Introduction

Religion and social policy; faith and social insurance: it is, perhaps, poor analytical style to argue on the basis of simple dichotomies but throughout the fieldwork carried out for this book, I have been confronted with the extent to which each of these four concepts challenges and indeed substitutes its counterpart. Religion is indeed an axis of spontaneous social and political action in Lebanon but, also, faith in God is as important for the service provider who believes that their work will be blessed by the Almighty as it is for the service user who ultimately depends on God to protect them from misfortune or lead them to a welfare organisation. As all research participants confirmed, religion as a basis of social welfare remained a force to be reckoned with. Yet, as I subsequently argue, this situation was more a matter of supply than demand.

Although the focus of social welfare in this book is religious, what I aim to demonstrate is that religious welfare operates on a continuum where the dividing line between the secular and the religious is not so sharp. Indeed, religion itself is interpreted and used by social actors in different ways. The RWOs that took part in this research bear testimony to this situation as they are themselves a heterogeneous mix. This will raise interesting questions about how problematic religion is as a basis of social welfare. The discussion at this point addresses the second of the main questions outlined in Chapter One:

• • How does religious affiliation inform social action and shape the conceptualisation of human well-being in Lebanon and the wider Middle East?

This chapter thus seeks to identify the positions and roles of the social actors involved in this research within the moral contexts and institutional discourses that produce and sustain the phenomenon of social service provision in Lebanon. I shall refer to this task as an exploration of the philosophy of social welfare in Lebanon.