Overview

The digital has emerged as a driving force of change that is reshaping everyday life and affecting nearly every sphere of vital activity. Yet, its impact has been far from uniform. The multifaceted implications of these ongoing shifts differ markedly across the world, demanding a nuanced understanding of specific manifestations and local experiences of the digital.In The Digital Double Bind, Mohamed Zayani and Joe F. Khalil explore how the Middle East's digital turn intersects with complex political, economic, and socio-cultural dynamics. Drawing on local research and rich case studies, they show how the same forces that brought promises of change through digital transformation have also engendered tensions and contradictions. The authors contend that the ensuing disjunctures have ensnared the region in a double bind, which represents the salient feature of an unfolding digital turn. The same conditions that drive the state, market, and public immersion in the digital also inhibit the region's drive to change. The Digital Double Bind reconsiders the question of technology and change, moving beyond binary formulations and familiar trajectories of the network society. It offers a path-breaking analysis of change and stasis in the Middle East and provides a roadmap for a critical engagement with digitality in the Global South.

Full Product Details

Author:   Mohamed Zayani (Professor of Critical Theory, Professor of Critical Theory, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar) ,  Joe F. Khalil (Associate Professor of Global Media in Residence, Associate Professor of Global Media in Residence, Northwestern University in Qatar)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint:   Oxford University Press Inc
Dimensions:   Width: 22.60cm , Height: 3.10cm , Length: 16.00cm
Weight:   0.456kg
ISBN:  

9780197508633

ISBN 10:   0197508634
Pages:   320
Publication Date:   28 March 2024
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order  
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements CONJUNCTURES AND DISJUNCTIONS 1. The Digital Middle East 2. Reckoning with Change ASPIRATIONS AND HINDRANCES 3. The Digital as Infrastructure 4. Technologies of Center and Periphery 5. The Digital as Digitality EXPRESSION AND SUPPRESSION 6. The Enticement of Digital Citizenship 7. Collective Voices and Digital Contention 8. Digital Adaptations and Disruptive Power IMITATION AND INNOVATION 9. In Pursuit of the Knowledge Economy 10. Cultural and Creative Industries 11. Emerging Digital Economies CONNECTIVITY AND COLLECTIVITY 12. Virtual Lives and Digital Spaces 13. The Demographics of a Connected Culture 14. Collectivity, Identity and Multivocality Afterword Notes References Index

Reviews

Essential reading not only for those specializing in the Middle East, but for anyone concerned with the impact of the digital revolution more generally. Never before in history has cutting-edge technology gone straight to all sectors of the world and en masse to the less-privileged as well as the affluent. The consequences in a sub-continent in which tradition and engrained structures of power remain strong are complex indeed, but brilliantly traced out by the authors. * Anthony Giddens, Life Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and Member of the House of Lords in the UK * Zayani and Khalil offer a welcome and significant contribution to our critiques of discourses that simplify and essentialize 'digital' and 'Middle East.' This volume deftly moves beyond binaries, creatively proposing a double bind framework that invokes fluid movements of people and technologies. It is a critical reminder that communication needs to be understood in historical and social contexts, as well as global political and economic structures. * Karin Wilkins, author of Prisms of Prejudice * In this skillfully written and thought-provoking book, Zayani and Khalil take readers to a Middle East few Westerners know. Complex, conflicted, and creative, the region, as this important work describes, is accelerating into the information age with big plans and even bigger uncertainties. * Vincent Mosco, author of The Smart City in a Digital World * Zayani and Khalil's comprehensive and conceptually ambitious review of media in the Middle East makes an important and much-needed contribution to debates on technology and regionalization generally. This is a landmark study in the de-westernization of media research. We have needed a book like this for a long time! * Nick Couldry, London School of Economics and Political Science *

Essential reading not only for those specializing in the Middle East, but for anyone concerned with the impact of the digital revolution more generally. Never before in history has cutting-edge technology gone straight to all sectors of the world and en masse to the less-privileged as well as the affluent. The consequences in a sub-continent in which tradition and engrained structures of power remain strong are complex indeed, but brilliantly traced out by the authors. * Anthony Giddens, Life Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and Member of the House of Lords in the UK * Zayani and Khalil offer a welcome and significant contribution to our critiques of discourses that simplify and essentialize 'digital' and 'Middle East.' This volume deftly moves beyond binaries, creatively proposing a double bind framework that invokes fluid movements of people and technologies. It is a critical reminder that communication needs to be understood in historical and social contexts, as well as global political and economic structures. * Karin Wilkins, author of Prisms of Prejudice * In this skillfully written and thought-provoking book, Zayani and Khalil take readers to a Middle East few Westerners know. Complex, conflicted, and creative, the region, as this important work describes, is accelerating into the information age with big plans and even bigger uncertainties. * Vincent Mosco, author of The Smart City in a Digital World * Zayani and Khalil's comprehensive and conceptually ambitious review of media in the Middle East makes an important and much-needed contribution to debates on technology and regionalization generally. This is a landmark study in the de-westernization of media research. We have needed a book like this for a long time! * Nick Couldry, London School of Economics and Political Science *

"""Essential reading not only for those specializing in the Middle East, but for anyone concerned with the impact of the digital revolution more generally. Never before in history has cutting-edge technology gone straight to all sectors of the world and en masse to the less-privileged as well as the affluent. The consequences in a sub-continent in which tradition and engrained structures of power remain strong are complex indeed, but brilliantly traced out by the authors."" -- Anthony Giddens, Life Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and Member of the House of Lords in the UK ""Zayani and Khalil offer a welcome and significant contribution to our critiques of discourses that simplify and essentialize 'digital' and 'Middle East.' This volume deftly moves beyond binaries, creatively proposing a double bind framework that invokes fluid movements of people and technologies. It is a critical reminder that communication needs to be understood in historical and social contexts, as well as global political and economic structures."" -- Karin Wilkins, author of Prisms of Prejudice ""In this skillfully written and thought-provoking book, Zayani and Khalil take readers to a Middle East few Westerners know. Complex, conflicted, and creative, the region, as this important work describes, is accelerating into the information age with big plans and even bigger uncertainties."" -- Vincent Mosco, author of The Smart City in a Digital World ""Zayani and Khalil's comprehensive and conceptually ambitious review of media in the Middle East makes an important and much-needed contribution to debates on technology and regionalization generally. This is a landmark study in the de-westernization of media research. We have needed a book like this for a long time!"" -- Nick Couldry, London School of Economics and Political Science"

Author Information

Mohamed Zayani is Professor of Critical Theory at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar. Joe F. Khalil is Associate Professor of Global Media at Northwestern University in Qatar.

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

No review item found!

Add your own review!

Countries Available

All regions