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piqer for: Boom and bust Global finds
I am a Dutch journalist, writer and photographer and cover topics such as human rights, poverty, migration, environmental issues, culture and business. I’m currently based in The Hague, The Netherlands, and frequently travel to other parts of the world. I have also lived in Tunisia, Egypt, Kuwait and Dubai.
My work has been published by Al Jazeera English, BBC, The Atlantic's CityLab, Vice, Deutsche Welle, Middle East Eye, The Sydney Morning Herald, and many Dutch and Belgian publications.
I hold an MA in Arabic Languages and Cultures from Radboud University Nijmegen and a post-Master degree in Journalism from Erasmus University Rotterdam. What I love most about my work is the opportunities I get to ask loads of questions. Email: [email protected]
Expressions Of Progress Or Weapons In A Cultural And Architectural Arms Race?
Rowan Moore was part of a group of foreign journalists flown in to attend the inauguration of the huge Qatar National Library in April. Now the new National Museum of Qatar is almost complete. The same Parisian architect designed the outpost of the Louvre opened last year in Abu Dhabi, and the 238-metre Burj Doha, completed in 2012.
The museums and towers are at once expressions of progress and weapons in a cultural and architectural arms race. They combine good intentions and political calculation. They are signs of a hunger for identity and status in lands transformed within a lifetime by oil wealth.
They are currency in the tricky and obscure negotiations that the leaders of the Gulf nations conduct, between conservative forms of Islam, authoritarian rule and selective versions of western liberalism. These states are surrounded by convulsions and conflicts in which they are themselves implicated, while aiming at home for prosperity, stability and the survival of their ruling regimes.
To what extent is it a vast act of sophisticated PR and soft power, part of a game of influence, asks Moore. How far can it go, in a country where homosexuality is a crime and the government supports Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist Islam?
Sheikha Hind says the Qatar Foundation wants to “encourage a generation that will debate and think for themselves”. But, Moore wonders, how free can they be when her family is permanently in charge of culture, government, business and city planning?
Moore also mentions the region’s notorious labour practices, whereby migrant workers are deprived of rights and can lose their lives on dangerous sites.
Emirati intellectual Mishaal al Gergawi on his government’s perspective: “You sit there on the throne, thinking, My country is only 45 years old and I’m trying to fight Isis, develop a post-oil economy, foster a tolerant society by building museums and universities, and I’m getting criticised for labour issues? Give me a break.”
