Setting the conditions for going global: Dubai’s transformations and the Emirati women

Abstract

This study investigated how the rapid transformation of Dubai has affected the forms and shape of Emiratis’ consumption. Analysis of participant observations, projective techniques and existential phenomenological interviews with Emirati women living in Dubai uncovered ambivalence about economic power and loss of traditions and strategies for going global including embracing local capital, brand selection and spatiotemporal restrictions. The discussion notes that the global is something that is locally constructed whereby the locals play a key role in developing global structures of common difference.

Keywords:

• Dubai
• glurbanisation
• glocalisation
• global consumer culture
• identity
• globalisation
• instant city

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hélène Cherrier

Hélène Cherrier (PhD, University of Arkansas) is currently an associate professor at RMIT, Australia. Her research interests, which relate to the sociology of consumption, embrace radical changes in consumption lifestyles; social and environmental activism; appropriation and reconfiguration of consumer meanings, symbols and usage; identity politics and the role of disposal in identity construction.

Russell Belk

Russell Belk is Kraft Foods Canada Chair in Marketing in the Schulich School of Business at York University. His research is often cultural and visual and involves the meanings of possessions, collecting, gift-giving, materialism, sharing and global consumer culture.