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Since October 2019, Lebanon has been going through a deep economic and financial crisis that drove the country to a political meltdown. Facing a severe recession, high inflation and unemployment, nationwide protests in the aftermath of the Beirut explosion in August 2020 have led to the resignation of Hassan Diab's cabinet – the second government to resign within the span of a few months. This article studies the interplay of the political, economic, and social factors that led to the current economic and political crisis. We show how warlord politics, and a corporate consociational system have misguided incentives and policies and consolidated a rentier economy that inevitably led to the current situation.

Intro -- Title Page -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part I: The Hermeneutical Self-From Meaning to Revelation -- Chapter 1: The Search for Foundation -- Chapter 2: The Ontological Horizon -- Chapter 3: Hermeneutics, Creation, and the "Re-enchantment" of the World -- Part II: The Absolute Self-Hegel's Journey from Revelation to Meaning -- Chapter 4: Hegel the Philosopher of Revelation -- Chapter 5: The Unfolding of God's Story -- Part III: The "Responsive" Self-Theological Rationality in Trinitarian Perspective -- Chapter 6: Trinitarian Description between Metaphysics and Hermeneutics -- Chapter 7: Epiphanies of Presence -- Chapter 8: Conclusions -- Bibliography.

When South Sudanese started to enter Sudanese territory after the outbreak of war in December 2013, they found themselves put into an uncertain gray area of definition. Lingering between aggressive rhetoric of Sudanese officials before the separation in July 2011 and the nominal bilateral agreement on four freedoms in September 2012, they were denied official refugee status until August 2016. This gap between their de facto and their de jure status added to their uncertainty and confronted humanitarian organizations with a number of intertwined semantic and logistic dilemmas. This article discusses how these dilemmas were experienced in northern Sudanese non-governmental organizations during the months leading up to August 2016. It illustrates how the organizations' positioning towards South Sudanese refugees reflects asymmetries in the humanitarian sector as much as the consequences of ongoing attempts to increase governmental control over it. The case study thus highlights how losing rights as citizens and not gaining rights as refugees after crossing borders is enhanced when it overlaps with the neglect of individuals' agency by their being simplified through quantification into a logistical problem. This points towards a need to complement humanitarian knowledge production with refugees' own practices of support and connection, as well as emic notions of belonging.

AbstractThis paper argues that revolutionary waves and social movements share similar dynamics to sand sliding down the edges of a pile. On this basis, the paper develops a theoretical model in which contention arises endogenously through discontent and social imitation as the social system self‐organizes into a state of criticality over time. Revolts and collective actions are thus understood as subsequent reorganizing cascades once the system has reached such a critical state. Although taken by themselves the properties and timings of these cascades are entirely chaotic, at the aggregate level the cascades' properties follow regularities that are impervious to the individual characteristics of individuals but are affected by the intrinsic structure of social networks.

AbstractIn recent years, a growing literature emerged studying the role of identity in economics. Yet, mainstream economists and other social scientists still eye identity economics with suspicion. This article illustrates the underlying assumptions of identity economics, gaps in the literature, as well as existing tools and research in other domains of economic theory that help to close these gaps, while demonstrating that identity economics is able to provide sophisticated approaches and additional findings that support transdisciplinary research on the topic. In order to demonstrate how these tools can be used to study the complex social systems in which identity, preferences, and institutions co‐evolve, I develop a number of simple analytical models and elaborate on their implications, while keeping technicalities to a minimum. In addition, I show how findings in behavioural economics apply to identity economics and prove insightful for our understanding of the complex interdependencies between identity and group formation.

Abstract
This article follows the attempts of Sudan's Mahdist rulers between 1881 and 1898 to establish a military, political, and cultural foothold in the Nuba Mountains, a region now close to the southern border of Sudan and historically a mountainous retreat area. These attempts started with talks held between religious authorities in the kingdom of Tegali and Muḥammad Aḥmad before he declared himself to be the Mahdī. This exchange of arguments initiated complex relations between the Mahdist regime and the population of the Nuba Mountains, relations that, for the most part, were characterized by violence and oppression but were also permeated by persuasion and cooperation. The article aims at providing a description of these relations, based on a review of available documents from the period. In conclusion, the author highlights the point that a focus on the actions of people usually regarded as peripheral, based on the perspective of supraregional power elites, can raise important questions on the modalities of political and cultural self-determination in specific times and places and also challenge generalized narratives of historical developments as clashes between powerful cultures defined as self-contained, mutually hostile blocs.

This article discusses the poem "A Homesick Sparrow" by the Sudanese poet Mahjoub Sharif (1948-2014) in the frame of recent cultural policies in Sudan. The poem was written in 1990 ; one year after the military coup that brought the present regime to power ; while the poet was imprisoned together with others regarded as oppositionists to the new Islamist government. It reflects not only a specific ; critical positioning against contemporary political events ; but can be read in the context of a long-term ; often harsh negotiation of the modalities of public appearances and utterances in Sudan. In this sense ; the poetic language and the way it was brought outside the prison walls are understood here as a performative act of political resistance against governmental attempts of peripheralization vis-à-vis cultural policies aiming at homogenization and centralization through political Islam.