DAFF 25A06 - Qatar, Dubai, Abu Dhabi : political sociology of culture in the principalities of the Persian Gulf

TThe role of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates in both the building and the representations of the global stage has increased and diversified since the late 1990s. From an economic one, linked to the foreign extraction of oil and gas from their territories, and the purchase of arms from the same countries, it has become more political and developed new cultural aspects. The last World Cup happened in Qatar, the last World Expo in Dubai. The first foreign branches of the Sorbonne University and the Louvre Museum were opened in Abu Dhabi. But those political entities also ended up being key political players on the global stage at the occasion of the 2011 “Arab Spring”. The ruler of Qatar was a main actor in the rise of the Muslim Brothers in Egypt and the crown prince of Abu Dhabi in their fall two years later. If this course has the description of cultural places and moments in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates as a starting point, it aims at contributing to the definition of power in those political entities and understanding their place on the global stage through the lenses of political sociology. The sessions will be structured in a way to enable the students to familiarize with the methodology of the teacher, which is the political sociology of culture.
Alexandre KAZEROUNI
Séminaire
English
None
Autumn 2024-2025
Oral participation (20 %), written reading record of one of the books mentioned in the bibliography of the course (40 %), group presentation on one of the topics proposed by the teacher at the first session (40 %).
Kazerouni Alexandre, Le Miroir des cheikhs. Musée et politique dans les principautés du golfe Persique, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 2017, 274 p. Disponible sur Cairn.
Crouzet Guillemette, Genèses du Moyen-Orient. Le golfe Persique à l'âge des impérialismes (vers 1800-vers 1914), Paris, Champ Vallon, 2015, 662 p.
Khuri Fuad I., Tribe and State in Bahrain. The Transformation of Social and Political Authority in an Arab State, Chicago, Londres, The University of Chicago Press, 1980, 289 p.
Talon Claire, Al Jazeera. Liberté d'expression et pétromonarchie, Paris, Puf, 2010, 286 p.
Crystal Jill, Oil and Politics in the Gulf. Rulers and Merchants in Kuwait and Qatar (1991), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995. 242 p.
––, Kuwait. The Transformation of an Oil State, Boulder, Oxford, Westview Press, 1992, 194 p.
Kamrava Mehran, Qatar. Small State, Big Politics, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 2015, 240 p.
*Louër Laurence, Transnational Shia politics. Religious and political networks in the Gulf, Londres, Hurst & Company, 2008, 326 p.
Marchal Roland (dir.), Dubaï. Cité globale, Paris, CNRS, 2001, 134 p.
Onley James, The Arabian Frontier of the British Raj. Merchants, Rulers, and the British in the Nineteenth-Century Gulf, Oxford, New York, Auckland, Oxford University Press, 2007, 352 p.
Rumayhi Muhammad Al-, Beyond Oil. Unity and Development in the Gulf (1983), Londres, Al Saqi Books, 1986. 157 p.
Zahlan Rosemarie, The Origins of the United Arab Emirates. A Political and Social History of the Trucial States, Londres, New York, Macmillan, 1978, 278 p.
––, The Creation of Qatar, Londres, Croom Helm, New York, Barnes and Noble, 1979, 160 p.
––, The Making of the Gulf Modern States. Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Oman (1989), Londres, Ithaca, 1998, 200 p.