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What Does the Law Say? The Making of Legal Culture in Saudi Arabia
Abstract
During the Islamic Awakening (a?-?a?wah l-?Isl?miyyah) period, Saudi Arabia was governed by a hegemonic Islamic identity that regulated every aspect of public life, of which the cultural sphere reserved the lion’s share. It was not until the announcement of Vision2030 in 2016 that this predominant cultural identity was disrupted. Led by Mohammed Bin Salman, crown prince of Saudi Arabia and architect of the Vision, a comprehensive makeover of the economic, social, and political structure of the country has gotten underway. In the shadow of this modernizing effort, a new cultural discourse has emerged, emphasizing individual responsibility and law-abidance, and privileging specialized legal knowledge and Rule of Law rhetoric. The paper traces the development of this emerging legal culture to recent state-led efforts aimed at introducing the law as a focal marker of popular culture in order to match the institutionally oriented modernizing ambitions of the state. Instances pointing to such state intervention in the cultural sphere are ubiquitous. Chief among them is a new law curriculum for high school students, the launch of the Saudi Character Enrichment program, as well as two Ministry of Justice initiatives dedicated to promoting legal awareness in the kingdom and making various sources of legal knowledge available for public and private use. The paper argues that this unprecedented incorporation of law into the social field has given rise to a new subjectivity, one that is unbound by anti-law sentiments characteristic of the previously dominant Islamic identity. A careful discourse analysis of news articles, public debates on social media, and the ascent of a new class of lawyers that have taken the initiative in meeting the increasing public demand for specialized legal knowledge captures the cultural construction of this new subjectivity. Illuminating the discursive continuity between the shifting institutional and cultural attitudes toward the law in recent years offers a holistic account of change in Saudi Arabia and allows a more dynamic understanding of state-society relations.
Discipline
Sociology
Geographic Area
Saudi Arabia
Sub Area
Cultural Studies