Speaker: Diana Allan (Development Studies and Anthropology, McGill University)

In collaboration with the Centre for International Policy Studies and the Human Rights Research and Education Centre

Drawing on ethnographic material from the Shatila camp in Beirut and the informal gathering of Jal el Bahr in Tyre, in southern Lebanon, this talk explores the possibilities suggested by various forms of collaborative practice within these marginalized communities. As the Palestinian national movement weakens, and the refugee community becomes more fractured— spatially, socially, and politically—new forms of sociality and provisional association, mostly forged in the informal economy, are emerging in and around camps. How refugees tackle immediate material concerns, express grievances, and demand civic entitlements (even in the absence of citizenship), reveals forms of reciprocity and activism that do not fit prevailing models for Palestinian political subjectivity in this context.