Imagining debt, practicing obligation [electronic resource] : family, charity, and humanitarianism in Saida, Lebanon
Keywords: Cultural and Social Anthropology.

In the 2010s, Lebanon had one of the most dramatic wealth disparities of any country in the world. And with the influx of Syrians across the border beginning in 2011, the country also had the highest per capita concentration of refugees globally. Yet in the absence of state-provided social services, charitable giving had become the domain of a host of actors, from prominent patrons to anonymous donors; from individual volunteers to family mutual aid associations (jama'iyyat/rawabit al-'aileh); and from political parties to a range of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The city of Saida, where the research for this dissertation was concentrated, is the birthplace of the late Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, and the original site of a set of philanthropic interventions that were a crucial part of his rise to power. It is also a predominately Sunni Muslim city, in which giving is often understood in religious terms. Thus, giving in Saida entails a nexus of humanitarian aid, religiously motivated giving, and political interest. Based in fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Saida, this dissertation examines changing sensibilities towards giving in the post-civil war and post-Hariri era. My fieldwork was concerned with how Sidonians (residents of Saida) come to feel obligated to each other, and which categories of people are deemed more or less worthy of aid. Rather than presupposing a particular relationship between Islamic beliefs and law, and social practice, I made this relationship a guiding question for anthropological investigation. I sought to understand the ways in which Islamic concepts are invoked, and the diverse range of practices understood by Sunni Muslims as fulfilling a religious obligation. My fieldwork also explored how ideas about Islamic giving related to transnational humanitarian discourses, and local and regional political and economic histories. I was interested in how a variety of different actors -- including family members, neighbors, wealthy donors, volunteers, and recipients -- understood obligation, worthiness, generosity, stinginess, and care. I argue that giving can be approached as a set of ongoing practices (e.g. cultivating virtues; balancing political, legal, and religious commitments; seeking out the deserving poor), rather than as a series of individual transactions (e.g. the moment of placing a coin in a beggar's hand or of distributing hot meals to the poor during Ramadan). Determinations about who is worthy of aid -- and relatedly, to whom one is obligated -- are shaped by history, politics, various Islamic ideas about giving, as well as legal and bureaucratic categories that parse, for example, Lebanese from Syrians, and Syrian refugees from Syrian migrant workers. In making sense of these diverse practices of charitable help, I identify three dominant ways of thinking about giving: 1) "The Gift, " according to which giving always entails some form of reciprocity; 2) Giving for God, with an eye toward receiving rewards in the hereafter; and 3) Virtue, whereby giving is undertaking as a pedagogical means of cultivating certain virtues, such as generosity, empathy, or good conduct. I argue that while these can be kept analytically distinct, they often co-exist in practice. The dissertation also examines the post-civil war expansion of family mutual aid associations (rawabit/jama'iyyat al-'aileh) in Saida, and shows how the bounds of kinship are drawn and redrawn, enabling even strangers to be considered kin and provided assistance. Within this context, Sidonians' ideas about to whom they are obligated are shifting. I further show how the aid provided to family members is connected at once to political interests, the cultivation of virtue, and a sense of Islamic responsibility. The dissertation also examines how Sidonians respond to the influx of Syrian refugees. I argue that there is a tension between a vision of the refugees as Muslims who are part of a global Islamic community on the one hand, and a view of the refugees as Syrians who have a long and complicated national history of entanglement with Lebanon. Finally, I analyze the ways in which some NGO workers and activists engage in ethical deliberation about how to give in a way that is appropriately non-sectarian and/or secular. In the absence of a formal state doctrine of secularity, Sidonians reflect on, and debate, what it means to practice truly secular giving. Charitable and humanitarian giving thus becomes a space for the negotiation of factors far beyond the immediate practical concern of alleviating poverty: personal virtue, religious duty, community belonging, and the politics of sectarianism.