MESA Banner
"Turn Sand into Gold" Producing the Regional Market-Space of Aqaba
Abstract
Recent developments in world affairs have led to increased pressures on Arab countries to pursue neoliberal modalities of development and government, challenging the integrity of seemingly given spatial scales of political organization. As a result political and economic life is redesigned to reflect ‘market’ discipline, and the ability to govern is ‘transferred’ from the state to new regulatory territorial arrangements within the global market space. This neoliberal developmentalism had a profound impact on the spatial fabric of Jordan, creating a range of “New State Spaces” that fit the dominant contours of supply-side economics. These socio-spatial reconfigurations remain understudied in the MENA-region. Since King Abdullah II took power in 1999, several entrepreneurial strategies are being pursued in Jordan. The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has been reformed to a central hub for transnational capital. This article explores these new governance arrangements of regulation and accumulation in the Aqaba Special Economic Zone (ASEZ). An in-depth analysis of different state spatial projects in the regional territory of Aqaba, illustrates the specific dynamics of social relations and ‘political’ agencies implicated in the production of ASEZ. The arena of various alliances and social struggles between a range of state and non-state actors, embodies and constitutes the production of “actually existing neoliberal spaces” that connect the ‘local’ territory of Aqaba to the global market. We explore ‘The Aqaba Masterplan’ that functions as a roadmap towards neoliberal futures, inscribing large urban regeneration projects and market strategies into the city spatial fabric. In contrast new governmental arrangements are set up between state-actors, NGO’s and private agencies for poverty relief such as microcredit schemes. A massive relocation program in the informal neighbourhood of Shallalah is set up towards substitute low income housing for these poor in the borderlands of Aqaba. Based upon extensive fieldwork through in-depth interviews with key-actors, this paper treats the uneven spatial development and the socio-spatial effects of this neoliberal reform in Aqaba (Jordan).
Discipline
Political Science
Geographic Area
Jordan
Sub Area
None