Living with the AK-47: Militancy and Militants in Hezbollah’s Resistance Movement

Understanding resistance movements and armed militias in the Middle East is key in unravelling this complex and sensitive region. This book focuses on the Hezbollah group in Lebanon, combining extensive ethnography with critical insights drawn from a range of disciplines including sociology, psychology and philosophy. Instead of approaching resistance or violence through received macro-formulations, the book concentrates on micro-narratives and spatial dynamics of two critical spaces – namely, Dahiya, a Shia-majority suburb of Beirut and Hezbollah’s stronghold, and training camps, where volunteers metamorphose into militants. The book is unique in that it juxtaposes ethnographic narratives in such a way that they script their own rich tale of bodily tactics, ‘resistance’ and possible subjectivity in the realm of everyday life. They create a complex palimpsest of the history of Lebanon, Hezbollah and individuals striving to live under the ‘Islamic sphere of influence’, offsetting stereotypes and dominant historiography.

This volume is a must-read for scholars, researchers, media analysts and policy groups engaged with the Middle East. It will be particularly relevant to the disciplines of Sociology, Social Anthropology, Geography, Psychology, International Relations and Area Studies with a focus on Lebanon.


Younes Saramifar is a sociologist and has studied at universities in Iran and India. He is currently affiliated with the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where he is working on the politics of memories in post-war Iran.

“It is really fascinating, all the more so in the large sections where so many voices are heard [which] are really excellent.”
Emeritus Professor Benedict Anderson
Author of Imagined Communities

“Living with Ak-47 is a fascinating book written by a daring and gifted sociologist. Younes is untangling the complex web of social and cultural factors at the roots of contention and violence in a community playing a key role in the long-lasting Lebanese civil conflict. To this end, he is using an innovative approach, leading a candid dialogue with a large number of interlocutors and encouraging them to simply speak about their life, their everyday practices, their opinions, their feelings, their grievances and their hopes.”
Emeritus Professor Jean-Luc Maurer
Director of the Graduate Institute of Development Studies (1992–2004), Geneva

“I really enjoyed it. Some really wonderful observations. This extraordinary ethnography provides a unique peek at the training routines of elite Hezbollah marksmen who keep the ‘enemy’ an empty signifier. And so, Younes shows, a kind of fragile Arendtian polis emerges.”
Michael M. J. Fischer
Professor of Anthropology and Science at MIT; author of Emergent Forms of Life and the Anthropological Voice

Buy This Book

ISBN: 1-4438-7552-X

ISBN13: 978-1-4438-7552-3

Release Date: 27th April 2015

Pages: 180

Price: £41.99

-
+