(Re)constructing Armenia in Lebanon and Syria

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

• Author(s): Nicola Migliorino,
• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Pages: 242
• ISBN_10: 1845453522
  ISBN_13: 9781845453527
  
• Language: en
• Categories: Medical / Reproductive Medicine & Technology , Political Science / General , Psychology / Interpersonal Relations , Social Science / Anthropology / General , Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural & Social , Social Science / Emigration & Immigration , Social Science / Ethnic Studies / General , Social Science / Feminism & Feminist Theory , Social Science / Gender Studies ,

Description:...

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.