Modernity and the Museum in the Arabian Peninsula is dedicated to the recent and rapid high-profile development of museums in the Arabian Peninsula, focusing on the a number of the Arabian Peninsula states: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and theUAE. These Gulf states are dynamically involved in the establishment of museums to preserve and , represent their distinct national culture and heritage, as well as engaging in the regional and global art worlds through the construction of state-of-the-art art museums. Alongside such developments is a rich world of collection and displaying material culture in homes and private museums that is little known to the outside world. Museum Studies literature has struggled to keep pace with such developments and Modernity and the Museum in the Arabian Peninsula is the first book to coherently present: a contemporary overview of the ever-evolving landscape of museums and related heritage projects in the Arabian Peninsula a critical evaluation of the nature of these museum projects within the political and cultural conditions in the Arabian Peninsula suggestions for productive ways forward for museum developments in the Arabian Peninsula Museums Studies students and museum professionals now have a book that fills an important gap in the picture of the museum worldwide. Contextualising this study in the history and politics of the region, from a scholar working within the region, this in-depth overview and critical analysis of museums in the Arabian Peninsula stands alone as an entry into this important topic.

Museums of the Arabian Peninsula offers new insights into the history and development of museums within the region. Recognising and engaging with varied approaches to museum development and practice, the book offers in-depth critical analyses from a range of viewpoints and disciplines. Drawing on regional and international scholarship, the book provides a critical and detailed analysis of museum and heritage institutions in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Yemen. Questioning and engaging with issues related to the institutionalisation of cultural heritage, contributors provide original analyses of current practice and challenges within the region. Considering how these challenges connect to broader issues within the international context, the book offers the opportunity to examine how museums are actively produced and consumed from both the inside and the outside. This critical analysis also enables debates to emerge that question the appropriateness of existing models and methods and provide suggestions for future research and practice. Museums of the Arabian Peninsula offers fresh perspectives that reveal how Gulf museums operate from local, regional and transnational perspectives. The volume will be a key reference point for academics and students working in the fields of museum and heritage studies, anthropology, cultural studies, history, politics and Gulf and Middle East Studies.

Museum activity has, in recent years, undergone major and rapid development in the Arabian Peninsula, with the regeneration of existing museums as well as the establishment of new ones. Alongside such rapid expansion, questions are inevitably raised as to the new challenges museums face in this region and whether the museum, as a central focus of heritage preservation, also runs the risk of overshadowing local forms of heritage performance and preservation. With contributions from leading academics from a range of disciplines and heritage practitioners with first-hand experience of working in the region, this volume addresses the issues and challenges facing museums in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Yemen and the UAE. It focuses on the themes of politics, public engagement and the possibility of a new museum paradigm which might appropriately reflect the interests and culture of the region. The interdisciplinary approaches analyse museum development from both an inside and outside perspective, suggesting that museums do not follow a uniform trajectory across the region, but are embedded within each states’ socio-cultural context, individual government agendas and political realities. Including case study analysis, which brings the more marginal nations into the debates, as well as new empirical data and critical evaluation of the role of the museum in the Arabian Peninsula societies, this book adds fresh perspectives to the study of Gulf heritage and museology. It will appeal to regional and international practitioners and academics across the disciplines of museum studies, cultural studies, and anthropology as well as to anyone with an interest in the Gulf and Middle East.

This publication contributes to new understandings of how heritage operates as a global phenomenon and the transnational heritage discourses that emerge from this process. Taking such a view sees autochthonous and franchised heritage not as separate or opposing elements but as part of the same process of contemporary globalised identity-making, which contributes to the development of newly emergent cosmopolitan identities. The book critically examines the processes that are involved in the franchising of heritage and its cultural effects. It does so by examining the connections and tensions that emerge from combining autochthonous and franchised heritage in the United Arab Emirates, providing a unique window in to the process of creating hybrid heritage in non-Western contexts. It develops new ideas about how this global phenomenon works, how it might be characterised and how it influences and is itself affected by local forms of heritage. By exploring how autochthonous and franchised heritage is produced in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates it becomes clear that Western-dominated practices are often challenged and, perhaps more importantly, that new ways of understanding, producing and living with heritage are being articulated in these previously marginal locations. The book offers innovative insights into heritage as a transnational process, exploring how it operates within local, national and international identity concerns and debates. It will appeal to scholars and students interested in critical heritage studies, museums, tourism, cultural studies and Middle Eastern studies.

Heritage projects in the Arabian Peninsula are developing rapidly. Museums and heritage sites are symbols of shifting national identities, and a way of placing the Arabian Peninsula states on the international map. Global, i.e. Western, heritage standards and practices have been utilised for the rapid injection of heritage expertise in museum development and site management and for international recognition. The use of Western heritage models in the Arabian Peninsula inspires two key areas for research which this book examines: the obscuring of indigenous concepts and practices of heritage and expressions of cultural identity; and the tensions between local/community concepts of heritage and identity and the new national identities being constructed through museums and heritage sites at a state level.

By employing the innovative lenses of ‘thing theory’ and material culture studies, this collection brings together essays focused on the role played by Arabia’s things - from cultural objects to commodities to historical and ethnographic artifacts to imaginary things - in creating an Arabian identity over time. The Arabian identity that we convey here comprises both a fabulous Arabia that has haunted the European imagination for the past three hundred years and a real Arabia that has had its unique history, culture, and traditions outside the Orientalized narratives of the West. All Things Arabia aims to dispel existing stereotypes and to stimulate new thinking about an area whose patterns of trade and cosmopolitanism have pollinated the world with lasting myths, knowledge, and things of beauty. Contributors include: Ileana Baird, Marie-Claire Bakker, Joseph Donica, Holly Edwards, Yannis Hadjinicolaou, Victoria Hightower, Jennie MacDonald, Kara McKeown, Rana Al-Ogayyel, Ceyda Oskay, Chrysavgi Papagianni, James Redman, Eran Segal, Hülya Yağcıoğlu, and William Gerard Zimmerle.

Museum diplomacy has come to new prominence in the contemporary moment. Museums have increasingly global agendas, advancing diverse international partnerships across the world. Moreover, they hold the potential to advance cross-cultural education and foster mutual understanding at a moment when we are beset by global challenges. Acknowledging the troubled histories of these institutions and their contested status, Museum Diplomacy: How Cultural Institutions Shape Global Engagement recognizes the pivotal contributions of museums’ global work, while also grappling with the significant issues, questions and possibilities that these activities raise. The collection features examinations of museum diplomacy by fifteen leading scholars and museum practitioners. These texts address global case studies that speak to museum practices related to objects, collections, and people, and charting foundational concepts and ideas. Taken as a whole, the book provides contemporary examples, grounded in historic context, along with provocations and explorations of best practices, providing points for reflection along with guidance for practitioners and scholars alike. Through these wide-ranging contributions, Museum Diplomacy also contributes a new understanding of cultural diplomacy that recognizes the vital diplomatic work of curators, museum administrators, and other museum professionals, as well as how these practitioners exert their own agency in ways that may or may not align with broader government and institutional agendas. Ultimately, Museum Diplomacy calls on the sector to rethink their perceptions of cultural diplomacy and embrace an expansive understanding of the diplomatic practitioner.

This open access book, comprising thirty-nine chapters divided into social, cultural, economic, and political spheres, offers a unique opportunity to dive into the complex, dynamic, and sometimes contradictory transformation of Gulf societies in the last few decades. Whilst the Gulf region has at times been seen as impervious to this natural phenomenon of transformation—timeless, never changing, deeply rooted in its ancient tribal customs and traditions and able to blend past and present seamlessly without suffering the wrenching trauma of change—this is clearly not the case, and the region is not immune to the inevitable forces of social change. There is no doubt today that the social change sweeping the Gulf has been profound, affecting almost every aspect of life in the Gulf societies. This volume has an encyclopedic value as the chapters collectively offer multifaceted and multidisciplinary perspectives to understand social change in the Gulf region. Through these chapters, the role of economic and educational transformation, and the impact of social media, migration, and urbanization have in driving social change in the Gulf societies is examined in detail with a focus on their directions, magnitudes, and relevant policy options. It also considers how COVID-19 is affecting the lives of the people in the Gulf. This book bridges gaps in the understanding of the rapid pace of social change in the Gulf, offering practical solutions for policy interventions. It is of interest to scholars and students in Middle Eastern studies, specifically, as well as sociology, media studies, migration studies, and educational policy.

State-driven investments in art and cultural production in the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are an important part of the search for longer-term alternatives to the longer-term unsustainability of the hydrocarbon-based economic development model. They also are an element in the search for soft power and status, and intersect with the nation-building project. The long-term planned––and unplanned––effects of such cultural initiatives include a necessary opening up to a future of unexpected and often undesired cultural encounters, whether in the classroom, the art gallery, the sports stadium, or the labor office. As states driven by a desire to raise both their regional and international status, but needing to satisfy their domestic conservative constituencies, their greatest test will be their judicious negotiating of the conflicting sociocultural elements of an increasingly globalized world. This volume offers a comprehensive multi-disciplinary analysis of this complex arena and the state of art and cultural production in these Gulf societies, through original studies on identity formation and an emerging museology; the aesthetics of censorship; the question of authenticity; cultural projects as state-driven soft power efforts; the phenomenon of public art; and artistic engagements with migrant labor communities. The chapters originally published as a special issue in the Journal of Arabian Studies.

Scholars and policymakers, struggling to make sense of the ongoing chaos in the Middle East, have been focusing on the possible causes of the escalation in both inter-state and intra-state conflict. But the Arab Spring has shown the urgent need for new ways to frame difference, both practically and theoretically. Within some policy circles, at the heart of these conflicts lies a fundamental incompatibility between different ethno-linguistic and religious communities; it is held that these divisions impede any form of political resolution or social cohesion. Yet, despite this galvanized public focus on pluralism and 'minorities' within the turbulent Middle East, there has been limited scholarship exploring these tensions. Sites of Pluralism fills this significant gap, going beyond a narrow focus on minority politics to examine the larger canvas of community spheres in the Middle East. Through eight case studies from esteemed experts in law, education, history, architecture, anthropology and political science, this multi-disciplinary volume offers a critical view of the Middle East's diverse, pluralistic fabric: how it has evolved throughout history; how it influences current political, economic and social dynamics; and what possibilities it offers for the future.