Guest Post: Mohamed Zayani and Joe F. Khalil on their new book The Digital Double Bind: Change and Stasis in the Middle East

“While adopting and adapting digital technologies propels the state, market, and public into an immersive digital sphere, such endeavor also paradoxically impedes the region’s momentum for substantial change, perpetuating a state of stasis.”

The advent of the digital era has ushered in an unprecedented wave of transformation across the global landscape. Its pervasive influence has permeated nearly every facet of human existence, altering societal norms, economic structures, and political paradigms. However, this profound impact has not been uniform, and its manifestations differ significantly across regions and nations. Our new book The Digital Double Bind dissects the intersections between the Middle East’s immersion in the digital and its complex socio-cultural, economic, and political dynamics. Drawing on local research and compelling case studies, the book illuminates the intricate nature of the region’s digital turn, unveiling its promises of change and the tensions that foster stasis.

The digital Middle East has been an evolving narrative, showcasing a kaleidoscope of transformations that have captured the attention of even casual observers. The region’s engagement with digital technologies has been visibly marked by initiatives ranging from e-government conversions to ambitious projects, from Neom in Saudi Arabia to the One Million Arab Coders initiative in Dubai and Egypt’s Red2Med to MoroccoTech. These endeavors hold promises of economic revitalization and technological innovation, epitomizing the region’s aspirations to thrive in the global digital landscape.

The COVID-19 pandemic further catalyzed this digital immersion by accelerating the adoption of technologies previously deemed unconventional in areas such as legal, financial, and healthcare services. The resulting ‘on-steroid-digitization’ has not only permeated various industries but has also fundamentally transformed the fabric of daily life for millions in the region. What was once novel has become commonplace, with social media platforms serving as ubiquitous channels through which individuals engage in global trends, digital cultures, and economic and political activities.

However, the enthusiastic embrace of the digital has yet to transform Middle Eastern societies seamlessly into uniformly prepared and universally interconnected ‘network societies.’ While certain ambitious countries, predominantly in the Gulf region, have surged ahead in digital readiness, such advancements belie the stark disparities prevalent across the region. Unequal access to technology, varying levels of digital literacy, and uneven technology deployment have delineated the peculiarities of the region’s techno-cultural geographies. These factors are often overlooked in favor of high-profile success stories.

Inequalities of literacies, access and affordances, amongst other hindrances, underscore the stark reality that the envisioned technology-driven transformation in the Middle East remains elusive. Even in subregions where digital technologies have been extensively adopted, the outcomes have been characterized by complex and occasionally conflicting dynamics that demand critical examination.

In contradistinction to the familiar portrayal of a seamlessly integrated network society, the Middle East’s digital turn reveals a multifaced landscape that calls for a nuanced analysis. Persistent social structures, cultural values, and governance systems coexist with and sometimes resist digital technologies’ transformative potential. The region’s journey toward digitalization is fraught with disjunctures and conjunctures that challenge simplistic narratives of linear technological progress.

As media narratives often focus on the hype around a few advanced digital hubs in the region, they inadvertently underplay the less favorable conditions prevailing in other parts. The persistence of the digital divide and uneven technological access serve as stark reminders that the envisioned digital revolution has yet to permeate every corner of the Middle East.

The narrative of the Middle East’s digital turn is one of profound potential that is punctuated with persistent challenges. It is a tapestry woven with promises of innovation and economic rejuvenation, interlaced with the complexities of socio-cultural dynamics and technological inequalities. Only through a critical engagement with and a nuanced understanding of these intricate dynamics can scholars and policymakers navigate the paths toward a more inclusive and equitable digital future in the region.

The Digital Double Bind navigates the labyrinth of the Middle East’s digital landscape with precision, showcasing how the forces driving digital transformation have simultaneously generated tensions and contradictions. The analysis unveils a double bind, a perplexing conundrum that encapsulates the region’s predicament within the digital paradigm. While adopting and adapting digital technologies propels the state, market, and public into an immersive digital sphere, such endeavor also paradoxically impedes the region’s momentum for substantial change, perpetuating a state of stasis.

By drawing attention to this digital double bind, the book challenges conventional binary perspectives that tend to oversimplify the relationship between technology and societal change. It transcends familiar trajectories of the network society, offering a nuanced and multifaceted exploration of the complexities of a digital turn that unfolds the intersection between fast-changing technological changes and entrenched socio-cultural, economic, and political dynamics of the Middle East.

In doing so, it constructs a robust conceptual framework that facilitates the analysis of technology and development in the Global South. This framework serves as a roadmap for scholars and practitioners, offering guidance for critical engagements with digitality in regions grappling with similar challenges.

Mohamed Zayani is Professor of Critical Theory at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar. Joe F. Khalil is Associate Professor of Global Media at Northwestern University in Qatar.

The Digital Double Bind: Change and Stasis in the Middle East is published by Oxford University Press in the Oxford Studies in Digital Politics series. For more on the book, see www.digitaldoublebind.com

(Photo: @joekhalil)