{"id":29371,"date":"2023-11-05T13:03:53","date_gmt":"2023-11-05T11:03:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/?p=29371"},"modified":"2024-01-04T18:22:24","modified_gmt":"2024-01-04T16:22:24","slug":"an-improvised-attempt-to-understand-social-transformations-in-amman-urbane-behavior-in-a-city-that-is-not-a-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/an-improvised-attempt-to-understand-social-transformations-in-amman-urbane-behavior-in-a-city-that-is-not-a-city\/","title":{"rendered":"From An Improvised Attempt to Understand Social Transformations in Amman: “urbane” behavior in a city that is not a city"},"content":{"rendered":"
An exclusive excerpt from the new bilingual Arabic-English book “Waking Up to My Distorted City” by Hisham Bustani and Linda Al Khoury on the “urban” distortion of Amman.<\/h5>\n
\n

‘urbane’ behavior is an issue of structural social production that concerns the very foundations of society. When the authorities monopolize the scope and space of societal organization\u2014interfering with its mechanisms in ways that separate the citizen from the practice of their citizenship, and thus remaining unchallenged as primary actors\u2014then the responsibility runs much deeper than the small part born by the individual.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/h4>\n

Hisham Bustani<\/h4>\n

Translated from the Arabic by Addie Leak<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What is \u201curbane\u201d or \u201ccivil\u201d behavior? Is it the opposite, say, of rural\/provincial or Bedouin behavior? Is the sexual harassment that accompanies the crowds in cities or quasi-cities \u201cuncivilized,\u201d the opposite of urbane? And can societal deference among villagers be considered a form of civility practiced by \u201cuncivilized\u201d people? The latter conclusion would resemble that of Nahda thinkers in the late 1900s who, dazzled by European \u201ccivilizational\u201d achievement, summed up their observations as having found \u201cIslam without Muslims.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Platitudes and superficial generalizations won\u2019t take us far. Let\u2019s say that \u201curbane\u201d behavior consists of mutual respect and social solidarity within the population, collective voluntary compliance with the group\u2019s customs and laws, and the understanding that the group\u2019s interests form self-imposed constraints on its members\u2019 actions. All this is more likely to be found in the countryside and desert than in our malformed cities. These cities, in my opinion, are random amalgamations of population groups that are yet to find a collective common ground, and \u2014 given the prevailing forms of administration and governance \u2014 are unlikely to find it any time soon. More on this later.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth remembering that when this \u201ccity\u201d (Amman) was a \u201cvillage\u201d \u2014 from its genesis as the administrative capital of Transjordan until the 1970s \u2014 its ethics were \u201curbane,\u201d according to the testimonies of those who remember \u201cthe good old days.\u201d Back then, its families knew each other on a personal level. East Amman had not yet become the impoverished, semi-isolated \u201cghetto\u201d it is today, or spilled over into the mixed bag of \u201cupscale\u201d West Amman. The myriad factors behind these variables are beyond the scope of this essay, but once the \u201cvillage\u201d had grown, exploded, mingled and become a \u201ccity,\u201d its inhabitants\u2019 behavior became corrupt and brutal. To compare the \u201cvillage\u201d era with the \u201ccity\u201d era, let me offer as an example a story my father tells about my grandfather, Abu Abdo, who owned a dried-goods shop on King Talal Street, at that time the city\u2019s crowded main thoroughfare. The story goes that whenever my grandfather found a wallet, or anything else of value, that a customer may have lost at his shop, he would simply hang it on the door as a public service announcement, where it would stay until its owner came back to claim it.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Linda
Linda Al Khoury, “Sorry to Disturb You” (courtesy Linda Al Khoury).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n


\nNow it\u2019s time to question another platitude: Are ethics and human behavior subjective or objective? My response puts the objective before the subjective, meaning that if we look at Amman from the 1930s to the 1970s, we find a broad, fairly affluent middle class, constituting a social scene that in no way resembles Amman of the \u201990s or the transformations that followed the collapse of the dinar and the implementation of IMF recommendations, with their accompanying slow, steady erosion of the middle class. It was then that people shifted from a forward-looking position of comfort to one of intense competition for their daily bread, with a primary focus on the ever-fluctuating present. This shift coincided with the meteoric rise of the nouveau riche \u2014 corrupt officials, monopoly-grabbers, the \u201cbusiness\u201d hordes; and owners of major service projects, compradors, and agencies \u2014 to the ranks of a dominant minority as the wealthy economic elite, in place of traditional downtown merchants whose traditions had included dealing with Amman as a dwelling space, not as a space for profiteering and violent seizure. Now, the context being what it is, is there a shared urbaneness or civility between 1950s Amman and Amman in this second decade of the new millennium?<\/span><\/p>\n

A city is a network made up of societal and economic nodes, of buildings, roads, and human relations, set against a backdrop of conventions and tacit agreements, as well as legal, social, and common-law regulatory frameworks. To a large extent, the city itself, with its ingrained traditions and conventions, produces and acts upon the behaviors of its citizens and visitors. For example, if you take an Ammani and put them in London or Dubai, you\u2019ll find that \u2014 in no time at all \u2014 they\u2019ll start using pedestrian crossings and abiding by traffic laws, and they\u2019ll stop throwing rubbish out of car windows. They\u2019ll use public transport and altogether \u2014 quite naturally \u2014 adopt what is accepted as \u201ccivil\u201d behavior. On the other hand, a \u201ccivilized\u201d <\/span>ajnabi<\/span><\/i>, or foreigner, transplanted into Amman would \u2014 in less than a month \u2014 start acting like a proper <\/span>ibn balad<\/span><\/i>, as street-smart as the next local, a phenomenon well known to those who mix with and observe the \u201ccivilized\u201d <\/span>ajaneb<\/span><\/i> scattered throughout Jabal al-Lweibdeh, Jabal Amman and elsewhere.<\/span><\/p>\n

Societal behavior can then be defined as an objective product of the socioeconomic and political forms that contain it, and of the relationships resulting from the interactions among these, whether positive or negative. The behavior of a society therefore expresses its objective reality, and from the latter we can start to interpret and analyze the former.<\/span><\/p>\n

Is it enough to have a large number of people gather in one overcrowded spot on Earth to call that spot a city, and to make the prevalent behavior within it \u201curbane\u201d? Or to begin condemning the \u201cbarbaric,\u201d uncivilized ways of this city\u2019s residents and demanding that they transform? Is there such a thing as individual transformation towards urban living and, from there, towards behaving more \u201curbanely\u201d?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"
Linda Al Khoury, “Streets of Glass.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n


\nUrban society differs from both rural and desert societies in one fundamental, pivotal way: it\u2019s a society made up of \u201cautonomous,\u201d or \u201cfree,\u201d individuals (and here I put the words in quotes because there\u2019s no real freedom or autonomy for anyone within a context of inequality, commodification of basic necessities, and a financial system born of capitalism, the mother of all modern cities). The foundation of urban society is the individual, their desires and tendencies. They\u2019re extracted from the collective to stand naked before those who want to buy their labor, whereas in rural and desert societies, the basis remains one of collectivism, solidarity, and the dissolution of the individual within the group in exchange for socioeconomic protection. In the city, the creed of the individual and their (imagined) freedom is king, as the individual\u2019s existence is entirely self-reliant, and a person\u2019s freedom only stops where that of others begins. But in the countryside and the desert, the basis of society is the common good, and individuals are subsumed within it; where the individual\u2019s very existence depends on their rural or Bedouin community, they cannot exist outside society\u2019s collective codes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Is this urban \u201cautonomy\u201d achieved in malformed quasi-cities, or within and among the groups that constitute them? Let\u2019s test the theory in two scenarios.<\/span><\/p>\n

Scenario 1: Personal Freedom \u2014 The \u201cCity\u201d as a Space for the Group<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

A young woman walks alone on Rainbow Street at 9 p.m. Or let\u2019s make her walk alone at 9 p.m. almost anywhere in Amman, and maybe at any time of day, morning or evening, too. It\u2019s only \u201cnatural\u201d that she should experience multiple forms of sexual harassment: stares from male passersby, comments from male passersby, comments from men in cars, honking from men in cars, men in cars stopping to invite her for a ride, and so on. It\u2019s also \u201cnatural\u201d that she should be exposed to disapproving looks or comments from other women accompanied by their husbands or fathers, in response to a comment from said husband or father along the lines of, \u201cFor shame! Look what she\u2019s wearing!\u201d or \u201cWhat\u2019s she doing in the street at this hour?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This \u201curbane\u201d behavior leads us to its urban roots: in the \u201ccity,\u201d public schools \u2014 and many private ones \u2014 are not mixed-gender, and their students receive no sexual education to speak of; the children of the city are brought up to see women purely as sexual objects that should be kept out of the public space (which is reserved for men) and isolated within the private spaces (that belong to one man or a small group of men). So the presence of a woman, unattached to a man, in the city\u2019s public space becomes a sexual invitation to transgress; the woman transforms from an individual into a communal object readily accessible to the collective of males. And men, in their turn, take on the role of lechers who choose to respond to this \u201cinvitation,\u201d concocted by social convention via the gendered distribution of public and private spaces.<\/span><\/p>\n

None of this is surprising in authoritarian-patriarchal societies that celebrate a power imbalance favoring masculinity, virility, and male guardianship. Such societies are managed by socioeconomic mechanisms that firmly corroborate this warped situation by portraying it as an authentic standard: the man is the head of the family and the family name and must safeguard them, and the woman is attached to the man and embodies his honor, integrity, and family. In patriarchal logic, a woman who enters a public space unattached to a man is offered up to the males of that space. She must be subjugated, humiliated, and made an example of, because the respectable woman\u2019s place is in the home, not the street. Her place is within the limited boundaries of the domain of one or more males in her life: her father, brother, husband, etc. Such behavior may be surprising in New York or London, where male violation more often takes the form of individual predatory behavior (still linked to the commodification of women as sex objects). But it\u2019s not really surprising in a \u201ccity\u201d that fails to truly recognize the individuality of its members and is instead formed of groups that adopt the \u201cvices\u201d of (rural\/desert) collectivism and renounce its virtues.<\/span><\/p>\n

The same perception of women is adopted by those who govern the city. For example: women don\u2019t have the right to pass on citizenship to their children or husbands, and women whose lives are threatened due to so-called \u201chonor\u201d issues are placed in administrative detention, while the men who threaten them are allowed to go free. In the same vein, the Jordan Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities issued instructions in 2014 banning female artists from singing in Ramadan tents, under the pretext of \u201cpreserving the sanctity of the month,\u201d meaning that women and women\u2019s bodies and voices (i.e., their physicality) are inherently and purely sexual, inciting lust, making their very presence (according to the authorities) a violation of the \u201csanctity\u201d of virtue and abstinence during the holy month.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this scenario, the \u201ccity\u201d has become the domain of a specific group<\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/i>males\u2014while in other scenarios, it may become the domain of any number of other groups. These could include the family (as when families put up celebration tents in the street, commandeering it for their own purposes), groups of vendors (as when Souq al-Juma\u2019a vendors commandeered the old bus lot in Abdali before getting kicked out, or when vendors occupy public pavements downtown) and business groups (for example, when Amrah Park was commandeered to build the disastrous Sixth Circle towers, or in the case of the Abdali \u201cBoulevard,\u201d now declared the \u201cnew city center,\u201d none of its businesses having been kicked out by the police or prosecuted by the State Security Court, as happened with Souq al-Juma\u2019a).<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"
Linda Al Khoury, ” Preparing to Operate.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n


\nScenario 2: The Limits of Personal Freedom\u2014The City as a Space for One<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Policeman: \u201cMove along, no double parking.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Civilian: \u201cI\u2019ll only be a second <\/span>\u2014 <\/span><\/i>I just want to grab a shawarma wrap!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Policeman: \u201cAll right, but hurry up, or you\u2019re getting a ticket.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The civilian mock-runs towards the shawarma shop, his car still in the street, disrupting traffic and blocking the exit for several properly parked cars.<\/span><\/p>\n

We shouldn\u2019t be surprised that this city-dweller behaves as if the city \u2014 in its entirety, with its residents and streets \u2014 is his own personal property. In it, he can park his car wherever and however he pleases, treating the hazard lights as an all-inclusive free pass. When our citizen finishes his wrap, he\u2019ll open the door and leave the bag of trash on the street \u2014 that would be the \u201crespectable\u201d way of doing it, the alternative being to toss it out the car window and allow his children to follow suit. He\u2019ll also let them run wild in the street while he takes over the front yard to entertain his relatives, their raised voices filling the neighborhood late into the night, because the city belongs to him and his children and those that came before him. This citizen will shoot his rifle in the air at his brother\u2019s wedding, as if he were in the wilderness of the desert or countryside, without any concern for the hundreds of fellow citizens\u2019 homes surrounding his own. Any one of them could be at their window, in the path of one of his bullets, and that person could die, but this is an afterthought for our fellow citizen and won\u2019t stop him from celebrating to the fullest. Nor will it stop him from driving a van with a loudspeaker to buy used furniture or sell vegetables or propane cylinders, making a racket everywhere he goes, or from honking the horn of the school bus several times at the \u201casscrack of dawn\u201d (as they say) to alert students to its presence, jolting sleepers awake every time, or from installing water pumps whose hum keeps the neighbors up at night. The city belongs to him, as we said, and to his father, who also double-parked \u2014 and the \u201cunderstanding\u201d and \u201cempathetic\u201d policeman goes along with it all, because he, too, behaves exactly like his fellow citizen.<\/span><\/p>\n

We shouldn\u2019t be surprised at a citizen like this because he\u2019s following to a T the example of his city\u2019s officials, who treat the city in a similar fashion, imposing their bad taste on its inhabitants and selling its parks and public squares to any bidder who can afford the privilege of contributing to the overall hideousness. A case in point is what happened with one of Amman\u2019s most distinctive landmarks: its roundabouts. City officials \u2014 arbitrarily, certainly \u2014 decided that the major addition they wanted to make to their city was the \u201cLED curb,\u201d as if the city\u2019s public spaces were their personal sitting rooms to be decorated according to their own vulgar tastes, in repulsive colors that match nothing but the sponsoring company\u2019s logo, tossing the glowing cubes (or some of them \u2014 those that aren\u2019t broken) like so many bags of trash out of a car door and leaving them on the side of the road to be toyed with by the winds of fate. (Because maintenance, of course, is nonexistent. Question: How many water fountains in Amman actually have water?). These cubes will remain under our noses until the poor taste of one politician is replaced by the worse taste of another.<\/span><\/p>\n

The city\u2019s officials believe they have the right to change the appearance of the squares and spaces, and of the whole city. The old Arab League Caf\u00e9 opposite Al-Husseini Mosque was demolished without anyone batting an eye; the glass Housing Bank branch on As-Salt Street downtown, jarring and ugly against its backdrop of old stone buildings, just fell from the sky that way, as did the concrete monstrosity of the Greater Amman Municipality building at the foot of Jabal Amman. The Hashemite Plaza has been changed several times and was finally rebuilt using cheap, shoddy materials unable to withstand weather fluctuations and standard wear and tear. The most recent thing these people bestowed upon us was their permission to demolish an old heritage home near the end of Kulliyat al-Sharia Street in Jabal al-Lweibdeh and to build an ugly hotel on its rubble, as well as their permission to erect a miserable little coffee stand marring the beloved viewpoint over Amman in the same neighborhood.<\/span><\/p>\n

Visiting London, Paris, or Brussels twenty years ago and then again now, you wouldn\u2019t feel like they had changed on you much. Their main squares are the same, and the old buildings are considered valuable architectural heritage. If they wanted to renovate them, they would gut the interiors and do a full remodel, leaving the old fa\u00e7ades intact for future generations of city-dwellers. Buildings have value, as do public property and public space, and the appreciation of this value is contagious and spreads through practice, from the object to the self, as do recklessness and haphazardness when they constitute the common practice. How do you cultivate respect for a \u201ccity\u201d that is reborn (or, rather, murdered) about once every ten years? And how can you respect a city that transforms its elegant old street into \u201cRainbow Street\u201d and its noble old quarter into \u201cWeibdeh\u201d?<\/span><\/p>\n

When the authority that governs the country and its people owns everything but can neither be investigated nor held accountable (Article 30 of the Jordanian constitution); when city officials act as if the city is their personal domain; when urban society is nothing but a loose gathering of different \u201cgroups\u201d or \u201cbands\u201d forbidden from evolving freely within a true civil society; and when the rule of law is insubstantial, non-institutionalized, titular, selective, and unjust, there will be no social conventions or individual freedoms, and no reason to care about either the law or one\u2019s fellow humans.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Waking Up to My Distorted City<\/em> by Hisham Bustani with photographs by Linda Al Khoury, The Arab Institute for Research and Publishing (Bilingual Edition), 2023. Excerpted by permission from the authors.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An exclusive excerpt from the new bilingual Arabic-English book “Waking Up to My Distorted City” by Hisham Bustani and Linda Al Khoury on the “urban” distortion of 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