Lords of the Lebanese Marches: Violence & Narrative in an Arab Society (Society & Culture in the Modern Middle East)

Lords of the Lebanese Marches looks at relations between different forms of power, violence and hierarchy in Akkar, the northernmost province of Lebanon, during the 1970s. Often regarded as "backward" and "feudal," in reality this area was controlled mainly by groups with important roles in government and business in Beirut. Using both material collected during his stay in Akkar and a variety of historical sources, Gilsenan analyzes the practices that guaranteed the rule of the large landowners and traces shifts in the discourses of domination in the area. He also examines the importance of narratives and rhetoric in constituting social honor, collective biography and shared memory/forgetting.