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Paul Tabar, Greg Noble, and Scott Poynting. On Being Lebanese in Australia: Identity, Racism, and the Ethnic Field Beirut, Lebanon: Lebanese American University Press, 2009. 189 pages. Paperback $25.00
Reviewed by Randa Bassem Serhan
On Being Lebanese in Australia: Identity, Racism, and the Ethnic Field is one of those titles that does an excellent job of foreshadowing the book's arguments and theoretical approach. The book's subject matter is second generation LebaneseAustralians, those born and raised in Australia, yet the title positions them as Lebanese in Australia defying legal and scholarly definitions of such a cohort (legally, they are Australian, sociologically, they are Lebanese- Australian or Australian of Lebanese descent). This is not a mistake, and the reasons are explained in the subtitle because processes of racism and competing "fields" that define ethnicity inform their identities.
Those familiar with the theoretical work of Pierre Bourdieu would recognize the notion of fields as networks and spaces that compete to constrain and produce in this case Lebanese as an "ethnicity." By choosing this theoretical approach, authors Paul Tabar, Greg Noble, and Scott Poynting are making it clear that their study of Lebanese ethnicity is going to go beyond defining a "Lebanese community" to exploring the processes by which identity is formed and in turn critiquing the larger social structures. In fact, the authors state on the first page that: "we want to distinguish our task from the task of writing the history and sociology of a diasporic community per se." Fortunately, they do provide the basic necessary figures about the population under study, namely that 1 80,000 Australians claim Lebanese descent, 75,000 of whom were bora in Australia; 75 percent of the total population lives in Sydney, and 60 percent identify as Christian and the remaining 40 percent as Muslim. This is important for those of us who are unfamiliar with the Australian context and yet want to make comparisons with our field sites.
Based on ten years of qualitative data collection through surveys, in-depth interviews, and participant observation, the authors try to portray the myriad ways that the Lebanese in Australia interact and make sense of theirplace in the Australian...