USSAMA MAKDISI, The Culture of Sectarianism: Community,History, and Violence in Ottoman Lebanon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).Pp. 259. $22.00.

Abstract

In The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Ottoman Lebanon, Ussama Makdisi focuses on sectarianism as the defining experience in modern Mount Lebanon—indeed, as the core of Lebanese modernity itself. This work is a meticulous deconstruction of sectarianism as a discourse spawned by a particular historic conjecture—Ottoman reform in the age of European domination—in and around the tiny peripheral society of 19th-century Mount Lebanon. It is also an impassioned insistence not only on the historic but also the moral urgency of recognizing the contingency of, and the human agency in, the emergence of sectarianism and an invitation for hope in a Lebanese future that might yet dare to embrace an alternative modernity. Makdisi's book is not only illuminated by the scholar's insight; it is also animated by empathy for his subject matter and a talent that brings local society and its mountainous vistas vividly to the mind's eye.