عندما يقوم بورديو بزيارة بيروت : الطبقة و الطائفة و الانتظام السياسي

Abstract EN

This research paper examines political sectarianism in Lebanon manifesting itself in predominantly shaping and framing class political awareness.

It presents and analyses a series of data based on a field survey carried out in the capital city, Beirut.

These collected data provide an empirical entry point to support this conclusion with regard to sectarianism and its impact on class political awareness.

In this context, class is presented as class «in itself».

This paper also argues that Bourdieu’s writings provide us with concepts to better understand the relationship class and political awareness, instead of dismissing it, as normally encountered in Marxist writings, as a backward ideological superstructure.

Also, Bourdieu’s concepts steer us away from construing sectarianism as an inherent and primordial component of the Lebanese identity, which constitutes the decisive factor in understanding and analysing Lebanese society.

This paper argues against the adoption of a reductionist approach in understanding sectarianism.

At the same time, it opens up the space to properly analyse the mutual impact between the core components of Lebanese society: the economic, social (including political), cultural and symbolic capitals.

However, this does not deny the existence of a dominant capital that always seeks through the state to impose its logic on other (and continuously) competing capitals.

At a time when this research shows how sectarianism in Lebanon is a dominant political capital, it acknowledges at the same time, the impact of other capitals on sectarianism, as well as the possibility of decomposing this dominance and its acquisition by the economic capital or other forms of social/political capital