Bedouins into Bourgeois
Remaking Citizens for Globalization

An examination of how state-led social engineering in the United Arab Emirates is reshaping citizens for globalization and a post-petroleum future.

Calvert W. Jones (Author)

9781107175723, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 26 May 2017

262 pages, 15 b/w illus.
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.3 cm, 0.58 kg

'Bedouins into Bourgeois offers a unique window into the making of citizens in a rapidly evolving Middle East. With innovative fieldwork and a sharply conceived theoretical lens, this path-breaking book sheds light on the paradoxical effects of the efforts of the rulers of the United Arab Emirates to shape a new kind of citizen.' Marc Lynch, George Washington University, Washington DC

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.

Introduction
1. Rethinking the making of citizens
2. Seeing like a Sheikh
3. Enlightenment under autocracy
4. Symbolism, spectacle, and the shaping of the post-petroleum citizen
5. From enlightenment to entitlement: intended and unintended outcomes of social engineering
6. Explaining the paradox of the entitled patriot
7. Conclusion
Appendix A: ethnography, interviews, and focus groups
Appendix B: survey evidence.

Subject Areas: Political economy [KCP], Politics & government [JP]