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.

• Acknowledgements


• CONJUNCTURES AND DISJUNCTIONS


• 1. The Digital Middle East


• 2. Reckoning with Change


• ASPIRATIONS AND HINDRANCES


• 3. The Digital as Infrastructure


• 4. Technologies of Center and Periphery


• 5. The Digital as Digitality


• EXPRESSION AND SUPPRESSION


• 6. The Enticement of Digital Citizenship


• 7. Collective Voices and Digital Contention


• 8. Digital Adaptations and Disruptive Power


• IMITATION AND INNOVATION


• 9. In Pursuit of the Knowledge Economy


• 10. Cultural and Creative Industries


• 11. Emerging Digital Economies


• CONNECTIVITY AND COLLECTIVITY


• 12. Virtual Lives and Digital Spaces


• 13. The Demographics of a Connected Culture


• 14. Collectivity, Identity and Multivocality


• Afterword


• Notes


• References


• Index

The Middle East's digital turn has renewed hopes of socio-economic development and political change across the region, but it is also marked by stark contradictions and historical tensions. In this book, Mohamed Zayani and Joe F. Khalil contend that the region is caught in a digital double bind in which the same conditions that drive the state, market, and public immersion in the digital also inhibit change and perpetuate stasis. The Digital Double Bind offers a path-breaking analysis of how the Middle East negotiates its relation to the digital and provides a roadmap for a critical engagement with technology and change in the Global South.