UC Berkeley

In this dissertation, I conduct a transnational analysis of Cairo, Egypt and Doha, Qatar to examine how dominant constructions and narratives of nationalism, put forth by various regimes, valorize particular groups of people in each city -- the military in Cairo, and the idealized, patriarchal family in Doha -- while rendering others unworthy of the full exercise of citizenship or engagement with urban, public life. Though narratives deeming particular groups as “worthy” or “unworthy” are propagated through discursive measures, they are also spatialized via particular socio-spatial practices that (re)order the city into sanctioned spaces for the valorized groups, versus dangerous, undesirable, unsanctioned spaces for the groups of people deemed unworthy of full engagement with urban life.

The first part of this dissertation looks at the privileged position of the Egyptian military and its role in the production of urban space in Cairo. I examine the military’s attempt to position itself as the embodiment of Egyptian nationalism, and how it uses this privileged position to obfuscate its economic activities, including its interests in urban development. I argue that since the 2013 military coup, which ousted Egypt’s first democratically elected president, the construction of narratives emphasizing the differentiated citizenship of Islamists -- a group whose disenfranchisement is seen as pivotal to the unfettered apotheosis of the Egyptian Military -- is manifest in various socio-spatial practices that demarcate, isolate and deem such people unworthy of full citizenship, and the claims with which such citizenship is associated. This, coupled with narratives valorizing the military establishment as heroic guardians of Egyptian nationalism, who saved Egypt from the Islamists, and who continue to protect the country from impending Islamist threats, underpins the paradigm of differentiated citizenship playing out in Cairo today. This facilitates the stigmatization of public space and de-legitimization of the public realm.

In the second half of this dissertation, I argue that contrary to the situation in Cairo, in which Islamists are deemed unworthy subjects of rule, in Doha, the current project of Qatari nation building promotes notions of Qatari nationalism that valorize an idealized, Qatari, “family,” and associated Islamist modes of being. Nationalist narratives and development schemes have led to a series of physical interventions into Doha’s urban realm that attempt to promote an idealized, unified, Qatari identity; one that is rooted in a markedly Islamic, Qatari culture and privileges an idealized Qatari family, which the state seeks to espouse through its many human development schemes. In the case of Doha, the valorization of an idealized, pious, patriotic family privileges the (re)ordering of the city to serve the family, and sanitize the city of low-income workers.

Though the cases of Cairo and Doha are very different, the socio-spatial processes that are currently (re)ordering these cities reinforce the paradigm of differentiated citizenship(s) prevalent in Arab societies today, and are examples of the deep barriers to democracy that currently exist in cities throughout the Arab world. The stigmatization of the public realm in both cities imposes the performance of differentiated citizenship(s), which exposes residents to a host of potentialities tied to their status as “worthy” or “unworthy” actors. To be in the public realm in Cairo is to be subject to contesting claims and the possibility of discipline and potential use of violence imposed by conflicting regimes of rule. To be in the public realm in Doha is to be subject to highly stratified, unwritten expectations, and social hierarchies based on citizenship, class, national origin, and gender.

The labeling and association of certain types of spaces with particular people, ways of life, modes of being, religiosity, and degree of belonging to the “nation” serves to brand particular groups as worthy of the exercise of full citizenship, yet render others unworthy of basic rights based on their perceived personal failings and complex axes of differentiation that inform social interactions. Groups of people who do not fit into current nation building processes and dominant narratives of nationalism -- who are deemed outside the frame of the “nation,” as defined by ruling regimes of rule -- are made legible by the demarcation and creation of governable spaces in which they are managed and disciplined. Additionally, the control and stigmatization of urban public space in both cities serves to facilitate the disenfranchisement of the majority of urban residents in Cairo and Doha.