Biography
Najib B Hourani is an Associate Professor of Anthropology, affiliated with the Muslim Studies Program and Global Studies in the Arts and Humanities. He holds a PhD in Comparative Politics, International Relations and Political Theory from New York University, an MA in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and an MA in Comparative Politics of Central America from Tulane University.
Professor Hourani draws upon ‘multi-sited political economy’ to explore processes of urban development and redevelopment in the Middle East, with particular attention to colonization, civil war and post-conflict reconstruction. He has written on Lebanese cities following the 1975-90 Civil War and the 2006 Summer War. Since 2019, he has pursued a Fulbright-funded project on the Syrian civil war and reconstruction. Together, the research on reconstruction in Lebanon and Syria constitute the core of a comparative manuscript, tentatively entitled Glass Towers and Heritage Trails. The book examines the tense relationship between discourses of the market development and of heritage conservation in the rebuilding of war-torn cities and societies.
More recently, he served as Co-PI with a group of MSU scholars on a project to understand the experiences of Middle Eastern and North African students, faculty and staff in the university environment.
To date he has published in a range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary journals, including Political Geography, Human Organization, Middle East Critique and Middle East Policy; and co edited a book with Dr. Edward L Muphy (History, MSU) entitled The Housing Question: Tensions, Continuities and Contingencies in the Modern City.
Dr. Hourani has served on the Editorial Board of the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) Report and, beyond the University, he serves as a Commissioner on the Commission for Middle Eastern American Affairs (State of Michigan, Dept. of Labor, Office of Global Michigan).
Works
Books
Murphy, Edward L. and Najib Hourani, eds, 2013. The Housing Question: Tensions, Continuities and Contingencies in the Modern City. Ashgate Press.
Select Articles
Hourani, Najib, 2025. “This is Home: Redirecting Reconstruction in Syria.” Middle East Cities: Conflict Catastrophe and Reconstruction. Human Organization, special section. Vol. 84, no 1.
Hourani, Najib, 2024. “Dangerous Times: War, Reconstruction and the City.” Op-Ed. Human Organization. Vol. 83, no. 3
Hourani, Najib and Safa Rawashdeh, 2023. “‘This is War:” Syria’s Reconstruction as Seen from Below.” Special Issue: Peripheries and Borderlands. Middle East Report. No. 305, Spring.
Hourani, Najib, 2015. “People or Profit? Two Post-Conflict Reconstructions in Beirut,” Human Organization. Vol. 74, no. 2, Summer, pp. 174-84.
Hourani, Najib, 2015. Capitalists in Conflict: The Lebanese Civil War Reconsidered,” Middle East Critique. Vol. 24, no. 2, Spring, pp. 1-24.
Hourani, Najib, 2014. “Urbanism and Neoliberal Order: The Development and Redevelopment of Amman,” in Hourani, Najib and Ahmed Kanna, eds., Arab Cities in the Neoliberal Moment, Journal of Urban Affairs. Special Double Issue, Vol. 36, no. 2, August, pp. 634-49.
Hourani, Najib, 2010. “Transnational Pathways and Politico-economic Power: Globalization and the Lebanese Civil War,” Geopolitics. Vol. 15, No. 3, pp. 290-311.
Select Book Chapters
Hourani, Najib, 2017. “Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Citizenship Agendas: Lessons from Beirut,” in Martijn Koster, Rivke Jaffe and Anouk De Koning, eds, Citizenship Agendas In and Beyond the Nation State. Routledge Press, pp. 64-79.
**Hourani, Najib, 2014. “International Finance and the Reconstruction of Beirut: War by Other Means?” in Daniel Bertrand Monk and Jacob Mundy, eds, The Post-Conflict Environment: Investigation and Critique. University of Michigan Press, pp. 187-218.
Hourani, Najib, 2012. “From National Utopia to Elite Enclave: “‘Economic Realities’ and Resistance in the Reconstruction of Beirut” in Gary McDonogh and Marina Peterson, eds, Global Downtowns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 136-159.
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