Marcela's Musing

Technogenic turns: The production of a public sphere in 21st century urban Morocco

AUTHOR Watson, Bahiyyih D.

DEGREE PhD

SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA CRUZ

DATE 2006

PAGES 259

ADVISER Raffles, Hugh

ISBN 978-0-542-70611-0

SOURCE DAI-A 67/05, p. 1796, Nov 2006

SUBJECT ANTHROPOLOGY, CULTURAL (0326); URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING (0999)


The following dissertation provides an ethnographic study of transformations that accompany the emergence of innovative media and communication technologies in the African Muslim nation of Morocco. Drawing on field research conducted in Casablanca, Morocco, this work addresses the moral landscape of everyday life in a Muslim city that is undergoing shifts incurred by the national development of an 'information society.' I investigate how religious beliefs and new technologies of communication mutually impact the character of cultural practices and the production of social space in a Muslim city. Technological advances in communicative practice enable unprecedented forms of public participation. These new features of everyday communication---Internet surfing, satellite broadcast viewing, and cell phone use alike---require a political, economic and architectural infrastructure to operate on a broad scale in the public domain. The structural installation of an information society is analyzed through an exploration of the localized urban planning practices and national legislative procedures that make up the backbone of Morocco's national effort to become a postindustrial information society in the global economy of the 21st century. The following dissertation examines the development of a new technology corridor in Morocco's edge city of Casablanca, 'Californie,' and demonstrates the significance of emergent forms and functions of social space in a technologically saturated Muslim African-Arab city.