Michael Gilsenan looks at the relations between different forms of power, violence, and hierarchy in Akkar, the northernmost province of Lebanon, during the 1970s. Often regarded as backward and feudal, in reality this area was controlled primarily by groups with important roles in government and business in Beirut. The most feudal land-owners had often done most to introduce capitalist methods to their estates, and backwardness was a condition produced by this form of political and social control. Gilsenan uses material from his stay in Akkar and a variety of historical sources to analyse the practices that guaranteed the rule of the large landowners. He traces shifts in power, and he examines the importance of narratives and rhetoric in constituting social honour, collective bio-graphy, and shared memory/forgetting. His lively account shows how changes in hierarchy were expressed in ironic commentary regarding idealised masculinity and violence, how subversive laughter and humour counterpointed the heroic ethic of challenge and revenge, and how peasant narratives both countered and reproduced the values of hierarchy.