A Landscape of War: Ecologies of Resistance and Survival in South Lebanon

This is a hybrid event. Attendees may watch remotely via Zoom, or attend in-person at the Elliott School of International Affairs, 1957 E St NW, Room 505, Washington, D.C. 20052.

What worlds take root in war? In this book, anthropologist Munira Khayyat describes life along the southern border of Lebanon, where resistant ecologies thrive amid a terrain of perennial war. A Landscape of War takes us to frontline villages where armed invasions, indiscriminate bombings, and scattered land mines have become the environment where everyday life is waged. This book dwells with multispecies partnerships such as tobacco farming and goatherding that carry life through seasons of destruction. Neither green-tinged utopia nor total devastation, these ecologies make life possible in an insistently deadly region. Sourcing an anthropology of war from where it is lived, this book decolonizes distant theories of war and brings to light creative practices forged in the midst of ongoing devastation. In lyrical prose that resonates with imperiled conditions across the Global South, Khayyat paints a portrait of war as a place where life must go on.

Munira Khayyat is Assistant Professor of Sociology, Egyptology and Anthropology at The American University in Cairo

Diana Pardo Pedraza is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at The George Washington University