The Reconstruction of Beirut: Local Responses to Globalization

COMMUNITY RESPONSES TO post‐civil war reconstruction efforts articulate the local and the global in Beirut, Lebanon. This paper discusses the nature of, and discourse surrounding, large‐scale redevelopment of the central business district and the ways in which community groups respond to it. Despite the fact that local residents positively identify with international aspects of pre‐civil war life, they object to new forms of global investments. Constructions of local heritage produced by residents are largely responses to the exclusionary practices of the new investors. [Global‐local, urban space, post‐war reconstruction, Beirut, Lebanon]