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Amman Cosmopolitan: Spaces and Practices of Aspiration and Consumption

Jillian Schwedler

Introduction

ike many cities in the Middle East, Amman today is hardly recognizable to the visitor who has been away for even just a few years. The formerly barren land adjacent to the Airport Road leading into the city is now crowded with gated villas, thick tracts of

western- style condos, and rows of recently planted saplings. Cell phone towers now clutter the vistas in much the way that satellite dishes did a decade ago. Newly installed sculptures adorn many intersections, construction sites seem to crowd every street, and high- speed underpasses have replaced the clogged traffic circles that once also served as social spaces in which pe-destrians gathered, particularly on weekend evenings. Amman is emerging as a world- class neoliberal city — or so the development projects, free trade zones, skyscrapers, and amenities for the wealthy would suggest.1 A new logo for the city was launched in 2009, part of a proj-ect to rebrand the city.2 But Amman today is not so much a different city from what it was a decade ago, as it is two cities: cosmopolitan West Amman, where development is unfolding at breakneck speed and foreign investment has skyrocketed, and East Amman, the bustling, dusty home to a majority of the city’s poor and working- class residents.

For Jordanians, too, Amman has become a very different place, and how they experi-ence the city remains as varied as ever: communities in all parts of the metropolis structure their quotidian practices around the spatial dimensions of their neighborhoods, from where groceries are bought and how workplaces are reached, to which roads can be crossed safely, at what times of the day, and how long it takes to move from place to place. Most parts of East Amman are much the same as they were ten and even twenty years ago. True, its neigh-borhoods have expanded to the north, east, and south, and some parks have been refur-bished so that lawns are green and fountains (sometimes) provide welcome respite from the dusty city for children to splash and tired feet to relax, particularly during the hotter summer

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Earlier versions of this article were presented on four occasions, and I am deeply indebted to the participants in each: the con-ference “Crossing Borders: Unusual Negotiations of the Secular, Public, and Private,” at Amherst College, January 2009; the Mid-dle East Studies Workshop at Harvard University, April 2009; the Ambiguities of Democracy Workshop at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, September 2009; and the Near East Political Science Workshop at Harvard University, March 2010. I am particularly grateful to Laryssa Chomiak, Rodney Collins, Barbara Cruikshank, Jill Goldenziel, Pete W. Moore, Srirupa Roy, 

Michael Stein, Berna Turam, and Lisa Wedeen for their insight-ful and thoughtful comments. All failings are my responsibil-ity alone.

1.  Christopher Parker, “Tunnel- Bypasses and Minarets of Capi-talism: Amman as Neoliberal Assemblage,” Political Geography 28 (2009): 110 – 20.

2.  Greater Amman Municipality, “The Story of Amman,” www .ammancity100.gov.jo/en/content/story- amman/2000s- 1 (ac-cessed 16 April 2010).

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months. The formerly outlying town of Zarqa to the northeast is now a suburb, and the sprawl shows no signs of slowing. But on the whole, the basic layout and infrastructures of most parts of East Amman have remained unchanged for many of its residents, as have the daily patterns of movement across time and space.3 Parts of West Amman, by comparison, have become very different places — spatially, temporally, cultur-ally, economically, and politically. Thus for the third of all Jordanians who reside in the greater Amman metropolitan area, those living, work-ing, and spending leisure time in West Amman have experienced far greater changes to their daily lives in recent years than have those whose quotidian routines remain largely confined to neighborhoods in East Amman.

Unsurprisingly, the impetus for many of these changes to the physical layout of parts of West Amman stems from government efforts aimed at attracting foreign capital to Jordan. Scholars have examined the country’s recent economic reforms,4 including the introduction and expansion of free trade zones and qualified industrial zones,5 the effects of privatization and market liberalization,6 and shifting sites and practices of patronage.7 But seldom explic-itly acknowledged is the extent to which these changes in the economic and cultural spaces in Amman have created new sites of engage-ment among Jordan’s citizens of diverse eco-nomic means: spatially, new patterns of work

and leisure activities are bringing increasing numbers of Jordanians from East Amman into West Amman (as well as creating new patterns of movement within West Amman); and cultur-ally, notions of class and social status are being complicated and reimagined as middle- class workers both inhabit and imitate the spaces of leisure that are largely exclusive to the wealthy cosmopolitan elite.

Shifting practices of work and leisure have also allowed a segment of Jordanians to reimagine their relation to the more desirable dimensions of economic liberalization, that is, by providing them access to the new spaces of glittering global capital, cosmopolitanism, and consumption. These include access to private commercial spaces, such as malls and other lo-cations where elite establishments are concen-trated, and to employment in a dramatically expanding sector of the service economy: West Amman’s high- end restaurants, bars, and ex-clusive nightclubs.8 I call the Jordanians who traverse these spaces formerly accessible only to the elite “aspiring cosmopolitans,” and I argue that their experiences of negotiating social sta-tus and cultural codes in multiple locales are exemplary rather than exceptional.9 New sites of leisure have allowed some middle- and lower- middle- class Jordanians to insert themselves into Jordan’s (relatively) new cosmopolitan lei-sure economy — physically and sometimes also economically — in ways that entail self- conscious

3.  As Parker illustrates, the government does have plans to incorporate portions of East Amman into its broader vision of expanding and deepening Amman’s global and market capitalism, but it intends to do so largely by opening corridors for the flow of goods and services that will require the relocation and displace-ment of portions of East Amman’s working- class pop-ulation. Christopher Parker, “Tunnel- Bypasses,” 117.

4.  Anne Mariel Peters and Pete W. Moore, “Beyond Boom and Bust: External Rents, Durable Authoritari-anism, and Institutional Adaptation in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,” Studies in Comparative Interna-tional Development 44 (2009): 256 – 85.

5.  Pete Moore, “QIZs, FTAs, USAID and the MEFTA: A Political Economy of Acronyms,” Middle East Report, no. 234 (2005).

6.  Rex Brynen, “Economic Crisis and Post- Rentier De-mocratization in the Arab World: The Case of Jordan,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 25 (1992): 69 – 79; Lamis Andoni and Jillian Schwedler, “Bread Riots in Jordan,” Middle East Report 201 (1996); Timothy Piro, Political Economy of Market Reform in Jordan (Land-ham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998).

7.  Laurie Brand, “Liberalization and Changing Political Coalitions: The Bases of Jordan’s 1990 – 91 Gulf Crisis Policy,” Jerusalem Journal of International Relations 13 (1991): 1 – 46; Markus Lowe, Jonas Blume, and Jo-hanna Speer, “How Favoritism Affects the Business Climate: Empirical Evidence from Jordan,” The Middle East Journal 62 (2008): 259 – 76; Anne Marie Baylouny, “Creating Kin: New Family Associations as Welfare Providers in Liberalizing Jordan,” International Jour-nal of Middle East Studies 38 (2006); and Anne Marie Baylouny, “Militarizing Welfare: Neo- liberalism and Jordanian Policy,” The Middle East Journal 62 (2008): 277 – 303.

8.  These new leisure spaces are attracting interna-tional attention, particularly aimed at tourists. See, for example, Andrew Ferren, “Next Stop: A New Styl-ish Amman Asserts Itself,” New York Times, 22 No-vember 2009, www.travel.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/travel/22next.html?emc=eta1 (accessed 16 April 2010).

9.  I am aware that my notion of “aspiring” cosmopol-itans suggests a category of actually existing cosmo-politans. While such a distinction is obviously prob-lematic — to the extent that cosmopolitanism entails not only economic resources but also a recognizable aesthetic and a multicultural worldview, the bound-aries of “membership” in such a group are necessar-ily fluid and contestable — I mean here to distinguish between those Jordanians of considerable economic means and those who might be more appropriately characterized as middle class. The cosmopolitan elite and the aspiring cosmopolitans may frequent the same stores and wear the same jeans, but the former do so in greater abundance, while driving expensive cars (often several), traveling internationally with great frequency, and running up tabs in nightclubs that exceed what an aspiring cosmopolitan earns (let alone spends) in a month or more.

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negotiations with sites of cultural production and cultural capital. For example, the young men who reside in East Amman (as well as more working- class neighborhoods of West Amman) who find employment in high- end establish-ments gain access and thus opportunities that are not only economic in nature: they also gain the knowledge of new representational codes that allow them to present themselves as, and sometimes be recognized as, members of Am-man’s cosmopolitan elite. These practices of representation can be described as crossings in spatial terms (from working- class to elite neigh-borhoods), in economic terms (from a lower to a higher social class), and in cultural terms (from working- and middle- class citizens to aspiring cosmopolitans). While much of the literature on the cultural effects of neoliberal economic reforms has emphasized exclusions and disen-franchisement, my aim is rather to illuminate the ways in which lines of exclusion are being crossed, creating opportunities (as well as new forms of exclusions) for those who might seem to initially find themselves on the losing side of neoliberal promises. The emergence of as-piring cosmopolitans in Jordan illustrates that new sites of participation and engagement may emerge as a consequence of economic reforms that are otherwise largely devastating for all but the wealthiest. Whether these sites and forms of engagement are ultimately emancipatory or destructive remains an open question, with the answer likely contingent upon one’s own per-spective of the liberatory possibilities of capital-ism. Rather than taking a normative stand on neoliberal economic reforms,10 I aim instead to identify some of the shifting practices of those most often treated as victims: practices of sur-vival, creativity, and reimagination that have re-ceived little attention to date.

My argument unfolds in two parts. In part 1, I examine the spatial and cultural ef-fects of Jordan’s neoliberal economic reforms, with particular attention to the reach of these reforms and their effects on different segments

of the population. In part 2, I discuss notions of cosmopolitanism generally as well as the ways the term is used by segments of Jordani-ans, with particular attention to whether cos-mopolitanism is as inclusive in practice as its component notion of celebrating “multicultur-alism” purports. I then examine the notion that neoliberal policies create sites of inclusion and exclusion, effectively creating different sets of rights and opportunities for different segments of the population. Focusing on cosmopolitan sites of leisure in Amman, I examine the sub-jectivities that these sites invoke and evoke, and particularly the ways in which those who have sought entry into these spaces have engaged in their own self- presentation and adaption of a cosmopolitan representational code. That is, these albeit diverse aspiring cosmopolitans are immediately engaged in the negotiation of their class position, in their location in the social hi-erarchy as they understand it; and as we shall see, these negotiations are as contingent on movement from one part of the city to another as they are on self- presentation. These Jordani-ans not only aspire to be part of Amman cosmo-politan, but to be recognized by others as such. They create new notions of self that effectively challenge certain narratives (for example, by downgrading the centrality of local and familial attachment to social standing) while bolstering others (such as cosmopolitanism and western consumerist fantasies), at least while they in-habit certain spaces and not others. By focusing on these highly local practices, we can begin to gain a better understanding of the full implica-tions of neoliberal economic reforms, in ways that recognize local creativity and the ability for individuals to self- consciously locate themselves within shifting social and economic fields. By linking the construction of narratives with shift-ing spatial orderings, we can develop a far more nuanced understanding of the exclusionary dimensions of economic reforms, as well as the innovations and creativity of those aspiring to be included.11 I conclude that while cosmopoli-

10.  For the record, I am highly critical of neoliberal economic reforms, having witnessed firsthand its destructive consequences for communities as well as individuals. In this article, I am aiming not to reject critiques, but to recover the agency of those who are often (correctly) portrayed in the literature critical of neoliberalism as victims.

11.  This project is undertaken in the spirit of David Harvey’s appeal to overcome the disciplinary divide between anthropology and geography that has led to the tendency to examine narratives and spatial or-derings in isolation of each other. David Harvey, “Cos-mopolitanism and the Banality of Geographical Evils” (unpublished manuscript, 2009). 

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tanism is not necessarily as inclusive and toler-ant as its advocates like to imagine, neither is neoliberalism necessarily as exclusionary as its own critics suggest. Shifting local practices of self and belonging suggest that geography and identity are complexly interconnected.

Part I: Amman’s New Cosmopolitan PlaylandSince Jordan entered into its first agreement with the International Monetary Fund in 1988, the country has systematically lifted (and some-times reinstated) subsidies for basic foodstuffs and petroleum products. Those least well off economically have felt the effects more deeply and acutely and have participated in various forms of protest, from “bread riots” to trucker strikes.12 At least since King Abdullah’s assump-tion of the throne in 1999, however, Jordan’s economic reforms have taken a decidedly neo-liberal turn. That is, the Jordanian government has accelerated legal reforms that facilitate for-eign investment and free trade and has actively sought to attract multinational corporations and foreign investment. In 2003, Jordan hosted the World Economic Forum at the Dead Sea, marking the regime’s commitment to reimagine Jordan’s role in the global economy.13 The flood of economic reforms beginning in 2000 — many of which were passed as “temporary” laws while parliament was out of session for more than two years (from May 2001 until August 2003) — were intended to rapidly liberalize the economy and make it hospitable for foreign investment while minimizing overt expressions of political dis-sent.14 As with most neoliberal projects, the state ostensibly “withdrew” control of certain spheres of economic activity, but in practice it extended its control far more deeply into Jordanian so-ciety through legal reforms, the adoption of highly securitized means of social control, and privileges for the entrepreneurial citizens both imagined by neoliberalism and required to put

it into local practice. But neoliberalism, as much as it can reflect a specific outlook toward eco-nomic development, should not be understood as a single “process” or set of policies; rather, it shares a common set of goals and beliefs about the effects of those goals, but the real meat lies in the details of execution: a set of ideas that can only be implemented through concrete, specific, and local policies and reforms. As Aihwa Ong notes, “Neoliberalism is often dis-cussed as an economic doctrine with a negative relation to state power, a market ideology that seeks to limit the scope and activity of govern-ing. But neoliberalism can also be conceptual-ized as a new relationship between government and knowledge through which governing activi-ties are recast as nonpolitical and nonideologi-cal problems that need technical solutions.” 15

Ong focuses on the active, interventionist as-pect of neoliberalism in non- Western contexts, “where neoliberalism as exception articulates sov-ereign rule and regimes of citizenship.” 16 This conceptualization provides a useful starting point for understanding the rapid pace and form of economic reforms in countries like Jordan, where economic reform policies are selectively applied, not only to specific fields of economic activity, but also spatially, through the creation of new sites of economic activity and consumption. These spaces are most dramati-cally illustrated by free trade zones and quali-fied industrial zones, where certain economic activities are concentrated and delineated spatially with explicit boundaries. But certain neighborhoods are also being reconfigured into concentrated spaces of particular kinds of economic activity — with other forms of eco-nomic activity explicitly excluded — of the sort that might be aptly described as cosmopolitan consumer dreamlands.17

12.  Andoni and Schwedler, “Bread Riots in Jordan”; Jillian Schwedler, “Don’t Blink: Jordan’s Democratic Opening and Closing,” Middle East Report Online, www.merip.org/mero/mero070302.html (2 June 2002).

13.  Pete Moore, “The Newest Jordan: Free Trade, Peace, and an Ace in the Hole,” Middle East Report Online, www.merip.org/mero/mero062603.html (26 June 2003).

14.  Schwedler, “Don’t Blink.”

15.  Aihwa Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty (Durham, NC, and Lon-don: Duke University Press, 2006), 3.

16.  Ibid. Italics in original.

17.  I borrow the term dreamland from Timothy Mitch-ell, who uses it in reference to a neoliberal vision of Cairo as “the world’s first electronic city,” complete 

with lush villas, fiber optics, golf courses, and all the other cosmopolitan amenities one could desire. One development promised that the buyer would find “The Egypt of My Desires.” Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno- Politics, Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 273. See also Diane Singerman and Paul Amar, eds., Cairo Cosmo-politanism (Cairo and New York: American University of Cairo Press, 2005).

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In this sense, King Abdullah has sought to create a new Jordan through neoliberal re-forms concentrated in parts of West Amman, the Aqaba Free Trade Zone, and various other qualified industrial zones (QIZs) scattered throughout the country. While QIZs have been largely established in rural areas, often through negotiations with tribal elites who demand that a certain number of jobs be promised to locals,18 the Aqaba Free Trade Zone and the large- scale capital investment in Amman have unfolded on a landscape already densely populated by Jordanians. In this sense, these economic re-forms require not only legal reforms and basic infrastructure, but also new forms of repression, surveillance, and policing to offset the seismic effects felt by the vast majority of the popula-tion. Official rates of unemployment were 13.5 percent and 12.6 percent in 2007 and 2008, respectively; unofficial estimates routinely put the figure at around 30 percent. Employment in agriculture and construction has declined by almost 50 percent between 1987 and 2003, with fewer than half of those jobs now held by Jorda-nian nationals.19 The government is thus count-ing on foreign investment and trade liberaliza-tion to improve Jordan’s economic outlook.

Neoliberal economic reforms also require a reformed legal system to support free trade and facilitate foreign investment, as well as considerable government investment in infra-structure at the sites of the imagined neolib-eral spaces: roads, ports, transportation, office space, and advanced telecommunications, to name just a few. The government must create not only the necessary regulations (through laws) to facilitate capitalistic investments (do-mestic and foreign), but it must also invest in infrastructural projects, including roads, port facilities, railroads, and telecommunications,20 as well as advanced surveillance methods to se-cure and police these spaces. The physical loca-tion of these projects and the state- led reforms that support the creation of economic zones are thus spatial and legal as well as social. With the increased presence of foreign firms comes the

need for the sorts of services demanded by the managers and executives of these firms: world- class hotels, restaurants, nightclubs, spas, and golf courses. Of course, these services are not utilized only by cosmopolitan foreigners — those who travel frequently and have become accus-tomed to a high- speed, global, luxury lifestyle. These sites of elite cosmopolitanism are also lo-cales for the production and self- presentation of a cosmopolitan elite within Jordan — the ability for certain Jordanians to claim cultural capital as cosmopolitan in the sense of being world- wise and well- traveled, multilingual, hip or cutting- edge, and comfortable and fluent in the cultural codes of the world’s major urban cen-ters. This self- presentation stands in distinction to that of other Jordanians who might also be wealthy and powerful, but whom the cosmopoli-tans view as less sophisticated or worldly. That is, cosmopolitans view themselves as distinct from tribal elites, merchants and traders, and others who may possess wealth but none of the characteristics necessary to signal membership in even the local cosmopolitan community, let alone the cosmopolitan international.

Tribal leaders, for example, long a key con-stituency for the regime’s stability, are largely viewed by Jordan’s jet- set cosmopolitans through an orientalist lens: as backward, out of pace with modernity, possessing little understand-ing of world(s) beyond their local authority, and engaging in outdated “traditional” practices such as arranged marriages, gender segrega-tion, and honor killings. The notion of “tribes” hold various meanings for Jordan’s cosmopoli-tan elite, only some of which echo notions of tribe as frequently used in the West. The term might refer to prominent families with deep ties to political and economic power — an equivalent in the United States would be the Kennedys or the Rockefellers — or it might refer to tight- knit extended families, where the employment and marital decisions of any individual have impact on the broader familial network. At times, it has much to do with extended real estate holdings and business monopolies. Of course, many of

18.  The majority of jobs in the QIZs often go to foreign nationals, who come to Jordan for the sole purpose of taking up these positions and reside in housing camps adjacent to the QIZs without engaging with Jordanian society on any broader level.

19.  European Training Foundation, Unemployment in Jordan (Luxembourg: Office for the Official Publica-tions of the European Communities, 2005), 24.

20.  David Harvey, New Imperialism (New York: Ox-ford University Press, 2005), 99 – 106.

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Jordan’s cosmopolitan elite have familial con-nections of this sort. But in my interviews and conversations with dozens of these elite, I have been struck by how often I heard “tribal” 21 jux-taposed to “modern” and to “cosmopolitan,” in ways that suggest in “tribal” a parochial, backward, and almost buffoonlike mental-ity that preserves barbaric practices (such as honor killings)22 while rejecting elements of “modernity” (such as gender equality).23 This is not to imply that the categories of tribal elites and cosmopolitan elites are mutually exclusive; to be sure, there are prominent members of tribes — used here in its broadest sense to refer to powerful extended families in the kingdom with long- standing and close patronage ties to the regime — who move among the circles I am describing as urban and cosmopolitan. I raise the notion of tribal elites as distinct from cos-mopolitan elites to signify the recognition by Jordanians of the existence of multiple nodes of social power, and to capture the fact that there are competing images of social hierarchy and diverse spaces that signify as well as reify these distinctions. The sorts of movements across cul-tural and geographic space enacted by Jorda-nians of middle- class backgrounds24 — as they shift from home to work, from home to leisure, from kinship to citizenship — are what Rodney Collins calls “transversals.” 25 These movements, in and out of cosmopolitan spaces, are certainly not the first sorts of transversals to emerge in Jordan. Prior to the current wave of neoliberal reforms and the emergence of cosmopolitan consumer spaces, cohorts of (frequently) men transversed other spaces, though perhaps cover-

ing less distance both geographically as well as in terms of social hierarchy. The symbolic and literal geography transversed by Amman’s aspir-ing cosmopolitans presents, however, a fruitful focus for exploring innovation and creativity at the margins and across the borders of economic reform programs.

Jordan’s cosmopolitan elite imagine them-selves to occupy a social space distinct from what they describe as traditional and local social hi-erarchies; and indeed they have come to inhabit distinct leisure spaces in a literal sense as well. Prominent among these are expensive night-clubs and restaurants, where one can always order a Caesar salad to be consumed in a fash-ionable environment with a soundtrack of west-ern and European hits and a clientele of global hipsters.26 Nightclubs, often featuring “interna-tional” dj’s brought in for stints ranging from a single night to several months, typically serve such “international” fare as sushi, chicken nug-gets, and quesadillas. Bottle service27 remains in vogue, and mojitos are ubiquitous, though likely to be replaced by a new trendy drink by the time this article reaches publication. Caipirinhas are also popular, typically poured with either vodka or Bacardi’s rum rather than with the Brazilian sugarcane liquor cachaça, which the authentic drink requires. The most elite places, however, pride themselves in stocking hard- to- acquire brands of liquors. One restaurant manager told me that he carries liquors back in his personal luggage that are not available through the im-porters in Jordan.28 Health clubs are also sites of cosmopolitan consumption and performance, with locations such as Dunes Club Amman29

21.  The term tribal is sometimes used in English and sometimes in Arabic (qabili); the term cosmopolitan is used in the same form in both languages.

22.  Honor killings, while not common, continue to number in the hundreds in Jordan annually. An honor killing is when a member of an immediate or extended family kills a family member for damaging the family honor through alleged or real contact with members of the opposite sex that are inappropriate (e.g., outside of marriage). In practice, honor killings are almost exclusively limited to women, though one individual reported to me a killing of a man sus-pected of sexual encounters with another man. See Rana Husseini, Murder in the Name of Honor (London: Oneworld, 2009).

23.  These insights are drawn from interviews and in-formal conversations with elite Jordanians conducted from 1995 to the present, including eleven phone and 

e- mail interviews conducted in late 2009 in connec-tion with this research.

24.  Of course, these transversals are not exclusive to the middle class; my focus here is on Amman’s “as-piring cosmopolitans,” but certainly transversals of various sorts characterize the daily realities of many Jordanians of diverse economic and social status.

25.  Personal correspondence, December 2009. Col-lins has developed the concept of “transversals” in his current work conceptualizing a similar dynamic in terms of hustlers in Tunis. I am grateful to him for suggesting the concept, as it nicely captures the sorts of crossings that I am exploring here.

26.  Anouk de Koning ascribes the ubiquity of café latte and Caesar salad in Cairo’s up- market coffee shops as evidence of “cosmopolitan belonging.” Anouk de Koning, “Café Latte and Caesar Salad: Cos-

mopolitan Belonging in Cairo’s Coffee Shops,” in Cairo Cosmopolitan, ed. Diane Singerman and Paul Amar (Cairo and New York: American University of Cairo Press, 2005), 221 – 22.

27.  Bottle service refers to the practice of purchasing a whole bottle of liquor, which is served with a vari-ety of mixers, garnishes, and a bucket of ice. Bottles that are not entirely consumed can usually be left behind with one’s name written on the bottle — an-other means of “marking” one’s membership among the cosmopolitan elite.

28.  Anonymous interview by the author, Amman, 14 August 2008.

29.  Dunes Club Amman, www.1stjordan.net/dunes club/index.html (accessed 16 April 2010).

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serving buckets of Coronas and cheeseburger sliders in a lush landscape surrounding swim-ming pools and waterfalls — all in a compound south of the city surrounded by desert (the club has a Facebook fan page). Like foreign busi-nesspersons, Jordan’s cosmopolitan elites also demand easy access in and out of Jordan via a modern and efficient airport: the government has extensively renovated Queen Alia Interna-tional Airport — complete with a Starbucks, its local competitor Blue Fig,30 a gleaming duty- free mall, and free wireless Internet31 — and has upgraded the scenery one sees from the car win-dow as one travels from the airport into Amman. As one businessman and former government official told me in 2003, the goal of these par-ticular renovations was to create an experience whereby the foreign visitor “doesn’t feel like he is in the third world from the moment he gets off the airplane.” 32 Streets elsewhere in West Amman have also been improved: Zahran Street has been entirely repaved with five major under-passes added to facilitate the rapid flow of traffic into and out of downtown; a suspension bridge connects the Fourth Circle of Zahran Street to the commercial neighborhood of Shmeisani to the north and Abdoun to the south;33 overpasses and underpasses speed traffic between residen-tial and commercial areas along Gardens Street, from Gardens Street to University Road and to new posh neighborhoods to the west of King Hussein Street; and the list could go on.

Most of these infrastructure projects and virtually all the elite services are concentrated in West Amman, so that the neighborhoods have been physically altered over the past decade for the dual purposes of facilitating foreign in-vestment and catering to the needs and recre-ational impulses of Jordan’s upper classes and foreign visitors. East Amman, by comparison,

has been little affected: true, parks and public spaces have been renovated and ornamental public fountains splash in the summer months. But East Amman is becoming as different from West Amman as West Amman is from its own recent past. In addition to the opening of some half- dozen sushi bars, numerous world- class restaurants, cigar lounges, and Irish pubs, the boutique products available today rival those available in New York, Paris, Milan, Tokyo, and Dubai. Even more, the sites for these and other material consumptions have become incredibly stylish. Indeed, what is being consumed is not limited to material goods and services, but also includes cultural codes and even spaces, a par-ticular cosmopolitan aesthetic. The most elite boutiques for sartorial goods, for example, are no longer located only along the traffic- hewn, dusty, and tired- feeling streets of Sweifiyeh — the only places one could find them as recently as the late 1990s; shoppers can now purchase their Chanel handbags and Armani jeans in the posh shops of more than a half- dozen glistening, pristine malls, where they may pause during their shopping for an espresso at any number of modernist- styled cafes, or even a venti half- caf latte from Starbucks.34 The newer malls are bright and clean, adorned with large banners advertising international movies — which may be viewed at the mall’s own reserved- seats- only multiplex — and icons such as David Beckham, whose image hawked his “favorite” brand of watch for most of 2008. Mecca Mall35 and the newer City Mall36 located on the western edge of West Amman will soon be joined by two major malls in Abdoun, a neighborhood home to some of the city’s hippest nightclubs as well as many of the cosmopolitan elite themselves. Indeed, Abdoun’s major traffic circle remains a site for congregating on weekend evenings

30.  Blue Fig, www.bluefig.com (accessed 16 April 2010).

31.  I was charmed to note that the wireless signal is broadcast via modems secured on the ceiling of the airport with duct tape.

32.  Interviewee’s name withheld by request. Amman, July 2003.

33.  This road continues south and eventually curves to the east, providing a high- speed conduit between East Amman and the commercial districts of West Amman — bypassing the downtown area entirely.

34.  The “city” mugs available from Starbucks inter-nationally — which feature cities such as Washing-ton, DC, New York, Paris, and so on — are “country” mugs in the Middle East: they are available for Jor-dan, Oman, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, and Lebanon, among others; most can be purchased in any Middle Eastern outlet of the chain, and not only in the country on the mug.

35.  Mecca Mall, www.meccamall.jo (accessed 16 April 2010).

36.  City Mall, www.citymall.jo (accessed 16 April 2010).

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(especially Thursday night), where pedestrians congregate while BMWs, Mercedes, and SUVs cruise the scene. Just south of Abdoun Circle is the city’s largest (as of this writing) free-standing Starbucks, a two- level building with outdoor terraces, a fireplace, and a guarded parking lot. Starbucks is sandwiched between the eco- conscious and hipster Blue Fig Res-taurant — which hosts art exhibits, artists, and concerts — and the concrete carcass of the Hard Rock Café Amman, a large building adorned with a Petra- inspired façade37 and a roof- top globe that continues to declare, “Love All, Serve All,” despite being closed for nearly a decade.38 The new Taj mall under construction just to the south is touted as Taj Life Style Center, where, as its Web site (launched in 2009) announces, “The 50,000 m2 mixed- use retail project blends chic shops, cafes, restaurants, and family en-tertainment venues together into one extraor-dinary cosmopolitan experience for the city of Amman.” 39 The site further describes the project: “Massively projecting five stories up-ward from the land’s surface, the structure is an urban 21st century citadel, frequented by chic travelers and cosmopolitan city residents.”

Closer to the physical center of the city, changes to the commercial district of Shmeisani are also under way. The neighborhood was lo-cated at the western edge of the city twenty years ago; today, it is nearly “downtown.” The eastern edge of the neighborhood borders Abdali, and precisely at this intersection is the site of the for-mer mukhabarat (secret police) complex, known informally as Palestine Hotel (Funduk Filastin) because of its history of “hosting” politically en-gaged Palestinians for long periods of time. The building was razed in 200240 to make way for the Abadali Project, a neoliberal dreamland that is planned to include seven gleaming skyscrapers, million- dollar apartments, a pedestrian “world” shopping mall, and space tailored to meet the needs of international financial services. (HSBC

inaugurated its headquarters at the Atrium building with a ribbon- cutting ceremony on March 31, 2010.) Billed on its Web site as “A New Downtown for Amman” as well as “Am-man’s central business district,” the project is self- consciously cosmopolitan in its reimagining of social spaces: the residential spaces are envi-sioned as “Generating a New Meaning to Urban Living,” 41 while the restaurants and shopping arcades promise to “Glitter Your Life.” 42 The retail component of the project, called Abadali Boulevard, declares itself to be “a world- class destination that places Amman on the inter-national retail map.” 43 The models on the Web sites are fair- skinned and generically European (or American) in facial features, with women sporting bare shoulders and paparazzi photo-graphing the beautiful people as they enter and leave shops and restaurants with cell phones in hand, indifferent to the adoring and longing at-tention of those surrounding them.

During the summer of 2008, the city of-fered a pilot shuttle service called the Amman City Bus, a hop- on, hop- off air- conditioned sightseeing bus that completes a circuit of thirty- five tourist and shopping spots every two- and- a- half hours. For approximately US$40 for a day pass — the country has a per capita income of US$8 a day, though residents ride for less — you can ride in air- conditioned comfort to visit such tourist destinations as the Roman citadel and amphitheater downtown — Amman is the site of the ancient Roman city of Philadelphia — King Hussein’s personal automobile collection at the Automobile Museum, as well as the major shop-ping areas (including malls and the outdoor pe-destrian area of Wakalat Street) and hotels in West Amman. While the service is currently sus-pended, as of the summer of 2009 government officials were talking about ways of reviving the project and making the service permanent.

Reflected in these diverse projects are the very real differences in the ways that Jordani-

37.  Petra, southern Jordan’s “Rose- Red City,” is nota-ble less for its Roman ruins than its earlier Nabatean structures carved into the sheer rock. The façade of Petra’s most famous building, the Treasury, is fea-tured in the film Raiders of the Lost Ark.

38.  In this sense, the low- brow globalism of Planet Hollywood (whose outlet in Abdoun has also closed down) and Hard Rock Café seems to have failed in Jordan.

39.  Taj Life Style Center, www.tajlifestyle.com (ac-cessed 16 April 2010).

40.  The main headquarters for “internal security” had moved to a new complex — resembling a prison yard — south of Amman a few years earlier.

41.  Abadali Project, www.abdali.jo (accessed 16 April 2010).

42.  Abadali  Boulevard  Company,  w w w.abdali - boulevard.jo (accessed 16 April 2010).

43.  See “Profile” under “About Us” at www.abdali - boulevard.jo. The Web site also describes Jordan as “an economically and politically stable country in the Middle East.” See “Amman” under “Our Location.”

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ans inhabit and move across the landscape of Amman. Indeed, the reach of neoliberal re-forms certainly creates tiers of citizenship and privilege of the sort Ong terms “gradations of citizen rights and benefits.” 44 It is not that the upper classes, as a function of their wealth, have greater access to the protections and rights en-coded in law, but that the specific rights being actively advanced, prioritized, and protected by the government are those related to a neo-liberal vision of economic growth (particularly free trade, foreign investment, and cosmopoli-tan consumerism), at the expense of democratic political rights (such as the freedom of political expression, popular participation, and assembly for the purpose of political protest). But despite the concentration of projects aimed at Jordan’s elite and aff luent foreign travelers — not the backpackers who stay in the same hostels they have for decades — these benefits do not map neatly or exclusively along class lines, but spa-tially: those residing, working, or traversing par-ticular spaces, regardless of economic class, may reap at least some of the benefits of these infra-structural improvements and reform priorities. Small- business owners can and are relocating their offices to West Amman in part because the new infrastructure has made transport from their homes to their sites of employment in West Amman quick and easy. The fixed routes of cheap shared taxis called service (pronounced sair- VEES) have been expanded throughout West Amman, another indication of a working- class infrastructure benefiting from new roads and shorter transit times. In this sense, Ong’s notion of “tiers” of citizenship entails rather rigid structural connotations that are somewhat at odds with the kinds of transversals enacted by Amman’s aspiring cosmopolitans. The notion of tiers suggests a rather inflexible hierarchy, and thus cannot fully capture the dynamism at work in and around Amman’s emerging neoliberal

and cosmopolitan spaces.45 It is to these com-plex transversals that I now turn.

Part II: Aspiring CosmopolitansWhat is cosmopolitanism — that to which some Jordanians aspire? I have described the term above as entailing a sense of being world- wise and well- traveled, multilingual, hip or cutting- edge, and comfortable and fluent in the cul-tural codes of the world’s major urban centers. One common definition of cosmopolitanism entails the idea that all humans belong to one community that shares a morality of inclusive-ness, tolerance, and multiculturalism. Cosmo-politanism in this sense is frequently advocated by western liberals as a panacea to internecine conflict, resurgent nationalism, and all sorts of bloody “othering.” Far from being inclusive and multicultural, however, this sort of cosmo-politanism strongly emphasizes democracy46 but in practice has little ability to tolerate or even accommodate antirepublican global outlooks, such as those supra- state identities put forth by Islamists and socialists, to give just two ex-amples.47 Prevailing conceptions of cosmopoli-tanism often appear intimately linked to glo-balization, as David Held notes,48 imagining a borderless world where cultural capital flows as freely as economic capital, lifting all boats from economic underdevelopment as well as cultural backwardness.49

But all notions of cosmopolitanism are necessarily grounded, attached to place and understood by people in concrete contexts. In Jordan, the term cosmopolitan is most often associated with elite consumerism, Western cultural domination, economic globalization, and secularism — a sort of Western- centric, rational- secular humanism gone shopping. In Amman the term is most commonly identified with particular spaces and practices rather than broad ideals of human community or multicul-

44.  Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception.

45.  I am grateful to Rodney Collins for urging me to emphasize this dimension of my critique of Ong.

46.  Seyla Benhabib articulates the ways in which cos-mopolitanism can probably never be reconciled with democracy. Seyla Benhabib, Another Cosmopolitan-ism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

47.  See also Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitan-ism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006).

48.  See, for example, David D. Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmo-politan Governance (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford Univer-sity Press, 1995), 267, cited in Harvey, “Cosmopoli-tanism,” 2. I am indebted to Harvey for making this connection.

49.  Indeed, the connection between globalization and cosmopolitanism requires a trick of what Masao Miyoshi calls a liberal self- deception: far from neutral observers, advocates of multicultural cosmopolitan-ism are actually “fully collaborating with the hege-monic ideology, which looks, as usual, like no ideol-ogy at all.” Masao Miyoshi, “A Borderless World?” in Documenta X — The Book, ed. Jean- François Chevrier (Stuttgart: Hatje Cantz Publishers, 1997), 202, cited in Harvey, “Cosmopolitanism,” 2.

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turalism, so that hotels, malls, nightclubs, res-taurants, and glitzy foreign investment projects can be easily juxtaposed to spaces that do not fit this image even as they may embody global market and cultural flows. As Parker notes, East Amman is not without its own form of cosmo-politanism: “The image of East Amman as an isolated slum suggests a degree of passivity and essentialism that would seem odd to anyone fa-miliar with the vibrant economy of its market-places and the subaltern cosmopolitanism of its inhabitants. The Palestinian refugee camp of Wihdat, for example, is home to one of Jordan’s most vibrant produce markets and a dizzying array of low- end consumer outlets.” 50

Yet as Jordanian blogger Ahmad Hu-meid laments, “Amman has become a divided city. That’s a sad reality we have to face.” 51 East Amman has its own vibrancy and cultural flows, but the government has invested in a neolib-eral vision that is most readily realizable, at least for the time being, in more affluent West Amman. The global superstore giant Carrefour has opened a major outlet in East Amman, but in a location easily accessible to West Amman via a new highway; it remains unclear what pro-portion of customers are drawn from nearby neighborhoods, but the availability of high- end brands suggests that Carrefour will draw an elite clientele and will not soon put local markets out of business. The result is that the city remains largely divided in terms of the spaces routinely traversed by various segments of the popula-tion. Jordan’s economic elite (as well as foreign visitors), for example, seldom venture into Am-man’s downtown souk of wust al- balad (city cen-ter) — where the enterprising shopper can find refurbished appliances, cheap cell phone bat-teries, used clothing, and all sorts of oriental kitsch — except on their way to visit the ruins of the ancient Roman city of Philadelphia52 or when they head downtown for a “cultural” ex-perience, like having lunch at long- established

working- class restaurants like Jerusalem Restau-rant. Likewise for the Jordanian citizens who shop, eat, and relax in the dusty downtown with a glass of fresh mango juice or an argila (water pipe), the booming nightlife in West Amman is not immediately apparent, though its licentious behavior is made “visible” through taxi- driver gossip, disapproving mosque sermons, newspa-per articles and advertisements, and the stories told by the young Jordanian men who work as waiters, bartenders, busboys, and bouncers in the city’s many clubs and restaurants.

But the crucial issue here is not that East Amman is providing the labor that enables the functioning of the neoliberal spaces that make up Amman Cosmopolitan. Rather, I wish to move beyond the critical literature on neolib-eralism to suggest 1) that neoliberal reforms do not create only exclusions and disenfranchise-ment for the working classes, but also spaces for self- imagination and inventiveness as a result of transversals, and 2) that as a consequence, the ideal consumer citizen envisioned by Jordan’s neoliberal reforms is not an identity or experi-ence attainable only by the upper class and eco-nomic elite.

Much recent literature on neoliberalism has emphasized the ways in which economic reform projects (neoliberal and otherwise) work to provide benefits and guarantee certain rights to small segments of the population while rendering fewer legal protections and rights to the majority. Scholars have examined the “dif-ferential modes of treatments of populations” 53 and how the idea of the global in practice only works to “connect” in a highly selective, discon-tinuous, and point- to- point fashion,54 leaving portions of the populations “outside” these pro-cesses in terms of opportunities and benefits, but also, in a more literal sense, spatially. James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer explore the ways in which resistance to neoliberal exclusions is often channeled from destabilizing antisystem

50.  Parker, “Tunnel- Bypasses,” 119.

51.  Ahmad Humeid, www.360east.com/?p=1014 (ac-cessed 16 April 2010).

52.  The downtown area itself is being considered for radical redevelopment. One plan imagines it as a cosmopolitan neoliberal space, another as a “classic” Middle Eastern souk, which would entail use of orien-talist imagery to create an “old city” casbah to attract 

tourists as well as a higher class of Jordanian leisure- seekers. The development project is currently pre-vented by the existence of a tenant law that makes it virtually impossible for landlords to evict tenants, even commercial tenants. Revisions to these laws are due to change in 2010, at which time the downtown area will likely undergo significant redevelopment that displaces the lower- end retailers.

53.  Robert Castel, “From Dangerousness to Risk,” in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, ed. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller (Chi-cago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 294, cited in Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception, 79.

54.  James Ferguson, Global Shadows: Africa in the Neo liberal World Order (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2006), 14.

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social movements into the carefully controlled and controllable spheres of elections and local reform organizations.55 In her study of citizen-ship, Saskia Sassen likewise emphasizes the ways in which disadvantaged subjects, such as fac-tory workers, see their inequalities formalized through reform policies and into law, despite the fact that they are sometimes successful in gaining formal rights;56 certain subjects, such as housewives and mothers, are excluded through a different means, namely, their categorization as nonpolitical.57

Ong also emphasizes the ways in which exceptions to neoliberalism — spaces governed by logics other than neoliberalism — are in-voked to both include and exclude populations and spaces from neoliberal calculations and choices.58 She does not use the notion of excep-tion in Giorgio Agamben’s sense of a decision made outside the juridical order,59 but rather to denote an extraordinary departure in pol-icy that can be deployed to include as well as exclude populations as well as spaces. Indeed, “the exception can also be a positive decision to include selected populations and spaces as targets of ‘calculative choices and value orienta-tions’ associated with neoliberal reform.” 60

What all these studies emphasize is that neoliberalism, like globalization, is not a single process or set of reforms that creates predictable and replicable effects across diverse locales, nor does it entail a simple “retreat of the state” from spheres of economic activity (so that “markets” can frolic freely). But economic globalization is rightly associated with staggering numbers of the globally excluded,61 so in addition to at-tention to the specific processes and means of exclusion, we also need to identify an analyti-cal angle that allows us to examine the ways in which peoples struggle at the bound aries of neoliberal projects, practices, and spaces. Anna Tsing’s notion of “friction” is useful here, as it points to the ways in which the tensions created

as inclusions and exclusions rub up against each other can be productive: friction results when the rubber hits the road, but it is essential for the vehicle to move forward. As she argues in her study of neoliberalim in Indonesia, “cultures are continually co- produced in the interaction I call ‘friction’: the awkward, unequal, and unstable, and creative qualities of interconnections across difference.” 62 The notion of friction is useful as well in thinking about the ways in which neolib-eral reforms do not in fact include or exclude neatly; the “edges” of these projects — legally and spatially — are sites of contestation as well as creativity. Thus while Ong’s idea of neolib-eralism as exception points to the construction of political and social spaces that are differently regulated and linked in diverse and selective ways to global circuits,63 I aim to shift our atten-tion away from examining precisely how those exclusions are generated and toward the ways in which peoples who find themselves at the blurry boundary of inclusion/exclusion strive to negotiate, imagine, and reconstruct the op-portunities and possibilities of marginal spaces. Precisely what it is these individuals do can lead to new practices and crossings of the sort cap-tured by Collins’s notion of transversals, that is, movements from work to leisure, from private to public, from family to citizen, from tradition to modernity, and so on. Jordanians daily traverse a wide range of symbolic and physical spaces, negotiating the crossings between them just as they negotiate interactions within each. In her study of how the production of desire in China lies at the heart of neoliberal projects, Lisa Rofel emphasizes that reforms can have contradictory effects: they “enhanced ordinary citizens’ sense of the new possibilities that lay within their reach but also increased frustrations with the new social inequalities that sometimes became evident.” 64 But frustrations are not the only re-sponse to the realization of the possibilities that appear to lie just out of reach. Even seemingly

55.  James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer, Social Move-ments and State Power (New York: Pluto Press, 2005), 9.

56.  Saskia Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (Princeton, NJ: Prince-ton University Press, 2006), 110 – 21.

57.  Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights, 277 – 321.

58.  Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception, 4.

59.  Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).

60.  Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception, 5.

61.  Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception, 23.

62.  Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Friction: An Ethnogra-phy of Global Connection (Princeton and New York: Prince ton University Press and Oxford University Press, 2005), 4.

63.  Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception, 9.

64.  Lisa Rofel, Desiring China: Experiments in Neolib-eralism, Sexuality, and Public Culture (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2007), 9.

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“excluded” Jordanians — those who are not imagined to animate the government’s dream of recreating Amman as a global, consumerist, cosmopolitan city of the world — are not entirely disempowered, and they are certainly not docile. Populations always animate the margins of neo-liberal exclusions. Many will remain excluded, despite considerable efforts to join in, while oth-ers will see new possibilities, new ways of being, and imagine themselves as included rather than excluded. Indeed, some will even find ways of participating in forms of economic and leisure activity that are prioritized by neoliberal visions even as they feel the effects of the selectivity of neoliberal reforms. For example, residents in a neglected neighborhood may move across a variety of spaces to inhabit and animate other spaces, which they can imagine were intended for use by them. Their activities may not be of the sort envisioned by neoliberal reforms,65 but they are actually made possible through the ju-ridical, spatial, and cultural reconfigurations attached to neoliberal reforms. In this sense, marginal and border spaces can be spaces not only of exclusion and disappointment but also of opportunity and vibrant inventiveness.

How, then, are such spaces being negoti-ated in Amman? The regime’s neoliberal pri-orities imagine a population of citizens that are politically quiescent but patriotic in their consumerism, who can animate the project of refashioning Amman as a city of world stature. Yet while certain elite spaces are most accessible to those with disposable incomes, the ideal con-sumer citizen envisioned by Jordan’s neoliberal reforms is an identity that is also accessible to those who are able to assert themselves as aspir-ing cosmopolitans. Neoliberal reform projects have created new patterns of both work and leisure activities that bring increasing num-bers of Jordanians from East Amman into West Amman. Notions of class and social status are being complicated as middle- class workers both inhabit and imitate the spaces of leisure that are fashioned according to the desires of the wealthy cosmopolitan elite. Indeed, practices of

work, leisure, and self- presentation have shifted in ways that allow a segment of Jordanians to gain economic and social opportunities through employment in high- end restaurants, bars, and nightclubs. While overall employment in Jor-dan hovers around 30 percent, private- sector employment in the areas of trade, hotels, and restaurants has increased from 9.8 percent in 1987 to 20.3 percent in 2003.66 Still, only 2 per-cent of the total workforce (and 6.2 percent of the private sector) are employed in restaurants and hotels. 67 With 58.2 percent of jobseekers, male and female, below the age of twenty- five, these are highly coveted jobs.68

I do not wish to imply that high- end hotels and restaurants are the only sites of entry for os-tensibly excluded portions of the population to forge cosmopolitan identities within the spaces of neoliberalism. But these self- consciously cos-mopolitan leisure sites are exemplary, because the need for workers entails the need for work-ers who appear to fit in — who can blend into the scene as if they belong — and thus require those workers to adopt a cosmopolitan representa-tional code, at least while at work. This transver-sal entails more than a particular kind of dress, but also a self- presentation that includes ease in engaging the cosmopolitan elite, as well as comfort and fluency in the cultural codes that signal worldly cosmopolitanism. The bartender must know not only how to make small talk and be conversant in the topics that will be of inter-est to the customer who waits for a friend to ar-rive, but how to make eye contact and likewise not violate conventions of personal space. The shop clerk must know not only what fashions are hot, but how to greet and interact with the customer in ways that suggest an understanding of shared values and experiences (“Everyone dreams of owning a Birken shoulder bag!”). As workers learn these codes and adopt them for self- presentation, they often carry them on their selves as they leave their place of employment, though not necessarily as they return home.

The need to staff elite establishments has considerably expanded over the past decade, as

65.  See especially Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception, and Tsing, Friction.

66.  European Training Foundation, Unemployment in Jordan, 24.

67.  Ibid., 38 and 28.

68.  Ibid., 30, table 10.

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new hotels each bring a handful of venues, and Jordanian entrepreneurs strive to create spaces that remind them of their favorite places in cit-ies like New York and London. Interviews with seven managers of some of the hottest spots pro-duced a refrain familiar to me during my own experiences working in restaurants and bars in New York: there is no shortage of applicants for positions, but managers struggle to find enough “suitable” employees. Several major new ho-tels have opened in Amman over the past de-cade, including Four Seasons, Sheraton, the Grand Hyatt, and LeRoyal. Independent and hotel- based restaurants such as Asia, Canvas, Wild Jordan69 (with its environmental theme), Ren Chai,70 Blue Fig (also environmental), the Sanctuary, Glass, the Living Room, the Grotto, and Vinaigrette71 present a sleek modernist aes-thetic, often serving organic foods and craft beers, and displaying the work of local artists on the walls. A decade ago many waiting and bartending positions were filled by foreigners: Americans and Europeans in the most expen-sive places, Eastern Europeans and East Asians in the seedier establishments. Jordanian men have also long staffed many of the restaurants, often in a style more of an elegant Italian res-taurant: head waiters, men of forty or older and wearing dark suits, supported by teams of younger men wearing vest, shirt, and tie. The flood of new establishments, particularly those aiming to attract the most elite clientele, has led managers to try to hire top staff away from competitors. What is new in these places is the relatively rapid spread of a cosmopolitan hip aesthetic, emerging first in the late 1990s and exploding in the past five years. The Grand Hyatt Hotel Web site, for example, describes its new 32° North restaurant as “cosmopolitan and sleek,” a “unique dining venue more likely to be found in New York, Sydney, or London.” 72 The older gentlemen waiters are left to run the “old” formal restaurants, like Romero and Trattato-ria, while the young and beautiful servers don black from head to toe and pour mojitos while dj’s spin the latest tracks from London and New

York. Because of the proliferation of high- end leisure establishments, patterns of employment have shifted as the demand for younger and hipper staff has increased, creating new op-portunities for those who once could hope to gain a position as a waiter only through years of apprenticeship in the city’s few top restau-rants. The owners of the most elite nightclubs mandate a particular look, but their reported efforts to hire staff from other establishments suggest that employment is not open to anyone: only those who show up for an interview having already adopted the desired representational code are likely to find employment.

Why should we care about the specifics of these new jobs for young men, other than to note changing employment trends? How has the proliferation of jobs in Amman’s cos-mopolitan sites of leisure and consumption ac-companied changes in the leisure practices and self- understandings of the young Jordanians who work there? Individuals are defined, and define themselves, through their adaptation of a representational code. That is, they wish to be recognized by and recognizable to the group to which they wish to belong; they also may wish to differentiate themselves from other groups. How they present themselves is also going to be contingent on context, and is likely to change as transversals take Jordanians from space to space, context to context. In every context, this process necessarily entails others’ recogni-tions of who belongs and who constitutes mat-ter out of place. Recognition by all audiences is of course not equally valued. As Norma Mo-ruzzi argues, we cannot fully understand self- presentation without a comprehension of “how local practitioners use the codes.” 73 What are these young men saying through their dress, hair, language, ringtones, favorite place to hang out, selection of CDs on the floors of their cars, and so on, and to whom are they saying it? In a similar manner, young male mall kids gel their hair into faux hawks — slicking the sides of their hair down and spiking the top in ways that en-able them to easily erase the effect upon return-

69.  Wild Jordan Café, www.wildjordancafe.com (ac-cessed 16 April 2010).

70.  ATICO Fakheldrin Group, www.atico- jo.com/ renchai (accessed 16 April 2010).

71.  alqasr- hojo.com, www.alqasr- hojo.com/vin.htm (accessed 16 April 2010).

72.  Grand Hyatt Hotel, www.amman.grand.hyatt .com/hyatt/hotels/entertainment/restaurants/index.jsp#5811972 (accessed 16 April 2010).

73.  Norma Claire Moruzzi, “Trying to Look Different: Hijab as the Self- Presentation of Social Distinctions,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 28 2 (2008): 225 – 34, 226.

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ing home — and adopt a particular repertoire of posing and gesturing when hanging out at the mall in an act of self- presentation that signals their position to others, who in turn are recog-nizable to them. Given that malls are private commercial spaces, adopting the right represen-tational code can also mean all the difference in terms of gaining admittance by the guards staffing the metal detectors that stand at the en-trances. Similarly, in the sleek, high- end neigh-borhood of Abdoun, multiple groups find ways to share the same cosmopolitan spaces: some by working in the establishments, some by patron-izing them, and still others by hanging around the central traffic circle, cruising and listening to music while meeting friends and drinking a Coke but not actually patronizing the more expensive and exclusive establishments. One might characterize this group, pejoratively, as circle rats akin to mall rats: they know the spaces to inhabit, aim to approximate the de-sired representational code (and frequently de-velop a specific code of their own), but do not have the ability to “pass” as part of the cosmo-politan elite, let alone possess the disposable in-come necessary to buy drinks and food at prices akin to those in New York City.

Yet these diverse segments of aspiring cos-mopolitans are able, through their adaption of a specific cosmopolitan representational code that they and others recognize, to claim their own place within a particular social locale, which they understand in hierarchical terms: stretching to a higher status in terms of class, or to a higher status in terms of coolness and hip-ness, as cutting- edge. That is, they are respond-ing to, as well as producing and reproducing, hierarchies of social capital that are natural-ized within the space of Bourdieu’ian habitus,74 spaces that exist at the boundaries of neoliberal reform projects while affording new opportuni-ties of entry to an otherwise largely excluded segment of the population.

Indeed, there are distinct and multiple spheres of aspiring youths, with many loath to be (mis)recognized as belonging to one other

group. For example, many of these aspiring cosmopolitans who work in bars and clubs adamantly distinguish themselves from — and would abhor being confused for — the male mall kids. The aspiring cosmopolitans and mall kids both might wear jeans and T- shirts, but how they wear them, how they fit the body, what brand they wear, and where they wear them are practices that create distinctions between them that are recognizable to themselves and some-times to others. The waiters and bartenders, for example, sport the carefully gelled hair of the metrosexual rather than the slick pompadours and faux hawks. During my ethnographic work in nightclubs, I noticed repeatedly in conver-sations that the aspiring cosmopolitans “see” these differences (from mall kids) as well as similarities (with the cosmopolitan elite). (The mall kids and weekend Abdoun loiterers, of course, are also engaged in transversals that may aptly be described as aspirational.) They are careful to reproduce and even exagger-ate these distinctions from mall kids, lest they be confused for them, while reproducing and adapting the codes they recognize in the cosmo-politan elite. These representational codes are comprehensible to others, and indeed rely upon recognition. Something as seemingly simple as a cell phone ringtone or choice of cologne can function as an important marker of distinction or similitude.

The self- presentation and status negotiat-ing of these aspiring cosmopolitans extend be-yond their places of work to their own sites of lei-sure activity. In many ways, they strive to emulate the leisure practices of the cosmopolitan elite, but at places that are somewhat less expensive than many of those in which they work. In their free time they hang out less at the malls than they do at Starbucks, and they frequent clubs that embody a cosmopolitan aesthetic but are not among the hottest spots to be seen — nor the most expensive. So while the cosmopolitan elite will drop hundreds of JDs (US$1.40 = JD 1) in a single night buying whole bottles of liquor75 and platters of chicken wings, sushi, pizza, and tapas

74.  Moruzzi, “Trying to Look Different,” 228. 75.  If you can afford it and are known to the bartend-ers, waiters, or owners, you can purchase a bottle of liquor at an elite establishment and leave any remain-ing portion behind with your name on it, so it is wait-ing there for you on a subsequent visit.

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at high- end bars like Chesters76 and Buddah Club,77 and nightclubs like Nai,78 Silk,79 JJs, and Kanabaye, the staff from those establishments will often hang out at venues like Cube and Fizz. These venues are still hip and cosmopolitan in aesthetic, but they are not frequented by the most elite, and thus the aspiring cosmopolitan is unlikely to encounter the patrons he serves at work (and drinks are still expensive but far more affordable than at the most elite clubs). Cube, for example, is located in the lower- mid- range Sheppard Hotel, a space that previously housed a tired bar with few customers; the new club, with its sleek white- leather banquettes, is packed to capacity many nights of the week. Yet upon mentioning to an upper- class Jordanian friend that I had been there the previous night, she re-plied (in English), “Eww, why would you want to go there?” implying, as I understood it, that the clientele was a bit down- market for her tastes.

Cosmopolitans and aspiring cosmopoli-tans do inhabit and animate some of the same leisure spaces, however, primarily the more casual but hip restaurants — places like Salute, Grappa, Canvas, Books@Cafe, and Bigfellow’s Irish Pub — and coffee shops, notably the many outlets of Starbucks. And everyone eats Caesar salads and drinks mojitos. But even as tiers of cosmopolitan leisure sites create parallel spaces for those with different levels of disposable in-come, they map onto similar spaces in West Amman — neighborhoods in a city whose neolib-eral spaces still, despite these inventive practices, exclude the vast majority of the population.

ConclusionWhat does all this mean? As Allen Scott argues, an ever- widening range of economic activity is concerned with producing goods and services that are permeated with broadly aesthetic or se-miotic attributes,80 and these attributes are so-cially productive in their own rights. Amman’s emerging spaces of cosmopolitanism create rapidly expanding avenues for accessing a new “modern” and patterns of employment imbri-

cate with tiers of leisure activity as well as shift-ing subjectifications and self- representations. In this way, forms of entertainment and distrac-tion always function, at least in part, as personal ornaments, modes of social display, sources of self- awareness,81 and acts of self- production. The group I’ve described as aspiring cosmopoli-tans self- consciously insert themselves into the economy not only through their employment in elite leisure establishments, but through their patterns of consumption as well as by adapt-ing a representational code that enables them to traverse the space of the city as well as the borders of perceived social hierarchies. Their significance is not only in the ways in which they are aspiring to engage in Jordan’s neolib-eral dreamland future, but in the ways in which they are imagining themselves as already part of that project. Through their patterns of em-ployment, leisure activity, and consumption, they have called into existence a tier of cosmo-politan activities to accommodate their desires while recognizing their somewhat lesser finan-cial resources. The banalities of space form the preconditions of shared experiences and thus for identities and narratives. When these spaces are remade, and movements across them altered (new paths, quicker movement), new narratives are constructed.

One might assume that Amman’s cos-mopolitan waiter/club kids have emerged as a target of Islamists, rhetorically if not physically, with the latter condemning the former for their alcohol consumption, experimental drug use, embrace of “Western culture,” and promiscuity. I do not want to suggest that some Islamists are not vocal in their opposition to what they see as the amoral and decadent behavior of Amman cosmopolitans. But I would like to raise a cau-tion against suggesting the existence of a clear binary between a pious, Islamic ascetic public and secular cosmopolitan consumer- partiers. Pious citizens have themselves grappled with cosmopolitan aesthetics and practices, evi-denced, for example, in jilbabs with faux rhine-

76.  Le Royal Amman, www.leroyalamman.com/ chesters.html (accessed 16 April 2010).

77.  Le Royal Amman, www.leroyalamman.com/ buddah_bar.html (accessed 16 April 2010).

78.  alqasr- hojo.com, www.alqasr- hojo.com/nai.htm (accessed 16 April 2010).

79.  Le Royal Amman, www.leroyalamman.com/silk .html (accessed 16 April 2010).

80.  Allen J. Scott, The Cultural Economy of Cities (Lon-don: Sage Publishers, 2000), 2.

81.  Scott, Cultural Economy of Cities, 3.

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stones reproducing YSL (Yves Saint Laurent) motifs, “muhaja- babe” fashions,82 and the much- discussed bad hijabi phenomenon in Iran.83 Families, couples, and same- sex groups of individuals donning conservative cloth-ing, including variations of head coverings for women, populate malls and coffee shops. Hijabs are not unusual sights at places like Starbucks, though they are most often donned by girls in their twenties and thirties, who arrive as couples (same or mixed sex) or in small groups, often side- by- side with women whose heads are uncov-ered. If we want to advance our understanding of “political” change in the context of selec-tive and targeted neoliberal economies in the Middle East, we will need to approach these aes-thetic practices and representational codes not as discrete and self- contained, where encounters between “competing” codes necessarily result in tension or conflict. Rather, we need to explore these codes and how they are used to gain trac-tion in our understanding of complex practices of subjectification and meaning- making, and thus as sites of new political possibilities.

82.  Allegra Stratton, Muhajababes (New York: Mel-ville House, 2008).

83.  Nima Naghibi, “Bad Feminist or Bad Hejabi? Mov-ing Outside the Hejab Debate,” Interventions 1 (1999): 555 – 71; Moruzzi, “Trying to Look Different.”