Beyond Exception: New Interpretations of the Arabian Peninsula by Ahmed Kanna & Amélie le Renard & Neha Vora

Author:Ahmed Kanna & Amélie le Renard & Neha Vora
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781501750298
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2020-10-14T21:00:00+00:00

Conclusion: Exceptionalism versus Global Inequality

Exceptionalist discourses use several arguments, centered on men’s supposed sexism and the oppression of women in Riyadh, and on slavery-like exploitation in Dubai. Beyond the content of these discourses, they reveal some aspects of Westerners’ positionalities in the two cities. In both cases, the interviewees see themselves as outsiders, even when their positions, as managers in organizations or as employers of domestic workers, contradict this perception. This vision of oneself as outsider is linked to the racializing belief, often based on gender, that “locals” are radically other, and to the belief that the Arabian Peninsula and the countries where its inhabitants come from (the Philippines, India) are not currently living in the same time as the West and, thus, as Westerners. These exceptionalist and racializing beliefs allow Western residents to criticize the lack of justice and equality—in terms of gender and work relations—and to see themselves as more advanced, even as models, in these fields. In their discourses, equality is essentialized as Western, while Gulf societies are essentialized as unequal. Through a proclaimed moral sense of equality that is meant to be distinctive, these interviewees, who occupied advantageous positions, defended a form of hegemony that was thought of as better, fairer, and thus more legitimate than that of “locals” and/or “others.” Besides skillful experts, they saw themselves as fair managers and employers, sometimes as saviors in a region seen as exceptionally unfair. This belief was particularly strong among white residents belonging to the upper classes. It helped construct a discourse about themselves as a specific group with distinctive identities among local elites, who have various national backgrounds.

In Dubai, many interviewees developed counternarratives that questioned this exceptionalist vision of the Gulf. Compared with the first group of interviewees, the people belonging to this second group did not occupy dominant positions in their home countries—they came more often from the working class and many belonged to racial minorities in France. Some underlined the global networks that linked the unequal social order in Dubai with the behaviors of consumers in France; others criticized unfairness in France through evoking their own experiences of racism, sexism, discrimination, and Islamophobia. Without necessarily idealizing Dubai, they used the same frameworks to analyze the situation in this city and the one they had lived in before. Many discussed and criticized the discourse of Westernness as fairness and equality. By doing so, they undermined one element of the construction of Westerners as a distinct and advantaged group in several cities of the Arabian Peninsula. Very few, however, addressed the essentialization of expertise as Western, which is the basis of the structural advantages they benefit from in the job market.

When “exceptionalist” expatriates identified with equality in contrast with various types of supposedly exceptional inequalities attributed to the Gulf, they were implicitly expressing their perception of themselves as Westerners. As for antiexceptionalist counternarratives, what made them possible was not only a different vision of the Gulf but also a different vision of Western societies. In exceptionalism, like in Orientalism, the self and the other are co-constructed through contrast and opposition.

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