Open AccessCritical political economy of the public infrastructure crisis in Lebanon: Interview with Karim Eid-Sabbagh
Author(s) -
Karim Eid-Sabbagh,
Ulrich Ufer
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
zeitschrift für technikfolgenabschätzung in theorie und praxis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2568-020X
pISSN - 2567-8833
DOI - 10.14512/tatup.30.3.70
Subject(s) - elite , political science , economy , government (linguistics) , politics , state (computer science) , corporate governance , financial crisis , hegemony , position (finance) , political economy , business , economics , law , finance , linguistics , philosophy , algorithm , computer science , macroeconomics
In this interview, Karim Eid-Sabbagh and Ulrich Ufer discuss how the case of the public infrastructure crisis in Lebanon highlights the importance of including analytical dimensions of critical political economy and global financial dynamics in technology assessment alongside a technology-society-governance perspective – in particular when focusing on the Global South. The Lebanese crisis has built up through long-term structural problems that include the legacies of colonialism, the country’s peripheral position in global capital relations, elite nepotism, sectarian strife, and the state’s dependency on international donor funding to build and maintain public infrastructure. These have coincided with short-term disintegration and disaster events over the past two years: mass migration, countrywide anti-government protests in fall 2019, the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020, the destruction of large parts of the country’s capital by the devastating explosion in the port of Beirut in August 2020, and the spiraling devaluation of the Lebanese currency.