{"title":"Not Afraid of My Sponsor","authors":"C. Cooley","doi":"10.1163/18739865-01602002","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n This article considers the role of media infrastructures in the U.A.E. racializing the South Asian migrant workers making, maintaining and interacting with them. Employing a sonic methodology, I historicize these infrastructures and legacies of racialization by considering the fiber optic cables carrying telecommunications in the region and their positioning along colonial trade routes, telegraph networks and other pathways connecting British colonies. These cables have more recently facilitated U.S. military interests and the growing importance of the U.A.E. as a hub for logistics. After analyzing sound and sound-related metaphors concerning the U.A.E.’s increasing power as a media hub in the region, facilitated by its media infrastructures, I argue that we can ‘hear’ how media infrastructures exploit and racialize labor but also enable a space for laborers to come together and absorb the pressure of neoliberal work.","PeriodicalId":43171,"journal":{"name":"Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4000,"publicationDate":"2023-05-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18739865-01602002","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This article considers the role of media infrastructures in the U.A.E. racializing the South Asian migrant workers making, maintaining and interacting with them. Employing a sonic methodology, I historicize these infrastructures and legacies of racialization by considering the fiber optic cables carrying telecommunications in the region and their positioning along colonial trade routes, telegraph networks and other pathways connecting British colonies. These cables have more recently facilitated U.S. military interests and the growing importance of the U.A.E. as a hub for logistics. After analyzing sound and sound-related metaphors concerning the U.A.E.’s increasing power as a media hub in the region, facilitated by its media infrastructures, I argue that we can ‘hear’ how media infrastructures exploit and racialize labor but also enable a space for laborers to come together and absorb the pressure of neoliberal work.
期刊介绍:
The Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication provides a transcultural academic sphere that engages Middle Eastern and Western scholars in a critical dialogue about culture, communication and politics in the Middle East. It also provides a forum for debate on the region’s encounters with modernity and the ways in which this is reshaping people’s everyday experiences. MEJCC’s long-term objective is to provide a vehicle for developing the field of study into communication and culture in the Middle East. The Journal encourages work that reconceptualizes dominant paradigms and theories of communication to take into account local cultural particularities.