POROUS BARRIERS: HYDRO-POLITICS AND THE ROLE OF EXPERTISE IN THE STRUGGLE AGAINST DAM PROJECTS IN LEBANON

Abstract

Dams are considered to be temples of modernity. During the past century, dams projects were spreading through the whole world accompanied by the development policies adopted worldwide. Under the current circumstances of climate change, many have argued that dams are a solution to continue supplying water in the dry years. Lebanon following the development trend in the 1950s, adopted many dams projects. However, because of the changing sociopolitical circumstances and the civil war, these projects were put on hold until 2010 when the dams projects were resurrected by Gebran Bassil. These policies are not neutral or technical solutions only. They are the result of knowledge production and molding a certain kind of expertise knowledge for political benefits. In this thesis, I will be exploring dam discourses in Lebanon and the counter-knowledge and expertise put forward by engineers, geologists, and other experts. The activists are using their knowledge to produce an opposing knowledge to the hegemonic knowledge that is empowered by the political ruling elites’ plans of development. I investigate how, where, and in what circumstances this counter-expertise knowledge is produced. I talk about an alternative reality imagined by the expert activists to supply water for the people without relocating the current inhabitants of the area. The thesis builds and unpacks the different epistemologies that experts have and to understand how they are situated politically and socially. It also borrows Bourdieu’s forms of capital to analyze how they are keys to gates that only people with specific forms of capital can enter. Finally, in thinking through knowledge and questions of epistemology, I engage in reflexive thinking about what it means to do ethnography during the Covid-19 pandemic. Crucially, my ethnographic research took place during the lockdown. I therefore had to be experimental with my methodology as many restrictions were put in action. I mainly relied on interviews, and para-ethnographic methods (Holmes and Marcus, 2005) where I treated my interlocuters as counterparts in the research and utilized their memories, experiences, and anecdotes as my ethnographic basis. I also had a virtual hike that was full of visuals to make it appear as realistic as the guide could make it real.