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A Crowd Psychology of Healthcare in Northern Lebanon
Abstract
During my research in Akkar, a governorate in northern Lebanon (2011-presently), I have been observing how local citizens and refugees from Syria navigate access to healthcare in hospitals, dispensaries, and other health facilities. Most residents seek to access healthcare facilities funded by governments that are generally viewed as supporters of their own national, political, and/or religious group. Indeed, in Lebanon, state-led forms of healthcare are barely provided. In this context, identity has become a key tool for patients to access healthcare, while, for providers, it remains a key instrument to create political constituencies (e.g., Jawad 2009; Cammett and Issar, 2010; Cammett 2011). Across Akkar's hamlets, I found that the access of many local and refugee residents to healthcare was not merely marked by ethnic and/or religious identity and group belonging – which, generally, is a primary interpretative tool for understanding societal and political dynamics in the so-called global South. Instead, I observed that people’s attempts at accessing healthcare were also influenced by what other ingroup or outgroup members practically do or believe, pointing to the importance of crowd behaviour. By this token, I am presently navigating the crowd psychology of local and refugee residents who either try to access or avoid the health facilities opened by Turkish governmental agencies (e.g., TIKA). Since the beginning of the Syrian flight in Spring 2011, the number of such facilities has increased in northern Lebanon, especially in villages that are known to be inhabited by Turkmans with Lebanese or Syrian nationality, such as Kuweishra. At present, I am conducting ethnographic observation and in-depth interviews with refugees and Lebanese residents in the villages where Turkish-funded facilities are located. This paper will also build on my past reflections on the impact of humanitarian aid provision on social membership and group-making in Lebanese society, which counts large numbers of refugee groups and local residents previously displaced by wars. Drawing on the anthropology of healthcare as well as crowd psychology, the primary aim of this research is understanding the behavioural politics of local and refugee access to healthcare and, more specifically, the ways in which a psychology of crowds can further inform, complement, or challenge the broader field of identity politics.
Discipline
Psychology
Geographic Area
Lebanon
Sub Area
None