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Saturday, 29 June 2024

‘Dubai’s so-called superficial spaces are personal cultural sites:’ says Dr Rana AlMutawa

Dr Rana AlMutawa Emirati professor and Researcher Dr Rana AlMutawa grew up in Dubai in the nineties. A significant chunk of her childhood memories centred around visits with family and friends to shopping malls. As someone who saw the city evolve int…
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'Dubai's so-called superficial spaces are personal cultural sites:' says Dr Rana AlMutawa

By Tessy Koshy on 29 Jun 2024

Dr Rana AlMutawa

Emirati professor and Researcher Dr Rana AlMutawa grew up in Dubai in the nineties. A significant chunk of her childhood memories centred around visits with family and friends to shopping malls. As someone who saw the city evolve into a megapolis, Rana's own experiences also meshed with the new developments mushrooming rapidly around her. Her book Everyday Life in the Spectacular City: Making Home in Dubai, is therefore an ode to the city's urban ethnography, seen through the lens of how middle-class citizens and long-time residents interact with spaces and create their own social ecosystems. In particular the book attempts to question the labels of Dubai's shopping malls as 'superficial' and 'glitzy spaces', not considered part of the cultural narrative. A selection of photographs from the book are also on display in an exhibition at the Kutubna Cultural Center in Dubai till July 4th, 2024.

Everyday Life in the Spectacular City Book

"The book was borne out of many frustrations --, especially the Orientalist narratives about places like Dubai" points out Rana, "I was also unhappy with the practice of social distinction that manifested in conversations about Dubai -- wherein some individuals showed their disdain towards the city as a way to present themselves as more socially and politically aware." An assistant professor of social research at the New York University Abu Dhabi, Rana's work focusses on urban ethnography, social hierarchy and belonging. Her book explores discourses of authenticity, belonging/exclusion and agency.

Image from the exhibition at Kutubna Cultural Center

At the Kutubna Cultural Center a striking image from the exhibition based on the book, pairs two different localities of Dubai. On one side is a pic of old Dubai with the creek and abras and the other has a view of Burj Khalifa seen through a cluster of high rises with the caption that sums Rana's views, as it says. -- 'Many people view the older and lower income part of Dubai as the real and authentic Dubai. Meanwhile the other side depicts the glitzy Dubai which some people label as fake and soulless.' Yet another image captures a group of Emiratis huddled together around a pavement, in a new Dubai locality and a coffee shop in a mall teeming with many Emiratis and local visitors with a caption that reads 'Malls and new developments that some people consider superficial are important social and cultural hubs, just as important as the historical part of the city.  As the city evolves rapidly, people don't simply feel oppressed or resist these changes. Instead, they adapt to these developments, for example, instead of the traditional neighbourhood gathering, some men use places like coffee shops similar to a majlis'.

Instead of the traditional majlis, local residents captured in the exhibition, meet around new developments in Dubai

She also looks at who gets included and marginalized from these shopping malls and new developments, while also arguing that these spots should not be dismissed as "non-places," neatly separated from the everyday lives of inhabitants. "I have seen how Emirati interlocutors re-appropriate these places as significant cultural sites; create a sense of belonging within them; and negotiate, perform, and challenge social norms in these spaces—while also demonstrating that belonging is often built on exclusions based on race, class, and a variety of other factors," she says. The coloured abaya, says Rana, was considered a taboo for women, a few years ago, but it is today widely accepted, because of being worn in places such as malls.

Through her book and the exhibited images Rana questions the narrative about the way inhabitants of so-called illiberal cities are depicted, as alienated victims seeing their cities change without their consent. While researching for her book, she interviewed over a hundred Emiratis and non-Emiratis who grew up in Dubai. Her findings revealed that Dubai residents have found meaning and a sense of belonging in places considered superficial or inauthentic, turning them into important cultural sites, where people go to meet others from the community or hold fond childhood memories. "Inhabitants may feel alienated by the rapid changes in the city, but that is not their only relationship with the place," says Rana. She cites the instance where some of her interviewees critiqued the new developments in the city as being too western and too foreign, saying they feel they do not belong in their own country. But at other times they go there because they like feeling anonymous. "People have very complex relationships towards the city that cannot be understood simply through supportive/oppressive/resistance narratives. Rather inhabitants find meaning even in places they may not favour, that in itself, a form of agency," says Rana.

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