Representation and ideology in postcolonial urban development: the Arabian Gulf: Fid-Bau Portal

Representation and ideology in postcolonial urban development: the Arabian Gulf

Al-Ragam, Asseel

In a period of postcolonial development the dominance of European cultural hegemony was destabilised. In the Middle East, this shift paralleled an Arab uprising that was determined to forge a link between a distant past and modern progress. Essays by the architect/planner Saba George Shiber illustrate how projects of resistance were made possible in the architectural discipline; these projects helped add value to a lost urban heritage and challenged the dominance of western models. This paper looks at the relationship between representation and ideology, and the invented cultural materials that are forged around this construction. It will attempt to highlight the sheer strength of ideological representations in the face of shifting power structures and the varied and dynamic voices that played a great part in celebrating different cultural forms in the pursuit of personal, political and social agendas. Even though the case study is somewhat idiosyncratic, the method of analysis could be of use in a comparative critique of similar studies of cultural resistance, suppression and representation, and could possibly assist in establishing more structured analytical models for the region.