Goldsmiths - University of London

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Muzna Al-Masri

Position held:
Research Student

Phone:
+44 (0)20 7919 7800

Fax:
+44 (0)20 7919 7813

Email:
anp01ma (@gold.ac.uk)

Goldsmiths, University of London
London
SE14 6NW

Supervisors: Emma Tarlo; Sophie Day

Negotiating Patron-Client Relationships in Conflict: Recreating the Sectarian Identity of Lebanon’s Football Champion Club

My research investigates how people negotiate, reproduce and subvert the construction of conflict boundaries and sectarian antagonism within the city of Beirut. I did ethnographic research with Nejmeh club, Beirut’s largest football club, which has been struggling with internal conflicts splitting it across Sunnite-Shiite lines. I explore the multiplicity of roles that fans and other intermediaries assume in negotiating the changes in the club’s sectarian identity and shaping the conflict’s fault lines, as well as continuities and disruptions that exist in the culturally ascribed power distribution system across periods of relative stability and overt violence.

Selected publications

Kraft, Martin, Muzna Al-Mazri, Heiko Wimmen, & Natascha Zupan. (2008) “Walking the Line: Strategic Approaches to Peacebuilding in Lebanon” Working Group on Development and Peace (FriEnt) http://www.frient.de/materialien/detaildoc.asp?id=985

 Al-Masri, Muzna and Salim Nasr. (2006) “Decentralization, Democratization and Local Governance in the Arab World” (in Arabic), in LCPS (Eds.) The Challenges of Decentralization and Local Governance in the Arab World. Beirut: Lebanese Center for Policy Studies.