Nationalism and Nationhood in the United Arab Emirates by Martin Ledstrup

Author:Martin Ledstrup
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

3.3 Conclusions

The ambition of this book is to understand, through the textual universe of Georg Simmel , how social forms of interaction unfold between cultural stabilization of the national and the transgressive flow of everyday life. This chapter has hopefully demonstrated that the dualism between localizing stabilizations and globalizing transgressions of the national is indeed a mutual relationship. To transition the study of nationhood into an appreciation of the everyday is also to understand how the national can arise from the very ordinary interactions that are not normally associated with nationalism . On the one hand, the modern subject is always already weaved and weaving into a globalizing materiality of the everyday. On the other hand, s/he tends to relate particular styles of self-formation to practices of local meaning. The car appears to be this very dualism . Through ordinary affects, events, and stereotypes , the car assembles a globally recognizable idiom of consumption, leisure, and power with objectifications of Emiratiness on the roads of the UAE.

I have attempted to understand this predicament from where social science began and begins: from the classics whose scholarship embodies a particular academic way of looking at the world. From the writers, that is, who are not just read but re-read, and then read again. The example of Georg Simmel brings movement and in-betweenness back to the very origins of sociology, if by the origins of sociology we understand the classics. How does this change the significance of Georg Simmel to the mobilities paradigm? It seems clear that his classical example incites a conception of modern times where movement , like car-driving in the UAE, is pivotal. But the story is incomplete if we confine cars as well as modern times to a matter of movement . Just as the modern subject is surrounded by forms, according to Simmel, through which the flow of life is precariously navigated, so car-drivers are surrounded by formations of subjectivity —of both a global appearance and local appearance—that they can draw together in idiosyncratic ways in order to move around as a modern subject. Ernest Bloch once called Georg Simmel “the philosopher of perhaps” (Frisby 2013, p. 99): A more comprehensive reading of the Simmelian perspective can help us make sense, perhaps, of how movement happens—to us.

Note

1.It should be noted that The View of Life is more fundamental in its orientation than toward forms of interaction . The orientation is toward what Simmel refers to as “worlds,” for instance, the differentiated worlds of art, religion , and science. Furthermore, The View of Life is also occupied with deeper questions about the significance of time and death. For the present purposes, however, I will not pursue these issues.

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