Garbage Infrastructure, Sanitation, and New Meanings of Citizenship in Lebanon

Abstract:In 2015, protestors south of Beirut, Lebanon, blocked the road to the landfill in Naimeh, an improperly prepared and overflowing dumpsite that serves as a collection point for Beirut's garbage. As piles of garbage grew on Beirut's streets, so did a massive protest that was not defined or organized by either of the major political factions or any of the sectarian political parties in Lebanon. Why were the 2015 protests not organized along the dominant sectarian political lines? This article analyzes the protests and their aftermath to understand how a relation to shared infrastructures plays a role in the emergent forms of citizenship brought about in the protest movement.