Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Volume 30, Number 3, 2010, pp. 547-562 (Article)
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m u i R o R A V
Amman Cosmopolitan: Spaces and Practices of Aspiration and Consumption Jillian Schwedler
Introduction
ike many cities in the Middle East, Amman today is hardly recognizable to the visitor who has been away for even just a few years. The formerly bar ren land adjacent to the Airport Road leading into t he cit y is now crowded with gated villas, thick tracts of western-style condos, and rows of recently pla nted saplings. Cell phone towers now clutter the vistas in much the way that satellite dishes did a decade ago. Newly installed sculptures adorn many intersections, construction sites seem to crowd every street, and high-speed underpasses have replaced the clogged traffic circles that once also served as socia l spaces in which pedestrians gat hered, particularly on weekend evenings. A mman is emerging as a world-class neoliberal city —or so the development projects, free trade zones, skyscrapers, and amenities for the wealthy would suggest.� A new logo for the city was launched in ����, part of a project to rebrand the city.� But Amman today is not so much a different city from what it was a decade ago, as it is two cities: cosmopolitan West Amman, where development is unfolding at breakneck speed and foreign investment has skyrocketed, and East Amman, the bustling, dusty home to a majority of the city’s poor and working- class residents. For Jordanians, too, Amman has become a very different place, and how they experience the city remains as varied as ever: communities in all parts of the metropolis structure their quotidian practices around the spatial dimensions of their neighborhoods, from where groceries are bought and how workplaces are reached, to which roads can be crossed safely, at what times of the day, and how long it takes to move from place to place. Most parts of East Amman are much the same as they were ten and even twenty years ago. True, its neighborhoods have expanded to the north, east, and south, and some parks have been refurbished so that lawns are green and fountains (sometimes) provide welcome respite from the dusty city for children to splash and tired feet to relax, particularly during the hotter summer Earlier versions of this article were presented on four occasions, and I am deeply indebted to the participants in each: the conference “Crossing Borders: Unusual Negotiations of the Secular, Public, and Private,” at Amherst College, January 2009; the Middle East Studies Workshop at Harvard University, April 2009; the Ambiguities of Democracy Workshop at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, September 2009; and the Near East Political Science Workshop at Harvard University, March 2010. I am particularly grateful to Lar yssa Chomiak, Rodney Collins, Barbara Cruikshank, Jill Goldenziel, Pete W. Moore, Srirupa Roy,
Michael Stein, Berna Turam, and Lisa Wedeen for their insightful and thoughtful comments. All failings are my responsibility alone.
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1. Christopher Parker, “Tunnel-Bypasses and Minarets of Capitalism: Amman as Neoliberal Assemblage,” Political Geography 28 (200 9): 110 –20. 2. Greater Amman Municipality, “The Story of Amman,” www .ammancity100.gov.jo/en/content/story- amman/2000s-1 (accessed 16 April 2010).
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months. The formerly outlying town of Zarqa to the northeast is now a suburb, and the sprawl shows no signs of slowing. But on the whole, the basic layout and infrastructures of most parts of East Amman have remained unchanged for many of its residents, as have the daily patterns of movement across time and space. � Parts of West Amman, by comparison, have become very different places— spatially, temporally, cu lturally, economically, and politically. Thus for the third of all Jordanians who reside in the greater Amman metropolitan area, those living, working, and spending leisure time in West Amman have experienced far greater changes to t heir daily lives in recent years than have those whose quotidian routines remain largely confined to neighborhoods in East Amman. Unsurprisingly, the impetus for many of these changes to the physical layout of parts of West Amman stems from government effort s aimed at attracting foreign capital to Jordan. Scholars have examined the country’s recent economic reforms,� including the introduction and expansion of free trade zones and quali fied industrial zones, � the effects of privatization and market liberalization, � and shifting sites and practices of patronage.� But seldom explicitly acknowledged is the extent to which these changes in the economic and cultural spaces in Amman have created new sites of engagement among Jordan’s citizens of diverse economic means: spatially, new patterns of work
3. As Parker illustrates, the government does have plans to incorporate portions of East Amman into its broader vision of expanding and deepening Amman’s global and market capitalism, but it intends to do so largely by opening corridors for the ow of goods and services that will require the relocation and displacement of portions o f East Amman’s working-class population. Christopher Parker, “Tunnel-Bypasses,” 117. 4. Anne Mariel Peters and Pete W. Moore, “Beyond Boom and Bust: External Rents, Durable Authoritarianism, and Institutional Adaptation in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,” Studies in Comparative International Development 44 (2009): 256 – 85. 5. Pete Moore, “QIZs, FTAs, USAID and the MEFTA: A Political Economy of Acronyms,” Middle East Report , no. 234 (2005). 6. Rex Brynen, “Economic Crisis and Post-Rentier Democratization in the Arab World: The Case o f Jordan,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 25 (1992 ): 69 –79; Lamis Andoni and Jillian Schwedler, “Bread Riots in Jordan,” Middle East Report 201 (1996); Timothy Piro, Political Economy of Market Reform in Jordan (Landham, MD: Rowman and Littleeld, 1998).
and leisure activities are bringing increasing numbers of Jordanians from East A mman into West Amman (as well as creating new patterns of movement within West A mman); and culturally, notions of class and social status are being complicated and reimagined as middle-class workers both inhabit and imitate the spaces of leisure that are largely exclusive to the wealthy cosmopolitan elite. Shifting practices of work and leisure have also allowed a segment of Jordanians to reimagine their relation to the more desirable dimensions of economic liberalization, that is, by providing them access to the new spaces of glittering global capital, cosmopolitanism, and consumption. These include access to private commercial spaces, such as malls and other locations where elite establishments are concentrated, and to employment in a dramatically expanding sector of the service economy: West Amman’s high- end restaurants, bars, a nd exclusive nightclubs. � I call the Jordanians who traverse these spaces formerly accessible only to the elite “aspiring cosmopolitans,” and I argue that their experiences of negotiating social status and cultural codes in multiple locales are exemplary rather than exceptional.� New sites of leisure have allowed some middle- a nd lowermiddle-class Jordanians to insert themselves into Jordan’s (relatively) new cosmopolita n leisure economy— physically and sometimes also economically — in ways that entail self-conscious
7. L aurie Brand, “Liberalization and Changing Political Coalitions: The Bases of Jordan’s 1990 – 91 Gulf Crisis Policy,” Jerusalem Journal o f Internatio nal Relat ions 13 (1991): 1 – 46; Markus L owe, Jonas Blume, and Jo hanna Speer, “How Favoritism Affects the Business Climate: Empirical Evidence from Jordan,” The Middle East Journal 62 (2008) : 259 –76; Anne Marie Baylouny, “Creating Kin: New Family Associations as Welfare Providers in Liberalizing Jordan,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 38 (2006); and Anne Marie Baylouny, “Militarizing Welfare: Neo-liberalism and Jordanian Policy,” The Middle East Journal 62 (2008): 277 – 303. 8. These new leisure spaces are attracting international attention, particularly aimed at tourists. See, for example, Andrew Ferren, “Next Stop: A New Stylish Amman Asserts Itself,” New York Times , 22 November 2009, www.travel.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/ travel/22next.html?emc=eta1 (accessed 16 April 2010).
9. I am aware that my notion of “aspiring” cosmopolitans suggests a category of actually existing cosmopolitans. While such a distinction is obviously problematic —to the extent that c osmopolitanism e ntails not only economic resources but also a recognizable aesthetic and a multicultural worldview, the boundaries of “membership” in such a group are necessarily uid and contestabl e —I mean here to distinguish between those Jordanians of considerable economic means and those who might be more appropriately characterized as middle class. The cosmopolitan elite and the aspiring cosmopolitans may frequent the same stores and wear the same jeans, but the former do so in greater abundance, while driving expensive cars (often several), traveling internationally with great frequency, and running up t abs in nightclubs that exceed what an aspiring cosmopolitan earns (let alone spends) in a month or more.
negotiations with sites of cultural production and cultural capital. For example, the young men who reside in East Amman (as well as more working-class neighborhoods of West Amman) who find employ ment in high-end establishments gain access and thus opportunities that are not only economic in nature: t hey also gain the knowledge of new representational codes that allow them to present themselves as, and sometimes be recognized as, members of Amman’s cosmopolitan elite. These practices of representation can be descr ibed as crossings in spatial terms (from working-class to elite neighborhoods), in economic terms (from a lower to a higher social class), and in cultural terms (from working- and middle-class citizens to aspiring cosmopolitans). While much of the literature on the cultural effects of neoliberal economic reforms has emphasized exclusions and disenfranchisement, my aim is rather to illuminate the ways in which lines of exclusion are being crossed, creating opportunities (as well as new forms of exclusions) for those who might seem to initially find themselves on the losing side of neoliberal promises. The emergence of aspiring cosmopolitans in Jordan illustrates that new sites of part icipation and engagement may emerge as a consequence of economic reforms that are otherwise largely devastating for all but the wealthiest. Whether these sites and forms of engagement are ultimately emancipatory or destructive remains an open question, with the answer likely contingent upon one’s own perspective of the liberatory possibilities of capitalism. Rather than taking a normative stand on neoliberal economic reforms, �� I aim instead to identify some of the shift ing practices of those most often treated as victims: practices of sur vival, creativit y, and reimagination that have received little attention to date. My argument unfolds in two parts. In part �, I examine the spatial and cultural effects of Jordan’s neoliberal economic reforms, with particular attention to the reach of these reforms and their effects on different segments 10. For the record, I am highly critical of neoliberal economic reforms, having witnessed firsthand its destructive consequences for communities as well as individuals. In this article, I am aiming not to reject critiques, but to recover the agency of those who are often (correctly) portrayed in the literature critical of neoliberalism as victims.
of the population. In part �, I discuss notions of cosmopolitanism generally as well as the ways the term is used by segments of Jordanians, with particular attention to whether cosmopolitanism is as inclusive in practice as its component notion of celebrating “multiculturalism” purports. I then examine the notion that neoliberal policies create sites of inclusion and exclusion, effectively creating di fferent sets of rights and opportunities for different segments of the population. Focusing on cosmopolitan sites of leisure in Amman, I examine the sub jectivities that these sites invoke and evoke, and particularly the ways in which those who have sought entr y into these spaces have engaged in their own self-presentation and adaption of a cosmopolitan representational code. That is, these albeit diverse aspiring cosmopolitans are immediately engaged in the negotiation of their class position, in their location in the social hierarchy as they understand it; and as we shall see, these negotiations are as contingent on movement from one part of the city to another as they are on self-presentation. These Jordanians not only aspire to be part of Amman cosmopolitan, but to be recognized by others as such. They create new notions of self that effectively challenge certain narratives (for example, by downgrading the centrality of local and familial attachment to social standing) while bolstering others (such as cosmopolitanism and western consumerist fantasies), at least while they inhabit certain spaces and not others. By focusing on these highly local practices, we can begin to gain a better understanding of the full implications of neoliberal economic reforms, in ways that recognize local creativity and the ability for individuals to self-consciously locate themselves within shifting social and economic fields. By linking the construction of narratives with shifting spatial orderings, we can develop a far more nuanced understanding of the exclusionary dimensions of economic reforms, as well as the innovations and creativity of those aspir ing to be included.�� I conclude that while cosmopoli-
11. This project is undertaken in the spirit of David Harvey’s appeal to overcome the disciplinary divide between anthropology and geography that has led to the tendency to examine narratives and spatial orderings in isolation of each other. David Harvey, “Cosmopolitanism and the Banality of Geographical Evils” (unpublished manuscript, 2009).
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tanism is not necessarily as inclusive and tolerant as its advocates like to imagine, neither is neoliberalism necessarily as exclusionary as its own critics suggest. Shifting local practices of self and belonging suggest that geography and identity are complexly interconnected.
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Part I: Amman’s New Cosmopolitan Playland
Since Jordan entered into its first agreement with the International Monetary Fund in ����, the country has systematically lifted (and sometimes reinstated) subsidies for basic foodstuffs and petroleum products. Those least well off economically have felt the effects more deeply and acutely and have participated in va rious forms of protest, from “bread riots” to t rucker strikes.�� At least since King Abdullah’s assumption of the throne in ����, however, Jordan’s economic reforms have taken a decidedly neoliberal turn. That is, the Jordanian government has accelerated legal reforms that facilitate foreign investment and free trade and has actively sought to attract multinational corporations and foreign investment. In ����, Jordan hosted the World Economic Forum at the Dead Sea, marking the regime’s commitment to reimagine Jordan’s role in the global economy.�� The flood of economic reforms beginning in ���� — many of which were passed as “temporary” laws while parliament was out of session for more than t wo years (from May ���� until August ����)—were intended to rapidly liberalize the economy and make it hospitable for foreign investment while minimizing overt expressions of political dissent.�� As with most neoliberal projects, the state ostensibly “withdrew” control of certain spheres of economic activity, but in practice it extended its control far more deeply into Jordanian society through legal reforms, the adoption of highly securitized means of social control, and privileges for the entrepreneurial citizens both imagined by neoliberalism and required to put
12. Andoni and Schwedler, “Bread Riots in Jordan”; Jillian Schwedler, “Don’t Blink: Jordan’s Democratic Opening and Closing,” Middle East Report Online, www.merip.org/mero/mero070302.html (2 June 2002). 13. Pete Moore, “The Newest Jordan: Free Trade, Peace, and an Ace in the Hole,” Middle East Report Online, ww w.merip.org/mero/mero062603.html (26 June 2003).
it into local practice. But neoliberalism, as much as it can reflect a specific outlook toward economic development, should not be understood as a single “process” or set of policies; r ather, it shares a common set of goals and beliefs about the effects of those goals, but the real meat lies in the details of execution: a set of ideas that can only be implemented through concrete, specific, and local policies and reforms. As Aihwa Ong notes, “Neoliberalism is often discussed as an economic doctrine with a negative relation to state power, a market ideology that seeks to limit the scope and act ivity of governing. But neoliberalism can also be conceptualized as a new relationship between government and knowledge through which governing activities are recast as nonpolitical and nonideological problems that need technical solutions.”��
Ong focuses on the active, interventionist aspect of neoliberalism in non- Western contexts, “where neoliberalism as exception articulates sovereign rule and regimes of citizenship.” �� This conceptualization provides a useful starting point for understanding the rapid pace and form of economic reforms in countries like Jordan, where economic reform policies are selectively applied, not only to specific fields of economic activity, but also spatially, through the creation of new sites of economic activity and consumption. These spaces are most dramatically illustrated by free trade zones and qualified industria l zones, where certain economic activities are concentrated and delineated spatially with explicit boundaries. But certain neighborhoods are also being reconfigured into concentrated spaces of particular kinds of economic activ ity — with other forms of eco nomic activity explicitly excluded— of the sort that might be aptly described as cosmopolitan consumer dreamlands.��
14. Schwedler, “Don’t Blink.” 15. Aihwa Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2006), 3. 16. Ibid. Italics in original. 17. I borrow the term dreamland from Timothy Mitchell, who uses it in reference to a neoliberal vision of Cairo as “the world’s rst electronic city,” complete
with lush villas, ber optics, golf courses, and all the other cosmopolitan amenities one could desire. One development promised that the buyer would find “The Egypt of My Desires.” Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 273. See also Diane Singerman and Paul Amar, eds., Cairo Cosmo politanism (Cairo and New York: American University of Cairo Press, 2005).
In this sense, King Abdullah has sought to create a new Jordan through neoliberal reforms concentrated in parts of West Amman, the Aqaba Free Trade Zone, and various other qualified industrial zones (QIZs) scattered throughout the country. While QIZs have been largely established in rural areas, often through negotiations with tribal elites who demand that a certain number of jobs be promised to locals,�� the Aqaba Free Trade Zone and the large-scale capital investment in Amma n have unfolded on a landscape already densely populated by Jorda nians. In this sense, t hese economic reforms require not only legal reforms and basic infrastructure, but also new forms of repression, surveillance, and policing to offset the seismic effects felt by the vast majority of the population. Official rates of unemployment were ��.� percent and ��.� percent in ���� and ����, respectively; unofficial estimates routinely put the figure at around �� percent. Employment in agriculture and construction has declined by almost �� percent between ���� and ����, with fewer than half of those jobs now held by Jordanian nationals.�� The government is thus counting on foreign investment and trade liberalization to improve Jordan’s economic outlook. Neoliberal economic reforms also require a reformed legal system to support free trade and facilitate foreign investment, as well as considerable government investment in inf rastructure at the sites of the imagined neoliberal spaces: roads, ports, transportation, office space, and advanced telecommunications, to name just a few. The government must create not only the necessary regulations (through laws) to facilitate capitalistic investments (domestic and foreign), but it must also invest in infrastructural projects, including roads, port facilities, railroads, and telecommunications, �� as well as advanced surveillance methods to secure and police these spaces. The physical location of these projects and the state-led reforms that support the creation of economic zones are thus spatial and legal as well as social. With the increased presence of foreign firms comes the 18. The majority of jobs in the QIZs often go to foreign nationals, who come to Jordan for the sole purpose of taking up these positions and reside in housing camps adjacent to the QIZs w ithout engaging with Jordanian society on any broader level.
need for the sorts of services demanded by the managers and executives of these firms: worldclass hotels, restaurants, nightclubs, spas, and golf courses. Of course, these services are not utilized only by cosmopolitan foreigners — those who travel frequently and have become accustomed to a high-speed, global, luxury lifestyle. These sites of elite cosmopolitanism are also locales for the production and self-presentation of a cosmopolitan elite within Jordan —the ability for certain Jordanians to claim cultural capital as cosmopolitan in the sense of being world wi se and well -traveled, multilingual, hip or cutting-edge, and comfortable and fluent in the cultural codes of the world’s major urban centers. This self-presentation stands in distinction to that of other Jordanians who might also be wealthy and powerful, but whom the cosmopolitans v iew as less sophisticated or worldly. That is, cosmopolitans view themselves as distinct from tribal elites, merchants and traders, and others who may possess wealth but none of the characteristics necessary to signal membership in even the local cosmopolitan community, let alone the cosmopolitan international. Tribal leaders, for example, long a key constituency for the regime’s stability, are largely viewed by Jordan’s jet-set cosmopolitans through an orientalist lens: as backward, out of pace with modernity, possessing litt le underst anding of world(s) beyond their local authorit y, and engaging in outdated “trad itional” practices such as arra nged marriages, gender segregation, and honor killings. The notion of “tribes” hold various meanings for Jordan’s cosmopolitan elite, only some of which echo notions of tribe as frequently used in t he West. The term might refer to prominent families with deep ties to political and economic power—an equivalent in the United States would be the Kennedys or the Rockefellers — or it might refer to tight-knit extended families, where the employment and marital decisions of any individual have impact on the broader familial network. At times, it has much to do with extended real estate holdings and business monopolies. Of course, many of
19. European Training Foundation, Unemployment in Jordan (Luxembourg: Ofce for the Ofcial Publications of the European Communities, 2005), 24. 20. David Harvey, New Imperialism (New York: Oxford Universit y Press, 2005 ), 99 –106.
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Jordan’s cosmopol itan elite have familia l connections of this sort. But i n my interviews and conversations with dozens of these elite, I have been struck by how often I heard “tribal” �� juxtaposed to “modern” and to “cosmopolitan,” in ways that suggest in “tribal” a parochial, backward, and almost buffoonlike mentality that preserves barbaric practices (such as honor killings)�� while rejecting elements of “modernity” (such as gender equality).�� This is not to imply that the categories of tribal elites and cosmopolitan elites are mutually exclusive; to be sure, there are prominent members of tribes — used here in its broadest sense to refer to powerful extended families in t he kingdom with long- standing and close patronage ties to the regime—who move among the circles I am describing as urban and cosmopolitan. I raise the notion of tribal elites as distinct from cosmopolitan elites to signify the recognition by Jordanians of the existence of multiple nodes of social power, and to capture the fact that there are competing images of social hierarchy and diverse spaces that signify as well as reify these distinctions. The sorts of movements across cultural and geographic space enacted by Jordanians of middle-class backgrounds�� — as they shift from home to work, from home to leisure, from kinship to citizenship — are what Rodney Collins calls “transversals.”�� These movements, in and out of cosmopolitan spaces, are certainly not the first sorts of transversals to emerge in Jordan. Prior to the cur rent wave of neoliberal reforms and the emergence of cosmopolitan consumer spaces, cohorts of (frequently) men transversed other spaces, though perhaps cover-
21. The term tribal is sometimes used in English and sometimes in Arabic ( qabili ); the term cosmopolitan is used in the same form in both languages. 22. Honor killings, while not common, continue to number in the hundreds in Jordan annually. An honor killing is when a member of an immediate or extended family kills a family member for damaging the family honor through alleged or real contact with members of the opposite sex that are inappropriate (e.g., outside of marriage). In practice, honor killings are almost exclusively limited to women, though one individual reported to me a killing of a man suspected of sexual encounters with another man. See Rana Husseini, Murder in the Name of Honor (London: Oneworld, 2009). 23. These insights are drawn from interviews and informal conversations with elite Jordanians conducted from 1995 to the present, including eleven phone and
ing less distance both geographically as well as in terms of social hierarchy. The symbolic and literal geography transversed by Amman’s aspiring cosmopolitans presents, however, a fruitful focus for exploring innovation and creativity at the margins and across the borders of economic reform programs. Jordan’s cosmopolitan elite imagine themselves to occupy a social space distinct from what they describe as traditional and local social hierarchies; and indeed they have come to inhabit distinct leisure spaces in a literal sense as well. Prominent among these are expensive nightclubs and restaurants, where one can always order a Caesar salad to be consumed in a fashionable environment with a soundtrack of western and European hits and a clientele of global hipsters.�� Nightclubs, often featuring “international” dj’s brought in for st ints ranging from a single night to several months, typically serve such “international” fare as sushi, chicken nuggets, and quesadillas. Bottle service�� remains in vogue, and mojitos are ubiquitous, though likely to be replaced by a new trendy drink by the time this article reaches publication. Caipirinhas are also popular, typically poured with either vodka or Bacardi’s rum r ather than with the Braz ilian sugarcane liquor cachaça , which the authentic drink requires. The most elite places, however, pride themselves in stocking hard-to-acquire brands of liquors. One restaurant manager told me that he carries liquors back in his personal luggage that are not available through the importers in Jordan.�� Health clubs are also sites of cosmopolitan consumption and p erformance, with locations such as Dunes Club Amman ��
e-mail interviews conducted in late 2009 in connection with this research. 24. Of course, these transversals are not exclusive to the middle class; my focus here is on Amman’s “aspiring cosmopolitans,” but certainly transversals of various sorts characterize the daily realities of many Jordanians of diverse economic and social status. 25. Personal correspondence, December 2009. Collins has developed the concept of “transversals” in his current work conceptualizing a similar dynamic in terms of hustlers in Tunis. I am grateful to him for suggesting the concept, as it nicely captures the sorts of crossings that I am exploring here. 26. Anouk de Koning ascribes the ubiquity of café latte and Caesar salad in Cairo’s up-market coffee shops as evidence of “cosmopolitan belonging.” Anouk de Koning, “Café Latte and Caesar Salad: Cos-
mopolitan Belonging in Cairo’s Coffee Shops,” in Cairo Cosmopolitan, ed. Diane Singerman and Paul Amar (Cairo and New York: American University of Cairo Press, 2005), 221 – 22. 27. Bottle service refers to the practice of purchasing a whole bottle of liquor, which is served with a variety of mixers, garnishes, and a bucket of ice. Bottles that are not entirely consumed can usually be left behind with one’s name writ ten on the bottle — another means of “marking” one’s membership among the cosmopolitan elite. 28. Anonymous interview by the author, Amman, 14 August 2008. 29. Dunes Club Amman, www.1stjordan.net/dunes club/index.html (accessed 16 April 2010).
serving buckets of Coronas and cheeseburger sliders in a lush landscape surrounding swimming pools and waterfalls — all in a compound south of the city surrounded by desert (the club has a Facebook fan page). Like foreign businesspersons, Jordan’s cosmopolitan elites also demand easy access in and out of Jordan v ia a modern and efficient airport: the government has extensively renovated Queen A lia International A irport — complete with a Starbucks, its local competitor Blue Fig, �� a gleaming dutyfree mall, and free wireless Internet �� —and has upgraded the scenery one sees from the car window as one travels from the airport into Amman. As one businessman a nd former government official told me in ����, the goal of t hese particular renovations was to create an experience whereby the foreign visitor “doesn’t feel like he is in the third world from the moment he gets off t he airplane.” �� Streets elsewhere in West Amman have also been improved: Zahran Street has been entirely repaved with five major underpasses added to facilitate the rapid flow of tra ffic into and out of downtown; a su spension bridge connects the Fourth Circle of Zahran Street to the commercial neighborhood of Shmeisani to the north and Abdoun to the south;�� overpasses and underpasses speed traffic between residential and commercial areas along Gardens Street, from Gardens Street to University Road and to new posh neighborhoods to the west of King Hussein Street; and the list could go on. Most of these infrast ructure projects and virtually all the elite services are concentrated in West Amman, so t hat the neighborhoods have been physically altered over the past decade for the dual purposes of facilitating foreign in vestment and catering to the needs and recreational impulses of Jordan’s upper classes and foreign visitors. East Amman, by comparison, 30. Blue Fig, w ww.bluefig.com (accessed 16 April 2010). 31. I was charmed to note that the wireless signal is broadcast via modems secured on the ceiling of the airport with duct tape. 32. Interviewee’s name withheld by request. Amman, July 2003. 33. This road continues south and eventually curves to the east, providing a high-speed conduit between East Amman and the commercial districts of West Amman — bypassing the dow ntown area entirely.
has been little affected: true, parks a nd public spaces have been renovated and orna mental public fountains splash in the summer months. But East Amman is becoming as different from West A mman as West A mman is from its own recent past. In addition to the opening of some half-dozen sushi bars, numerous world-class restaurants, cigar lounges, and Irish pubs, the boutique products available today rival those available in New York, Paris, Milan, Tokyo, and Dubai. Even more, the sites for these a nd other material consumptions have become incredibly stylish. Indeed, what is being consumed is not limited to material goods and services, but also includes cultural codes and even spaces, a particular cosmopolitan aesthetic. The most elite boutiques for sartorial goods, for example, are no longer located only along the t raffic-hewn, dusty, and tired-feeling streets of Sweifiyeh—the only places one could find them as recently as the late ����s; shoppers can now purchase their Chanel handbags and Armani jeans in the posh shops of more than a half-dozen glistening, pristine malls, where they may pause during their shopping for an espresso at any number of modernist-styled cafes, or even a venti halfcaf latte from Starbucks.�� The newer malls are bright and clean, adorned with large banners advertising international movies — which may be viewed at the mall’s own reserved-seats-only multiplex — and icons such as David Beckham, whose image hawked his “favorite” bra nd of watch for most of ����. Mecca Mall �� and the newer City Mall �� located on the western edge of West Amman will soon be joined by two major malls in Abdoun, a neighborhood home to some of the city’s hippest nightclubs as well as many of the cosmopolitan elite themselves. Indeed, Abdoun’s major traffic circle remains a site for congregating on weekend evenings
34. The “city” mugs available from Starbucks internationally — which feature cities such as Washington, DC, New York, Paris, and s o on — are “country” mugs in the Middle East: they are available for Jordan, Oman, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, and Lebanon, among others; most can be purchased in any Middle Eastern outlet of the chain, and not only in the country on the mug. 35. Mecca Mall, www.meccamall.jo (accessed 16 April 2010). 36. City Mall, www.citymall.jo (accessed 16 April 2010).
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(especially Thursday night), where pedestrians congregate while BMWs, Mercedes, and SU Vs cruise the scene. Just south of Abdoun Circle is the city’s largest (as of this writing) freestanding Starbucks, a two-level building with outdoor terraces, a fireplace, and a guarded parking lot. Starbucks is sandwiched between the eco-conscious and hipster Blue Fig Restaurant — which hosts art exhibits, art ists, and concerts —and the concrete carcass of the Hard Rock Café Amman, a large building adorned wit h a Petra-inspired façade�� and a roof-top globe that continues to declare, “Love All, Serve All,” despite being closed for nearly a decade.�� The new Taj mall under construction just to the south is touted as Taj Life Style Center, where, as its Web site (launched in ����) announces, “The ��,��� m mixed-use retail project blends chic shops, cafes, restaurants, and family entertainment venues together into one extraordinary cosmopolitan experience for the city of Amman.” �� The site further describes the project: “Massively projecting five stories up ward from the land’s surface, the structure is an urban ��st century citadel, frequented by chic travelers and cosmopolitan city residents.” Closer to the physical center of the city, changes to the commercial district of Shmeisani are also under way. The neighborhood was lo cated at the western edge of the city twenty years ago; today, it is nearly “downtown.” The eastern edge of the neighborhood borders Abdali, and precisely at this intersection is the site of the former mukhabarat (secret police) complex, known informally as Palestine Hotel (Funduk Filastin ) because of its history of “hosting” politically engaged Palestinians for long periods of t ime. The building was razed in ������ to make way for the Abadali Project, a neoliberal dreamland that is planned to include seven gleaming skyscrapers, million-dollar apartments, a pedestrian “world” shopping mall, and space tailored to meet the needs of international financial services. (HSBC �
37. Petra, southern Jordan’s “Rose-Red City,” is notable less for its Roman ruins than its earlier Nabatean structures carved into the sheer rock. The façade of Petra’s most famous building, the Treasury, is featured in the lm Raiders of the Lost Ark. 38. In this sense, the low-brow globalism of Planet Hollywood (whose outlet in Abdoun has also closed down) and Hard Rock Café seems to have failed in Jordan.
inaugurated its headquarters at the Atrium building with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on March ��, ����.) Billed on its Web site as “A New Downtown for Amman” as well as “Amman’s central business district,” the project is self-consciously cosmopolitan in its reimagining of social spaces: the residential spaces are envisioned as “Generating a New Meaning to Urban Living,” �� while the restaurants and shopping arcades promise to “Glitter Your Life.” �� The retail component of the project, called Abadali Boulevard, declares itself to be “a world-class destination that places Amman on the international retail map.” �� The models on the Web sites are fair-skinned and generically European (or American) in facial features, with women sporting bare shoulders and paparazzi photographing the beautiful people as they enter and leave shops and restaurants with cell phones in hand, indifferent to the adoring and longing attention of those surrounding them. During the summer of ����, the city offered a pilot shuttle service called the A mman City Bus, a hop-on, hop-off air-conditioned sightseeing bus that completes a circuit of thirtyfive tourist and shopping spots every two-and-ahalf hours. For approximately US$�� for a day pass — the countr y has a per capita income of US$� a day, though residents ride for less —you can ride in air-conditioned comfort to visit such tourist destinations as the Roman citadel and amphitheater downtown —Amman is the site of the ancient Roman city of Philadelphia — King Hussein’s personal automobile collection at the Automobile Museum, as well as the major shopping areas (including malls and the outdoor pedestrian area of Wakalat Street) and hotels in West Amman. While the service is currently suspended, as of t he summer of ���� government officials were talking about ways of reviving the project and making the service permanent. Reflected in these diverse projects are the very real differences in t he ways that Jord ani-
39. Taj Life Style Center, www.tajlifestyle.com (accessed 16 April 2010).
42. Abadali Boulevard Company, www.abdali -boulevard.jo (accessed 16 April 2010).
40. The main headquarters for “internal security” had moved to a new complex — resembling a prison yard — south of Amman a few years earlier.
43. See “Profile” under “About Us” at www.abdali -boulevard.jo. The Web site also describes Jordan as “an economically and politically stable country in the Middle East.” See “Amman” under “Our Location.”
41. Abadali Project, www.abdali.jo (accessed 16 April 2010).
ans inhabit and move across the landscape of Am man. Indeed, the reach of neoliberal reforms certainly creates t iers of citizenship and privilege of the sort Ong terms “gradat ions of citizen rights a nd benefits.” �� It is not that the upper classes, as a function of their wealth, have greater access to the protections and rights encoded in law, but that the specific rights being actively advanced, prioritized, and protected by the government are those related to a neoliberal vision of economic growth (particularly free trade, foreign investment, and cosmopolitan consumerism), at the expense of democratic political rights (such as the freedom of political expression, popular participation, and assembly for the purpose of political protest). But despite the concentration of projects aimed at Jordan’s elite and aff luent foreign t ravelers — not t he backpackers who stay in the sa me hostels they have for decades — these benefits do not map neatly or exclusively along class lines, but spatially: those residing, working, or traversing particular spaces, regardless of economic class, may reap at least some of the benefits of these infra structural improvements and reform priorities. Small-business owners can and are relocating their offices to West Amman in part because the new infrastructure has made transport from their homes to their sites of employment in West Amman quick and easy. The fixed routes of cheap shared taxis called service (pronounced sair- VE ES) have been expanded throughout West Amman, another indication of a workingclass infra structure benefiting from new roads and shorter transit times. In this sense, Ong’s notion of “tiers” of citizenship entails rather rigid structural connotations that are somewhat at odds with the kinds of transversals enacted by Amman’s aspiring cosmopolitans. The notion of tiers suggests a rather inflexible hierarchy, and thus cannot fully capture the dynamism at work in and around Amman’s emerging neoliberal 44. Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception. 45. I am grateful to Rodney Collins for urging me to emphasize this dimension of my critique of Ong. 46. Seyla Benhabib articulates the ways in which cosmopolitanism can probably never be reconciled with democracy. Seyla Benhabib, Another Cosmop olitanism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
and cosmopolitan spaces.�� It is to these complex transversals that I now turn.
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Part II: Aspiring Cosmopolitans
What is cosmopolitanism — that to which some Jorda nians aspire? I have descr ibed the term above as entailing a sense of being world- wise and well-traveled, multilingual, hip or cuttingedge, and comfortable and fluent in the cultural codes of the world’s major urban centers. One common definition of cosmopolitanism entails the idea that all humans belong to one community that shares a morality of inclusiveness, tolerance, and multicultura lism. Cosmopolitanism in this sense is frequently advocated by western liberals as a panacea to internecine conflict, resurgent nationalism, and all sort s of bloody “othering.” Far from being inclusive and multicultural, however, this sort of cosmopolitanism strongly emphasizes democracy �� but in practice has little ability to tolerate or even accommodate antirepublican global outlooks, such as those supra-state identities put forth by Islamists and socialists, to give just two examples.�� Prevailing conceptions of cosmopolitanism often appear intimately linked to globalization, as David Held notes,�� imagining a borderless world where cultural capital flows as freely as economic capital, lifting all boats from economic underdevelopment as well as cultural backwardness.�� But all notions of cosmopolitanism are necessarily grounded, attached to place and understood by people in concrete contexts. In Jordan, the term cosmopolitan is most often associated with elite consumerism, Western cultural domination, economic globalization, and secularism — a sort of Western-centric, rational-secular humanism gone shopping. In Amman the term is most commonly identi fied with particular spaces and practices rather than broad ideals of human community or multicul-
47. See also Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006). 48. See, for example, David D. Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmo politan Go vernance (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), 267, cited in Harvey, “Cosmopolitanism,” 2. I am indebted to Harvey for making this connection.
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49. Indeed, the connection between globalization and cosmopolitanism requires a trick of what Masao Miyoshi calls a liberal self-deception: far from neutral observers, advocates of multicultural cosmopolitanism are actually “fully collaborating with the hegemonic ideology, which looks, as usual, like no ideology at all.” Masao Miyoshi, “A Borderless World?” in Documenta X — The Bo ok, ed. Jean-François Chevrier (Stuttgart: Hatje Cantz Publishers, 1997), 202, cited in Harvey, “Cosmopolitanism,” 2.
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turalism, so that hotels, malls, nightclubs, restaurants, and glitzy foreign investment projects can be easily juxtaposed to spaces that do not fit this image even as they may embody global market and cultural flows. As Parker notes, East Amman is not without its own form of cosmo politanism: “The image of East Amman as an isolated slum suggests a degree of passivity and essentialism that would seem odd to anyone familiar with the vibrant economy of its marketplaces and the subaltern cosmopolitanism of its inhabitants. The Palestinian refugee camp of Wihdat, for example, is home to one of Jordan’s most vibrant produce markets and a dizzying array of low-end consumer outlets.”�� Yet as Jor da ni an blo gger Ahmad Humeid laments, “Amman ha s become a divided city. That’s a sad reality we have to face.” �� East Amman has its own vibra ncy and cultural flows, but the government has invested in a neoliberal vision that is most readily realizable, at least for the time being, in more affluent West Amman. The global superstore giant Carrefour has opened a major outlet in East Amman, but in a location easily accessible to West Amman via a new highway; it remains unclear what proportion of customers are drawn from nearby neighborhoods, but the availability of high-end brands suggests that Carrefour will draw an elite clientele and will not soon put local markets out of business. The result is t hat the city remains largely divided in terms of the spaces routinely traversed by various segments of the population. Jordan’s economic elite (as well as foreign visitors), for example, seldom venture into Amman’s downtown souk of wust al-balad (city center)— where the enterprising shopper can find refurbished appliances, cheap cell phone batteries, used clothing, and all sorts of oriental kitsch — except on their way to visit t he ruins of the ancient Roman city of Philadelphia �� or when they head downtown for a “cultu ral” experience, like having lunch at long-established
50. Parker, “Tunnel-Bypasses,” 119. 51. Ahmad Humeid, www.360east.com/?p=1014 (accessed 16 April 2010). 52. The downtown area itself is being considered for radical redevelopment. One plan imagines it as a cosmopolitan neoliberal space, another as a “classic” Middle Eastern souk, which would entail use of orientalist imagery to create an “old city” casbah to attract
working-class restaurants like Jerusalem Restaurant. Likewise for the Jordanian citizens who shop, eat, and relax in the dusty downtown with a glass of fresh mango juice or an argila (water pipe), the booming nightlife in West Amman is not immediately apparent, though its licentious behavior is made “visible” through tax i-driver gossip, disapproving mosque sermons, newspaper articles and advertisements, and the stories told by the young Jordanian men who work as waiters, bartenders, busboys, and bouncers in the city’s many clubs and restaurants. But the crucial issue here is not that East Amman is providing the labor that enables the functioning of the neoliberal spaces that make up Amman Cosmopolitan. Rather, I wish to move beyond the critical literature on neoliberalism to suggest �) that neoliberal reforms do not create only exclusions and disenfranchisement for the working classes, but also spaces for self-imagination and inventiveness as a result of transversals, and �) that as a consequence, the ideal consumer citi zen envisioned by Jordan’s neoliberal reforms is not an identity or experience attainable only by the upper class and economic elite. Much recent literatu re on neoliberalism has emphasized the w ays in which economic reform projects (neoliberal and otherwise) work to provide benefits and guarantee certain rights to small segments of the population while rendering fewer legal protections and rights to the majority. Scholars have examined the “differential modes of treatments of populations”�� and how the idea of the global in practice only works to “connect” in a highly selective, discontinuous, and point-to-point fashion,�� leaving portions of the populations “outside” these processes in terms of opportunities and benefits, but also, in a more literal sense, spatially. James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer explore the ways in which resistance to neoliberal exclusions is often channeled f rom destabilizing antisystem
tourists as well as a higher class of Jordanian leisureseekers. The development project is currently prevented by the existence of a tenant law that makes it virtually impossible for landlords to evict tenants, even commercial tenants. Revisions to these laws are due to change in 2010, at which time the downtown area will likely undergo significant redevelopment that displaces the lower-end retailers.
53. Robert Castel, “From Dangerousness to Risk,” in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality , ed. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 294, cited in Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception, 79. 54. James Ferguson, Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2006), 14.
social movements into the carefully controlled and controllable spheres of elections and local reform organizations.�� In her study of citizenship, Saskia Sassen likewise emphasizes the ways in which disadvantaged subjects, such as factory workers, see their inequalities formali zed through reform policies and into law, despite the fact that they are sometimes successful in gaining formal rights; �� certain subjects, such as housewives and mothers, are excluded through a different means, namely, their categorization as nonpolitical.�� Ong also emphasizes the ways in which exceptions t o neoliberalism — spaces governed by logics other t han neoliberalism — are i n voked to both include and exclude populations and spaces from neoliberal calculations and choices.�� She does not use the notion of exception in Giorgio Agamben’s sense of a decision made outside the juridical order, �� but rather to denote an extraordinary departure in policy that can be deployed to include as well as exclude populations as well as spaces. Indeed, “the exception can also be a positive decision to include selected populations and spaces as targets of ‘calculative choices and value orientations’ associated with neoliberal reform.”�� What all t hese studies emphasize is t hat neoliberalism, like globalization, is not a si ngle process or set of reforms that creates predictable and replicable effects across diverse locales, nor does it entail a simple “retreat of the state” from spheres of economic activity (so that “markets” can frolic freely). But economic globalization is rightly associated with staggering numbers of the globally excluded,�� so in addition to attention to the specific processes and means of exclusion, we also need to identify an analytical angle that allows us to examine the ways in which peoples struggle at the boundaries of neoliberal projects, practices, and spaces. Anna Tsing’s notion of “friction” is useful here, as it points to the ways in which the tensions created
as inclusions and exclusions rub up against each other can be productive: friction results when the rubber hits the road, but it is essential for the vehicle to move forward. A s she argues in her study of neoliberalim in Indonesia, “cultures are continually co-produced in the interaction I call ‘friction’: the awkward, unequal, and unstable, and creative qualities of interconnections across difference.”�� The notion of friction is useful as well in thinking about the ways in which neoliberal reforms do not in f act include or exclude neatly; the “edges” of t hese project s — legally and spatially — are sites of contestation as well as creativity. Thus while Ong’s idea of neoliberalism as exception points to the construction of political and social spaces that are differently regulated and linked in diverse and selective ways to global circuits, �� I aim to shift our attention away from examining precisely how those exclusions are generated and toward the ways in which peoples who find t hemselves at t he blurry boundary of inclusion/exclusion strive to negotiate, imagine, and reconstruct the opportunities and possibilities of marginal spaces. Precisely what it is these individuals do can lead to new practices and crossings of the sort captured by Collins’s notion of transversals, that is, movements from work to leisure, from private to public, from family to citizen, from tradit ion to modernity, and so on. Jordanians daily traverse a wide range of symbolic and physical spaces, negotiating the crossings between them just as they negotiate interactions within each. In her study of how the production of desire in China lies at the heart of neoliberal projects, Lisa Rofel emphasizes that reforms can have contradictory effects: they “enhanced ordinary citizens’ sense of the new possibilities that lay within their reach but also increased frustrations with the new social inequalities that sometimes became evident.” �� But frustrations are not the only response to the realization of the possibilities that appear to lie just out of reach. Even seemingly
55. James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer, Social Movements and State Power (New York: Pluto Press, 2005), 9.
59. Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
56. Saskia Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Universit y Press, 20 06), 11 0– 21.
60. Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception, 5.
57. Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights, 277 – 321. 58. Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception, 4.
61. Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception, 23. 62. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Friction: An Ethnogra phy of Glo bal Conn ection (Princeton and New York: Princeton University Press and Oxford University Press, 2005), 4.
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63. Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception, 9. 64. Lisa Rofel, Desiring China : Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality, and Public Culture (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2007), 9.
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“excluded” Jord ania ns — those who a re not imagined to animate the government’s dream of recreating Amman as a global, consumerist, cosmopolitan city of the world — are not entirely disempowered, and they are certainly not docile. Populations always animate the margins of neoliberal exclusions. Many will remain excluded, despite considerable efforts to join in, while others will see new possibilities, new ways of being, and imagine themselves as included rather than excluded. Indeed, some wi ll even find ways of participating in forms of economic and leisure activity that are prioritized by neoliberal visions even as they feel the effects of the selectivity of neoliberal reforms. For example, residents in a neglected neighborhood may move across a variety of spaces to inhabit and animate other spaces, which they can imagine were intended for use by them. Their activ ities may not be of the sort envisioned by neoliberal reforms,�� but they are actually made possible through the juridical, spatial, and cu ltural reconfigurations attached to neoliberal reforms. In this sense, marginal and border spaces can be spaces not only of exclusion and disappointment but also of opportunity and vibrant inventiveness. How, then, are such spaces being negotiated in Amman? The regime’s neoliberal priorities imagine a population of citizens that are politically quiescent but patriotic in their consumerism, who can animate the project of refashioning Amman as a city of world stature. Yet while certain elite spaces are most accessible to those with disposable incomes, the ideal consumer citizen envisioned by Jordan’s neoliberal reforms is an identity that is also accessible to those who are able to assert themselves as aspiring cosmopolitans. Neoliberal reform projects have created new patterns of both work and leisure activities that bring increasing numbers of Jordanians from East Amman into West Amman. Notions of class and social status are being complicated as middle-class workers both inhabit and imitate the spaces of leisure that are fashioned according to the desires of the wealthy cosmopolitan elite. Indeed, practices of
work, leisure, and self-presentation have shifted in ways that allow a segment of Jordanians to gain economic and social opportunities through employment in high- end restaurants, bars, and nightclubs. While overall employment in Jordan hovers around �� percent, private-sector employment in the areas of trade, hotels, and restaurants has increased from �.� percent in ���� to ��.� percent in ����.�� Still, only � percent of the total workforce (and �.� percent of the private sector) are employed in restaurants and hotels. �� With ��.� percent of jobseekers, male and female, below the age of twenty-five, these are highly coveted jobs.�� I do not wish to imply that high-end hotels and restaurants are the only sites of entr y for ostensibly excluded portions of t he population to forge cosmopolitan identities within the spaces of neoliberalism. But these self-consciously cosmopolitan leisure sites are exemplary, because the need for workers entails the need for workers who appear to fit in —who can blend into the scene as if they belong —and thus require those workers to adopt a cosmopolit an representational code, at least while at work. This tran sversal entails more than a particular kind of dress, but also a self-presentation that includes ease in engaging the cosmopolitan elite, as well as comfort and fluency in the cultur al codes that signal worldly cosmopolitanism. The bartender must know not only how to make small talk and be conversant in the topics that will be of interest to the customer who waits for a friend to arrive, but how to make eye contact and likewise not violate conventions of personal space. The shop clerk must know not only what fashions are hot, but how to greet and interact with the customer in ways that suggest an understanding of shared values and experiences (“Everyone dreams of owning a Birken shoulder bag!”). As workers learn t hese codes and adopt them for self-presentation, they often carry them on their selves as they leave their place of employment, though not necessarily as they return home. The need to staff elite establishments has considerably expanded over the past decade, as
65. See especially Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception, and Tsing, Friction. 66. European Training Foundation, Unemployment in Jordan, 24.
67. Ibid., 38 and 28. 68. Ibid., 30, table 10.
new hotels each bring a handful of venues, and Jordanian entrepreneurs strive to create spaces that remind them of their favorite places in cities like New York and London. Interviews with seven managers of some of the hottest spots pro duced a refrain familiar to me during my own experiences working in restaurants and bars in New York: there is no shortage of applicants for positions, but managers str uggle to find enough “suitable” employees. Several major new hotels have opened in Amman over the past decade, including Four Seasons, Sheraton, the Grand Hyatt, and LeRoyal. Independent and hotel-based restaurants such as Asia, Canvas, Wild Jordan �� (with its environmental theme), Ren Chai,�� Blue Fig (also environmental), the Sanctuary, Glass, the Living Room, the Grotto, and Vinaigrette�� present a sleek modernist aesthetic, often serving organic foods and craft beers, and displaying the work of local artists on the walls. A decade ago many waiting and bartending positions were filled by foreigners: Americans and Europeans in the most expensive places, Eastern Europeans and East Asians in the seedier establishments. Jordanian men have also long staffed many of the restaurants, often in a style more of an elegant Italian restaurant: head waiters, men of forty or older and wearing dark suits, supported by teams of younger men wearing vest, shirt, and t ie. The flood of new establishments, particularly those aiming to attract the most elite clientele, has led managers to try to hire top sta ff away from competitors. What is new in these places is the relatively rapid spread of a cosmopolitan hip aesthetic, emerging first in t he late ����s and exploding in the past five years. The Grand Hyatt Hotel Web site, for example, describes its new ��° North restaurant as “cosmopolitan and sleek,” a “unique dining venue more likely to be found in New York, Sydney, or London.”�� The older gentlemen waiters are left to run the “old” formal restaurants, like Romero and Trattatoria, while the young and beautifu l servers don black from head to toe and pour mojitos while dj’s spin the latest tracks from London and New
York. Because of the proliferat ion of high- end leisure establishments, patterns of employment have shifted as the demand for younger and hipper staff has increased, creating new opportunities for those who once could hope to gain a position as a waiter only through years of apprenticeship in the city’s few top restaurants. T he owners of the most elite nightclubs mandate a particular look, but their reported efforts to hire staff from other establishments suggest that employment is not open to anyone: only those who show up for an interview having already adopted the desired representational code are likely to find employment. Why should we care about the specif ics of these new jobs for young men, other than to note changing employment trends? How has the proliferation of jobs in Amman’s cosmopolitan sites of leisure and consumption accompanied changes in the leisure practices and self-understandings of the young Jordanians who work there? Individuals are defined, and define themselves, through their adaptation of a representational code. That is, they wish to be recognized by and recognizable to the group to which they wish to belong; they a lso may wish to differentiate themselves from other groups. How they present themselves is also going to be contingent on context, and is likely to change as transversals take Jordanians from space to space, context to context. In every context, this process necessarily entails others’ recognitions of who belongs and who constitutes matter out of place. Recognition by all audiences is of course not equally valued. As Norma Moruzzi argues, we cannot fully understand selfpresentation without a comprehension of “how local practitioners use the codes.” �� What are these young men saying through their dress, hair, language, ringtones, favorite place to hang out, selection of CDs on the floors of their cars, and so on, and to whom are they saying it? In a similar manner, young male mall kids gel their hair into faux hawks —slicking the sides of their hair down and spiking the top in ways that enable them to easily erase the effect upon return -
69. Wild Jordan Café, www.wildjordancafe.com (accessed 16 April 2010).
71. alqasr-hojo.com, ww w.alqasr-hojo.com/vin.htm (accessed 16 April 2010).
70. ATICO Fakheldrin Group, www.atico- jo. com / renchai (accessed 16 April 2010).
72. Gr and Hyatt Hotel, ww w.amman.grand.hyatt .com/hyatt/hotels/entertainment/restaurants/ index.jsp#5811972 (accessed 16 April 2010).
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73. Norma Claire Moruzzi, “Trying to Look Different: Hijab as the Self-Presentation of Social Distinctions,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 28 2 (2008): 225 –34, 2 26.
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ing home —and adopt a part icular repertoire of posing and gesturing when hanging out at the mall in an act of self-presentation that signals their position to others, who in turn are recognizable to them. Given that malls are private commercial spaces, adopting the r ight representational code can also mean all the difference in terms of gaining admittance by the guards staffing the metal detectors that stand at the entrances. Similarly, in the sleek, high-end neighborhood of Abdoun, multiple groups find ways to share the same cosmopolitan spaces: some by working in the establishments, some by patronizing them, and still others by hanging around the central traffic circle, cruising and listening to music while meeting friends and drinking a Coke but not actually patronizing the more expensive and exclusive establishments. One might characterize this group, pejoratively, as circle rats akin to ma ll rats: they know the spaces to inhabit, aim to approximate the desired representational code (and frequently de velop a specific code of t heir own), but do not have the ability to “pass” as part of t he cosmopolitan elite, let alone possess the disposable income necessary to buy drinks and food at prices akin to those in New York City. Yet these diverse segments of aspiring cosmopolitans are able, through their adaption of a specific cosmopolitan representational code that they and others recognize, to claim their own place within a particular social locale, which they understand in hier archical terms: stretching to a higher status in terms of class, or to a higher status in terms of coolness and hipness, as cutting-edge. That is, they are responding to, as well as producing and reproducing, hierarchies of social capital that a re naturalized within the space of Bourdieu’ian habitus,�� spaces that exist at the boundaries of neoliberal reform projects while affording new opportunities of entry to an otherwise largely excluded segment of the population. Indeed, there are d istinct and multiple spheres of aspiring youths, with many loath to be (mis)recognized as belonging to one other
group. For example, many of these aspiring cosmopolitans who work in bars and clubs adamantly distinguish themselves from — and would abhor being confu sed for — the male mall kids. The aspiring cosmopolitans and mall kids both might wear jeans and T-shirts, but how they wear them, how they fit the body, what brand they wear, and where they wear them are practices that create distinctions between them that are recognizable to themselves and sometimes to others. The waiters and bartenders, for example, sport the carefully gelled hair of t he metrosexual rather than the slick pompadours and faux hawks. During my ethnographic work in nightclubs, I noticed repeatedly in conversations that the aspiring cosmopolitans “see” these differences (from mall kids) as well as similarities (with the cosmopolitan elite). (The mall kids and weekend Abdoun loiterers, of course, are also engaged in transversals that may aptly be described as aspirational.) They are careful to reproduce and even exaggerate these distinctions from mall kids, lest they be confused for them, while reproducing and adapting the codes they recognize in the cosmopolitan elite. These representational codes are comprehensible to others, and indeed rely upon recognition. Something as seemingly simple as a cell phone ringtone or choice of cologne can function as an important marker of distinction or similitude. The self-presentation and status negotiating of these aspiring cosmopolitans extend be yond their places of work to their own sites of leisure activity. In many ways, they strive to emulate the leisure practices of the cosmopolitan elite, but at places that are somewhat less expensive than many of t hose in which they work. In their free time they hang out less at the malls than they do at Starbucks, and they frequent clubs that embody a cosmopolitan aesthetic but are not among the hottest spots to be seen —nor the most expensive. So while the cosmopolitan elite will drop hundreds of JDs (US$�.�� = JD �) in a single night buying whole bottles of liquor�� and platters of chicken wings, sushi, pizza, and tapas
74. Moruzzi, “Trying to Look Different,” 228.
75. If you can afford it and are known to the bartenders, waiters, or owners, you can purchase a bottle of liquor at an elite establishment and leave any remaining portion behind with your name on it, so it is waiting there for you on a subsequent visit.
at high-end bars like Chesters �� and Buddah Club,�� and nightclubs like Nai,�� Silk,�� JJs, and Kanabaye, the staff from those establishments will often hang out at venues like Cube and Fizz. These venues are still hip and cosmopolitan in aesthetic, but they are not frequented by the most elite, and thus the aspiring cosmopolitan is unlikely to encounter the patrons he serves at work (and drinks are still expensive but far more affordable than at the most elite clubs). Cube, for example, is located in the lower-mid-range Sheppard Hotel, a space that previously housed a tired bar with few customers; the new club, with its sleek white-leather banquettes, is packed to capacity many nights of the week. Yet upon mentioning to an upper-class Jordanian friend that I had been there the previous night, she replied (in English), “Eww, why would you want to go there?” implying, as I understood it, that the clientele was a bit down-market for her tastes. Cosmopolitans and aspiring cosmopolitans do inhabit and animate some of the same leisure spaces, however, primarily the more casual but hip restaurants — places like Salute, Grappa, Canvas, Books@Cafe, and Bigfellow’s Irish Pub —and coffee shops, notably the many outlets of Starbucks. And everyone eats Caesar salads and drinks mojitos. But even as tiers of cosmopolitan leisure sites create parallel spaces for those with different levels of disposable income, they map onto similar spaces in West Amman —neighborhoods in a city whose neoliberal spaces still, despite these inventive practices, exclude the vast majority of the population. Conclusion
What does all th is mean? As Allen Scott argues, an ever- widening range of economic act ivity is concerned with producing goods and serv ices that are permeated with broadly aesthetic or semiotic attributes,�� and these attributes are socially productive in their own rights. Amman’s emerging spaces of cosmopolitanism create rapidly expanding avenues for accessing a new “modern” and patterns of employment imbri-
cate with tiers of leisure activity as well as shifting subjectifications and self-representations. In this way, forms of entertainment and distraction always function, at least in part, as personal ornaments, modes of social display, sources of self-awareness, �� and acts of self-production. The group I’ve described as aspiring cosmopolitans self-consciously insert themselves into the economy not only through their employment in elite leisure establishments, but through their patterns of consumption as well as by adapting a representational code that enables them to traverse the space of the city as well as the borders of perceived social hierarchies. Their significance is not only in the ways in which they are aspiring to engage in Jordan’s neoliberal dreamland future, but in the ways in which they are imagining themselves as already part of that project. Through their patterns of employment, leisure activ ity, and consumption, they have called into existence a tier of cosmopolitan activities to accommodate their desires while recogniz ing their somewhat les ser financial resources. The banalities of space form t he preconditions of sha red experiences and thus for identities and narratives. When these spaces are remade, and movements across them altered (new paths, quicker movement), new narratives are constructed. One might assume that Amman’s cosmopolitan waiter/club kids have emerged as a target of Islamists, rhetorically if not physically, with the latter condemning the former for their alcohol consumption, experimental dr ug use, embrace of “Western culture,” and promiscuit y. I do not want to suggest that some Islamists are not vocal in their opposition to what they see as the amoral and decadent behavior of Amma n cosmopolitans. But I would like to raise a caution against suggesting the existence of a clear binary between a pious, Islamic ascetic public and secular cosmopolitan consumer-partiers. Pious citizens have themselves grappled with cosmopolitan aesthetics and practices, evidenced, for example, in jilbabs with faux rhine-
76. Le Royal Amman, www.leroyalamman.com/ chesters.html (accessed 16 April 2010).
79. Le Royal Amman, ww w.leroyalamman.com/silk .html (accessed 16 April 2010).
77. Le Royal Amman, www.leroyalamman.com/ buddah_bar.html (accessed 16 April 2010).
80. Allen J. Scott, The Cultural Economy of Cities (London: Sage Publishers, 2000), 2.
78. alqasr-hojo.com, www.alqasr-hojo.com/nai.htm (accessed 16 April 2010).
81. Scott, Cultural Economy of Cities, 3.
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stones reproducing YSL (Yves Saint Laurent) motifs, “muhaja-babe” fashions, �� and the much-discussed bad hijabi phenomenon in Iran.�� Families, couples, and same- sex groups of individuals donning conservative clothing, including variations of head coverings for women, populate malls and coffee shops. Hijabs are not unusual sights at places like Starbucks, though they are most often donned by girls in their twenties and thirties, who arrive as couples (same or mixed sex) or in small groups, often side-by-side with women whose heads are uncovered. If we want to advance our understanding of “political” change in the context of selective and targeted neoliberal economies in the Middle East, we will need to approach these aesthetic practices and representational codes not as discrete and self-contained, where encounters between “competing” codes necessarily result in tension or conflict. Rather, we need to explore these codes and how they are used to gain traction in our understanding of complex practices of subjectification and meaning-making, and thus as sites of new political possibilities.
82. Allegra Stratton, Muhajababes (New York: Melville House, 2008). 83. Nima Naghibi, “Bad Feminist or Bad Hejabi? Moving Outside the Hejab Debate,” Interventions 1 (1999): 555 – 71; Moruzzi, “Trying to Look Different.”
