Assemblages, cosmopolitics and controversies: Capturing the territorial and knowledge dimensions of infrastructural politics in Lebanon

Abstract

Drawing upon Actor-Network Theory literature and a specific strand of urban assemblage literature, the cosmopolitical ontology offers a fresh and innovative perspective on urban politics. It positions the interactions between human and non-human entities as the central factor shaping politics. In this article, I have adopted this cosmopolitical ontology and proposed to analyze environmental and infrastructural controversies as a crucial methodological approach. This analysis sheds light on how territoriality and knowledge, key elements of urban politics, can be understood from this perspective. I use a diversity of methods including reports and press review, interviews, focus groups and surveys to map and analyze two controversies in Lebanon around the Deir Ammar electricity plant and Saida waste management plant. I show how “rogue” material non-human actants - in the form of fumes and particles, chemical compositions of waste and composts, bacteria, fuel leaks – destabilize the territorial assemblages brought together by these infrastructures. Polluted spaces become focal points for contesting established narratives of territorial solidarity and considerably weaken institutional and political governances. Expert discourses of State institutions and technical firms are put in question. While efforts to build a “localized” knowledge empowers local actors. However, as the case studies show, when controversies become protracted, interest in the complexity of infrastructural politics dwindles and more entrenched political actors are capable of recuperating these controversies to their advantage. This is why maintaining the “territorialization” of controversies through the development of localized knowledge is essential for these cosmopolitics to bring social and political change.

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