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Podcast by Feras Klenk

A 45-minute podcast conversation on Omani geopolitics, history, and culture on Spotify and Instag... more A 45-minute podcast conversation on Omani geopolitics, history, and culture on Spotify and Instagram.

Roundtable by Feras Klenk

Cities are synonymous with energy. Building a city is a pursuit of capturing the liveliness, the ... more Cities are synonymous with energy. Building a city is a pursuit of capturing the liveliness, the vitality, and the modernity that cities emanate to the wider world. Cities also require energy – lots of it -- in order to become envisioned, planned, and built. In the GCC, the rise of the carbon economy in the 20th century fueled new, intense visions of urban modernities from planners and policymakers alike. This panel will look directly at the construction of urban life in the GCC, bringing together panelists who study the speculation, imagination, and aesthetics unfolding through cities across the GCC. Our panelists will explore relationships between combustion and the bustle, between friction and fire, between the motor and the motivations that has brought contemporary GCC cites into existence.

Dissertation by Feras Klenk

This dissertation explores how under pressure from low oil prices, enormous budget deficits, and ... more This dissertation explores how under pressure from low oil prices, enormous budget deficits, and a faltering economic model, the Omani state has been renegotiating its relationship with global capitalism in a dawning post-oil era. To apprehend this development, I ethnographically explore how the Omani government has embarked on a multi-sited program of economic reform in which the promotion of entrepreneurship plays an important role. Based on 12 months of archival and field research in London and Muscat, I demonstrate how the state reform project, meant to revitalize the engines of capital accumulation in one country, transcends the “economic.” It explores how emotions, bureaucratic complaints, new ideas about productivity and creativity, foreign experts, and local entrepreneurs are reworking the contours of state capitalism in Oman while seeking to transform the state, society, and the individual. This dissertation provides a glimpse into this complex and contradictory reform process and the exigencies of post-oil development under late capitalism.

, I arrived in London to begin my dissertation research project on the relationship between state... more , I arrived in London to begin my dissertation research project on the relationship between state-formation and infrastructure, specifically road building, in the Sultanate of Oman. Located on the southeastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, Oman experienced an infrastructural boom in the 1970s, which was precipitated by the discovery of oil and coincided with the development of the modern Omani nation-state. My original plan was to explore the materiality of state-building through logistical infrastructure and its various dimensions, such as road design and engineering, space and environment, concrete and, as one comprehensive exam committee member suggested, roadkill, and ultimately capitalist development. With that, I spent four months in the National Archives, the British Library, and the MECA Oman Archive in St. Anthony's College Oxford, reading through diplomatic cables, intelligence reports on economic, political and military affairs, British and Omani newspapers, and British economic development reports on Oman. While I got the sense and scale of the infrastructural projects in the country, the specific materials I required were scattered in corporate and private archives across Europe and the Middle East. For example, an Austrian construction firm Strabag has been involved in road building in Oman, with much of its archival materials located in Austria and being politically sensitive. As I reached a roadblock, so to speak, in my project and my anxiety started to mount, I came across a report that made a brief reference to the Anglo-Omani Society (AOS), a nongovernmental organization established in 1976 and dedicated to preserving and maintaining the historical friendship between the two countries. This is how I found myself in a luxurious threestory Georgian townhouse in the Mayfair district of London, where the AOS was headquartered. 1 1 Since the 1990s the then Sultan Qaboos was very generous to the AOS, granting the organization checks for £70,000, £500,000 and finally £11,000,000 to form an endowment and "purchase a building to produce As I frequented the AOS to examine its private library collection, I met former and current British diplomats, Omani and British businessmen, former members of the British military, and highranking Omani government officials. Many were members or officers of the AOS and regularly attended the society's eventstalks, discussions, and dinnersto socialize and network for potential business prospects. Thus, a British businessman who brought a prominent car company to Oman invited me for a drink at the Royal Air Force Officers Club in London. At another AOSsponsored event on the Oman pavilion at the Expo 2020 Dubai, where champagned was freely poured and appetizers were circulating at high speed, I talked to British theme park designers, British bankers, and Omani government aides. All of them were there for future-oriented ventures and potential business projects, conceived in the climate of up-and-coming economic development in Oman. However, it was middle-aged Omani graduate students and young Omani undergraduates who eventually became my key interlocutors. During our long walks through parks, meetings over coffee, and visits to street markets, they shared with me their thoughts about the recent economic reforms and accelerated social changes taking place "back home." On a sunny Sunday afternoon in March 2016 when I and Abbas, 2 a thirty-three-year-old student, were eating burgers from Caboose, he teased me: "You know, [research on] roads are boring and for old people. Why don't you look at entrepreneurship? This is really big in Oman right now." Heeding Abbas' point, I began to notice that entrepreneurship, economic reform, and the ongoing social transformations in Oman were indeed the topics many of my Omani friends passionately discussed and were deeply a constant source of revenue to fund the Society's activities." They currently rent out offices in the building and collect the rent. Please see, Anglo-Omani Society Annual Review magazine 2015 https://www.aosoc.org//uploads/downloads/aos-review-2015-lr.pdf 2 With the exception of a few participants who gave me permission to refer to them by name (i.e., foreigners not based in Oman any longer), all participants either Omani and foreign quoted in the dissertation are either unnamed or have been given pseudonyms for their protection. interested in. As an ethnographer, I decided to follow my interlocutors and their concerns, interests, and feelings about the profound economic changes that, at the time, were taking place in Oman, seeking to move the country away from fossil fuels to a post-oil economy. So, I shifted my research project away from material infrastructure toward an emergent entrepreneurial infrastructure, being assembled in Oman in response to global economic pressures for competitiveness and local anxieties around peak oil. To help realize my new project, my key Omani interlocutors Abbas and Mansur opened their extensive networks of contacts for me, which included government officials, businesspeople, and aspiring entrepreneurs. With an elusive research visa finally obtained from Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) and a list of potential contacts, I began my six-month research trip in Muscat in July 2016. Stretched along a West-East axis and overlooking the Gulf of Oman, Muscat resembles an archipelago, connected together by capillaries of roads and a sea of asphalt. Life in the city is structured around cars and the multitude of highways, expressways, and overpasses that during the day take people to malls, shops, hotels, strip malls, homes, and places of work. At night, young men often gathered in empty lots or cruised along al-Shati Street with its lights and cafes, where they tried to get the attention of young Omani women and men. My interlocutors resided primarily in the suburban areas of al-Koudh, al-Hail, and Azaiba in enclosed villas and small apartments, which reminded me simultaneously of my home city of Houston and of Tucson in terms of carcentered lifestyle, spatial fragmentation, and the heat. Renting a vehicle, a white 2015 Toyota Corolla, expanded my personal mobility and allowed me to travel across the streetscapes of Muscat heavily dotted with strip malls, nondescript buildings, and heavy traffic. I was able to interview, observe, and hang out with my interlocutors and friends in formal and informal spaces such as government and corporate offices, coworking spaces, hotel lobbies and conference rooms, cafes, and once a private yacht. In those spaces, I became acquainted with Omanis and foreign expatriates who had been involved in Oman's "entrepreneurial turn" since 2013. Thus, in a drab corporate meeting room I met Muhammad, a charismatic PR employee of a major international oil company, who told me about his mentorship of Omani high school students for the local and regional Injaz al-Arab Young Entrepreneur Competitions. 3 In an upscale Italian restaurant located in one of Muscat's ubiquitous shopping centers, I also met Aisha, a prominent Omani businesswoman and entrepreneur, who talked to me about her lobbying activities 4 with the Omani government to "take entrepreneurship seriously." Those and many other spaces, which I describe in the following four chapters, were the sites where entrepreneurial discourses and values, broadly conceived, were inculcated and promoted. Researching the "entrepreneurial drive" Muhammad and Aisha rhapsodized to me about, I paid close attention to Muscat's moods and atmospheres. From conversations with my interlocutors, I sensed the combination of anxiety about Oman's economic and political future or what I call in Chapter 1 a "state of/in crisis;" the overall sense of security and contentment epitomized by the Omani phrase umur taybeh or "things are fine;" and upbeat aspirations for entrepreneurially driven technocratic futures, discussed in Chapters 2 and 4. Those moods circulated between the fragments of the city I visited during my fieldwork. For instance, the original apartment I rented from SQU was unclean, rundown, and infested with crickets, a problem that my fellow researchers from other countries also experienced. The Housing Division of the University was unresponsive to our concerns and needs, which my roommate from Senegal framed 3 Injaz which is a member of JA Worldwide is a non-profit organization dedicated to youth education, training in work force readiness, and entrepreneurship across the MENA region. For more, see https://www.injazalarab.org/. 4 She was quite open about her local celebrity status (i.e., Instagram influencer), family name, and social status (e.g., married with children) protected her from any potential reprisals from government officials who were annoyed by her lobbying activities. in terms of bureaucratic abandonment. Later, that sense of bureaucratic inefficiency resurfaced in other settings and filtered through my chapter on bureaucratic complaint. My friendship with an Egyptian engineer for an American firm in Oman also alerted me to the transitory feelings of boredom and ennui, provoked by limited sensory stimulation in comparison with the more techno-modern 5 cities of the Persian Gulf like Dubai and by the overall slowness my friend complained to me about. "I go back to Cairo to feel alive," he told me as we drove along the half-empty Muscat express way around 1 am. This sense of restlessness and the desire for high speed and broader horizons were echoed in the spaces of entrepreneurial inception such as the coworking space al-Rudha that I frequented. Those moods and atmospheres were grounded in material processes such as cyclical oil crises, one of which I witnessed during my fieldwork, transforming kinship networks, expat-dependent labor regimes and accordingly structured labor markets, circumscribed political life, and many more. These different strands came into focus for me in my examination of the attempts at...

The government and the people are one body. If one of its limbs fails to do its duty, the other p... more The government and the people are one body. If one of its limbs fails to do its duty, the other parts of the body will suffer. Sultan Qaboos on his accession to the throne (1970) Driving down the Muscat Expressway at high speed, Hamad, a 25-year-old private consultant, and I were on our way to a lunch meeting at Fauchon, a popular French restaurant near the Royal Opera House. Skillfully maneuvering on the busy expressway, Hamad spoke about the café's "many excellent dishes and desserts." It was when he reached the topic of macaroons that we encountered heavy traffic on the road. Hamad began to slow down, as it became clear that there was a traffic jam ahead, and soon we came to a complete stop. Not yet used to Muscat's daily gridlock traffic, I asked Hamad why we stopped. Grumbling while gripping the steering wheel, he said: "You don't know? Most of these people are government employees rushing to get home." A former government employee in the Ministry of Transportation, he explained to me that the end of the workday for government workers was at 2:30 pm, but most of them left earlier. Laughing, he pointed to the lines of white Toyota Land Cruisers, Hyundai Accents, and Nissan Sentras in front of us. When I looked at my watch, I noticed it was only 1:30 pm. Unprovoked, Hamad launched into a tirade. He explained to me that Oman was in the state of crisis, because of the "selfishness" of government employees. He drew a parallel between the paralyzing traffic and the Omani bureaucracy, as both came "to a halt" and negatively impacted government performance. Shifting gears, he lamented how because of the collective action of a "handful of individuals," the private sector also experienced "major pain" while dealing with the Omani bureaucracy. He said to me: "you can be trying to submit the correct paperwork to start a business or something, but you keep failing. And why you ask me? It is because the [government] 14 As a new state logic that interacts with and transformed by the local context and not as a fixed set of attributes with predetermined outcomes, see Aihwa Ong, 2007. "Neoliberalism as Mobile Technology." Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 32(1): 3-8. 15 Works from anthropology and geography have demonstrated that the state has been absolutely central to recent economic, political, and social transformations that unfold on multiple scales (e.g., capital mobility, labor flexibility, tariff reform, new articulations of citizenship and state sovereignty, new subjectivities, etc.

In the wake of the Arab Spring, 1 when many young Omanis protested against high unemployment and ... more In the wake of the Arab Spring, 1 when many young Omanis protested against high unemployment and corruption, Sultan Qaboos, the then absolute ruler of Oman, delivered a speech. 2 There, he defended the importance of the private sector for the development of society in the economic and social realms. 3 He also reprimanded critics who argued that the private sector was a rentier-seeking enterprise, not able to address the needs of Omanis, and was entirely reliant on the state for its economic survival. 4 Such negative attitudes, he declared, undermined "the development plans in the country, particularly to diversify [national] income." More importantly, he posited, such critiques undermined citizen confidence in a market economy and, presumably, in the Omani state. Confidence in the market was important, because, as Sultan Qaboos stated, it would encourage Omani youth to work in the private sector and "instill a spirit of belonging to its institutions." Drawn from the youth's alleged "commitment to the ethics of work," this new spirit would increase productivity, develop the potential of the Omani private sector, and "release its great energies" into the global marketplace. Like many heads of state in the Persian Gulf, Qaboos reminded the youth that "work as much as it [was] a right, it [was] also a duty." Anyone, who had completed their education or training, should get a profession that would "fulfill their sense of 1 There were sporadic protests in Muscat and Sohar against government corruption. The protestors demanded increased wages, lower living costs, and an increase in job creation. The immediate government response was to swiftly disperse the protestors, but it also increased wages and benefits, created more government jobs, reshuffled the Shura council (advisory body), and abolished the Ministry of National Economy for perceived and real corruption.

Starting Up Oman It was only after the SME Development symposium held at Saih al Shamekhat in Jan... more Starting Up Oman It was only after the SME Development symposium held at Saih al Shamekhat in January of 2013 that many of my Omani interlocutors declared that the government "got serious" about promoting entrepreneurship. In an uncharacteristically swift fashion, the Omani government announced a series of policy maneuvers that helped establish what players and observers called the Omani entrepreneurial ecosystem. 1 These moves included the issuing of Royal decree No.36/2013 that established the Public Authority for SME Development (Riyada) and the Central Bank of Oman (CBO) that allocates 5% of all commercial loans to SMEs. 2 The government also pledged 10% of all government contracts to small and medium enterprises. 3 It is around these concrete plans that the Omani entrepreneurial scene began to coalesce. 4 The rapid growth of this ecosystem, as one of my interlocutors boasted, was a testament to real interest in the "submerged Omani entrepreneurial spirit" that now could truly "shine." After all, Omanis "have always been entrepreneurial," many research participants argued, referencing a history of long-distance trade in the Indian Ocean. 5 This new spirit was reflected in Omani 1 Entrepreneurial ecosystem is the conventional term to describe the multitude of actors (e.g., firms, startups, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists), policies, laws, and finance and their constant interaction that produces innovative and potentially lucrative products. In interviews and casual conversations, my Omani interlocutors and expat experts used the term "ecosystem," which draws from the biological sciences to describe the symbiotic relationship between different living and nonliving organisms in their environment, interacting as a system. 2 Anonymous, The Report: Oman 2016 (Oxford, Oxford Business Group) pg. 53. Many informants complained that their start-ups or SMEs could not access adequate credit to grow their business. 3 Anonymous, "Oman working to support SME growth" accessed January 16, 2020 https://oxfordbusinessgroup.com/news/oman-working-support-sme-growth. Different interlocutors also revealed this information to me during my fieldwork. 4 In a complicated genealogy, many of the organizations and actors that make up the present system were already present but moribund, operating in isolation with no overarching goal, or whose original organizational objectives were not aligned with promoting entrepreneurship. 5 Like many Oman's I've met, they claimed that trading was "in their blood" therefore entrepreneurial comes naturally to them. This reminded me of participation in various accelerators, incubators, co-working spaces, entrepreneurship competitions, seminars, and workshops, related to entrepreneurial skill building. And yet, despite this rising tide of enthusiasm, one prominent Omani businessman, Ali Kamil Daud of Daud Group of Companies surveyed the entrepreneurial landscape and was dissatisfied. In an interview with me he said, "I saw [government ministries] 6 doing different things (initiatives to help entrepreneurs my commentary) and going into different directions with no unity of effort." He further complained: "[government ministries] are territorial and [exert] little effort and initiatives, so I said to myself I will do something different and better!" The desire to produce what he termed "tangible results" and "meaningful leadership" was the spark for the creation of a guiding platform that would be his "gift to the Omani people." This platform would soon become known as Startup Oman, a non-governmental project that aimed to assist and guide entrepreneurs in navigating the entrepreneurial environment. Born out of Ali's wish to provide "meaningful leadership" on entrepreneurship, Startup Oman was co-created and run by two female expats: Sherry Colbourne, a self-described Canadian serial entrepreneur, and Ines Baricevic, a Croatian citizen, Ali Daud's business development analyst, and an entrepreneurship enthusiast. Together these women created Startup Oman, a "onestop-shop" where Omani entrepreneurs could learn about the resources, tools, and prospects available to them. Like many expats looking for adventure and opportunity, Sherry and Ines followed well-trodden paths to the Persian Gulf, where their expertise, knowledge, and experience became sought after. There they joined other foreign experts, who operated in the region. In this chapter I will show how these two female expert expats and their labor became part of the emergent entrepreneurial infrastructure in Oman, following Julia Elyachar's and Rosalind 6 Ali is referring to all the government ministries and private sector actors in the words of one entrepreneur expat "have jumped on the entrepreneur bandwagon."

Conferences by Feras Klenk

With low oil prices, a rolling budget deficit, and a saturated public sector in Oman, discussions... more With low oil prices, a rolling budget deficit, and a saturated public sector in Oman, discussions about the need for “change” and “action” have become ubiquitous. They have centered on skill-building, improving employee work ethic and morale, government reform, and accountability. In 2013 Sultan Qaboos, the ruler of Oman announced his support for small and medium enterprise development and entrepreneurship by creating a fund to financially support and guide entrepreneurial initiatives (e.g., start-ups). This was part of a larger strategy to diversify the economy away from fossil fuels. With the Sultan’s personal backing, an entire ecosystem made up of different actors (e.g., universities, public authorities, private training programs, tech funds) from public and private sectors have rapidly emerged in the country with the center of gravity in Muscat. This assemblage of institutions is supposed to create a society of entrepreneurs, encourage them, and coordinate their activities to boost the national economy, reduce overall government spending, and create more jobs. The desire to create an “entrepreneurial society” showcases the techno state logics of development embedded in the state planning process.

In Oman, the office job in the public sector is considered prestigious and highly sought after. W... more In Oman, the office job in the public sector is considered prestigious and highly sought after. With guaranteed lifetime job security, good pay, and “flexible work,” it is considered ideal by many. This desirability of office job originates in the historical transition of the region from pastoral nomadism to a modern capitalist economy centered on fossil fuels. In the Omani context, this transition took place in the 1970s, when citizens were recruited to new state bureaucracies. This process was a part of the modernizing state building project that resulted in a generous welfare state for Omani citizens. The air-conditioned office in a government ministry replaced the farm and the fishing boat as the new and preferred space of work in Oman. Older generations nostalgically remember life before fossil fuels as precarious, but also “harsh” and difficult.” Citing “frustration” with working in government, today many Omanis are ready and willing to give up the security and social prestige of a government office job in order to pursue business. In this paper I examine why this is the case and argue that Omanis express dissatisfaction with the established social order through the vehicle of entrepreneurship, where creating your own business has become a symbol for self-development. Many who forgo office work in a government ministry lose status their precarious existence is always mitigated by networks of support. At the same, newly fledgling entrepreneurs define precarity as freedom, where they explore their own self-interests without familial interference and the burden of social expectations

This paper is part of a dissertation project that examines how the global discourse on entreprene... more This paper is part of a dissertation project that examines how the global discourse on entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial culture is taken up and promoted in Oman, specifically in the capital Muscat as a response to economic crisis and austerity measures. With low oil prices, looming budget deficits, and a saturated public sector, discussions about change have become more urgent and centered on skill building, work ethics, government reform, and accountability. This process began in 2013 when Sultan Qaboos gave an important speech that emphasized the significance of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs to Oman’s economic and social development. Since, then with variable degrees of success, an entire infrastructure has slowly emerged to help nurture, guide, and develop aspiring Omani entrepreneurs. In this paper, I examine the case of Al-Rudha (The Lounge), a private platform that offers workspace to aspiring entrepreneurs and startups in a cool and stylish setting, to network, but also to “chill” and “relax” with fellow Al-Rudha members. Framed as "giving back to the community and youth," the business also carries out workshops where members can learn new work skills useful for starting a business or work in the private sector. I argue that spaces like Al-Rudha that are seen as “cool” are sites for the cultivation of an entrepreneurial ethos and practices. It appeals to a new generation eager for a new lifestyle and type of work, juxtaposed, as it were, to “older” styles of work in the public sector in Oman.

"One of the most important developments in the current Syrian conflict has been the emergence and... more "One of the most important developments in the current Syrian conflict has been the emergence and articulation of alternative political projects that reimagine or replace the Syrian nation-state. Participants in the conflict are advocating for either a conservative Islamist state (i.e., various rebel groups), a democratic federal Syria (i.e., Rojava), a reinvigorated Syria under Ba’athist leadership, or a Sunni Muslim Caliphate (i.e., the Islamic State). With the collapse of the centralized education system at all levels in areas outside of regime control, various actors are attempting to translate their political ideas into alternative educational systems. These efforts are a part of a larger process of the reorganization of socio-political life.

Education has always been a key instrument in any state-building project. Educational systems have been established, for instance, to instill national culture and cultivate a national identity. They have helped to produce subjects who enter into a particular relationship with the state. Moreover, education is central to the production of a national space and its territorial imaginary. In this paper, I examine the IS’ attempts to inculcate a non-national territorial imaginary or spatial consciousness through textbooks, print and visual media, and bodily practices. The analysis of English and Arabic-language materials, such as a geography school textbooks, videos, and magazines, reveals the complex nature of education that extends beyond conventional institutional curricular, and encompasses other materials, sites, and practices that are prescriptive in nature. I argue that the emerging education project of IS is an attempt to demarcate communal boundaries, reimagine space, and construct a certain subjectivity by narrating a spatial history of loss and humiliation. I illustrate how the confluence of violence, boundary formation, and spatial reimagining in the IS’ education project is attempting to produce a new type of (jihadi) subject, who is re-territorialized in the boundless Islamic State. Moreover, this “educational legacy” may outlast the collapse of ISIS as a political entity.

This paper is in conversation with works in geography and area studies and contributes to the debates around the issues of education and state-building, space and material practices, violence and state-like political actors in the Middle Eastern context. Focusing on the spatiality of education is crucial to our understanding of how various territorial imaginaries are operationalized in today’s Syria and how they become attached to multiple political agendas."

Workshops by Feras Klenk

Spring, where demonstrators were protesting against the corruption of longtime ministers, for sub... more Spring, where demonstrators were protesting against the corruption of longtime ministers, for substantial political reforms, higher wages, the reduction of foreign labor, and for more jobs. For many, the former Minister of National Economy embodied the widespread public perception of an "out of touch" Omani elite eager to defend their privileges and wealth, the source of Oman's economic problems, and a class willing to subordinate Oman's national interests for private gain. These measures were designed to mollify a public desire for substantial internal political and economic reform signaling that Sultan Qaboos and the government is "listening" to the complaints of the people. However, the system that people were protesting against remains firmly in place despite largely cosmetic changes. Indeed, many of the men, the Sultan's steady hands for decades 1 For example, Sultan Qaboos promised to create 50,000 new public sector jobs despite the general acknowledgement that the state could not "afford" to create more public sector jobs which one interviewee said "defied the law of economics." Other measures included cost of living increases and salary raise for members of the military and security services, students, and general government workers. It is arguable that the delay of the implementation of the VAT tax and cutting of subsidies however slight is a means to cushion a blow that may have political repercussions.

In late 2016, the Omani government launched its National Program for Enhancing Economic Diversifi... more In late 2016, the Omani government launched its National Program for Enhancing Economic Diversification or Tanfeedh (implementation) to meet global economic challenges, respond to low oil prices, and address issues like unemployment. A key component of its 9th five-year plan is to build a sustainable national economy grounded in economic diversification and private sector development. Supported by international experts and organizations, this program adopts the understanding of sustainability and diversification as market-driven and calculated. For example, it relies on the measurement of performance and economic growth, while seeking to encourage youth to work in the private sector and become global entrepreneurs. Among the stated goals of Tanfeedh is to increase the efficiency and productivity of the Omani bureaucracy by implementing KPIs (key performance indicators) to their work. This is done to respond to the needs and demands of local, regional, and international business by incentivizing government workers to become more responsible and proficient. This is part of the larger project of increasing economic growth in the name of economic diversification and sustainability by transforming relations between the state and the private sector. Also, and it the same time, it will alleviate pressure from the Omani government to directly provide for its citizens in light of large budget deficits because of low oil prices and redirect it towards the individual. Hence, transforming the relationship between the (Omani) citizen and the state. This paper, based on my ethnographic field based research argues that this conventional understanding of sustainability, diversification and, most importantly, the economy is problematic. The vision of the economy as a statistical aggregate obscures the entrenched economic interests and power structures that dominate the Omani economic and political landscape, and prevent open discussions about the meanings of growth and economic futures. Using Tanfeedh as a case study, my paper focuses on the ambitions, anxieties, hopes, desires, and fantasies of state-planners, elite Omanis, and young entrepreneurs that are part of the process that helps to build and constitute the economy and give different economic measurement systems and the numbers that comprises them meaning and legibility in a wider context (i.e., re-embedding the economy in its wider social, political, and cultural contexts). Moreover, my paper shows how debates around economic diversification and sustainability in Oman serve as a site of intervention to transform the logic of the state by introducing new market friendly rationalities in the conduct of government, a process that we see taking place on a regional and global scale.

Book Reviews by Feras Klenk

This course provides a broad and thematic overview of Islamism, currently the most visible politi... more This course provides a broad and thematic overview of Islamism, currently the most visible political movement in the Arab World and an important global phenomenon. This course examines the emergence of Islamism and analyzes Islamist political action. It seeks to unpack and problematize concepts and ideas that are essential to the analysis of political Islam. Drawing materials from different academic disciplines such as anthropology, history, political philosophy, and other materials. All class interactions, including readings and discussions, will take place online through our d2l course website. The syllabus contains the outline of course themes and the assignment schedule. The syllabus is subject to change-you will be informed about any modifications in advance. Course Texts: For your convenience, files of all materials will be posted on D2L. You will not have to purchase any books unless otherwise noted.