Despite Lebanon’s relatively wide use as an example in studies of ethnic politics, clientelism, sectarianism, and—most recently—refugees, comparatively few articles in top political science journals are published about Lebanese politics or based on extended fieldwork in Lebanon.^{Footnote 1} Yet, in political science research, Lebanon is broadly represented as an area that consistently exhibits specific dynamics. Field-based scholarship on Lebanon often works to nuance this framing (see, e.g., Cammett Reference Cammett2014; Salloukh et al. Reference Salloukh, Barakat, Al-Habbal, Khattab and Mikaelian2015), but these works are few and far between.

Lack of contextual knowledge among both qualitatively and quantitatively oriented scholars substantiates overused categories of analyses, undermines data validity, and inhibits ethical production of knowledge. This article addresses three distinct, interrelated predicaments in the Lebanese context: (1) a generally uncritical focus on sect/sectarianism as the primary explanatory factor in Levantine politics; (2) research tourism/voyeurism; and (3) effects of these two factors on the survey-firm industry in Lebanon.

We first focus on the trap of seeing Lebanon exclusively through the prism of sect, partly because most previous work has centered on this form of identification. Second, we identify how this trend interacts with the growing valorization of “dangerous” research, which has played out in Lebanon in both the aftermath of the 2006 July War and the context of the Syrian refugee crisis. We identify problems associated with “academic tourism,” including ignorance of local histories and its effects on research design and analysis. Third, we note how Lebanese actors have responded by offering survey services tailored to the foreign-researcher market and shaped by its expectations. We conclude by arguing for more careful historical contextualization, creative casing of research, responsible research practices, and critical engagement with the production of academic knowledge.

Because core political science texts often cite Lebanon as an example of sectarian fragmentation (Lijphart Reference Lijphart1977, 147–48, 155–56) and ethnic conflict (Horowitz Reference Horowitz1985, 3, 31, 39), it also is a telling case study in the ethics of knowledge production (Schwedler Reference Schwedler2014). Often described using terms such as “fragmented” or simply “highly complex,” Lebanon is used repeatedly to illustrate the same political phenomena. To be clear, this pattern is not limited to ethnic and sectarian politics, although it is perhaps most visible there. It also is evident in the repeated use of Hizb Allah (but not other Lebanese political parties) in studies of terrorism, rebel-to-party transition, and Islamic politics, as well as of Shatila, a Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut’s southern suburbs as a site to study Palestinian refugee politics (Sukarieh and Tannock Reference Sukarieh and Tannock2013).^{Footnote 2} The studies underscore not only the negative consequences for communities but also the way that the quality of data and validity of research decline in the wake of hundreds of researchers trekking through the same party offices and neighborhoods to interview many of the same people.

These issues affect both quantitative and qualitative research and are compounded by what Myron Weiner labeled advocacy research, “where researchers know already what they want to see and say, and as a result they end up coming away from their research having proven it” (quoted in Jacobsen and Landau Reference Jacobsen and Landau.2003, 187). For example, many scholars design surveys and field experiments, structure interviews, and code datasets in ways that uncritically center sect as a necessarily relevant political identity, whereas they neglect to explore, for example, the importance of home village, party affiliation (often conflated with sect, although the two are not coterminous), leftist or rightist ideologies (Schulhofer-Wohl Reference Schulhofer-Wohl2018), secularism, class, and other less-well-studied modes of identification.

In other disciplines, this trend is consistently criticized. Scholars including Majed (Reference Majed2016), for instance, emphasize that “saying that sectarianism is real does not imply that it is an all-encompassing explanatory variable that can be used to understand Arab societies in one go. This reductionist and often orientalist approach in explaining the Arab world does not help us grasp the complex dynamics of identity politics in the region” (see also Makdisi Reference Makdisi2000). Yet, the authors routinely review scholarship that refers to “Christians” and “Muslims”^{Footnote 3} as though they are appropriate, locally resonant, unified, and immutable categories rather than externally applied labels that do not always accurately represent unified social groupings.

Our argument is not that sectarianism does not matter in Lebanese or Middle Eastern politics; it clearly does (Corstange Reference Corstange2016). It is that allowing the category of “sect” (which is different) to overshadow others and to drive the understanding of Lebanese politics erases other modes of affiliation, coordination, action, and identification, and it impoverishes scholarly understanding of political dynamics in the region.

This observation is particularly important because whereas it is easy to make assumptions about the role of sect on Lebanese populations, contemporary research often challenges rather than affirms standing theory. For example, in a survey study about the relationship between violence and attitudes among individuals who survived the Lebanese Civil War, researchers found that experiences of violence, past displacement during the 1975–1990 civil war, and sect (with the exception of Shiites) all had no impact on respondents’ contemporary attitudes toward hiring Syrian refugees, whereas sect did play a role in their unwillingness to host refugees (Ghosn, Braithwaite, and Chu Reference Ghosn, Braithwaite and Chu2019). Cammett’s (Reference Cammett2014) careful parsing of the electoral dynamics that undergird segmented versus broad-based strategies in political parties’ service provision and Rizkallah’s (Reference Rizkallah2017) examination of parties’ mobilization networks—both a challenge to the “sect-all-the-way-down” view of Lebanese politics—are other good examples. In the following section, we interrogate a more general source of these issues: the labeling of Lebanon as a “dangerous” and “exotic” research locale.