The August 4 Explosion: Entrepreneurial Strategies and the Reproduction of “disaster capitalism”.
August 4, 2020, 6:07. The moment time stopped, and life stood still.
In a single moment, 2750 tons of ammonium nitrate carelessly stored in the port of Beirut exploded and wiped out half the city. The gigantic mushroom took the life of more than 200 victims, injured more than 6,500 people and left more than 300,000 individuals without a home. With an economic and health crisis ravaging the country, the August 4 blast would only worsen the situation. Three decades after its 15-year civil war, the country was facing another disaster, and the demolished city was once again an experimental terrain for disaster relief strategies. In what follows, we investigate the capitalization of the blast as promise of reform. More specifically, we look at entrepreneurial examples who, by creating and marketing products, were not only inspired by the blast, but also capitalized on the blast by creating products with glass and clothing debris from the explosion itself.
Incapable of salvaging itself, the state left the task of restructuring, reconstructing, and reforming to the civil society and private actors. While aiming towards raising funds – and making profit – to provide financial aid for the ones affected and to somehow contribute to bringing the city back to life, “disaster capitalism” instrumentalizes the catastrophe to “promote and empower a range of private, neoliberal capitalist interests.” By capitalizing on the blast, the private sector and the civil society de-politicize and de-contextualize the tragedy, framing it as a historical event and a marketing campaign. On a strategic level, this process benefits the state as it alleviates its tasks of providing and catering for the ones affected, but it also ensures a replication and regeneration of its neoliberal policies.
Entrepreneurship and fundraising: the cases of the “The Light of Beirut” and the “Beirut rising from the ashes” collections
Ever since the explosion, many private agents and organizations have carried the burden of providing for the people, saving what remains of the city and contributing to rebuilding it. To achieve that, these individuals and entities would raise funds with help from local and international governments, agencies and philanthropes. Moreover, several entrepreneurial projects would be launched with similar targets. In December, Lebanese designer brand Vanina released the “Light of Beirut” Collection. This collection included the ‘silo’ bags, a series of bags that replicated the destroyed silo on the port of Beirut and was, as described in Vanina’s marketing campaign, “handcrafted with the glass shattered by the 4th of August explosion, this shimmering clutch stands still like the iconic Silos of the port of Beirut that it reminisces.” Made out of the shattered glass that was collected by volunteers for recycling, the silo bags intended to pay tribute to the victims of the blast while romanticizing the ruins of the painful landscape of the city. While appreciated by some, the collection received many negative critiques which pushed its designers to remove the collection. Another initiative was started by fashion designer and founder of Hardcore Beirut, Perla Maalouly, who created a fashion line “from damaged and torn down curtain fabrics to denim and used clothes” with the intention of recrafting the recycled fabrics as a means of preserving the memory of the blast and emphasizing the people’s ability to rise again and rebuild the city. Both projects refurbished the meaning of the used rubbish, symbolizing on the one hand a romanticized eternalization of a particular event, and on the other hand a reincarnation of hope and the promise of a new tomorrow in which Beirut rises again. As the aftermath of a new disaster hitting the country, resilience and adaptation are once again a requirement for survival.
“Disaster Capitalism” and entrepreneurship: an extension of the neoliberal system
Mark Schuller borrows the term “disaster capitalism” from Naomi Klein to refer to the corporate capitalization of natural or man-made disasters. The occurrence of a catastrophe paves the ways for private agents to concoct solutions benefiting the market. Meanwhile, to Naomi Klein, such events are transformed into markets themselves. And out of desperation, affected subjects would hold on to any glimpse of promise of survival. She says that “they want to salvage whatever they can and begin repairing what was not destroyed; they want to reaffirm their relatedness to the places that formed them.” Therefore, reform is tied to the “generosity of outsiders-creating fertile ground for promoting neoliberal policies through conditionalities”. Rather than restructuring and redistributing, such strategies and policies engender the emergence of several smaller agents bringing aid and reform to the table. What Schuller calls the capitalization on disasters Klein considers to be a “shock doctrine”. Effectively, the “shock doctrine” is the neoliberal strategy of the exploitation of a crisis to impose liberalized policies on the affected communities. As a repercussion of the disaster, these reformative policies and strategies are implemented when the affected group is at its most vulnerable and shocked, diverging the masses from the actual context of the calamity. In what Klein considers as corporatist systems, the state allocates and delegates the regulatory role to the liberated market and the private agents who are commissioned to implement sustainable and regenerating solutions. Klein bases her argument on her critique of Milton Friedman, a strong advocate of the liberalization of the market and its relevance in the management of crisis.
“However, while putting on a humanitarian face, the private agents that participate in the free market ultimately aim at generating profit.”
Nevertheless, for such a matter to take place, the market needs to detach its ties with the state, and the economy from politics, for the state’s position is to put forward the rules and laws and the market to tweak and apply. Friedman’s perception on the matter is that the more the free market is implemented in everyday life, the less the issues require a political regulation and participation hence the de-politicization and de-contextualization of disasters for the sake of survival. The state hands over the public goods to the private sector, now in control of redistribution. Such a transition is at moments of crises, when change is needed. Friedman establishes the “shock treatment”, the instant when fast and drastic solutions are imposed on the affected communities. These policies entail the transmission of the public wealth to actors capable of revitalizing the economy. At such moments, these shocked communities are more inclined to accept any reconstructive proposition: a therapy for their shock. However, while putting on a humanitarian face, the private agents that participate in the free market ultimately aim at generating profit. As a result of that fact, the disaster becomes the market and marketing stunt itself; it is not the solutions that tend to be profitable, but the actual disaster. Rather than providing relieving solutions, these implementations tend to build on class divisions and magnify them.
Source: Hiba Al Kallas from Shutterstock
The apolitical civil society and private agents as channels of neoliberalism
Taken out of its gruesome context, the Beirut blast is represented as a dramatic event the Lebanese ought to get through. The city is no stranger to such scenarios, as it had already been suffering from the repercussions of its 15-year war. The dawn of the nineties witnessed the application of the “shock doctrine” and an increase in neoliberal agents seizing distributive duties from the weakened state. However, Bassel Salloukh, a professor of political science at the Lebanese American University, argues that the transfer of economic power was twofold. On the one hand, after losing faith in the existing system, private actors (whether it is the civil society, entrepreneurs or individuals) appropriated the means of production. Meanwhile, the state found refuge in liberating the market and giving it the opportunity to preserve itself, its current structure, and in handing the weight of reform to the civil society and private agents– no matter the cost. These agents were responsible for providing the people with their basic socio-economic rights. The people were and are once again asked to self-regulate and innovate a solution for their survival. Basic rights are stripped from people as political contextualization weakens, and the people plunge at the heart of a struggling and failing system under a weak state. Once again, in the midst of an economic health crisis, and after one of the biggest explosions in history, the de-politicization of the Beirut blast relieves the state from performing its regulatory role. By following this schema, civil society and the private agents not only project the social and class divisions, but also facilitate their reproduction and continuation. The de-politicization of the performing agents entails a de-politicization of the actual catastrophe, turning it into a momentary and yet impactful historic event, belonging to our collective memory rather than our lived present and future.
“Consequently, the blast itself becomes the market, generating entrepreneurial ideas with profitable intentions.”
Our reading of Perla Maalouly and Vannina’s collections is not one of representation and reproduction but rather one of production. It is one of producing and reproducing “shock treatments”, temporary and profitable solutions. Such types of production capitalize on the urge to collect funds (or effectively part profits and part funds) in order to subsidize the affected parties. Consequently, the blast itself becomes the market, generating entrepreneurial ideas with profitable intentions. Once again, the private sector reacquires the redistribution of aids as it secures its profit. Moreover, the tragedy of the blast, the moment the world stopped, is reduced to a specific narrative, a romanticized and de-politicized one. The tragedy becomes objects you can consume, services you can take part in, crises you can purchase. In this sense, the story of August 4, 2020, at 6:07pm, is quite different for everyone.
Resources:
Avanzato, M. (2020, August 11). Beirut Explosion: A crisis of Lebanese (and global) capitalism. Retrieved from https://beirut-today.com/2020/08/11/beirut-explosion-crisis-lebanese-global-capitalism/
Chehayeb, K., & Sewell, A. (2020, August 19). Local groups step up to lead Beirut blast response. Retrieved from https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news-feature/2020/08/18/Lebanon-Beirut-explosion-local-aid-response
Daher, J. (2020, August 24). After the Beirut Explosion, Disaster Capitalism Has Lebanon in Its Sights. Retrieved from https://jacobinmag.com/2020/08/beirut-lebanon-disaster-capitaism-neoliberalism
Friedman, M. (2002). Capitalism and freedom. Fortieth anniversary edition. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
Kingston, P. W. (2013). “Advocacy Politics within Weak and Fragmented States”. In Reproducing sectarianism advocacy networks and the politics of civil society in postwar Lebanon. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Klein, N. (2007). The shock doctrine: The rise of disaster capitalism. New York: Metropolitan Books.
Lazkani, S. (2020, September 22). Lebanese Designer Creates A Fashion Collection From Fabrics Damaged In The Blast. Retrieved from https://www.the961.com/transforming-damaged-fabrics-for-funds-beirut/
Osman, N. (2020, December 7). Lebanese designer removes bag made from explosion debris after backlash. Retrieved from https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/lebanon-beirut-explosion-port-debris-bag-silo-removed
Salloukh, B. (2015). “Neoliberal Sectarianism and Associational Life”. In The politics of sectarianism in postwar Lebanon. London: Pluto Press.
Schuller, M. (2008). “Deconstructing the Disaster after the Disaster: Conceptualizing Disaster Capitalism”. In N. Gunewardena & M. Schuller (Authors), Capitalizing on catastrophe: Neoliberal strategies in disaster reconstruction. Lanham: AltaMira Press.
Informative links on the August 4 blast investigations:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shvxEAUWhKY