usage of the concept of culture and heritage in the united arab emirates – an analysis of sharjah...
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Usage of the concept of culture andheritage in the United Arab Emirates –an analysis of Sharjah heritage areaOliver James Picton aa Geography , AKIS BS , Al Khor, QatarPublished online: 02 Feb 2010.
To cite this article: Oliver James Picton (2010) Usage of the concept of culture and heritage inthe United Arab Emirates – an analysis of Sharjah heritage area, Journal of Heritage Tourism, 5:1,69-84, DOI: 10.1080/17438730903469813
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RESEARCH NOTE
Usage of the concept of culture and heritage in the United ArabEmirates – an analysis of Sharjah heritage area
Oliver James Picton�
AKIS BS, Geography, Al Khor, Qatar
(Received 9 March 2009; final version received 20 September 2009)
Under the forces of an oil-based economy and the fast paced change, nationals in theUnited Arab Emirates (UAE) and other Gulf states are becoming very keen topreserve, represent and invent a distinct ‘national’ culture and heritage. Fears of ‘loss’of identity and concerns about ‘global’ culture are powerful social forces. Heritagerevival has become a significant social, cultural and political process in the UAE, themost public sign of this being the development of ‘Heritage Villages’. This analysisexplores themes of heritage revival and the preservation, representation andconstruction of culture in the UAE with specific analysis of the Sharjah HeritageArea (SHA). It will be shown that heritage revival in the UAE is both a symbolic andpractical negation of globalization. Heritage revival is also increasingly an affirmationof the fast paced development of international business and tourism in the Emirateswhich is the focus of economic diversification. SHA will first be examined as amuseum exhibitionary complex combining museum, festival and shopping. Therepresentation, performance, negotiation and interplay of local/global and old/newculture at the SHA will be outlined in the context of transnationalism and the oil-propelled modernization.
Keywords: heritage revival; globalization; modernity; preservation; politicization ofculture; nation building/statecraft
Background
Since the discovery of oil in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the nation has experiencedmodernization and fast social change quite unique to the oil-rich Muslim societies of theGulf. Globalization and modernity have threatened what some nationals imagine to be‘authentic’ Emirati culture and heritage. Heritage revival has gained support throughoutthe national and expatriate communities in the UAE, generating symbolic meaning andideological capital (Khalaf, 2002). While the discovery of oil and associated globalizationand modernity may have given nationals a consumption-based high material quality of life,there is also discontent with globalization/Americanization under the forces of being inte-grated into what Appadurai and Breckenridge (1996, p. 23) labels global ethnoscapes, tech-noscapes, financescapes, mediascapes and ideoscapes. These fears have been translated intothe politicized government policy of heritage revival which is centred around museums,heritage villages/areas, the invention of cultural traditions, renovation of old buildings
ISSN 1743-873X print/ISSN 1747-6631 online
# 2010 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/17438730903469813
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Journal of Heritage TourismVol. 5, No. 1, February 2010, 69–84
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(the government has opted for a policy of restoration rather than preservation), support forthe arts and regular community ‘heritage’/cultural events in educational institutions. Glo-balization in the UAE has not weakened the nation-state, but has enhanced the hegemony ofthe ruling Sheikhs who, with multinationals, control oil production. Materially the UAE hasmodernized beyond recognition, but many socio-political and cultural structures have main-tained their traditional, albeit modified form. While the Sharjah Heritage Area (SHA) mayrepresent an attempt to negate the perceived threat of globalization and its associatedcultural imperialism and homogenization, it should be noted that museums themselvesare part of western philosophical tradition, and not a concept native to the non-West/UAE. The concept of the museum spread across the globe in the same flows Appaduraiand Breckenridge (1992) describes; the same flows and networks which are seen to threatenEmirati culture and heritage. Museums are cultural products of western societies, wherefetishization of things leads to an object-dominated aesthetics. A definition of culturethat promotes representational art inevitably does so at the expense of other definitions(Cruikshank, 1992).
The aims of this study are fivefold. The heritage conservation concepts used in the SHAwill be examined. The key components of the SHA and their significance will also beanalysed. The concept of culture and how it is understood in the context of the SHA willbe explored, along with the main discourses of the SHA and how these are articulated.Finally, the implications of findings for the future of heritage at the SHA, and in theregion will be more widely explored.
Methods
The following analysis is a result of systematic observations at the SHA – in its museumsand souk, during its April 2004 heritage festival and also ‘behind the scenes’ in the officesof the Directorate of Heritage and the Department of Culture and Information of the Gov-ernment of Sharjah at the SHA site. Four staffers at the SHA were interviewed usingunstructured interviews. Interviews were coded using a system of open-coding to revealcommonalities and trends in ideas which have been included in this analysis. The researchdesign was broadly ethnographic. Discussions with visitors, cultural actors and workers atthe SHA were not recorded and coded, but rather written notes taken. The focus of myresearch and observations has been the usage of the term ‘culture’ at the SHA. An under-lying question spanning all my main research questions is to examine how globalization andmodernity have shaped understandings and constructions of culture and heritage in theUAE and the need to present it to the public in museums. The intertwined relationshipsbetween globalization, modernity, the SHA and the heritage industry in the UAE will beexamined more widely. Comparative and contextual materials, in particular photos andexcerpts from museum literature, have also been synthesized into this analysis. The firstfocus of analysis will be the heritage conservation concepts used in the SHA.
The conservation concepts used in old Sharjah/SHA (after Salah-Ouf, 2000)
The following conservation concepts are used in Old Sharjah and the SHA based on adetailed survey of the area and the categories of Salah-Ouf (2000). It should be notedthat the current footprint of restored buildings in the SHA are not the same as thoseshown in historic maps.
Restoration/conservation aims to return the object/site to its original state at a givenpoint in its historic life. Bait al Naboodah and the Souk Al Arsah are good examples in
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the SHA since they were restored to their appearance in the 1950s, a point in time judged bythe directorate as the best traditional shape of the buildings. Restoration does not allow fullintegration into life, except as a museum. While Salah-Ouf groups restoration/conservationtogether, rebuilding as the case has been in the SHA is best categorized as restoration ratherthan conservation.
Replication aims to ‘correct’ mistakes of the past (Salah-Ouf, 2000). Al Hisn fort inSharjah is a good example, since it is a replica of the destroyed fort based on memoriesand photographs. Sharjah is quite unique insofar as many reconstructions are entirelydependent on personal judgement of those involved in the process. They are imaginationsof the past/heritage, not ‘authentic’, but capturing the spirit and general character. Thus is itwith these decision makers that the power of representing the past lies.
The addition of modern land use activities in the midst of SHA’s utopian image of thepast is relatively successful. Harmony with the ‘old’ with a smooth transition and transform-ation between the two is attempted.
Relocation, although not used in Sharjah, has been used in the Middle East/NorthAfrica, most notably in Upper Egypt where the Abu Simbel temples were moved toprotect them from (artificial) Nasser Lake.
Sharjah’s museums, including SHA museums are administratively part of the Govern-ment of Sharjah Department of Culture and Information and are therefore all state ownedand run. Museums are maintained by the Directorate of Heritage which consists ofthe Restoration Section and the Heritage Properties Section. The directorate worksclosely with Sharjah Commerce and Tourism Development Agency. The followingsection examines the components of the SHA and their function.
The components of Sharjah Heritage area as a museum ‘exhibitionary complex’:museum 1 festival 1 shopping
SHA as museum
Since His Highness Sheikh Sultan decided to restore the walled historic centre of Sharjahcity in 1990 and organized the directorate of heritage under the management in 1995,museums have been the dominant form of displaying (material) ‘culture’ and heritage atSHA. Originally there were seven museums and an educational centre. Since this time,eight more museums have been opened and there are ambitious plans to incorporate onenew museum to the heritage area each year with increased specialization. The nextplanned museum will trace the history of automobiles in the UAE representing a significantshift from a previous emphasis on the pre-oil heritage to ‘modern’ Emirati culture where thecar and mobility (local and global) are now central to daily life. Observations were focusedat SHA in Sharjah Heritage Museum (Bait Al Naboodah) – a museum modelled on ethno-graphic museum displays, at the Islamic museum and during the heritage days festival.Figure 1 shows a collection of coins at the Islamic museum.
SHA as festival
After many years of being involved with the American Museum of Natural history,anthropologist Boas resigned believing it was impossible to represent culture adequatelythrough the limited heritage of objects (Cruikshank, 1992). Non-material culture is nowof great concern to museums. For the first time, to celebrate World Heritage Day on 8April 2004, SHA held a three night-long festival to celebrate heritage and national
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culture from 18–20 April 2004 (see dancers in Figure 2 during the festival). Throughoutthe year, the SHA hosts small performances at times of significance, particularly on NationalDay (Al Eid al-Watani), during Eid El Fitr, Eid Al Adha and al Haj celebrations andsometimes during Dubai’s annual month-long ‘Shopping Festival’ in the winter.
At the nearby Dubai heritage village (DHV) there are usually daily performances, and‘cultural actors’ bring exhibits ‘alive’. At the SHA, the performance and cultural actors areonly used on special occasions. The April festival represents increased focus on festivityand performing arts at the SHA, suggesting that the SHA is following the footsteps ofthe DHV’s where performances by cultural actors are an integral part of its exhibition ofEmirati culture and heritage. Festivities at the SHA are bound up in educational, political,nostalgic and carnivalesque discourses and are interpreted differentially depending onfactors such as nationality, age and cultural capital. I visited the SHA during the festivalwhich centred around night performances from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Performances includeddance, music, storytelling, cookery, crafts, a wedding caravan on camel and horsebackand a visit by His Highness Sheikh Sultan, the Ruler of Sharjah. The vast majority ofvisitors who view and took part in the performances were Emirati. Events during SHA’sfestival mimic those at DHV.
Because of the significance of oral heritage in pre-oil UAE, such performances of dance,music and storytelling can justifiably be an integral part of SHA displays (Figure 3). Oralhistory reconstitutes the past, organizing perceptions about the past to be heard, if not stored(Rosaldo, 1980). While events may seem institutionalized, superficial and false to someWesterners, many Emiratis see events such as the heritage festival as providing a link to
Figure 1. Inside the museum – coin displays (photograph by author, with the kind permission of theMuseum).
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the past and a means of keeping traditions alive, as well as a source of entertainment(Khalaf, 2002). Performers perform largely for themselves, and while the drama of thedisplays appeals to foreigners, they are not the main target audience at the SHA. Thereforesuch events at the SHA should not be interpreted as superficial surface cultural revitaliza-tion driven by international tourism, although this may change in the future, and is alreadydoing so at DHV where heritage and culture are increasingly commodified and commercia-lized. Indeed, the distinction between museums and amusement parks – between thepopular and the authorative/educational – is increasingly blurring across the world.Lack of funding often means museums must mimic more popular theme parks tocompete for tourist income (Graburn, 1995). Similarly, theme parks like Disney Worldcontain museum-like representations of people and places. The Disneyfication of heritagecan be observed across the world where policies and practices create rather than preserve/conserve and where standardization and placelessness are emerging. It could be argued thatthe SHA has become a simulated image of its idealized former self; a theme park of sorts.However, across the industrialized world, it is the oldest attractions which are heritage sitesgrowing at a fast pace, and natural features are ‘culturized’.
SHA as shopping
Clearly, sale and commerce fulfil a fundamental role at SHA, epitomized by the estab-lishment of the Souk al Arsah by the directorate as a museum itself. The souk (market) isthe oldest in the UAE. Figure 4 shows the main souk courtyard area where a visitor isbeing shown Persian rugs. Items for sale are even described in the SHA promotional
Figure 2. Traditional dance in the heritage area (photograph by author).
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literature as ‘exhibits’, literally making it a museum for sale. The heritage festivalincluded several stalls selling traditional arts and crafts. All heritage museums in theUAE currently have free entry. The administrative structure of the SHA museumsdoes not express commercial interests on the level found in similar heritage villages/museums in Britain and elsewhere. This is a reflection of the capital resources the gov-ernment has available from oil revenues to subsidize support for heritage, art and culturaldisplays although events such as the heritage festival do attract sponsorship. Examiningthe items on sale in the souk, it is apparent that few are ‘Emirati’, a reflection of bothtourist tastes and the history of the souk which was used by traders from all over theGulf and South Asia. Similarly, a minority of salesmen today are Emirati. Popularitems include Persian rugs, khanjars (daggers worn by Omani and Yemeni men aspart of the traditional dress), Indian and Omani silver jewellery, sheesha pipes andabayas and dishdashas (traditional Emirati dress). The inclusion of a souk as amuseum/museum-esque attraction in itself is not unique to SHA. At Nizwa fort –one of Oman’s premier tourist attractions – the surrounding souk is an integral partof a visit to the fort and can be compared with an extensive gift shop in a Britishmuseum. However, the south side of the souk is still primarily used by locals with live-stock, fish, fruit, vegetables and household items for sale.
Figure 3. ‘Fairy Tales house’ at the heritage festival (photograph by author).
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Usage of the term ‘culture’ at SHA
Some theoretical notes on ‘culture’
Since this discussion is exploring the usage of the term culture at the SHA, it is necessary tobriefly raise some issues regarding the term ‘culture’ itself. Anthropological understandingsof culture are usually descriptive, inclusive and relativistic. Wright (1998) explores the poli-ticization of culture and distinguishes between two anthropological approaches to culture:old and new meanings. ‘Old’ meanings of culture equate ‘a culture’ with ‘a people’ in ageographical area with a ‘list’ of characteristics, whereas ‘new’ meanings emphasizeculture as a process of contestation over the power to define key concepts, includingculture itself (Wright, 1998, p. 14). ‘Culture’ is now highly politicized, a theme which iscentral to the usage of the term culture at SHA. ‘Culture’ is used by the state, corporations,development agencies, and minorities are now using culture strategically, the latter some-times via museums. Culture is therefore not a ‘thing’, but exists in relationships createdby economic, social and political forces. Culture is a source of power and a source ofdomination; it is flux and stability. Geographers continue to forge understandings of thisdialectic ‘between constant change, the ever-present flux of social relationships, and therelative permanence of reified ways of knowing, standardized “maps of meaning” and soli-dified cultural productions’ (Mitchell, 2001, p. 294). Perhaps the best way to understandculture is to examine its function, which is in its most simple sense to allow socialreproduction and integration by making and marking difference. Geertz (1993, pp. 4–5)emphasizes the interpretation of cultures in anthropology: ‘[T]he concept of cultureI espouse. . . is essentially a semiotic one. Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an
Figure 4. Selling Persian rugs in the souk (photograph by author).
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animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be thosewebs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of lawbut an interpretative one in search of meaning. It is explication I am after’. Geertz comparesanalysing cultures to literary criticism. The job of the ethnographer is:
sorting out the structures of signification. . . and determining their social ground and import. . .Doing ethnography is like trying to read (in the sense of ‘construct a reading of’) a manuscript.Once human behaviour is seen as. . . symbolic action – action which, like phonation in speech,pigment in painting, line in writing, or sonance in music, signifies the question as to whetherculture is patterned conduct or a frame of mind, or even the two somehow mixed together, losessense. The thing to ask [of actions] is what their import is. (Geertz, 1993, pp. 9–10)
Geertz argues that culture is ‘public because meaning is’. Systems of meaning are the col-lective property of a group, and when we say we do not understand the actions of peoplefrom a culture other than our own, we are acknowledging our ‘lack of familiarity withthe imaginative universe within which their acts are signs’ (Geertz, 1993, pp. 12–13).Ultimately for Geertz, culture is still bounded. However, we are to a certain extentalways ‘inauthentic’, caught between cultures in our globally interconnected worldwhere ‘difference or distinctiveness can never be located in the continuity of a cultureor tradition’ (Clifford, 1988, p. 11). Culture, however, may not directly construct differ-ences between people – differences which are created in the ‘conjunctural spaces’between cultures – even if these are cultural (Clifford, 1988). Acknowledging culture’sexistence allows humanistic and ‘action-geographers’ to support the rights of groups fight-ing to save their culture and identity under hegemonic forces, something of significance tothis discussion of heritage and cultural preservation and revival through museums in theUAE. From a geographical perspective stresses between transnational geography and ‘old’geography (as the comparative study of places) have led some to write against culture,exploring not the life-world meanings of identity and identity politics, but the appropria-tion of cultural symbols/identity markers and externalizing social manipulation perhapsneglecting cultural difference (Hylland Eriksen, 2003). As Kuper (1999, p. 247) cautions,‘it is a poor strategy to separate out a cultural sphere and treat it in its own terms . . .culture can never provide an adequate guide for living’. Culture is a contested relationship,and a relationship where context is everything (Mitchell, 2001). When identity is rep-resented by having a ‘culture’, museums clearly make sense (Clifford, 1997). However,having a culture and history is not enough; the proprietary claims by the collectivitymust be recognized by others, and museums are an ideal way of doing so (Handler,1985). The following is an exploration of the representation of culture at SHA and thecultural discourses of SHA.
Representing ‘culture’: heritage display and the cultural discourses of SHA
The cultural representations of SHA present themselves as representations of Emiraticulture and heritage. A key consideration here is who is making decisions about what islocal culture and heritage? While there is Emirati involvement, a large number ofdecision-makers and staff are non-Emiratis – mostly from other Arab countries and alsoWestern expatriates. This introduces complex geometries of power in decision-making.They are historically revived invented heritage displays set up in some cases as ‘living’displays, especially during festivals. The invention of traditions is often a result of rapidsocietal transformation that destroys the traditional social and patterns which formertraditions were designed for. The UAE is an excellent example of such a case. Invented
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cultural traditions are powerful despite arguments that they are fake and culturally inauthen-tic. Invented traditions are ‘a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitlyaccepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seeks to inculcate certain valuesand norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with thepast. In fact, where possible they normally attempt to establish continuity with a suitablehistoric past’ (Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983, p. 1). This helps create the old culture necessaryfor Anderson’s (1991) imagined community with created nationalism linked to an imaginedpast. Khalaf (2000, p. 243) examines camel racing as an example of invented culturaltraditions in the UAE: ‘The annual celebrations and activities surrounding the glorificationof the thoroughbred camel as a cultural icon are given new meaning, rhetoric, and directionfor a community reconstructing itself as a modern nation-state within shifting globalcontexts’. It is the designers, curators, cultural actors and architects at SHA who have thepower to say what is (authentic, and the reconstructions are therefore fragmented). Accord-ing to Cruikshank (1992, p. 6), entrenched oppositions between ‘self’/‘other’, ‘us’/‘them’,‘subject’/‘object’ gives power to the defining institution. SHA uses both the ‘in situ’ andthe ‘in-context’ approach to heritage display. The new Restoration Museum that documentsthe process of heritage restoration in Sharjah is an excellent example of an in-contextdisplay at SHA. It establishes a theoretical frame offering guidance, historical backgroundof excavation, collection, ownership and information on the conservation of objects whichare displayed at SHA. The in situ approach
entails metonymy and mimesis. The art of mimesis . . . places objects, or replicas of them insitu. In ‘in situ’ approaches the instillation enlarges the ethnographic object by expanding itsboundaries to include more of what was left behind, even if only by replica. In situ approachestend toward environmental and recreative displays. At their most mimetic ‘in situ’ instillationsinclude live persons, preferably actual representatives of the cultures on display. (Kirshenblatt-Gimblet, 1998, p. 20)
This approach is exemplified by cultural displays at SHA during the heritage festival. Livecultural actors – ‘displayed’ as representatives of the Emirati culture which is re-presentedat SHA – become part of the heritage area and ‘exhibits’ in their own right (see Figures 5and 6).
SHA tends to represent Sharjah’s culture and heritage as something distinct with anessence and geographical boundary. Because of this SHA exhibits in a structural function-alist fashion, representing its culture as unique and somewhat isolated, with a territory, setof institutions and beliefs, rather than as a historical process (Shelton, 1992). WhileSharjah as a city at the crossroads of Arabia, Persia, Africa and Asia is subtly celebratedat the SHA, this celebration of transnationalism is limited entirely to the pre-oil transna-tionalism. Sharjah’s development into a modern multi-ethnic city is arguably sometimesoverlooked. For example, the Souk al Arsah proclaims that the souk was a well-knownstation for a great number of commercial ships and boats coming from Persia andIndia, in addition to many Arab tribes visiting with different types of goods. However,as stated previously, most of the products sold in the souk originate from outside ofSharjah and the UAE, notably Iran, Oman, India and Pakistan. SHA quite clearly presentsthe culture and heritage of the UAE, and of the Islamic world more widely, as superior toother cultures. For example, a Government of Sharjah Tourist Brochure (2002) states that‘The [Islamic] museum exhibits a range of important Islamic artifacts and manuscriptsexpressing the supremacy of the distinct Islamic heritage’. The Islamic museum exhibitsitems from across the Islamic world. Cultural discourses of the SHA will be examined as
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nostalgic, educational and political, based on Khalaf’s (2002) exploration of culturaldiscourses of nearby DHV.
Nostalgic discourse and issues of authenticity
For Emirati visitors to the SHA, the complex potentially offers the opportunity to ‘relive’their past-evoking memories of their heritage. Performances by cultural actors at the SHAprimarily do so for themselves, not visitors, and become living signs of historical memory.The nostalgic discourse is idealistic and critical of transnationalism and modernity in theUAE, in particular the influx of transnational workers. Urry (1990) discusses how societiesremember the past and to what extend memory and heritage are hegemonic or contested. Inthe UAE, memory and nostalgia are largely hegemonic rather than contested, and arestrongly politicized. The collective consciousness of nationals is strong.
SHA is quite unique insofar as the memories it attempts to evoke are very recent inhistorical terms. The fast pace of change in the UAE after the discovery of oil meansthat many nationals alive today clearly remember a way of life entirely different fromthat Emiratis are born into today. The rapid change means the ‘past’ is in living memory,but memories are fading. The UAE’s rapid change creates the need to preserve anddisplay the past since national’s historical memory of the social self has been so quicklytransformed. The vast majority of visitors are reflexively aware that what they are seeinghas been staged. As Rojek and Urry (1997, p. 14) writes ‘[T]here is a clear understandingthat actors are performing; or that the objects on view have been placed in a simulatedenvironment or are copies or fragments of the historical record’. Schouten (1995) claims
Figure 5. Emirati artisan cum cultural actor demonstrating barasti crafts at the heritage festival(photograph by author).
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that visitors ‘are not primarily looking for scientific historical evidence. They may even beonly partly interested in historical reality as such. Visitors to historic sites are looking for anexperience, a new reality based on the tangible remains of the past. For them this is theessence of the heritage experience’. Visitors are seeking their own authentic selves andinter-subjective authenticity – ‘authenticity’ per se is arguably irrelevant. This lack ofconcern for authenticity should not be equated with postmodernism/playful ‘post-tourism’ a la Urry (1990) where delight is found in inauthenticity as all tourist experiencesare valued as equally inauthentic. Although staff and national visitors at SHA certainlybelieve in an authentic past and an authentic Emirati culture, there is arguably no suchthing as the ‘authentic past’ (nor present) since memory changes and is historically con-ditioned. Both history and memory are revisionist; both are subjective. It is a sense of nos-talgia rather than a need to ‘understand’ Emirati heritage that drives SHA. As Lowenthal(1985, p. 4) writes ‘if the past is a foreign country, nostalgia has made it the foreigncountry with the healthiest tourist trade of all’. However, for Emirati visitors to SHA, thepast is still very real and objective. The search for an authentic past has led to the museu-mification of primary and manufacturing cultures where the non-urban and non-servicesector is regarded as authentic by alienated urbanites searching for a ‘simpler life’. Suchnostalgia and searches for authenticity have overtones of ‘imperialist nostalgia’ fuelledby the pace of socio-technical change (Graburn, 1995). Rosaldo (1989) used the term‘imperialist nostalgia’ to describe a feeling of guilt/regret about destruction wrought bycolonization, and on nature by industry. Much eco-tourism in less economically developedcountries is arguably based on these impulses. The term could also be applied to the UAE,with Emiratis expressing guilt/regret for the luxuries and lifestyle changes they have
Figure 6. Folklore troupe performing al ayaala being filmed by Sharjah TV, Sharjah’s nationalArabic television station (photograph by author).
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experienced in such a short time. The daily hardships, tribal conflict and famine ofpre-oil Arabia are distant memories for most Emiratis, although tribal conflict is still aserious issue in the region. While representations of Emirati heritage and culture arehighly utopian, often avoiding the harsh realities of life before oil wealth, sites like SHAappeal to a sense of ‘imperialist nostalgia’. For some (middle-class) European/NorthAmerican visitors, the ‘manufactured authenticity’ of sites such as SHA may lead to disap-pointment. One solution to this is to search ‘back-stage’ where authenticity supposedly lies;where the ‘real’ is waiting to be discovered. In the UAE such tourists are likely to bedisappointed in their search in the UAE’s museums, towns, villages and countryside forthe ‘authentic’ experience of Arabia that may be imagined in the West.
Educational discourse
SHA has had an educational centre since its foundation. The education discourse aims toreach and inspire both Emiratis and foreigners – those living in the UAE and visitingfrom abroad – and be entertaining at the same time. While nationals at SHA are encouragedto share its symbolic wealth, foreigners are sometimes excluded as ‘others’ through SHA’ssomewhat univocal representation of Emirati heritage and articulation of the supremacy ofEmirati and Muslim culture and heritage. Clearly the educational discourse is also politi-cized. A primary aim is to educate young nationals about the radically different wayof life of their ancestors in recent history and to instil a sense of national pride. Moderntechnology is used to disseminate information to the public. The entire heritage area isnow documented using interactive multi-media. As previously discussed, SHA uses bothin-situ and in-context methods of engaging and educating the public.
Political discourse
Clifford (1997, p. 218) writes that ‘Communities or individuals who might have tradition-ally expressed their sense of identity and power by holding a festival or building a shrine orchurch [or mosque] may now (also) support a museum’. Durrans (1988, p. 152) writes that‘[I]n most developing states, local, regional, and national museums operate not just as repo-sitories for things of the past, but as instruments for building new national identities,whether the effort is genuinely mass-based and democratic or sectional and elitist’. Thisis certainly articulated at SHA. Political culture is celebrated at SHA throughout theyear, but especially during celebrations. In a very real sense SHA, along with otherEmirati heritage villages, helps to create a sense of nationhood and nationalism in thisyoung country. The political discourse of SHA is embedded in the nostalgic and educationaldiscourses. Heritage sites in the UAE, including SHA and Sharjah Cultural Centre, havebecome places where nationals can practice imagining the nation and manage their localand global identity, particularly at events such as Sharjah’s heritage days festival. Theyprovide a means through which the state can produce and appropriate heritage knowledgeand control its dissemination to the public. This is an exercise of statecraft, using heritage instate formation illustrating how ‘culture’ at SHA used politically.
Conclusions: globalizing futures and preserving difference
While the government policy of cultural Emiratization/heritage revival was the initialprimary rationale for establishing SHA and other heritage villages and museums, it isincreasingly clear that the forces of tourism and business are becoming increasingly
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powerful, illustrated by the marketing of Sharjah as a ‘cultural capital’ of the UAE and Gulfmore widely. Transnational ideologies, state formation, modernity and tourism are nowbecoming embedded in SHA’s mission to represent Emirati heritage to nationals and amulti-ethnic audience of expatriate residents and tourists. However, the negation of globa-lization and the promotion of international tourism are in many senses in direct oppositioncreating a contradiction in SHA’s aims and function. It is useful to also consider the heritageindustry in neighbouring Dubai. DHV is administered by the Department of Tourism, Com-merce and Marketing but SHA is still administratively part of Government of SharjahDepartment of Culture and Information suggesting less commidification of heritage atSHA. It is clear that DHV is more orientated to foreign visitors and tourists than SHAand has more organized events such as traditional dance, music and exhibits which are dif-ferentially attractive to visitors who have different motivations, cultural capital and under-stands of Emirati heritage. The Department of Tourism promotes Dubai as a world city oftrade, business and tourism epitomized by Dubai Shopping Festival’s slogan ‘One WorldOne Family’ which is also used by DHV. Conversely Sharjah is marketed as the UAE’s‘cultural capital’ – a place of art, ‘culture’ and heritage away from the liberalism, brash con-sumerism and modernity associated with Dubai. The UAE is promoted as a tourist destina-tion overseas which offers the juxtaposition of traditional ways of life with supermodernity– ancient desert ways of life played out with the backdrop of a skyline to compete withHong Kong and New York. The preservation and reinvention of Emirati heritage andculture – including in museums and heritage villages – is therefore an economic assetwith many tourists drawn to the UAE not only for shopping and sunshine, but also the per-ceived exoticism of Arabian society and culture. Binary oppositions bound up in neo-Orien-talist discourses, notably traditional/modern, liberal/conservative, local/global are used topromote the UAE as a tourist destination. Without the vast oil and gas reserves that neigh-bouring Abu Dhabi emirate has, Dubai and Sharjah are seeking to diversify their economiesand see tourism as a viable option. There is a clear zone of conflict between tourist andbusiness developers who see global flows and glocalism as advantageous with immenseopportunity with the local intelligentsia who see serious problems emerging in the Gulfas a result of globalization. The impact of ‘culture tourism’ is likely to increase inSharjah. This creates a shift in theory and concern from historic preservation to conserva-tion for cultural tourism. Accurate conservation, according to Salah-Ouf (2000), is not theaim of SHA, although several sources within the Directorate of Heritage contradict this.
While SHA proudly displays the heritage of the Emirate, it clearly acknowledges, albeitsometimes reluctantly, that Sharjah has been exposed to numerous cultural influences.While there is a confrontation with historical ‘inauthenticity’ and the past ‘other’,modern ‘others’ – the expatriates who have literally built the UAE and now effectivelyrun the country for their Emirati hosts – are largely excluded from hegemonic Emiratiunderstandings of their nation, particularly when imagined and represented at sites suchas SHA. However, when heritage sites like SHA host cultural performances they areoften not specifically ‘Emirati’ per se. Dance and music groups from Saudi Arabia,Oman, Bahrain and elsewhere are often employed at DHV. At DHV, entertainmentduring the Shopping Festival even includes stilt walkers and jugglers from Europe,drawing DHV increasingly into globalized carnivalesque, tourist and entertainmentdiscourses. As outlined, Emirati heritage sites are reinventing themselves as ‘exhibitionarycomplexes’ combining museums, festivity and sale. Before 1998, DHV was similar to SHAas it is now – it was simply a complex of preserved historical buildings, replicas of ‘oldDubai’ and museum exhibits – but transformed itself into a ‘living museum’ whereEmirati culture is recreated and performed by cultural actors. Sharjah’s inaugural heritage
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festival in April 2004 may represent a shift to mimic DHV’s focus on festivity, the carnival-esque and inclusion of the ‘other’. Perhaps the greatest challenge to Emirati museums is thatEmirati culture, tradition and heritage is strongly oral. Preserving and representing this longhistory of storytelling, music, dance and oral culture is complex, and SHA has neglected thisin the day-to-day displays. Increasing emphasis on performance and oral culture is needed ifthe aim to preserve non-material Emirati culture and heritage is to be achieved. An auto-mobile museum tracing the history of cars in the UAE is planned in Sharjah perhaps nearthe SHA site illustrates how modern heritage is increasingly acknowledged and celebratedin the UAE, a major shift from romantic and nostalgic conceptualizations of pre-oil Emiraticulture as ‘authentic’ and ‘good’. Both SHA and DHVare now comprised of restored build-ings and newly built museums although DHV consists mostly of newly built structuresdesigned to look like traditional Emirati constructions. While these are not pure simulacra,they show signs of simulation, particularly first order simulations where the ‘real’ isrepresented, but is obviously artificial. Second order simulations are also emerging wherereality and representation blur (Baudrillard, 1981). Hyper-reality in the context of recon-structing the old/traditional, as done at SHA and in its museums, is defined as when thereconstructed traditional object is fetishized to be better than the original (MacCannell,1992). However, MacCannell is assuming the existence of authenticity and the ‘real’.
Performance will likely become a more significant aspect of SHA’s representations ofculture. These linguistic and performative expressions of ideas compliment the physicalmanifestation of ideas in ‘things’, centring on social relationships between people andthings (Cruikshank, 1992). As Cruikshank (1992, p. 6) writes:
A further shift in analyses of both material and oral traditions gives greater place to the ongoingsocial life in which both occur – the growing attention to performance (Bauman, 1977, 1986).Increasingly, museums are becoming centres of cultural performance of indigenous music,dance and political statement, attracting audiences who may have concerns very differentfrom readers of ethnography.
As a symbolic site trying to re-present and preserve the culture and heritage of what is effec-tively a minority culture in a nation-state, comparing SHA to museums created by ethnicminorities elsewhere (for example, First Nations in North America) providing the ‘indigen-ous-’/‘native voice’ is not unjustified. What does differ is that Emiratis, along with MNCs,are undeniably economically and politically dominant in the UAE and therefore able toreinforce the symbolic and practical dominance of their culture.
It is possible that post-oil heritage and culture may one day become a new facet ofSHA’s representations. This could reduce the misleading, elitist and immobile juxtaposi-tioning of pre-/post-oil Emirati culture, old/new and local/global, the former of eachrepresenting meta-narratives of positivities and security, and the latter representing lossof identity, change and a sense of being ‘misunderstood’ by global audiences. Theseoppositions bound up in meta-narratives of loss are intertwined, something not acknowl-edged at SHA at present but increasingly articulated at DHV. In fact, culture in the UAEis increasingly hybridized; both Emirati and expatriate. Just as geographers have a tendencyto oscillate between different meta-narratives of culture, describing it in terms of homogen-ization and loss in opposition to increased diversity and invention (Clifford, 1988) so domuseums. However, academics and museum curators (both of whom are participants andobservers in the ongoing process) such as those at SHA should avoid reducing cultural rea-lities to narratives and, with narratives of emergence, observe glocalizing culture from a‘dynamic’ (geographical) perspective (Yamashita, 2003, p. 15). SHA in its exhibitionsclearly articulates ‘insides’/‘insiders’ and ‘outsides’/‘outsiders’ rather than acknowledging
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how ‘homes and abroads, community insides and outsides, fields and metropoles areincreasingly challenged by post-exotic, decolonizing trends’ (Clifford, 1997, p. 53)where we are all in many senses ‘inauthentic’ in an interconnected world, ‘caughtbetween cultures’ (Clifford, 1988, p. 11). This is particularly true in the UAE which isso deeply embedded in transnational ‘–scapes’, flows and networks. While a multi-culturalcity in terms of its ethnoscape, Sharjah is far from multi-cultural insofar as Emirati, Muslimand Arab cultures and heritage are privileged in many aspects of life including in museums.While nationals at SHA are encouraged to share its symbolic wealth at sites such as SHA ascollective owners of the cultural property on display, foreigners are sometimes excluded as‘others’. This exclusion is amplified by lack of guidance for non-nationals to understand exhi-bits and events. SHA is both celebratory and critical – celebrating Emirati culture/heritage,and critical of globalization and modernity by excluding their discourses from exhibits.However, the planned automobile museum that will trace the history of cars in the UAE isa significant shift to accommodate post-oil heritage in the UAE and may represent achange in direction as modernity is acknowledged in this Sheikhdom of change and continu-ity. As modernity is celebrated, perhaps SHA will start celebrating the ‘other’ in the UAE,celebrating tolerance and global diversity just as Khalaf (2002) claims DHV does. Thiswould be an important step towards SHA recontextualizing its position in the world order.However, any such change would probably lead to even more commercialization andcommodification of heritage at SHA. As Shelton (1992) suggests with reference to Europeanmuseums, increasing cultural awareness and multi-culturalism provide new roles forethnographic collections. SHA is a ‘contact zone’ partaking in the postmodern marketingof heritage and displays of identity and culture (Clifford, 1997, p. 218). Clifford’s (1997,p. 219) conclusions are particularly applicable to SHA and the UAE more widely:
Museums, those symbols of elitism and staid immobility, are proliferating at a remarkable rate:from new national capitals to Melanesian villages, from abandoned coal pits in Britain, toethnic neighbourhoods in global cities. Local/global contact zones, sites of identity-makingand transculturation, of containment and excess, these institutions empitomize the ambiguousfuture of ‘cultural’ difference.
In this sense SHA is preserving certain kinds of difference and offering them up for thevisual and consumptive pleasure of visitors (Mitchell, 2001) by bringing the old into thenew, ignoring how both are enmeshed in our global capitalist political economy. SHA,like so many other heritage sites aims to achieve and sustain a singular and univocalsense of place through controlling change. Further analysis of SHA and heritage revivalin the UAE could focus on issues of (cultural) sustainability.
AcknowledgementsThanks to the staff and cultural actors in Sharjah heritage area’s museums, shops and the Directorateof Heritage at the Government of Sharjah Department of Culture and Heritage for their help. Thanksalso to the American University of Sharjah at University City Sharjah for access to their library.
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