societies that interact on the Arabian Peninsula, where he has conducted extensive fieldwork.
Gardner applied the "Page 99 Test" to his new book, The Fragmentary City: Migration, Modernity, and Difference in the Urban Landscape of Doha, Qatar, and reported the following:
The 99th page of my new book primarily consists of a description of The Pearl, the man-made island just off the coast of Doha, Qatar. I’ll quote here the first of two paragraphs describing The Pearl:Learn more about The Fragmentary City at the Cornell University Press website.The final example is the development known as The Pearl, which is the Qatari example of the offshore residential developments for which the Gulf states are renowned. Developments like The Pearl have a symbolic resonance that is unprecedented, for they are visible from outer space. In local parlance, and as if often repeated in writing, these developments have been “reclaimed from the sea.” In this case, The Pearl is a man-made island that occupies the shallow coastal waters once vital to the pearl industry and of great environmental importance (Burt 2014). Construction of The Pearl commenced in 2003. Altogether, the island development contains some 18,831 dwellings intended to accommodate an estimated 45,000 residents. The 400 hectares (985 acres) of reclaimed land are built and arranged to provide more than thirty-two kilometers of new beachfront, and the retail and commercial offerings that suffuse the island development reach for a stylistically cosmopolitan and culturally diverse tenor. Costs for the project were initially estimated at $2.5 billion, but estimates have now ballooned to nearly $15 billion.This section doesn’t really illuminate the central thesis of my book. But like any ethnography, it’s details, examples, and specifics that lead readers to the overarching theses that undergird the book. In that sense, detailed descriptions like those presented here are threads that one can follow to those central themes. Let’s follow the thread leading from page 99 for a moment!
First, migrants come from all over the Indian Ocean world to work in Qatar. Those migrants end up living in particular locations and spaces in the city. Consigning foreigners to particular enclaves and specific spaces is characteristic of the contemporary Gulf city. But as I demonstrate in this book, all sorts of things other than people are also consigned to enclaves and to specific spaces in the urban landscape.
It’s this juncture where the description of The Pearl found on page 99 fits: The Pearl is an exceptional space, for it is one of the only places in Qatar where foreigners can own property. Notably, while The Pearl is an exceptional space in that sense, it’s also quintessentially emblematic of the pattern by which Doha has grown in recent decades — a pattern that I refer to as an urban spatial discourse. This urban spatial discourse has deeply shaped the city one encounters there today. Indeed, in this book I contend that the city itself is best comprehended as a conglomeration of these enclaves and gargantuan urban spaces.
While these enclaves and distinctions in the urban landscape have been a lightning rod for much Western critique, in this book I point in another direction. I suggest that the fragmentary nature of the city’s urban landscape has been an integral feature in the preservation of cultural differences amidst such dramatic transnational movements and flows. Simultaneously, I also argue that this urban spatial discourse has been the key tool by which Qatar’s citizen-minority govern the “foreign matter” they host on the peninsula and in the city. In the final accounting, what’s notable about Doha is the superdiverse demography of the city, and the absence of integration as an ideal (or even a desire) by most of its residents. With so much diversity packed into the urban landscape, we should all pay attention to the urban ethos of Doha and cities like it.
--Marshal Zeringue
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