num_pages: 288
description: Cultivating the Past Living the Modern explores how and why heritage has emerged as a prevalent force in building the modern nation state of Oman. Amal Sachedina analyses the relations with the past that undergird the shift in Oman from an Ibadi shari'a Imamate (19131958) to a modern nation state from 1970 onwards. Since its inception as a nation state material forms in the Sultanate of Omansuch as old mosques and shari'a manuscripts restored forts national symbols such as the coffee pot or the dagger ( khanjar ) and archaeological siteshave saturated the landscape becoming increasingly ubiquitous as part of a standardized public and visual memorialization of the past. Oman's expanding heritage industry exemplified by the boom in museums exhibitions street montages and cultural festivals shapes a distinctly national geography and territorialized narrative. But Cultivating the Past Living the Modern demonstrates there are consequences to this celebration of heritage. As the national narrative conditions the way people ethically work on themselves through evoking forms of heritage it also generates anxieties and emotional sensibilities that seek to address the erasures and occlusions of the past.
language: English
title: Cultivating the Past, Living the Modern: The Politics of Time in the Sultanate of Oman
publisher: Cornell University Press