Taking the case of the poor urban quarter of Bab al-Tebbaneh in northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, this paper will examine the role of social networks during the contentious episode that began in 2005 and was escalated by the Syrian uprising in 2011. The paper will show how the Future Movement, the political movement created by Rafiq Hariri in 1998 and taken over by Saad Hariri in 2005, mobilized local networks in Bab al-Tebbaneh in order to ensure electoral victory in Tripoli. Identifying the networks used by the Future Movement, the paper will examine networks autonomy vis-à-vis political elites. To what extent were Sunni anti-Syrian networks constituted top-down by the Future Movement, as a means to an end, and to what extent were these networks already relevant in 2005 as everyday networks of sociability?
These two are by no means mutually exclusive; in fact the paper will show that social networks play both roles simultaneously: symbols and networks forged during the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990) were instrumentalised by the Future movement as a means to an end. References to the past were essential to ensure the success of new campaigns and constructed ad hoc for opportunistic reasons. Yet, Bab al-Tebbaneh’s local networks maintained degree of independence and were important to shape the contentious episode after 2005. By soliciting the help of local, sectarian networks for strategic reasons, the Future Movement launched a process that it proved unable to control.
While empirical studies of social networks in the Middle East are many, focus has often been on everyday micro-resistance to encroachment (Bayat 2013, Bonnefoy and Catusse 2013, Wedeen 1999), rather than on direct protest networks. This changed after the Arab uprisings in 2011, when scholars analysed the contentious episodes that led to the fall of the Mubarak and Ben Ali regimes. Yet few, if any, have so far analysed revolutionary micro-dynamics within poor urban areas. This paper will attempt to do so, building on empirical micro-studies of Sunni networks (see for instance Haenni 2005, Johnson 1986: 83), as well as theoretical literature on urban social movements (Castells 1983:53, Denoeux 1993: 13-25). Starting from Denoeux, it will see such networks as having both a stabilizing and a destabilizing role. By showing how social movements use local networks and memory in order to mobilize the general population, the paper will shed light on the relationship between structure and agency in collective action (Fillieule 2006: 202). Moreover, it will show how even contentious episodes launched from above, that is, by political elites, maintain degrees of autonomy at the local level, and may steer larger movements in directions different from those actually planned by the political establishment.
