War and the City: Urban Geopolitics in Lebanon - Paperback

by Sara Fregonese (Author)

War and the City examines the geopolitical significance of the Lebanese Civil War through a micro-level exploration of how the urban landscape of Beirut was transformed by the conflict. Focusing on the initial phase of the war in 1975 and 1976, the volume also draws significant parallels with more recent occurrences of internecine conflict and with the historical legacies of Lebanon's colonial past.

While most scholarship has thus far focused on post-war reconstruction of the city, the initial process of destruction has been neglected. This volume thus moves away from formal macro-level geopolitical analysis, to propose instead an exploration of the urban nature of conflict through its spaces, infrastructures, bodies and materialities. The book utilizes urban viewpoints in order to highlight the nature of sovereignty in Lebanon and how it is inscribed on the urban landscape. War and the City presents a view of geopolitics as not only shaping narratives of international relations, but as crucially reshaping the space of cities.

Author Biography

Sara Fregonese is Lecturer in Political Geography at the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Birmingham, and an affiliate of the Institute for Conflict, Cooperation and Security (ICCS) at the University of Birmingham. Between 2009 and 2012, she was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow. She holds a PhD in Geography (Newcastle University, UK), an MA in Mediterranean Cooperation (Ca' Foscari, University of Venice) and a BA in Middle Eastern studies (Ca' Foscari, University of Venice).