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gustavo barbosa signature
  • HOME
  • RESUME
  • PUBLICATIONS
    • BOOKS
      • THE BEST OF HARD TIMES
      • REVISITING GENDER IN THE MIDDLE EAST
    • BOOK CHAPTERS
    • JOURNAL ARTICLES
  • INTERVIEWS
  • REVIEWS
  • CONFERENCES & LECTURES
  • AWARDS
  • CONTACT

Gender Troubles in Shatila Lebanon: Bodies that Matter (the Fidāʾiyyīn’s Heroism) And Undoing Gender (the Shabāb’s Burden)

March 9, 2022
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Gender Troubles in Shatila Lebanon

Interview with Refugee Outreach and Refugees Network, on 7 March 2022.

“This essay presents one of the arguments developed by the author in his book The Best of Hard Times: Palestinian Refugee Masculinities in Lebanon (Barbosa, 2022).”

In this short essay, I argue for the full historicity and pliability of masculinity, which changes from place to place and time to time. Based on fieldwork conducted in Shatila, a Palestinian refugee camp in the southern outskirts of Beirut, where I lived for one year and conducted research for two, I demonstrate that the shabāb, the lads from the camp, faced with unemployment and the de-mobilization of the Palestinian Resistance movement, in its military form, cannot replicate the heroic persona of their forebears, the fidāʾiyyīn, who exude virility when narrating their deeds. As may be implied from this already, based on shabāb’s biographies, I problematize what Marcia Inhorn (2012) has ironically labelled “hegemonic masculinity, Middle Eastern style.”

I develop my argument in three moves. First, I provide the reader with historic scaffolding, so that s/he can understand not only why masculinity has changed from one generation to the next, but also why gender, as a concept imbued with notions of power, works well to describe the fidāʾiyyīn’s lives, but not the shabāb’s. Second, I provide some ethnographic evidence to this argument. I finish by addressing some of the theoretical implications of my reasoning.

For the historic scaffolding, I quote from what I consider as the best documentary about Shatila, the movie Roundabout Shatila (2005), by Maher Abi Samra. Even though a bit dated, the quote, illustrated by the film frame below, shows how Shatila is placed at the centre of various circles of causation, all highly complex. That means, in practice, that Shatilans today, including the shabāb, have very little control of what at the end comes to determine their lives.

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Dr. Gustavo Barbosa
I’m a Brazilian anthropologist and journalist, with MScs in Anthropology from Museu Nacional/Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro and The London School of Economics and Political Science, and a PhD, also in Anthropology, from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Currently, I’m an Associate Researcher at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Universidade Federal Fluminense (NEOM/UFF), in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
info@gustavo-barbosa.com
Recent Publications
  • The Best of Hard Times gustavo barbosa
    March 30, 2023
    أفضل الأيام الصعبة: ذكورية اللاجئين الفلسطينيين في لبنان
  • the best of hard time book cover gustavo barbosa
    March 1, 2023
    The Best of Hard Times: Palestinian Refugee Masculinities in Lebanon.
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the best of hard time book cover gustavo barbosa

The Best of Hard Times: Palestinian Refugee Masculinities in Lebanon (Gender, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East) Paperback

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Gender Troubles in Shatila Lebanon: Bodies that Matter (the Fidāʾiyyīn’s Heroism) And Undoing Gender (the Shabāb’s Burden) - Dr. Gustavo Barbosa