Abstract

Divided cities are characterised by intergroup contestation over the wider issue of state legitimacy. Violent conflict has left a legacy of segregation, weak public services and clientelistic networks. Debates and practices for conflict management in divided cities centre on accommodationist or integrationist approaches. While accommodationist methods seek to recognise and accommodate ethnosectarian divisions within public institutions, it risks intensifying ethnosectarian polarisation and empowering elites to deepen control over communities. Integrationist methods, alternatively, aim to foster shared identities and relationships between groups, but are too optimistic in assuming that divisions can be overcome through rational deliberation. As an alternative, I deploy Mouffe’s theory of agonistic conflict to show how various non-sectarian movements contest the hegemony of a sectarian system that reproduces exclusion and inequality. To this end, I use key dimensions of agonism – ‘rearticulation/disarticulation’ and ‘chains of equivalence’– to analyse different types of non-sectarian actors and successive waves of protest, known as ‘You Stink’ and the ‘Thawra’, in post-war Beirut.

摘要

分裂的城市的特点是群体间在更广泛的国家合法性问题上的争论。暴力冲突留下了种族隔离、公共服务薄弱和依附关系网络的遗留问题。分裂城市中冲突管理的辩论和实践集中在适应主义或整合主义方法上。虽然迁就主义方法寻求承认和适应公共机构内的民族教派分歧，但它可能会加剧民族教派的两极分化并赋予精英权力以加深对社区的控制。或者，整合主义方法旨在促进群体之间的共享身份和关系，但过于乐观地认为可以通过理性审议来克服分歧。作为备选，我运用墨菲的对抗性冲突理论来展示各种非宗派运动如何与再现排斥和不平等的宗派制度的霸权竞争。为此，我使用激动的关键维度——“重新表达/分离”和“等价链”——来分析不同类型的非宗派行为者和连续的抗议浪潮，被称为“You Stink”和“Thawra”，在战后的贝鲁特。