Dubai Amplified

Author: Stephen J. Ramos
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317147618
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 213

Book Description
Following the British withdrawal in 1971, the Gulf Region entered a heady period of political restructuring, awash with oil money that helped fund national aspirations. Infrastructure investment became a central part of the region's nation-building initiatives and fueled strong competition. Without its neighbours' oil fields, infrastructure and territorial development became particularly vital to Dubai. This book provides a unique and detailed understanding of Dubai urbanism by demonstrating that cumulative programmatic intensification and scalar amplification of its large-scale infrastructural components guided its metropolitan growth and generated a territorial organization logic that outstripped the predictive capacity of traditional Western master planning. Dubai’s rapid series of infrastructural projects culminated in the Jebel Ali Port, Industrial Area, and Free Zone, which marked a definitive "before and after" point. The book shows how Jebel Ali also became the template for subsequent developments, Dubai World Holdings Company's international aspirations, and the agencies that manage and regulate Dubai's large-scale infrastructural projects today. Dubai Amplified highlights the cycle of typological borrowing, prototypical replication, and scalar amplification, specifically in Dubai's infrastructure projects, to best describe its general territorial development. While infrastructure is traditionally understood as the elemental "hardware" that undergirds urban development, the book concludes by arguing that the definition should be expanded in this case as more of a set of objects, networks, and services that cities can selectively borrow, replicate, and amplify.

Shipping and Development in Dubai

Author: Keith Nuttall
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0755641647
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 233

Book Description
A small town on a sandy creek half a century ago, Dubai is now the largest trading, commercial, leisure and transport entrepot in the Gulf and wider region. This book explains the reasons for the emergence of Dubai and its distinctive development trajectory, arguing that the decision, in the 1970s, to invest in infrastructure made possible by shipping containerization laid the foundations for its future expansion. The book shows that in contrast to its competitors' hydrocarbon rentier economic model, Dubai's creation and expansion of ports and airports, together with 'value-added' logistics and business-friendly enhancements, were used to out-compete regional rivals. Drawing on a range of primary and secondary sources, including interviews with logistics business-people, government records, memoirs, it fills a significant lacuna in the history of Dubai's development and emergence as a global trade hub.

Arab Cinema Travels

Author: Kay Dickinson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1838714448
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 362

Book Description
Exploring the impact of travel on Arab cinema, Kay Dickinson reveals how the cinemas of Syria, Palestine and Dubai have been shaped by the history and politics of international circulation. This compelling book offers fresh insights into film, mobility and the Middle East.

Sinews of War and Trade

Author: Laleh Khalili
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 178663483X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 251

Book Description
On the map of global trade, China is now the factory of the world. A parade of ships full of raw commodities-iron ore, coal, oil-arrive in its ports, and fleets of container ships leave with manufactured goods in all directions. The oil that fuels China's manufacturing comes primarily from the Arabian peninsula. Much of the material shipped from China are transported through the ports of Arabian peninsula, Dubai's Jabal Ali port foremost among them. China's 'maritime silk road' flanks the peninsula on all sides. Sinews of War and Trade is the story of what the making of new ports and shipping infrastructure has meant not only for the Arabian peninsula itself, but for the region and the world beyond. The book is an account of how maritime transportation is not simply an enabling companion of trade, but central to the very fabric of global capitalism. The ports that serve maritime trade, logistics, and hydrocarbon transport create racialised hierarchies of labour, engineer the lived environment, aid the accumulation of capital regionally and globally, and carry forward colonial regimes of profit, law and administration.

Security Politics in the Gulf Monarchies

Author: David B. Roberts
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231555911
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 483

Book Description
The Gulf monarchies—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates—play crucial roles in world markets and politics. Their economies, which have traditionally been driven by oil revenues, have simultaneously propelled transformative change and preserved the traditional order. Fossil fuel wealth has underwritten an implicit social contract characterized by generous welfare states, ruler-centric politics, and a heavy state presence in the economy, facilitating stability during tumultuous times. However, as the transition toward renewable energy looms, will the Gulf monarchies be able to adapt? David B. Roberts offers a definitive guide to continuity and change in the Gulf region. He explores the forces challenging and bolstering the status quo across the political, social, economic, military, and environmental dimensions of security. Roberts examines the six monarchies individually and holistically, considering their recent histories and contemporary concerns. Beneath wide-ranging changes affecting these countries, he pinpoints key dynamics and structures that have persisted over the long term. The book examines key topics such as generational change in leadership, migrant workers, female labor force participation, U.S. military influence, and the multifaceted threat of climate change. Roberts scrutinizes how a move away from the oil-centered economic model could reverberate across the social spectrum, with profound implications for security. Suitable for a range of courses and offering important new insights for experts, this book is an accessible and up-to-date overview of the politics of a key world region.

Making Space for the Gulf

Author: Arang Keshavarzian
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 150363888X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401

Book Description
The Persian Gulf has long been a contested space—an object of imperial ambitions, national antagonisms, and migratory dreams. The roots of these contestations lie in the different ways the Gulf has been defined as a region, both by those who live there and those beyond its shore. Making Space for the Gulf reveals how capitalism, empire-building, geopolitics, and urbanism have each shaped understandings of the region over the last two centuries. Here, the Gulf comes into view as a created space, encompassing dynamic social relations and competing interests. Arang Keshavarzian writes a new history of the region that places Iran, Iraq, and the Arabian Peninsula together within global processes. He connects moments more often treated as ruptures—the discovery of oil, the Iranian Revolution, the rise and decline of British empire, the emergence of American power—and crafts a narrative populated by a diverse range of people—migrants and ruling families, pearl-divers and star architects, striking taxi drivers and dethroned rulers, protectors of British India and stewards of globalized American universities. Tacking across geographic scales, Keshavarzian reveals how the Gulf has been globalized through transnational relations, regionalized as a geopolitical category, and cleaved along national divisions and social inequalities. When understood as a process, not an object, the Persian Gulf reveals much about how regions and the world have been made in modern times. Making Space for the Gulf offers a fresh understanding of this globally consequential place.

The Essential Guide to the Dubai Real Estate Market

Author: Michael Waters
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000848612
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 315

Book Description
This is the first book to fully present, analyse and interpret the Dubai real estate market. Dubai is fast becoming one of the world’s most attractive places to invest in real estate and this book examines the market from three interlinked sectors that drive its performance: occupiers, investors and developers. It examines the market’s historical growth and lays the foundations to examine future trends. The book provides a synopsis of Dubai’s market practices, economic trends and social change that impacts the value of real estate. Chapters also debate issues such as property investment, house price performance, local valuation practices, spatial planning, the economics of the city, market practices and regulation, property-led economic growth and future trends such as sustainability and digitalization. This book offers a comprehensive, in-depth and up-to-date account of the Dubai property market and presents a full assessment of the investment potential of Dubai real estate. It is a must read for students, academics and real estate professionals interested in this fascinating real estate market that has implications for both Dubai and wider GCC markets as well as the international investment market and senior professionals who come to work in the region.

The United Arab Emirates

Author: Kristian Coates Ulrichsen
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317603109
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 271

Book Description
Led by Dubai and Abu Dhabi, the UAE has become deeply embedded in the contemporary system of international power, politics, and policy-making. Only an independent state since 1971, the seven emirates that constitute the UAE represent not only the most successful Arab federal experiment but also the most durable. However, the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath underscored the continuing imbalance between Abu Dhabi and Dubai and the five northern emirates. Meanwhile, the post-2011 security crackdown revealed the acute sensitivity of officials in Abu Dhabi to social inequalities and economic disparities across the federation. The United Arab Emirates: Power, Politics, and Policymaking charts the various processes of state formation and political and economic development that have enabled the UAE to emerge as a significant regional power and major player in the post Arab Spring reordering of Middle East and North African Politics, as well as the closest partner of the US in military and security affairs in the region. It also explores the seamier underside of that growth in terms of the condition of migrant workers, recent interventions in Libya and Yemen, and, latterly, one of the highest rates of political prisoners per capita in the world. The book concludes with a discussion of the likely policy challenges that the UAE will face in coming years, especially as it moves towards its fiftieth anniversary in 2021. Providing a comprehensive and accessible assessment of the UAE, this book will be a vital resource for students and scholars of International Relations and Middle East Studies, as well as non-specialists with an interest in the United Arab Emirates and its global position.

The UAE

Author: William Gueraiche
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786731916
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 283

Book Description
William Gueraiche's work is the first scholarly study of the UAE's campaign to establish itself on the international stage and to explore the impact that its economic transformation has had on the country. Emirati society remains at core conservative and the preservation of Arab-Islamic identity remains important, yet the UAE has the highest proportion of foreigners of any country in the world. What does this mean for the identity of Emiratis living there and what are the implications for foreigners working there? The author also explores the environmental costs of the Dubai lifestyle, its 'Look East' policy and increasing volume of trade with eastern Asia, and the ways in which the UAE has sought to challenge the traditional hegemony of Saudi Arabia in the region. In a final chapter the author examines the impact of the economic depression that called the whole representation of Dubai into question.

Crack-Up Capitalism

Author: Quinn Slobodian
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
ISBN: 1250753902
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 222

Book Description
A Fortune best nonfiction book of 2023 In a revelatory dispatch from the frontier of capitalist extremism, an acclaimed historian of ideas shows how free marketeers are realizing their ultimate goal: an end to nation-states and the constraints of democracy. Look at a map of the world and you’ll see a colorful checkerboard of nation-states. But this is not where power actually resides. Over the last decade, globalization has shattered the map into different legal spaces: free ports, tax havens, special economic zones. With the new spaces, ultracapitalists have started to believe that it is possible to escape the bonds of democratic government and oversight altogether. Crack-Up Capitalism follows the most notorious radical libertarians—from Milton Friedman to Peter Thiel—around the globe as they search for the perfect space for capitalism. Historian Quinn Slobodian leads us from Hong Kong in the 1970s to South Africa in the late days of apartheid, from the neo-Confederate South to the former frontier of the American West, from the medieval City of London to the gold vaults of right-wing billionaires, and finally into the world’s oceans and war zones, charting the relentless quest for a blank slate where market competition is unfettered by democracy. A masterful work of economic and intellectual history, Crack-Up Capitalism offers both a new way of looking at the world and a new vision of coming threats. Full of rich details and provocative analysis, Crack-Up Capitalism offers an alarming view of a possible future.