Everyday Life in the Spectacular City

Everyday Life in the Spectacular Cityis a groundbreaking urban ethnography that reveals how middle-class citizens and longtime residents of Dubai interact with the citys so-called superficial spaces to create meaningful social lives. Rana AlMutawa shows that inhabitants adapt themselves to top-down development projects, from big malls to megaprojects. These structures serve residents evolving social needs, transforming Dubais spectacular spaces into personally important cultural sites. These practices are significant because they expand our understanding of agency as not only subversive but also adaptive. Throughextensive fieldwork, AlMutawa, herself an Emirati native to Dubai, finds a more nuanced story of belonging. This story does not seek to uncover the real city that lies beneath the veneer of the spectacle, but rather to demonstrate that social meanings and forms of belonging take place within the spectacle itself.By offering an alternative to the discourse of authenticity and elucidating the dynamics of ambivalent belonging, AlMutawa belies stereotypes that portray Dubais developments as alienating and inherently disempowering.Everyday Life in the Spectacular Cityspeaks beyond the Middle East to a globalized phenomenon, for Dubais spectacles are unexceptional in todays changing world.