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5 Contesting the Legitimacy of Urban Restructuring and Highways in Beirut’s Irregular Settlements Agnès Deboulet and Mona Fawaz The struggle between the state and particular social groups seeking recognition or independence is generally depicted in the context of direct and sometimes violent conflicts such as guerrilla warfare, terrorist attacks, or the coercive state occupation of strategic spatial locations. However, open conflicts are only a part of how politics of identity are manifested, and it is possible to investigate how these politics penetrate the context of everyday urban life, such as in processes of spatial or service acquisition. There, struggles are sometimes conducted in open confrontations that translate well defined and pre-­ established group strategies (Tarrow 1998; Touraine 1973), and are, at other times, fought indirectly through silent ruse and subterfuge, within quotidian practices of everyday life (Scott 1985; de Certeau 1990) or what Bayat (1997) called (in the case of Tehran) the “silent encroachment of the poor.” Struggles between nation states and contestant communities are also conducted in the course of everyday urban governance, notably during the planning and execution of urban development projects. These projects are indeed often the physical embodiment of the visions that dominant groups seek to perpetuate about what the city should look like, who should be included among its dwellers, and who should be entitled to participate in its making ­ (Holston 1999; Yiftachel 1998). Over the past decades, these dominant groups have been comforted in their positions by international practices that exacerbate exclusive urban policies (Onçu and Weyland 1997). Conversely, such urban development projects also create opportunities for dwellers to contest these dominant visions and carve out their own space in the city. Thus, they could be interpreted and explored as new modes of regulation or elementary forms of socialization (Simmel 1950), rather than simple manifestations of crisis. In this paper, we investigate how local, national, and international claims over space are formulated in the context of urban development projects. We look at 118 Agnès Deboulet and Mona Fawaz how institutional actors, political parties, and various social groups read and position themselves vis-­ à-­ vis the execution of highway segments through dense urban neighborhoods, and how they attempt to impose their view or negotiate their place in a context where individuals are often subsumed to communal, religious , and sectarian identities. In addition, we explore how political parties and central state agencies and actors oppose and redefine urban legitimacies through planning interventions. Two main directions guide our inquiry. The first seeks to investigate how identities and political expressions are rearticulated in the course of a major global/­ local event such as the politics of reconstruction and highways, looking particularly at emerging forms of hegemony and contradictions between identity, territory, and financial interests, while exploring the complex interplay between local actors, such as sectarian political parties and low-­ income urban dwellers, in preserving autonomy and control in the midst of theses changes. The second looks at how the displacements triggered by these projects are translated into major risks that threaten city dwellers with severe concerns (Cernea 1998; Navez-­ Bouchanine 2004). With this strategy, we will bridge some of the gaps between two approaches to investigating the social impacts of highway developments. The first stems out of traditional political-­ economy approaches that (at least since the 1970s) acknowledge that decisions about highway locations are made in the political arena, based on the organizational capabilities of public and governmental groups who negotiate the additional value of transport service provided by the road in relation to other externalities, such as the environmental effects of the highway, whether­ local or regional (Wheeler 1976). In these investigations, the resistance launched against highways in developed countries is depicted as the reflection of con­ flict­ ing political agendas and value systems (Logan and Molotch 1987; Wheeler 1976); differing class practices and interests (highways going through low-income neighborhoods); conflicting local community and government visions of the city­ (McCreery 2000); or competing private benefits between, for example, different transport sectors (such as the Roads Union in France, see Dunn 1995). The second approach stems out of socioanthropological views of identity and cultural re­ defi­ ni­ tions (Abrams and Waldren 1998) that see in development projects a moment of important destabilization of the community and a reformulation of communal identities (Gans 1962). Building on the contributions of these two approaches, we also pay special attention to the capabilities of “ordinary” city dwellers (Giddens 1987) or their competences (Berry-­ Chikhaoui and A. Deboulet 2001...

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