Following The Wires

Dr Daniele Rugo (Brunel University London)

Dr Maria Kastrinou (Brunel University London)
Dr Dana Abi Ghanem (University of Manchester)

THE PROJECT
Conflict and Power Outages in Beirut
Sensing socio-material practices of everyday
electricity supply
The electricity infrastructure and its failures as lens
to make sense of the lived and material legacy of
conflicts

THE PROJECT
Bridge gap on life cycle of conflict in Lebanon
Provide socio-technical insights into the relationship
between State and non-State actors;
Provide an understanding of the role of
communities in navigating post-conflict contexts;
Provide insights into direct and indirect
consequences of conflicts in relation to changing
everyday practices.

BACKGROUND
Early 1960s: programme for the universalization of
services
and infrastructure including electricity
1964: creation of lectricit du Liban in 1964.
1975: Civil war upset effort, debilitation of services
Infrastructure provision used as a political weapon
2006 IsraelHezbollah war: attacks on power plants
and network further diminished capacity of power
production.

TODAY
Power outages are an inherent part of Lebanese everyday
life
Power cuts from 3 hours to more than 12 hours per day.
Emergence of strategies for maintaining desired levels of
service
Growth of informal network of supply through private
generator owners/entrepreneurs (PGEs).
Result: fragmented system of provision. Biggest burden
on lower income households.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS
How can discrepancies in access to energy be used to
articulate the lasting impact of conflicts on everyday
lives and the urban environment?
How do informal networks emerge and operate to
overcome energy disruptions in post-conflict Greater
Beirut?
How can experiential responses to conflict be
understood and communicated?
How do alterations in the urban environment reveal
changing everyday practices?

METHOD
Sociology
Draw attention to social and material aspects of everyday
life mediated through electricity services and their lack
thereof. Analysis of social-material interactions.
Anthropology
Explore social and political dimensions of electricity supply
through everyday realities.
Filmmaking
Capture perceptual responses to disrupted electricity
services and their impact on the urban environment.

METHOD
Sociological accounts of interactions with energy
infrastructures will direct the eye of the camera
This in return will capture ways of doing that will inform
ethnographic observations.
The latter will feed back into rethinking the overall
relation between socio-material structures, post- conflict
politics and urban spaces.
Filmmaking will be an integral part of the research
process and inform research design, measurement, data
collection and analysis, communication.

METHODOLOGICAL TOOL KIT

- it promotes attentiveness to materiality and
sensoriality, includes non-verbal responses and the
non-human elements entangled in these responses;
- it offers possibility to feature subjects living their life
rather than merely talking about it;
- it prioritizes participants experiential framework over
the researchers conceptual grid;
- it facilitates processual understanding.

AIMS
- explore how energy infrastructures are revealing of the
obduracy of conflict and its changing dynamics;
- investigate informal electricity supply as revealing of
the dynamic between State and non-State actors in
post-conflict contexts;
- Visualize impact of energy disruptions on everyday life
and on the urban environment in order to assess the
role of communities in negotiating the direct and
indirect impact of conflict.

FIELDWORK
Three fieldwork visits structured around temporal and
geographic objectives.
Religious events (Easter, Ramadan, Id al-Fitr) and
seasonal changes to follow shifts in demand and
distribution.
AREAS
Reflect diversity of living with electricity outages (income,
services available, sectarian identity).
Chiah, Sin el Fil, Hadath, Hazmieh and Hadath
Ain-Mreisseh, al-Zarif, Basta, Mar Mikhael, Geitawih and
Karm el-Zeitoun

OUTPUTS
Following the wires - feature-length documentary
Two joint-authored academic papers
Exhibition with works by Lebanese artists
Web-based application

Website:
www.followingthewires.com
Twitter:
@followingwires
https://twitter.com/followingwires