Fawwaz Traboulsi studied at the American University of Beirut and the School of Oriental Studies in London and received his doctorate in history from the Université de Paris VIII. After a career in journalism and political activism, he has been since 1997 an associate professor of Political Science and History at the Lebanese American University, Beirut-Lebanon. He has written on history, Arab politics, social movements, political philosophy, folklore and art. His translations include works by Karl Marx, John Reed, Antonio Gramsci, Isaac Deutscher, Che Guevara, John Berger, Etel Adnan, Sa`di Yusuf and Edward Said (Out of Place, 2000, and Humanism and Democratic Critique, 2005).
Fawwaz Traboulis’ writings include
- On an Incurable Hope (a journal of the siege of Beirut, summer 1982, 1984)
- Guernica-Beirut (a Picasso mural/an Arab city in war, 1987)
- an anthology of the Arab Renaissance writer Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq (1995)
- Surat-al-Fata bi-l-Ahmar (a memoir, 1997)
- Silat Bila Wasl (a critique of political thought in Lebanon, 1998)
- Wu´ud ´Adan (a Yemen diary, 2000)
- Dhofar, a testimony from the revolutionary years (2003).
His recent publications are
- The Stranger, the Treasure and the Miracle (2006, A Reading in the Musical Theatre of the Rahbani Brothers and the Diva, Fayrouz)
- A History of Modern Lebanon (Pluto Books, London, 2007).
Ethnic, cultural and religious collective rights as a contribution to conflict resolution
Case Study: Lebanon
Presented by Fawwaz Traboulsi
Lebanon has been living under a regime of political, administrative, cultural and religious collective rights for more than half a century. That is the system that defines the Lebanese as mainly members - by birth – of eighteen religious ‘confessions’ or ‘sects’, belonging to Christianity, Islam and Judaism, and that distributes political power, political representation and administrative posts on the basis of fixed quotas to each. Furthermore, the Lebanese Constitution relegates personal statuses (i.e. matters of inheritance, marriage, divorce, adoption, etc.) to sectarian legislation and sectarian courts and renders the State responsible for helping in priority private and religious education.
Regarding Lebanon’s contemporary history, the obvious question that needs to be studied is whether this system has been a factor of conflict resolution or of conflict generation?