Branding the Middle East. Communication Strategies and Image Building from Qom to Casablanca
Edited by: Steffen Wippel
Volume 38 in the series Studies on Modern Orient, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin & Boston, 2023
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110741100
This edited volume investigates place, product, and personal branding in the Middle East and North Africa, including some studies from adjacent regions and the wider Islamicate world. Going beyond simply presenting logos and slogans, it critically analyses processes of strategic communication and image building under general conditions of globalisation, neoliberalisation, and postmodernisation and, in a regional perspective, of lasting authoritarian rule and increased endeavours for “worlding.” In particular, it looks at the multiple actors involved in branding activities, their interests and motives, and investigates tools, channels, and forms of branding. A major interest exists in the entanglements of different spatial scales and in the (in)consistencies of communication measures. Attention is paid to reconfigurations of certain images over time and to the positioning of objects of branding in time and space. Historical case studies supplement the focus on contemporary branding efforts. While branding in the Western world and many emerging economies has been meticulously analysed, this edited volume fills an important gap in the research on MENA countries.
The authoritarian Gulf monarchies in transition to post-oil economies receive special attention here. Among other things, they are concerned with “green branding” in a field of tension that ranges from the greening of the desert to efforts at ecological modernisation, but also accusations of “greenwashing,” which has not yet been sufficiently investigated.
Join CIMS for a conversation with the book's editor Steffen Wippel and two of its chapter authors, Karin Ahlberg and Tilde Rosmer.
Karin Ahlberg is a social anthropologist. She is a researcher at the Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University, Sweden, and a postdoctoral fellow at the Institut für Ethnologie und Kulturwissenschaft, Universität Bremen, Germany. Previously, she worked at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, Norway. In 2017, she received her PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Her PhD thesis examines entanglements between tourism, statecraft, and national image curation in contemporary Egypt. Ahlberg’s current research explores the environmental afterlife of the Suez Canal and the effects of Lessepsian migration in the Mediterranean Sea from a more-than-human perspective. Karin is the author of the chapter “Egypt With or Without Islam: The Work Behind Glossy Tourism Advertisements” in this edited volume.
Tilde Rosmer is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Social Science at Zayed University, Dubai Academic City, UAE with a PhD in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Oslo, Norway. She teaches courses on critical thinking, Middle Eastern history, and culture and sustainability. Rosmer’s research has been mainly on collective identity formation and religious-political movements, with a particular focus on Israel and Palestine. Her book on the Islamic Movement in Israel was published in 2022. Currently her research in the emerging field of Environmental Humanities focuses on awareness and knowledge of sustainability among Emirati youth. Together with Gergana Alzeer, Tilde wrote the chapter “Greening the Desert: Emirati Youth’s Perceptions of Green Branding.”
Steffen Wippel is currently publications manager at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) in Hamburg for the Merian Centre for Advanced Studies in the Maghreb (MECAM), Tunis; he previously coordinated an interdisciplinary group of fellows at MECAM for the Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany. Before that, he worked at the Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) in Berlin, several German universities, and the University of Southern Denmark in Odense. He holds a PhD in economics from the Freie Universität Berlin and a habilitation degree (Dr. habil.) from Erlangen University. His interdisciplinary research focuses on regionalisation processes, including transregional links, and urban development in the Middle East and North Africa, particularly in Morocco and Oman. Steffen is the editor of the anthology and author of several chapters, including the theoretical introduction and empirical overview of the region as well as “The Multilevel Branding of Tangier at Spatial and Temporal Interfaces.”
Program
- Introduction by K. Soraya Batmaghelichi
- Intro remarks and general presentation by Steffen Wippel
- Chapter discussion by Tilde Rosmer
- Chapter discussion by Karin Ahlberg
- Conversation with moderator/discussant and editor and authors
- Q&A with general audience
Open to all. Welcome!