Center for Human Rights & the Arts

FRESH OFF THE PRESS: The State of Lebanon: Popular Politics and Institution Building in the Wake of Independence (Stanford University Press) by Ziad Abu-Rish, Associate Professor of Human Rights and Middle East Studies and our director of MA in Human Rights & the Arts.

The book offers a new social and institutional history of post-colonial Lebanon by tracing shifting patterns of alliances and conflict that shaped state formation in Lebanon. Exploring labor regimes, women’s suffrage, the provision of electricity in Beirut, public education, and the armed forces—and the meetings, lectures, pamphlets, delegations, and protests they produced—Abu-Rish demonstrates how elite and popular groups shaped the landscape of state institutions. In so doing, Abu-Rish offers significant insights into politics, social life, and the state in Lebanon—grounded in the early post-independence period yet critical to how we understand Lebanon today.

The book is available from the publisher and the usual retail bookstores.