The Orient Institut Beirut is pleased to invite you to its co-convened conference entitled “Revolt in(g) collapse. Protest and everyday adjustments in contemporary Lebanon” organised by the ERC Dream, with the American University of Beirut (AUB), the Orient-Institut Beirut (OIB), Mansion and the Institut français du Proche-Orient. 
 

It will take place on Monday 20 and Tuesday 21, June in Beirut. The conference will be held in English and Arabic, and take place at the OIB and Mansion on Monday, and the AUB on Tuesday. 

Since the social movements in the fall of 2019, Lebanon has experienced many crises and is still in the process of the downfall of its economy - what scientific questions can we address about this situation? How can grounded and comprehensive social sciences unfold the many layers of events, responses, tries and shifts since then, especially at the level the personal and collective experiences, the mundane and the everyday - leaving aside (geo)political considerations and elite-centred analysis? How can academia intersect with militant and expert knowledge, and contribute to the drawing of new interpretations, comparisons and imaginings? 
 
This event articulates the presentation of new materials and fieldworks on contentious and subversive practices, revolutionary identities in Lebanon, and a critical and reflexive re-appraisal of some ideas about this crisis, without giving in to the temptation of despair and defeat: it tackles its roots and sequences, the particular role of some social very vocal categories (youth, women), the apparent silence of some others (sects), the dynamics between Beirut and other cities, or between urban and rural, among many.
 
This event is thought of also as an occasion for comparison, in time and space, one of the core aspects of the ERC Dream Project. At first sight, some of the phenomenons that have unfolded during the crisis challenge some of the most established findings in social movements theories, the study of crises, or of the politics of urban subaltern in the middle-east, and make the case of Lebanon not easily comparable to other apparently similar situations at the same period (Algeria, Sudan, but also Chile), or further upstream at a regional or national level (Arab spring, Lebanese movements of 2018 or 2005, Lebanese Civil War, etc): this makes it all the more necessary to engage in a proper comparison without succumbing to the temptation of a 'Lebanese exceptionalism'.
 
Eventually, rather than settling on a large set of questions that is still in the making, this event offers a sectional view of the current thinking on the project. Through roundtables and open discussions, it tackles the various ways of writing through and about the uprising, then and now, in and outside of academia; whether they be films, personal diaries, academic or journalistic writing, music, performances, or arts.

Please find the attached program