Dubai: Gilded Cage
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Review
`...scratches the glossy surface of fantastical construction projects and conspicuous consumption to examine the paradoxes and contradictions of Dubai society.' --Hugh Tomlinson, The Times, 27th March 2010
`A probing insight into the transience of expatriate life in Dubai...This is an interesting read.' --Traveller Magazine, 1st March 2010
`Ali argues that Dubai is a social experiment...in this fascinating study'
--PD Smith, The Guardian, 10th April 2010
`...very useful, both for scholars working on the topic and for anyone with an intention to travel to the region.'
--Marta Saldana Martin, International Affairs, July 2010
`A probing insight into the transience of expatriate life in Dubai...This is an interesting read.' --Traveller Magazine, 1st March 2010
`Ali argues that Dubai is a social experiment...in this fascinating study'
--PD Smith, The Guardian, 10th April 2010
`...very useful, both for scholars working on the topic and for anyone with an intention to travel to the region.'
--Marta Saldana Martin, International Affairs, July 2010
Product Description
In less than two decades, Dubai has transformed itself from an obscure Gulf emirate into a global centre for business, tourism, and luxury living. It is a fascinating case study in light-speed urban development, hyperconsumerism, massive immigration, and vertiginous inequality. Its rulers have succeeded in making Dubai into a worldwide brand, publicizing its astonishing hotels and leisure opportunities while at the same time successfully downplaying its complex policies towards guest workers and suppression of dissent. In this enormously readable book, Syed Ali delves beneath the dazzling surface to analyze how - and at what cost - Dubai has achieved such success. Ali brings alive a society rigidly divided between expatriate Westerners living self-indulgent lifestyles on short-term work visas, native Emiratis who are largely passive observers and beneficiaries of what Dubai has become, and workers from the developing world who provide the manual labour and domestic service needed to keep the emirate running, often at great personal cost.
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4 reviews
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
What's so great about permanency?
2 Mar 2011
Format:Paperback
If you live in the UAE or in the Gulf then much of what Syed Ali discusses is not new, but depressingly familiar - exploitation of labor from the developing world, the pursuit of money and affluent lifestyles by the world's professional class, the ennui and slothfulness of the indigenous population, and astride it all the benevolent dictatorship of the Sheikhs. If you know little about this part of the world, Gilded Cage would be a good introduction. Despite being written by a professional sociologist, it is refreshingly free of jargon and pretension (quite unlike Dubai Dreams, a book of similar scope, in which the author - though not an academic - tries far too hard to be witty and meaningful).
Conceived as an academic investigation into the lives of expats born and raised in Dubai, Gilded Cage eventually grew to cover a whole range of people and issues, from labor and capital, to prostitutes and the pampered Emiratis. The book is largely an extended magazine feature written using much the same methods employed by journalists - reading lots of books and articles about the subject, visits to the scene, and interviews with the locals. Besides the police who showed up at his hotel to warn him off his research and escort him from the country, it seems Syed didn't interview widely among Emiratis or speak with anyone in government. Consequently this corner of his mural is lacking in color and depth. There is also no discussion of religion and some of its peculiar manifestations. (Almost all Sunni imams are employees of the state and are, just like the maids and construction workers, foreigners on temporary work visas.)
To his surprise, Syed discovers impermanency not as bad as he imagined. In fact, he finds that among those who grew up in Dubai, the permanently impermanent, an acceptance of their condition sets them free and confers on them a "worldly attitude." For them there is one less thing in life over which to suffer, the loss of place. "[They] seem to be `free' of the weight of staying." Perhaps someday we can look back on this group as some of our first truly global citizens, people liberated from the tyranny of home, with no place to go back to, only places to move on to.
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Conceived as an academic investigation into the lives of expats born and raised in Dubai, Gilded Cage eventually grew to cover a whole range of people and issues, from labor and capital, to prostitutes and the pampered Emiratis. The book is largely an extended magazine feature written using much the same methods employed by journalists - reading lots of books and articles about the subject, visits to the scene, and interviews with the locals. Besides the police who showed up at his hotel to warn him off his research and escort him from the country, it seems Syed didn't interview widely among Emiratis or speak with anyone in government. Consequently this corner of his mural is lacking in color and depth. There is also no discussion of religion and some of its peculiar manifestations. (Almost all Sunni imams are employees of the state and are, just like the maids and construction workers, foreigners on temporary work visas.)
To his surprise, Syed discovers impermanency not as bad as he imagined. In fact, he finds that among those who grew up in Dubai, the permanently impermanent, an acceptance of their condition sets them free and confers on them a "worldly attitude." For them there is one less thing in life over which to suffer, the loss of place. "[They] seem to be `free' of the weight of staying." Perhaps someday we can look back on this group as some of our first truly global citizens, people liberated from the tyranny of home, with no place to go back to, only places to move on to.
#
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
A Great Book, Very Readable.
10 May 2010
Format:Paperback
In writing Dubai, Gilded Cage Syed Ali covers subjects that could be dry and, for lack of a better word, boring. He has however taken this book and made readable, interesting and enjoyable without "dumbing it down." The subject matter is covered in depth and I enjoyed the book thoroughly. I think this book is much like Marketplace on NPR. With many business reports, unless you are a business professional many people do not understand and may be bored by the content. Marketplace is the one business report that I listen to, understand and enjoy. The book does for Dubai what Marketplace does for business, makes it enjoyable, highly interesting and understandable without having to be a sociologist. This is a must read.
Dan
Dan
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Enlightening
15 May 2011
Format:Kindle Edition
At the end of a few-day business trip to Dubai I downloaded this book o learn more about this place I'd been. Enlightening.
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