{"id":{"repo_id":"uiuc","oai_identifier":"oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/115726"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/uiuc/oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/115726","repository":{"repo_id":"uiuc","name":"University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign","base_url":"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh"},"display":{"title":"Entrepreneurial state and profitable culture: Nexus of culture, capital and development in Saudi Arabia","abstract":"Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'Closed Access', the embargo will last until 2024-05-01","abstract_html":"Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'Closed Access', the embargo will last until 2024-05-01","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Alowfi, Ahmed Saad G"],"institution":"University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign","degree_name":"Ph.D.","degree_level":"Dissertation","degree_discipline":"Sociology","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Bayat, Asef","Dill, Brian","Gille, Zsuzsa","Moussawi, Ghassan"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2022,"date_issued":"2022-05","date_published":"2022-05","updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:24:55Z","subjects":["Culture","developmental sociology","capitalism","developmental state","cultural transformation"],"languages":["en","eng"],"rights":["Copyright 2022 Ahmed Alowfi"],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"https://hdl.handle.net/2142/115726","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Bayat, Asef","Dill, Brian","Gille, Zsuzsa","Moussawi, Ghassan"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Alowfi, Ahmed Saad G"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date","label":"Dc Date","values":["2022-05","2022-04-20"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["text","Thesis"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["Sociology"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Dissertation"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["Ph.D."]},{"key":"thesis:institution_name","label":"Thesis Institution Name","values":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Culture","developmental sociology","capitalism","developmental state","cultural transformation"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["en","eng"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["Copyright 2022 Ahmed Alowfi"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["https://hdl.handle.net/2142/115726"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'Closed Access', the embargo will last until 2024-05-01","The student, Ahmed Alowfi, accepted the attached license on 2022-04-19 at 10:58.","The student, Ahmed Alowfi, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2022-04-19 at 11:05.","This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2022-04-20 at 16:14.","DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #17795 on 2022-11-11 at 12:47:28","Since the mid-2010s, Saudi Arabia has experienced an extraordinary cultural transformation as part of a developmental project to diversify the country’s economy. This state-led transformation has remade cultural life and urban spaces, with measures ranging from expensive infrastructure for arts and music to relaxing strict moral codes for public conduct and promoting entertainment. Why does the state’s pro-market development subsidize leisure activities? Why does its top-down nation-building project center the promotion of open cultural expressions and cosmopolitan attitudes? This dissertation examines these transformations in terms of the changing relationships among culture, capitalism, and the developmental state in the twenty-first century. I argue that the shift in global value chains from the tangible to the intangible has informed a corresponding transformation in the way the developmental state approaches culture as a means of economic growth. Addressing such seemingly incoherent provisions in the post-2015 developmental project, I show that such cultural policies, often dismissed as image manipulation strategies, are in fact devised to perform a fundamental function in the overall developmental plan. Operating on discourses emerging from the intensifying nexus between culture and capitalism, the post-2015 state project’s logic seeks to derive economic value from maximizing exposure to global flow by making its spaces culturally open and turning its subjects into creative, flexible, open-minded and cosmopolitan individuals, contrasting with the industrious and rational man or the Weberian spirit of capitalism. While high modernist state projects in the previous century were characterized by uniformity and rationalistic aesthetics in ordering people and spaces, the post-2015 top-down state project seeks to exploit difference and organize society in the image of diversity and enchanted aesthetics. Based on ethnographic observations, interviews, policy documents, and archival materials, I trace historical shifts in which culture is conceptualized within developmental discourse in Saudi Arabia. I also detail how the culture-capitalism nexus is taken to the extreme by an entrepreneurial state, turning various areas of cultural life into sites for capital accumulation and significantly redrawing state-society relations. The dissertation encourages the rethinking of the developmental state and the type of humanistic high modernism that implies a new kind of developmental politics that brings the state closer to people’s lives and blurs the boundaries between cultural, economic, and political domains."]},{"key":"dc:format","label":"Dc Format","values":["application/pdf"]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["Entrepreneurial state and profitable culture: Nexus of culture, capital and development in Saudi Arabia"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor":["Bayat, Asef","Dill, Brian","Gille, Zsuzsa","Moussawi, Ghassan"],"dc:creator":["Alowfi, Ahmed Saad G"],"dc:date":["2022-05","2022-04-20"],"dc:description":["Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'Closed Access', the embargo will last until 2024-05-01","The student, Ahmed Alowfi, accepted the attached license on 2022-04-19 at 10:58.","The student, Ahmed Alowfi, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2022-04-19 at 11:05.","This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2022-04-20 at 16:14.","DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #17795 on 2022-11-11 at 12:47:28","Since the mid-2010s, Saudi Arabia has experienced an extraordinary cultural transformation as part of a developmental project to diversify the country’s economy. This state-led transformation has remade cultural life and urban spaces, with measures ranging from expensive infrastructure for arts and music to relaxing strict moral codes for public conduct and promoting entertainment. Why does the state’s pro-market development subsidize leisure activities? Why does its top-down nation-building project center the promotion of open cultural expressions and cosmopolitan attitudes? This dissertation examines these transformations in terms of the changing relationships among culture, capitalism, and the developmental state in the twenty-first century. I argue that the shift in global value chains from the tangible to the intangible has informed a corresponding transformation in the way the developmental state approaches culture as a means of economic growth. Addressing such seemingly incoherent provisions in the post-2015 developmental project, I show that such cultural policies, often dismissed as image manipulation strategies, are in fact devised to perform a fundamental function in the overall developmental plan. Operating on discourses emerging from the intensifying nexus between culture and capitalism, the post-2015 state project’s logic seeks to derive economic value from maximizing exposure to global flow by making its spaces culturally open and turning its subjects into creative, flexible, open-minded and cosmopolitan individuals, contrasting with the industrious and rational man or the Weberian spirit of capitalism. While high modernist state projects in the previous century were characterized by uniformity and rationalistic aesthetics in ordering people and spaces, the post-2015 top-down state project seeks to exploit difference and organize society in the image of diversity and enchanted aesthetics. Based on ethnographic observations, interviews, policy documents, and archival materials, I trace historical shifts in which culture is conceptualized within developmental discourse in Saudi Arabia. I also detail how the culture-capitalism nexus is taken to the extreme by an entrepreneurial state, turning various areas of cultural life into sites for capital accumulation and significantly redrawing state-society relations. The dissertation encourages the rethinking of the developmental state and the type of humanistic high modernism that implies a new kind of developmental politics that brings the state closer to people’s lives and blurs the boundaries between cultural, economic, and political domains."],"dc:format":["application/pdf"],"dc:identifier":["https://hdl.handle.net/2142/115726"],"dc:language":["en","eng"],"dc:rights":["Copyright 2022 Ahmed Alowfi"],"dc:subject":["Culture","developmental sociology","capitalism","developmental state","cultural transformation"],"dc:title":["Entrepreneurial state and profitable culture: Nexus of culture, capital and development in Saudi Arabia"],"dc:type":["text","Thesis"],"thesis:degree_discipline":["Sociology"],"thesis:degree_level":["Dissertation"],"thesis:degree_name":["Ph.D."],"thesis:institution_name":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:24:55Z"}