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Are John Knudsen
Are John Knudsen (born July 1, 1959 in Ålesund) is a Norwegian Research Professor at the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI) in Bergen, Norway and holds a PhD in Social anthropology (2001). Knudsen is specialized in the Middle East, Lebanon in particular, and he has written widely about micro-conflicts, forced migration, displacement, refugee camps, urban refugees, Humanitarianism and Political Islam.

Biography
Knudsen gained his bachelor’s degree in social anthropology in 1988, from the University of Bergen and also studied there for his masters. At this time, he was already interested in the Middle East and South Asia, and his Master’s Thesis was “Household viability and adaptability in a North Pakistan mountain village in transition"(1992). From 1989-1998 his research was mainly on North Pakistan and his PhD dissertation (2001) “Violence and Belonging” was published in 2009 by Nias Press. In his dissertation Knudsen’s local ethnography method enabled him to illuminate the complexities of violence both on a structural level, but more innovatively, in the light of the personal experience by the men part of lethal conflicts. With the construction of this subjective and empirical method to violence, Knudsen was indeed inspiring and relevant for advancing the study of violence in the Middle East and South Asia.

Knudsen’s work is often based upon controversial themes and his approach is shaped from a critical point of view covering themes like the duplicity of humanitarianism or the hidden and complex structures within the frames of Palestinian and Syrian refugee camps in Lebanon. Throughout Knudsen’s career, he has performed long-term fieldwork both in Pakistan and Lebanon which have been carried out through books, podcasts, chapters, documentaries and journal articles. The research is funded by the Research Council of Norway (RCN), NordicResearch (NordForsk), and the EU Commission. In addition, Knudsen figures as a project leader on projects such as SuperCamp, URBAN3DP and EFFEXT and as a project member of TRAFIG, HYRES and BABELS.

Post-war Lebanon
With an interdisciplinary analysis Knudsen effectively contributes to the knowledge of a complex field, meaning the contemporary Lebanese history and society. In his book “Lebanon: After the Cedar Revolution” (2012) he charts out an overview of the political and social changes in Lebanon after the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005. Knudsen states how Lebanon can be regarded as a prisoner of its geography and history examining the on-going struggles due to the power-sharing system of government, sectarian tensions including details on Hezbollah and other political groups. Knudsen illuminates how their external linkages to for example Iran and USA influences the tensions and creates political violence. Knudsen’s detailed work on the power struggles and sectarian system indeed enables him to capture the complexities of the refugee societies within Lebanon, which is clearly seen throughout his noteworthy coverage in his further works on Syrian and Palestinian refugee communities in Lebanon.

Political Islam and Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon
A significant amount of the research of Knudsen delves into Palestinian refugee camps based in Lebanon and Political Islam in relation to these camps. In his article “Islamism in the diaspora: Palestinian refugees in Lebanon"(2005) Knudsen shed light over a hitherto undermined field, namely the research upon Islamism among Palestinian refugees dispersed in Middle Eastern countries. Knudsen outlines the sources of Islamism in this context, and he clearly illuminates the various factors that are entangled in the understanding of these structures due to religious, political, cultural, and economic aspects and governmental challenges in the host country. This theme is seen in several of Knudsen’s articles and books, where he can be regarded as an important contributor to the knowledge production of the field of refugee camps in the Middle East. Delving deeper into this, Knudsen researches how internal and external factors play a role in the creation of the bureaucracy and leadership within the camps, often in an unsustainable way affecting the identity of the Palestinian refugees and the discourses surrounding them.

Knudsen succeeds in mapping out the micro-conflicts but also challenges the prejudices about the refugees living in camps, by highlighting how the camps often become involuntary hosts for militant Islamist movements and weapons as the camps are less controlled. The establishment of Islamic groupings affects how the outside-society brands the camps as ‘islands of security’ narrating the camps as an arena beyond the Lebanese law. As Knudsen though points out, the camps might rather be labeled as ‘islands of insecurity’ as the government isolates the refugees from the rest of the host society leaving them in conflict-ridden environments facing factionalism. Knudsen problematizes how these tensions weaken the community within the Palestinian refugee camps, leaving the community without any common voice fighting for political hegemony.

Displacement
Throughout his career as a Research Professor, Knudsen captures the tensions within refugee camps facing internal challenges and external limitations. A central point in his research, is how the politics of citizenship in post-war Lebanon institutionalized the discrimination of Palestinian refugees and deprived them from rights, consequently excluding them in fear of their potential permanent settlement in Lebanon. Knudsen illustrates the legal limbo the Palestinian refugees face in Lebanon, both being unable to return to Palestine and being marginalized by their host-society deprived of civic rights. In relation to this, he shows how the lack of governmental support and interaction from the host society leaves the refugee communities vulnerable. Knudsen proposes new understandings in this regard, highlighting how the disputes in the refugee camps cannot rigidly be reflected as a Jihadist Islamic culture between refugees, but rather reflected as a lack of engagement from the host government within the camps, allowing Islamic groups to spread in a state within the state. Knudsen strongly states how Lebanon rather than ensuring protection of the refugees, search protection from the refugees, illustrating how the Lebanese Army omits entering camps but rather maintains an iron grip around it.

Expounding on the theme of political Islam, Knudsen publishes “Decade of Despair: The Contested Rebuilding the Nahr al-Bared Refugee Camp, Lebanon” (2018) covering how the Palestinian refugee camp Nahr al-Bared is destroyed by the Lebanese Army battling an Islamist group, Fatah al-Islam in 2007. The research project runs from 2007-2017 where Knudsen analyzes the laggard reconstruction of Nahr al-Bared and the political and military complexities connected to the process. He argues that the ruins in the camp gets transformed into a penalized space – something he calls an outdoor imprisonment which he compares to Loïc Wacquant’s notion of the hyperghetto. Through the documentary “Nahr el-Bared Talks Back” (2010) the victims of the destruction get to tell their inside stories and experiences, where Knudsen enables to unmute voices that have often been muted.

Lebanon’s Transitional Zones of Emplacement
In 2017 Knudsen publishes a Journal Article “Camp, Ghetto, Zinco, Slum” where he analyzes the twin processes of emplacement and encampment drawing lines to the seminal work of Giorgio Agamben. While sharing common principles with Agamben, Knudsen also widens Agamben’s theories on totalitarian camp studies, stating that camps come in many shapes and forms, and over time transforms from the influence of humanitarianism, state agencies, and the refugees of the community. In order to theorize on this transformation, Knudsen draw lines on the critical Sociology of Loïc Wacquant and Michel Agier. In doing so, Knudsen can offer a more nuanced typology on the forms of camps which extends Agier’s concept of city-camps. Describing the several decades that Palestinian camps have been existing in Lebanon, the forms of the camps and refugees have changed to become what Knudsen calls ‘transitional zones of emplacement’. With this article Knudsen challenges the static view on refugee camps, by theorizing them as transnational places changed by socio-spatial alterations leading to new urban forms. This makes the article an innovative piece where he uses his ethnographic field work gathered from 2003-2017 in relation to his historical knowledge on the changes Lebanon have gone through since 2005.

Lebanon’s ‘Non-camps’ policy
Knudsen’s study on Lebanon’s instituted ‘non-camp’ approach during the refugee crisis from Syria after the Syrian civil war, is approached with a sceptic viewpoint, as it causes unsustainable consequences reproducing the tensions between refugees and the local residents and leaves Syrian refugees in poor and rural-urban areas. Knudsen posits the new polices as the government’s inability to find a common agreement on how to handle the refugee crisis which he relates to Lebanon’s troubled history hosting huge amounts of refugees while recovering from civil war facing political division. This hybrid system affects that Syrian refugees self-settle which leaves the government with a lack of grip on the situation. Knudsen highlights how this is not only an economic burden but also a challenge to the sectarian balance in the country. His point with his case study is a call for Lebanon to re-think the nature of the statehood.

The duplicity of humanitarianism and the western response to the refugee-crisis
Knudsen’s later work explores and links together diverse areas of responses to the refugee challenges not only in the Middle East but also in the Western countries. In the article "Superleiren (SuperCamp): The Middle East as a Regional Refugee Camp" (2019)  Knudsen unfolds a historical approach to take us through the history of refugee camps from the mid 18teens-present, in order to map out how the Middle East historical have been constituted as a refugee-region. Knudsen argues that the middle east throughout time has become a permanent ‘storage space’ for refugees, a term Knudsen calls a regional refugee-camp - a ‘SuperCamp’ meaning “A bio-political region under humanitarian administration and subsidized by a financial assistance regime.” This definition raises his critical voice due to different areas of the camps concerning western refugee policies and the duplicity of humanitarianism.

Inspired by Agamben’s critical studies on refugee camps, Knudsen problematizes the disciplinary function that humanitarian aid tends to hold. He illuminates how the function of the camps historically have changed from not only being the task of saving lives, but also securing and controlling the behavior of the refugees and/or securing the isolation of the refugees from the majority community. He critically points out how organizations such as UNCHR and UNWRA often have a functional supremacy over the camps, which gives them power over the ones who they were supposed to help.

With this article, Knudsen raises a critical voice against the European strategies that keep refugees out of Europe, by paying middle eastern countries to host them, which maintains the middle east as a refugee region. Knudsen’s research indeed pushes for other solutions than the present strategies, as the SuperCamp-concept is a part of the problem and not a part of the solution of the refugee-challenges.

Articles:

 * 2020. Sheikhs and the    City:  Urban Paths of Resistance in     Sidon, Lebanon. Conflict & Society, 6(1): 34-51.
 * 2019. Emergency    Urbanism in Sabra, Beirut. Public Anthropologist, 1(2),     171-193.
 * 2019.    Superleiren (SuperCamp: The Middle East as a Regional Refugee     Camp) Babylon, in Norwegian – see CMI web.
 * 2018. Decade of    Despair: The Contested Rebuilding the Nahr al-Bared Refugee Camp, Lebanon     (2010–17), Refuge, 4(2): 135-149.
 * 2018. The Great    Escape? Converging Refugee Crises in Tyre, Lebanon. Refugee Survey     Quarterly, (1): 1–20.
 * 2017. Syria's    refugees in Lebanon: Brothers, burden and bone of contention. Lebanon     Facing the Arab Uprisings: Between Internal Challenges and External     Constraints. Daniel Meier and Rosita Di Peri. London, Palgrave     Macmillan: 135-154.
 * 2017. Campements,    abris et squats: Des zones floues où vivent les  Réfugiés syriens au     Liban. hommes & migrations 1319, September-December: 67–76.
 * 2016. Camp, ghetto,    zinco, slum: Lebanon’s transitional zones of emplacement. Humanity     Journal, 7(3): 443–457.
 * 2014. Violence et    déplacement: La crise des réfugiés Syriens au Liban. Maghreb-Machrek     218, 29-40. doi: 10.3917/machr.218.0029
 * 2005. Islamism in the diaspora: Palestinian refugees in    Lebanon. Journal of Refugee Studies 18(2): 216-234.

Books:

 * Knudsen, Are    John and Tine Gade (Eds). 2017. Civil-Military Relations in Lebanon:     Conflict, Cohesion and Confessionalism in a Divided Society. London:     Palgrave MacMillan.
 * B. Ezbidi and    Knudsen, Are John (Eds). 2014. Popular Protest in the New Middle East:     Islamism and Post-Islamist Politics. London: I.B. Tauris.
 * Knudsen, Are    John and M. Kerr, (Eds). 2012. Lebanon: After the Cedar Revolution.     London: Hurst (US edition: Oxford University Press, November 2013).
 * Knudsen, Are    John S. Hanafi, (Eds). 2011. Palestinian Refugees: Identity, Space and     Place in the Levant. London: Routledge (Arabic edition, 2010).
 * Knudsen, A.    2009. Violence and Belonging: Land, Love and Lethal Conflict in the     North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. Copenhagen: NIAS     Press.

External:
https://www.cmi.no/