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Making Cadres of the “City—Corporation”: Cultural and Identity Politics in Neoliberal Dubai

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2016

Ahmed Kanna
Ahmed Kanna*
Affiliation:
University of the Pacific
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Extract

The contributions by Bishara, Deeb and Harb, Silverstein, and Winegar explore the ways non-state actors confront nationalist state projects. If these projects are not always foregrounded, the modernist nationalist state is nevertheless always in the background in each case, inviting an examination and critique of the “political commodifications of culture.” Here, I take a different approach to the culture concept in struggles between modernizing states and their subjects. Particularly suggestive in Winegar’s piece on Egypt and Deeb and Harb’s on Lebanon is the ethico-cultural dimension of thaqafa, its injunction to the would-be muthaqqaf to self-regulate, to refine the sensibilities, and so on. As the authors point out, there is an arguably Eurocentric and statist bias when thaqafa is deployed in this way. Part of this aspect of thaqafa is an implicit condescension toward “folk” (i.e., non-state) traditions, which are represented as retrogressive.

Type
Special Section: Culture Concepts in Political Struggle
Information
Review of Middle East Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , Winter 2009 , pp. 207 - 218
Copyright
Copyright © Middle East Studies Association of North America 2009

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