The Dubai Sandwich
This recent article from the Guardian Newspaper paints a pretty unbiased view of Dubai, telling it how it really is. While some of the information maybe slightly skewed, by and large Adam Nicolson gets it just right. The concluding paragraph gets Dubai right down to a nutshell (or sandwich)
This is the Dubai sandwich: at the bottom, cheap and exploited Asian labour; in the middle, white northern professional services, plus tourist hunger for glamour in the sun and, increasingly, a de-monopolised western market system; at the top, enormous quantities of invested oil money, combined with fearsome social and political control and a drive to establish another model of what modern Arabia might mean in the post-9/11 world. That is the intriguing question: can Dubai do what Libya, Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, or almost anywhere else in the Arab world you might like to mention, have failed to do? Is Dubai, in fact, the fulcrum of the future global trading and financial system? Is it, in embryo, what London was to the 19th century and Manhattan to the 20th? Not the modern centre of the Arab world but, more than that, the Arab centre of the modern world.
At a time where the Western perception of the Middle East is at an all time low, this article gives a realistic view that rises to the surface of the gunk that seems to be written about the region nowadays and puts articles that link the UAE with 9/11 to shame
This is the Dubai sandwich: at the bottom, cheap and exploited Asian labour; in the middle, white northern professional services, plus tourist hunger for glamour in the sun and, increasingly, a de-monopolised western market system; at the top, enormous quantities of invested oil money, combined with fearsome social and political control and a drive to establish another model of what modern Arabia might mean in the post-9/11 world. That is the intriguing question: can Dubai do what Libya, Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, or almost anywhere else in the Arab world you might like to mention, have failed to do? Is Dubai, in fact, the fulcrum of the future global trading and financial system? Is it, in embryo, what London was to the 19th century and Manhattan to the 20th? Not the modern centre of the Arab world but, more than that, the Arab centre of the modern world.
At a time where the Western perception of the Middle East is at an all time low, this article gives a realistic view that rises to the surface of the gunk that seems to be written about the region nowadays and puts articles that link the UAE with 9/11 to shame
posted by grapeshisha at 11:00 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home