Village-ness, discrimination, and urban modernity: Thinking alongside ‘village people’ in Lebanon

Abstract

Based on qualitative phenomenological research alongside village dwellers in Lebanon, this article identifies village-ness – an experience of being labelled as ‘non-urban’ with an upbringing and habitus considered to be ‘of the village’ – as difference and lack. I accordingly argue for the recognition of a hierarchization between those considered ‘city people’ and ‘village people’ in mainstream Lebanese imaginary that establishes experiences of discrimination, prejudice, and assault. Developing this, the article explores participants’ understandings of transformation improving these conditions. (Western-style) education, (capitalist) employment, (modern) technology, and a deepened connectivity to the city emerge as key variables in this respect. This change, my analysis shows, is conceptualised as ‘becoming urban’ understood as ‘becoming modern’, where Modernity is specifically framed as a Western-centric formation with discourses of ‘civility’, linear time, ‘development’, and ‘progress’ dominant. Accordingly, the article posits that the construction, inferiorisation, and assault of village-ness is a key site of the establishment and (re)production of a Eurocentric ‘urban modernity’ at the level of everyday lived experiences. Recognising that this phenomenon extends far beyond Lebanon, I posit the need to seriously bring the ‘urban question’ into anti/post/decolonial thought.