The Early Bronze Age Tombs of Jebel Hafit presents fifty burial mounds excavated by Moesgaard Museum in 1961-1971 in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi in the Arabian Gulf. These excavations were the first ...archaeological investigations at all in this part of the world, and they throw light on the beginning of the Bronze Age on the Oman Peninsula. The graves represent a fundamental transformation of the relationship between humans and the environment in the region, preceding the emergence of oasis agriculture. The graves contain the first objects of copper in the region and show that the exploitation of copper from the Oman mountains had begun. The tombs of Jebel Hafit are inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage list. The publication is the result of a cooperation between the Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority and Moesgaard Museum.
The images of human trafficking are all too often reduced to media tales of helpless young women taken by heavily accented, dark-skinned captors—but the reality is a far cry from this stereotype. In ...the Middle East, Dubai has been accused of being a hotbed of trafficking. Pardis Mahdavi, however, draws a more complicated and more personal picture of this city filled with migrants. Not all migrant workers are trapped, tricked, and abused. Like anyone else, they make choices to better their lives, though the risk of ending up in bad situations is high. Legislators hoping to combat human trafficking focus heavily on women and sex work, but there is real potential for abuse of both male and female migrants in a variety of areas of employment—whether on the street, in a field, at a restaurant, or at someone's house. Gridlock explores how migrants' actual experiences in Dubai contrast with the typical discussions—and global moral panic—about human trafficking. Mahdavi powerfully contrasts migrants' own stories with interviews with U.S. policy makers, revealing the gaping disconnect between policies on human trafficking and the realities of forced labor and migration in the Persian Gulf. To work toward solving this global problem, we need to be honest about what trafficking is—and is not—and to finally get past the stereotypes about trafficked persons so we can really understand the challenges migrant workers are living through every day.
Honour Is in Contentment Lancaster, William; Lancaster, Fidelity
2011, 2010-11-30, Letnik:
v.N.F. 25
eBook
Based on interviews and field research,the authors explore the sets of ideas Arab tribespeople from Ras Al-Khaimah had about tribe and community; social and economic networks, and jural contracts for ...livelihoods and profits; their uses of their environments; the moral relations of credit, debt and labour; ruling; economic and political transformations; and ideas of regional history where conflicts were regarded as disputes over sets of ideas, and informal accounts of tribal and local histories.Published sources give a wider context to these ideas and events which show the great complexity and differing perspectives of 'life before oil' in the Gulf.William O. Lancaster and Fidelity C. Lancaster, Aberdeen University, Scotland, UK.
How are state leaders adapting their citizen-building strategies for globalization? What outcomes are they achieving, and why? Bedouins into Bourgeois investigates an ambitious state-led social ...engineering campaign in the United Arab Emirates, where leaders aimed to encourage more entrepreneurial, market-friendly, patriotic, and civic-minded citizens. Extensive ethnography - including interviews with a ruling monarch - reveals the rulers' reasoning and goals for social engineering. Through surveys and experiments, social engineering outcomes are examined, as well as the reasons for these outcomes, with surprising results. This fascinating study illustrates how social engineering strategies that use nationalism to motivate citizens can have paradoxical effects, increasing patriotism but unexpectedly discouraging or “crowding out” development-friendly mind-sets.
The contrast between Kuwait and the UAE today illustrates the vastly different possible futures facing the smaller states of the Gulf. Dubai's rulers dream of creating a truly global business center, ...a megalopolis of many millions attracting immigrants in great waves from near and far. Kuwait, meanwhile, has the most spirited and influential parliament in any of the oil-rich Gulf monarchies.
InThe Wages of Oil, Michael Herb provides a robust framework for thinking about the future of the Gulf monarchies. The Gulf has seen enormous changes in recent years, and more are to come. Herb explains the nature of the changes we are likely to see in the future. He starts by asking why Kuwait is far ahead of all other Gulf monarchies in terms of political liberalization, but behind all of them in its efforts to diversify its economy away from oil. He compares Kuwait with the United Arab Emirates, which lacks Kuwait's parliament but has moved ambitiously to diversify.
This data-rich book reflects the importance of both politics and economic development issues for decision-makers in the Gulf. Herb develops a political economy of the Gulf that ties together a variety of issues usually treated separately: Kuwait's National Assembly, Dubai's real estate boom, the paucity of citizen labor in the private sector, class divisions among citizens, the caste divide between citizens and noncitizens, and the politics of land.
Mercenaries and Missionariesexamines the relationship between rapidly diffusing forms of capitalism and Christianity in the Global South. Using more than two hundred interviews in Bangalore and ...Dubai, Brandon Vaidyanathan explains how and why global corporate professionals straddle conflicting moral orientations in the realms of work and religion. Seeking to place the spotlight on the role of religion in debates about the cultural consequences of capitalism, Vaidyanathan finds that an "apprehensive individualism" generated in global corporate workplaces is supported and sustained by a "therapeutic individualism" cultivated in evangelical-charismatic Catholicism.
Mercenaries and Missionariesuncovers a symbiotic relationship between these individualisms and shows how this relationship unfolds in two global cities-Dubai, in non-democratic UAE, which holds what is considered the world's largest Catholic parish, and Bangalore, in democratic India, where the Catholic Church, though afflicted by ethnic and religious violence, runs many of the city's elite educational institutions. Vaidyanathan concludes that global corporations and religious communities create distinctive cultures, with normative models that powerfully orient people to those cultures-the Mercenary in cutthroat workplaces, and the Missionary in churches. As a result, global corporate professionals in rapidly developing cities negotiate starkly opposing moral commitments in the realms of work and religion, which in turn shapes their civic commitment to these cities.
This book aims to tell the Abu Dhabi story in economic development, from its past dominance in oil to its economic vision for the future. More than being an exemplar of industrial restructuring and ...diversification from a resource-based to a 21st century knowledge-based economy and society, Abu Dhabi emphasises its cultural legacy and tradition as an environmental advocate for green and sustainable pathways. It has as many challenges as creative responses to show that its success is not by wealth alone.
Dubai Amplified Ramos, Stephen J.
2010, 20160429, 2012, 2016-05-06, 2010-12-01
eBook
A detailed examination of the increasingly ambitious developments and infrastructure programmes realized in Dubai since the 1970s. This book provides an invaluable understanding of Dubai urbanism, ...but by highlighting the cycle of typological borrowing, prototypical replication, and scalar amplification. It also argues that the definition of 'infrastructure' in this type of territorial development should be expanded into a set of objects, networks and services that cities can replicate and amplify.
The Trucial Coast Diaries are the secret reports written in Dubai by the Representatives of the London based group of oil companies, the Iraq Petroleum Company, known on the Trucial Coast as ...Petroleum Development (Trucial Coast), PD(TC). These men, the authors, were in a unique position to observe the social, economic and political environment of the people then living in the present day United Arab Emirates, before oil revenues led to a dramatic transformation from intense poverty to the great wealth which now permeates every aspect of this society. The diaries, dating from 1948 to 1957, are reproduced here with extensive footnotes added on each page to provide explanation and clarification for readers who may not be familiar with the people, the places and the way of life a long time ago 'on the Coast'. This publication benefits from the unique experience by the editor gained after living well over half a century in the Emirates and enjoying the confidence of so many of the people.
