Approaches to Arabic Popular Culture

Abstract

Over recent years, Arabic popular culture has become a focal point of West Asian and North African studies. Most of the new research dealing with it concentrates on the ‘popular’ as opposed to an intellectual ‘high’ culture far from the harsh and hierarchically organized reality many Arabic-speaking societies face today. Popular cultural practices are thus seen as a rejection of the elite and a stance against those who have ‘something to loose’ within paralyzed and conservative communities. Albeit not denying the subversive political potential associated with these practices, this volume intends to take a more nuanced and broader perspective. Arabic popular culture might engage with emancipatory claims, but it might as easily follow the capitalist rulebook of global marketing. It might fight against oppressive authorities, yet it can equally become their symbol. Approaches to Arabic Popular Culture therefore closely looks at the aesthetic implications of a topic ranging from Lebanese hip hop over Algerian pop novels to jihadi chants in the ‘Islamic State’ as well as from Egyptian mahraganāt music over sarcastic stories about hash dens and time travel in downtown Cairo to Saudi-Arabian YouTube-influencers. Thus, the theoretical scope widens and the reader is taken on a delightful journey to the unsettling pleasures of contemporary Arabic art and culture.