Dubai: Globalization on Steroids Essay

Promotions for Dubai on CNN, BBC World, and rough other satellite channels show a shimmering skyline of glass and brace office towers with their graceful curves and aquiline shapes, suggesting a distant galaxy where altogether the unpleasantness of urban life has been airbrushed a centering. solely advertising al about always offers to a greater extent promise than acceptedity, whether the product is potato chips or a metropolis or a country. Seen through the lens of the everyday, nothing in this urban center is so absolved. Its hard to come to terms with Dubai, because thither is confusion even in the way it is described by the media. It is oft measures referred to as a Persian Gulf country (which it definitely isnt), or a urban center-state (wrong again), or a Gulf emirate (also not accurate, because Dubai, the city, is wholly cleave of Dubai, the emirate, which is an integral part of the joined Arab Emirates). But angiotensin-converting enzyme thing is clear during th e three years Ive resilientd here, it has undergone the kind of trans variantation that a city might experience once in a lifetime.Each time I leave my apartment block, I drive past shells of marginal expressions with piles of sand and rubble spilling onto the spotwalks, and Im struck by another irony of Dubai that the more the city aspires to be the premier megalopolis of the twenty-first century, the more it resembles 1945 Dresden. The pace of growth has leftover many an(prenominal) residents wondering what the urge on is. Yet everyone seems to be in a rush. On Sheikh Zayed Road, the 12 lanes linking Dubai with Abu Dhabi, the UAE capital 100 miles to the south, drivers barrel down the fast lanes at 90 miles an hour. Late on a Friday night, drivers weave in and out of the sessnonball along traffic, which results in an appalling accident rate that leaves crushed fenders and tangles of gnarled coat piled along the roadsides.Has any place on macrocosm grown as quickly or be en transformed so completely? Aerial photos from the primeval 1960s show a dusty, ramshackle trading post tuck be-tween the Persian Gulf and the Creek, Dubais inland peeway and outlet to the sea. 10 years later it was beginning to take on the look of a prosperous city a decade after that it had changed so a great deal as to be almost unrecognizable. The one-runway airstrip had been replaced by an international airport, a forest of office towers had grown up along the Creek, and residential tracts had ranch across barren expanses of desert that stretched to the horizon.Dubai today is ofttimes described as a Wild West town, and the widespread economic opportunism lends some truth to the description. Driving the expansion is neither natural resources nor old- ground industrialization yet rather the gears of a 21st-century thriftbanking, technology, trade and tourism, real estate, and media outlets. The tycoons nifty business deals in hotel restaurants and on beach-club patios are representatives of this new global economyTaiwanese bankers and Lebanese import/exporters, Russian oligarchs and Iranian property investors. But even Dubai is not immune from the vicissitudes of global economicsthe September ecumenical financial crisis drained almost $6 billion from its financial markets. In spite of its rapid growth and the influence of globalization on Dubai, a bit of the old city can quiet down be found. straits through the c everywhereed market on the Deira side of the Creek, past spice up vendors displaying their wares in 100-pound sacks then go up winding, narrow lanes past the gold, silver, and material dealers from Pakistan and Iran and the Indian merchants who speak fluent Arabic, their roots in Dubai reaching tush generations.From there it is only a short walk up to the Al-Hamadiya School, at once a museum, the first place to offer formal education in Dubai. Exhaust-spewing water taxis keep mum shuttle commuters across the Creek between the vo luminous streets of Deira and the traditional Bastakia quarter, home to the pre-oil rulers palace, a spawned market, and the settle of a former fort. On the Deira side, ships unload pallets of cargo, just as they provoke ever since Dubai performd as a convenient transit point for a lot of the trade that passed between India and Africa and the rest of the Arabian peninsula. In the neighbourhoods of Jumeirah and Umm Suqeim, quiet side streets lined with white houses topped with red tile roofs glisten in the afternoon sun, suggesting the placid tranquillity of southern calcium when southern California was tranquil and placid. Early in the morning, Indonesian housemaids sweep driveways with dried ornamentation branches, and South Asian labourers still use these primitive implements to clear the paths in the local parks. It is hard to reconcile such images with those more popularly associated with Dubai. at that place is the Royal Mirage Hotel, whose silent, soaring hallways and co urtyards deport been designed in palatial Arabian splendour. Not far away is the Madinat Jumeirah, another hotel complex and an adjoining obtain arcade, where the tinkling music of the oud is pumped into the elevators and down the narrow, serpentine corridors in an confinement to re-create the sensual mysticism of the Arabian covered market. But here, too, equal almost everywhere in Dubai, the traditional clashes with the modern, and the uneasy blend is meant to serve consumerism at the Madinat Jumeirah, res-taurants and cafs surround artificial lakes, gift boutiques cater to upmarket travellers, and live music echoes from the JamBase, one of Dubais hot spots. All of the meretriciousness has made Dubai trendy among the globetrotting business set and holidaymakers interested in a taste of the Middle Eastas long as it is indurate with a hefty dose of Club Med entirely the changing contri exception of the city is not endorsed by everyone.Among so-called locals, or Emirati nati onals, there is increase fear that their culture will eventually succumb to occidentalization and foreign influence. such(prenominal) apprehension is justified, for the demographics are not on their side. Emiratis instantaneously account for only 20 percent of the population (an official estimate, in all probability inflated) within 20 years, as more foreigners pour in from South Asia, the Far East, Russia, and Africa, the serving is ilkly to fall to the sin-gle digits.But it is hard for locals to grumble too loudly when they crap also been seduced by the global consumer ethos. After midday pray-ers on a blazing Friday afternoon, they head for the blissfully cool shopping malls, as do Indian and Filipino families and British expatriates, to scoop up the a la mode(p) in mobile phones and other electronic gadgets. Women display designer handbags over their flowing black abayas but wear blue jeans under them, and many young men complement their crinkly clean kandouras with a ba seball game cap instead of the traditional white headdress. Out in the lay lot, families cram the backs of their Range Rovers and Ford Explorers with plastic shopping bags and a calendar months groceries. The good life has created a sedentary life, and with it a nifty rise in obesity and diabetes.As though suddenly see the need to change direction, Dubai has begun making desperate attempts to preserve its past. In April 2007 the Dubai Municipality upshotd a ruling ordering the preservation of more than 2,000 buildings it considered having historical significance in the United Arab Emirates. But the breakneck development all over the city makes this a fools errand. Glossy advertisements for unbuilt real estate tracts cover the arrivals hall at the airport, fill billboards beside the highway entrance ramps, and push the give-and-take off the front pages of the local news- writings. The inside pages promise more one full-page ad shows a Venetian gondolier, against a backdrop of s ham Mediterranean chic, paddling along an artificial canal, past caf tables with Western and Asian patrons reposeful beneath palm trees. The most widely advertised development is now the Lagoons, a name that, like the Greens, Springs, Lakes, and Meadows, belies the arid land it occupies.Indeed, image more than oil (little of which ever existed in Dubai anyway) is now the citys most valuable export. But what reality might that image exploit? The city was never one of the great centres of Islamic learning or Arab culture, like Cairo or Damascus. It has always been a centre for trade, a way station for commerce. Even today it boasts no impressive mosques shopping malls are the grandest edifices, and the best-known universities are imported satellite campuses from the United States, England, and Australia. So with no great cultural legacy to celebrate, Dubai has embraced the culture of celebrity. Last February, Tiger forest was once again victorious in the Dubai Desert Classic, and R oger Federer tried (unsuccessfully) to abide his title in the Dubai Tennis Championships. A year ago George Clooney promoted his characterisation Michael Clayton at the Dubai International Film Festival, and Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have been spotted frolicking with their children on the beach of the Burj Al Arab, the sail-shaped hotel that is the citys flowing signature landmark.Dubai is often described as an Arabian Disneyland, and the characterization is not wide of the mark. Tourists, residents, and celebrities (including Michael capital of Mississippi and Rafael Nadal) have slid down the foaming cascades at the Wild Wadi water park. Across Sheikh Zayed Road, the enclosure for the indoor ski slope at the Mall of the Emirates angles into the sky like a giant airplane repair shed tipped on end, glowing with a streak of lurid garble at nightfall. To accommodate the 15 million tourists a year that the city is planning to host by 2010, another resort complex of 30 hotels and 100 cinemas was sketched out on the city planners boards, but as a sign that even Dubais aspirations have been tempered, the calculate has been put on hold. Not, however, the Mall of Arabia, which promises to surpass the West Edmonton Mall as the worlds largest shopping and entertainment complex.The most impressive romp of Dubai isnt the George Jetson architecture, or even the Burj Dubai, destined to be the tallest building in the world when completed, but the fact that tidy sum who would normally be at each others throats in their home countriesIndians and Pakistanis, Sunni and Shiite Muslims, Serbs and Bosnians, Ethiopians and Eritreansmanage to live and work together in remarkable harmony. This is also part of the legacy of Dubai, that for generations it has served as a crossroads of cultures and a transit point for people as well as goods, and so it evolved into a tolerant apathetic space where the petty feuds of other parts of the world have no place. The downside of this polyglot orderliness is a paucity of the shared concerns that can form a social consciousness and hold a society together.I dont want Hezbollah running my country, the Lebanese receptionist at a medical clinic says when I ask her thoughts on the fallout of the Israel-Lebanon war. That issue is a nonstarter for the Asian staff who share her office. She was a good-looking, beautiful woman the Pakistani security guard outside my apartment building croons, two days after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, who spent part of her political exile in Dubai. Being so far from the caf tables of Lahore or Karachi, it is probably the first chance hes had to pour out flattery for the populist leader. Dubai is just a short airplane hop from the crises in Sudan, Iraq, and Palestine, but in an odd irony, this global city remains blissfully alienated from the pressing global issues that surround it. Car bombings in capital of Iraq and street battles in Gaza seem to exist in some line of latitud e universe far from Dubais beach clubs and poolside barbecues.If talk radio is a barometer of popular sentiment, Dubai lacks social angst, or even concern about the worlds troubles. On Property Week, callers swap tips on the latest real estate investments. On another show, listeners offer advice on ways to fling off time in traffic and compare the brunch buffets and weekend lam packages offered by five-star hotel chains. One program is devoted to nuanced analysis of rugby, soccer, and cricket matches for United Kingdom and subcontinent expatriates. When the local English daily celebrated its 35th anniversary, readers praised the paper for its coverage of business, sports, and entertainment, but there was no han-k-ering for more articles on inter-national current events, some fright-ening-ly close to home. Life in Dubai is not all curious indulgence, however, for vice has arrived as an inseparable part of the global village. Dubais wickedness rate, still modest by Western standard s, has risen to a direct that would have been unknown a generation ago.Street crimes are still rare but drug seizures are not, and black markets in consumer goods have sprung up. (In a caper that Butch Cassidy would have envied, a gang of thieves hatch two stolen cars through an entrance of the upscale Wafi City Mall, smashed a jewellery store display window, and made off with the goods.) Where economic adventurism thrives, so does the worlds oldest profession. Prostitutes from China, the Philippines, Russia, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet republics hover adjacent hotel entrances, hoping to snag returning guests. To its credit, Dubai can be called a true microcosm, but its hard to believe that a coherent society can be composed of guest workers who have migrated solely for lucrative jobs and have no longterm stake in the citys future.Beneath the veneer of harmony is the disturbing sense that everyone knows his or her place. Class asserts itself in an violative caste syst em where national and ethnic identity determines whether one is offered appointment or a lease for an apartment. The citys reputation as a haven of safety and security in a difficult part of the world is upheld by affirming an old world order left by the colonial power Dubai would like to believe it has moved beyond. cordial equality is a noble ideal promoted by the government but flouted in practice, proving once again that the democratic society is still a modern notion, at war with the more widespread tendency of pitying beings to create a hierarchy. A landlord may refuse to rent apartments to bachelors, the write in code word for men from the Asian subcontinent working in Dubai who may be supporting wives and children back home.The term would never apply to an unmarried German electrical engineer or a Canadian English teacher. eightsome years, a taxi driver replies when I ask how long he has been plying the roads of Dubai, and I know this means 12 hours a day, six days a w eek. On Friday afternoons he probably goes to the closest Western Union office, like hundreds of others, to wire money back to his family in Mumbai or Peshawar. Class asserts itself also in the division between servers and the served. I still feel a little awkward when supermarket clerks address me formally and the deliveryman from Pizza Hut (Ahmad, according to his name tag) is overly grateful for a modest tip.But I remind myself that since Dubai is not a republic and few of its residents come from democratic countries, there is no way its society could resemble one. If someone had to pinpoint one spot on earth that epitomizes the most unsavoury aspects of globalization, Dubai could be Exhibit A. It is a place where the whims of a consumerist society overwhelm a simple native Bedouin culture, the predilections of the affluent deplete local climate and ecology, and the divide between rich and poor is unapologetically dictated bare.Discussion pointsRead the above account of Dubai and discuss the following questions in groups 1. To what extent can the Dubai story be regarded as the epitome of globalisation? Explain your answer. 2. In what ways can Dubai be regarded as assailable? 3. What negative aspects of the Dubai story can you identify? 4. How might these negative aspects be mitigated?