(Re)constructing Armenia in Lebanon and Syria

Ethno-Cultural Diversity and the State in the Aftermath of a Refugee Crisis

Bibliographic Data

ID23541549
AuthorsNicola Migliorino
Year2022
Publication date2022-12-31
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
Venueconstructing Armenia in Lebanon and Syria (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherBerghahn Books (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1515/9780857450579
OpenAlexW4298394757
ISBN9780857450579
Open LibraryOL38657857M
LanguageEN
Citations received3

For almost nine decades, since their mass-resettlement to the Levant in the wake of the Genocide and First World War, the Armenian communities of Lebanon and Syria appear to have successfully maintained a distinct identity as an ethno-culturally diverse group, in spite of representing a small non-Arab and Christian minority within a very different, mostly Arab and Muslim environment. The author shows that, while in Lebanon the state has facilitated the development of an extensive and effective system of Armenian ethno-cultural preservation, in Syria the emergence of centralizing, authoritarian regimes in the 1950s and 1960s has severely damaged the autonomy and cultural diversity of the Armenian community. Since 1970, the coming to power of the Asad family has contributed to a partial recovery of Armenian ethno-cultural diversity, as the community seems to have developed some form of tacit arrangement with the regime. In Lebanon, on the other hand, the Armenian community suffered the consequences of the recurrent breakdown of the consociational arrangement that regulates public life. In both cases the survival of Armenian cultural distinctiveness seems to be connected, rather incidentally, with the continuing ‘search for legitimacy’ of the state.

Ancient history · Geography · History · Islamic Studies and History · Middle East Politics and Society · Turkey's Politics and Society · Feminism · Gender identity · Human reproduction · Human reproductive technology · Interpersonal relations · Political science