Mohamed Zayani and Joe F. Khalil, The Digital Double Bind: Change and Stasis in the Middle East (Oxford University Press, 2024).

Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book?

Joe F. Khalil (JK): The impetus behind writing this book stemmed from our recognition of the profound ways in which the digital revolution has impacted the Middle East. The peculiarities of the ongoing changes were such that we felt a pressing need for a deeper understanding of how digital transformations intersect with the complex sociopolitical dynamics of the region. The “digital turn” we refer to in the book is a pivotal moment primarily driven by advancements in information and communication technologies, though irreducible to a technological shift. It is also essential to recognize that the digital turn remains an ongoing and incomplete process. What is important for us is not simply what the changes amount to but what complexities this transition entails. And that is why one of the book’s foci is the tensions and contradictions accompanying the adoption of digital technologies in the region.

Mohamed Zayani (MZ): What we refer to as the Middle East’s “digital turn” is indeed complex and multifaceted. Rather than provide a straightforward account of the “digital turn,” our book encourages readers to ponder over thought-provoking questions about the region and beyond. For instance, how can national efforts to adopt cutting-edge technologies like 5G networks be reconciled with the determination to impose restrictions on essential services like VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) and popular social media apps? How can states address digital sovereignty when their digital visions are premised on technologies and infrastructures they neither produce nor control? What does it mean to promote digital entrepreneurship and hone digital creative cultural industries in a context that has long been shaped by conformity? How do individual users negotiate agency and individualism online while still upholding values rooted in collectivism? These are some of the questions that intrigued us as we embarked on the research.

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures does the book address?

JK: To our knowledge, this is the first book to comprehensively analyze the Middle East’s digital landscape. It addresses a wide range of developments related to the region’s digital transformation, from infrastructure investments to state control and from market dynamics to societal transformations. In the book, we also substantiate the macroanalysis we provide with microanalyses and case studies that look closely at various developments, whether it is digital youth cultures, the gender digital divide, identity politics, or digital entrepreneurship.

MZ: The reader will find the book intriguing not just for its in-depth exploration of the digital scene in the Middle East and how the region is keeping up with rapid changes in technology, but also for the insightful framework it provides to understand these changes and their impact. The theoretical contribution of the book is the conceptual frame of the “digital double bind,” which encapsulates the intricate web of contradictory logics shaping the ongoing digital transformation in the Middle East. The other thing that distinguishes the book is its interdisciplinarity. We draw upon various perspectives, weaving together insights from media studies, digital studies, science and technology studies, sociology, cultural anthropology, and political science. We certainly learned a lot in the course of the research and hope that the book stimulates further critical reflection on the complex intersections of technology, politics, economy, and culture in the Middle East beyond conventional frameworks and familiar narratives.

J: How does this book connect to and/or depart from your previous work?

JK: The Digital Double Bind grew naturally from our research trajectories. Our prior work laid a foundation for understanding media and communication dynamics in the region, but as media industries and consumption patterns became subsumed within more encompassing digital usages, practices, and sectors, the picture became more complex. Not only was this project scope ambitious, but we sometimes felt we were chasing a moving target. That is why collaboration was key to this project, and it is something we found rewarding both at the personal and intellectual levels.  

MZ: Our latest work also represents a departure as it centrally explores the profound impact of digital transformations. While prior research provided a foundation for understanding media dynamics, The Digital Double Bind takes a pioneering step into the complexities of the digital era. Leveraging insights from mainstream and alternative media to ecosystems and social movements, this book expands our intellectual terrain, offering a fresh perspective on the intricate digital landscape in the region.

J: How does the book contribute to existing scholarship on the Middle East and digital media?

JK: Our book challenges conventional conceptualizations of the digital Middle East by highlighting the limitations of existing frameworks. We critique prevalent approaches that are constructed around normative benchmarks, such as speed, access, and affordances, and anchored in prescriptive models rooted in Western paradigms.

MZ: Indeed, we emphasize the pitfalls of defining the Middle East through assumed binaries, such as utopia/dystopia, development/underdevelopment, and progression/regression. These oversimplified narratives often project a Middle East that is either rapidly pursuing the network society or trapped in an inability to change. Our book provides a more nuanced perspective that considers the complexities of the region’s digital transformation, contributing to a deeper understanding of its sociocultural, political, and economic landscape. 

J: Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

JK: We believe our book will appeal to a diverse audience—obviously scholars, researchers, and students of the Middle East but also policymakers and professionals interested in digital media, technology studies, and development studies. We hope the book will spark critical discussions and stimulate further research on the complex dynamics of digital transformations in the region in particular and the Global South in general. We look forward to hearing their feedback after they have read the book. Additionally, they can visit our website to find material for course design and further research.

MZ: What we try to do with this work is engage a broad audience and foster greater awareness of the challenges and opportunities the digital era presents and what that means for the Middle East. We hope that our book serves as a catalyst for reconsidering the question of change in the region, inspiring individuals and institutions to explore innovative solutions and approaches to navigating the complexities of digital transformations. Ultimately, we envision our work making a meaningful impact on academic discourse, policy circles, and more broadly societal understanding of the region's digital future. Considering that the nature of the digital Middle East we uncover in the book resonates with similar contexts in the majority world, so we also hope our work provides the basis for more comparative analyses on the digital in the Global South. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

JK: Currently, we are involved in several projects that build upon themes explored in our book. We are conducting further research on the intersection of digital media industries and platforms in the Middle East, examining emerging trends and developments in the cultural economy. Additionally, we are collaborating with colleagues from other institutions on a project that explores the implications of digital transformations on spatial reconfigurations of media ecosystems.

Excerpt from the book (from Chapter 2: Reckoning with Change, pp. 15-19)

Beyond Technology and Modernization

At the turn of the twenty-first century, a number of media observers affirmed that although not everyone in the Middle East was wired, the region was not beyond the reach of the “information revolution.” A decade later, captivated by the events of the Arab uprisings, many pundits confidently declared the “crucially important” role digital social-networking tools played in the street protests that swept the region. Even more nuanced accounts still saw a “socio-technical revolution” in these developments. These proclamations about sweeping revolutionizing transformations point to the complexities of the digital turn. Understanding these evolving dynamics requires a longue-durée approach. An examination of various encounters with modernity and technology provides a historical engagement with the question of change and stasis associated with the digital double bind.

The condition of modernity preoccupied Arab intellectuals and reformers long before the digital. With the intrusion of Western colonial powers in the region, such engagements became more pressing as contending projects of modernization emerged. As early as the mid-nineteenth century, an Arab modernization movement known as Al Nahda (“Awakening”) crystallized. Its project, which encompassed distinct but intersecting religious, secular, and nationalist modernization currents, aimed to rejuvenate the region’s cultural norms, attitudes, and practices. That ambition precluded a Western approach that sought to transform Middle Eastern societies from “traditional” to “modern,” a project that manifested itself as a modernization paradigm in the middle of the twentieth century.

Though not coterminous, these two movements reveal the extent to which preoccupations with what it means to be “modern” are rooted in divergent conceptions of the Middle East. Al Nahda’s modernity project, born partly in response to the colonial experience, had envisioned avant-garde approaches in the arts and culture and promoted progressive forms of governance, education, and even lifestyle. A contending modernization project, which gained prominence during the Cold War, provided a rationale for the West to adopt it as an interventionist foreign policy and for the Middle East to become a receiver of foreign aid and expertise.

As articulated by American social scientists, modernization envisaged shaping the consciousness of traditional societies and promoting an entrepreneurial model of society, conceivably a continuation of the colonial project. One influential text, Daniel Lerner’s The Passing of Traditional Society, exhibited assumptions that continue to underlie currents of scholarship about the Middle East, namely that traditional values and premodern structures restrain “progress.”

Technology formed an essential element for both projects. Western technologies and concepts proved to be a source of inspiration for many reformers and thinkers, while technocratic elites and modernization adherents viewed communication technologies as a catalyst. The two camps approached these influences in strikingly different ways and envisioned them being used in distinctive fashions. Al Nahda’s adoption of Western technologies was driven by the desire to renew the East. By contrast, Lerner and his advocates viewed mass communication as a conveyor belt carrying ideas from technologically advanced nations to the developing world, where they would help people shed their traditional ways of life and adopt putatively Western values, systems, and practices that champion liberal democracy and free market economies.

Neither project fully succeeded. In the case of Al Nahda, its efforts, although enlightened, did not amount to modernizing the philosophical, religious, and political conception of the state or society. Nor did they produce critical discourses in the natural and social sciences, although their contributions in the fields of humanities and the arts shaped a new generation of Arab intellectuals and policymakers. Similarly, although the modernization paradigm continues to have a certain resonance, it relegates endemic problems of development to intrinsic conditions, which downplays exogenous forces. Issues such as income disparities, gender inequalities, educational reform, chronic unemployment, and weak governance loom large in the international development agenda. Although modernization, within this manifest agenda, amounted largely to the westernization of postcolonial societies, it nonetheless resonated with a number of political elites and social reformers who adopted Euro-American models, systems, and technologies in pursuit of their nations’ development goals. 

Disillusionment with Al Nahda and skepticism toward modernization gave way to a new momentum, particularly with newly independent Arab states and revolutionary regimes embarking on large national development projects. By the 1970s, new, critical intellectual and activist currents brought questions of dependency and cultural imperialism to the fore, which found an outlet in sociopolitical movements that advocated participation, empowerment, and resistance. Adherents of these anti-hegemonic philosophies argued that modernization theory ignored both structural barriers to development and the weight of the colonial legacy and advocated a conception of socioeconomic development that is amenable to lasting social change embedded in local communities. Just as modernization theorists pitted modernity against tradition, proponents of these newer theories set the non-Western “periphery” against the “core.” With their rapid ascension to the United Nations, newly decolonized countries advocated of a New International Economic Order (NIEO) and called for a New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO).

Despite various experiments—including those inspired by Soviet-style state socialism—the prospects for Arab modernization soon dissipated. By the 1980s, it became clear that promised socioeconomic progress was not within reach. Additionally, many countries experienced an economic downturn and fell into debt crises, largely the result of profligate lending by Western banks and heavy borrowing by kleptocracies. Foreign assistance designed to address the debt crisis became predicated on fulfilling international organizations’ expectations that countries receiving such assistance would follow prescribed macroeconomic reforms, which included adopting structural adjustment policies, promoting neoliberal policies, and deepening integration into a global economy. The Western push for neoliberal policies broadened such neocolonial practices. Western experts and leaders proclaimed that a free market, rather than the state, would serve as the engine for socioeconomic development. Those calls came at a time when the retreat of socialism removed a counterweight to Western economic power and when reformers in a number of Middle East states became open to different approaches. These policies, coupled with persistent underdevelopment, led to further reliance on the West for technology.

By the 1990s, innovations in ICTs consolidated the state-private nexus. In the telecommunications sector, local elites and international companies forged new partnerships across the region at the expense of state monopolies. Notably, national and foreign investment in ICTs was considered not only essential to economic growth but also a potent instrument for social change. The unrelenting process of globalization further enshrined the premise that economic liberalization moved in tandem with political liberalization. As these expectations extended to the Middle East, a new discourse emerged in which democratization was promoted as the path to development. That idea took hold even though economic development at the time also occurred under autocratic regimes and several Arab countries stalled political reform in the name of development.

Since the mid-twentieth century, democracy promotion was deemed essential to maintaining influence in the Middle East. In this endeavor, democracy promoters placed considerable faith in communication technologies and the mass media. The appropriation of state-sponsored international broadcasting is hardly new; it stretches back to the colonial era. What is noteworthy, though, is how communication technologies, from satellite television to the internet, became part of a widely adopted discourse for change. For many foreign-policy strategists and technology enthusiasts, the alleged role that social media played in the Arab uprisings was nothing less than a vindication of democracy promoters’ faith. Although the illusion of technological triumph proved hollow, these discourses about democracy and freedom remain seductive even today, subsumed in the activities of various international development organizations and forming the unstated assumptions of state policy choices and planning.

Whereas these theories maintain the West as a referent, Arab intellectual historiographies tend to focus on Arab culture as a strong determinant for what came to be known as the “Arab predicament”—what observers claimed to be the region’s inability to change. Largely driven by a sense of fatalism, this predicament frames endogenous variables as the root cause of Arab societies’ seeming stasis. Various articulations of the Arab predicament drew from reactions to defining historical moments in the region (most notably the 1967 Arab- Israeli war) and generated critical reflections on the Arab condition. These intellectual debates oscillated between cultural impediments and sociohistorical determinants. Individually, the Arab self is perceived as emulating the Western other who innovates and is therefore bound by an uneven relationship characterized by a “civilizational gap.” Collectively, this discourse disparages Arab societies as trapped by nostalgia, keener on preserving the past than on embracing the future. Where elites and intellectuals offered alternatives to cultural dependency on the West, these movements struggled to challenge the dialectics of tradition, as the source of collective authority, and modernity, as a form of autonomy. Further impeding efforts to overcome this predicament is the assumed need for Arab societies to replicate the ways Western societies evolved when they developed these technologies. At the core, the understanding of the Arab predicament largely rests on the view that Arab societies are at an impasse, resulting in intellectual inertia and sociopolitical malaise. To those who subscribed to such views, the information era offered hope for change.