Contesting property: urban commons, statecraft, and the ‘tyranny’ of liberalism in Lebanon

Abstract

AbstractAs heterogeneous forms of commodification threaten the survival of urban commons worldwide, in Beirut a group of residents and professionals has resorted to civic advocacy to keep the beach of Dalieh of Raouche accessible, including calling on public authorities to intervene. Combining Polanyian analysis and recent developments in the anthropology of the state, civic advocacy is recast here as a case of ‘grassroots’ statecraft, adapted to, as well as shaped by, the logics and discourses of late capitalism that it seeks to undo. As such, counter‐movements are reconceptualized as not only defensive, but also offensive and explicitly generative of new political projects and modes of governance. At the same time, the article pushes the argument further to suggest that ‘grassroots’ statecraft in the context of the protection of the commons is inherently multivocal, and that calls for, and rejection of, state intervention may be contained at once within this counter‐movement, forced to coexist by the constraints imposed by the neoliberal political‐economic system it confronts.