Where are we? Translating Qatar's natural and urban landscapes and recovering alternative narratives

Qatar is a country that strives to promote and control its official public narrative of ambitious transformation and modernisation. Yet there are alternatives to this temporal, aspatial narrative of progress that are seldom heard. Many of these come from travellers, who, when they encounter a new place, seek to translate it into something meaningful (Cronin 2000, 23). They do this both for themselves as they negotiate unfamiliar environments, and for others (e.g. maps, reports, surveys, articles and travelogues). This paper presents the findings of a larger work-in-progress based on empirical and archival research that seeks to rediscover and give space to the voices and written observations of the explorers, sailors, archaeologists, geologists and civil servants who encountered and described (i.e. translated) the confronting landscape long before Qatar emerged as a sovereign nation. It also includes interviews with contemporary residents to investigate how they read and translate the natural landscapes of desert and seashore as well as the built environment.
Drawing on Massey’s reconceptualisation of space as no longer static, closed and immobile but as “a product of interrelations” (2005, 10) and a multiplicity of “stories-so-far” (2005, 12) that enables a diversity of present and future political reimaginings, the project aims to recover some of these alternative narratives. It argues that such recovery can fracture reductionist narratives of exclusion and elitism, and make way for the elaboration of richer, more authentic narratives that, through the recognition of diversity and multiplicity, are more just and sustainable for a multicultural, 21st-century nation.