In Saudi Arabia, the first oil boom era was expressed in local and international pressures to consume; the latter often referred to as recycling petro-dollars. Saudi economic “rush to development” was arguably a consumer-revolution on state, social and personal levels. Local material culture was quantitatively and qualitatively transformed as goods and services, from new homes, most notably the villa, to household furnishings, electric gadgets, and cars, to new leisure patterns appeared. Their use and meaning, and the way such goods and services were promoted and sold also changed. At the center of the paper is an analysis of local dialectics of a catch-up, Saudi material culture. It was an age of affluence (locally known as al-turfah) never to repeat itself in Saudi recent history, when a vast segment of Saudi society improved on its standards of living. Nevertheless, speed and intensity in consumption also brought much anxiety to the process. Most goods and services were imported, produced and sold by invisible or expatriate hands. New forms of retailing and promotion, including advertising, were introduced, as well as new commodities. New venues for social distinction through consumption were formulating fast, and so did their opposition. The age of affluence, I argue, brought no less anxiety than material wealth to Saudi society, culture and politics. I rely on analysis of contemporary Saudi press advertisements, which were a window case for the introduction of new commodities in Saudi markets. Comparisons with contemporary Egyptian ads allow drawing attention to Saudi particularities in promotion. Testimonies by marketing specialists and academic writing on Saudi marketing further augment my analysis. The concluding part of the paper evaluates the role of a local, catch-up material culture in the articulation of neo-conservative Saudi socio-politics in an age seemingly prone for a vast change.

The Aswan High Dam, built between 1960 and 1971, caused considerable change to Egyptian politics and society (Waterbury 1979), although the specific ways that it created expectations for a new urban consumption regime have been understudied. The ubiquity with which the promise of “after the dam” circulated in Egyptian public culture to explain the timetable of postcolonial economic development reflected confidence that the Nasser regime and its monumental projects would guarantee a significant rise in the popular standard of living. The state used its newly nationalized commercial sector in the early 1960s to promote the building of the dam among its citizens. `Abd al-Halim Hafiz’s ode “The High Dam,” for example, played on television sets in the display windows of newly nationalized department stores in 1961 (Fernea and Fernea), stores that in the early 1960s increasingly catered to the families of the rapidly expanding sector of middle-class government employees. In less formal spaces, local consumption patterns reflected the optimism of the national development that the High Dam would produce. For example, local tailors crafted dresses from silver brocade on the theme of the High Dam (Abaza), and Nubian housewives embroidered skullcaps with the High Dam design for their relatives working in Cairo (Fernea and Fernea). By the time the dam was completed, however, the vast stores of electricity that had been promised by the dam’s expanded hydroelectric works had been largely channeled into industrial production such as artificial fertilizers and basic industry rather than rural electrification, and local industrial substitution industries had reached a structural crisis (Mabro; Waterbury 1983). Egyptian migration to the Gulf and Sadat’s open-door economic policies became the new drivers of popular consumption (and immiseration) in the1970s. This paper examines the postcolonial construction of citizenship through consumption in Nasser’s Egypt that Egyptians under Sadat used as a claim-making device against the state in the 1970s. Its primary sources are press advertisements and articles, memoirs, literature, and film. References Abaza, Mona. Changing Consumer Cultures of Modern Egypt. Boston: Brill, 2006. Fernea, Elizabeth Warnock and Robert A. Fernea with Aleya Rouchdy, Nubian Ethnographies. Prospect Heights: Waveland Press, 1991. Mabro, Robert. The Egyptian Economy, 1952-1972. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974. Waterbury, John. Hydropolitics of the Nile Valley. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1979. _____________. The Egypt of Nasser and Sadat. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983.

When Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian fruit and vegetable seller lit himself on fire in December 2010, the lives of informal retailers became relevant in world politics. In Egypt, too, there was growing frustration and resentment against the government in the retail sector. In Alexandria, like in other parts of the country, informal vendors face a number of challenges which include government interference, declining profits, global influence and increased competition. This paper will elucidate the socio-political anxiety of the informal retail community in Alexandria, immediately before the 2011 Revolution. The informal economy is an important subject for economists and international aid organizations, but little work has been devoted specifically to retailing, consumption and urban culture. One notable exception is Nicholas Hopkin’s research after the infitah into the informal sector in Egypt. Similarly, as part of Michael Hofmann’s research on informal economy in Fayum, he explains the effects of the infitah on local vending. In terms of high end retail, Mona Abaza addresses consumer culture and the social implications of shopping malls and retail shops in Cairo, from the 1960’s to the present, while touching on informal trade. On the other hand, Homa Hoodfar’s research in the 1980’s into economic coping skills of lower class families, elucidates much about the informal retail sector in Cairo. This paper is based on interviews with illegal street vendors, legal informal vendors, suq shop owners and distributors conducted in 2010 and early 2011 and will address the following questions: How is the informal retail sector differentiated? What is the relationship between distribution and mass culture? What is the relationship between vendors and the government? References Abaza, Mona, Changing consumer cultures of modern Egypt : Cairo's urban reshaping. Boston : Brill, 2006. Hoodfar, Homa. “Survival Strategies and The Political Economy of Low-Income Households in Cairo.” In Singerman, Diane and Homa Hoodfar (eds). Development, Change, and Gender in Cairo. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996. pp. 1-26. Hofmann, Michael. “The Informal Sector in an Intermediate City: A Case in Egypt,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, Volume. 34, No. 2 (Jan., 1986), pp. 263-277. Hopkins, Nicholas. Informal Sector in Egypt (Cairo Papers in Social Science), Vol. 14, Monograph 4. American University in Cairo Press. 1991.