CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2024
| Author | Zebdawi, Maya |
|---|---|
| Title | Capital Before Gender: German Interventionism and the Making of the Lebanese Epistemic Regime |
| Summary | This thesis examines the role of three specific German foundations (Stiftungen)—the Heinrich Böll Stiftung (HBS), the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (RLS), and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES)—in shaping Lebanon's civil society, with a focus on gender and sexuality. The study tracks the contemporary knowledge production efforts of these organizations from 2019, marked by the Palestinian refugee camp protests, the migrant domestic worker uprising, and the broader Lebanese revolt, through to the current israeli aggression on Lebanon as part of Operation Sword of Iron, passing through the Beirut port explosion, which triggered the largest surge of international aid capital to Lebanese NGOs. The timeline is delineated to argue that these Stiftungen's fluctuating engagement with gender issues is intricately linked to the political economy of Lebanon’s epistemic regime, which shifts in response to looming mass insurgencies. Using critical discourse analysis and insights from my experiences as both a translator and an activist, I explore how HBS, RLS, and FES, aligned with German political parties, have communicated and translated themes like gender equality, LGBTQ+ rights, and feminist histories in Lebanon. I also investigate the role of language in knowledge production within Lebanon’s trilingual academic environment, revealing how these linguistic choices both reflect and reinforce existing social hierarchies. This work posits that the strategic focus on gender and sexuality by these Stiftungen is a calculated response to the potential for political organization and insurgency in Lebanon, highlighting the power dynamics that underlie the country’s epistemic regime. |
| Supervisor | Timár, Eszter |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2024/zebdawi_maya.pdf |
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