Everyday Life in the Spectacular City
Regular price
€31.99
14 days return policy
Shipping & Delivery
A01=Rana AlMutawa
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Rana AlMutawa
automatic-update
built environment
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=JBSD
Category=JFSG
Category=JHMC
clothing
COP=United States
cosmopolitanism
creative class
Day to day life in Dubai
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
diversity
emiratis
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
gender
geography
Language_English
living
middle class
neighborhoods
PA=Available
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
public spaces
shopping malls
social and cultural norms
socioeconomic
softlaunch
tourists
urban development
westeners
Product details
- ISBN 9780520395060
- Weight: 499g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 09 Jan 2024
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
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.
