Lebanese sectarian identity and the Saudi-Iranian cold war.

Abstract

The contest between regional powers Saudi Arabia and Iran for greater influence in the Middle East exacerbates structural sectarianism by arraying sect-affiliated entities against one another. This study questions whether this structural sectarianization is matched at the level of identity construction. Its results suggest that the sectarianizing impacts of regional politics are concentrated within politically affiliated subsets of sects, rather than simply pitting sect against sect. This hypothesis is developed through two phases of research. The first is a discourse analysis of how politically affiliated media frame regional and domestic politics. This analysis suggests that explicitly non-sectarian discourses may nonetheless still induce a sectarianizing effect because of consistent biases in “othering.” In the second phase, interviews were conducted with members of the Shi’a and Sunni Lebanese communities to suggest how their identity constructing discourses are impacted by media framings. Politically affiliated Shi’a and Sunni were more likely to display the same bias against their opposite sect as was found in the media framings.