Lebanese Global Villages: Practices of reproduction and constitution of global communities

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Anton Escher
• Subject Area: Human Geography
• Term: from 2013 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 242406455

Global diaspora communities with roots in villages in Lebanon have developed over the course of the past century and spread all over the world. At the same time, there is a permanent worldwide mobility occurring and intensive integration of communication developing among the individuals of the communities in different parts of the world. New media and digital platforms make the communities dynamic, since audio and video communication is now available virtually at any time. This virtual duplication of the community in the internet opens up additional opportunities for conjoining activities and joint actions. It is presumed that the new information and communication technologies (ICTs) strengthen the social consolidation of communities that transcend national boundaries. The existing patterns of social order within the communities gain additional importance. From the viewpoint of the diaspora community, the present political and social reorientation primarily involves a redistribution of power, in which they want to participate. A purpose of the project is to develop a new theoretical framework reconsidering conventional categories such as ethnicity, community and the nation state. The members of the project develop a new empirical approach to include the interplay between ICTs and social change. Finally the results of the projects exhibit possibilities of social and political participation of members of global communities in the societies in which they are living. To encounter these aims the scientists use the villages Aitou, Hadchit and Ehden in Lebanon as start points for their fieldwork. From these villages they expand their empirical studies to Germany, Australia and the USA. The scientists define Diasporas as fragmented social orders. To put this concept in a modern context, they refine the concept of Gemeinschaft by TÖNNIES (1887) and connect it with the theory of social practices of SCHATZKI (2002). The developed theory emphasizes the heterogeneity, and emotional moment of social life. The members of the global villages establish and reproduce these affective relations by collective social practices, such as traditional dances and ceremonies, and day-to-day practices as phone calls. The project suggests the new theoretical framework of the global village as a valuable concept to do research on the process of community-building in the modern globalized world.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants