In Lebanon, civil marriage has become a major key-site for the struggle between supposedly opposite visions of the political and social system: sectarianism and secularism. Along with the implementation of a civil personal status code, it has been at the core of different civil society initiatives in recent years. As a political matter, the advocacy for the legalization of civil marriage has been analyzed through the works of activists aiming to impose a culture of secularism (Abillama , 2018; Mikdashi, 2014). Though they share a common aim, namely the end of the confessional system as prescribed in the post-Taëf Lebanese constitution, activists for a civil marriage do not agree on the same strategies to pursue it. Thus, another way to look at their battle consists in examining the transformation of their agendas since the end of the civil war and to analyze how it shaped new paradigms and practices of citizenship, as well as contending visions of sectarianism, secularism and the state. In particular, by focusing on these transformations, I argue that the appropriation of public spaces by activists can be conceptualized as an emotional politics (Ahmed 2004) which paradoxically run parallel to the privatization of the battle and the assignment of a liberal paradigm to it, that of contract-making based on the individual will. At the same time, civil marriage is a social and commercial phenomenon and little attention has been given to the formation of a civil marriage industry and people’s experiences, especially when it comes to organize and celebrate it overseas. Drawing on an ethnographic material I collected between 2015 and 2019 in Lebanon and in the Republic of Cyprus among activists, law professionals, civil servants and couples, I will combine these two approaches to civil marriage to analyze the social and legal implications of contract-making in marriage and family issues, as well as the circulation of marriage narratives, representations and practices between Lebanon and Cyprus by arguing that the ritualization of civil marriage contribute to the reproduction of social differences along the lines of religious, class, gender and status. Ultimately, as scholars has recently contended (Deeb, 2020), my analysis will encourage to think critically the use of the sectarian lens in the study of the Lebanese society.

In this paper I analyze the value system of the Islamic State, the armed group that took control of large parts of Syria and Iraq in the 2010s, in light of anthropological kinship and descent logic. IS sought to rapidly build its own citizenry within the territory it controlled. This paper takes its claim to be a “state” seriously. This state arose rapidly and in very public fashion, spreading its vision and message in social media and various other forms of media, and through the use of violent public spectacle that made its way into conventional news sources such as television and print. IS rampaged through the areas it sought to control, and came to control, committing violent acts that have been labeled “genocide” by several other governments. I interviewed some of its victims/survivors in Iraq in 2015. These interviews and public sources suggest that IS sought to build a citizenry that constituted a uniform nation that adhered closely to its value system, and that it did so not simply by promulgating its own “Islam” as it claimed, but through means that addressed issues of succession and citizenry-building. In patrilineal descent systems, new members of groups (whether small family groups or larger political groups) can be “made” through conception. An infant who is conceived by a male member of the group is automatically deemed a member of the group. The IS was well-known to have used the abduction and rape of women as a means to instill fear and win its battles. I argue, however, that abduction and rape were much more than strategic tools in conflict: they were well-thought-out strategies at quickly building a loyal citizenry comprised of the resulting offspring. While their mothers were subjugated and may or may not have come to agree with IS doctrines, the children conceived by IS rape victims were easy fodder for indoctrination. Recruiting adults to a cause is one way to build a new group, but raising children who are taught a group’s values within a tightly-controlled space is another way. This paper analyzes some of the ways in light of the patrilineal kinship model elucidated by sociocultural anthropology. Patriliny is common worldwide and its social outcomes diverse, but this case showcases how a descent system such as patriliny can be harnessed to provide logical impetus to violent and coercive state-building.

This paper contributes to the field of law and society by highlighting the process of legitimizing and rationalizing the establishment of an exclusionist gendered juridical field in the post-1979 Revolution Iran. Following the establishment of the Islamic Republic, an Assembly of Experts was formed to write the new political system’s constitution which resulted in the establishment of a highly gendered judicial system in Iran. Yet, the literature on the legal status of women in post-revolution Iran neglects the process of creating, justifying, and presenting these sets of laws to the public and mainly concentrates on the rights activists' attempts to alter the highly gendered judicial field. Focusing on the arguments at the Assembly of Experts for the Constitution and the translations of their ideas to the public, this paper offers a new narrative on women's representation in the text of the law and addresses the following question: How did the lawmakers and the translators of their ideas to the public justify the exclusion of women in post-revolutionary Iran? To answer this question, I use discourse and document analysis in two steps: first, by reviewing the debates of the Assembly of Experts for the Constitution (1980), I analyze member’s arguments for the establishment of an exclusionist gendered set of laws. Afterwards, I review the translation and representation of these arguments in the newspapers for the public by focusing on two major newspapers of the time, Keyhan and Ettelaat, in 1979-1980. Going beyond the dichotomy of agents, as players of the field, and the structure, I apply Bourdieu’s conceptual framework to illustrate the power relations and the intertwined relationship between the juridical field, the field of knowledge, and the political field as a set of interrelated fields. I argue that the members of the Assembly of Experts for the Constitution were the prominent players in the political field and the field of knowledge who, in their attempt to determine the monopoly of rights in the juridical field, deprived Iranian women of their rights. An analysis of the discussions reveals that the Assembly of Experts for the Constitution in their argumentation and the translator of their ideas in the newspapers in their presentation and justification for the public did not limit themselves to the religious arguments. Instead, by highlighting a set of non-religious arguments and justifications, these players of the judicial and political field tried to appeal to a greater public, including women.

Social change under authoritarian regimes is achieved through unconventional means of legal mobilization. Socio-legal scholarship on authoritarian regimes suggests that as states and legal systems gradually democratize, local actors gain at most a court of public opinion and an increase in consciousness about the law and their rights. 1 Within this field, scholarship on Iran engages with unintended outcomes of an Islamico-civil legal system2 where everyday actors contribute to social change through a ‘collective presence.’3 This paper brings to light the power of the collective presence of Iranian practitioners of white marriage (cohabitation) in influencing official discourses and debates at the clerical level. Using data collected from 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Iran, this paper will examine the interviews I conducted with clerics and seminary scholars in Qom, about the emergence of white marriages, the existing institutions of temporary and permanent marriage, and women’s rights in conjugal relationships broadly. Some of the seminary scholars are women who engage in a collective “rereading” of the Quran on the grounds that Islamic jurisprudence is dynamic and must be revised for expediency. I triangulate these interviews with major concerns raised about the challenges of women’s rights in Islamic jurisprudence at a conference of clerics that I attended. These discussions reveal the power that practitioners of white marriage exercise through their collective presence, where their unsanctioned conjugal practices permeate contemporary Shi`i Islamic debates about gender. The pervasiveness of white marriage in these official Iranian discourses is a response to an unconventional movement in an Islamic republic where clerical debates influence gender laws and lead to incremental social change.