A New Old Damascus: Authenticity and Distinction in Urban Syria (Indiana Series in Middle East Studies)

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Название:A New Old Damascus: Authenticity and Distinction in Urban Syria (Indiana Series in Middle East Studies)

Автор: Christa Salamandra

Издательство: Indiana University Press

ISBN: 0253344670

Дата издания:2004-12-10

Страниц: 216

Язык:Английский

Формат:PDF

Размер: 5.44 MB

In contemporary urban Syria, debates about the representation, preservation, and restoration of the Old City of Damascus have become part of status competition and identity construction among the city's elite. In theme restaurants and nightclubs that play on images of Syrian tradition, in television programs, nostalgic literature, and visual art, and in the rhetoric of historic preservation groups, the idea of the Old City has become a commodity for the consumption of tourists and, most important, of new and old segments of the Syrian upper class. In this lively ethnographic study, Christa Salamandra argues that in deploying and debating such representations, Syrians dispute the past and criticize the present.

Indiana Series in Middle East Studies--Mark Tessler, general editor