City University of New York graduate student, Shea McManus, supervised by Dr. Talal Asad, will undertake social science research on local responses to the recently established Special Tribunal for Lebanon. In May 2007, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution mandating an international court to prosecute those accused in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. It will be the first such court to have a subject-matter jurisdiction framed with reference to domestic law in a case that falls under the jurisdiction of Lebanese national courts. The researcher will examine systematically how this court is interpreted in Lebanon, particularly by influential religious scholars.
The researcher will begin by conducting archival research on documents produced by about religious scholars, to delineate key religious concepts being invoked in reference to the tribunals. She then will conduct ethnographic interviews with religious scholars of different viewpoints and institutional affiliations to understand how these concepts are being interpreted and applied. She will identify the specific problems that religious scholars raise about the Tribunal; the ways they think about these issues in relation to doctrine and notions of everyday life; and how they link practices ranging from prayer and community service to political activism in relation to their interpretations of the practical aims and normative assumptions of the Tribunal. In the final phases of the proeject, she will expand her interview sample to include a wider field of clerics to test for validity of the research's initial findings.
The research is important because it will expand social science theory about local cultures and international institutions, and how that relationship comes actually comes about at the local level. The research also will contribute important information about religious differentiations in an area of the world that is important to the United States. Finally, the research will contribute to the education of a social scientist.
