Everyday Life in the Spectacular City

Making Home in Dubai

Rana AlMutawa (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

294 Seiten

2024
University of California Press (Verlag)
978-0-520-39506-0 (ISBN)

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Everyday Life in the Spectacular City is a groundbreaking urban ethnography that reveals how middle-class citizens and longtime residents of Dubai interact with the city's so-called superficial spaces to create meaningful social lives. Rana AlMutawa shows that inhabitants adapt themselves to top-down development projects, from big malls to megaprojects. These structures serve residents' evolving social needs, transforming Dubai's spectacular spaces into personally important cultural sites. These practices are significant because they expand our understanding of agency as not only subversive but also adaptive. Through extensive fieldwork, AlMutawa, herself an Emirati native to Dubai, finds a more nuanced story of belonging. This story does not seek to uncover the "real" city that lies beneath the veneer of the spectacle, but rather to demonstrate that social meanings and forms of belonging take place within the spectacle itself. By offering an alternative to the discourse of authenticity and elucidating the dynamics of ambivalent belonging, AlMutawa belies stereotypes that portray Dubai's developments as alienating and inherently disempowering. Everyday Life in the Spectacular City speaks beyond the Middle East to a globalized phenomenon, for Dubai's spectacles are unexceptional in today's changing world.

Rana AlMutawa is Assistant Professor of Social Research and Public Policy at New York University Abu Dhabi.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction
1. (In)Authenticity in Brand Dubai
2. Negotiating Belonging in Dubai’s Glitzy, Neoliberal Spaces
3. Globalization and Diversity at a Cosmopolitan Crossroads
4. An Appropriately Modern City
5. The Costs and Benefits of Safety in Sanitized Spaces
Conclusion

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	17.01.2024
Zusatzinfo	17 b-w figures
Verlagsort	Berkerley
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	499 g
Themenwelt	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie
	Naturwissenschaften ► Geowissenschaften ► Geografie / Kartografie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-10	0-520-39506-9 / 0520395069
ISBN-13	978-0-520-39506-0 / 9780520395060
Zustand	Neuware