Popular Culture and Political Identity in the Arab Gulf States

The editors (the director and a member of the advisory council of the London Middle East Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies, UK) present the results of an eponymous conference held in February of 2007 for the purpose of examining the diversity of culture within the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman) while investigating its sources, pressures for change, and its articulation with authority structures, especially states. Topics addressed by the ten papers include government cultural preservation efforts in the UAE and Bahrain, the nationalization of culture and Kuwait's invention of a pearl-diving heritage, the social and political elements that drive the poetry of Nimah Ismail Nawwah, sport and identity in the Gulf, place and space in the memory of UAE elders, the dynamics of liberalizing public spaces in the Gulf, and the coexistence of tradition and modernity in Gulf societies. Distributed in the US by Consortium. Annotation c2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)