Akram Khater’s Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender, and the Middle Class in Lebanon, 1870-1920 examines the cultural and material forces that led to the rise of a distinctive middle class from among the rural peasantry of Mount Lebanon.

Khater argues that individuals and families who had increased their wealth by working in the United States before returning to Lebanon formed the core of this class. Khater examines both the economic and cultural processes by which this class came into existence, arguing that the values they espoused did as much to set them apart as the money they possessed.

Curiously, these values often bore more relationship to the lives of the white American middle class than to the experience of Lebanese migrants in the mahjar (land of emigration). For instance, although Lebanese women’s labor as peddlers in America was instrumental in the financial construction of the Lebanese middle class, upon returning to the Mountain these same women were confined to the home on the grounds that work outside the home was beneath them and improper. The returnees also emphasized privacy and boundaries, despite the fact that many had lived in cramped communal quarters surrounded by strangers in the mahjar, a fact which exposed them to criticism from American middle class reformers and Lebanese-American periodicals.

Although Khater examines the expression of middle class values in periodicals and political discourse, he also explores the lived experience of the middle class through a discussion of the material culture that marked it. His discussion of the houses built by the returnees is especially fascinating, as it reveals the way in which the middle class manipulated space to reflect their status and to embody their notions of how the ‘modern’ middle class family should live. Large, architecturally distinctive homes with modern amenities showcased the newfound wealth of this class while simultaneously marking them as different from both the rural peasantry and the Mountain’s ‘traditional’ elites. In contrast to both peasant and elite homes of the past these homes were self-contained, obviating the need for middle class women and children to patronize public spaces in the village. This reflected and reinforced the middle class belief that children were delicate and belonged in the home, where their mothers devoted themselves unswervingly to the care of the family. The sense of ‘apartness’ engendered by these homes also served as a concrete reminder of the economic disparities between the new middle class and their peasant neighbors, heightening the class consciousness of each. The ‘central-hall house’ with its division of space within the home into specially-purposed areas (cooking, eating, living, sleeping) whose access was restricted to specific individuals (parents/children, men/women, and family/guests) also served multiple purposes. It demonstrated that a family could afford to construct such a complex home, reflected middle class notions of propriety and privacy, and disciplined those who resided within it to respect these boundaries. The interior and exterior space of the homes constructed by returnees from the mahjar reflected and reinforced their belief that the ‘modern’ middle class family was private and set apart from village society. Khater’s examination of the dynamics of space enriches his study of the Lebanese middle class by showing how debates about the ‘modernity’ shaped the lives of ordinary rural people.

I really, really enjoyed this book. It was a new take on the formation of modern Lebanon, national identity, immigration/diasporas, gender and modernity... It was interesting to read about a group of immigrants who viewed America as a stopping point on a circular journey, rather than a final destination. It was also interesting to read scholarship that suggests that adoption of ‘modern’ identities often entailed a step backward for women, whose independent interests were sacrificed in the name of middle-class respectability or for the sake of national unity. I liked how he drew on sort of unconventional sources - studies of the layout of homes and villages - to inform his examination. ( )