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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Lebanon
Index
The primacy of the family manifests itself in all phases of
Lebanese life including political, financial, and personal
relationships. In the political sphere, families compete with each
other for power and prestige, and kinsmen combine forces to support
family members in their quest for leadership. In business,
employers give preference to hiring relatives, and brothers and
cousins often consolidate their resources in operating a family
enterprise. Wealthy family members are expected to share with less
prosperous relatives, a responsibility that commonly falls to
expatriate and urban relatives who help support their village kin.
In the personal sphere, the family has an equally pervasive
role. To a great extent, family status determines an individual's
access to education and chances of achieving prominence and wealth.
The family also seeks to ensure an individual's conformity with
accepted standards of behavior so that family honor will be
maintained. An individual's ambitions are molded by the family in
accordance with the long-term interests of the group as a whole.
Just as the family gives protection, support, and opportunity to
its members, the individual member offers loyalty and service to
the family.
The traditional form of the family is the three-generation
patrilineal extended family, consisting of a man, his wife or
wives, their unmarried children of both sexes, and their married
sons, together with the sons' wives and children. Some of these
groups live under one roof as a single household, which occurred in
earlier generations, but most do not.
The family commands primary loyalty in Lebanese society. In a
study conducted by a team of sociologists at the American
University of Beirut in 1959, loyalty to the family ranked first
among both Christians and Muslims, males and females, and among
both politically active and noncommitted students. Next to the
family in order of importance were religion, nationality or
citizenship, ethnic group, and finally the political party. The
results of this study probably reflected the attitudes of the
Lebanese in 1987. If anything, primordial ties appear to have
increased during the 1975 Civil War. The rise of Islamic and
Christian fundamentalism encouraged the development of ethnic and
familial consciousness. Among Maronites, there has always been an
emphasis on the family; for example, the motto of the Phalange
Party is "God, the homeland, the family."
The family in Lebanon has been a means through which political
leadership is distributed and perpetuated. In the Chamber of
Deputies of 1960, for example, almost a quarter of the deputies
"inherited" their seats. In the 1972 Chamber, Amin Jumayyil (who
became president in 1982) served with his father Pierre Jumayyil
after inheriting the seat of his uncle Maurice Jumayyil. Because
"political families" have monopolized the representation of certain
sects for over a century, it has been argued that family loyalty
hinders the development of a modern polity.
Data as of December 1987
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