We are excited to share with you our latest publication, “I am, as you can see, the local government, the electricity company and much more”: Building committees as space of social organizing in Beirut, which reports on findings from our first project “Between the private and the public: Building Committees and Spaces of Social Organizing in Beirut”.
The report presents the results of the first phase of our collaborative ethnographic research project, which aims at documenting and analysing the crisis-ridden daily lives of residents in the city of Beirut, and how they individually and collectively negotiate, manage and resist the challenges of a city collapsing. The work was partially funded by Rosa Luxemburg-Stiftung, Beirut.
The research takes the building as the primary unit of analysis and in light of the recent (and ongoing) electricity crisis, focuses on the city’s building-level responses and the organising around it. Noting the impact that the intensification of the energy and financial crisis had on buildings in Beirut and the shared services that require electricity, we share learning on building committee membership, selection and motivation, and discuss how building committees function and negotiate fairness and justice when responding to their residents competing needs. We also explore prospects of collaborative organising and best practices that allow a move from individual or exclusionary solutions to collaborative ones.