Cultural activism through spatial practices: walking tours and urban gardening in Kuwait City

Abstract

Studies on urban transformation in the Arab Gulf have thus far predominantly dealt with the city as a space of financial investment. Only recently they began to pay attention to contestations of urban space. Cultural initiatives in Kuwait, as this article argues, present and foster new forms to reclaiming urban space. They not only demand, but also engage in practices according to which citizens have a say in how the space which they inhabit is re-formed and re-shaped.I analyse two such initiatives - one which organises walking tours of Kuwait City and another which creates an urban garden in a public park. In so doing, I outline the social and cultural fields, which contain partially overlapping actors and networks, in which these initiatives are situated and analyse the entrepreneurial frameworks and practices - from "social entrepreneurship" to "commons" - in which they are articulated. In their attempt to construct participatory spaces the initiatives have never the less been targeted towards a certain strata of Kuwait's society, first and foremost, middle class Kuwaitis with a cosmopolitan outlook.