICE, STRATEGY AND ENDURANCE 39 RUIN AS RUINATION NOT REIFICATION 43 AESTHETICS OF DECAY AND MISANTHROPY 47 INSTITUTIONALISED NEGLECT 51 CHAPTER BREAKDOWN 52 CHAPTER ONE INHERITANCE AND THE AMBIVALENCE OF KINSHIP 55 INTRODUCTION 55 SETTING THE STAGE: FRAGMENTATION AND MANIPULATION 57 POWER OF ATTORNEY 62 DEFERRING TO PATRIARCHAL POWER 72 THE AMBIVALENCE OF KINSHIP 77 CONCLUSION 84 CHAPTER TWO CLEANING REAL ESTATE AND THE HIERARCHY OF VALUE 87 INTRODUCTION 88 BINARY AND HIERARCHY 91 OLD RENT - NEW RENT 99 TENANT-OWNER STANDOFF 106 4 STREET-VIEW OF A GLOBAL HIERARCHY 113 MEET THE CLEANERS 117 CONCLUSION 124 CHAPTER THREE MAINTENANCE, DECAY AND DELIBERATE DEBRIS 127 INTRODUCTION 127 DECAY, DELIBERATENESS AND DELIBERATIONS 130 CRACKED WALLS AND COLLAPSING CEILINGS 133 TREASURE TROVE AND TOOL-SHED 140 THE MORE THINGS STAY THE SAME 148 CONCLUSION 152 CHAPTER FOUR MAGNITUDE, MATERIALITY AND THE MAGNANIMITY OF LIFE 155 INTRODUCTION 155 BUILDING FOR SELLING NOT DWELLING AND THE AESTHETICS OF THE PAST 161 STATUS AND THE NOSTALGIA FOR MAGNANIMITY OF LIFE 168 EXCEPTION AND THE NOSTALGIA FOR MAGNANIMITY OF LIFE 173 CONCLUSION 178 CHAPTER FIVE MANSION: CHRONICLES OF A BORROWED HOUSE 181 INTRODUCTION 181 ANATOMY OF A HOUSE COLLECTIVE 187 THE HOUSE WITH MANY NAMES 190 MANSION’S FORMAL AND INFORMAL STATUS 194 MANSION’S CONDITIONS OF POSSIBILITY 199 A GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT AND HOW IT ALL BEGAN 200 CHECKS, BALANCES AND BENEVOLENT SURPLUS 203 THE DEBATE ON MANSION’S ETHOS AND CONTINUITY 206 CONCLUSION 212 CONCLUSION 216 APPENDIX 1 223 APPENDIX 2 227 BIBLIOGRAPHY 229 Word count including footnotes: ~ 80900 5 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Basta's old and new buildings. 17 Figure 2: Beirut skyline, southeast to northwest. 18 Figure 3: Solidere promotional photograph of Beiruti Houses in Wadi Abu Jamil. 26 Figure 4: The Beiruti House in children's literature (Medlej & Medlej 2013). 27 Figure 5: Municipal Beirut with fieldsite neighbourhoods. 28 Figure 6: Map of apartment prices in Beirut, RAMCO 2014. 29 Figure 7: New construction beside old house in Achrafieh. 38 Figure 8: Abu Amir's building. 63 Figure 9: Rida House, Basta. 69 Figure 10: White Building, Basta. 87 Figure 11: Deliberate debris. 142 Figure 12: Billboard advertising a stalled construction site, Zoqaq el-Blat. 180 Figure 13: Mansion in the Khatib & Alami survey. 181 Figure 14: Mansion's central hall. 182 Figure 15: Billboard advertiseing furniture boutique in Qantari. 224 6 7 ABSTRACT THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY MADE TO FALL APART AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF OLD HOUSES AND URBAN RENEWAL IN BEIRUT September 2016 SAMAR KANAFANI Since post-war reconstruction, Beirut has been experiencing a building boom, which spread rapidly outward from the city’s historic and war-torn centre to the rest of the Lebanese capital. In the process, old houses and buildings have been systematically demolished to make space for large towers, excluding much of the urban population. State policies and market forces converge to make real estate a pillar of the neoliberal economy, while offering no housing, social or economic policies to redress its gentrifying effects. This thesis scopes the conditions that produce decayed residences since the mid-1990s. It asks: What have these circumstances prompted urban dwellers to do with their houses in decay? How are dwellers in different positions of entitlement to property differently enabled to respond to decay and impending renewal, in the quest for continued dwelling in the city? What sentiments and strategies emerge from this interplay? And how have social relationships and notions of dwelling, and of decay been reconfigured in the process? From fieldwork among downwardly mobile tenants and landowners, urban practitioners and a cultural collective in neighbourhoods where urban renewal is approaching, I propose, “institutionalised neglect” as a concept to capture the circumstances that expedite the decay of old houses. I argue that this neglect keeps land available for real estate profit making while making urban renewal inevitable. In chapters that deal with inheritance, eviction, material decay, nostalgia and the exceptional conditions of a commoning experiment, I reveal that dwellers’ sensibilities are oriented towards prolonged dwelling close to the city centre, whether by endurance of the neoliberal building regime or attempts to extract gains from its straining conditions. 8 9 DECLARATION No portion of the work referred to in the thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other institute of learning. COPYRIGHT STATEMENT The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules to this thesis) owns certain copyright or related rights in it (the “Copyright”) and s/he has given The University of Manchester certain rights to use such Copyright, including for administrative purposes. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts and whether in hard or electronic copy, may be made only in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) and regulations issued under it or, where appropriate, in accordance with licensing agreements which the University has from time to time. This page must form part of any such copies made. The ownership of certain Copyright, patents, designs, trade marks and other intellectual property (the “Intellectual Property”) and any reproductions of copyright works in the thesis, for example graphs and tables (“Reproductions”), which may be described in this thesis, may not be owned by the author and may be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property and Reproductions cannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions. Further information on the conditions under which disclosure, publication and commercialisation of this thesis, the Copyright and any Intellectual Property University IP Policy (see http://documents.manchester.ac.uk/display.aspx?DocID=24420), in any relevant Thesis restriction declarations deposited in the University Library, The University Library’s regulations (see http://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/about/regulations/) and in The University’s policy on Presentation of Theses. 10 11 For Nadja, Dounya and Walid 12 12 13 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I want to thank the Social Anthropology Department at the University of Manchester, for granting me a place in its doctoral program, with the generous support of the Overseas Research Scholarship Award. The intellectual life of the department has been truly inspiring and positively challenging. I am grateful for the opportunity to have had Michelle Obeid as my primary supervisor and trusted guide, and cherish these years while looking forward to more conversations. Though he joined mid-way through the process as my second supervisor, Stef Jansen’s contribution quickly became integral to the development of this research. I feel lucky to have had such careful readers, astute interlocutors and helpful critics seeing me through this hefty endeavour, always with generous encouragement. I also thank Andrew Irving for his supervision and teaching in the first phase of my studies. To my peers at the department who became dear friends, Alejandro, Antonia, Federico, Giovanni, Patricia, Ximin: thanks for being there for me at various moments along the way. In Beirut, I wish to thank the Orient Institute for granting me a doctoral fellowship (2015-16), where I completed this thesis in the company of supportive researchers and friends: Adrien, Liz, Michaela, Till and Torsten. My Writing Group sistas, Helena, Lamia, Muzna and Zina, you gave me great comments along the way, shared your PhD travails and egged me on by shining example. I’m so glad we’ll be walking together for a while still. I am also grateful to Mansion for taking me in when I needed a workspace and for being the special place with the special people who make it that way: Aysar, Ghassan, Ghassan, Mansour, Sabine, Sandra and Sari to name just a few. In addition to having a room of her own, Virginia Woolf said a (married) woman (in England, in 1925) needs a supportive husband (and no children, but lets ignore that here) in order to write. That’s true and for me that was Walid. Thank you, my love, for inspiring me to labour for what I want steadily and calmly, without pomp or fuss, as you always do, one step at a time. Thank you for being there in actions not just in words, and for carrying alone a load we should have shared during a very untimely period for you. I’m also grateful to our precious girls, Dounya and Nadja, who endured my absences over the years. You have surprised and blessed me at every turn with your patience, strength and understanding and picked up my spirits with wisdom beyond your years. Special thanks go to my parents-in-law, Hanan and Pierre, for their support and affection. I wish Pierre were still here so I could tell him in person but he remains always in my thoughts. Much gratitude goes to my parents, Mona and Nabil, for having taught me to cut my own path even if it means some sacrifices. I’m touched by their genuine interest in my research.

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