{"product_id":"everyday-life-in-the-spectacular-city-making-home-in-dubai-9780520395060","title":"Everyday Life in the Spectacular City: Making Home in Dubai","description":"\u003ci\u003eEveryday Life in the Spectacular City \u003c\/i\u003eis a groundbreaking urban ethnography that reveals how middle-class citizens and longtime residents of Dubai interact with the city's 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 Dubai's 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. Through extensive 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 Dubai's developments as alienating and inherently disempowering. \u003ci\u003eEveryday Life in the Spectacular City\u003c\/i\u003e speaks beyond the Middle East to a globalized phenomenon, for Dubai's spectacles are unexceptional in today's changing world. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eRana AlMutawa\u003c\/b\u003e is Assistant Professor of Social Research and Public Policy at New York University Abu Dhabi. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"University of California Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50674076254482,"sku":"9780520395060","price":32.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_456d7970-8c76-43c8-9123-8aa27e28e672.jpg?v=1733852393","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/everyday-life-in-the-spectacular-city-making-home-in-dubai-9780520395060","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}