Museums of the Arabian Peninsula offers new insights into the history and development of museums within the region. Recognising and engaging with varied approaches to museum development and practice, the book offers in-depth critical analyses from a range of viewpoints and disciplines. Drawing on regional and international scholarship, the book provides a critical and detailed analysis of museum and heritage institutions in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Yemen. Questioning and engaging with issues related to the institutionalisation of cultural heritage, contributors provide original analyses of current practice and challenges within the region. Considering how these challenges connect to broader issues within the international context, the book offers the opportunity to examine how museums are actively produced and consumed from both the inside and the outside. This critical analysis also enables debates to emerge that question the appropriateness of existing models and methods and provide suggestions for future research and practice. Museums of the Arabian Peninsula offers fresh perspectives that reveal how Gulf museums operate from local, regional and transnational perspectives. The volume will be a key reference point for academics and students working in the fields of museum and heritage studies, anthropology, cultural studies, history, politics and Gulf and Middle East Studies.

Museum activity has, in recent years, undergone major and rapid development in the Arabian Peninsula, with the regeneration of existing museums as well as the establishment of new ones. Alongside such rapid expansion, questions are inevitably raised as to the new challenges museums face in this region and whether the museum, as a central focus of heritage preservation, also runs the risk of overshadowing local forms of heritage performance and preservation. With contributions from leading academics from a range of disciplines and heritage practitioners with first-hand experience of working in the region, this volume addresses the issues and challenges facing museums in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Yemen and the UAE. It focuses on the themes of politics, public engagement and the possibility of a new museum paradigm which might appropriately reflect the interests and culture of the region. The interdisciplinary approaches analyse museum development from both an inside and outside perspective, suggesting that museums do not follow a uniform trajectory across the region, but are embedded within each states' socio-cultural context, individual government agendas and political realities. Including case study analysis, which brings the more marginal nations into the debates, as well as new empirical data and critical evaluation of the role of the museum in the Arabian Peninsula societies, this book adds fresh perspectives to the study of Gulf heritage and museology. It will appeal to regional and international practitioners and academics across the disciplines of museum studies, cultural studies, and anthropology as well as to anyone with an interest in the Gulf and Middle East.

Museums of the Arabian Peninsula offers new insights into the history and development of museums within the region. Recognising and engaging with varied approaches to museum development and practice, the book offers in-depth critical analyses from a range of viewpoints and disciplines. Drawing on regional and international scholarship, the book provides a critical and detailed analysis of museum and heritage institutions in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Yemen. Questioning and engaging with issues related to the institutionalisation of cultural heritage, contributors provide original analyses of current practice and challenges within the region. Considering how these challenges connect to broader issues within the international context, the book offers the opportunity to examine how museums are actively produced and consumed from both the inside and the outside. This critical analysis also enables debates to emerge that question the appropriateness of existing models and methods and provide suggestions for future research and practice. Museums of the Arabian Peninsula offers fresh perspectives that reveal how Gulf museums operate from local, regional and transnational perspectives. The volume will be a key reference point for academics and students working in the fields of museum and heritage studies, anthropology, cultural studies, history, politics and Gulf and Middle East Studies.

Museum activity has, in recent years, undergone major and rapid development in the Arabian Peninsula, with the regeneration of existing museums as well as the establishment of new ones. Alongside such rapid expansion, questions are inevitably raised as to the new challenges museums face in this region and whether the museum, as a central focus of heritage preservation, also runs the risk of overshadowing local forms of heritage performance and preservation. With contributions from leading academics from a range of disciplines and heritage practitioners with first-hand experience of working in the region, this volume addresses the issues and challenges facing museums in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Yemen and the UAE. It focuses on the themes of politics, public engagement and the possibility of a new museum paradigm which might appropriately reflect the interests and culture of the region. The interdisciplinary approaches analyse museum development from both an inside and outside perspective, suggesting that museums do not follow a uniform trajectory across the region, but are embedded within each states' socio-cultural context, individual government agendas and political realities. Including case study analysis, which brings the more marginal nations into the debates, as well as new empirical data and critical evaluation of the role of the museum in the Arabian Peninsula societies, this book adds fresh perspectives to the study of Gulf heritage and museology. It will appeal to regional and international practitioners and academics across the disciplines of museum studies, cultural studies, and anthropology as well as to anyone with an interest in the Gulf and Middle East.

This publication contributes to new understandings of how heritage operates as a global phenomenon and the transnational heritage discourses that emerge from this process. Taking such a view sees autochthonous and franchised heritage not as separate or opposing elements but as part of the same process of contemporary globalised identity-making, which contributes to the development of newly emergent cosmopolitan identities. The book critically examines the processes that are involved in the franchising of heritage and its cultural effects. It does so by examining the connections and tensions that emerge from combining autochthonous and franchised heritage in the United Arab Emirates, providing a unique window in to the process of creating hybrid heritage in non-Western contexts. It develops new ideas about how this global phenomenon works, how it might be characterised and how it influences and is itself affected by local forms of heritage. By exploring how autochthonous and franchised heritage is produced in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates it becomes clear that Western-dominated practices are often challenged and, perhaps more importantly, that new ways of understanding, producing and living with heritage are being articulated in these previously marginal locations. The book offers innovative insights into heritage as a transnational process, exploring how it operates within local, national and international identity concerns and debates. It will appeal to scholars and students interested in critical heritage studies, museums, tourism, cultural studies and Middle Eastern studies.

This publication contributes to new understandings of how heritage operates as a global phenomenon and the transnational heritage discourses that emerge from this process. Taking such a view sees autochthonous and franchised heritage not as separate or opposing elements but as part of the same process of contemporary globalised identity-making, which contributes to the development of newly emergent cosmopolitan identities. The book critically examines the processes that are involved in the franchising of heritage and its cultural effects. It does so by examining the connections and tensions that emerge from combining autochthonous and franchised heritage in the United Arab Emirates, providing a unique window in to the process of creating hybrid heritage in non-Western contexts. It develops new ideas about how this global phenomenon works, how it might be characterised and how it influences and is itself affected by local forms of heritage. By exploring how autochthonous and franchised heritage is produced in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates it becomes clear that Western-dominated practices are often challenged and, perhaps more importantly, that new ways of understanding, producing and living with heritage are being articulated in these previously marginal locations. The book offers innovative insights into heritage as a transnational process, exploring how it operates within local, national and international identity concerns and debates. It will appeal to scholars and students interested in critical heritage studies, museums, tourism, cultural studies and Middle Eastern studies.