Ordinary Drinking? Place and Politics of Alcohol in Lebanon

Marie Bonte (1)

1 LADYSS - Laboratoire Dynamiques Sociales et Recomposition des Espaces

"Relying on a qualitative research that combines sites observations and interviews, this chapter seeks to point out the spatial, social, and symbolic dimensions of alcohol in Lebanon, a country known to be permissive but where alcohol is not visible or available uniformly. By asking where alcohol can be sold and drunk, I question the place of alcohol in Lebanon, in the twofold sense of the word. This chapter will first consider the in-between situation of such a commodity, through the dual concepts of visibility and invisibility. The issue of the regulation of drink space raised by this in-between situation will then be analysed through the role of different actors (state, private companies, nightlife employees). A last part will focus on competing drinking pattern that result from this regulation: they vary between performance and transgression." (source éditeur)

Mots clés: alcohol; Lebanon; place; (in)visibility; regulation; norms

Domaines: Géographie

Marie Bonte. Ordinary Drinking? Place and Politics of Alcohol in Lebanon. Biçer-Deveci, E., Bourmaud, P. Alcohol in the Maghreb and the Middle East since the Nineteenth Century, Palgrave Macmillan, pp.67-91, 2021, St Antony's Series, ⟨10.1007/978-3-030-84001-3_4⟩. ⟨hal-03757687⟩