Major histocompatibility class I antigens in the Lebanese population

Except for two reports on Lebanese immigrants, there have been no studies on the major histocompatibility [MHC] antigens in the Lebanese population. We describe the frequency and distribution of MHC class I antigens present in the A, B and C loci based on data obtained from 200 healthy unrelated individuals from different parts of Lebanon. The highest gene frequencies were as follows:A2 [24.8%], B35 [17.9%] and Cw4 [18.6%], making this haplotype the commonest. Comparison of genetic distances revealed a pattern closer to the Caucasoid population than to the Mongoloid, Oriental or Black populations

Identity Crisis in Arab Diasporic Novel: A Case Study of Lebanese American Novel

Very little has been written on cultural identity and national identity in contemporary Lebanese novel in the diaspora. This study explores how border identity is presented in Rabih Alameddine's Koolaids (1998), I, the Divine (2001), and The Angel of History (2016), three novels about the failure of the Lebanese immigrants to establish their cultural identity in the diaspora. It also gives a bird's-eye view of the myriad problems encountered by the immigrants while trying to build their cultural identity. Rabih Alameddine, a Lebanese American writer whose early literary pursuits focus on melting in the new homeland, represents the impossibility of redefinition and introduces the immigrants' remarkable preoccupation with the quest for national identity and nationhood. He mixes melancholic and ridiculous moments to represent the quest for cultural identity in order to subvert the neo-orientalist discourse which is based on the East/West dichotomy. Moreover, the use of multiple settings and narrators in each novel is also a common theme that explains the physical and psychological effects of the Lebanese civil war and the Lebanese ethnic categories in the diaspora.

Nós, o outro e os outros: a constituição multiétnica capixaba no caldeirão cultural do Espírito Santo, Brasil

This paper aims to analyse the multiethnic constitution of Espírito Santo starting from the report book Encontro das Raças, published in 1997 by the journalist Rogério Medeiros. The book presents interviews with narratives of European immigrants and descendants – Pomeranians, Dutch, Italians, Polish, German, Tyrolean, and Swiss. During its historical, socio-cultural and demographic constitution, Espírito Santo also counted with the participation of Syrian and Lebanese immigrants – in the 19th and early 20th centuries – and Asians, as well as national migrants. Medeiros also discusses and presents narratives of the descendants of Africans, Indians and Portuguese who constitute the first matrix of miscegenation of the capixaba people. The purpose of the present study is to reflect on this relationship that Medeiros calls the “Meeting of the Races” from a perspective of the sense of belonging and power relations established between these various ethnic groups settled in the state from 1847, when the government of the province sought alternatives to transform Espírito Santo economically and initiated, through political actions, the process of installing European immigrants in its lands.

A Time for All Things

Born in 1908 in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Michael DeBakey is the eldest of six children of Lebanese immigrants. He enjoys conspicuous academic success as a youth and then medical school, displaying intelligence and originality. DeBakey comes under the tutelage of surgery professor Alton Ochsner. He also spends a year training in Europe. Debakey and Ochsner publish important research papers. In World War Two DeBakey is assigned to the Office of the Army Surgeon General, where he excels in administration, rising to the rank of Colonel. He serves beyond the war’s end, contributing to the foundation of postwar federal medical research and veterans’ care. In 1948 he becomes Chair of Surgery at Baylor University medical school in Houston. The department focuses clinical and research efforts on vascular diseases, and leads a revolution in the surgical approach to these problems. DeBakey’s own family suffers from his devotion to his work. In the 1960s DeBakey’s fame grows. His lab pursues an artificial heart. Colleague Denton Cooley implants the first artificial heart with a device taken from DeBakey’s lab, and a forty-year rift between these two giants ensues. DeBakey becomes President, then Chancellor of the Baylor medical school. After the death of his first wife, he remarries in the 1970s. His fame and influence are worldwide. DeBakey operates on the Shah of Iran, and is consulted on the heart surgery of Boris Yeltsin. He is awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2008, and dies shortly afterward at age 99, a universally-admired legend.

Emotional Intelligence and Immigrant Entrepreneurship Development: A Correlation Analysis of the Lebanese Family Entrepreneurships in Nigeria

The arrival of the first Lebanese immigrant in Lagos in 1890 has been followed by increase in the number of Lebanese immigrants in Nigeria. The immigrants get attached to their families on arrival. This is owing to the instrumental, financial, psychological and emotional supports they receive from their families to enable them assimilate into the Nigerian community. In spite of their contributions to the economic and infrastructural development of Nigeria through the family-owned immigrant entrepreneurships they have developed, no study seems to have been conducted in this area. Consequently, based on data from selected Lebanese family-owned entrepreneurships, this study examines the relationship between emotional intelligence and immigrant entrepreneurship development. The study adopted mail questionnaire survey design. The generated data through questionnaire were analyzed using Pearson’s correlation. It was found that emotional intelligence is significantly related to the dimensions of immigrant entrepreneurship development, that is, entrepreneurial intention, entrepreneurial capabilities, entrepreneurial networking and entrepreneurial success. Based on the results, the study recommends exposing new immigrants and immigrant entrepreneurs to trainings and programs that will improve their emotional intelligence, entrepreneurial behaviour, capabilities, networking attitude and success mindset. The ultimate effect of these trainings and programs is increase in the development of immigrant entrepreneurships.

Some courtesy formulas used by Syrian-Lebanese immigrants in Argentina

The use of formulaic phrases has attracted considerable interest in cultural studies, but little attention has been paid to sociolinguistic issues. This paper is a study of the linguistic courtesy expressions of Syrian-Lebanese, second-generation immigrants in Argentina. Based on secret recordings, and using an interpretive approach to transfer, this research explores the relationship between courtesy formulas in Arabic and their equivalent in Spanish. Formulas containing mainly somatic elements (hands and eyes) are selected to narrow the range of meanings of the targeted expressions. The approach to transfer is interpretive; the findings show how the formulas’ structures are tailored to the requirements of different languages, and how different formulas are creatively employed to display and negotiate identities that are related to the status of immigrants in Argentina and their discursive spaces.

‘Better than anywhere else’: Lebanese settlement in Queensland, 1880–1947

Until the 1960s, the settlement of Lebanese migrants in Queensland was characteristically regional, with the immigrants dispersed widely throughout the state. Immigrant settlement involves a dynamic and complex interaction between the immigrants and the social, political and economic structures of the receiving society. An analysis of the settlement experience of Lebanese immigrants in Queensland from the 1880s reveals the interplay of several factors, which resulted in a distinct pattern of settlement. Fundamental to this experience was the influence of racially exclusive state and Commonwealth legislation and immigration policies. Additionally, Queensland's particular geography and style of development, in conjunction with the predominance of self-employment and the segregation of Lebanese in petty commercial occupations such as hawking and shopkeeping, significantly determined the immigrants’ geographic settlement pattern. Finally, a less obvious but nonetheless important factor was the determination of the immigrants to settle permanently in Queensland. Whatever the reasons, this dispersed settlement pattern significantly shaped the lives of the immigrants and their descendants.

From Oysters to Olives at the Olympia Café

Greek cafés were a feature of Australian cities and country towns from the 1910s to the 1960s. Anglophile Australians, who knew the Greeks as dagos, were possessed of culinary imaginations that did not countenance the likes of olive oil, garlic, or lemon juice. As a result, Greek cafés catered to Australian tastes and became the social hubs of their communities. After establishing the diverse and evolving nature of food offered in Greek shops since their origins in the late nineteenth century – oyster saloons, cafés, fish shops, fruit shops, milk bars, snack bars, confectioneries – this article uses the concepts of “disgust” and “hunger” to offer new insights about food and identity in Australia’s Greek community and in the wider Australian culinary landscape. In particular, it applies Ghassan Hage’s work on nostalgia among Lebanese immigrants to the situation of Greek proprietors and reveals how memories of a lost homeland allowed café families to feel “at home” in Australia. In a land of “meat-n-three-veg,” a moussaka recipe the family had known for generations offered both a sense of identity and the comfort of familiarity, and Greek cafés, because they represented hope and opportunity, were familial spaces where feelings of nostalgia were affective building blocks with which Greeks engaged in homebuilding in a new land. And although their cafés did not serve Greek food, Greek proprietors and their families did eventually play a role in introducing the Australian palette to Mediterranean foods and foodways.