This paper argues that social pressures caused by rapid economic and demographic growth have led all the nations of the GCC to transform radically their 21st century higher educational systems. These significant changes, however, are not uniform across the region, and thus have sharply different implications for the region’s cultures and societies. The most ambitious efforts have attempted to cluster higher educational institutions in one area or “city”. This paper argues that these new initiatives have different effects on the structure of city life, the role of the state, and work relations between and amongst the national and expatriate professional classes. “The Emergence of Higher Educational” examines two different higher educational clusters that have been established over the past two decades. The two are Dubai’s Knowledge Village and International Academic City and Qatar’s Education City. The different educational models embodied in these “cities” are substantial. The Dubai case represents a neoliberal approach to higher educational reform that allows the market to determine which educational institutions will be successful. Branch campuses are encouraged to establish small and large degree programs, but the state itself makes only a small commitment to the viability of any particular institution. The Qatar model, like the Dubai approach, emphasizes the importation of branch campuses. On the other hand, the goal of the government is to ensure that only prestigious academic programs are established by well-respected Western universities. Rather than leaving educational restructuring to the market, the Qatar Foundation heavily subsidizes this project and links this effort to the creation of a dynamic government-directed “knowledge economy”. This paper hypothesizes that these different approaches create distinct roles for the academic city in the larger Gulf metropolis. Dubai’s Knowledge Village and International Academic City have largely merged into the rest of the city as two free trade zones amongst many. The Qatar approach has more aggressively attempted to construct a larger cluster of academic and research projects that are restructuring the city of Doha itself. On a political level: educational reform plays a much larger role within the state in Qatar than it does in Dubai. On a social level: a greater effort has been made by Qatari authorities to integrate nationals into these educational and economic projects, while in Dubai, nationals continue to rely on underfunded federal institutions for university and college education.

Emirati families have endured more pressure due to globalization than their counterparts in any other part of the world. In no other country has the proportion of foreign nationals in the society become so much larger than the population of citizens and in such a short span of time. As a consequence, Emiratis are not even the largest national group in their own country and have a hard time sustaining their culture among a continuously growing number of foreigners. As expatriate communities from around the world have enveloped national households in both the public and private spheres, UAE families have become globalized from within in order to compete in an English-speaking, Westernized culture and capitalist economy. Although one could make comparisons with families in other Gulf States, the UAE's pioneering economic model and the speed of its social transformation since independence in 1971 have had an unprecedented impact on the UAE’s family structure and practices.This study analyzes the transformation the UAE family hasundergone in its structure, values and adaptive strategies. It uses data I collected from a survey of more than 200 UAE families of students at Zayed University. The rapid economic success of the UAE has been driven by external economic forces using foreign expertise and outside models. Therefore, the UAE has no indigenous theoretical model to interpret the changes affecting Emirati families. In the absence of such a model, Emirati families have had to develop in a way that takes into account their traditional family structures while coping with the effects of globalization on them and the wider society and culture.

This paper investigates the two major Kuwaiti museums dedicated to commemorating the Iraqi invasion of 1990 and its aftermath, with an emphasis on how the visitor interacts with the exhibitions presented. The two museums are al-Qurain Martyr’s museum and the Kuwait House of National Works Memorial Museum. The first part of this paper will focus on the role of two museums in Kuwait in propagating and reinforcing Kuwaiti traditions in the context of the devastating Iraqi invasion of the country in 1990 and 1991. The second part of this paper will focus on how the spatial arrangement of the exhibition materials in each museum facilitates the transmission and reinforcement of the major types of Kuwaiti traditions. My paper is based on extensive field work in Kuwait. One of the aims of this paper is to apply theoretical models to explore the institutional foundations of “invented traditions” in Gulf countries like Kuwait, using the institution of the museum as a focal point. My paper relies on two seminal works on heritage and museums, Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger’s, The Invention of Tradition (1983), which uncovers the untidy, and sometimes patently false, origins of accepted national traditions and Tony Bennett’s The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics (1995), which focuses on the museum as an institution and a critical node in the conflict arising from exhibitions that are in line with socially accepted traditions and that at the same time provide space for some visitors to challenge these traditions. My paper applies the theoretical models presented by these authors to explore the institutional foundations of “invented traditions” in Gulf countries like Kuwait, using the institution of the museum as a focal point. Second, my paper examines the limits of “invented traditions” and the controversies around museum exhibitions that engender a political field. As Bennett explains, although the museum seeks to control the discursive field with its exhibitions and space of representation, some visitors will inevitably evade these control mechanisms to question the inclusion or absence of certain groups. Despite the appearance of Kuwait as a unified society, there are marginal groups that do not figure into the exhibition plan of the museums. However, this paper will explore works of literature and documentary evidence which could be included to permit each museum to connect with and challenge the visitor.

Heritage Sites, Collective Memory and National Identity in the United Arab Emirates My paper focuses on heritage sites in the UAE and their use by the state in the construction of a national identity. The sites include Bastikiyya, the Dubai Museum and Hatta village in Dubai and the heritage zone in Sharjah. The question this paper raises is whether collective memory as preserved and exhibited in the buildings and artifacts on display conveys what Emiratis remember of the past before independence in 1971 or how the past has been represented by the state to construct a national identity in the post-colonial period. My paper argues that the state, represented here by the heritage zones, and its citizens have different interpretations of the past and have reacted differently to the rapid transformation of the economy, society and culture after 1971. While the state extols the progress made in nation building and economic development, the Emiratis interviewed often expressed a sense of loss and of feeling adrift in a country they no longer recognize. The project on which this paper is based began with oral interviews of Emirati citizens and visits to heritage sites between 1998 and 2002 and field work in Dubai and Sharjah in 2010. My paper draws on the work of Pierre Nora on collective memory and Eric Hobabawm and Terence Ranger on the invention of tradition. My paper contends that the heritage sites present an argument for a distinct Emirati culture and a communal identity before 1971 and the apparently seamless transition from community to nation in the post-colonial period. On the other hand, individual Emiratis emphasized the hardships and privations of life before 1971 and the almost complete and traumatic rupture between the past and the present that occurred with independence and that I contend has not been healed. While individual Emiratis did not express a desire to return to the hardships of the past, they did express an almost existential concern that their identity and culture, already transformed by modernization in the post-independence period, were now in danger of being overwhelmed if not eradicated by the globalization of Emirati society. My paper argues that there is a disparity between the memories of older Emiratis about the past and the state’s imposition of meaning on the various buildings and artifacts in the heritage areas through the narratives that accompany the displays and the way that material is organized.