The joke is on us: Irony and community in a Beirut scrapyard |
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| Authors: | ELIZABETH SALEH ADRIEN ZAKAR |
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| Institution: | 1. Social anthropologist working as a research associate at the Asfari Institute for Civil Society and Citizenship, American University of Beirut.;2. Intellectual historian and currently a Mellon postdoctoral fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center. |
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| Abstract: | The Lebanese scrap metal industry – one of the country's largest exports – relies heavily upon marginalized young boys displaced from their homes in Syria. These underage waste pickers are not supposed to be working, and yet work is the only legitimate reason for their presence in Lebanon. Workers engage in different types of trip as they journey across Beirut, discreetly rummaging through rubbish. These trips allow them to cover up play under the guise of work while fostering a community of complicity that functions according to age hierarchies, rites of passage and codes of conduct. |
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