Bedouin Visual Leadership in the Middle East: The Power of Aesthetics and Practical Implications [1st ed.] 9783030573966, 9783030573973

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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN BUSINESS, ARTS AND HUMANITIES

Bedouin Visual Leadership in the Middle East The Power of Aesthetics and Practical Implications

amer bitar

Palgrave Studies in Business, Arts and Humanities

Series Editors Samantha Warren Faculty of Business and Law University of Portsmouth Portsmouth, UK Steven S. Taylor WPI Foisie School of Business Worcester, MA, USA

Business has much to learn from the arts and humanities, and vice versa. Research on the links between the arts, humanities and business has been occurring for decades, but it is fragmented across various business topics, including: innovation, entrepreneurship, creative thinking, the creative industries, leadership and marketing. A variety of different academic streams have explored the links between the arts, humanities and business, including: organizational aesthetics, arts-based methods, creative industries, and arts-based research etc. The field is now a mature one but it remains fragmented. This series is the first of its kind to bring these streams together and provides a “go-to” resource on arts, humanities and business for emerging scholars and established academics alike. This series will include original monographs and edited collections to further our knowledge of topics across the field. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15463

Amer Bitar

Bedouin Visual Leadership in the Middle East The Power of Aesthetics and Practical Implications

Amer Bitar Dubai, United Arab Emirates

ISSN 2662-1266     ISSN 2662-1274 (electronic) Palgrave Studies in Business, Arts and Humanities ISBN 978-3-030-57396-6    ISBN 978-3-030-57397-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57397-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Book Abstract

This book focuses on leadership as a visual discourse and explores the construction of this discouse in the specific context of Bedouin Arabia. In it, I consider leadership from an aesthetic perspective and in the context of various geographical and historical settings. The book contributes to the literature on leadership by exploring the interconnected, and problematic, concepts of power/knowledge, discourse, subjectivity, body symbolism, and the power of gaze from a Foucauldian perspective. The aim is to move beyond the dominant individualistic perspective to approach leadership as a social relational process tied to specific sociocultural and historical settings. The book contributes to the management literature by elaborating a discourse on visual leadership and introducing a research method that brings together the tools of discourse analysis, observation, visual analysis, and aesthetics. The discussion of leadership thus takes into account the role of aesthetic and sensory experiences in the process of creating art from the perspectives of visual artists, leaders who use images to communicate with their followers, and the public that consumes these images. Key topics include language, culture, faith, climate, and government.

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Book Abstract

Consideration is also given to the power of image and visual leadership, in particular with respect to the panoptical effect of leaders’ images on their followers described by Foucault. Keywords  Visual leadership • Aesthetics • Visual representations • Images • Foucault • Discourse • Bedouin Arabia • Middle East

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I am indebted to my parents for their consistent support and persistent push, especially through tough times, to work on and finalize this book. Their unlimited support, encouragement, and love taught me the importance of lifelong learning. I must thank Mada, my beloved wife and lifelong partner, for her unlimited support during these tough years of working hard to achieve this project; I must admit that, without her support, I wouldn’t have been able to finish this project. I have been helped by friends and family who have always remained kind and supportive even during difficulties. I would like to thank everyone for their continued encouragement. I am indebted to a number of persons in the fine arts community, especially my mother-in-law, Ms. Lamia Assi, who facilitated my data gathering, and to the artists who shared with me their valuable insights. Finally, I would like to thank my children Julia and Jude, who fill my life with lots of love and excitement. Dubai January 2020

Amer Bitar

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Contents

1 Visualizing Leadership in Bedouin Arabia  1 Arabs and “the Orient”    2 Foucauldian Analysis   5 Foucault, the Bedouin, Leadership, and Visual Representation: A Synthesis   7 Leadership as a Socially Constructed Phenomenon    8 Leadership, Power, and Discourse   10 The Visual Representation of Leadership   12 The Power of Gaze   14 Research Methodology  17 Ontology  18 Epistemology  20 First Phase  23 Second Phase  23 Third Phase  24 Analysis of the Data   24 Positionality  26 A Few More Words About Bedouin Arabia   29 A Provisional Definition of Leadership   32 Leadership in the Bedouin Context   32

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Overview  33 References  34 2 An Overview of Visual Leadership Studies 41 Visual Studies  42 Aesthetics  45 Propaganda  48 Metaphor  50 Visual Leadership  52 Aesthetic Leadership  55 Visual Methodologies  56 Visual Genealogy of Images   56 Organizational Aesthetics  57 Charismatic Leadership  58 References  60 3 Bedouin Culture 71 Who Are the Bedouin?   71 Bedouin Culture  73 Temporary Domiciles  73 Constant Travel  74 Kinship Relations  74 Patriarchy and Masculinity   75 Oral Culture  75 Genealogy  76 Bedouin Visual Leadership  77 King Faisal I of Iraq and Syria   78 President Saddam Hussein of Iraq   79 King Hussein bin Talal of Jordan   81 King Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia   82 Emir Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah of Kuwait   83 King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain   85 Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman   86 References  89

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4 The Leader’s Perspective 91 Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid as a Visionary Leader   91 Sheikh Mohammed’s Bedouin Iconography   93 Triumph  95 Historical Context: A Map Showing Sheikh Mohammed’s Achievements  98 The Sheikh’s Messages   99 References 105 5 The Artist’s Voice107 Fawaz Arnaut  109 Ismail Rafai  112 Dr. Najat Makki  118 Dr. Nizar Sabour  130 Sattar Kawoosh  136 Moosa Al Halyan  142 Waddah Al Sayed  145 Wail Murib  149 Thinking About the Artist’s Voice  153 References 156 6 The Audience’s Perspective159 Main Themes  161 Theme 1: Inspirational Leadership  161 Theme 2: Charismatic/Heroic Leadership  162 Theme 3: Patriarchal Leadership  163 Theme 4: Visionary Leadership  164 Theme 5: Humane Leadership  165 Theme 6: Happiness  166 Theme 7: Achievement  167 Theme 8: Confident Leadership  168 Thinking About the Audience’s Perspective  168 References 169

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7 The Power of Aesthetics171 Aesthetics and Sensory Experience  171 Language 174 Culture 174 Faith 175 Climate and Geography  177 Government 178 The Power of Images  179 Visual Leadership and Panopticism  182 Practical Implications of the Findings  188 Practical Implications for Leaders: Creating a Leadership Myth 190 Practical Implications for Followers: The Consumption of Visuals 193 Practical Implications for Communication  196 Practical Implications for Leadership in a Bedouin Context  201 Conclusions, Limitations, and Recommendations  208 References 213 Glossary to Arabic Terms217 Index219

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1

Fig. 1.2 Fig. 3.1

Fig. 3.2

Fig. 3.3

Fig. 3.4

Map of ancient Arabia, Christoph Weigel the Elder, 1720 (Source: Wikipedia. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:Map_of_Ancient_Arabia_-_1720.tif#filehistory. Accessed 21 July 2020) 30 Map of Fertile Crescent, (Nafsadh, 2011) (Source: Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertile_Crescent. Accessed 21 July 2020) 31 Emir Faisal’s delegation at Versailles, during the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, by unknown, 1919, accessed 21 July 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faisal_I_of_ Iraq#/media/File:FeisalPartyAtVersaillesCopy.jpg79 Faisal I, king of Iraq from 1921 to 1933, by unknown, 28 April 2011, accessed 21 July 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Faisal_I_of_Iraq#/media/File:1307109799_king-faisali-of-iraq-kopiya.jpg80 Saddam in his youth, by unknown, 14 February 2008, original text: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/11517/57/& h=334&w=270&sz=23&hl=en&start=1&um=1&tbnid=Qu ZWurYIQufhsM:&tbnh=119&tbnw=96&prev=/images%3F q%3Dsaddam%2Byoung%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%2 6sa%3DN81 King Hussein of Jordan among his troops, 1 March 1957, by army photographer, 1 March 1957, accessed 21 July 2020, xiii

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List of Figures

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussein_of_Jordan#/media/ File:King_Hussein_of_Jordan_among_his_troops_1_ March_1957.png82 Fig. 3.5 King Hussein of Jordan dancing dabkeh with Bedouins, 1960, by unknown, 1 January 1960, accessed 21 July 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussein_of_Jordan#/media/ File:King_Hussein_of_Jordan_dancing_dabkeh_with_bedouins,_1960.jpg83 Fig. 3.6 King Faisal I of Syria with King Abdul-Aziz of Saudi Arabia in the mid-1920s, by unknown, 1920s, accessed 21 July 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Saud#/media/ File:King_Faisal_I_of_Syria_with_King_Abdul-Aziz_of_ Saudi_Arabia_in_the_mid-1920s.jpg84 Fig. 3.7 Farouk I of Egypt & Abdulaziz Al Saud, by unknown, 1945, accessed 21 July 2020, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:Farouk_I_of_Egypt_%26_Abdulaziz_Al_Saud.jpg85 Fig. 3.8 Emir Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah of Kuwait in 2009, The White House from Washington DC, 3 August 2019, accessed 21 July 2020, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:Sheikh_Sabah_IV.jpg86 Fig. 3.9 King of Bahrain Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa, U.S. Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist Julian Carroll, 22 January 2007, accessed 21 July 2020, https://commons. wikimedia.org/w/index.php?sort=relevance&search=King+H amad+bin+Isa+Al+Khalifa+of+Bahrain&title=Special:Search &profile=advanced&fulltext=1&advancedSearch-current=% 7B%7D&ns0=1&ns6=1&ns12=1&ns14=1&ns100=1 &ns106=1#/media/File:Hamad-Bin-Isa-Al-Khalifa.jpg87 Fig. 3.10 Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman, by unknown, 8 June 2013, accessed 21 July 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Qaboos_bin_Said#/media/File:Sultan_Qaboos_bin_Said.jpg88 Fig. 4.1 Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, President’s Secretariat, 26 March 2007, accessed 21 July 2020, https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_bin_Rashid_Al_ Maktoum#/media/File:Mohammed_bin_Rashid_Al_ Maktoum.png93 Fig. 4.2 Statue of Sheikh Mohammed’s hand making the gesture of triumph in Burj Khalifa Park, by Bitar, A. 2020 96

  List of Figures 

Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2 Fig. 5.3 Fig. 5.4 Fig. 5.5 Fig. 5.6 Fig. 5.7 Fig. 5.8 Fig. 5.9 Fig. 5.10 Fig. 5.11 Fig. 5.12 Fig. 5.13 Fig. 5.14 Fig. 5.15 Fig. 5.16 Fig. 5.17 Fig. 5.18 Fig. 5.19

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Fawaz Arnaut, Sheikh Mohammed gazing into the distance, 2013. Acrylic on canvas, 50 cm × 70 cm 109 Fawaz Arnaut, Sheikh Mohammed making the three-finger sign, 2013. Digital on Coral Draw 29.4 cm × 41.3 cm, printed on canvas 110 Ismail Rafai, [Grey Period 1]. Acrylic on canvas, 180 cm × 180 cm115 Ismail Rafai, [Grey Period 2]. Acrylic on canvas, 180 cm × 180 cm116 Ismail Rafai, [Grey Period 3], Acrylic on canvas, 180 cm × 180 cm117 Ismail Rafai, [Grey Period 4]. Acrylic on canvas, 180 cm × 180 cm118 Ismail Rafai, [Savior Period-1]. Acrylic on canvas 119 Ismail Rafai, [Savior Period-2]. Acrylic on canvas, 180 cm × 180 cm120 Ismail Rafai, [Savior Period-3]. Acrylic on canvas, 300 cm × 150 cm120 Ismail Rafai, The Last Supper, 2014. Acrylic on canvas, 300 cm × 150 cm121 Ismail Rafai, Painter’s Book, 2019. Ink on handmade paper, 50 cm × 36 cm122 Ismail Rafai, Painter’s Book, 2019. Ink on handmade paper, 50 cm × 36 cm122 Ismail Rafai, Painter’s Book, 2019. Charcoal on handmade paper, 50 cm × 36 cm 123 Najat Makki, Between the Sea and the Desert, 2011. Acrylic on canvas 123 Najat Makki, Untitled, 1990. This painting suggests what the artist described as the “welcoming glow” of the desert. Acrylic on canvas 124 Najat Makki, Formation. This painting shows the symbolic use of colors. Acrylic on canvas 125 Najit Makki, Poetry of Sultan bin Ali Al Owais 1. Acrylic on canvas127 Najit Makki, Poetry of Sultan bin Ali Al Owais 2. Acrylic on canvas127 Najit Makki, Poetry of Sultan bin Ali Al Owais 3128

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List of Figures

Fig. 5.20 Najat Makki, Untitled, 2012 (Makki & Lersen, 2012, p. 20) 129 Fig. 5.21 Najat Makki, Untitled 2, 2012 (Makki & Lersen, 2012, p. 24)130 Fig. 5.22 Nizar Sabour, Palmyra Icons, 2009. Acrylic on canvas, 35 cm × 50 cm131 Fig. 5.23 Nizar Sabour, Happiness Without Title 2, 2006. Acrylic on canvas, 100 cm × 100 cm 132 Fig. 5.24 Nizar Sabour, Invitation For Life 2, 2007. Acrylic on canvas, 160 cm × 132 cm133 Fig. 5.25 Nizar Sabour, War Time, 2016. Acrylic on canvas, 100 cm × 100 cm134 Fig. 5.26 Nizar Sabour, Red 1. Acrylic on carton, 45 cm × 56 cm 135 Fig. 5.27 Nizar Sabour, Still Life, 1998. Acrylic on canvas, 120 cm × 120 cm136 Fig. 5.28 Sattar Kawoosh, Chanson of Love, 2015. Acrylic on canvas, 80 cm × 100 cm138 Fig. 5.29 Sattar Kawoosh, Portrait of Onsi Alhaj, 2012. Acrylic on canvas, 40 cm × 50 cm 139 Fig. 5.30 Sattar Kawoosh, Portrait of Hameed Almukhtar, 2014. Acrylic on canvas, 40 cm × 50 cm 140 Fig. 5.31 Sattar Kawoosh, Portrait of Ala Almafraji, 2014. Acrylic on canvas, 40 cm × 50 cm 141 Fig. 5.32 Moosa Al Halyan, Arabian horse rearing up toward Burj Khalifa. Pencil, 21 cm × 29 cm 143 Fig. 5.33 Moosa Al Halyan, Arabian horse with rider. Japanese ink, 21 cm × 29 cm144 Fig. 5.34 Moosa Al Halyan, Portrait of Sheikh Zayed 1. Pencil, 29.7 cm × 42 cm145 Fig. 5.35 Moosa Al Halyan, Portrait of Sheikh Zayed 2. Crayon, 29.7 cm × 42 cm146 Fig. 5.36 Moosa Al Halyan, Portrait of Sheikh Zayed 3. Pencil, 29.7 cm × 42 cm147 Fig. 5.37 Waddah Al Sayed, Manuela. Acrylic on canvas, 175 cm × 175 cm148 Fig. 5.38 Waddah Al Sayed, Nara. Acrylic on canvas, 150 cm × 150 cm149 Fig. 5.39 Waddah Al Sayed, Through Nizar’s Eyes. Acrylic on canvas, 175 cm × 400 cm150

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Fig. 5.40 Waddah Al Sayed, Balkis. Acrylic on canvas, 140 cm × 140 cm151 Fig. 5.41 Waddah Al Sayed, Your Eyes. Acrylic on canvas, 140 × 140 cm152 Fig. 5.42 Wail Murib, Music Theme 1 (A popular music). Acrylic on canvas, 80 cm × 70 cm, 2016 153 Fig. 5.43 Wail Murib, Music Theme 2 (Solo Playing). Acrylic on canvas, 75 cm × 75 cm, 2013 154 Fig. 5.44 Wail Murib, Accordion’s Tears, 2016. Acrylic on canvas, 75 cm × 65 cm, 2018 155 Fig. 7.1 Leadership process diagram 183 Fig. 7.2 A leader’s image communication process 199 Fig. 7.3 Sheikh Mohammed and Mohamed Alabbar during the Dubai Crown Prince Endurance Cup, March 23, 2013, L Constantino, 6 October 2014, accessed 21 July 2020, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File%3ASheikh_ Mohammed_bin_Rashid_Al_Maktoum_and_Mohamed_ Alabbar.jpg202 Fig. 7.4 Mohamed Alabbar competes in the Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Endurance Cup 2013, L Constantino, 19 January 2013 accessed 21 July 2020. https://commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mohamed_Alabbar_-_Endurance_ Racing.JPG203

1 Visualizing Leadership in Bedouin Arabia

The Beduin of the desert, born and grown up in it, had embraced with all his soul this nakedness too harsh for volunteers, for the reason, felt but inarticulate, that there he found himself indubitably free. He lost material ties, comforts, all superfluities and other complications to achieve a personal liberty which haunted starvation and death. … In his life he had air and winds, sun and light, open spaces and a great emptiness. (Lawrence, 2000, 18)

This quotation captures Bedouin life in the early twentieth century from the perspective of a British official who had extensive experience with Bedouins—specifically, T.  E. Lawrence, the famous “Lawrence of Arabia.” The life of the Bedouins in general has been evolving at a rapid pace since Lawrence’s time, especially after the discovery of the vast petroleum reserves that transformed the region in the past century. The lives and culture of these people, who today live alongside other ethnicities in dozens of countries, is—or should be—of concern to those living in and outside the region, both because Arabia has been a source of conflict that has spread around the world over the past half-century and, more positively, because it is the cradle of the Islamic faith and of cultures that have enriched the world for millennia.

© The Author(s) 2020 A. Bitar, Bedouin Visual Leadership in the Middle East, Palgrave Studies in Business, Arts and Humanities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57397-3_1

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This book is addressed in large part to Western readers interested in understanding the Bedouin and the region that they inhabit in addition to their wider influence on cultural, social, and economic life in the Middle East over the centuries. Research remains scant on the Bedouin, though rare academic studies have focused on their sociocultural and historical settings and their influence on Islam (see Bailey, 2018; Jabar & Dawod, 2003). Furthermore, leadership in the Middle East region has been the subject of only a few articles (see Metcalfe & Mimouni, 2011), so there is a need for further academic studies of the topic set in this part of the world. My aim is to help the broader world community to appreciate the Bedouins as a people in their various contexts and to encourage the forging of partnerships with them to take the place of the hegemonic relations that have long characterized their interactions with other peoples. My hope is to promote interest in and understanding of the Bedouin in ways that will contribute to the development of the region, its economy, and its people through the building of business partnerships. It is also my hope that Bedouin readers will find that this book depicts their world accurately and offers fresh insights into it.

Arabs and “the Orient” At the outset, it is important to be clear about terminology. The words “Arab” and “Muslim,” to begin with, have long been problematic for Westerners, who tend to confuse these distinct concepts, using them as if they were interchangeable. In point of fact, the Bedouins are a significant Arab ethnic group, most but not all of whom are Muslims, that is, adherents of the Islamic faith (though a few tribes are Christian, Druze,1 or adherents of other religions). While the Bedouins have not been studied  Druze are Arabic-speaking ethnoreligious group originating in the Levant, the majority of them lives in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel. The name Druze is derived from the name of Muhammad bin Ismail Nashtakin ad-Darazi. The Druze faith incorporates elements from Ismailism, Gnosticism, Hinduism, Christianity, and other philosophies and beliefs. 1

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as intensely as many other Arab peoples, there has been some research into their culture and history, particularly in relation to their influence on Islam as a religion. The purpose of the present book is to build on this work by exploring the dynamics of leadership within Bedouin communities. Arabia is the land of Arabs, whose native language is Arabic; in this sense, the term describes not only the Arabian Peninsula but all of the area from the Arabian (or Persian) Gulf and Arabian Sea in the east to the Red Sea in the west and from the Indian Ocean in the south to the Syrian steppe (Badia) in the north. In recent years, this area has come to be referred to in the language of diplomacy, finance, and academia as the Middle East North Africa (MENA), which is considered to encompass all of the Arabic-speaking countries in Arabia, the Levant, Mesopotamia, and North Africa. The Arab countries of North Africa, where the Bedouin are concentrated, are Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, and Mauritania. Currently, a range of terms—Arabia, MENA, Near Orient, Arab countries, Middle East, Greater Middle East—serve to describe the region, each reflecting a specific historical and cultural perspective. The use of these terms interchangeably clearly does not promote a nuanced understanding of the land and the peoples who inhabit it. Scholars in recent decades have documented the tendency in the West to represent Arabs as the “Other.” Edward Said (2003) in particular revealed the ways in which “Orientalism” has defined the totality of that which is considered Arabia, Arabic, and Islam, including the Bedouins. Thus, he argued, Orientalism served as a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient’s special place in European Western experience. The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe’s greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other. In addition, the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience. (p. 12)

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One of the starting points for my research on this project was the insight that Said’s discussion of Orientalism could be useful in explaining the unique Bedouin concept of leadership to Westerners. My personal experiences as a native of this often troubled region have naturally shaped my view of the issues discussed in this book. Thus, in designing, conducting, and presenting the research for this project, I have been keenly aware of my position as an individual whose cultural and religious identities and place of origin position him at the center of what is often seen as a “clash of civilizations” between Arabia (or MENA, the Middle East, etc.) and Western countries (Huntington, 1996). Being born into and growing up in this context, I cannot help but feel the growing hate, suspicion, and racism coming from highly visible non-Arab and non-Muslim individuals whose cultures, religions, and ethnic identities seem to differ so greatly from my own. Thus, I have found myself craving acceptance from Westerners, constantly seeking to prove that I am a “civilized Other” who can be trusted rather than one of the villains portrayed in the media. This kind of inferiority complex affects nearly all Arabs who find themselves living in the West. I became interested in the role of imagery in leadership while growing up in Syria under the totalitarian regime of Hafez al-Assad, the father and predecessor of the country’s current ruler. The regime compelled its citizens to treat Assad as something akin to Almighty God; thus, his image was omnipresent on the streets, in the media, even in schoolbooks. Weaned on this intrusive political propaganda, I grew skeptical of it even in childhood, though I was at the same time fascinated by the cult of Assad and the use of imagery to contain and control what I later came to identify, after exposure to the philosophy of Michel Foucault, as the docile bodies of the Syrian people. It was the experience of this dystopia, a prominent part of which was the constant fear of incarceration, that drew me to Foucault’s work. For a while Foucault’s star may have dimmed somewhat in the West in recent years, his writings remain revelatory for people like me seeking to make sense of life under oppressive leadership. His studies of the origins of modern prisons in the West, therefore, provided me with a powerful way

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of looking at the Assad regime’s use of discourse, in particular visual discourse, to control the thoughts of those over whom he rules. What Assad has accomplished, irrespective of his ruthlessness and destructiveness, is remarkable: he has managed to control and manipulate an entire nation for the benefit of a chosen few, in part by harnessing the patriarchal culture that obtains in Arabia. This culture tends to produce situations in which a few elite families control the wealth and political decision-­ making and the dominant social relations remain based on familial relationships. The constant barrage of propaganda that helps these families to sustain their power has, therefore, reinforced the patriarchal system on which it relies. Sharabi (1992) usefully described this reimagining of traditional Arab culture as an alternative to the secular and industrial cultures of the West as a “neopatriarchy.” I therefore approach leadership as a social phenomenon in which, as with most social phenomena, visual, textual, and auditory means of communication serve to reproduce and to strengthen established power relationships. My specific focus here, as alluded to earlier, is on understanding the use of visual symbols as products of social context by leaders in their efforts to maintain and/or extend their influence. My project thus includes uncovering and deciphering hidden meanings that the visual manifestations of leadership are meant to convey when leaders seek to manipulate the thoughts and actions of their followers. At the same time, it is my belief that my perspective as an “insider” researcher entrenched culturally in this region adds real value to the findings presented here owing to my deep understanding of symbols, rituals, and other forms of insider discourse.

Foucauldian Analysis Owing to the importance of Foucault’s work for my analysis of the visual component of leadership, it will be useful to go into some detail here regarding my understanding of his understanding of the nature of power and discourse. One of Foucault’s key concepts concerns the relationship

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between power and truth (Foucault, 1977, 1979), and the arguments presented in this book are founded on the notion that leadership involves the imposition of disciplinary power on key actors. Specifically, according to Foucault, sophisticated surveillance systems impose the disciplinary power of gaze, which targets the human mind (rather than the human body) in order to maintain the incarceration of individuals. This “positive” form of disciplinary power, however, is just a façade of hegemony. Another, negative, form is famously represented in the fictional world of George Orwell’s (1949) novel 1984, in which a constant surveillance tool—in this case, television—remains focused on the human object, as manifested in the well-known slogan from the novel, “Big Brother is watching you.” From this perspective, the application of “positive” Foucauldian disciplinary power is fundamentally distinct from the negativity of the extreme oppression that Orwell describes. Of course, power functions in other ways than simply from the top down; it is everywhere, affecting every social relationship and constantly forming and reforming discourses as it meets resistance (Foucault, 1977; Rose, 2012). Thus Foucauldian discursive analysis captures the ways in which the social world is constructed by revealing the forces that produce certain kinds of knowledge and, consequently, certain truths (Rose, 2012). From this perspective, every social relationship involves a power imbalance (Foucault, 1977). These considerations raise the question of what it means to say that power plays a substantial role in “producing” human “subjects” (Hall, 1996). In my analysis, power and discourse remain intertwined. Given that power is the main component of discourse, any social process remains discursive in nature, taking the form of a power struggle among various parties (Foucault, 1979). Furthermore, because power produces knowledge, the process of interpreting a visual representation of a social phenomenon essentially involves depicting a struggle. Building on Foucault’s insights, the official portrait of a leader can represent a surveillance tool because it creates the effect that the leader is personally observing everything within his realm, that he (usually, though not necessarily “he” rather than “she”) is, as in Orwell, “watching you.”

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This relationship between leadership and discipline provides the basis for my investigation of the mechanism through which visual tools cause viewers to internalize power relations (Foucault, 1977; McKinlay & Starkey, 1998). This mechanism assists in the controlling of human beings as the aforementioned “docile bodies” and their integration into a self-disciplined, self-surveilled, and obedient society (Rose, 2012). Visualization within this context refers to the entire scope of a seen experience, that is, to its full cultural, social, and psychological context. In visualization, various materials come to encapsulate the rich cultural, social, and emotional experiences of the people who produce them (Warren, 2005). Forms of visual discourse, and thus a kind of aesthetics, have been evolving constantly over thousands of years in which human beings have been translating their ideas into images on stone, wood, plaster, canvas, paper, and other media.

F oucault, the Bedouin, Leadership, and Visual Representation: A Synthesis My own personal story aside, it may fairly be asked why the perspective of a French philosopher could be expected to reveal anything of interest about the role of visual representation in the leadership practices of Arab rulers. The connection begins with Foucault’s emphasis on the importance of language, images, and symbols in the social construction of reality and in any discourse-driven production of knowledge (Foucault, 1972). As has just been seen, leadership, as a projection of power, involves the control of both knowledge and the gaze, and it is in this way that visuality plays a substantial role in shaping the leadership process, as I describe below. Regarding the cultural focus of this book, Foucault of course focused his analysis almost exclusively on European society, and his insights have mainly been brought to bear in Western contexts, at least regarding leadership. This book, therefore, breaks new ground by using those insights to shed new light on the exercise of power in the specific sociocultural context of Bedouin society.

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Based on the above considerations, I view leadership from three main perspectives: power, discourse, and aesthetics as a social phenomenon reflected in the feelings, beliefs, values, thoughts, and social relations of individuals. That is, because leadership involves the construction of meaning using language and symbols already embedded in a society, the interpretation of it must take into account the social and cultural contexts in which it functions (Bryman et al., 1996). In a fairly recent discussion of the role of imagery in leadership, Griffey and Jackson (2010) argued that a leader’s portrait is able to function as a kind of “virtual leader in terms of its latent and enduring influence upon followers” (p. 133) because it depicts key personal and positional qualities within the appropriate cultural and historical context. Their notion is that the combination of qualities and context in the leader’s portrait provides a holistic and integrated archetype of leadership, and they documented the ways in which portrait artists have used various poses, facial expressions, and settings in order to convey authority and power. In this book, I similarly demonstrate leaders’ use of various symbols and visual materials to enhance their power and enforce their followers’ obedience in the sociocultural context of Bedouin communities.

Leadership as a Socially Constructed Phenomenon Since there obviously can be no leader without followers, leadership is necessarily a social, and socially constructed, phenomenon (e.g., Alvesson & Sveningsson, 2003; Hawkins, 2015; Wood, 2005). It is therefore useful to think of leadership in terms of a few main components, specifically a leader, a situation (e.g., a problem or an opportunity), and individuals who respond to the situation under the leader’s guidance, including followers (subordinates) and other stakeholders. Thus, a certain alerting situation, such as an attack from an outside force, may induce a leader to shape the response of his or her social group. The propriety of that response is a measure of the leader’s effectiveness. In order to shape the

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proper response, a leader must evaluate accurately various significant aspects of the situation, including the environment, his or her own personality and experience, the desires and capacities of the followers, and relevant social, cultural, and historical contexts. Leadership, however, is not simply a matter of rationally deducing the proper response to a situation; in the words of Grint (2005), “The context is not independent of human agency, and cannot be objectively assessed in a scientific form” (p. 1471). Grint’s work built on the notion of “tame” and “wicked” problems put forward by Rittell and Webber (1973) in their distinction between management and leadership: tame problems involve little uncertainty and are matters for management, while wicked problems are characterized by complexity and uncertainty and call for leadership. Because situations can become intractable when competing interests view the same problem in different terms, Grint argued (2005), leadership should be studied in terms of both the degree of uncertainty associated with a given problem and the kind of power needed to tackle it, suggesting that, in most cases, a leader should exercise “soft power” involving pointed questioning in order to foster a collaborative atmosphere. In such a social environment, leadership involves collaboration between the leader and the led in the process of constructing meaning (Smircich & Morgan, 1982; Kelly, 2008). Communication is clearly a key aspect of articulating a shared meaning in order to formulate a shared goal (Fairhurst & Grant, 2010; Fairhurst & Uhl-Bien, 2012; Hawkins, 2015). However, in human communication, “language does not mirror reality; rather it constitutes it. Seen in this light, communication becomes more than a simple transmission; it is a medium by which the negotiation and construction of meaning takes place” (Fairhurst & Grant, 2010, p. 174). The difference between the construction of social reality and the social construction of reality is key here. Thus Fairhurst and Grant (2010) argued that the construction of social reality “emphasizes the cognitive products of social interaction—constructions of social reality involving categories, implicit theories, attributions, and sensemaking accounts,”

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whereas the social construction of reality “emphasizes the interactions themselves” (pp. 177–178). This notion of the construction of social reality is centered on perception, that is, on the ways in which individuals perceive leadership, which remain grounded in their social frames and personal background. The notion of the social construction of reality, on the other hand, is centered on action, representing an implicit sociohistorical interaction from the perspective of Foucauldian archaeological analysis, the focus of which is on the networks of rules governing the statements that make up a discourse. Thus discourse of any sort, including that which is associated with leadership, remains a “historically rooted constellation of ideas, assumptions and talk patterns that, in effect, become linguistic resources for communicating actors subject to those discourses” (p.  179). From this perspective, leadership is, in effect, an exercise in the management of meaning.

Leadership, Power, and Discourse Fundamental to my study is the widely accepted notion—discussed above in the context of Foucault’s writings—that power is central to the leadership process. Thus a given leader’s effectiveness can in part be measured in terms of his or her ability to wield power (Yukl, 1989). Returning to Foucault, he argued (1977) that any social relationship between “subjects” creates a power imbalance. Power impacts every aspect of human existence, internal and external (Martin & Meyerson, 1998). Foucault famously distinguished modern disciplinary power, based on reforming the human mind, from historically earlier forms of sovereign power based on inflicting pain on the human body (Armstrong, 1994). Compared with sovereign power, disciplinary power is more ambiguous; it cannot be seen, touched, or sensed, and is only felt when it is exercised (Foucault, 1977). Building on the previous discussion, the effects of power can be either negative—when power involves violence, manipulation, domination, and oppression—or positive—when it involves belongingness and

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inclusivity (Clegg et al., 2006). Foucault (1977) focused on the positive aspect of power. In the context of leadership, power is exercised by the leader on his or her followers, who accept his or her authority irrespective of their own preferences. Foucault identified what he described as a “juridico-­discursive” misconception about power in the West (Foucault, 1979, p.  83) according to which power is always negative, must be imposed in the form of rules, laws, or taboos, and is uniform and universal (see Feder, 2011). It is necessary to address this misconception in order to arrive at an accurate understanding of power as it relates to leadership in the non-­Western context of Bedouin society. Disciplined bodies. Foucault (1977) reacted in particular to the scientific management theory of the American engineer and theoretician Frederick Taylor (1856–1915), who argued that “The principal objective of management should be to secure the maximum prosperity for the employer, coupled with the maximum prosperity for each employé” (Taylor, 1911, p. 1). He focused on the movements of the human body in relationship to technology, coining the term “human machine.” Foucault looked at Taylor’s approach as a kind of discipline, which is to say as the unitary technique by which the body is reduced as a “political” force at the least cost and maximized as a useful force. The growth of a capitalist economy gave rise to the specific modality of disciplinary power, whose general formulas, techniques of submitting forces and bodies, in short, “political anatomy,” could be operated in the most diverse political regimes, apparatuses or institutions. (1977, p. 221)

In modern Arab countries, Bedouins find themselves existing within both capitalist economies and older, tribal forms of organization. The imagery that Bedouin leaders use to reinforce their power can accordingly be expected to incorporate discourses relevant to both perspectives. Influence and authority. The exercise of power, then, is a fundamental part of leadership. It can take various forms, such as the systematic management characteristics of Taylorism, close surveillance, or the

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facility with communication known as charisma. For Foucault (1977), power is positive when its influence on behavior, identity, and, especially, knowledge is productive and creative (cf. McKinlay et al., 2010). Leaders exercise power positively and seductively through the deployment of media in ways that foster creativity, team building, rhetorical and communication capabilities, and the articulation of a vision. When such leaders are successful, their followers obey them owing to their mastery of such positive forms of power as compelling narratives and storytelling in the absence of the exercise of negative forms of power (e.g., domination and manipulation).

The Visual Representation of Leadership Perhaps the most conspicuous representation of leadership throughout history has been in the form of heroes, larger-than-life figures endowed with, in addition to other advantages in terms of physical strength and beauty, birth, and alleged connections to the divine, a special capacity to inspire others often described as charisma (e.g., Kelly, 2014). The modern notion of charismatic authority traces back to the German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920), who described it in terms of the possession of “supernatural, superhuman, or at least specific powers or qualities … not accessible to the ordinary person … on the basis of [which] the individual concerned is treated as a leader” (1968, p.  48). More recently, Meindl et al. (1985) coined the phrase “romanticization of leadership” to describe the heroic view of leaders as the focus of organizations, so that firms’ economic performance is often considered a largely individual rather than a collective effort. This deeply emotional, in some cases even romantic or religious, view of leaders has been studied by Gabriel (1997), who argued that followers perceive leadership in diverse ways according to their experiences and their social backgrounds. Since business leaders are in significant respects comparable to political leaders, the extensive scholarship on the representation of the former, in particular CEOs, is informative regarding the iconography of power

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deployed by the latter. In like manner as the perceptions of political leaders are naturally tied to the conditions that obtain in the countries that they rule, the images of business leaders are associated with the identities and impacted by the performance of their companies. Thus high-­ performing companies tend to depict their leaders as manifestations of their success and models of organizational effectiveness. The media, in particular the business press, reinforce this impression by ascribing the success of organizations to specific traits of their leaders through the use of suggestive metaphors and narratives that may evolve over time. Chen and Meindl (1991), for example, documented successive phases in the representation of Donald Burr, founder and CEO of the short-lived budget airline People Express, who was at first represented in the business media as a missionary preacher of expansion, then as a prize fighter in battles with the competition, and in the end as a fallen hero. In this interplay between the images of management that companies seek to project and the reading of those images by the business press, according to Jackson and Guthey (2007), visual representations of business leaders function as rhetorical tools in reconstructing the required image of both the leaders themselves and their respective firms. The notion of visuality is, then, central to the perception of leadership, even as it is to Foucault’s thought. Visuality is an extension of vision; while vision is linked to the physical operation of sight, visuality is the social construction and reflection of that which is seen (Foster, 1988). Thus both visuality and vision pertain to the consumption of images, which include “pictures, statues, optical illusions, maps, diagrams, dreams, hallucinations, spectacles, projections, poems, patterns, memories, and even ideas” (Mitchell, 1984, p. 504). Images of leaders normally take the form of portraiture, which focuses on the face. As the artists interviewed in the following chapters make clear, portraiture combines physical and psychological aspects of the subject. As West (2004) put it, Portraits are not just likenesses but works of art that engage with ideas of identity as they are perceived, represented, and understood in different

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times and places. “Identity” can encompass the character, personality, social standing, relationships, profession, age, and gender of the portrait subject. (p. II)

Thus, West added to the list proposed by Mitchell of paintings, drawings, engravings, photographs, coins, and medals on which appear, embedded in the portraits, symbols, and signs requiring interpretation. In its specific context, such an image becomes an actor on the historical stage, a presence or character endowed with legendary status, a history that parallels and participates in the stories we tell ourselves about our own evolution from creatures “made in the image” of a creator to creatures who make themselves and their world in their own image, (Mitchell, 1984, p. 504)

My inquiry, then, belongs conceptually to the branch of philosophy relating to images, including explanations for their power and the collaboration among patrons, artists, and audiences necessary to give them meaning that is known as aesthetics, as discussed in detail in Chap. 2.

The Power of Gaze Power is an abstraction, and this book represents an effort to visualize one of its manifestations. The Bedouin leader’s portrait, I argue, manifests power by projecting the leader’s gaze broadly throughout the space over which that power extends. The result is the impression that the leader is constantly watching, a notion that Foucault developed in his work on the eighteenth-century innovation in prisons known as the “panopticon.” Conceived by the English utilitarian social theorist Jeremy Bentham, the design of the panopticon enables a single watchman to maintain constant surveillance of prisoners because they do not know exactly when they are being watched. The idea, then, is that, rather than responding only to authorities, the prisoners become self-disciplined; thus Bentham

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(1838) described the panopticon as a “new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example: and that, to a degree equally without example, secured by whoever chooses to have it so, against abuse” (p. 39). Foucault (1977) saw that the purpose of the panopticon was “to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power” through an architecture that creates “a state of conscious and permanent visibility”; “it reverses the principle of the dungeon; or rather of its three functions—to enclose, to deprive of light and to hide—[and] preserves only the first. … Full lighting and the eye of a supervisor capture better than darkness, which ultimately protected. Visibility is a trap” (pp. 200–201). In prisons that deploy a panopticon, then, the inmates are subject to the power of the gaze that is always, potentially, being directed at them. Acevedo (2011) has well defined gaze as in the context of visual art as “a socially constructed event mediated by the intersection of gazes between the viewer and the painting. This gaze is produced by the exchange of meanings, located in a language that ‘speaks’ to the different parts … the unveiling of significances, resonances, and emotions” (p. 40). Fundamental here is the separation of the object—the image or visual material—from the subject—the spectator who views it. The role of the subject/spectator is active, and that of the receiver/object, the image, is passive. The power differential is often coded in terms of the active role of the male source of the gaze and the passive role of the female recipient of it (Bryson et al., 1994; Mitchell, 1996; Mulvey, 1996). The key role of leaders in constructing meaning ties in with the concept of gaze, and in this respect as well the depiction of various Western business leaders in their portraits has significant parallels with the portraits of Bedouin political leaders. Thus, Jackson and Guthey (2007) argued that CEO and top executive photographs deserve close scrutiny as an important window into how business celebrity, firm reputation, and corporate legitimacy are constructed and reconstructed in the media precisely because they are a primary means by which followers encounter and make sense of leaders. (p. 183)

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That is, an audience constructs and deconstructs leadership based in part on its exposure to leaders’ images through various media channels. Similarly, in a religious context, Acevedo (2011) referenced the work of Guthey and Jackson in analyzing the visual representation of Pope Innocent X by two artists who lived centuries apart, Velázquez (in 1650) and Bacon (in 1953). Specifically, she examined in the aesthetic construction of leadership and communication of it to a target audience in various political, cultural, and historical contexts and in accordance with power relations. With regard specifically to the capacity of leaders’ images to represent them as superhuman through the concept of gaze, she observed that A socially constructed event mediated by the intersection of gazes between the viewer and the painting. This gaze is produced by the exchange of meanings, located in a language that “speaks” to the different parts. … The concept emphasizes the active looking that must occur in and around an image to produce meaning … [through] the unveiling of significances, resonances, and emotions. (p. 40; emphasis in original)

The gaze, then, socially constructs subjective meaning and symbols in relation to the image and the viewer. Furthermore, Acevedo noted, this process of creating meaning reveals a dynamic sensual and emotional process involving the image and the viewer’s mind and body. In this book, I document and account for the impact of the power of the gaze as it is represented in portraits of Bedouin leaders. From a theoretical perspective, I understand this power to be the product both of cultural and historical forces specific to the Bedouin experience and of social phenomena that recur in various forms across cultures—in particular, panopticism. From the perspective of practice, my methodology consists of a mixture of essentially qualitative methods involving the analysis of leaders’ portraits and interviews with both artists and the citizens who are the target audience for the portraits.

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Research Methodology Importantly, to develop this perspective further, it must be recognized that no single, universal reality exists somewhere “out there.” Rather, individuals construct multiple realities through various means of communication, each of which is shaped by the social context. Social researchers try to take into account these various realities and their instantiations in various forms of language. They cannot remain neutral while observing and interpreting these realities, however, because their backgrounds and values systems inform their perceptions and the ways in which they make sense of the societies that they study (Walsh, 2012). A qualitative research approach provides the social constructionist researcher with a deep understanding of the topic of interest in all its complexity and with reference to multiple disciplines. The focus in this book on visual media also calls for a qualitative methodology because visual materials are by nature ambiguous and capable of eliciting a range of interpretations that simply cannot be quantified. The main objective of my research is, then, to understand the symbols of leadership and to articulate the ways in which people in a certain sociocultural context— Bedouin Arabia—perceive their realities. Scholars have identified relatively few methods for investigating aesthetic leadership. In the words of one of them, “In applying aesthetic methods to leadership topics, we highlight the importance of getting at the experiential and contextual, and inquiry into leaders and followers’ sensory and felt meanings constructed in subjective processes that rely on aesthetic knowledge” (Hansen et al., 2007, p. 552). Leadership as I understand it is a social reality with linguistic and rhetorical components. Knowledge, as part of reality, is a product of social construction involving language, images, and symbols produced by human subjects. Thus Foucault (1972) argued that human subjects are produced rather than born. Human subjectivity is socially constructed through certain processes (Rose, 2012), in particular discourse, which, in a Foucauldian sense, is expressed through texts, images, and symbols that together constitute a sort of knowledge. Meanings are socially produced and constructed through the connections among various aspects of discourse; in

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this respect, a meaning emerges and evolves within distinct social, temporal, and spatial contexts (Foucault, 1972; Rose, 2012). Symbols and rituals function within the complex framework of a social system made up of individuals who understand and use them in similar ways. A social system serves as the vehicle for cultural and social interactions (St. Clair, 1982). Derrida asserted that traditional values and variations in norms and mores conceal problematic relationships formed under previous repression (Dooley & Kavanagh, 2006). Foucault similarly argued that all social interactions reveal power relationships (Foucault, 1972, 1977; Taylor, 2011). Building on Derrida’s and Foucault’s insights, power, in a social interaction context, has negative aspects that are manifested in all sorts of traditional ideals. Consequently, cultural identity conceals that sense of repression and domination (Dooley & Kavanagh, 2006). Of course, interpreting the symbols at play in a social phenomenon such as leadership requires the observation of human behaviors within a specific sociocultural context. Indeed, when interpreting any social phenomenon, researchers construct the frames for meanings that explain reality from the perspective of the social context in which it is embedded while also taking into consideration their own sociocultural backgrounds. Hence, I acknowledge that I am an active agent who inevitably influences the interpretation of the social realities that I study. In light of the above discussion, my research approach has an inductive bent, in that I seek to remain sensitive to the fact that human actions and interactions remain embedded within a complex social system and associated with numerous values and symbols. So it is that observation and personal experience are necessary when seeking to understand, describe, analyze, and, ultimately, report on the sophisticated system of human interactions that make up a culture (Gill & Johnson, 2002).

Ontology Russell observed that reality consists of particulars that remain connected through certain relationships, each of which embodies certain characteristics (Rust, 2005). Traditional philosophers proposed that reality exists

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“out there,” and any “neutral” researcher who seeks it finds it. Consequently, as knowledge reflects a form of reality, any knowledge can be expanded to leadership as it “is ‘out there’ and can be observed and perceived as a real and stable phenomenon” (Jepson, 2009, p.  67). Postmodernists reject this idea, instead insisting that there is nothing that can rightly be called a neutral observation, that multiple realities exist, and, therefore, that language is socially constructed, “a product of historical, social interaction which is idiosyncratic to specific social groups and individuals” (Jepson, 2009, p.  65–66). Hence, the observer cannot remain neutral, and individuals use language to construct whatever reality they observe according to their perceptions. This reality is a by-­product of the researcher’s background and the values system residing in his or her subconscious. Consequently, the observer/researcher’s language is socially constructed and intended to describe a unique reality. Foucault argued that reality is a socially constructed discourse articulated through language. As discussed, discourse in this sense remains vague and can contain multiple connotations (Hardy et al., 2000). This bidirectional, dialogical aspect of reality is multidimensional owing to its social linguistic nature, which increases the sophistication of discourse (Foucault, 1972, 1977; Falzon, 1998). In addition, the status of the “subject” proves to be key to the whole notion of power in Foucauldian analysis. Foucault used the term “subject” to denote an active agent that can influence others and be influenced. This notion stands in opposition to two key terms, namely “substance,” which describes a passive agent, and “object,” which describes an agent whom other agents or forces affect but cannot impact others (Taylor, 2011). Subjectivity remains a distinguishing social phenomenon for “free” and “rational beings” (Falzon, 1998; Taylor, 2011). As a consequence, approaching leadership from aesthetic and visual perspectives entails dealing with the enigma of meaning and symbols and the need to decipher their meanings according to their sociocultural contexts. It is for these reasons that I focus on subjective study and rely on social constructivism as the main approach for my research (Hansen et al., 2007).

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Epistemology Emmanuel Kant argued that knowledge is proof of rational cognition, illustrating as it does the “pure” type of non-empirical reasoning regarding the main objective, which is to discover reality. However, this knowledge fails to constitute a complete corpus, for it remains abstract in nature and cannot provide a complete explanation for reality (Burnham & Young, 2007). Foucault (1972) spoke of building foundations and of the criteria that a researcher must consider when studying any reality. The starting point should be defining the criteria of all concepts that are taken for granted and that are “no longer one of lasting foundations” (Foucault, 1972, p. 6). In fact, Foucault strongly critiqued the existence of an ultimate foundation of thought that comprises the holistic nature of reality, and he found fault with the “metaphysical” role of philosophy as a means to establish such foundations. Simply put, because nothing can be generalized and everything has social, cultural, local, and historical dimensions, again, no absolute reality exists. In other words, nothing proves universal, and nothing can be dogmatic (Falzon, 1998). The temporal and spatial aspects of phenomena play substantial roles in constructing various versions of various realities. Consequently, knowledge, as a transcendental foundation, is inherently deceptive; this denial of the transcendental nature of knowledge is articulated in the notion of the “death of man.” Once the transcendental nature of the ostensibly rational is shown to be illusory, each human is revealed as having been modeled by a unique array of social, cultural, and historical forces defined by the temporal and geographical contexts in which individuals live (Falzon, 1998; Taylor, 2011). Foucault (1977) asserted that all sorts of knowledge prove to be discursive: “the power produced knowledge” and “power and knowledge directly imply one another. There exists no power relation without the correlative constitution of the field of knowledge” (p. 27). Hence, though knowledge is assumed to be true, its truth continues to emerge and evolve over time; thus Foucault implored, “do not ask me who I am and do not ask me to remain the same” (p.  19). This problematic relationship

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between knowledge and power can be explained with reference to Foucault’s association of the two concepts. Knowledge is defined by a sophisticated assemblage of processes and struggles; hence, “it is not the activity of the subject of knowledge that produces a corpus of knowledge, useful or resistant to power, but power-knowledge, the processes and struggles that traverse it and of which it is made up, that determines the forms and possible domains of knowledge” (p. 28). Foucault showed that knowledge needs the support of power to be considered acceptable or to be normalized and thus recognized as consistent with the prevailing norms (Feder, 2011). The knowledge normalization process, then, is by nature social; and, social mechanisms are responsible for the production of knowledge. Thus, for example, that which can be normalized in a certain society or era may not be acceptable in different times, precisely because the contextual and temporal dimensions in which society produces knowledge have a substantial influence on what constitutes knowledge. So it was that Foucault (1977) focused on physical punishment during the eighteenth century, which he described as the “spectacle of the scaffold” of public torture and executions, these being a set of processes that could not be normalized in current Western penal practices owing to social changes that have rendered such punishment unacceptable. In this respect, the relationship between power and knowledge proves controversial precisely because it is reciprocal. In Foucault’s words, “the power relations give rise to a possible corpus of knowledge, and knowledge extends and reinforces the effects of this power” (1977, p. 29). Thus, it is not possible to validate the presupposition of power for knowledge or vice versa. Accordingly, I needed to clarify my philosophical approach so as to identify the best epistemological approach for achieving my main objective, which is to provide warranted knowledge about the social reality of the leadership process. Communication naturally plays a key role in my construction of social knowledge in terms of understanding, describing, and analyzing the realities that I observed and experienced. Language mediates the apprehension of these realities, but it does not do so in a transparent fashion;

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rather, it is a medium for constructing a social reality from the perspectives of the individuals who inhabit it. Viewed this way, language reflects the cultural context of the individuals using it (St. Clair, 1982; Schipper, 1999). Another important epistemological question concerns the relationship between me, as a researcher, and the topics that I choose to investigate, for this choice is rooted in my belief system (Klenke, 2008). Based on the above argumentation as well as my personal understanding, I conclude that it is impossible for a researcher to develop neutral knowledge. My observations and interpretations of what I have observed remain influenced and indeed biased by my social and cultural background, just as every scientific fact betrays social influence (Johnson & Duberly, 2012). As Kant declared, individuals’ a priori sociocultural contexts influence their sensory experiences with respect to the ways in which they receive and interpret data (Johnson & Duberly, 2012). These considerations deepen the understanding of leadership as “co-­ constructed, a product of sociohistorical and collective meaning making, and negotiated on an ongoing basis through a complex interplay among leadership actors, be they designated or emergent leaders, managers, and/ or followers” (Fairhurst & Grant, 2010, p. 172). In choosing my methodological approach for exploring leadership as a relational process, I began with Jakobson’s (1960) traditional tripartite model of communication involving (1) the addresser, who creates and sends a certain message; (2) the message, including both its content and its context; and (3) the addressee or target audience for the message. This model was useful for assessing diverse perspectives on leadership to arrive at a holistic picture of this sophisticated social phenomenon. I assumed what Greene and Caracelli (2003) described as a “dialectical stance” in their argument that paradigms may offer contradictory perspectives; as they put it The process of reaching this better understanding is dialectical. This is because different paradigms do indeed offer different, and sometimes contradictory and opposing, ideas and perspectives. In dialectic mixed

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methods inquiry, these differences are valued precisely for their potentialthrough the tension they invoke—to generate meaningfully better understating. (p. 97)

Thus, I collected various types of data corresponding to each of these aspects of communication in the three successive phases of research that I conducted for this project. I detail my specific methods in the following chapters, but it will be useful to provide a brief overview of them here.

First Phase The first phase of my research, then, focused on the addresser—that is, the leader—and consisted of an analysis of several publicly displayed photos of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum (b. 1949), a leader who has ruled Dubai since 2006. The photos of Sheikh Mohammed that I analyzed for this phase of the research were publicly available on his social media accounts or in books, magazines, and newspapers. It was my expectation that the variety of sources would reflect the rich cultural, social, and emotional experiences of those responsible for disseminating the sheikh’s images. In assessing these images, I engaged in a sort of visual genealogy, seeking to construct their meanings from social and historical perspectives (Acevedo, 2011) by analyzing, in turn, the frame, which includes the technical devices used to construct a leader visually, the gaze, which concerns the emotion-fueled construction of meaning in collaboration between the viewer and the artwork, and the “period eye,” which is the influence of the specific point in time or history on the construction of meaning and gaze (Acevedo, 2011). I also followed the advice of Rose (2012) to “look and look again” and was inspired by Foucault’s (2009) analysis of Manet’s use of space on the canvas, lighting, and “the place of the viewer in relation to the picture” (p. 31).

Second Phase The second phase of the research involved exploring the message and the artist’s voice. I conducted semi-structured, in-depth interviews with eight

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Arab artists with experience of Bedouin culture from Iraq, Syria, and the UAE.  My strategy was to let these highly educated and sophisticated individuals speak freely about their craft. After explaining briefly the nature of my research, I asked them about whom they targeted with their work and the messages that they attempted to deliver. I was particularly interested in how those who had painted portraits of leaders (which most had done) represented them, as well as leadership and power in general, visually. I also sought to learn from them the impact of Bedouin society on their work.

Third Phase For the last phase of the research, which focused on the addressee, I conducted ten semi-structured interviews with individuals of various nationalities and cultural backgrounds living in Dubai who together were representative of the Emirate’s overall population. During these interviews, I asked the interviewees to respond to selected images of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum. I found that they unconsciously applied Acevedo’s (2011) three categories (i.e., frame, gaze, and period eye) when analyzing a visual work. I recruited the subjects beginning with my personal network and then through a snowball sampling technique (i.e., by asking interviewees to recommend other candidates).

Analysis of the Data After completing the three phases of the research, I began the process of capturing the main themes, which I performed iteratively and according to the process described by Potter and Wetherell (1987). Thus, I started by reading thoroughly all of the transcripts from the interviews and identifying words that the interviewees associated with leadership, such as “development,” “inspire,” and “happy” and highlighting them in yellow. Next, I coded these words, my goal being “not to find results but to squeeze an unwieldy body of discourse into manageable chunks” (Potter

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& Wetherell, 1987 p.  167), and arranged them in tabular form in 28 categories. Within these categories, I distinguished eight themes relating to leadership: inspiring, heroic/charismatic, patriarchal, visionary, humane, happy, achieving, and self-confidence. In assessing the various categories and themes and the relationships among them, I was inspired by Foucault’s (1972) insistence on posing questions: We must be ready to receive every moment of discourse in its sudden irruption; in that punctuality in which it appears, and in that temporal dispersion that enables it to be repeated, known, forgotten, transformed, utterly erased, and hidden, far from all view, in the dust of books. Discourse must not be referred to the distant presence of the origin but treated as and when it occurs … [and must] pose a whole cluster of questions. What are they? How can they be defined or limited? What distinct types of laws can they obey? What articulation are they capable of? What sub-groups can they give rise to? What specific phenomena do they reveal in the field of discourse? (p. 28)

Individually, each of these categories and themes represents a distinctive discourse. I accordingly set out to explore the relationships among these discourses in the specific context of Bedouin society by interpreting the distinctive meaning of the symbols used to represent Bedouin leadership from geographical, cultural, and historical perspectives (Edwards, 2015). Guiding my thinking as I assessed the themes and their interrelationships was the assumption that Bedouin tribal values would be reflected in the practices of Bedouin leaders, in the relationship between values and rituals or practices. Indeed, this is the case with leadership in any cultural context (Rosaldo, 1993). As has been seen, a key aspect of my argument is that a leader’s visual representations can create a psychological effect akin to that produced by Bentham’s panopticon in terms of increasing self-discipline and strengthening the social forces of followers. I further expected that visual representations of leaders would magnify their achievements (McKinlay & Starkey, 1998). I accordingly sought through my analysis to identify the use of the leader’s portrait as a kind of tool for surveillance that worked through the

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internalization of discipline (Foucault, 1977; McKinlay & Starkey, 1998). The power of images, however, can manifest in all manner of visual and artistic materials displayed on the premises of an organization. Thus, observing that leaders’ images can be seen everywhere in any Arab city—often accompanied by quotations from their speeches—I have analyzed them as part of an “institutional apparatus” designed to impose self-discipline (Foucault, 1977).

Positionality Insider status. Those who research human social phenomenon often find it effective to position themselves as insiders with respect to the cultures that they study. Schutz (1976) provided a useful definition of the insider as one who is accustomed to a given group in terms of the “systems of orientation and guidance such as the folkways, mores, laws, habits, customs, etiquette, fashion” (p.  92). Insiders, however, tend to take their cultural practices and behaviors for granted; it is the task of the researcher to deconstruct such assumptions and to identify their sources and functions within the group. Thus, in research of the type that I conducted for this book, it was necessary to maintain a delicate balance between insider and outsider perspectives, that is, to leverage my lived experience with Bedouin culture while maintaining the distance that scholarship demands. In combining the roles of participant and observer (Gobo, 2008), I functioned as an insider owing, in the first place, to my origins in Syria, where Bedouin culture has had a strong cultural and social influence on Syrian culture collectively, though Bedouins make up less than 8% of the total population (Chatty, 2010 p.  47). Further, my more than 10-year residency in Dubai has enriched my understanding of Bedouin culture and indeed has meant my immersion in it (Neyland, 2008). A further significant aspect of my insider status concerns language. As a native speaker of Arabic, I was able to converse freely with the individuals mentioned in this book and to conduct the interviews in that language. The significance of a shared language in such contexts is well documented; thus Jepson (2010) asserted that a “national language acts as a cultural voice and influence on an individual’s thoughts and views of

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the world and specific phenomena such as leadership” (p. 426). Language influences the ways in which individuals perceive and conceptualize; hence, it is not a neutral aspect of the study of a social phenomenon. For obvious reasons, language plays a substantial role in the transmission of meaning owing to its capacity to shape social interactions over time within a group of people. My ability to speak Arabic, therefore, was fundamental to my ability to position myself as an insider both during the interviews and when interpreting texts associated with the portraits of Arab leaders. At the same time, however, because this book was composed and is presented in English, my use of Arabic also distances me from its audience, whether or not they read both languages. In particular, I have been faced with the task of choosing accurate English words to represent the Arabic terms used by the interviewees and myself during the interviews for such multivalent terms as “leadership,” “power,” and “authority.” I will, therefore, discuss here briefly the key issues relating to translation for this study. Arabic terms relating to leadership. The various Western terms for the social phenomena that were the subject of my research, such as “leadership,” “power,” “authority,” and even “discourse,” may be represented by various Arabic terms with distinct connotations depending on, for example, geographical and historical circumstances. Thus Al-Mawrid Al-Hadeeth, the standard English-Arabic dictionary, offers more than 100 possible translations of the verb “to lead” (‫)يقود‬, which in fact in most cases overlap the range of meanings for the English verb, such as “show the (right) way,” “push,” “initiate,” “be in the beginning,” and “hold first place (in a race).” One Arabic translation for “leader” (‫ )قائد‬refers largely to a dominant political figure (‫)زعيم‬, while another is closer to “manager” (‫ )مدير‬in business contexts. The stronger linguistic distinction in Arabic between these contexts corroborates Jepson’s (2010) argument regarding the culturally dependent nature of leadership and related concepts. Recently, the widespread use of English as a lingua franca in the UAE has brought about changes in the Arabic vocabulary of leadership there. Thus the English word “leader,” untranslated, has come to take the place of the political term (‫)قائد‬, while the English term “leadership” (‫ )القيادة‬has taken on two meanings, (‫ )القيادة‬and (‫)الزعامة‬, both again relating to political leadership. During the interviews, when I wished to direct the discussion

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to business as opposed to political leadership, I used the Arabic phrase “leadership in business” (literally “in companies”; ‫)القيادة يف الرشكات‬, which I distinguished from “political leadership” (‫)الزعامة السياسية‬. The terms “power” and “authority” are, as would be expected, connected to notions of leadership in the Arabic language in such a way that terms for leadership imply a connection with power and/or authority. Al-Mawrid Al-Hadeeth provides as translations for “power” one term meaning “authority” (‫)سلطة‬, another meaning “influence” (‫)نفوذ‬, and still another meaning “domination” (‫)سلطان‬. The dictionary also offers three possible translations for “authority” (‫ سلطان‬,‫سلطة‬, and ‫)الحكومة‬, all of which refer to government. Thus, the words “power” and “authority,” which are more or less synonymous in political contexts in English, have meanings very similar to Arabic ‫“( سلطة‬authority”) and ‫“( سلطان‬domination”), respectively. For the sake of precision and consistency, I translated English “power” as ‫( نفوذ‬literally “influence”) and English “authority” as ‫( سلطة‬literally “authority”) during the interviews. Arabic terms relating to discourse. Al-Mawrid Al-Hadeeth suggests as translations for “discourse” words that often mean “talk” (‫)حديث‬, “conversation” (‫)محادثة‬, “consultation” (‫)مداولة‬, “article (in a publication)” (‫)مقالة‬, “speech” (‫)خطبة‬, and “lecture” (‫)محارضة‬. Since none of these translations suits the meaning of discourse in this study, I consulted Arabic translations of the title of Foucault’s The Order of Discourse, which has been rendered ‫ نظام الخطاب‬by, in particular, the Moroccan scholar Dr. Al Zawawi Baghura—specifically, ‫ الخطاب‬translates “discourse.” In many cases, this term is followed by an adjective describing the discourse, such as ‫الخطاب‬ ‫“ السيايس‬political discourse” or ‫“ الخطاب اإلسالمي‬Islamic discourse,” the latter usage having become common in contemporary Arab scholarship. In practice, I encountered no difficulties in this regard during the interviews; I simply explained what I meant when I used the word ‫ خطاب‬and offered examples. In wrapping up this discussion of translation and positionality, I again draw attention to the fact that Dubai, where I conducted most of the research, is an international city in which English is the dominant language. English and Arabic discourses coexist and merge in this context to the point that a kind of UAE-specific English dialect seems to be forming among the majority of the population that does not speak Arabic.

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A Few More Words About Bedouin Arabia I discussed some key aspects of Bedouin culture at the beginning of this introductory chapter, and I return to these issues in Chap. 3 in greater detail. This chapter closes by preparing for that discussion with a brief overview of the geography, culture, and family relationships that characterize Bedouin Arabia and are key to understanding the representation of leadership explored in this study. To begin with, the borders of neither Arabia nor the Bedouin portion thereof are well defined. Arabs have wandered as nomadic raiders and pastoralists over the vast Syro-Arabian desert for thousands of years (Mansfield, 1992); the ethnonym “Arab” is documented at least as far back as the first millennium BCE. Much of the Bedouin population is concentrated in what is commonly known as the Fertile Crescent, a region of relatively well-watered and productive land that extends from the northern border of the Arabian Peninsula, Mesopotamia, and the Levantine coast of the Mediterranean into the Nile Valley. The sites of the earliest large-scale human civilizations are found in this region, including Damascus, Aleppo, Ugarit, Jericho, Ur, and Akkad (Figs. 1.1 and 1.2). The language of Bedouin Arabs includes elements of various northern Semitic tongues, including Akkadian, Aramaic, Syriac, and Hebrew as well as an older, southern version of the Arabic spoken in Yemen and the Amharic tongue spoken in Ethiopia. Today’s literary Arabic developed from the old dialect of Mecca under the domination of the Quraysh tribe and derives its authority from the fact that it is the language of the Holy Quran (Shouby, 1951). It is important to keep in mind that the significant anthropological differences among Arabic-speaking peoples are reflected in variations in colloquial spoken Arabic while literary Arabic is a universal written language. Bedouin culture can be described as fundamentally pastoral, nomadic, and tribal in nature; it is also overwhelmingly patriarchal. Esenova (1998) has usefully described tribal culture in terms of four key characteristics, namely solidarity among the members of a tribe, kinship (both real and mythical), hierarchical hereditary leadership, and compact residence (i.e., those in power allocate resources through a system of patron-client relations). Tribal values tend to be based on such notions as honor, solidarity,

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Fig. 1.1  Map of ancient Arabia, Christoph Weigel the Elder, 1720 (Source: Wikipedia. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_Ancient_Arabia_-_ 1720.tif#filehistory. Accessed 21 July 2020)

pride, and loyalty but also include independence and endurance of hardships. At the head of a tribe stands the hereditary ruler, who is the sole decision-maker though he usually consults a council of elders (Al-Krenawi & Lightman, 2000). Tribal values inform modern Bedouin family businesses, and the governments of Bedouin countries are run in much the same manner. The city-state of Dubai, for instance, is run by a single family whose leader, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, serves as a kind of national CEO, with leadership remaining in the family from one generation to the next. The royal family controls all of the major firms in Dubai; in particular, the sheikh owns Dubai Holding, the global investment company that

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Fig. 1.2  Map of Fertile Crescent, (Nafsadh, 2011) (Source: Wikipedia. https://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertile_Crescent. Accessed 21 July 2020)

develops and manages the Emirate’s major financial dealings. An appreciation of the tribal nature of Bedouin culture is crucial for understanding leadership in modern states like Dubai, though family firms of this sort have received relatively little attention from scholars (Habbershon & Williams, 1999; Poutziouris et al., 2006). Generally speaking, leadership in tribal contexts involves connections among four distinct systems, namely the family, organization, nation, and society (Alwuhaibi, 2009; see also Astrachan et al., 2002; Litz, 1995). An

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important consequence of these connections is that family firms, and states run by families, tend to be more complex and to be much more concerned with objectives that are not economic in nature than those that are not managed along family lines. A family’s non-economic objectives for its holdings may include employee satisfaction, financial security, job security, personal advancement, and corporate citizenship (Tagiuri & Davis, 1992)—to all of which issues the leaders of family firms must, accordingly, be responsive. I will return to these issues in my analysis of the manner in which the portraits of Bedouin leaders project power.

A Provisional Definition of Leadership Despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that a great many approaches to the study of leadership have been elaborated over time, a widely accepted definition of the concept has yet to emerge (e.g., Meindl et  al., 1985; Yukl, 1989). I view leadership at its best as the process of using positive power to produce positive outcomes and therefore as embodying a constructive process free from hegemony and oppression. For the purposes of this study, therefore, I define the concept of leadership as the exercise of power through the transmission of certain messages so as to influence the construction of meaning by other subjects within a certain sociocultural context (Fairhurst, 2009; Fairhurst & Uhl-Bien, 2012; Kelly, 2008).

Leadership in the Bedouin Context Regarding my choice to study these issues in the context of Bedouin society, it is motivated—again apart from my personal connection to this society—in part by the persistence of significant gaps in the empirical literature on the sociocultural life of Arabs in general and of Bedouins in particular, though they constitute the dominant ethnic group in some parts of Arabia (Al-Krenawi & Graham, 1997). As alluded to earlier, outsiders, especially Westerners, tend to misunderstand Arabs and Bedouins and their values systems owing to the distorted picture conveyed in the news and entertainment media. Meanwhile, the true nature and diversity of tribalism, patriarchy, and family relations in the Bedouin world simply

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do not receive the scholarly attention that they deserve given the large numbers of individuals involved and their powerful influence on the world as a whole. Thus I discuss the deployment of visually articulated leadership discourse in the production of a specific kind of knowledge and practice within the sociocultural context of tribally dominated Bedouin Arabia. I pay particular attention to the ways in which sensory and aesthetic experiences inform the construction and representation of leaders and leadership and the roles of visual aesthetics, self-surveillance, and self-discipline in followership. This book thus stands to make significant theoretical, methodological, and practical contributions to the literature on leadership and on Bedouin society. Its main contribution to theory is the development of a process model for leaders’ deployment of visual communication that accounts for all three of the elements involved, namely the leader, the audience, and the message. In terms of methodology, I have used in this research a unique combination of qualitative approaches, including visual genealogy, psychoanalysis, and discourse analysis, that may prove useful in future studies of leadership in under-studied communities. With regard to practice, it is my hope that the findings presented here will help Westerners to understand the Arab world better and offer insights into leadership practices and efforts at persuasion within their own communities. I also hope that members of the Bedouin community will find this book useful in thinking about how power is distributed within tribal and family structures, for instance when devising training and mentoring programs for the next generation of leaders and thinking about the roles that images play as technologies (especially artificial intelligence and social media interactivity) transform societies around the world.

Overview In designing this project and carrying out this research, I sought to answer the following set of interrelated questions: • How do leadership discourses result in knowledge and practice? • How are leadership discourses articulated visually in Bedouin Arabia?

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• To what extent and in what ways do sensory and aesthetic experiences inform the construction and representation of leaders and leadership? • What is the role of visual aesthetics in cultivating followership? • What roles do self-surveillance and self-discipline play in followership? I lay out the argument in the following chapters. Having presented the topic of study, established the philosophical perspective and theoretical framework, discussed some of the key literature, and described the methodology in this introductory chapter, I present in Chap. 2 an overview of the literature on visual leadership as an emerging field of study and evaluate the progress made in this field and reflect on its possible future direction. In Chap. 3, I describe Bedouin culture in some detail with an emphasis on the visual representation of leadership. In Chap. 4, “The Leader’s Perspective,” I present a case study of the renowned Bedouin leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid. Chapter 5, “The Artist’s Voice,” includes description and analysis of eight semi-structured, in-depth interviews that I conducted with Arab portrait artists that reveal how they conceptualize visual messages in the context of Bedouin culture. In Chap. 6, “The Perspective of the Audience,” the focus shifts to the perception of messages through an account of interviews with ten residents of Dubai from diverse nationalities and cultural backgrounds. Chapter 7, “The Power of Aesthetics,” offers a synthetic overview of the findings with respect to aesthetics and the sensory perspective, the power of images, and visual leadership as a form of Foucault’s panopticon.

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2 An Overview of Visual Leadership Studies

Visual leadership is a field of study within the broader discipline of leadership that has emerged as practitioners and consultants have begun to exploit various visual technologies in practice-based books and manuals addressed to the leaders of organizations, teams, and individuals (Sibbet, 2011, 2013; Sibbet & Wendling, 2018). The focus here is on academic approaches to the topic; thus, in the following discussion, I evaluate the progress that has been made in the study of visual leadership and reflect on the insights revealed by this research and its future directions. I survey scholarship that has beens influential in the development of this field, including work in such related fields as visual and cultural studies. I also in this context elaborate on the notions of propaganda and metaphor that have played significant roles in the development of this field. The aim is to provide a holistic sense of visual leadership. The first challenge in assessing an emerging field of study in the social sciences is to establish a clear definition of it. To define visual leadership, it is useful to distinguish as its key aspects visual studies, aesthetics, and leadership. In what follows, I summarize in turn the contribution of each of these aspects, or epistemological themes, to the emergence of visual leadership as a hybrid field of study. © The Author(s) 2020 A. Bitar, Bedouin Visual Leadership in the Middle East, Palgrave Studies in Business, Arts and Humanities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57397-3_2

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Visual Studies The term “visuality” was introduced in the nineteenth century by Thomas Carlyle in a lecture titled “On Heroes” (1840); as he used the term, it essentially means “visual culture” (Mirzoeff, 2006). Mitchell (2002), on the other hand, distinguished visual studies from visual culture “as, respectively, the field of study and the object or target of study. Visual studies is the study of visual culture” (p.  166). For Mirzoeff (2002), though, “visual culture—rather than visual studies or other such formations—is the right phrase for the discursive formation” (p. 6). It is worth mentioning here that, while “culture” was first used to refer specifically to the fine arts and aesthetics, in particular, literature, art, and music, in today’s lexicon, the term has a much broader range of meaning. Thus Sturken and Cartwright (2018) argued that culture is produced through complex networks of making, watching, talking, gesturing, looking, and action—networks through which meanings are negotiated among members of a society or group. Objects such as images and media texts come into play in this network of exchange as active agents. They draw us to look and to feel or speak in particular ways. (p. 6)

From this perspective, culture symbolizes the holistic body of collective meaning and expression that is manifested in a network of religious, linguistic, ethnic, artistic, political, and social contexts, including the characteristic values and morals that unite a given culture. Regarding the terminology, Foster (1988) asserted that, “Although vision suggests sight as a physical operation, and visuality sight as a social fact, the two are not opposed as nature to culture: vision is social and historical too, and visuality involves the body and the psyche” (p. ix). Approached this way, the notion of visuality includes both sight as a physical action and the sociocultural construction of visual information; the combination of these two processes reveals “how we see, how we are able, allowed, or made to see, and how we see this seeing or the unseen therein” (p. ix). In other words, when looking at a given object, every pair of human eyes observes the same object in terms of the mechanics of

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gathering information in the form of light energy, but each human brain interprets the object uniquely based on each observer’s sociocultural background; to quote Foster again, observers “socialize this vision” (p. ix). Similarly, according to Mirzoeff (2006), “Visuality is very much to do with picturing and nothing to do with vision, if by vision we understand how an individual person registers visual sensory impressions” (p.  67). Hence, visuality concerns mainly form and representation. In this sense, then, the notion of representation is central to visuality, and representation is, of course, a form of social discourse. As Pollock (1994) argued, representation is not just a fancy new word for picturing, depicting imaging, drawing, or painting. Representation is to be understood as a social relation enacted and performed via specific appeals to vision, specific managements of imaginary spaces and bodies for a gaze. The efficacy of representation, furthermore, relies on a ceaseless exchange with other representations. Across the social formation there are diverse assemblages of representations, called discourses, some of which are specifically but never exclusively visual. These combinations interact and cross refer with other discourses, accumulating around certain points to create so dense a texture of mutual reference that some statements, and some visions, acquire the authority of the obvious. (p. 14)

Representation involves the use of things written, seen, or sensed to create a meaning within the context of the surrounding world. Therefore, representation involves more than the seen object and can take various forms. In visual studies, representation concerns the visual social construction of meaning. Thus, Sturken and Cartwright (2018) affirmed that Visual culture is not simply about images. It is also about practices we engage in relative to seeing, and it is about the ways that the world is visually organized in relationship to power. The capacity to look, to be seen, to see, and to participate in the practices of visual culture involves social contestation. (p. 22)

Likewise, according to Mirzoeff (2004) “visual culture does not depend on pictures themselves but the modern tendency to picture or visualize existence” (p. 5), while Mitchell (1994), in approaching the development

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of modern philosophy and science from a pictorial rather than textual perspective, has advocated the application of “picture theory,” and Jenks (1995) insisted that “The modern world is very much ‘seen’ phenomenon” (p. 2). Most individuals encounter a dizzying array of visual materials in their daily lives, especially since the advent of advanced technologies that make high-quality images and video almost universally available. Indeed, these technologies are bringing about a large-scale philosophical and technical transformation of society. This is the “pictorial turn” described by Mitchell (1994), which has meant “not that we have some powerful account of visual representation that is dictating the terms of cultural theory, but that pictures form a point of peculiar friction and discomfort across a broad range of intellectual inquiry” (p.  13). Accordingly, visuals are replacing text in a manner consistent with human nature, in that, as Berger (1972) put it, “seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it” (p. 7). Visual studies originated, naturally enough, in the context of art history, but the field is now is a cross-disciplinary, drawing on concepts developed also by scholars in cultural studies, anthropology, media studies, philosophy, psychology, social studies, and visual communication. Regarding the relationship between visual studies and these other disciplines, to quote Mitchell again, What, after all, can fit inside the domain of visual studies? Not just art history and aesthetics, but scientific and technical imaging, film, television, and digital media, as well as philosophical inquiries into the epistemology of vision, semiotic studies of images and visual signs, psychoanalytic investigation of the scopic drive, phenomenological, physiological, and cognitive studies of the visual process, sociological studies of spectatorship and display, visual anthropology, physical optics and animal vision, and so forth. (2002, p. 167)

Visual studies, then, as it has been developing since the 1980s, is a discipline that concerns the relationships between people and images. In

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particular, it involves research into the construction of meanings amid the profound cultural and technological changes that have taken place over the past few decades. Visual studies concerns the power of images to inform and alter the relationships among notions of culture, authority, and identity that contribute to the interpretation of meaning.

Aesthetics Mitchell (2002) has provided a useful summary of the relationship among visual studies, aesthetics, and art history: Together, then, art history and aesthetics provide a kind of completeness; they cover any conceivable question one might have about the visual arts. And if one conceives them in their most expansive manifestations, art history as a general iconology or hermeneutics of visual images, aesthetics as the study of sensation and perception, then it seems clear that they already take care of any issues that a discipline of visual studies might want to raise. The theory of visual experience would be dealt with in aesthetics; the history of images and visual forms would be dealt with in art history. (p. 167)

Regarding aesthetics specifically, according to Taylor and Hansen (2005), this discipline “is concerned with knowledge that is created from our sensory experiences” (p. 1212). Aesthetics thus differs from scientific knowledge in that what is produced is “sensitive knowledge,” which includes feelings, sensory perceptions, and tacit impressions. Therefore, If we look carefully at this distinction of aesthetic/sensory knowing versus intellectual/propositional knowing, we find a distinction that is not just about how we know things, but why we know things. Intellectual knowing is driven by a desire for clarity, objective truth and usually instrumental goals … aesthetic knowing is driven by a desire for subjective, personal truth usually for its own sake. (p. 1213)

In most discussions of aesthetics, as Barry and Meisiek (2010) observed, the term “art” refers to a craft rather than fine art. These scholars usefully distinguished between the concepts of art and craft in historical and

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contextual, and hence utilitarian, terms. Crucially for the present study, they connected both concepts to leadership, arguing that there is both an art and a craft of leadership and distinguishing these two aspects based on aesthetic criteria: leadership becomes art when it touches the audience’s senses. They cited Martin Luther King’s renowned “I Have a Dream” speech as exemplary of the power of artful leadership to drive an audience to act in ways that transcend utilitarian leadership (cf. Davies, 2005). In the late twentieth century, the subfield of organizational aesthetics developed for the study of the role of the senses in various enterprises. Strati (2000) distinguished five main areas of concern for the emerging field: images associated with organizational identity, an organization’s physical space, artifacts within that space, artistic aspects of management, and ways in which artistic practice informs management. Organizational aesthetics, then, is concerned primarily with lived sensory experiences, with the intangible rather than the physical reality of organizations. An artifact, in turn, can be defined as a “product of human action which exists independently of its creator” and is “intentional,” being designed to “[solve] a problem or [satisfy] a need” and, like other aspects of aesthetics, “perceived by the senses, in that it is endowed with its own corporality or physicality” (Gagliardi, 1996, p.  701). More recently, Edwards (2017) has argued that aesthetics can be used to reconceptualize leadership within organizations. Returning to the level of the individual, Springborg (2010) defined art as “an arrangement of conditions intended to make us perceive some part of the world more directly through our senses—and less through our concepts and ideas about this part of the world” (p. 245). Therefore, art can be perceived through the senses and through feelings. Aesthetics, however, is often confused with beauty; the latter is, rather, one of several aesthetic categories, others of which are the comic, the sublime, and the ugly (Strati, 1992). In making aesthetic judgments, and, thereby, constructing meaning, the mode of representation is the primary consideration. From this perspective, an artifact can be said to elicit two distinct sets of meanings. In the case of a painting, for example, the painter encodes one set of meanings and the spectator derives another. The positive

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aspects of power define the terms under which this process of constructing meaning is negotiated. For Foucault (1974), Representation undertakes to represent itself here in all its elements, with its images, the eyes to which it is offered, the faces it makes visible, the gestures that call it into being. … And representation, freed finally from the relation that was impeding it, can offer itself as representation in its pure form. (pp. 17–18)

Foucault had already extended such notions of art and aesthetic experience from artifacts to ways of life, commenting, for example, “But couldn’t everyone’s life become a work of art? Why should the lamp or the house be an art object but not our life?” (Foucault, 1998, p. xxx). What Foucault was acknowledging in such comments was the inescapable fact that artifacts reflect the systems in which individuals perceive themselves to be embedded. Prown (1982) argued along these lines that “objects made or modified by man reflect, consciously or unconsciously, the beliefs of individuals who made, commissioned, purchased or used them, and by extension, the beliefs of the larger society to which they belonged” (p. 2). Strati (1999) similarly asserted that an organizational artifact serves as a metaphor for organizational hierarchy, citing as an example the chair, of which the “shape and quality denote hierarchically ordered organizational levels … of power and prestige. Visual cultures therefore reconstruct the connection between the person and non-human objects in organizational life in terms of aesthetic knowledge” (p. 39). Given the power with which they may be endowed, leaders naturally use artifacts to manifest their values. Thus Hawkins (2015) insisted that “artworks are active” and are “co-generators of leadership effects” (p. 953) and leadership and, therefore, a product of social interaction and relations, not just between leaders and their followers, but including other objects that are used in these relations as well. Hence, leaders cannot claim the absolute ownership of power relations. Hawkins also invoked the image of the chair, which, in a boardroom, when prominently situated at the end of a table, surrounded by several other, smaller chairs, and when interacted with by individuals involved in

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leadership relationships, works within this network of actants to materialize assumptions and norms about relative status positions. The chair, in its relationships with people and other things, contributes to the (re)configuration of a particular relationship between leader and followers, offering new possibilities to enact status differentials and therefore collaborate in the generation and legitimization of power imbalances and hierarchies amongst a board of directors. (p. 954)

Again, from a sociocultural perspective, the meanings of artifacts are driven by their contexts. Thus, in the case of the chair example just given, the meaning would be different in a Bedouin than in a Western context because Bedouins customarily sit on the ground. The same variability is bound to be true of the images of leaders: portraiture may be found in a wide variety of cultures in the context of leadership, but the impact of leaders’ portraits on the senses of the intended audience, and thus the forms that they take and the places in which and occasions on which they are displayed, is specific to a given cultural context, Bedouin or otherwise.

Propaganda Propaganda refers to the use of information by leaders, especially authoritarian ones, to control large groups of people and often involves various aspects of leadership, aesthetics, and visuality. Hummell and Huntress (1949) provided a broad definition of propaganda as “any attempt to persuade anyone to any belief ” (p. 2). Leaders present heroic accounts of themselves to their subjects through various narrative and emotional techniques in which visuals play a crucial role. Regarding its specifically negative aspects, Ross (2002) defined propaganda as consisting of four key components, namely “(1) an epistemically defective message (2) used with the intention to persuade (3) a socially significant group of people (4) on behalf of a political discourse in general and in particular expressly political” (p. 29). For this reason, Ross argued, propaganda messages are by nature defective: the propagandist’s objective is to persuade an audience to believe lies and embrace a defective political cause.

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The arts have frequently provided powerful tools for communicating propaganda, in particular such visual arts as movies and television, posters, photography, and paintings. Ross’ notion of political causes can be extended to other propagandistic messages involving religious, sectarian, and tribal dogma and institutions. For instance, in the Middle East, propaganda has been used by Islamic fundamentalists to disseminate their beliefs and to rail against those who disagree with them. To take another well-known example, the Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels combined nationalistic, political, and religious rhetoric to create a vision of Hitler as a messiah from heaven as exemplified in the notorious film Triumph of the Will, which was written, produced, and directed by the master filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. Stanley (2015) argued like Ross that propaganda is simply the political rhetoric of flawed ideologies within a society and, further, that propagandists’ exploitation of media channels in a liberal democracy can lead to tyranny. Returning to the example of Nazi Germany, racist messages and emotional manipulation of the mass population supported the representation of Hitler as a god-like leader who would conquer any enemy in the service of the German people; Nazi symbols, images, and language helped to normalize an authoritarian system that maintained control in large part by dehumanizing certain groups and casting them as internal enemies deserving of annihilation. Even earlier, Tearing Down the Spanish Flag (1898), one of the first propaganda movies (and one of the shortest, at 39 seconds, showing merely the lowering of the Spanish flag and raising of the U.S. one), was made to galvanize support for the U.S. role in the Spanish-American War. Soviet propagandists for their part created the film October: Ten Days That Shook the World in 1928 to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the 1917 revolution. So also, during the Spanish Civil War, Picasso’s oil painting Guernica (1937) depicted the horrors and suffering caused by the conflict in a highly emotional way and thus can be described as a work of visual propaganda.

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Metaphor Metaphor refers to “understanding one conceptual domain in terms of another conceptual domain” (Kovecses, 2010, p. 4). It is, then, a relationship between two concepts, a source and a target, expressed in various linguistic forms, a “novel or poetic linguistic expression where one or more words for a concept are used outside of their normal conventional meaning to express a ‘similar’ concept” (Lakoff, 1993, p. 202). This figurative mode of expression serves to convey abstract and often emotional concepts through mental imagery. Poets and leaders alike use the symbolic language of metaphors to influence their audiences. In the case of Picasso’s Guernica, for example, visual metaphors include the use of a bull to represent virility, a horse to represent innocence, a dove to represent peace, and so on. According to Charteris-Black (2005), “metaphor is a very effective means through which potential leaders can communicate with the ‘voice within’ because it creates evocative representations of the speaker and their policies by arousing emotions and forms part of the process by which an audience reconstructs the causal relationships of an argument” (pp.  10–11). Propagandists, then use metaphors or analogies to move their audiences. In this sense, metaphor can be a tool that political leaders use to implant or exploit symbolic images in the minds of their audiences. Attempts have been made, however, to distinguish metaphor from analogy; generally speaking, the former is understood to be implicit and the latter explicit. The distinction traces back at least as far as Aristotle, for whom “Metaphor is the application of an alien name by transference either from genus to species, or from species to genus, or from species to species, or by analogy that is proportion” (Butcher, 2000, p. 28). Aristotle thus linked analogy to the notion of proportion and the attribution of a concept to a new context with respect to similarity or correlation and, in this respect, appears to have confused metaphor and analogy. The issue has been discussed by numerous other scholars over the millennia; Thomas Aquinas, for example, introduced the concept of the analogy of attribution (analogia entis) to describe the relationship between the

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creator and the creature, that is to say, between the univocal and equivocal (Wendlinder, 2016). To be sure, among discussions of the proper use of analogy, there have been radical arguments, such as that of Chomsky (1986), that the concept is not necessary to understand linguistic performance: This idea is not wrong but rather is vacuous until the concept of analogy is spelled out in a way that explains why certain “analogies” are somehow valid whereas others are not, a task that requires a radically different approach to the whole question. … We can give substance to the proposal by explaining “analogy” in terms of I-language, a system of rules and principles that assigns representations of form and meaning to linguistic expressions, but no other way to do so has been proposed; and with this necessary revision in the proposal, it becomes clear that “analogy” is simply an inappropriate concept in the first place. (p. 32)

I contend, however, that analogy indeed plays an important role in discourse and that it is useful to distinguish metaphors from analogies based on their focus: metaphor is a kind of symbolic language used by poets and speakers to influence their audiences, and analogy is a tool used by philosophers to explain logical arguments. Further, analogy is a broader concept than metaphor, since an analogy can take the form of a metaphor. In contrast with Chomsky’s dismissal of analogies, Aristotle praised the use of metaphors: It is a great matter to observe propriety in these several modes of expression, as also in compound words, strange (or rare) words, and so forth. But the greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor. This alone cannot be imparted by another; it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphor implies an eye for resemblances. (Butcher, 2000, p. 32)

He explained that “by current or proper word I mean one which is in general use among a people; by a strange word, one which is in use in another country … every word is either current, or strange, or metaphorical, or ornamental, or newly-coined, or lengthened, or contracted, or altered” (p. 28). Aristotle, then, viewed metaphor as a distinct, vivid, and expressive mode of language that can be highly effective when used

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by those endowed with a special talent that cannot be learned and is especially found in poets. In positive terms, when used by skilled orators, metaphors facilitate understanding. A recent example from the Arab world is the frequent use of the word uluj (‫“ )علوج‬bloodsucking insect,” by Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahhaf, the Iraqi Information Minister, during the 2003 U.S. invasion of that country. This word served to depict the American forces in Iraq as undeserving of any respect or support and deserving of destruction without mercy because they represented a deadly menace to the Iraqi people. Hitler likewise described Jews as “maggots in a rotting corpse” to depict that minority group within Germany as a source of disgust, contagion, and degeneration (Nussbaum, 2010).

Visual Leadership While the literature includes much discussion of the meaning of leadership and the traits that make a leader successful, as mentioned in the previous chapter, the term itself remains vague and variously defined amid the wide range of theoretical approaches to it. Thus, as Burns (1978) observed, “Leadership is one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on earth” (p.  2); according to Alvesson and Sveningsson (2003), it has consistently confused with “an assumed empirical reality” (p. 360). There is currently, then, no widely accepted applied scientific definition of leadership. In the present study, I seek to explicate the multiple “realities” of the social phenomenon of leadership; as described by Fairhurst and Grant (2010), [t]hese realties are constructed through social processes in which meanings are negotiated, consensus formed, and contestation is possible. Such a view shows us how meanings that are produced and reproduced on an ongoing basis create structures that are both stable and yet open to change as interactions evolve over time. (p. 174)

Scholars continue to define leadership variously as the process of exercising power, managing cultures, and mobilizing others to complete work

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by setting goals and objectives, the ultimate goal being to increase organizational performance and effectiveness (Kelly et al., 2006). The prevailing definitions emphasize the nature of leadership as a process of exercising influence among various members of social groups (Yukl, 1989). Traditionally, as just seen, leadership research has been characterized by an individualistic approach rooted in psychological theory according to which leaders possess certain personal qualities and capabilities, certain traits, styles, and behaviors, that naturally differentiate them from followers. That is, leaders are born with certain inherited, identifiable, and measurable characteristics that destine them to rise to positions of influence in their social settings owing to some combination of integrity, vision, and capacity for innovation (Barker, 1997; Gill, 2009; Kelly, 2008; Wood, 2005). From a visual perspective, leadership involves the articulation of images of power (Morris, 1999), including but not limited to photographs and portraits. As Mitchell (1984) observed in this context, “we speak of pictures, statues, optical illusions, maps, diagrams, dreams, hallucinations, spectacles, projections, poems, patterns, memories, and even ideas as images, and the sheer diversity this list would seem to make any systematic, unified understanding impossible” (p. 504). Still, the visual dimension of leadership often involves portraiture, that is, representations of the leader’s face of a specific prominent person. Portraits are, in the words of West (2004), “not just likenesses but works of art that engage with ideas of identity as they are perceived, represented, and understood in different times and places. ‘Identity’ can encompass the character, personality, social standing, relationships, profession, age, and gender of the portrait subject” (p. II). Portraits may take the form of paintings, sculptures, drawings, engravings, photographs, coins, and medals (West, 2004). In a sense, a portrait creates a mystery necessitating interpretation, for such images are replete symbols and allusions. For Mitchell (1984), the mystery involves an actor on the historical stage, a presence or character endowed with legendary status, a history that parallels and participates in the stories we tell ourselves about our own evolution from creatures ‘made in the image’ of a

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creator to creatures who make themselves and their world in their own image. (p. 504)

A pioneer in the analysis of leaders’ portraits was Jenkins, whose 1947 book The State Portrait: Its Origin and Evolution remains a milestone in the field. The study of visual leadership has developed rapidly in recent years thanks to the work of scholars such as West, who was quoted in the previous paragraph and has studied portraiture and visual art in general; Gagliardi (1990), who has focused on the impact of symbols on corporate culture; and Guthey and Jackson (2005, 2008), who have explored the visual construction of corporate identity by analyzing the portraits of business executives; and others whose work is discussed below. Of particular note in this context is Townsend-Gault (1988, 1994), who investigated the art of Native American and other indigenous cultures and found visual non-verbal communication to be a key aspect of organizational identity; she demonstrated that the portraits of past senior leaders served to depict the histories of organizations as well as to legitimize the tradition of private ownership of family-owned firms. Also in the business world, Anderson and Imperia (1992) analyzed photographs in the annual reports of 25 airline firms and discussed the gender stereotyping in photographic messages in the business media.1 The theories that have contributed to the development of visual leadership as a discipline can thus be categorized as pertaining mainly to the following concepts, which are explored in turn in the following discussion: • • • • •

aesthetic leadership, visual methodologies, visual genealogy of images, organizational aesthetics, and charismatic leadership.

 See also (Chen & Meindl, 1991; Gioia et al., 2000; Hatch & Schultz, 1997; Hayward et al., 2004; McQuarrie & Mick, 1999; Melewar & Saunders, 2000). 1

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Aesthetic Leadership Among the key studies of aesthetic leadership, a few deserve particular attention here.2 Acevedo’s (2011) comparison of two images of Pope Innocent X, which has already been mentioned, considered how aesthetic expression in the form of portraiture can promote leadership and charisma and manifest a leader’s politics. From a very different perspective, Ladkin (2008) explored the role of beauty in leadership by analyzing the musician Bobby McFerrin’s performance, self-presentation, gestures, and body language and argued that “leading beautifully” involves a view of leadership as a performing art, equal measures of charisma and authenticity, and impression management. Hansen et  al. (2007), on the other hand, argued that the theorization of leadership and organizational studies can be transformed by viewing leadership from an aesthetic perspective. Other important work in this regard has been done on twentieth-­ century totalitarian regimes. Mention has already been made of Hitler as an influential figure in the development of aesthetic leadership, and Spotts (2003) suggested that his experience as an artist influenced his deployment of Nazi symbols, myths, rituals, speeches, and spectacles, for which purpose he leveraged, in addition to cinema, such media as architecture, music, photography, and paintings as part of his efforts to control his followers. Falasca-Zamponi (1997) similarly considered the Italian Fascist leader Mussolini’s use of various media in support of his totalitarian government. Collectively, these studies have made clear that aesthetic leadership is a multivalent phenomenon, the dimensions of which extend beyond images and text to various forms of the performing arts, music, and literature.

 Other key studies of aesthetic leadership include (de Monthoux et  al., 2007; Dobson, 1999; Duke, 1986; de Monthoux, 2004; Küpers, 2004; Moore & Beck, 1984; Schroeder, 2008; Taylor & Hansen, 2005). 2

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Visual Methodologies Visual methods are being used for qualitative research in an increasing variety of disciplines. These research approaches have been deployed by researchers in the social sciences to interpret images, movies, posters, paintings, digital media, video games, and other media.3 Rose (2012) argued that, in order to interpret visual data critically, it is necessary to consider an image carefully, to take into account the influence of social conditions on the production and interpretation of the image, and to be aware of the range of ways in which individual researchers may regard the image. According to Pain (2012), visual methods can enhance data collection and presentation through “rapport-building, facilitating communication, facilitating expression of tacit knowledge, improving the researcher’s access to difficult-to-reach places or groups, and promoting reflection” (p.  305). Methods that researchers use to interpret visual materials include auto-photography (Thomas, 2009), photo-elicitation (Harper, 2002), photo essays (Mitchell, 1994), PhotoVoice (Wang & Burris, 1997), and photo documentation (Suchar, 1997, 2004, 2006), content analysis (Lutz & Collins, 1993; Slater, 1998), semiology (Bal & Bryson, 1991; Barthes, 1973; Dyer, 1982; Williamson, 1978), psychoanalysis (Bruno, 1993, 2002; De Lauretis, 1995; Doane, 1991), and discourse analysis (Andersen, 2003; Burke, 2001; Phillips & Hardy, 2002; Sekula, 1986; Tonkiss, 1998).

Visual Genealogy of Images Visual genealogy is a discursive approach to art and media. The term was coined by Schroeder and Zwick (2004), who, drawing on the notion of genealogy in Foucault’s work, “place[d] contemporary advertising imagery into a historical context that encompasses photography, fine art, and graphic design within what we call a visual genealogy. We emphasize how  In addition to those mentioned here, key discussions of methodologies for conducting research using visual materials include (Banks, 2001, 2008; Barbour, 2014; Collier & Collier, 1986; Epstein et al., 2006; Glaw et al., 2017; Hamilton, 2006; Jenkings et al., 2008; Knowles & Cole, 2008; Noble & Bestley, 2011; Pink, 2007; Prosser, 1998; Stanczak, 2007). 3

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ads produce and manipulate social signifiers rather than how individuals appropriate their symbolic value” (p.  22). That is, placing an artwork within its historical context adds a new dimension to the study of it and the power relations in which it is embedded. Schroeder and Zwick analyzed representations of the male body, sexuality, masculinity, and consumption from the perspective of contemporary print advertising images and found that these images reflected a shift from the notion of men as producers to consumers. Acevedo (2011) similarly used visual genealogy to analyze the connection between images of leadership and the historical context of power relations over time in his study of the images of Pope Innocent X. Likewise, Scholz (2012) relied on visual genealogy as a tool to explore the role of advertisements in shaping the “living in harmony with nature” myth.

Organizational Aesthetics Both Gagliardi (1990, 1996) and Strati (1992, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2000) focused on the development of organizational aesthetics and identity by analyzing organizational artifacts and individuals’ relationships within organizations. Strati (1996) argued that “aesthetics are a form of knowledge and they have their own truth” (p. 216). From this perspective, the analysis of aesthetics can shed light on interactions within an organization. Other scholars have taken other approaches. Turner (1990) studied these issues from the perspective of symbolism, while Linstead and Hopfl (2000) claimed that aesthetic approaches move in the spaces between the organization as regulatory (the Law) and as experience (the Body); between the cognitive and the sensory; and between the stimulus and the response. Consequently, aesthetic approaches have much to contribute to the study of organizations by working outside conventional categories and by challenging the logic of the organizing process. (p. 3)

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The study of meaning within organizations is an emerging discipline related to cultural studies, creativity, and corporate image (Hansen et al., 2007).4

Charismatic Leadership As has been seen, the traditional notion of charismatic leadership emphasizes special qualities possessed by select people (Weber, 1968). Their power to inspire is closely associated with oratorical skill, including the ability to establish a strong emotional, rather than rational, connection with their followers. Thus, according to Bass (1985): Inspirational leadership has been most applauded by the masses and most derided by skeptical intellectuals who [equate] it with demagoguery, manipulation, exploitation, and mob psychology. Its emphasis on persuasive appeals to faith rather than reason, to the emotions rather than to the intellect, and to various mechanisms of social reinforcement rather than to logical discourse has made it seem fit only for the immature and the undereducated. (pp. 56–66)

From this perspective, charismatic leaders are inspiring in the sense that they foster devotion and enthusiasm in their supporters, display self-­ confidence, establish trust, and are master orators. As orators, effective leaders use metaphors and analogies to render their messages vivid for their audiences. In the present context, Bedouin poetry can thus serve as a medium for charismatic leadership since it is replete with metaphors, images, and inspiring language. Scholars have emphasized various aspects of leadership and the social construction of reality within organizations. Grint (2000), for instance, considered leadership an art rather than a science, while Meindl et  al. (1985) held that leadership involves playing a heroic and larger-than-life role and coined the phrase “romanticization of leadership” to explain why  Other influential studies of organizational aesthetics include (Carr & Hancock, 2003; Dean et al., 1997; Dickinson & Svensen, 2000; Hancock, 2002; Harding, 2002; Larsen & Schultz, 1992; Marchand, 1998; Strati & de Montoux, 2002; Taylor, 2002; Taylor & Hansen, 2005). 4

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the economic performance of firms is often considered a largely individual rather than collective effort. Gabriel (1997) explored this deeply emotional and romantic, and in some cases almost religious, view of leadership and argued that followers perceive leadership in diverse ways according to their experiences and social backgrounds. In any case, charismatic leaders exploit a powerful aura and rhetorical skills and draw on powerful cultural heroic myths (Willner, 1984), while their followers perceive them through socially constructed myths (Conger & Kanungo, 1998).5 In light of these studies, I approach visual leadership in this book as an interdisciplinary matrix that draws on aesthetic leadership, visual genealogy, visual methodologies, organizational aesthetics, charismatic leadership, visual culture, aesthetics more generally, leadership, management, culture, and philosophy. From these perspectives, leaders’ images serve as powerful tools for influencing their audiences, and the leaders themselves manipulate artwork to reinforce myths that render them, in a sense, godlike. Visual leadership, then, involves the use of powerful imagery to play on human emotions. In extreme situations, leaders’ portraits can acquire symbolic power that exceeds their real-world power; indeed, the reality of their physical existence may interfere with the cultivation of a godlike image. Visual and aesthetic leadership, therefore, are alike in terms of representation and communication but differ in terms of the instruments on which leaders rely: compared with aesthetic leadership, visual leadership relies primarily on architecture, cinema, music, photography, posters, video games, paintings, and other such materials and much less so on oral and written materials. In a nutshell, visual leadership is the process of exercising power through aesthetic visual materials (paintings, sculptures, drawings, engravings, posters, photographs, cinema, architecture, and so on) that are freighted with symbols, myths, and enigmas. Its aim is to construct for followers cumulative meanings based on their specific social and  On charismatic leadership, see further (Awamleh & Gardner, 1999; Beyer, 1999; Bligh & Schyns, 2007; Boal & Bryson, 1988; Bono & Ilies, 2006; Bryman, 1992; Conger, 1989; Deluga, 2001; Gardner & Avolio, 1998; Hartog & Verberg, 1997; Howellk, 1988; Hunt, 1999; Hunt, Boal, & Dodge, 1999; Jacobsen & House, 2001; Kim et al., 2002; Kirkpatrick & Locke, 1996; Meindl, 1995; Mumford & Van Doorn, 2001; Shamir et al., 1993, 1994; Strange & Mumford, 2002; Trice & Beyer, 1986; Yagil, 1998). 5

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cultural contexts. The result is a strong emotional connection between leaders and their followers based on appeals to the senses and emotions. Modern Bedouin leaders have relied on symbols and imagery that tie them to their traditional nomadic culture even as they have negotiated their societies’ relationships with the modern world.

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3 Bedouin Culture

Who Are the Bedouin? Returning now to the discussion begun in Chap. 1, the term Bedouin (Badu ‫بدو‬, singular Badawi ‫ ) بدوي‬means “person of the desert” (desert means al badya ‫) البادية‬. It has been used to refer to nomadic Arabs, and, though the words “Arab” (‫ )العرب‬and “Bedouin” (‫ )البدو‬are generally used interchangeably, their meanings do not entirely overlap, as Lewis (1993) observed. The Bedouins are Arabs who have traditionally lived in nomadic communities in the Middle East, primarily in the Syro-Arabian desert that extends over a large part of the Arabian Peninsula. They herd camels, sheep, and goats, moving from place to place to gain access to water and pasturage. According to genealogists, today’s Bedouins are descended from two main tribes, the Adnani (‫ )العدنانيون‬of northern Arabia and the Qahtani (‫ )القحطانيون‬of southern Arabia and Yemen (Abu-Hakima, 1972). The nomadic nature of the Bedouins is at least partly attributable to the geography of the Arabian Peninsula, which consists of arid desert spotted with a few remote small fertile areas called oases among which they move according to the needs of their livestock. In practice, though, the Bedouin clans of the Arabian Peninsula can be distinguished as either © The Author(s) 2020 A. Bitar, Bedouin Visual Leadership in the Middle East, Palgrave Studies in Business, Arts and Humanities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57397-3_3

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nomadic, semi-nomadic, or rural. The nomadic clans consist of shepherds who live in the desert and travel with their herds. The semi-nomadic clans live on the edge of the arid steppe lands around the oases, frequenting small towns deep in the Arabian Peninsula and near the northern Syrian steppe. The rural clans live in rural areas that supply the desert towns that once serviced caravans crossing the desert. Bedouin communities are not confined to the Arabian Peninsula but are also found in the Sinai Peninsula and the Sahara. Arab Bedouin can be distinguished from other nomadic communities in the southern Sahara by their Arabic language and shared cultural and genealogical notions. The traditional, conservative, and patriarchal nature of Bedouin society forms a collective identity centered on loyalty to the family and clan (Al-Krenawi & Slater, 2007). A tribe is a social structure based on kinship (Chatty, 2010) and as such represents a kind of extended family, the roots of which may extend back for thousands of years (Chatty, 2010; Yaphe, 2007). Bedouin tribes are ruled by chiefs called sheiyukh (‫)شيوخ‬, singular sheikh (‫ )شيخ‬a word that combines the meanings of leader, chief, elder, and noble. Sheikhs are assisted by an informal tribal council (majlis ‫)مجلس‬ made up of male elders. The members of a tribe are expected to obey and respect the sheikh and the elders, loyalty again being a fundamental tribal value along with genealogy (Mizel, 2009). According to Esenova (1998), tribes possess four main characteristics: (a) solidarity among their members, as expressed in the Arabic saying “I against my brother, my brother and I against my cousin; my brother, my cousin, and I against the world”; (b) kinship that can supposedly be traced back to a single ancestor; (c) traditional leadership based on succession and hierarchical authority controlled by the one family considered closest to the founding ancestor; and (d) compact residence. The fundamental values of these tribes are honor, solidarity, pride, loyalty, independence, and perseverance in the face of hardship. Again, the sheikh is not the sole decision-maker but rather makes major decisions in consultation with the council of elders (Al-Krenawi & Lightman, 2000).

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Bedouin Culture Pastoralism, a nomadic way of life, and tribal social organization are, then, fundamental features of Bedouin life. It will be useful to discuss here briefly other core characteristics of Bedouin culture that relate to visual leadership.

Temporary Domiciles Since Bedouins are nomads, they use mobile shelters in the form of tents made of wool provided by their animals, often black goats. Living in tents open to the desert and cooking outside so that their tents do not catch fire, Bedouins frequently socialize with their neighbors and welcome passing guests. Indeed, they pride themselves on having no need for locked doors and leaving the entrances to their tents wide open as an invitation to passing guests. They feed these visitors with their best animals; slaughtering a prize animal for this purpose is an important cultural, social, and religious symbol that often includes the ritual of daubing diners with the blood of the animal, a practice reflected in the religions linked to the Bedouin, in particular Judaism and Islam. Thus, for instance, in Genesis 22: 6, God tells Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, but a messenger from God interrupts him and instructs him to sacrifice a ram instead. In the Quranic version of the story,1 Abraham (Ibrahim) is told to sacrifice his son, Ishmael (Ismail), whom God replaces with a “great sacrifice.”2 Such stories illustrate the importance of generosity and sacrifice in the collective culture and social heritage of the Bedouin.

 Surah As-Saffat 101–113 (English translation from quran.com/37).  “You have fulfilled the vision. Indeed, We thus reward the doers of good. Indeed, this was the clear trial. And We ransomed him with a great sacrifice.” From the Holy Quran, Surah As-Saffat, 105–107 (English translation from quran.com/37). 1 2

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Constant Travel The Bedouin lifestyle, then, has traditionally involved travel from place to place under difficult conditions. When camped, Bedouins light fires so that other Bedouins and travelers can find their tents since, in order to survive in the harsh desert climate, they developed the tradition of helping and serving others, as reflected in the Bedouin proverb “today’s host is tomorrow’s guest” (Bailey, 2018) and their view that those who do not honor guests are immoral. Conversely, guests who refrain from eating or drinking at a Bedouin host’s tent are considered evil and to be feared. This set of beliefs is reflected in the tenets of Islam; for instance, the Prophet Mohammed said, “Whoever believes in God and the Last Day, let him honor his guest.”3 Hospitality, then, is a fundamental part of the Bedouin social system.

Kinship Relations Bedouin social structure varies across regions, but a shared aspect is a system of kinship levels designed to protect members of one group from the raiding (ghazw‫ ) غزوة‬of other tribesmen with whom they are in competition for access to water and pasturage. The largest Bedouin social group is the tribal confederation (asha’ir or qabila ‫)عشيرة او قبيلة‬, which consists of few tribes with thousands or even hundreds of thousands of members that have settled large regions of the Arab world. The distribution of these groups may transcend political boundaries. These tribes do not have traceable kinship; the main objective of these confederations is, again, to protect their members from incursions by tribesmen of other confederations with which they share territory. The next largest division is the tribe (ashira ‫) عشيرة‬, which consists of few clans with hundred or even thousands of tribesmen who live in neighboring areas and claim to share a common ancestor in the past few generations. The next largest division is the clan (batn ‫) بطن‬, which consists of dozens to hundreds of  Abu Huraira reported: “The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said, ‘Whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day, let him speak goodness or remain silent. Whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day, let him honor his neighbor. Whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day, let him honor his guest’.” Source: https://sunnah.com/bukhari/78/163 3

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tribesmen in the same village who claim to share a strong blood relation. The clans are made up of subsections (fakhdh ‫ ) فخذ‬of a few families, also numbering dozens to hundreds of tribesmen and living in the same village, who share a stronger blood relation. The extended family (bayt ‫) بيت‬ is the smallest Bedouin social unit (Bailey, 2018; Jabar & Dawod, 2003).

Patriarchy and Masculinity As mentioned, Bedouin society is patriarchal. It is believed that only men can protect the tribe and honor the guests, for which reason sons who “can wield a sword and slaughter an animal for a guest’s meal; who can rescue a violated girl and take revenge for spilt blood” are preferred over daughters (Bailey & Hallo, 2014, p. 416). Bedouin families pride themselves on the number of sons that they have, which serves a measure of power and influence, especially since daughters cannot inherit leadership positions. This perspective can be seen in the Quran, in which the story is told of a woman who, after delivering a daughter, sadly asked God, “why is it not a boy, as having a girl who cannot protect herself in the conditions of Bedouin life is so difficult.”4 There are even pre-Islamic accounts of fathers burying their infant daughters alive in a practice called (wa’ed ‫ )الوأد‬that is strongly condemned in Islamic teachings.5 The role of women in Bedouin society is to marry and bear sons for the clan, and men are allowed to practice polygamy in order to sire more sons; according to another Bedouin saying, “He who collects more wives begets more men” (Bailey & Hallo, 2014, p. 153).

Oral Culture The nomadic Bedouins do not send their children to school. Instead, they teach them to endure hardship and face challenges from an early age. Hence, at least by the standards of urban centers, most Bedouins are illiterate. However, they are steeped in an oral tradition consisting of  Surah Al Imran 36 (English translation from Arabic from quran.com/3).  Surah 8–9 (English translation from Arabic form quran.com/81).

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proverbs, stories, and poems that are memorized and transmitted from generation to generation. As in many cultures, this orally composed and transmitted material has persisted over thousands of years and is characterized by rhymes and verse structures that facilitate recall (Bailey, 2018). Examples of Bedouin folktales and mythology include the poetry attributed to Antarah bin Shaddad Al Absi (‫)عنترة بن شداد العبسي‬, a sixth-century, pre-Islamic, Bedouin warrior renowned for both his verse and his courage, and the Al Hilali epic (Sirat Bani Hilal ‫)سيرة بني هالل‬, an Arabic oral poem that recounts the wanderings of a Bedouin tribe through Arabia and North Africa.

Genealogy Within Bedouin society, then, kinship relationships are fundamental, and it is a point of pride for individual Bedouins to be able to recite the genealogy of their clans as it has been passed down in the oral tradition. For this reason, male Bedouin names refer to three to five ancestors linked by the term “son of ” (bin ‫ )بن‬and then (Al‫ )آل‬to indicate family or clan. Thus, a Bedouin man may introduce himself as (first name) bin (father’s name) bin (grandfather’s name) Al (family/clan name), preceded by any title that he may hold, such as sheikh. Bedouin culture is also characterized by a deeply rooted hierarchy that determines social standing. To begin with, large tribes exercise more power than small ones (Al-Krenawi & Graham, 1997). Further, the members of Bedouin tribes are differentiated based on whether they are (a) considered to be “original,” that is, belong to a nomadic Bedouin family with an established genealogy, (b) non-nomadic peasants who live near and work the tribe’s lands, a class of tribesmen particularly numerous today in Syria and Iraq, or (c) slaves who cannot claim kinship with a nomadic Bedouin family, most of whom are the descendants of captives, especially from Africa, and have darker skin than most Bedouins (Al-Krenawi & Graham, 1997). Today, Bedouin societies are going through a profound cultural, social, political, and economic transition (Al-Krenawi & Graham, 2005) attributable to two main causes. First, the Arabian Peninsula, the Syro-Arabian desert, and Sahara are controlled by a patchwork of various states,

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creating political and regulatory boundaries that impede the movement of nomadic peoples and security concerns that have encouraged the Bedouin to abandon their nomadic lifestyle (Thomas, 2003). The laws enacted by these states have in many cases conflicted with the Bedouins’ unwritten customs. Second, the discovery of oil in the Arabian Peninsula and northern Sahara has led to an influx of capital that has allowed the inhabitants of these regions to exchange the difficulties of a nomadic life for modern comforts by relocating to such sprawling modern cities as Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Riyadh. This transition began in the post-World War II era, when Middle Eastern and North African states were liberated from Western domination. The newly formed Arab governments began to pressure the Bedouin to limit their movements and to settle down in such a manner that these governments could more easily control their borders. Over the ensuing decades, the potential for the Bedouin to maintain their nomadic lifestyle became increasingly limited and, in some cases, was eliminated completely—for instance, the boundary between Iraq and Syria has frequently been impermeable owing to conflicts between the governments of those countries. Today, the official statistics made available by the Arab governments tend to misrepresent the actual numbers of Bedouins within their borders. However, it is clear that they represent the majority population in the six Gulf States, namely Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Oman, though most of these Bedouin have undergone the transition just described and abandoned nomadism in favor of life in these countries’ developing cities. Substantial Bedouin communities are also found in Iraq, Syria, Jordan, the Palestinian territories, Israel, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Mauritania.

Bedouin Visual Leadership Whatever their precise numbers in the Arab states, the Bedouins’ culture has had a strong influence on the leadership style observable across the region. In order to explicate this style, I now provide a few examples of leaders from the region who have presented themselves in the trappings

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of Bedouin culture. Their leadership in this respect is especially evident in their appearance in traditional garb.

King Faisal I of Iraq and Syria Faisal bin Hussein bin Ali Al Hashemi, born in Mecca in 1885, was the third son of Hussein bin Ali, the Grand Sharif of Mecca.6 As emir (prince), Faisal led the Arab delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and was proclaimed King of the Arab Kingdom of Syria, which included Greater Syria, in 1920; then, after that monarchy was soon abolished, he was crowned King of Iraq in 1921 and reigned until his death in 1933. As a Bedouin leader, Faisal was a member of Banu Hashim, or Hashemites (‫)بنو هاشم او الهاشميين‬, a clan of the Quraysh tribe to which Mohammed belonged and that took its name from the Prophet’s great-grandfather, Hashim bin Abd Manaf. Leaders who trace their descent back to back to the Prophet are known as Ahl al-Bayt ‫“(آل البيت‬Family of the House”) and carry such titles as sayed ‫( سيد‬sir) and sharif ‫( شريف‬noble). Faisal made it a point to act and dress as a Bedouin leader his entire life. Thus, when he led the Arab delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, he wore the traditional thawb,7 shemagh,8 agal,9 bisht,10 and janbiya11 (Fig. 3.1). Likewise, in a formal portrait (Fig. 3.2), Faisal is wearing traditional Bedouin clothing, with an old-style golden agal, a colored shemagh, and a black bisht with a golden braid.  “Sharif of Mecca” was the title of the traditional stewards of the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina and the surrounding Hejaz region in what is now Saudi Arabia. 7  Thawb (‫ )بوث‬is the Arabic term for an ankle-length garment with long sleeves made of cotton or sheep’s wool worn by Bedouin men. 8  Shemagh (‫ )غامشلا‬is the Arabic term for a type of Bedouin headdress that takes various forms and names. In the Arabian Gulf, where it is also known as the ghutrah, it is a plain white cotton cloth; in Palestine, where it is known as the kuffiyeh, it is a white, orange, and black cloth made of wool and cotton; and in Yemen and Oman, where it is known as the musar, it is a colored cloth of cotton or flax. 9  Agal (‫ )لاقع‬is the Arabic term for a cord, traditionally black and made of goat hair, used to keep the shemagh in place on the wearer’s head. 10  Bisht (‫ )تشب‬is the Arabic term for the flowing cloak worn over the thawb on special occasions, such as festivals and weddings. It is traditionally made of woven camel hair or wool and trimmed with a black cord or golden braid and ranges in color from white to various shades of gray and brown. 11  Janbiya (‫ )ةيبنج‬is the Arabic term for a ceremonial dagger that originated in Yemen. 6

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Fig. 3.1  Emir Faisal’s delegation at Versailles, during the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, by unknown, 1919, accessed 21 July 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Faisal_I_of_Iraq#/media/File:FeisalPartyAtVersaillesCopy.jpg

President Saddam Hussein of Iraq Saddam Hussein bin Abd al-Majid Al Takriti was born in Al Awja, Iraq in 1937 and served as the country’s fifth president from 1979 until he was removed from power by U.S. forces in 2003. Hussein established a strong visual presence that can be described as panoptical in the terms discussed above using various aesthetic means and emphasized his claim to being a traditional Bedouin leader. Bedouins have lived in Iraq for thousands of years and make up a large portion of the population along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers valley. Hussein himself belonged to the powerful Al Bu Nasir tribe, whose 30,000 members inhabit the town of Tikrit and the surrounding area in north central Iraq. In fashioning his image as a Bedouin leader, Hussein linked his Iraq both to the succession of renowned pre-Islamic civilizations that

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Fig. 3.2  Faisal I, king of Iraq from 1921 to 1933, by unknown, 28 April 2011, accessed 21 July 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faisal_I_of_Iraq#/media/ File:1307109799_king-faisal-i-of-iraq-kopiya.jpg

flourished on the Tigris and Euphrates and to traditional Bedouin and Arab rulers. A key part of fostering this image was presenting himself, like Faisal, in traditional garb. Thus, in a typical image Hussein wears a white thawb, black agal, white shemagh, and black bisht and, in the manner of a Bedouin sheikh, is seated in front of a humble tent-like enclosure with a curtain of traditional keffiyeh cloth. The broad smile on his face conveys a sense of confidence and pride. In other images, Hussein linked his rule to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, creating the motto: Yesterday Nebuchadnezzar, today Saddam Hussein, a propagandistic used during the Iraq-Iran war (1980–1988) (Fig. 3.3).

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Fig. 3.3  Saddam in his youth, by unknown, 14 February 2008, original text: http:// mwcnews.net/content/view/11517/57/&h=334&w=270&sz=23&hl=en&start=1&u m=1&tbnid=QuZWurYIQufhsM:&tbnh=119&tbnw=96&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dsa ddam%2Byoung%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN

King Hussein bin Talal of Jordan Hussein bin Talal Al Hashemi, born in Amman in 1935, was the eldest son of Talal bin Abdullah, the King of Jordan (and earlier Transjordan), and succeeded his father in 1952; he then ruled the country until his death in 1999. King Hussein and his family, including his great-uncle Faisal, were Hashemites. Like the other leaders just discussed, the king wore traditional Bedouin garb. In one official image, for example (Fig. 3.4), he is shown greeting a crowd of Jordanians in a Western-style military uniform but with the traditional black agal and kuffiyeh. Again, the Bedouin influence on visual leadership is evident.

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Fig. 3.4  King Hussein of Jordan among his troops, 1 March 1957, by army photographer, 1 March 1957, accessed 21 July 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Hussein_of_Jordan#/media/File:King_Hussein_of_Jordan_among_his_troops_1_ March_1957.png

In another official image (Fig. 3.5), the king joins his soldiers in performing the traditional Bedouin dabkeh ‫دبكة‬, a dance that demonstrates his familiarity with the local cultural practices in which his people engage.

King Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia Abdulaziz bin Abdula Rahman bin Faisal bin Turki bin Abdullah bin Muhammad Al Saud (whose name well exemplifies the genealogical nomenclature discussed earlier in this chapter), born in Riyadh in 1875, founded the Saudi monarchy and reigned from 1932 until his death in 1953. His great achievement was to transform his position as a tribal leader into that of a national leader by unifying the various warring tribes in the greater part of the Arabian Peninsula. Throughout his career, Abdulaziz Al Saud also consistently presented himself in traditional garb,

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Fig. 3.5  King Hussein of Jordan dancing dabkeh with Bedouins, 1960, by unknown, 1 January 1960, accessed 21 July 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Hussein_of_Jordan#/media/File:King_Hussein_of_Jordan_dancing_dabkeh_with_ bedouins,_1960.jpg

as can be seen in a photograph of him and King Faisal of Iraq taken in 1922 (Fig. 3.6), before he ascended to the throne, where both men and two others accompanying them wear the thawb, shemagh, agal, and bisht; one of the latter has his hand on his jabiya. King Abdulaziz emphasized this aspect of his visual leadership as long as he reigned; thus, in a photograph of him with King Farouk I of Egypt (Fig. 3.7), both men wear, again, the shemagh, agal, and bisht and are surrounded by others in similar garb.

Emir Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah of Kuwait Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah, born in Kuwait City in 1929, is the fourth son of Sheikh Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah and has reigned as the Emir of Kuwait since January 2006. The Al-Sabah family is part of the

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Fig. 3.6  King Faisal I of Syria with King Abdul-Aziz of Saudi Arabia in the mid1920s, by unknown, 1920s, accessed 21 July 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Ibn_Saud#/media/File:King_Faisal_I_of_Syria_with_King_Abdul-Aziz_of_Saudi_ Arabia_in_the_mid-1920s.jpg

Utub (Bani Utbah ‫ )بني عتبة‬tribal confederation that came to Kuwait from Najd in Saudi Arabia in the early eighteenth century and belongs to the larger Anizah tribal confederation. In a typical official photo (Fig. 3.8), in which the Emir is preparing to meet the U.S. president, he is shown wearing traditional Bedouin attire, including a white thawb, black agal, white shemagh, and white bisht.

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Fig. 3.7  Farouk I of Egypt & Abdulaziz Al Saud, by unknown, 1945, accessed 21 July 2020, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Farouk_I_of_Egypt_%26_ Abdulaziz_Al_Saud.jpg

King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain Hamad bin Isa bin Salman Al Khalifa, born in Riffa, Bahrain in 1950, is the son of Sheikh Isa bin Salman Al Khalifa and reigned as Emir (Prince) from March 1999 until being crown the country’s first king in February

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Fig. 3.8  Emir Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah of Kuwait in 2009, The White House from Washington DC, 3 August 2019, accessed 21 July 2020, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sheikh_Sabah_IV.jpg

2002. Khalifa family, like Al-Sabah family, is originated from the Utub (Bani Utbah) who moved from Najd in Saudi Arabia and settled in Bahrain since the early of the eighteenth century. In a formal portrait (Fig. 3.9), his traditional Bedouin attire includes a white thawb, black agal, white and red kuffiyeh, and a light brown bisht trimmed with a golden braid; in addition, he is carrying red misbaha (prayer beads) in his hand.

Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman Qaboos bin Said bin Taimur Al Said, born in Salalah, Oman, in 1940, was the only son of Sultan Said bin Taimur and himself reigned as sultan

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Fig. 3.9  King of Bahrain Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa, U.S. Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist Julian Carroll, 22 January 2007, accessed 21 July 2020, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?sort=relevance&search=King+Ham ad+bin+Isa+Al+Khalifa+of+Bahrain&title=Special:Search&profile=advanced&full text=1&advancedSearch-current=%7B%7D&ns0=1&ns6=1&ns12=1&ns14=1&ns10 0=1&ns106=1#/media/File:Hamad-Bin-Isa-Al-Khalifa.jpg

from 1970 until his death in 2020. The Al Said tribe traces its roots to the Qahtani Al Azd tribe, which originated in Yemen. In a formal portrait, he appears wearing the traditional white thawb, a colored muzzar,12 a colored wazar,13 and a khanjar (an Omani version of the janbiya) (Fig. 3.10).  As mentioned in an earlier footnote, muzzar is the Arabic word for a traditional headdress worn by Omani men consisting of a square of woven wool or cotton fabric wrapped and folded into a turban. 13  Wazar is a woven cloth wrapped around the waist made from cotton, white or colored. 12

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Fig. 3.10  Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman, by unknown, 8 June 2013, accessed 21 July 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qaboos_bin_Said#/media/File:Sultan_ Qaboos_bin_Said.jpg

Among Bedouin leaders, then, a form of visual leadership has developed over the past century of representing themselves in traditional garb. As has been seen, leaders from King Faisal to King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa and the Emir of Kuwait have consistently presented themselves wearing the thawb, shemagh, agal, and bisht in their official photographs and portraits, even when, as was the case with an image shown above of King Hussein of Jordan (Fig.  3.4), they also wear modern military garb. Moreover, these leaders present themselves as traditional leaders to Bedouin and Arab audiences as well as in the presence of Western leaders.

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Having established this general trend in visual leadership, I now consider in detail how one modern Arab leader, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid of Dubai, uses the symbols discussed in this chapter and others to create a specific image of himself as a leader.

References Abu-Hakima, A. M. (1972). The development of the Gulf states. In D. Hopwood (Ed.), The Arabian Peninsula: Society and politics (pp.  31–53). London, England: George Allen and Unwin Ltd.. Al-Krenawi, A., & Graham, J. R. (1997). Social work and blood vengeance: The Bedouin-Arab case. British Journal of Social Work, 27(4), 515–528. Al-Krenawi, A., & Graham, J. R. (2005). A culture of desert survival: Bedouin proverbs from Sinai and the Negev. The Middle East Journal, 59(1), 165–166. Al-Krenawi, A., & Lightman, E. S. (2000). Learning achievement, social adjustment, and family conflict among Bedouin-Arab children from polygamous and monogamous families. Journal of Social Psychology, 140(3), 345–355. Al-Krenawi, A., & Slater, N. (2007). Bedouin Arab children use visual art as a response to the destruction of their homes in unrecognized villages. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 47(3), 288–305. Bailey, C. (2018). Bedouin culture in the Bible. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Bailey, C., & Hallo, W. W. (2014). A culture of desert survival: Bedouin proverbs from Sinai and the Negev. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Chatty, D. (2010). The Bedouin in contemporary Syria: The persistence of tribal authority and control. Middle East Journal, 64(1), 29–49. Esenova, S. (1998). “Tribalism” and identity in contemporary circumstances: The case of Kazakhstan. Central Asian Survey, 17(3), 443–462. Jabar, F. A., & Dawod, H. (2003). Tribal and power: Nationalism and ethnicity in the Middle East. London, England: Saqi. Lewis, B. (1993). The Arabs in history (6th ed.). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Mizel, O. (2009). Accountability in Arab Bedouin schools in Israel: Accountable to whom? Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 37(5), 624–644.

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Thomas, M. (2003). Bedouin Tribes and the Imperial intelligence Services in Syria, Iraq and Transjordan in the 1920s. Journal of Contemporary History, 38(4), 539–651. Yaphe, J. (2007). Tribalism in Iraq, the old and the new. Middle East Policy, 7(3), 51–58.

4 The Leader’s Perspective

The focus in this chapter is on the visual discourse of leadership established by publicly displayed images of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, the Bedouin leader of Dubai. The analysis comprised the first phase of the empirical research that I conducted for this project, as described in Chap. 1. In the following discussion, I describe the point of view that is established through a select set of official representations of Dubai’s leading business and political figure. As will become clear, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid draws on a tradition of self-representation by rulers in the region as traditional Bedouin tribal chiefs in the manner described in the previous chapter.

 heikh Mohammed bin Rashid S as a Visionary Leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum (hereafter, Sheikh Mohammed), born in Dubai in 1949, is the son of Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum and reigned as Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates and Ruler of Dubai from February 2006. Al Maktoum family © The Author(s) 2020 A. Bitar, Bedouin Visual Leadership in the Middle East, Palgrave Studies in Business, Arts and Humanities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57397-3_4

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descends from the Al Bu Falasah (Al-Falasi ‫ )بيت الفاليس‬a branch of the Bani Yas tribal federation (‫)بني ياس‬. Sheikh Mohammed has been widely recognized as a visionary Bedouin leader who enjoys the love and respect of his people and is considered largely responsible for building Dubai into an international city. This case study of representations of him sheds light on the ways in which local Bedouin leaders communicate visually with their followers and the ways in which the latter, in turn, decode the meanings and symbols embedded in visual representations of their leaders. As discussed in Chaps. 1 and 2, I have used some of the techniques of visual genealogy in my study of leadership from an aesthetic perspective, in particular by remaining attentive to the construction of meaning from social and historical perspectives as well as from the perspectives of frame and gaze described by Foucault. I familiarized myself with and indeed immersed myself in the visual representation of Sheikh Mohammed in various social settings. Also as mentioned in Chap. 1, I acted as an “insider” with respect to the Arab cultural context. In conducting this case study, I naturally collected as many visual representations of Sheikh Mohammed as I could; I present representative examples here. I found these materials online, in newspapers, and in other mass media, such as on billboards that are displayed throughout Dubai, which I photographed to create my own visual diary. One of the guiding assumptions of this project was that all visual material meant for public display forms part of a larger communication strategy on the part of leaders and their advisers to disseminate and reinforce their ideas, beliefs, and values. Following Guthey and Jackson (2005), I consider photographic portraits to be a powerful form of rhetoric and a discourse about identity and also, like Barthes (1981), one that is located “the intersection of two quite distinct procedures; one of a chemical order: the action of light on certain substances; the other of a physical order: the formation of the image through an optical device” (p. 11). On one level, any photo depicts a reality and captures a specific time and place, in which respect it documents the evidence of nature (Tagg, 1988).

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Sheikh Mohammed’s Bedouin Iconography The iconography of Sheikh Mohammed’s leadership has been based consistently on his achievements in building and positioning the small city-­ state of Dubai as a player on the world stage. A typical example is the formal state portrait of the sheikh with the UAE flag partly occupying one quarter of the photo. His direct gaze at the viewer conveys strength, legitimacy, and authority. The symbolism of the portrait is steeped in the rich Emirati culture; thus the sheikh is clad in the traditional garb described in Chap. 3: a white thawb, (again, a tunic-like garment), on his head a white shemagh (headscarf ) held in place by a black agal (headband), and, just visible, a very fine black and gold bisht (a formal cloak worn over the thawb), see Fig. 4.1.

Fig. 4.1  Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, President’s Secretariat, 26 March 2007, accessed 21 July 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_ bin_Rashid_Al_Maktoum#/media/File:Mohammed_bin_Rashid_Al_Maktoum.png

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The traditional dress stresses the sheikh’s tribal roots and Arab Bedouin background, which is also something that he emphasizes in his rhetoric: “I am, after all, the son of an Arab tribe, and tribal people are schooled and groomed in wisdom and a keen awareness of future possibilities, more by their parents than by schools. … Their teachers were the members of their tribes” (Maktoum, 2012, p. 31). The sheikh’s deep gaze suggests inner dignity and peace and reflects his philosophy that, in his own words, “A good leader crystallizes his vision, defines its objectives, navigates its development, and supervises its implementation. … This should be done with one goal in mind: that of serving the people and enhancing the status of the country” (p. 38). The portrait by representing the sheikh in this manner, places his leadership in a tribal context, suggesting that his concern is for his tribe’s prosperity and that of the state that his tribe has become. The deployment of tribal symbols in this image thus forges an implicit connection to the sheikh’s ancestors, as is again reflected in his words on the subject: The tree of leadership can be neither planted nor removed, for it is deeply rooted in genealogy, upbringing, and instinct, while its branches have been perfected by factors such as time, wisdom, science, expertise, experience, dexterity, and contact with others, assimilating their skills. (Maktoum, 2012, p. 44)

Again as discussed in the previous chapter, genealogy is a key aspect of Bedouin culture and the basis for an individual’s social status and a leader’s right to rule. It is common in all public areas to see a set of three portraits of the leading Sheikhs in Dubai: Sheikh Mohammed appears on the left; in the center is Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, ruler of Abu Dhabi and president of the UAE; and on the right is Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed Al Maktoum, the crown prince of Dubai. All three of these formal state portraits are set against the background of the UAE flag. Sheikh Mohammed’s portrait in this group looks different from the image in Fig. 4.1; the sheikh’s visage in the formal portraits occupies the entire central space of the photo, largely obscuring the UAE flag. His gaze is powerful and authoritative, though in this case he does not look directly

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at the viewer as the crown prince does. This gaze into the distance gives the viewer the perception that the sheikh is thinking about the future. Once again, and as in most of his formal portraits, Sheikh Mohammed is wearing the traditional thawb, agal, shemagh, and bisht. Particularly noteworthy is the angle or perspective of the photograph, which, having been taken from below, is suggestive of his high rank and importance as a leader, at least according to some of the artists whose work is discussed in the following chapter.

Triumph Sheikh Mohammed introduced a gesture, using the thumb, forefinger, and middle finger to form initials of three words that stand for an important message for Dubai as quality is a way of life. The three fingers in a salute represents a letter of the Arabic alphabet and, by custom, the three words “triumph,” “victory,” and “Arab.” Also they represent three English words “win”, “victory,” and “love”. The gesture has been a key feature of the sheikh’s iconography, having been immortalized in a large statue in Burj Khalifa Park (Fig. 4.2). The sheikh explained the meaning of this gesture in a poem titled, fittingly, “Triumph” (2014, the English translation was done by an unnamed individual in the sheikh’s media office): Signifying great victory, I raised my hand triumphant. I yearn solely for the First, my eyes only upon the best. Three letters are my symbol, among Arabs it is known: Triumph, victory … distinct from foreign signs. I am an Arab … honored and passionately driven, An Arabian horse I ride, distinguished by excellence. O Teller of great triumphs, inscribe the brightest words, About us and prosperity, it ascends to farthest stars. Though I journey on dark nights, I am fond of light and joy, Where ambitious men dwell, I find myself at home. He who defies time meets an invincible opponent; Yet time I do challenge, upon a horse and on foot. By winning I am impassioned, for it feeds a fiery soul,

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Fig. 4.2  Statue of Sheikh Mohammed’s hand making the gesture of triumph in Burj Khalifa Park, by Bitar, A. 2020

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Born among people who from giving never bore. My horse is among the finest, for her pain I know the cure. I comprehend her thoughts, and she discerns mine. My vast knowledge about her within deepest oceans found. Nurtured by my deeds, she drank like the glorious. Among more than fifty nations whose feats are renowned, One hundred and sixty kilometers stretched vastly beyond. Arduous moments prolonged on most perilous paths, Horses were bewildered facing hardship and terror. Every rider who withdraws or rests is forgiven, Except us, for our souls are ambitiously driven. In this manner, we have been raised, amid passion and fervor, Every trial we confront with determination and valor. We have won, and all Arabs celebrate with joy, After a harsh challenge, sweet victory we enjoy. This triumph we proudly gift with sentiments sincere, To Khalifa, the Leader, and our people who we endear.

There exists a strong connection between the visual and textual articulations of any message that Bedouin leaders wish to communicate to their audience. Poems have served as a means of expression for the Bedouin for thousands of years, and Sheikh Mohammed is a master of this form of communication. Sheikh Mohammed’s public image making the gesture of triumph (image name “Gesture of Triumph”) shows him wearing the thawb with the traditional agal and shemagh on his head, but he is not clad in the bisht that appears in his formal photos. In Bedouin society, the absence of the bisht conveys a sense of informality and suggests hard work. It is an important message that the sheikh has sought to communicate to the Emirati youth: the need for hard work in order to achieve their goals. Likewise, in place of the rather stern expression that he shows in the previous photos, Sheikh Mohammed in this image is smiling. With his head, chest, and right hand raised high, he here communicates to viewers of the billboard the strength, dignity, and happiness of a leader who feels victorious in having achieved his vision. As scholars have observed, bodily gestures in addition to the use of the vertical dimension of space can serve to make visible and schematize power (Schubert, 2004).

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 istorical Context: A Map Showing Sheikh H Mohammed’s Achievements Three more representations of the sheikh are presented in a map of the city of Dubai that was displayed in the main atrium of the Dubai Mall. The map emphasizes the major achievements in the form of key landmarks in the development of the city. At the top center is a formal portrait of the sheikh, and on the left side of the portrait are printed his three titles, “UAE Vice President, Prime Minister, and Ruler of Dubai.” The text provides the sheikh’s full name, “His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin [“son of ”] Rashid Al Maktoum.” Al Maktoum is the name of the family or tribe, and it is noteworthy that the use of the sheikh’s full name in this official representation makes clear his ancestry and tribal affiliation. Below this image and title and above the map is a timeline showing the four members of the Maktoum family who have led their tribe and the modern city-state of Dubai. In the top panel of the map, then, the sheikh appears as a visionary leader because he in effect oversees, and by extension is responsible for, both Dubai’s recent history, represented in the middle panel, and the city itself, depicted in the lower panel. The timeline includes a second image of the sheikh, facing left toward his predecessors, the positioning of which suggests that his family’s success has continued from one generation to the next through hard work and the pursuit of a clear vision for the future. Here again the sheikh is wearing formal garb (thawb, agal, shemagh, and bisht), as he does in the larger image, showing that he is enjoying and celebrating great achievements. Sheikh Mohammed’s hard work in guiding Dubai through its transformation into a powerful modern city-state is evoked by the second representation of him on the map, located in the lower right corner. In this image, as in the one in the top panel, he is wearing the thawb, agal, and shemagh; he is not wearing the formal bisht but instead informal clothing. Again, the message seems to be that young UAE nationals should roll up their sleeves and work hard to contribute to the greatness of Dubai. Below this portrait is a quote by the sheikh, in Arabic as is the rest of the text on the map, emphasizing his forward thinking, “I believe in the future, and would like you to share my belief. We must collectively apply ourselves to shape our future.”

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The Sheikh’s Messages In the following discussion, I analyze these images of Sheikh Mohammed in terms of the messages that they are meant to convey. Behind each is the story of a visionary leader who has realized a great dream by turning a piece of desert with few resources into one of the world’s main business hubs. As an insider to the culture of Dubai, I detect, based on my subjective analysis, a set of five main messages encoded within the images of the sheikh presented so far: • First message: Sheikh Mohammed is a visionary leader. Thus, in all of his formal photographs, he is shown gazing intently into the distance. • Second message: Sheik Mohammed is a traditional Bedouin leader. Thus, most of his formal photos depict him wearing traditional Emirati dress (i.e., a thawb, agal, shemagh, and, less often, bisht). Moreover, the association of his images with texts alludes to the fact the sheikh, as just noted, has written and published poetry in Arabic, as Bedouins have traditionally done for centuries. Thus the sheikh’s traditional discourse frequently combines the visual messages of his portraiture with the textual messages conveyed in his poetry. • Third message: Sheikh Mohammed is a strong leader. Thus, he is depicted as masculine (e.g., with facial hair, as is expected in Arab society) and showing a penetrating look. Masculinity is, of course, connected with leadership in many social contexts, and this is nowhere more true than in Bedouin society. • Fourth message: Sheikh Mohammed is a hardworking leader; thus he is depicted in some images without the formal bisht. His aforementioned three-finger gesture and poetry reinforce this message. • Fifth message: Sheikh Mohammed is a legitimate and authoritative sovereign; thus the UAE flag is evident in his formal photos. The combined effect of these messages is to communicate visually that the sheikh is a modern Bedouin leader worthy of the devotion of young Emiratis. His images reinforce the notion that he is a visionary leader, as

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do such statements as “they say the sky is the limit for ambition. We say: The sky is only the beginning” (Makhtoum, n.d.). Supporting these messages is the disciplinary power behind the leader’s photographs. My analysis of the few photographs that the communication team of the office of Sheikh Mohammed has formally circulated suggests that these messages are intended for an audience consisting of subordinates and followers, who, as just discussed, are encouraged to work toward the desired society and to feel loyalty toward the leader. Through such visual materials, the audience is invited to construct a certain discourse that normalizes a specific perception of the sheikh’s leadership. In order to deepen the analysis, in the following discussion and Chaps. 6 and 7, I consider the images of the sheikh from the following perspectives: 1. the role of the visual materials, mainly formal photographs, in developing a predesigned discourse; 2. following Foucault, the inevitable resistance to the application of power and knowledge; and, 3. again following Foucault, the capacity of visual materials, such as prominently displayed photographs, to act as a virtual panopticon that internalizes self-discipline and fosters loyalty toward a particular leader through the leader’s gaze upon the subjects of his or her leadership discourse (Newton, 1994). The fundamental notion, then, is that the physical body plays an important role in constructing images of leadership, especially with respect to the manner in which leaders look and the gaze in their eyes. The eyes, then, represent and act as a powerful panoptical tool. So it was that Orwell (1949) described the eyes of Big Brother as “always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, working or eating, indoors or out doors, in the bath or in bed—no escape” (p. 18). In like manner, Sinclair (2005) stressed that leadership is a bodily practice in which such factors as physical shape, features, stances, movements, styles of speaking, and amount of eye contact play central roles in the reception of a leader’s messages, asserting that “The body is a powerful player in the construction of leadership” (p.  389). This is why it is

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important that leaders’ visual representations, either a photo or a painting, can illustrate the refection of the bodily practice of leadership, hence, Tagg (1988) argued that “The transparency of the photograph is its most powerful rhetorical device” (p. 35). Turning now to social media, Sheikh Mohammed has maintained active accounts on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook through which his team communicates what he does on a daily basis to an audience that, as of February 2017, numbered 7.5 million on Twitter and 3.6 million on Facebook, with a high level of interactivity among them. On his LinkedIn profile, the sheikh says of his government, “We are building a new reality for our people, a new future for our children, and a new model of development.” As mentioned, the government’s communication strategy has been based on inspiring its citizens to be creative and innovative. Sheikh Mohammed’s communication team uses visual media and emerging media technologies very effectively in terms of the number of followers and their interactions with his posts. Thus, for instance, the number of followers of his LinkedIn page grew from 1.2 million on February 2017 to more than 2.3 million in November 2019, and that of his Facebook followers from 3.2 million on February 2017 to more than 3.8 million on November 9, 2019. It is readily apparent that the sheikh’s social media efforts have two main targets, namely Emirati nationals who belong to Bedouin society and are targeted with a message about the value of work through posts in the Arabic language and other nationals, including UAE expatriates, living in the UAE who are addressed in English with a message about the sheikh’s vision for Dubai. An article on the LinkedIn page in Arabic targeting Emirati nationals; it is about a meeting of Sheikh Mohammed with various Emirati and Saudi officials to discuss initiatives and projects designed to strengthen relations among them. In visual terms, it is immediately noteworthy that the image shows only men in traditional Emirati and Saudi traditional dress. One message here seems to be that this context is reserved for Emiratis and Saudis. The English-language article on the sheikh’s LinkedIn page titled “Why the Year of Giving?” exemplifies the message with which the government is targeting non-UAE nationals. This message challenges the stereotypical image of the oil-rich Gulf states as highly

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materialist societies with no tradition of social services or volunteerism— as is, indeed, the case with many other capitalist societies. Here the sheikh is introducing what are cast as new concepts for citizens of the UAE to embrace in terms of giving back to society; certainly, these concepts have only been operative in Dubai since it became a modern city-state. This image takes the theme of the hardworking sheikh even further, as he is depicted in traditional garb—clad in a thawb, agal, and shemagh but, this being an informal occasion, no bisht—after a meeting with Emirati and Saudi governmental employees as part of an effort to strengthen the relationship between the two countries. Notably, Sheikh Mohammed always appears distinguished in his photos. Thus, in the Women’s Day image, Arabic-language article about Sheikh Mohammed’s participation in a Women’s Day celebration on his LinkedIn page, March 7, 2017, Sheikh. Mohammed stands as the sole man, clad in white, surrounded by women, who wear black; the image illustrates both his benevolence toward women and their deference to his authority. Moreover, he is always in these images surrounded by UAE locals, though they comprise less than 20% of the total population of Dubai, seemingly in order to convey the message that his focus remains on them rather than the majority expatriate population. This message is reinforced by the tendency in these official photographs to depict the sheikh wearing traditional local garb. The Women’s Day image shows, to be more specific, an Arabic-­ language post about the celebration of Women’s Day that again targets Emirati nationals. In this photograph, Sheikh Mohammed stands in the middle surrounded by dozens of Emirati women in traditional dress, all of whom are raising the three-fingered salute in a message of loyalty to and endorsement of his leadership and vision. This is a good example of the use of visuals to communicate a certain message to a certain target audience, since only those familiar with the culture can decode the hand gesture—or note that the sheikh is dressed informally. In this case, he appears to be looking directly at the camera or audience, and he wears a smile or expression indicating his satisfaction regarding the great advances made by Emirati women in recent years and his enjoyment of the Women’s Day celebration.

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Another image of Sheikh Mohammed (image name “Surprise Visit”) in a local media outlet shows him walking through the streets of Dubai, dated February 25, 2017; this image accompanies an English-language article about what is described as a “surprise visit” to a newly developed part of the city. He is surrounded by and engaged in conversation with his people, a green traffic light clearly visible behind him as he crosses the street using the crosswalk, clad traditional garb—thawb, agal, and shemagh—but, this being an informal occasion, no bisht. The following analysis takes into account a few more photos of Sheikh Mohammed that are representative of five recurrent themes. These themes, some of which have been evident in images already shown, together create a holistic impression of the sheikh as a traditional, religious, compassionate, high-achieving, and visionary leader. The first theme is that of a traditional Bedouin leader. The Sheikh presents himself as a Bedouin leader largely by wearing a traditional dress and engaging in traditional activities. The elements of traditional dress in which he is nearly always clothed in the images of him have already been described, namely the thawb, agal, shemagh, and bisht. The sheikh is dressed traditionally but informally. Regarding the traditional lifestyle, Sheikh Mohammed is shown seated on the ground in the traditional Bedouin manner in a Bedouin tent. At other times, he is shown interacting with animals that play important roles in Bedouin life, including a horse, a camel, and a falcon. Horses, camels, and falcons are also mentioned frequently in Sheikh Mohammed’s poems, as the following examples show. I am an Arab … honored and passionately driven An Arabian horse I ride, distinguished by excellence. (“Triumph,” 2014) My horse is among the finest, her pain I know the cure. I comprehend her thoughts, and she discerns mine. (“Triumph”) And that I love horses, my sweet concern. (“To the Equestrienne”) Seeing lightning, past and present Lightning from your side flashes, I and my camels follow. (“Jilted”) Congratulations, as many as the horses that ran, Widespread as the scent of the trees so high.

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And the son of the noble, you find him a knight and a falconer, Ready to face the most arduous paths, fearing not their danger. (“Unsurpassed”)

The second key theme is that Sheikh Mohammed is proud of his religion. Thus he is shown performing the Umrah (one form of pilgrimage to Mecca), touring the Holy City and offering morning prayers during Eid al Fitr. The third theme is that of a leader who takes good care of his people. This notion is conveyed by images such as one in which Sheikh Mohammed is shown visiting an elder care home and in which he shares a friendly moment with a young student. The fourth theme is that of an achiever; thus, Sheikh Mohammed is depicted in Western athletic garb after having received the individual and team gold medals at the FEI World Endurance Championship in the United Kingdom (“Victory achieved by hard work and persistence,” 2012). Depictions of the sheikh’s achievements also reference his public works projects, many of which were included in the map of Dubai discussed earlier; thus another image shows the sheikh gazing out over an airport. The fifth theme has also already been introduced in the discussion of the first image of the sheikh (Fig. 4.1); it is that of the visionary leader. This theme is similarly reinforced in another image which represents quite literally the sheikh’s “vision” with respect to “challenges in the race for excellence” and in which he displays the piercing gaze noted earlier. This gaze, which is also evident in many other of the official images seen in this chapter, is projected near but beyond the viewer of the image, giving the impression of a leader whose vision perceives each of his subjects and represents them all. I close this chapter by observing that the role of visual representation of leadership is as important in the region inhabited by the Bedouin as it is in other parts of the world despite the region’s aniconism. The connections among language (poems), images (leader’s images), and symbols (the three-finger sign of victory) are manifestations of the social construction of reality and the discourse-driven production of knowledge. The discourse embodied in the photographs of the sheikh—and most of the

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images discussed here are photographs—reveals a sophisticated understanding of the leadership process from a visual perspective. What I mean is that the transmitted images of the traditional leader engage in a discourse that is structured socially and that viewers can use to make sense of his relationship to themselves and the society to which they belong. In this respect, Sheikh Mohammed’s visual leadership builds on that of earlier figures such as King Faisal while engaging with modern forms of communication such as social media. The above discussion, then, has made clear the importance of visuals in shaping a socially constructed process of leadership within the Bedouin community. I accordingly view the role of visuals in leadership in the terms suggested by Griffey and Jackson (2010), who argued that a leader’s portrait may function as a “virtual leader in terms of its latent and enduring influence upon followers” (p.  133). That being the case, a leader’s images, when analyzed together, can provide a holistic and integrated archetype of leadership.

References Barthes, R. (1981). Camera lucida: Reflections on photography. [La Chambre claire], (trans: Howard, R.). New York, NY: Hill and Wang. Griffey, E., & Jackson, B. (2010). The portrait as leader: Commissioned portraits and the power of tradition. Leadership, 6(2), 133–157. Guthey, E., & Jackson, B. (2005). CEO portraits and the authenticity paradox. Journal of Management Studies, 42, 1057–1082. Maktoum, S. M. b. R. A. (2012). My vision: Challenges in the race for excellence. Dubai, United Arab Emirates: Motivate Publishing. Maktoum, S.  M. b. R.  A. (2014). Triumph. Retrieved from http://www. sheikhmohammed.ae/vgn-ext-templating/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=c179a 3e04522a310VgnVCM1000003f64a8c0RCRD&vgnextchannel=a9499454 bc594310VgnVCM1000004d64a8c0RCRD&vgnextfmt=default&dat e=1349260475847&category=c1588290abf34110VgnVCM100000 3f140a0aRCRD Maktoum, S. M. b. R. A. (n.d.). Quotes. Retrieved from https://sheikhmohammed.ae/en-us/quotes

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Newton, T. J. (1994). Discourse and agency: The example of personnel psychology and “assessment centers”. Organisation Studies, 15(6), 879–902. Orwell, G. (1949). Nineteen eighty-four. London, England: Signet Classics. Schubert, T. W. (2004). The power in your hand: Gender differences in bodily feedback from making a fist. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 757–769. Sinclair, A. (2005). Body possibilities in leadership. Leadership, 1(4), 387–406. Tagg, J. (1988). The burden of representation: Essays on photographies and histories. Minneapolis, MI: The University of Minnesota Press.

5 The Artist’s Voice

In this chapter, I focus on the creation of visual images by presenting the results of semi-structured, in-depth interviews with eight Arab artists. Taken together, these interviews present a nuanced picture of the communication process, including the context and the content of the message. In discussing these artists’ work, I draw attention to its social, cultural, and historical dimensions. In keeping with the overall theme of this book, my focus is on the visuality of leadership discourse, in particular the visualization of heroism as part of a social discursive process. In sum, I sought insights into these artists’ notions of leadership, power, authority, discourse, surveillance, heroism, and the gaze. The artists whom I interviewed came from diverse backgrounds. Some painted portraits (Arnaut, Rafai, Kawoosh, and Al Halyan) and some did not (Makki, Sabour, Al Sayed, and Murib); some were living in the UAE and others elsewhere. All were speakers of Arabic who had lived a large part or all of their lives in one or more Arab country and were connected to Bedouin society, making them insiders with regard to my research. The interviewees included one female Emirati artist and seven male artists: one Emirati artist, three Syrian artists living in the UAE, one Syrian artist

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living in Syria, an Iraqi artist living in the Netherlands, and an Iraqi artist living in Canada.1 The interview questions concerned the artist’s subjects, what they aimed to deliver through their art, how they represented leaders, leadership, the concept of power, and the influence of Bedouin society on their paintings. I also asked about the artistic process, including their use of color and light, and how they represented the UAE and other governments. The first interview that I conducted for this project served as a kind of pilot for the subsequent interviews and as the basis for a list of general questions that I prepared for them. Regarding the influence of the Bedouin society on the artists’ paintings, I asked the artists about • • • • •

aspects of Bedouin society that influenced their paintings, their use of colors, light, and so on to convey ideas, their representation of the government under which they lived, whether their work had been used in commercial contexts, and how a painting can communicate a powerful message.

The main aim of the interviews was to gain insights into how artists come up with ideas and articulate them visually and the Bedouin sociocultural influence on their art. Through my conversations with the eight artists, I gained insight into the second component of the communication process discussed in Chap. 1, the content of messages, by looking at “leadership acts in artistic terms, both from a localized, folk art perspective and from a formal artworld one” (Barry & Meisiek, 2010, p. 343). In the following discussion, then, I introduce each of the artists and highlight conversations that address the issues and themes that are the subject of this book.

 I conducted all of the interviews in Arabic, six of them face-to-face, one by phone, and one by Skype, and recorded and transcribed all of them for analysis. 1

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Fawaz Arnaut The first artist whom I interviewed was Fawaz Arnaut (b. 1955), a Syrian who had painted a number of local leaders in his home studio in the UAE over a period of 35 years.2 Arnaut first began to paint as a child and studied under the well-known and European-trained Syrian artist Louay Kayali (1934–1978), who was also known for his portraits, in Aleppo. Arnaut moved to Dubai in the mid-1980s, where he came to specialize in portraits and caricatures and in digital paintings. Among Arnaut’s subjects has been Sheikh Mohammed, as shown in Figs. 5.1 and 5.2.

Fig. 5.1  Fawaz Arnaut, Sheikh Mohammed gazing into the distance, 2013. Acrylic on canvas, 50 cm × 70 cm

 Our interview took place on September 2015.

2

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Fig. 5.2  Fawaz Arnaut, Sheikh Mohammed making the three-finger sign, 2013. Digital on Coral Draw 29.4 cm × 41.3 cm, printed on canvas

According to Arnaut, portraiture requires extensive experience with a subject in order to obtain a sense of his or her personality. From his perspective, what distinguishes the artist from a camera is sensitivity to the subject’s psychology: The professional portrait artist draws the person and not just the outer figure. Drawing a person includes all of the feelings of joy and sadness, love, affection, and anger within them and sometimes even other psychological features, in addition to the artistic touch and technique.

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Poor portraits, by contrast, are created hastily in the streets and without attention to the subject’s inner feelings: In fact, the worst kind of art of portrait is one drawn fast and instantaneously, for example by workshop artists drawing on the roads. Some of these drawings are very good and some are very bad; but, of course, this kind of painting is not true portraiture, but rather a momentary opportunity to make money. The first tips for the art of portraiture are to know the person, in addition to a good knowledge of the artist’s technique of painting portraiture in terms of lighting, angle, and clothing.

Arnaut asserted that, when he was asked to paint a portrait of a dignitary, the resulting artwork represented his own view of and feelings toward his subject, whether positive, as a figure to be respected, or negative, as a figure to be feared or hated. In a sense, he viewed this approach to his craft as a reflection of his culture: We have to admit that people in the Middle East are very emotional; hence, it is important for us to express our feelings toward anything we see in our daily life. As an artist, I am not neutral when it comes to expressing what I feel toward a certain leader when I paint him; therefore, you can see how I feel toward this certain leader in the portrait I paint. Either I like him— and you can feel that, in the portrait, he is a good leader—or I don’t like him—and you can feel that reflected in the portrait in the use of dark colors and [representation of ] a tough, gloomy, sulky face.

The work of artists who hold this view, then, is not focused on representing the personality of a leader dispassionately. Rather, they make use of various visual effects in order to create a distinctive, personalized rendering. In some cases, Arnaut observed, an artist may be called upon to hide flaws in a leader’s appearance that could detract from the representation of power: Yes, we face these situations in most cases and react by choosing the proper angle and lighting that help hide flaws and show strength, especially when the person is a leading figure who is of a high level of importance.

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From the perspective of an established portrait artist such as Arnaut, then, the key to depicting a leader is being sufficiently acquainted with the subject so as to form a personal opinion. That opinion should then inform the artist’s work, being reflected in its color scheme and the facial expression of the figure being depicted. Likewise, an artist may choose to hide flaws in a leader’s appearance in order to maximize the impression of strength and heroism that a portrait projects.

Ismail Rafai Born in Almiyad in eastern Syria in 1967, Ismail Rafai (who has also worked as a writer) studied fine arts at Damascus University and moved to Sharjah in the UAE in 2000. Unlike Arnaut, Rafai has worked, not as a portrait artist, but as a fine artist, in keeping with his training.3 According to Rafai, the natives of the part of the Arabian Peninsula that is now the UAE—who are Bedouins and represent less than 20% of the total population of the country4—accept the legitimacy of the leadership of the various sheikhs and their families. In this country, there is a recognition of the legitimacy of the leaders. These leaders belong to the families and clans historically recognized as representing them. Actually, according to custom, these clans derive their legitimacy from the existence of deeply-rooted social concepts and convictions.

This artist, then, described the legitimacy of the current UAE leadership as resting on three main principles, the first being the prevailing patriarchal tribal system, under which one family rules the tribe and possesses the right to choose the leader according to its own consensus and succession traditions. The second principle is the historical heritage of the first, in that a tribe would be unimaginable without a family leading it. The

 I conducted the interview at his atelier in Sharjah on February 2016.  The population of the UAE numbered 8.3 million as of the end of 2010, of whom fewer than 1 million (947,947) were native Bedouins (https://www.government.ae/en/information-and-­ services/social-affairs/preserving-the-emirati-national-identity/population-and-demographic-mix) 3 4

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third principle is the right possessed by certain families to maintain leadership of their tribes. Rafai went on to discuss the main differences between the model of tribal leadership operative in the UAE and those in other Arab countries, which for him were located mainly in the more patriarchal nature of the former. On this basis, he distinguished the governments of the various emirates from the autocratic and indeed tyrannical regime of the Assad family in Syria. Thus citizens of the UAE accepted and appreciated their leaders (i.e., the sheikhs), and a mutual appreciation obtained between these rulers, members of established families that may have ruled for decades, and the ruled. Whenever citizens are in need, they turn to their leaders. An autocratic leader, by contrast, compels acceptance as a de facto head of the family. Dubai, as a city-state within the UAE, is led according to the sociocultural and historical relationships that bind the tribe together. The key to this emirate’s success has been its visionary tribal leader, but in fact his model of leadership is specific to Dubai’s distinctive sociocultural and historical settings. Not surprisingly, the two models—the tribal patriarchy typical of the UAE and the autocracy that has long ruled Syria—have given rise to different forms of visual discourse. Rafai had a historical perspective on these issues. Thus he recounted having interviewed an elderly individual about the transformation of life in Ras Al Khaiyma. “There is the sheikh’s palace there,” he told me, pointing at the palace, which still exists. The sheikh is always there, and his palace is as well-tended. … These concepts are related to customs and are historically rooted in the form of the tribe; these concepts are the main laws that govern the movement of the social context. Hence, in this emerging country, there is a mix between modernity and patriarchal, tribal, and civil laws at the same time; there is an agreed-upon tribal discourse in this country.

From his perspective, the historically deep-rooted norms and traditions of the Bedouin have permeated their collective unconsciousness and given rise to a broadly accepted discourse according to which a certain family takes the lead and retains the right to nominate the successor to the present ruler, and the people must agree with their decision. In today’s

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UAE, this discourse takes the form of a blend of modern, patriarchal, and tribal values that fosters a consensus between the rulers and the ruled. This discourse is also entirely consistent with Islamic discourse that values founding fathers, patriarchal values, and established families and thereby instills in the collective unconscious of the Bedouin people the notion that the ruling system is divinely ordained and should not be questioned. This Bedouin discourse, according to Rafai, is reflected visually in images of the Emirati sheikhs. It conveys the sense of sacredness, along with the love and respect, that is felt for Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the founding father of the UAE and reflected in portraits of him. In Rafai’s words, The use of this form of pictures for a certain number of sheikhs is to establish and influence people. This is a thoughtful and not arbitrary idea, and it is not an Emirati invention; images have been used throughout history to influence people.

This observation is connected to another that Rafai made in regard to the creative process and the motivation that powerful emotional experiences provide to artists to create artworks of great feeling that communicate ideas. He went on to discuss his personal experiences from 2012 to 2015 during the horror of the Syrian war, the grief that he felt at seeing his home city destroyed and members of his family killed, and the effect that these experiences had on his art: I see my people, my family killed, my memories, my entire existence; you are drawing a scene that is extremely difficult, one that you can only refer to through symbols like these. I produced a collection of paintings in which the horror is very obvious—horror, death, dead people, shards, pain, sadness, grief—all of these grey paintings. You can see here a monster or a demon with a corpse, here a desperate human who has surrendered to his fate and fully accepted it; crying, screaming, horror. I was working to create my own visual formula to embody that frightful reality as a witness from one side and a narrator from another side. The main shift happened in me as a narrator; when you shift between being a witness and being a narrator, you can see that dramatic dimension of the scene. Hence, you want to proclaim that we need to live differently. Where is the salvation? You c­ annot

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get rid of the enormity of what you see. Then I stopped painting for around four to five months.

This intensely emotional lived experience changed Rafai and his artistic style, leading to what he called his “Grey Period”—being characterized by monochromatic grey and blood-red images—which manifested visually his grief, anger, horror, and melancholy (Figs. 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, and 5.6). Then, in 2015, he began to transition into his “Savior Period,” prompted by his question, “Where is salvation?” (Figs.  5.7, 5.8, 5.9, and 5.10). Rafai also spoke of the link between his mental and physical state and the art that he produced:

Fig. 5.3  Ismail Rafai, [Grey Period 1]. Acrylic on canvas, 180 cm × 180 cm

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Fig. 5.4  Ismail Rafai, [Grey Period 2]. Acrylic on canvas, 180 cm × 180 cm

Once I was sitting here, I was mentally absent, there was a blank canvas on the stand, I started to paint [while] fully mentally absent. This was my first different work, the Messiah; it was a turning point for me. I was feeling sick inside; I was not normal. I was deeply shocked. I was working without anything on my mind, and then, after I stayed for a full month at home, really sick, as if I was a mad person. I had a bad toothache; I went to a dentist, and he told me that there was nothing wrong. I tried various painkillers, including morphine, but in vain; the only thing I was thinking of was this painting.

Rafai’s sensations drove him to paint; his unconscious thoughts directed his body to act according to certain sensations.

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Fig. 5.5  Ismail Rafai, [Grey Period 3], Acrylic on canvas, 180 cm × 180 cm

Rafai in his interview thus focused on two main issues. First, delving deeply into Bedouin society as a whole, he identified its particular tribal and patriarchal structure as the basis of society in the UAE, according to which one family rules by historical right while enjoying the support of the other families, and he distinguished this structure from that elsewhere in the Middle East. For this reason, he argued, the depiction of Emirati leaders and the reception of these depictions were distinct from the use and reception of images of other Arab leaders. Second, Rafai spoke of the profound impact of his personal experience of grief, horror, and anger in war-torn Syria on his artwork. Third, for Rafai as for the other painters whom I interviewed, poetry is a substantial expressive tool that can

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Fig. 5.6  Ismail Rafai, [Grey Period 4]. Acrylic on canvas, 180 cm × 180 cm

complement an artist’s visual construction of reality. Rafai had a great poetic gift and used words to express ideas as powerfully and effectively as he did with a brush. Thus Figs. 5.11, 5.12, and 5.13 present portions of a recent work entitled Painter’s Book in which he blended image and text so as to blur the distinction between the two.

Dr. Najat Makki Dr. Najat Makki (b. 1956; her name is also sometimes transliterated as “Maky”) has been recognized as a pioneer of the contemporary Emirati art scene; she was also the only woman among the artists interviewed for

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Fig. 5.7  Ismail Rafai, [Savior Period-1]. Acrylic on canvas

this part of my research. Makki earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in relief sculpture and metal and later (2001) a doctorate in art at the College of Fine Arts in Cairo. Like Rafai, her focus has been on fine art, though she has also been called upon to paint portraits.5 According to Makki, geography has had a deep impact on Bedouin society; in the case of Dubai, it is the experience of living close to both the sea and the desert.

 Our interview was conducted at a coffee shop in Dubai on April 2016.

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Fig. 5.8  Ismail Rafai, [Savior Period-2]. Acrylic on canvas, 180 cm × 180 cm

Fig. 5.9  Ismail Rafai, [Savior Period-3]. Acrylic on canvas, 300 cm × 150 cm

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Fig. 5.10  Ismail Rafai, The Last Supper, 2014. Acrylic on canvas, 300 cm × 150 cm

I, through living near the sea, was influenced by the sea and its blue color. In some of my paintings, I used the image of the desert, I used the shades of yellow to represent desert. (see Fig. 5.14)

Thus, for example, another of her paintings (Fig.  5.17) constructs visual discourse through the juxtaposition of symbolic colors—the blue of the sea, the white of a seagull, the yellow and orange of the desert, and the green of palm trees and oases. The colors in turn invoke various sounds, such as the calmness of the desert and the distinctive sound of camels moving across it and the echo of poems sung by shepherds, and, though Makki’s work is often not overtly figurative, it is suggestive of such images as the light of the full moon on the vast desert or the glow of a fire seen from afar in the night that promises the generosity with which Bedouins welcome guests. At night you see the rising of the fire always glowing; here there is another impression that this fire is kindled for a guest. … A series of paintings that I have done portrayed the image of yellow and white. As for the desert, along with various shades of orange, the color white represents the purity and serenity of the Bedouin people of the UAE and their good heart. (Fig. 5.15)

Fig. 5.11  Ismail Rafai, Painter’s Book, 2019. Ink on handmade paper, 50 cm × 36 cm

Fig. 5.12  Ismail Rafai, Painter’s Book, 2019. Ink on handmade paper, 50 cm × 36 cm

Fig. 5.13  Ismail Rafai, Painter’s Book, 2019. Charcoal on handmade paper, 50 cm × 36 cm

Fig. 5.14  Najat Makki, Between the Sea and the Desert, 2011. Acrylic on canvas

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Fig. 5.15  Najat Makki, Untitled, 1990. This painting suggests what the artist described as the “welcoming glow” of the desert. Acrylic on canvas

As Makki went on to note, Islamic values and traditions reject artistic representations of the human form, for which reason the ownership or public display of portraiture and sculpture representing is a fraught issue in many Islamic countries (Fig. 5.16). The patient efforts of a few pioneering Emirati artists and other members of society have been changing the way in which people look at representational art so that these forms of art are perceived less as idolatrous and more as a source of aesthetic pleasure. Makki certainly saw her role as an artist in these terms: I studied sculpture, and, when I came back home, the community was not welcoming of that kind of art. Sculptures are seen as idols from the perspective of religious belief … and we as artists must deliver a message to the community. Gradually, UAE society began to accept modern abstract sculpture in particular.

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Fig. 5.16  Najat Makki, Formation. This painting shows the symbolic use of colors. Acrylic on canvas

She observed that the owners of family businesses were still reluctant to display their images publicly and that the population in general avoided showing even personal photos. This reluctance did not extend, however, to images of political leaders, which, she suggested, have in some respects taken the place of other forms of human imagery in a manner consistent with the widespread tendency in the UAE (and most other traditional societies) to revere the father, for which political leaders often serve as a kind of proxy. Rather than facing the uncertainty and discomfort associated with displaying family photos and portraits in public, then, Emiratis instead displayed portraits of the sheikh, who has come to

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represent their roots, heritage, and the respect owed to ancestors. As Makki described the phenomenon, It is common to see photos of our sheikhs inside each and every Emirati house. No one obliges people to hang their leaders’ photos in their homes, but, as citizens, we appreciate and highly esteem the leaders.

She also spoke of artists’ use of symbols in depicting leaders: I have an example for you. A couple of years ago, I was chosen as one of a few artists to paint the late Sheikh Sultan bin Ali Al Owais, one of the leading pearl traders in Dubai and one of the prominent businessmen in the region, after he passed away. The late Sultan Al Owais was a poet, a businessman, and a philanthropist. In order for me to represent him visually, I had to read and know more details about him, his life, his achievements, and his personality. I read everything that was written about him, and I found that he was a great person who gave a great deal through his business and charity projects. I painted three paintings for him imagining him as Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea, since the late Sultan Al Owais was a prominent sea trader and used to own a great number of precious pearls and gems. Hence, he was standing on the shore, as if conversing with the pearls lying there.

Makki, then, considered geography and faith to be the main influences in terms of shaping the personalities of Emiratis and, consequently, constructing their understanding of the realities in which they live. She also connected the high esteem in which fathers are held in Emirati society with tribal values in regard to the acceptance of tribal leaders and the display of their images. Lastly, as just seen, Makki was another example of an artist who associated effective portraiture with an accurate and deep understanding of the subject’s character and achievements. Also noteworthy is the importance of poetry for Makki, which is noticeable in her incorporation of poems into some of her work, as can be seen in Figs. 5.17, 5.18, 5.19, 5.20, and 5.21 and is the central theme of a book, Les Sphères: L’Univers de Najat Makki, that blends images and text and that she co-authored with the poet Paul Henri Lersen (Makki & Lersen, 2012).

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Fig. 5.17  Najit Makki, Poetry of Sultan bin Ali Al Owais 1. Acrylic on canvas

Fig. 5.18  Najit Makki, Poetry of Sultan bin Ali Al Owais 2. Acrylic on canvas

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Fig. 5.19  Najit Makki, Poetry of Sultan bin Ali Al Owais 3

The painting shown in Fig.  5.20 relates to the following poem by Lersen (Makki & Lersen, 2012, p. 19): Here she is bearing life the unbound the goddess hands held high begetting flesh and shade she bears the sheaf of breath chaos and danse her awakening eyes open immensity.

The painting shown in Fig. 5.21 illustrates another of Lersen’s poems:

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Fig. 5.20  Najat Makki, Untitled, 2012 (Makki & Lersen, 2012, p. 20)

The meaning of the painting in Fig. 5.21 was explained by the poet Paul Henri Lersen in the below poem (Makki & Lersen, 2012, p. 23): lasting moment without moving without dreaming with truths towards the surface patiently words haunted by faces traces and secrets elusive numbers tied up nude.

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Fig. 5.21  Najat Makki, Untitled 2, 2012 (Makki & Lersen, 2012, p. 24)

Dr. Nizar Sabour Dr. Nizar Sabour (b. 1958), a professor of fine arts in Syria and a leading Arab artist, earned a Ph.D. in what he called the “Sciences of Art” at a university in Moscow, Russia. His work has combined traditional and contemporary techniques and imagery (Figs.  5.22, 5.23, 5.24, 5.25, 5.26, and 5.27).6 Sabour viewed the visual discourse of power as a manifestation of ideology in any society, citing by way of example Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the first half of the twentieth  Our interview took place on May 2016. For Sabour’s paintings, see http://www.nizarsabour. com/paintings.asp 6

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Fig. 5.22  Nizar Sabour, Palmyra Icons, 2009. Acrylic on canvas, 35 cm × 50 cm

century. Turning to the current situation in the Middle East, he observed that various tribal and political ideologies were likewise manifested in visual discourse. He went on to describe Dubai as an example of a place in the Gulf region where images of political leaders were not uncommon but those of business leaders were. As he put it, in some respects echoing Makki, I guess what’s happening in our region happened in Europe a hundred years or two hundred years ago. In our societies, there have been dominant ideologies reflected in visual discourses, and, currently, the dominant ideologies in our region, whether they are religious, political, or clannish and tribal, will be reflected totally in the business world. For example, when you enter a Gulf-based corporation, you will see the king’s portrait or the crown prince’s, but you won’t see a portrait of the company’s owner.

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Fig. 5.23  Nizar Sabour, Happiness Without Title 2, 2006. Acrylic on canvas, 100 cm × 100 cm

Sabour also asserted that the dead haunt Arab societies, and he critiqued the practice of displaying photographs of individuals (other than tribal leaders) only after they have died. He described such display as normal practice for most families in the region, including his own, an act of evocation that kept them connected to their past. I always ask myself, why do we put pictures of the dead in our homes? For example, when my grandfather passed away, they placed his image in our house, and the same thing happened when my brother-in-law passed away. In fact, it’s a kind of necromancy and thus evokes memories, but, from a

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Fig. 5.24  Nizar Sabour, Invitation For Life 2, 2007. Acrylic on canvas, 160 cm × 132 cm

political perspective, it serves to evoke and enforce power; this is what I think. I mean, when I display an image of a leader, it enforces and evokes the power of the leader, and it is reflected on me. This matter has nothing to do with the institution or the competence of the institution.

Sabour’s observations point to a striking contrast, namely that traditional organizations or groups in Arab culture base their identities on an individual and his—the gendered pronoun in this case reflecting the patriarchal nature of the culture—image, while modern ones, by contrast, base their identities on the values that they represent. Sabour went on to discuss the symbolic depiction of power (Figs. 5.26 and 5.27):

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Fig. 5.25  Nizar Sabour, War Time, 2016. Acrylic on canvas, 100 cm × 100 cm

There are old symbols that, I think, are not suitable for all times, such as the scepter, crown, or fist, or throne, and so on. I think, now, that power can be represented by using red with different degrees and shades; the visual information can be created using different degrees of red, from deep red to light red—this is the way I visualize.

He also mentioned the symbolic display of power and political ideology through architecture, using the former Soviet Union—the collapse of which he witnessed as a student in Moscow in the late 1980s—as an example. The architecture of the Soviet Union has several epochs; [there have been] various architectural epochs since the beginning of the twentieth century—the first years of Stalin and later styles, then Khrushchev’s style; then there was the liberal model. For example, Stalin’s style was based on high walls and heavy, monotonous columns that you can find in front of each building, as if he had changed buildings into prisons; hence, you don’t know what is inside and what is behind these enormous walls. So, architecture was a representation of the political system, as is true to this day.

Sabour’s analysis here is with Foucault’s (1977) notion of visibility as a “trap” that uses space as a source of power for the panoptical mechanism:

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Fig. 5.26  Nizar Sabour, Red 1. Acrylic on carton, 45 cm × 56 cm

The panoptic mechanism arranges spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly and to recognize immediately. In short, it reverses the principle of the dungeon; or rather of its three functions—to enclose, to deprive of light and to hide—it preserves only the first and eliminates the other two. Full lighting and the eye of a supervisor capture better than darkness, which ultimately protected. Visibility is a trap. (p. 200)

Visual imagery, from this perspective, plays a substantial role in all political propaganda, particularly in developing countries. As Sabour observed, Image is essential for any person, wherever he lives, owing to the important role of media. But you identify a specific image; I think the ideological image still exists in the world, and especially in the East.

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Fig. 5.27  Nizar Sabour, Still Life, 1998. Acrylic on canvas, 120 cm × 120 cm

For him, then, the images of individuals possessed a certain undeniable power, in particular images of the dead. Sabour also identified a kind of aesthetics of power in painting by contrasting the use of traditional symbols, such as the scepter, with the potential for a color scheme—specifically, shades of red—as means to convey power in modern contexts. Lastly, Sabour drew attention to the use of architecture to display power and the ubiquity of ideological imagery.

Sattar Kawoosh Sattar Kawoosh was born in 1963  in Baghdad and studied at the Art Academy of Baghdad, from which he graduated in 1990 with a specialization in the visual arts. He has since gone on to receive worldwide recognition and numerous prizes for his work, which has appeared in magazines and newspapers and on book covers. He has been based in the

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Netherlands since 1994.7 Kawoosh has developed a unique approach to portraiture that resembles the mosaic technique (e.g., Figs. 5.28, 5.29, 5.30, and 5.31), which he described as follows: I use portraiture technique in a special way, in the sense that I use a technique that differs from traditional portraiture drawing. I try to combine my own style in drawing and the person’s character, and that leads to a special kind of portrait painting, which is similar to the mosaic art but resembles the person I draw.

Kawoosh’s reference to the artist’s task of combining the physical and psychological aspects of his subjects echoes similar observations by Arnaut, Rafai, and Makki mentioned above. For all of these artists, a portrait constitutes a dialogical work of art, one that creates its own discourse so as to facilitate its interpretation by onlookers (Bakhtin, 1983). The artist’s skill is in combining the physical and psychological aspects of the depiction in a sophisticated way. Portrait painting contains several components. Actual reality is a fundamental and essential component, of course, but a painter’s technique and imagination play an essential role in the portrait painting. … Personal knowledge significantly affects the impact of an artwork; hence, the absence of personal knowledge makes the portrait different.

Kawoosh also commented on the various ways in which portrait artists construct power visually: There are several factors that reflect on this issue [i.e., power], for example the portrait’s size and whether it is just a portrait of the face or of the full body. In addition to the person’s nature, the colors that are used must likewise fit the characteristics of the person and his work, since each and every artist sees the artwork from his own perspective.  Our interview took place on March 2016 at the Lamiatos Arts Gallery in Dubai. F or Kawoosh’s portraits, see: http://www.kawoosh-art.com/paintings/gallery/portraits/ 7

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Fig. 5.28  Sattar Kawoosh, Chanson of Love, 2015. Acrylic on canvas, 80 cm × 100 cm

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Fig. 5.29  Sattar Kawoosh, Portrait of Onsi Alhaj, 2012. Acrylic on canvas, 40 cm × 50 cm

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Fig. 5.30  Sattar Kawoosh, Portrait of Hameed Almukhtar, 2014. Acrylic on canvas, 40 cm × 50 cm

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Fig. 5.31  Sattar Kawoosh, Portrait of Ala Almafraji, 2014. Acrylic on canvas, 40 cm × 50 cm

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For him, then, artistry in portraiture depends on the ability to combine the subject’s physical and psychological features, utilization of a unique technique, and attention to the symbolic force of a subject’s visual features. Like other artists interviewed for this project, he considered it necessary for the portrait artist to be acquainted with an individual in order to paint a compelling portrait of him or her. Lastly, Kawoosh emphasized the role of the painter’s imagination in creating a powerful portrait.

Moosa Al Halyan Moosa Al Halyan (b. 1969  in Dubai) is an Emirati painter who has received numerous awards. Much of his work has involved depicting horses (Figs. 5.32, 5.33, 5.34, 5.35, and 5.36), though he also has painted portraits.8 Al Halyan’s philosophy about art is summed up in his statement that “the eye is the spirit’s window to communicating the best message.” Thus, for him—as might be expected for a visual artist—vision remains the key to human communication. Al Halyan discussed the importance of leaders’ images during his childhood, in particular the ubiquitous images of the late Sheikh Zayed, which could be seen in textbooks, on television, and in newspapers. The impact of this imagery on Al Hayan was profound; the sheikh’s “features were deeply ingrained in my memory … I was drawing Sheikh Zayed everywhere” (Figs. 5.34, 5.35, and 5.36). Giving voice to a recurring theme regarding psychology and imagery in these interviews, Al Halyan asserted that Leaders’ actions “are reflected in their faces, and therefore I, as an artist, have to read the correct face through drawing the eyes, the smile, and other features.” He was sensitive to the negative aspects of political authority, but he viewed Sheikh Zayed as the ideal tribal leader and sought to convey his admirable qualities and deeds by depicting him with a strong gaze and stern countenance. He expressed similar respect for a number of other local leaders who, he said, protected the tribe and acted as fathers toward its members.  Our interview took place on May 2016 at a coffee shop in the Dubai Mall.

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Fig. 5.32  Moosa Al Halyan, Arabian horse rearing up toward Burj Khalifa. Pencil, 21 cm × 29 cm

Like Arnaut, Al Halyan spoke of the need to present the subject in the best possible light, though not to the point of misrepresentation. “Everyone has a deficiency in his character that can be shown in one form or another,” he observed, “and the painter must realize the strengths and weaknesses of the person to be painted.” At the same time, however, “the artist must be honest in his work.” Interestingly, Al Halyan made a connection between his portraits and his passion for painting Arabian horses such as the images shown above

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Fig. 5.33  Moosa Al Halyan, Arabian horse with rider. Japanese ink, 21 cm × 29 cm

(Figs. 5.32 and 5.33). For him, horses represented power and powerful people. “The Arabic horse is beautiful, you cannot imagine how much I love horses and painting them. I don’t own a horse myself; they are for this class.” With this last phrase, he was referring to individuals from the highest socioeconomic class in the UAE. Indeed, Arabian horses, along with camels, have been considered the original companions of the Bedouins of the Arabian Peninsula and Syrian steppe for thousands of years. Arabian horses have long been essential for the nomadic lifestyle of Bedouins as well as symbols of beauty and excellence owing to their importance in raiding and war among tribes. For these reasons, the breeding and possession of authentic purebred Arabian horses with a well-­ established ancestry continues to confer social distinction on the members of tribes and families and to represent a symbol of nobility (Lange, 2017). Bedouins, then are proud of their horses’ origins and the purity of their bloodlines in like manner as they take pride in their families and ancestors.

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Fig. 5.34  Moosa Al Halyan, Portrait of Sheikh Zayed 1. Pencil, 29.7 cm × 42 cm

According to Al Halyan, then, the most powerful forms of communication are visual, a conclusion that he had reached in part from his observation of the display of Sheikh Zayed’s images in his youth. Like several of the other artists whom I interviewed, he emphasized the psychological aspect of portraiture and indicated that a portrait should avoid a subject’s flaws. Lastly, as just discussed, he associated his work as a portrait artist with his passion for depicting horses with respect to notions of power and class.

Waddah Al Sayed The prominent Syrian artist and designer Waddah Al Sayed (b. 1969 in Damascus; his name is also transliterated as “Sayyed” and “Sayyid”), graduated from the College of Fine Arts in Damascus in 1990 and moved

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Fig. 5.35  Moosa Al Halyan, Portrait of Sheikh Zayed 2. Crayon, 29.7 cm × 42 cm

to the UAE in 2013. His works include representations of the human form, in particular female, but not portraits of political leaders (Figs. 5.37, 5.38, 5.39, 5.40, and 5.41).9 My interview with him was important for this project because his observations reinforce the connection between painting and poetry in Bedouin and Arab culture. Al Sayed described his visual discourse as being influenced by social context and time and taking various forms. Thus he recalled that, as he developed his art, “At the visual level, I was looking to give Levantine painting a different scene in a different body.” The influence of Middle Eastern culture led him to associate his work with the poetry that plays such a central role in Arab life:  Our interview took place on 19 July 2016.

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Fig. 5.36  Moosa Al Halyan, Portrait of Sheikh Zayed 3. Pencil, 29.7 cm × 42 cm

A unification occurred in my paintings between colors and poems. I organized an exposition that I called “The Lover’s Mirrors” for [the Syrian statesman and poet] Nizar Qabbani.10 It was a dramatic shift in my style, and my paintings became exclusively for poems; words and colors overlapped and harmonized in my paintings.

He went on to describe his relationship with Qabbani’s work as a state of passion that you live in; you cannot understand, but it was embodied in you, it became in you, in your mind, in your memory, in your  Nizar Qabbani (21 March 1923–30 April 1998) was a Syrian diplomat, poet, writer and publisher. His poetic style combines simplicity and elegance in exploring themes of love, eroticism, feminism, religion, and Arab nationalism. Qabbani is one of the most revered contemporary poets in the Arab world. 10

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Fig. 5.37  Waddah Al Sayed, Manuela. Acrylic on canvas, 175 cm × 175 cm

sentiments; it exists in all spiritual existence as unreadable emotions; it is my soul. I started to write [i.e., to explain the psychological state of identifying with Qabbani] his poems; even my wife told me that “this Nizar writes in your hands.” I became Nizar.

Figures 5.39, 5.40, and 5.41, then, show the emotional impact of the visualization of Nizar’s poems. Al Sayed here used the word “write” to describe his work as a painter as a way to explain his psychological relationship to Qabbani’s ideas and writings. He thus emphasized the cultural connection between poetry and visual art in his work, in which context colors function like words. This connection was seen in the previous chapter in the discussion of Sheikh Mohammed’s poetry.

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Fig. 5.38  Waddah Al Sayed, Nara. Acrylic on canvas, 150 cm × 150 cm

Wail Murib The Iraqi artist Wail Murib was born in Hilla in 1947 and studied economics in Baghdad; he received no formal training in art. He moved to Canada in 2008 and has become known for his expressionist and abstract art (Figs. 5.42, 5.43, and 5.44) and has received recognized awards for his work; he is also the author of a self-published book of poems in Arabic (Murib, 2015).11

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 Our interview took place on September 2016 via Skype.

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Fig. 5.39 Waddah Al Sayed, Through Nizar’s Eyes. Acrylic on canvas, 175 cm × 400 cm

Murib considered representation of the human form to be extremely important in the visual arts. He argued that art, like all creative activities, requires freedom from restrictions imposed by cultural and social taboos; thus, for him, “religion may represent an obstruction to the development of civilization; religion and its rituals restrict all forms of art.” Further, Murib considered art to have practical applications in efforts to combat violence, terrorism, and war. So it is that, in the two paintings shown here, his depiction of musicians encoded a political message, namely that the sound of the oud12 or drum or trumpet can overpower that of bombs. In like manner as Rafai spoke of having been inspired as an artist by the suffering that he experienced during the war in Syria, Murib described the creative process as a state of emotional “transfiguration” for the artist. He recalled one particularly dramatic experience prior to relocating to Canada: Once, during the years of tragedy in Iraq, one of my sons was playing music on his keyboard; I was about to ask him to lower the volume when  An unfretted Arabic stringed instrument.

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Fig. 5.40  Waddah Al Sayed, Balkis. Acrylic on canvas, 140 cm × 140 cm

suddenly, and at the same moment, we heard the sound of a huge explosion in our neighborhood—but the level of the music remained louder than the sound of the explosion. This incident affected the way I approached art by making the humans in my paintings play music to create beauty and music; through painting humans playing music, that can be a response to the bloody scene around us.

Further, like Al Sayed’s, Murib’s art has bridged the discourses of poetry and visual art. Thus, as mentioned, he has published a book of poems with the evocative title Brushstroke, and he described poetry as central to the cultural life of Bedouins. Thus he linked language and art:

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Fig. 5.41  Waddah Al Sayed, Your Eyes. Acrylic on canvas, 140 × 140 cm

Language is of great importance in artwork, as it is reflected in the warmth of the colors and the nature of the shapes and lines that are drawn. Language is the backbone of our relationship with our social surroundings.

This link appears in his poems, such as one in which he described a scene in which “He wrote his musical notes/On the table surface/After his fingers rested, gently taps on hers.”13 For Murib, then, artists can only realize their creativity when they have freedom of expression and imagination. Like some of the other artists discussed in this chapter, Murib was inspired as an artist by the violence of war and also by the deep tradition of Arab poetry. In particular, his work has created, or revealed, a nexus among visual, written, and musical forms of art. Thus, in addition to being a  In Arabic, ‫َقوف ُرقنتُهعباصأ ْتحار نأ دعبةلواطلا ِحطس َقوفِهتفوزعم‬ ‫قفرب اهعباصأ‬. 13

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Fig. 5.42  Wail Murib, Music Theme 1 (A popular music). Acrylic on canvas, 80 cm × 70 cm, 2016

painter, he has written poetry (in Arabic), while musicians have been a frequent theme in his paintings.

Thinking About the Artist’s Voice In this chapter, I have explored the perspectives of eight Arab artists regarding the impact of their broader social, cultural, and historical experiences on the ways in which they have expressed their ideas and their

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Fig. 5.43  Wail Murib, Music Theme 2 (Solo Playing). Acrylic on canvas, 75 cm × 75 cm, 2013

perceptions of the role of images in Bedouin society. The focus has been on the visual articulation of leadership discourses in the sociocultural context of Bedouin Arabia and the role of sensory and aesthetic experiences in constructing the representation of leaders. As mentioned, communication and language play substantial roles in the process of constructing leadership. Language constitutes reality and constructs meaning according to the sociocultural context. Leadership, as a socially constructed phenomenon, communicates goals shared by the stakeholders in a society. This perspective is necessary to understand the strong connection between visual messages (paintings) and textual messages (poems) in Bedouin and Arab society. As discussed in Chaps. 1 and 3,

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Fig. 5.44  Wail Murib, Accordion’s Tears, 2016. Acrylic on canvas, 75 cm × 65 cm, 2018

poetry has served as a key expressive tool for the Bedouins in an oral tradition that stretches back thousands of years, and this cultural history is reflected in the ways in which modern visual artists are using poems to inspire or even to form a part of their work. It is clear from the above discussion that visualization involves sensing an experience and that this process is shaped by the specific cultural, social, and psychological context in which it occurs. Visualization is an aspect of power, which is everywhere and affects every social relationship. The artists thus provided insights into the importance of the power of gaze and into the use of portraiture and visual artwork to impose “positive” discipline on the human mind. A further aspect of this kind of

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power was revealed in the importance that the artist Al Halyan attached to Arabian horses, which for Bedouins serve as a symbol of social distinction for families and tribes and thus as “co-generators of leadership effects” (Hawkins, 2015, p. 953). In effect, an image of an Arabian horse symbolizes leadership as a kind of raw power linked to high social status in Bedouin society. In other words, the image of an Arabian horse socially constructs a positive aspect of power that is distinctive to Bedouin society, in the context of which it reflects a struggle among social classes comparable to Gramsci’s notion of hegemony. Another important issue discussed by Al Halyan and raised discussed in the previous chapter is the leader’s gaze, which is thought to manifest his deeds. Hence, a good portrait artist must be able to project the correct expression when drawing the eyes and lips in particular, as was seen in respect to Sheikh Mohammed’s visionary gaze into the distance. Likewise, Arnaut raised an important concern for portrait painters regarding sensitivity to the subject’s psychology and the substantial impact of the painter’s emotions toward the leader being portrayed. He considered a portrait to be a visual representation of the power that an artist attributes to a leader, whether positive or negative, which is communicated by the color scheme as well as the facial expression of the portrait’s subject.

References Bakhtin, M. (1983). The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Barry, D., & Meisiek, S. (2010). The art of leadership and its fine art shadow. Leadership, 6(3), 331–349. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison [Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison], (trans: Sheidan, A.). London, England: Penguin Books. Hawkins, B. (2015). Ship-shape: Materializing leadership in the British Royal Navy. Human Relations, 68(6), 951–971.

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Lange, C. (2017). Purity, nobility, beauty and performance: Past and present construction of meaning for the Arabian horse. In D. Davis & A. Maurstad (Eds.), The meaning of horses: Biosocial encounters (pp.  39–53). London, England: Routledge. Makki, N., & Lersen, P. H. (2012). Les sphères: L’univers de Najat Makki. Paris, France: Le Scribe-l’Harmattan des Arts et des Lettres. Murib, W. (2015). Brushstroke. Scotts Valley, CA: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform.

6 The Audience’s Perspective

In Chap. 4, I discussed the source of messages through a case study of the Bedouin leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai. In Chap. 5, I turned to a second key component in the communication process, which concerns how artists create visual messages and the influence of their sociocultural backgrounds on the content of their work. In this chapter, I focus on the perspective of audiences, specifically their perceptions of messages. In order to do so, I presented three of the images of the sheikh discussed in Chap. 4 to ten residents of Dubai of various nationalities and cultural backgrounds. Here, then, I present the third phase of my empirical research into the visual aspects of leadership and audiences’ interpretations of messages. To be more specific, I conducted ten semi-structured, open-ended interviews with individuals, seven women and three men.1 During the interviews, I first asked these individuals to describe their conceptions of  I met with most of the interviewees face-to-face, but I spoke with two of them over the phone; in either format, these interviews lasted around 15 minutes each. As with the other interviews for this project, I recorded and transcribed the sessions and then analyzed the transcripts. All of the interviewees held advanced degrees and had lived in Dubai for at least four years. We conversed in English since this was their primary spoken language in the country, though the interviewees all spoke at least one other language. 1

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typical leadership images and their notions of a model leader. I then asked them to respond to three of the images of Sheikh Mohammed introduced in Chap. 4 (Gesture of Triumph, The Women’s Day and Surprise Visit). To analyze the collected data, I employed the method of discourse analysis to capture the main themes of leadership from an audience’s perspective and thus to understand what leadership means for residents of Dubai from various sociocultural backgrounds. Moreover, I sought to understand the intertextual relationships among these themes. My main concern was to analyze the transcripts of the ten interviews. By performing these tasks, I hoped to gain an understanding of the discourse of leadership from the audience’s perspective. The main themes were captured iteratively according to the six-step process described by Potter and Wetherell (1987). First, I read all of the transcripts carefully and identified the words that my interviewees used to describe leadership, such as “development,” “inspire,” and “happy.” Second, I highlighted these words in the transcripts in yellow. Third, I coded these words as Potter and Wetherell suggested, “not to find results but to squeeze an unwieldy body of discourse into manageable chunks” (p. 167); hence, I created a table for organizing the codes. Fourth, I distinguished 28 categories of leadership objectives. Fifth, I distributed these categories into the eight umbrella themes described below. Lastly, I analyzed the themes that represented various forms of discourse and assessed the intertextuality among them in the construction of the leadership discourse. My efforts in this regard are consistent with Foucault’s (1972) insistence that those who study society must ask many questions: We must be ready to receive every moment of discourse in its sudden irruption; in that punctuality in which it appears, and in that temporal dispersion that enables it to be repeated, known, forgotten, transformed, utterly erased, and hidden, far from all view, in the dust of books. Discourse must not be referred to the distant presence of the origin but treated as and when it occurs … pose a whole cluster of questions (What are they? How can they be defined or limited? What distinct types of laws can they obey? What articulation are they capable of? What sub-groups can they give rise to? What specific phenomena do they reveal in the field of discourse? (p. 28)

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Intertextuality played a substantial role in establishing the meaning of leadership in the context of the three photos I presented to my interviewees in this phase of the research. Notably, they unconsciously applied Acevedo’s (2011) three approaches to analyzing a visual work, frame, gaze, and the period eye.

Main Themes Through my analysis of the transcripts of the interviews, then, I identified eight dominant or umbrella themes relating to the sense of leadership conveyed by the images of Sheikh Mohammed. In the following discussion, I present key statements by the interviewees that illustrate each of these themes—specifically, leadership that is inspiring, heroic/charismatic, patriarchal, visionary, humane, happy, achieving, and self-­ confident—and the relationships among them.

Theme 1: Inspirational Leadership Throughout the interviews, I encountered the idea that the main task of leaders is to inspire their followers by standing with them. Thus one interviewee, Deepa, asserted that a leader is someone who should be able to work with a team [and] … feels very happy with that young team from his country. When he believes that he can work with them and he believes in them, that they will take the country forward— then he is very happy with the team. … But this person [i.e., Sheikh Mohammed], he looks like, very happy standing in between [sic] the team, and leader should be like that. He should be leading from behind.

Another interviewee, Ruchi, stressed the nonverbal nature of this kind of leadership, stating that There is confidence; [leaders are] very comfortable within [sic] themselves, and, just talking to them, they’ll use few words. They inspire people around

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them, so if—if the photography, then it’s that gaze that, that confidence; a lot of stories come by just that look.

The theme of inspirational leadership is thus connected with the theme of self-confidence, which, in leaders, inspires others to want to follow them. Thus, when it comes to imagery, the power of a depiction of a leader to inspire others derives in part from the self-confidence that artists—photographers, portrait painters, sculptors, and so on—are able to project through the leader’s pose and the gaze.

Theme 2: Charismatic/Heroic Leadership The charismatic or heroic theme is a dominant one throughout the Middle East, where leaders have traditionally been viewed not only as courageous but also as superhuman, godlike, holy, and unreachable. Deepa’s reaction to the Gesture of Triumph image illustrates this point: I feel now, looking at this picture—we look at the gods, then there is something in behind it, some illumination to glorify that picture … so kind of, you know, somebody standing in between human or [sic] a god.

Another interviewee, Hisham, contrasted popular leadership with a more distant or godlike style after viewing the image of Sheikh Mohammed in the streets of Dubai (Surprise Visit image): For me, [when] the leader is just trying to show people that he’s just one of them—it makes people happy to see their leader sitting in the places they sit in. I don’t know, actually, for me, it’s a sign of leadership. Like, for us, the stories of Arab leaders in the past, of Muslim leaders, where they went between [sic] the people. They used to sit with people. So, yeah, for us, we can see this as an image of leadership—walking in the streets, eating in the restaurant, crossing the traffic light just as any other people. This is not the typical Arab leader we know currently because most Arab leaders are dictators, so they are people you do not see in public.

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Charismatic or heroic leadership, then, has various components and takes various forms, though it usually involves communication skills and a commanding gaze. In the three images that I showed the interviewees, the sheikh struck Natasa as “showing charisma” and Liji as being “very charming.” In visual terms, charisma is conveyed when a leader is, according to Natasa, “standing straight up” or, according to Nahid, looking “very proud.” For Deepa, the sheikh’s charisma meant that “he’s able to communicate with his team members. And [they are] eager to listen to him.”

Theme 3: Patriarchal Leadership As discussed in previous chapters, a traditional Bedouin leader is the head of a tribe that is literally or at least conceptually his extended family. This role is, as alluded to earlier, the sole prerogative of men, who act as fathers taking care of their families—that is, as patriarchs. Thus among the interviewees, Dinesh observed after examining the three photos, “this is a unique quality I see in Sheikh Mohammed … seeing these photos, it feels like it is not only a leader—it looks like a family member.” Hanan reflected on this theme at some length after viewing the image of Sheikh Mohammed attending a Women’s Day celebration (Women’s Day image): Well, it—the photo shows a leader who is quite confident of the future for UAE women. I can tell; all the ladies around him are also raising the three fingers symbol for win, victory, and love. He seems responsible, and he has given them the drive to probably graduate or be successful. I see confidence. I see great motivation. I see the happiness of the outcome results [sic]. I see an awareness of—this is what he wants the UAE female community to be like: educated, highly educated, hardworking, outspoken, very professional. They know how to work under pressure. He has taken the initiative, and now he wants others to take that initiative after him. I see self-esteem, I see flexibility. I see satisfaction, actually, and I can tell from the feedback reaction around him, just from the faces, that everyone is quite content and happy.

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Nahid reflected on the notion that the main job of the head of a state is to take care of his people as if they are all members of one family: First of all, they just wanted to arouse the patriotism, as I said before, because the number of citizens here in UAE is very small, and this is the only way to show them that “we are here to take care of you.” This is the message that they wanted to say to their citizens, that we are here and we wanted to take care of you and we want you—we want us, all of us to be one, as one country, as one people, as one, um, as one population.

Theme 4: Visionary Leadership The idea that a leader should be a man of vision also came up repeatedly during the interviews. Thus, Deepa observed, “So, maybe we can add one line to our previous [definition]—a definition of a leader, like, a person who is, like, visionary [with respect] to achiev[ing] something above human capacities.” For her, then, visionary leadership was connected with charismatic/heroic leadership as just discussed. For Ruchi, this kind of leadership was tied to a sense of progress: “It’s to show their vision; they’re looking forward ahead.” So also Hanan saw in the images of the sheikh the smiling face of a leader who seems quite confident of the future of his own country. Um, I mean, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid is a man with an incredibly great vision and limitless ambition. He actually had a great foresight of what his country is going to be, what his people are going to be like. And he is—and his people are working seriously and professionally in order to acquire it [success] as the end [result].

For Houssam, who, like Hanan and Natasa, had experience living in the West, the notion of progress was likewise fundamental to the message conveyed by Sheikh Mohammed’s official images: It’s clearly—gives a clear message here, standing up high, and pride, even confidence as a leader. Looking up for the future, ready to face the next challenge. Using the hand gesture, basically, even his own new victory sign.

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And that has become very famous here in this area and region. And, for me personally, it gives hope and it gives confidence. And, and we are—as leaders, we try to exemplify that every time we sit with our teams, and we try to improve them. … But I think here, this image of Sheikh Mohammed [again, Figure 2.4] is, it’s clear that they nailed it down to that kind of positiveness and hope and looking forward to a brighter future and never looking down, always looking up, no matter what challenges, no matter what hurdles are on the way. This is what this message means to me.

Theme 5: Humane Leadership I categorized such words as “humble,” “tolerant,” “empathetic,” and “honest” under the theme of humane leadership. These characteristics are of particular interest in that, as alluded to above, they differentiate Sheikh Mohammed’s image from that of the typical Middle Eastern leader. The theme of humane leadership associates him instead with the traditional Bedouin leader, for whom, again, the entire tribe is an extended family. Taking each of the words associated with this theme in turn, humility, to begin with, can be represented by such acts as walking the streets like an ordinary person. Thus Ruchi observed, in responding to the image of the sheikh on the streets of Dubai (Surprise Visit image), That’s what I like, and this photo represents just him walking, uh, crossing the street. Confident, from the way he’s walking. One foot forward … normally; otherwise, people who are leaders will try to, you know, show they’re different from the other people.

The humane theme is thus in tension with the theme of charismatic and heroic leadership. In the case of Sheikh Mohammed, his image as a man of the people associates him with traditional Bedouin leadership and distinguishes him from the tradition of leadership in the Middle East of godlike rulers who shun the contact of ordinary people and transcend human limitations. By going out into the streets of Dubai, then, the sheikh made a display of humility that marked him as a distinct kind of leader.

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Responding to the same image, Nahid commented that “I can tell from this picture, there is a sense of humbleness and a kind of—to spread the feeling that he’s part of those people around him,” and Ruchi keenly observed that “He’s leading by example. He’s—you can see it’s a green light, so he’s not breaking any rules.” Nahid went on to observe, We can hardly see Arab leaders just walking around, not in cars or in a parade, just walking in, in their cities. This is, for us, it’s something almost rare. … So, he can walk easily in, inside his city, without any fear. … For us, this world, the Arab world—we don’t see a leader being humble. We don’t see it, usually, humbleness as a part of leadership.

Or, as Hisham put it: “He wants to deliver this message, that we are a different country, we are a modern country, we are not like the other Arab countries.” Also along these lines, Biji spoke of the sheikh as being tolerant toward “People from all countries [who] are welcomed and treated the same.” Overall, then, humane leadership was, for the interviewees, both a fundamental aspect of representations of Sheikh Mohammed and a feature of his rule that distinguished him from other Middle Eastern heads of state. The sheikh’s imagery accordingly depicted him as empathetic. For Natasa, his “leadership of the country” was built on “appreciation and respect”; for Ruchi, “He shows respect for all people”; and for Hisham, “So it’s something social, more social. The way he’s standing, like respecting the audience, respecting his followers.”

Theme 6: Happiness Responding to the image of Sheikh Mohammed celebrating Women’s Day (Women’s Day image), Ruchi described it as a “happy photo.” Natasa mentioned his “happy positive face.” Dinesh likewise saw an “expression of happiness” toward others. Hisham went into a little more detail: “I see the smile on his face—leadership is also emotional. So, when you see a smile, you feel you do not fear the leader as much, as you feel more love for that leader.”

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This theme of happiness runs counter to another impression that Middle Eastern leaders often seek to create through images by representing themselves as tough, strong—which means unsmiling—and therefore someone who is beyond human. Thus Hisham observed that “The leader should be aggressive, should be powerful, should not be humble— military style.” A happy and smiling face, by contrast, can create a sense of trust in leaders, humanizing them and projecting positivity and optimism. Thus Houssam spoke of “Positiveness and hope and looking forward to a brighter future and never looking down, always looking up, no matter what challenges, no matter what hurdles are in the way.”

Theme 7: Achievement The images of Sheikh Mohammed that I showed to the interviewees conveyed a sense of his achievements through the victory sign, his vision, and the development of Dubai for which he has been responsible. I have already discussed the sheikh’s distinctive three-finger sign of victory in previous chapters. Its symbolism was well known to the interviewees; thus Hanan decoded it in detail: “It resembles three [Latin] letters, if you can see them, the W, the V, and the L, and this is a gesture … is a gesture of win[ning], victory, and love.” Regarding the sheikh’s vision, Deepa said that it was “Visionary to achieve something above human capacity,” and for Hanan the images of him suggested “incredibly great vision and limitless ambition.” Nahid likewise felt that “this vision is very positive.” Similarly, Houssam, responding to the image of the sheikh at the Women’s Day celebration (Women’s Day image), stated that he “gives such a great inspiration— which he would try to achieve, the successes, some of the successes that he achieved already, and turning Dubai from a small spot to the global national tourist sector.” The image of the sheikh walking through the streets of Dubai (Surprise Visit image) places him in the midst of some of the development that his vision has brought about, namely thoroughly modern roads and buildings. He is also surrounded by his followers in the image, which shows him to be a man of action. Thus Hanan commented,

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Usually, he walks around. He gets updates—constant updates on the project and the development itself, and he gathers information. He involves himself in the process in terms of operation, in terms of strategy, in terms of the outcome. He is a man who wants to know the know-how actually. … Good leaders can provide such development.

Theme 8: Confident Leadership For the interviewees, the three images of Sheikh Mohammed communicated his confidence in walking and speaking and in his overall appearance. Thus, Natasa observed of Surprise Visit image, “They’re all confident and they’re all walking confidently from what I can see.” Regarding confidence in communication, Ruchi’s words have already been quoted with respect to Theme 1. The sense that leaders possess confidence is reinforced when they project a valid and proven vision and are able to implement it effectively. According to Hanan, the three images showed that the sheikh was “Quite confident of the future of his own country. I mean, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid is a man with an incredibly great vision and limitless ambition.” Self-confidence is also evident in the way in which a leader stands and projects pride. Houssam’s words to this effect were already quoted in the context of Theme 4 (visionary leadership).

Thinking About the Audience’s Perspective Taken together, the themes that recurred in the interviewees’ responses to the pictures of Sheikh Mohammed conveyed the notion that the main task of a leader like him is to inspire his followers. To do so, the leader must stand among them, work with them, and act as a role model for them. None of this is possible, however, if a leader does not possess self-­ confidence. This kind of inspirational leadership relies on charisma, which involves good communication skills, which include the ability to project a penetrating gaze. The interviewees’ responses to the images of Sheikh Mohammed also pointed to an aspect of his brand of Bedouin leadership that distinguished

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him from many other Middle Eastern leaders. Thus, while the latter have traditionally depicted themselves as possessing a kind of superhuman courage that makes them unreachable and even holy, the sheikh at times shows himself among his followers, celebrating with them or walking the city streets like an ordinary citizen of Dubai. By representing himself in this way, the sheikh shows that he is humble, empathetic, and approachable. This is, in fact, one of the key aspects of the traditional Bedouin tribal leader: he is strong and aggressive when confronting the tribe’s enemies but kind and humane in his dealings with the members of his tribe; he is a patriarch who cares for his extended family. At the same time, Sheikh Mohammed has presented himself as a visionary leader with a track record of achievement. That is, his vision is effective because it results in concrete achievements, such as the construction of the infrastructure of a modern city-state. His signature victory sign, therefore, is revealed as no hollow gesture but rather as an affirmation of his achievements and his potential for further successes. Dubai also differs from other cities in a manner that is reflected in the sheikh’s three-finger victory sign, which celebrates the essential element of love in his leadership. In the crafting of his image, that love manifests in the happiness that he seeks to create for his people, so that vision, achievement, and happiness become interconnected in the sheikh’s leadership image. Again, these themes are mutually reinforcing in their social and historical construction of a notion of Bedouin leadership that— despite some contradictions in the discursive formation of these themes— is uniquely suited to the special situation of modern Dubai. My interviewees, then, interpreted the three photos of Sheikh Mohammed that I showed them as being intended to construct a specific image of leadership, one that engenders multiple meanings and is socially constructed, powerfully discursive, and aesthetically articulated.

References Acevedo, B. (2011). The screaming pope: Imagery and leadership in two paintings of the Pope Innocent X. Leadership, 7(1), 27–50.

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Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge. [L’Archéologie du savoir], (trans: Smith, A. M. S.). London, England: Routledge Classics. Potter, J., & Wetherell, M. (1987). Discourse and social psychology: Beyond attitudes and behaviour. London, England: Sage.

7 The Power of Aesthetics

In this chapter, I provide an overview of my findings from the perspectives on leadership established in the previous chapters of the leaders who send visual messages, the artists who create such messages, and the audience targeted by these messages as well as the scholarship discussed in Chap. 2. Thus, I discuss the power of symbols, images, and aesthetics, with particular attention to the potential for a leader’s images to function as a kind of surveillance apparatus, a panopticon, within a society.

Aesthetics and Sensory Experience Through their work, artists seek to create a subjective reality to which viewers of their work will react. These reactions are distinct depending on various personal and contextual variables, such as emotions and cultural background. That is, an aesthetic reality gives rise to an emotional experience and, in turn, a unique perception. An external stimulus—in this case, a work of art—creates an internal, sensory experience that may evoke emotions and lead to a certain action. It is in this respect that

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Cupchik (1992) described the creative process in general as triggering a “bodily mechanism” in the viewers of experimental art. All of this is to say that the relationship between feelings and actions affects this integration of visual and motor activities so that the creation of any artwork represents a combination of intellectual and technical processes and is inseparable from emotion. In this respect, fine motor skills, in particular hand control, are of particular importance, as are the extensive practice and experience that refine the skills required to transform raw materials into pieces of art. Again, the sociocultural context within which art is produced and consumed is central to its communicative power. This processing of sensory experience, then, involves emotions, memories, perceptions, stimuli, and so on (Rothenberg, 1986). As Lakoff and Johnson (1999) put it, “The mind is inherently embodied. Reason is shaped by the body” (p. 5). They referred to such thoughts as the “cognitive unconscious,” which functions as a sort of “hidden hand” (p.  13) helping individuals to conceptualize their perceptions of various aspects of life. This mechanism controls the understanding of the spoken and written word and of body language. Thus, for the artist Rafai, the creative experience consisted of two phases. At first, he was “mentally absent”; then, he received a stimulus when he was exposed to the horrors of the war in Syria: In the beginning, I worked on a few artworks for the revolution in an indirect way, but all these works were touching [on] the revolution. I see my people, my family killed, my memories, my entire existence—you are drawing an extremely difficult scene that you can only refer to through symbols like these. I produced a collection of paintings in which the horror is very obvious; horror, death, bodies, fragments, pain, sadness, grief, all these grey paintings. You can see here a monster or a demon with a corpse, here a disparate human who is surrendered to his fate and fully accepting it, crying, screaming, horror. I was working to create my own visual formula to embody that frightful reality as a witness from one side and a narrator from another side. The main shift happened in me as a narrator when you mix between being a witness and being a narrator; you can see that dramatic dimension for the scene. Hence, you want to pronounce that we need to live differently. Where is the salvation? You cannot get rid of the

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enormity of what you see. Then I stopped painting for around four to five months.

Rafai was referring specifically to the exceedingly brutal situation in Syria and to turning points in his artistic development from his Grey Period to his Savior Period, which, as seen in Chap. 5, reflected his emotional state at the time. The first period, lasting from 2012 to 2015, consisted of essentially monochromatic paintings in shades of grey slightly warmed by other colors, of red and, less often, blue (Figs. 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, and 5.6); the second, beginning in 2015, consisted of works intended to explore the question of where salvation was to be found (Figs. 5.7, 5.8, 5.9, and 5.10). The two periods were inspired by, or at least call to mind, Picasso’s Blue and Rose Periods (1901–1904 and 1904–1906, respectively). The mental and emotional state that led to Rafai’s transformation, which he could not adequately express in words, catalyzed a transition in his art. From this perspective, artistic creation is a product of strong stimuli, external and internal, that lead to a state of intense emotional transformation. Wail Murib, another of the artists discussed in Chap. 5, had a similar experience as the result of the incident during the Iraqi War in which his son’s music on the keyboard competed with the sound of bombs, and it manifested in his paintings for years to come (Figs. 5.42, 5.43, and 5.44). It is also important to distinguish the kinds of specific external stimuli that motivated Rafai and Murib in the particular sociocultural contexts in which they lived and worked. A culture creates its own distinct frames of reference that form the basis for the unique personality of each individual who is part of the culture. Language, culture, faith, climate, and geography, and government—all of which came up during my interviews—are among the powerful influences on the development of personalities and thus of the forms taken by works of art. I will accordingly address each in turn in the following discussion.

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Language Language naturally plays a central role in defining national identity. Thus Murib observed that “Language is the backbone of our relationship with our social surroundings.” In the various forms of language—spoken and written, body language, facial expressions, and so on—there exist layers of meaning and evaluations depending on the nature of the communication involved. The Arabic language forms the backbone of Arab identity but, as the language of Islam and the Quran, it transcends the Middle East to be considered a global language. For Muslims, Arabic is also a sacred language that, at least theoretically, each must know in order to practice the faith. As a consequence, the spread of Islam has led to the formation of various colloquial versions of Arabic (Suleiman, 2003). There is, then, a tight connection between language and religion in the case of Arabic and Islam, which I will discuss further in this chapter.

Culture Beyond language, the symbols, customs, ceremonies, and history that together constitute a culture serve to unite individuals in the formation of a state. Thus, according to Smith (1999), “a central theme of historical ethno-symbolism is the relationship of shared memories to collective cultural identities: memory, almost by definition, is integral to cultural identity, and the cultivation of shared memories is essential to the survival and destiny of such collective identities” (10). In general, participation in a given culture means sharing with other members of that culture a set of concepts, images, and ideas that represent a shared interpretation of the world. In other words, members of a culture attach similar meanings to symbols relating to language, feelings, images, and so on (Hall, 1997). According to Ismail Rafai, There is the collective memory of the country where there is recognition of the legitimacy of the leaders. They belong to the families and tribes that, historically, are recognized as the ones to represent them, and where they

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are within the tribal custom, [from this position] they derive their legitimacy and a deep-rooted social notion in their convictions.

Culture, then, consists of accumulated customs, symbols, traditions, ceremonies, rituals, myths, memories, language, and religious practices. It maintains the continuity of the present and future with the past and serves as the lens through which all aspects of a society are perceived. The artist Najat Makki, again as discussed in Chap. 5, conceived of Bedouin culture as a kind of welcoming glow in the vastness of the landscape (see Fig. 5.15): At night, you see the rising of the fire always glowing; it can be seen in Syria, Jordan, or in any other Arab country where there is desert. Yet, here there is another impression that this fire is kindled for a guest, and always a guest is coming. Bedouins are generous by nature.

This way of looking at the world was a product of the artist’s cultural background as a native and lifelong resident of the UAE, of her embodied and intuitive symbolic system rooted in her memories and beliefs, and of her encoding of the world around her to which she is heir. Her cultural background, symbolic system, and manner of encoding her world were, in turn, informed by the centuries of Bedouin tradition described in Chap. 3 to which the inhabitants of the Arab world are heirs.

Faith Islam has been the dominant religion in the Middle East for more than a millennium and is the official religion of all Arab countries. Some of these countries, such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, practice and apply Islamic law in all aspects of life; in others, such as Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, the legal system is instead based on French law. The Islamic faith is, of course, founded on the Quran, which was composed in the old standard Arabic of the Quraysh tribe in Mecca, which is no longer in daily use. The difficulty of the old language and the manner in which the Quranic verses (ayah ‫آية‬, plural ayat ‫ )آيات‬were written has left open many

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possible interpretations and thus created room for religious clerics to influence adherents of the faith. Islam is more than simply a religion, in that, in addition to offering a way of communicating with the divine, it imposes on its adherents a comprehensive set of practices that touch every aspect of their lives, as discussed in Chap. 1. For the purposes of this book, the key point is that the Islamic faith dominates the sociocultural frame of reference for the leaders, artists, and audiences that I discuss. Of particular significance is the tradition of aniconism in Islamic art that has been elaborated over the centuries by clerics and theorists. This tradition has been more strongly felt in the Arabian Peninsula and less so in countries in which the legal system is less indebted to Islam, such as, in addition to those just cited, Iraq and Egypt. Arab artists from the UAE are among those who have tended to avoid the representation of the human form in favor of abstraction or images of animals and nature. According to Makki, religion has shaped in large part the reaction of viewers in the UAE to sculptures representing the human form. As has been seen, her return to the UAE after study abroad made her especially aware of her region’s aniconism. Another artist discussed in Chap. 5, Murib, was clearly troubled by the influence of Islam on artists: In my personal opinion, religion may represent an obstruction for the development of civilization. Religion and its rituals restrict all forms of art. For example, what ISIS1 did for the Syrian and Iraqi monuments is the same as what early Muslims did for the idols that were placed around the Kaaba, as they described it as ugly and having pagan statues, while they were extremely beautiful.

The viewpoints of these two artists on the issue reflect a division in Arab societies regarding Islam and visual art. On the one hand, religious discourse approaches art from the perspective of that which is haram (‫)حرام‬, inconsistent with Islamic law. On the other hand, from a secular perspective, Islam presents an obstacle to the production of art and to artistic progress.  The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and by its Arabic-language acronym Daesh. 1

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In this context, the strong link between the Arabic language and the Islamic religion merits further consideration. As just mentioned, since the Quran was written in Arabic, Muslims, at least ideally, should have a sufficient command of the language to understand it; translations are not considered authoritative. This being the case, Arabs, whose mother tongue is Arabic, are considered privileged among Muslims. Likewise, all Islamic prayers are performed in Arabic around the world. Unlike Christianity, which has relied on more than one sacred language (i.e., Hebrew and Greek and, to a lesser extent, Latin and Coptic), Islam has an “original” sacred language. Confusion has resulted when Western media outlets have failed to recognize that not all Arabs are Muslims and that not all Muslims are Arabs, the problem being particularly acute in the discussions of the emergence of political forms of Islam.

Climate and Geography As articulated before, Arabia, or the Arabian Peninsula, is characterized by a hot, sunny, and dry climate and vast areas of desert dotted with a few oases. The climate supports date palms, acacia, and eucalyptus but is generally not conducive to forestry or agriculture. The UAE consists of desert and a long coastline on the Arabian (Persian) Gulf bordered by the Strait of Hormuz on one side and the Gulf of Oman on the other. The coast is quite hot and humid, especially during the dry summer season. Owing to the conditions in which they live, people of the region have historically pursued a nomadic lifestyle, moving from place to place to secure water and pasturage for their livestock, mainly camels, sheep, and goats. This lifestyle led to the formation of various tribal groups, as explained in Chap. 3, and generally to the distinctive identity of the inhabitants of what is now the UAE. Makki spoke of the influence of climate and geography on her art: When we were young, our family’s house was close to the sea, in Bur Dubai, and was built from the sea bricks, which is appropriate for this climate; in summer, high temperatures were forcing people to move inland. I, through living near the sea, was influenced by the sea and its blue color; of course,

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every day the sea gives a different impression, and this is what I understood later. [In] some of my paintings, I used the image of the desert, I used the shades of yellow to represent desert.

Thus, as has been seen, from an aesthetic perspective, Makki incorporated into this work three main themes relating to geography and climate, the blue water and white seagull representing the sea and various yellow hues the desert (Fig. 5.14).

Government Government naturally plays a crucial role in the formation of cultural identity. The culture of those living in a closed communist state such as North Korea, to give an obvious example, differs markedly from that of those living in an open democratic state such as South Korea. So also political leaders and events exert a powerful influence on the collective perception of events and individuals’ understanding of national identity (Smith, 1999). Thus Sheikhs Zayed and Mohammed have shaped the identity of the UAE and remain among its most prominent citizens. The paternalistic nature of the governments of many Arab states has already been noted; as seen in Chap. 3, it represents an extension of Bedouin society. As Makki observed, For us, as Arabs or Muslims, the father always has great sanctity in our society. When we want to put up an image of leadership, it is represented by the father. It is in our values; we feel what we feel for the leader, the loyalty—loyalty cannot be bought. … Emiratis have loyalty to their leaders; in every Emirati house, you see a photo hanging on the wall of Zayed, either in the living room or in the council [majlis], one always finds a small or big picture for Zayed.

Thus, Makki spoke to the embedded and unconscious nature of the patriarchal system of relations in Emirati society. Here again, the leader is represented as the good father who takes care of his children, who for their part are sworn to obey, follow, and trust him implicitly. Rafai recalled a conversation that sheds light on this vision of leadership:

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I had a dialogue with an old Emirati man from Ras Al Khaimah, and I asked him about how life had changed there and about the sheikh, the Ruler of Ras Al Khaimah, and what he was doing before. He replied, “lifelong Sheikh,” and here you can see that the sheikh has an eternal presence for the old man, with a significant difference, the love and acceptance of the principle of the paternal personage, the sponsor and head of the clan or tribe. The sheikh represents the father, the shepherd; he plays a pivotal role in helping all those who need help. Here, I recalled several stories that people told me about Sheikh Zayed. These acts have their roots in the tribal norms and values, which were historically established to regulate the social contexts and laws that govern the country.

Sheikh Zayed, then, has come to typify the father figure as a leader. Under the patriarchal tribal system, individuals are expected to remain loyal to their leaders and to look to them as fathers and shepherds.

The Power of Images Art in general touches the senses, that of vision in the case of images. The aesthetic experience requires the separation of the visual material from the spectator who observes it. The spectator plays an active role as the subject, and the visual material assumes a passive role as the object that nevertheless influences the subject. At the same time, as described by Mitchell (1996), an artist transforms an image, a subject, into an object, changing its nature from active to passive. That is, the “painting’s desire … is to change places with the beholder, to transfix or paralyze the beholder, turning him (as a male) into an image for the gaze of the picture in what might be called ‘the Medusa effect’” (p. 76). Conversely, a piece of art empowers its audience and therefore plays a more active role than Mitchell acknowledged owing to its effect on the senses. Approached in this way, the perception of art involves, first, an individual’s frame of reference and, second, his or her psychological state or mood at the moment of exposure to it. This being the case, no set of common, unified aesthetic standards can normalize the various frames of reference for various audiences under various circumstances. Certainly, personal factors relating to education

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and experience create individual frames of references that impact individuals’ aesthetic standards. The main objective of a piece of art, then, is to produce a subjective reality by way of specific symbols and signs (Jakobson, 1960; Mitchell, 1996; Preziosi, 1989). Hence, as discussed in Chap. 2, art in general serves as a communication tool and employs a specific language, and visual art naturally uses the language of visible signs and symbols, of shapes, colors, and shades. As Rose (2012) explained it, any visual artwork consists of several main components. To begin with, there is the content or theme, the “feel of an image” (p.  74), that commands the audience’s attention, though this element may be difficult to discern in modern art such as, for instance, Rafai’s. Further, there is color, which includes both the actual hues employed (e.g., Rafai’s Grey Period), the saturation or brightness of the hues (see also Taylor, 1981), and the play of light among the hues. Another key component is the spatial organization of an artwork as it presents itself to the audience. From this perspective on the communicative and expressive component of visual artwork, a piece of art exercises a certain power over the subject (i.e., the human recipient or audience), particularly when it portrays a human being. Human representation can take various forms, including portraits, statues, and masks, and has played an important role in cultures throughout history. Moved by powerful depictions of good and evil, societies have worshipped portraits as gods or idols and believed that they had magical properties, including serving as receptacles for spirits. Nizar Sabour, another of the artists introduced in Chap. 5, spoke to this notion with respect to images in general and in particular of deceased family members: I always ask myself, why do we put pictures of the dead in our homes? For example, when my grandfather passed away, they placed his image in our house, and the same thing happened when my brother-in-law passed away. In fact, it’s a kind of necromancy, and thus evokes memories. But, from a political perspective, [this practice] serves to evoke and reinforce power; this is what I think. I mean, when I put up an image of a leader, it reinforces and evokes the power of the leader and is reflected back on me.

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Mitchell (1996) similarly observed: Everyone knows that a photograph of their mother is not alive, but they will still be reluctant to deface or destroy it. No modern, rational, secular person thinks that pictures are to be treated like persons, but always seem to be willing to make exceptions for special cases. (p. 73)

People in general, then, tend to believe that images possess a certain power to bring the dead back to life and to communicate with them. Foucault (1977) described power as something that is present, and distributed unequally, in every social relationship between or among subjects. Simply put, power informs the social relationship between a subject or spectator and an object or image. In theory, objects cannot by their mere existence exercise power over subjects but can only do so when they act as agents for other subjects. For Weber (1968), power represented “the possibility of imposing one’s will upon the behavior of other persons” (p. 942, cited by Bendix, 1978, p. 290). It is, therefore, possible to distinguish within the notion of power generally three main aspects: the one who exercises power, the one over whom power is exercised, and the authority associated with the exercise of power. In assessing the effect of artwork, these aspects of power correspond to the addresser and artist and the image as an object, the addressee as a subject and spectator of an image, and the expression of the artist’s feelings that touch the addressee’s senses. A visual artwork, then, can move human beings in a specific direction. In this process, a spectator, through interaction with a certain visual artwork and the process of making meaning, enters into a new discourse using visual representations. The visual representation, through its signs, symbols, shapes, colors, and shades, creates this discourse. In the case of the images discussed in the previous chapters, the sociocultural contexts of Arabia give the discourse meaning, as became clear in Chap. 6 in the reactions of the individuals whom I interviewed to the images of Sheikh Mohammed, which they used to construct a social discourse according to their specific sociocultural backgrounds. As discussed in Chap. 1, discourse analysis has proved to be a valuable tool for clarifying the subjective meaning of leadership as a social

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phenomenon tied to specific social contexts. Thus part of the research for this study involved analyzing followers’ linguistic responses to visual, aural, and textual messages from their leaders. The interactions between leaders and their followers, then, assume various forms, linguistic and otherwise (Hardy et al., 2005). Again, the followers’ sensemaking processes are influenced by their sociocultural and historical contexts. The leadership interaction involves not just the human element—that is, the messages between leaders and followers—but rather extends to non-human elements. The image of Sheikh Mohammed crossing the street presented in Chap. 4 (Surprise Visit image), for instance, is a powerful example of the non-human element of leadership communication, in that the traffic sign and crosswalk communicate the notion that the sheikh is a role model, an exemplary good citizen: though he is the most powerful person in the country, nevertheless, he respects the law. As seen in Chap. 6, followers’ responses to the three photos of Sheikh Mohammed yielded eight interrelated themes pertaining to leadership (i.e., leadership that is inspiring, heroic/charismatic, patriarchal, visionary, humane, happy, achieving, and self-confident).

Visual Leadership and Panopticism I understand leadership, then, as a process in which the leaders and the led participate jointly in the construction of meaning (Kelly, 2008; Smircich & Morgan, 1982). From this perspective, leadership is a display of power involving the transmission of certain messages designed to influence the process of meaning construction. The process unfolds within a certain sociocultural context in the form of discourse (Fairhurst, 2009; Fairhurst & Uhl-Bien, 2012; Kelly, 2008). To illustrate better my argument and findings in this respect, I have expanded Jakobson’s (1960) model of verbal communication to the leadership process as shown in Fig. 7.1. In this process, the message is theoretically unidirectional, from leaders to followers (schematically, leader ➔ followers). However, this more or less feudal model of leadership is not what is found in practice. Instead, the interactive relational process of leadership proves to bidirectional

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Fig. 7.1  Leadership process diagram

(leader ➔ followers & followers ➔ leader), to be sure with a distinct power imbalance in favor of the leader. The discourse that results from the process, therefore, reflects the power exercised in the use and communication of language, again within a certain sociocultural context. Leaders exercise power in various forms—through ideas, values, relations, goals, commitments, feelings, and emotions—so as to influence their subordinates. Simply put, they create or leverage a source of authority that generates a power imbalance in their favor. Again, in practice, followers exercise power as well when they interact with the transmitted messages in a dynamic process of discursive communication affected by and constructed within, once more, a specific sociocultural context (Alvesson & Sveningsson, 2003). In this respect, then, leadership can be described as a sociocultural process of sensemaking that relies on imbalances of power (Fairhurst & Uhl-Bien, 2012). It is a dialogical phenomenon in which interaction occurs through language and discourse that go beyond the spoken and written word to include all visual expressions of human ideas, including the visual arts. Again, in all of these expressions, a power imbalance exists between the visual artwork (object) and the spectator (subject).

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As discussed in Chap. 2, scholars have shown that portraits of leaders can influence their followers by presenting their personal and positional qualities in a manner that is especially meaningful within the prevailing cultural and the historical context (e.g., Griffey & Jackson, 2010). The discursive nature of a visual message gives it virtual authority and power, converting it from an object into a subject that can influence spectators. In this way, the process of constructing meaning varies among cultures and over time. As a consequence, a social process such as leadership cannot be studied without investigating the cultural and historical contexts in which it plays out. From this perspective, leadership is a process that influences subjects to act in a desired way in order to achieve a goal. If the achievement is to be durable, the leader must implement a control-and-correction mechanism of which surveillance forms the main component. Importantly, surveillance is a resource-intensive process, and one means of conserving resources in this regard is the panopticon described by Foucault (1974). As discussed in Chap. 1, the panopticon was an eighteenth-century proposal for monitoring prisoners that relied on instilling in them the notion that they were, at least potentially, always under surveillance. The notion underlying my arguments in this book is that images of a leader can act similarly as an apparatus of surveillance. Specifically, through such images, a leader exercises power over the viewers of the images, whether ordinary people admiring a canvas at an art exhibition or an organization’s employees being presented with its leader’s image on the wall at their place of work. The power of an image resides, naturally, in the meanings that individuals derive from it as an object. As just discussed, such meanings are not straightforward but are rather contingent on the cultural and historical contexts in which the image is viewed. Consequently, making sense of the world remains a dynamic and complex process for every individual and one that is distinctive in terms of individuals’ culture and experience. In the case of Bedouin leaders, their images displayed in public spaces can be expected to have very different meanings for, and impacts on, for example, an individual like me, who has lived in the UAE for over a decade, a tourist who has just arrived at the Dubai airport, and an Emirati national who has lived all of his or her life in Dubai immersed in the

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patriarchal tribal culture. By the same token, similar interpretations can be expected from Emirati nationals who share a culture and history as well as conceptual maps and a visual language (Hall, 1997). Thus, Rafai, for example, asserted that Emirati nationals think of their leaders as being always present with them, as permanent aspects of their politics and culture. Many Emiratis clearly believe in and are emotionally attached to their leaders, being encouraged to feel this way by the social system based entirely on tribal structures described in Chap. 3. Generally speaking, Emiratis as a group accept the roles that the leaders of their tribes have played and revere their ancestors as protectors of the land and its people. Therefore, the Emirati painter Moosa Al Halyan during our interview spoke of Sheikh Zayed as the nation’s father and founder, as a beloved figure, and widely accepted leader in the eyes of Emiratis. Al Halyan had himself created portraits of the sheikh (e.g., Figs. 5.34, 5.35, and 5.36); he related that, while at school, he had drawn the sheikh’s visage and had become expert in recognizing all of the details for each period of the sheikh’s life. Notably, while Islam, as discussed, discourages artistic representations of human beings, Arab and Bedouin leaders are exceptions, as they are considered in a sense beyond human. An image of Sheikh Zayed or a similar statesman, then, may be perceived in a variety of ways, even among those who share a culture and a history. Emirati nationals might view the sheikh’s image as a message of appreciation for, compliance with, or respect toward the various leaders of the UAE. Thus Makki observed that “Whenever you enter an Emirati house, you see images of Sheikh Zayed, Sheikh Rashid, Sheikh Mohammed … in the living room or in the council [majlis].” At the same time, people from certain backgrounds may tend to interpret a leader’s publicly displayed images negatively, obvious examples being opponents of the dictatorial regimes of Assad in Syria and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. According to Satar Kawoush, the Iraqi artist introduced in Chap. 5, “Power always carries the meaning of oppression and of contempt for the other”—a statement that speaks to the impact of negative historical and social influences on artists’ ways of looking at the world. From the perspectives developed in Chap. 2, Bedouin leaders’ portraits both function as metaphors for the power that the leaders project and draw on analogies

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between the leaders of modern Arab states and traditional Bedouin leadership. Foucault’s (1980) arguments on the nexus of power and meaning are particularly acute in this regard: The history which bears and determines us has the form of a war rather than that of a language: relations of power, not relations of meaning. History has no ‘meaning’, though this is not to say that it is absurd or incoherent. On the contrary, it is intelligible and should be susceptible of analysis down to the smallest detail—but this in accordance with the intelligibility of struggles, of strategies and tactics. (p. 114)

Simply put, history shapes individuals through the relations of power. Foucault rejected Marxism, but there are undeniable class distinctions in Emirati society. Thus, while open class struggle may not be evident in Emirati society, class struggle can also take the form of hegemony in Gramsci’s sense, in which one social class within a society takes the intellectual, political, and economic lead (Gramsci, 1989; see Schwarzmantel, 2015). The issue of class was apparent in Al Halyan’s observations on his passion for painting horses. He represented visually the class associations of horses in Emirati society in a particularly striking way in one painting by depicting one of the animals rearing up toward Burj Khalifa, the tallest tower in Dubai, thus bringing together two symbols of status in the UAE (5.24). Moreover, the horse wears no bridle, halter, or saddle and bears no rider, thus perhaps symbolizing the absolute power exercised by the ruling class. In at least some instances, then, issues relating to class play a role in the construction of power relations, knowledge, and truth in the language and discourse of leadership, as articulated by artists such as Al Halyan. The effect of this form of visual discourse in the UAE has been to produce “docile bodies,” a key term of Foucault’s that I first introduced in Chap. 1. Leaders rely on their followers’ docile bodies to realize their objectives. The ubiquitous display of leaders’ images creates within the societies that they control a virtual panopticon in that the leader’s gaze becomes virtually inescapable. Put another way, leaders use visual art, along with such other means of influence as the media and architecture

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to reinforce the dominance of certain families in both public and private spaces. This omnipresent form of the panopticon extends over entire cities and countries to serve as an immense apparatus of hegemony for reinforcing norms and rendering bodies docile. My understanding of power relations and the associated discourse is built on the insights of both Gramsci, who, again, located it in class struggle, and Foucault, for whom hegemony could not be traced to any specific group of subjects. Of course, the specific discourse of leadership in the UAE as elsewhere is dynamic, being subject to the prevailing social, historical, economic, and cultural conditions at various points in time. The knowledge and power relations operating through this virtual panopticon form a massive apparatus of governmental, familial, legal, and economic relations within Emirati society. These relations remain rooted in a patriarchal system while playing out in an otherwise modern environment in a sophisticated synthesis of patriarchal, familial, economic, political, and governmental contexts. In making these arguments, then, I am extending the notion of the panopticon beyond prison-based discipline and punishment to include a sophisticated network of relations, power imbalances, and knowledge operated through diverse but interconnected elements, including various media, architecture, laws, administrative bodies, governmental and cultural institutions, and so on, apart from, or at least tangential to, the carceral power of the state. I had expected, when I began work on this study, to identify a leadership discourse that was common across culturally similar Bedouin societies, but in fact I did not. I found instead that leadership discourse was highly differentiated across these societies. That is, the current leadership discourse in Dubai under Sheikh Mohammed differs from that in other Emirates and other Arab countries as well as from that which the sheikh’s brother and predecessor promulgated during his leadership of Dubai from 1990 to 2006. Simply put, leadership discourse is specific to a given place and time. Another and related major conclusion of this study is that there exists no one style or general template for leadership among Bedouin Arabs— though, to be sure, there are enough similarities among the manifestations of Bedouin leadership, based on the shared culture described in Chap. 3, to justify the generalizations suggested in this book. Consequently,

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there has developed no one form of visual leadership discourse, even when two neighboring communities are compared. My approach to leadership discourse in the UAE, accordingly, concentrates on the exercise of power and the relationship between power and knowledge in the context of Bedouin traditions. From the perspective that I have been advancing, power forms knowledge, and knowledge, in turn, influences power and the relationship between power and (docile) bodies. In Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed has created a new form of visual leadership that corresponds to a specific time and specific goals. Power can, of course, be negative and repressive when used to control individuals and to impose hegemony, but its positive side is apparent in Dubai’s remarkable productivity. Ever the keen observer of the problems associated with power, Foucault (1980) also acknowledged that If power were never anything but repressive, if it never did anything but say no, do you really think one would be brought to obey? What makes power hold good, what makes it accepted, is simply the fact that it doesn’t only weigh on us as a force that says no, but that it travels and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourses. It needs to be considered as a productive network which runs through the whole social body, much more than as a negative instance whose function is repression. (119)

Social phenomena such as leadership, when studied from the perspective of discourse, are amenable to analysis based on specific, localized models keyed to unique social and historical cases. Leadership encompasses multiple meanings, many of which are experienced aesthetically; it is socially constructed and discursive.

Practical Implications of the Findings I have been arguing that the visual representations of leaders that appear widely across the Middle East have served as a form of political control despite the aniconism that is characteristic of Islam. Because leaders are exempt from the prohibition on representational art, their images serve as

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a fundamental component of the collective frames of reference for the citizens of Middle Eastern countries. In other words, their images ensure that leaders remain prominent in the collective consciousness of their subjects and in the historical myths of the social groups to which these subjects belong. Here again, a Foucauldian perspective provides an effective theoretical and empirical basis for approaching the social phenomenon of leadership. I have throughout this book drawn on Foucault’s concepts of power, discourse, archaeology, genealogy, and so on. Power is, of course, a key aspect of leadership. One means of exercising power is through the control of myth, in particular the construction and dissemination of heroic images of a leader. Thus, leaders in politics and business may deploy portraits, statues, and other visual representations to project a heroic image that can serve as a tool for controlling their followers’ thoughts. The effect of such images is, again, panoptical, leaving followers with the impression that the heroic leader is always watching. From this perspective, artwork has the potential to render bodies docile in the face of a quasi-divine leader. Such well-known tyrannical rulers as Stalin, Hitler, Kim Il-Sung, Sadam Hussein, and Hafez Assad have bolstered their power in this manner. Naturally, construction of the mythical image of a leader requires that his (and again, this form of leadership is almost exclusively male) physical existence be gradually hidden from sight so that the curated image may dominate the collective consciousness of the society over which he rules. Orwell’s (1949) Big Brother is an example of this form of power. My approach to the study of leadership from a visual perspective also takes into account the other side of the power dynamic, that of the followers, as illustrated in Fig. 7.1 above. In addition to visual representation, discourse plays a substantial role in constructing this power relationship through language keyed to specific sociocultural contexts. I have explored this complex view of leadership in this book from the perspectives of the addresser—that is, the leader who creates and disseminates a message—the addressee or audience—that is, the leader’s followers, whom the message targets—and the visual artists who articulate the message.

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In the following discussion, I consider the practical implications of my findings with respect to each of these perspectives, which I relate to three themes. Thus I begin by considering how Bedouin leaders convey their messages through images to their followers. Next, I consider the practical implications of my work for the consumption of visuals by followers. Lastly, I sum up my observations concerning visual artists’ communication of leaders’ messages.

 ractical Implications for Leaders: Creating P a Leadership Myth In Chap. 6, I analyzed visual representations of Sheikh Mohammed and his use of them to reach his target audience. Symbols and rituals play a substantial role in the visual formulation of a leader’s myth when they correspond to the audience’s social, cultural, and historical frames of reference (Kuronen & Virtaharju, 2015). In this respect, I drew attention to the following five main considerations when targeting a Bedouin audience. To begin with, the Arabic language has a significance for Bedouins that includes a millennia-long tradition of oral poetry and of course the Quran. Sheikh Mohammed’s poetry associates the prestige of the language with his message. Moreover, in such poems as “Triumph,” which was quoted and discussed in Chap. 4, he expressly connects the written word with visual representations of his power, in this case his characteristic three-finger salute (Gesture of Triumph image). A second consideration for messages targeting Bedouins is culture, which includes symbols, customs, ceremonies, myths, and history and helps to create and to unify nations, even as it has functioned to unify tribes and confederations and promote an ethos of helping others. A Bedouin leader communicates his efforts on behalf of his people and positions himself as an important character in their story; in the case of Sheikh Mohammed, historical forces have made him the leader of his family and tribe. His messages accordingly stress his continuity with the tradition of Bedouin leadership. Examples include official images that, again as discussed in Chap. 4, depict the sheikh in traditional dress, seated

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in the traditional manner, and connected to the desert and its animals. As an effective Bedouin leader, the sheikh is fully fluent in Bedouin cultural symbols. A third consideration for a leader targeting a Bedouin audience in the UAE is the Islamic faith. Bedouins are naturally proud to count among their number the Prophet Mohammed, and any Bedouin leader must show himself to be a devout Muslim. As Sheikh Mohammed (2012) has put it, “I am proud of my religion, my country, and my nation” (p. 7), and his official images include depictions of himself performing religious rituals. A fourth consideration to which I have drawn attention is the desert climate and geography of the region. Because of these conditions, the Bedouin grew accustomed to living in tents and sitting on the ground, and the yellow and white of the desert hold special significance as visual signifiers. Modern Bedouins may live increasingly in cities as a result of the societal transformation described in Chap. 3, but the influence of countless generations of desert living remains powerful. It is for this reason that Sheikh Mohammed is often depicted in a yellow thawb, accompanied by iconic desert animals such as the camel, and, as just observed, seated on the ground. Lastly, Bedouin tradition is patriarchal in nature; also as discussed in Chap. 3, the head of the tribe serves as a kind of father figure for all of the members of his tribe. Fundamental to this kind of leadership is the notion that the leader repays the loyalty of his fellow tribesmen by protecting them. Sheikh Mohammed thus invoked deeply rooted ideas of kinship and authority in images showing him at an elder care facility visiting the residents like a dutiful family member. Leadership is, at its core, the consequence of an interactive power imbalance, and leaders rely on a range of communication strategies to maintain the imbalance. Culture plays a substantial role in determining the effectiveness of leaders’ communications and in building relationships between them and their audiences, including communication through images and text. Hence, identifying culture and subcultures in an organization or society is an important consideration when determining how the image of a leader is to be presented (De Chernatony, 1999). The degree of congruence between the leader’s desired message and the

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perception of the message by the targeted stakeholders indicates the degree of success in transferring the message. The main groups of stakeholders that the leaders’ images target include governments, investors, political groups, suppliers, customers, trade associations, employees, and communities (Donaldson & Preston, 1995). In the case of Bedouin leadership, messages that target UAE nationals, expatriates living in the UAE, and audiences outside the UAE tend to take different forms. Because each of these groups maintains a distinct perspective when deciphering any message, sending the same message to a diverse set of them can result in a kind of perceptual incongruence. For Bedouin leaders, then, it is important to balance widely recognized ideas and symbols with those that are specific to a given polity. The emergence of new communication technologies, in particular social and digital media, has resulted in an enormous increase in communication through photos, videos, and text. The visual components of messages play a powerful role in creating the perception that leaders are professional and competent and generally in presenting them in a positive light and constructing the leadership myth referred to throughout this book. Leadership mythology shapes the perceptions of a leader (Kuronen & Virtaharju, 2015) and is reinforced by various rituals (Lévi-Strauss, 1996). Leaders’ rituals are, therefore, a key element in their efforts to shape perceptions of themselves. Leadership mythology exists within specific sociocultural contexts, and leaders often use rituals to communicate a consistent message over time that strengthens the images and mythology that they seek to create for themselves and establish in the minds of their followers. (Kuronen & Virtaharju, 2015). In this sense, visual art serves to render a leader acceptable to its intended audience through the use of symbols that are significant within that audience’s frames of reference. Sheikh Mohammed’s signature three-finger salute is an instructive example of the use of symbols in this way. Again as discussed in Chap. 6, the salute conveys various messages simultaneously and thus is perceived in various ways, symbolizing victory and triumph but also love and the Arab people. The significance of this symbol has evolved over time along with the leadership mythology of Sheikh Mohammed as he has built

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Dubai into an internationally recognized city. The salute’s significance is depicted dramatically through visual fine art in the form of the enormous sculpture representing it (Fig. 4.2) located close to what is at the time of this writing the world’s tallest building, Burj Khalifa. The symbolism in this case is transparent: the skyscraper represents an enormous accomplishment, a victory for the sheikh as well as for Dubai and its people and a metaphor for their success. This and related analyses of the uses of imagery by Arab leaders presented in this book reveal an effective strategy for communicating their myths and influencing their audiences. In the case of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed has constructed a leadership myth that involves projecting the image of a Bedouin tribal ruler who is also a poet and orator, who is proud of his genealogy but modern in terms of embracing new technologies and ideas. Through his effective use of images, the sheikh has fostered the perception that he is at one with his people, that he understands them, enjoys their lifestyle, and represents them, visually and otherwise. Hence, this study can provide insights for current and future Bedouin leaders in the creation of their myths.

 ractical Implications for Followers: The Consumption P of Visuals A further practical implication of the findings presented here concerns the audience of Sheikh Mohammed’s visual messages, as discussed in Chap. 6. My aim here has been in part to suggest to leaders ways in which they may be able to improve their communication efforts and ability to inspire their followers by acting as role models. Thus leaders need to ensure that their communication channels run in two directions, both to and from their followers. They also—at least those who care about their people—should be cautious about creating a dictatorial atmosphere in which their images constitute a kind of panoptical apparatus that suppresses rather than motivates positively their followers. Autocrats tend to elaborate a one-way communication strategy and to avoid interacting with their followers. So it is that, as just observed, their communication teams often build their myths by minimizing their physical appearance,

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transforming them into metaphorical images visible only in photos. The photo in this context has the power to transform the leader from an object into a subject and to magnify his or her power. It is in these respects that Sheikh Mohammed’s visual communication strategy can be seen as a key tool in the construction of the image of a good Bedouin leader. His official images depict him communicating with his followers on a regular basis and acting almost as an ordinary person in terms of his desire to serve the residents of Dubai. One image in particular that I have discussed in detail (Surprise Visit image) suggests that the sheikh’s followers may encounter him on the streets of the city, where he does not ask for special treatment. As has been seen, this image actually communicates several interrelated messages. In the first place, it represents the sheikh as a dutiful leader who serves as a role model for hardworking Emiratis, clad as he is in workers’ clothes (i.e., not wearing a bisht over his thawb). Further, the image shows him to be self-disciplined, since he demonstrates respect for traffic regulations, just as he would expect other residents of and visitors to his city. Thus, the main aim of this visual message is to show the sheikh as the ruler of a disciplined society whose citizens benefit from loyalty to him and following his positive example. In Chap. 6, I explored the perspective of the audience through an analysis of my interviews with ten residents of Dubai. This analysis identified eight main themes relating to the sheik’s leadership: inspiring, heroic/charismatic, patriarchal, visionary, humane, happy, achieving, and self-confident. A review of these themes in light of the findings discussed in the foregoing chapters will help to make clear their impact on the sheikh’s target audience. Beginning with the inspirational dimension of the sheikh’s leadership, I demonstrated how one image (Gesture of Triumph image) celebrates his success through his display of the victory sign, his faraway look, victorious smile, and raised chest. Regarding the heroic/charismatic dimension of the sheikh’s leadership, Bedouin leaders have traditionally been cast in heroic terms and have commanded absolute trust from their followers, and my interviewees likewise described the sheikh as “charismatic” and “proud.” Visually, he has been represented with what might fairly be described as a charismatic expression. I note here that heroic leadership is, of course, in no way

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specific to the Bedouin experience but is found across cultures and throughout history; to take a random example, the Roman emperor Commodus entered the gladiatorial arena to bolster his heroic myth as godlike and undefeatable. So also Sheikh Mohammed has augmented his heroic image as a leader who courageously and successfully faces all challenges through images of him participating in sporting events. In these images, he not only wins the races but also proves himself as a team leader, thereby communicating the message that he is a champion both in the context of traditional Bedouin horsemanship and on the world stage. Turning now to the theme of patriarchal leadership, the sheikh’s images portray him as a father to his people, who are represented as his extended family and tribe. In this respect, I pointed to an image of Sheikh Mohammed visiting an elder care facility. A complementary image shows the sheikh’s concern for the young in a visit to a school. With respect to the other themes, I discussed the visionary nature of the sheikh’s leadership with reference to a publication in which he elaborated “My Vision”. The humane nature of his leadership is represented in images on his LinkedIn page, such as one highlighting his philanthropy as well as the aforementioned one of him visiting the elderly. Turning now to representations of the sheikh’s role in creating happiness, which is a crucial goal for any country, several images depict him in the company of smiling followers (e.g., Women’s Day image). Regarding the theme of achievement, a number of the sheikh’s images depict his successful building projects, such as the Dubai International Airport. Lastly, regarding the sheikh’s self-confidence, he is consistently represented as an energetic and active leader who commands the attention and respect of others (e.g., Surprise Visit image). Based on these considerations, the practical implications of the findings presented in this book from the perspective of audiences concern the characterization of leaders as role models, the interpretation of leaders’ messages, and variations in the reactions of audiences to the same image. The eight themes outlined above and the relationships among them provide valuable insights into the construction of a leader’s—in particular a Bedouin leader’s—heroic image. Similarly valuable is the application of Foucault’s “picture-object” notion to leaders’ visual messages with regard

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to the properties of photographs and paintings on canvas spatial, lighting, and so on.

Practical Implications for Communication In the second phase of my empirical research, discussed in detail in Chap. 5, I focused on the artist’s perspective when crafting a message and the use of an image to create the leader’s myth. According to Broms and Gahmberg (1983), “The reason why myths are so powerful is that they are not only thought, they are also felt” (p. 488). Emotions, then, play a substantial role in the formation of the image and myth of a powerful political leader. Also useful in this context is the framework developed by Guzman and Sierra (2009) of five factors that exert significant influence over voters’ preferences for certain candidates, namely competence, empathy, openness, agreeableness, and handsomeness. Through attention to these factors, a political leader’s image and myth can be constructed and manipulated so as to play on voters’ emotions. The distinctive social relations of the democratic West naturally influence Western voters’ choices and the manner in which they identify with political leaders and candidates. So also the conservative, tribal nature of Bedouin society described in Chap. 3 can be seen in social relations based on class, social structure, and economic and historical relations, all of which play significant roles in the interactions between Bedouin leaders and their followers. Thus, Bedouin leaders are not elected but rather inherit their political power owing to the patriarchal structure of Bedouin social relations. At the same time, Bedouin societies are not monolithic, and two distinct approaches to ruling may be observed in the region, conservative and progressive. In general, conservative regimes that emphasize traditional tribal relations control the six Gulf countries, including the UAE, and “progressive” regimes control the Levant, Egypt, and the other North African countries (Sharabi, 1992). Whether conservative or progressive, the leaders of these countries are regularly depicted as divine or at least superhuman in their myths. The slogans, images, and symbols that they use in the construction of these myths are, once more, specific to the social, historical, and cultural

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contexts of their various countries. Each succeeding generation of leaders wants to inherit this mythology just as previous generations did. Hence, as seen in Chaps. 4 and 6, the main objective of any Middle Eastern leader’s message is to influence the collective unconscious of his people. Sheikh Mohammed’s leadership represents an enlightened version of the patriarchal ideal in that his messaging emphasizes his concern for his people and shows him treating them as family members. A work of visual art, as a tangible object, creates a subjective, intangible reality manifested in the ideas, feelings, and emotions of its viewers and in this respect exercises a certain power over them. I argued earlier in this chapter and in Chaps. 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 that this power is imposed through a sophisticated process of interpretation based on the viewers’ frames of reference and their psychological states at the moment of viewing. When it comes to measuring this power, I suggested that social media platforms have great potential for leaders’ efforts to calibrate the emotional effect of their visual messages. Murdough (2009) proposed a five-­ phase process for the use of social media in promoting brands extending from conception, definition, and design through deployment and optimization that can be of use in crafting a tool for measuring the impact of images. Such a tool could take advantage of emerging artificial intelligence—and this is indeed the direction in which my work has been taking me since I completed the research for this book. From this perspective, the feelings and emotions that images invoke make them a far more efficient means of communication than text on a page; as the saying goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” In explaining the power of images, Rose (2012) took into account content, colors, space, light, and expressive content in the creation of a subjective reality. By the same token, a piece of visual art constructs a subjective reality as the viewer processes sensory experience through the lenses of emotions, memories, perceptions, stimuli, and the input of other senses (Cupchik, 1992; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999; Rothenberg, 1986). In the case of Sheikh Mohammed, visual messages create the image of an exemplary tribal leader who simultaneously projects a heroic presence and a humble, “common man” persona that his Bedouin followers appreciate. This romantic model of leadership (“romantic” in the sense discussed in Chap. 1) has proved highly effective in this region and stands in

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contrast with the use of power in negative ways by other regional leaders. Meindl et al. (1985) put it in more general terms: A romanticized view of leadership is probably also an outgrowth of a general faith in human organizations as potentially effective and efficient value-producing systems that fulfill the various interests of their participants and perhaps, also, society at large. (p. 97)

That is, the romantic ideal of a value-creating hero who performs virtual miracles for the betterment of his people stands in stark contrast with the leadership approaches of Assad in Syria, Hussein in Iraq, and other tyrannical rulers. The romantic view of leadership is applicable in important respects to the business world—and, as observed, Sheikh Mohammed is the leading business commander in Dubai. Thus, legendary business leaders have been recognized as contributing a form of symbolic capital to their organizations and exerting a substantial influence over their material capital as reflected on market and shareholders’ value. Hegele and Kieser (2001) discussed Jack Welch, who served as the CEO of General Electric from 1981 to 2001, in these terms. Thus, they noted that discourse about Welch described his impact on the firm as near-miraculous, with the creation of enormous value for shareholders, the positioning of the company as an industry leader, the minimization of downsizing and controlling costs, and improvements in the hierarchy of management. Storytelling played a key role in constructing Welch’s mythic image as a kind of cowboy, a rugged fighter on behalf of his company and its shareholders and one in it for the long term. Welch is thus a further example of the importance of tailoring the message to the cultural setting, in this case the mythology of the American West. As these scholars memorably put it, Welch is the tough and lonely cowboy who fights like hell against the powerful competition, mainly from abroad, and against bureaucrats. He does not do it for himself but for the many shareholders in the country, whose savings he wants to multiply. He believes in his ideals. In the beginning, a large number of people tried to stop him, even among the stock market experts, and among his own ranks some did not share his ideals, but Welch

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continued on his way, did what a man’s gotta do. He impresses friends and foes alike with occasional demonstrations of his unbelievable fitness and speed—although he does not ride through the Rocky Mountains at night or draw faster than a rented gunslinger, even though he’s been shot. (p. 302)

Welch’s body language, with his fists and teeth clenched as he faces an audience with a look of persistence suggesting that he remains determined to achieve what he has promised and will prove a tough and implacable adversary to any who stand in the path of his achievement. Here again, visual art can be seen as a powerful medium for the construction and dissemination of a heroic image to various groups of stakeholders. A visual message can achieve this effect through a culturally specific blend of symbols, traditions, ceremonies, rituals, myths, and historical memories. As illustrated in Fig. 7.2, each group of stakeholders receives the message in a distinct way depending on the manner of its transmission and the various stakeholders’ sociocultural backgrounds. Again, social media can be a valuable tool for gauging how followers receive a leader’s messages. Personal frames of reference play a substantial role in shaping individuals’ personalities and thus their interpretations of the cognitive, linguistic, and social dimensions of messages. In other words, because every culture creates distinctive frames of reference, the process of interpreting messages remains specific to personal frames of reference that are informed by language, culture, faith, climate, and government.

Fig. 7.2  A leader’s image communication process

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In this context, I note that this book has practical implications for individuals doing business with the Middle East. Thus I have offered insights into how Bedouin political and business leaders communicate their messages, the importance of visuals, and the unique sociocultural and historical background of this region that can be of use in establishing commercial as well as other forms of human connections. It is my hope that the book will help to connect individuals and to improve the understanding of the region, its economy, and its people by outsiders. When such bridges have a chance to form, business partnerships can take the place of wars and conflicts. In any case, as discussed, across the modern architecture and landscape of most cities of Arabia, tribal patriarchal relations continue to dominate and to shape leadership imagery. Hence, the common image projected by Arab leaders remains that of the strong savior character who protects the tribe from the real and metaphorical incursions of other tribes. He is tender toward the weak and harsh toward the tribe’s enemies. He is male, paternalistic, and superhuman. In this latter respect, the image is somewhat paradoxical, for the heroic leader often simultaneously cultivates the image of the common man. From an aesthetic perspective, leadership involves the construction of a subjective reality, in the present context through visual images, that corresponds to a greater or lesser extent to objective reality. The specifically aesthetic aspect of leaders’ images of course relates to the fact that they rely on artists to create works in which a subjective reality is presented and through which an emotional experience is evoked. In the case of Sheikh Mohammed, this reality provides the context for a compelling leadership myth, one keyed to the specific sociocultural context of Bedouin Arabia. The myth has been effective because the message has targeted specific groups of stakeholders in the UAE and beyond, in like manner as Jack Welch’s leadership myth appealed to his employees as well as to stakeholders outside his company, including government officials, investors, suppliers, and customers.

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 ractical Implications for Leadership P in a Bedouin Context One of the stated aims of this book is to provide insight into leadership as it is practiced in modern Bedouin communities. Thus I have discussed in detail in this chapter the five elements that define the Bedouin frame of reference introduced in Chap. 4 and the eight characteristics of Bedouin leaders discussed in Chap. 6. In those chapters, I suggested that these considerations and observations can form the basis of practical tools for Bedouin leaders when it comes to constructing and communicating their messages. These elements could likewise help in the creation of comprehensive training programs tailored to patriarchal Bedouin society that teach young Bedouin leaders leadership communication skills. Similarly, the results of this research could form the basis for a mentoring program for leaders seeking to improve their communication skills by analyzing their messages’ real impact on their followers. Further, the findings presented here offer a framework for understanding and measuring—and therefore for shaping—the power of the images that Bedouin leaders communicate to their followers. In particular, as mentioned, the development of social media is making available advanced tools, such as artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and Python, that have great potential for the crafting of culturally appropriate communication strategies for Bedouin leaders. The strategy of normalization in communication also can be effective in a range of contexts, but especially in marketing and retail, and is of interest in terms of using visuals to influence consumption patterns in Bedouin Arabia. Bedouin business leaders prize highly the use of leadership images as an intangible asset to showcase the quality of their leadership and can be reflected in their firms’ performance and potential to inspire confidence that they will enhance their firms’ market value. The following are a few examples of images of Bedouin business leaders who have been conspicuous in their use of various media to communicate messages about their roles in society. Mohamed Alabbar. Alabbar founded and has served as the chairman of Emaar Properties, the firm responsible for the development of

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Fig. 7.3  Sheikh Mohammed and Mohamed Alabbar during the Dubai Crown Prince Endurance Cup, March 23, 2013, L Constantino, 6 October 2014, accessed 21 July 2020, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File%3ASheikh_Mohammed_bin_ Rashid_Al_Maktoum_and_Mohamed_Alabbar.jpg

landmark assets such as Burj Khalifa and the Dubai Mall. He was not active on social media at the time of the research for this project; his Twitter and Facebook accounts were inactive, and he had no presence on LinkedIn. Figure 7.3 presents an image of Alabbar as an achiever, with him walking side by side with Sheikh Mohammed at the Crown Prince Endurance Cup as if listening to the sheikh’s instructions; thus, he is shown as a leader who becomes actively involved in situations in order to accomplish his mission. Figure 7.4, another image from the same event, depicts Alabbar riding a horse; as discussed, horsemanship symbolizes superior leadership, power, and high status in Bedouin society. Alabbar’s strengths as a traditional Bedouin leader are emphasized in different images where he appears in traditional dress (i.e., a thawb, agal, and shemagh but, in this case without a bisht) holding an achievement award, and where he is again walking beside Sheikh Mohammed, this time in the company of Sheikh Hamdan, the Crown Prince of Dubai, during the

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Fig. 7.4  Mohamed Alabbar competes in the Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Endurance Cup 2013, L Constantino, 19 January 2013 accessed 21 July 2020. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mohamed_Alabbar_-_Endurance_ Racing.JPG

groundbreaking ceremony for The Tower at Dubai Creek Harbour, another Emaar Properties development. Each of these images, then, presents Alabbar as an exemplary leader whose management skills and achievements have been recognized worldwide. Figures 7.3 and 7.4 depict him as an athlete while in other images show him in traditional Emirati dress, reinforcing Sheikh Mohammed’s message that young UAE nationals should roll up their sleeves and work hard to contribute to the greatness of Dubai.

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Khalaf Al Habtoor. Al Habtoor is the founder and has been the chairman of the Al Habtoor Group, one of the most successful conglomerates in the Gulf region. He is active on social media (i.e., Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn). Al Habtoor depicts in different images flanked by Sheikh Mohammed and Sheikh Hamdan as he shows them his achievements, all three wearing traditional dress (thawb, agal, and shemagh; the absence of the bisht, reflects the fact that this was an informal work visit). In other images, Al Habtoor is shown being interviewed; accompanying text reads “You may be younger than I am, but I feel younger. Retirement is out of the question. If you ask me how old I am, I am 37. I am young!” The image thus communicates that Al Habtoor, though in his 70s, remains energetic and able to work long hours to achieve his goals. Other image depicts Al Habtoor surrounded by his grandchildren, thereby showing that he values family; accompanying text reads “to have the energy and appetite to work, you also need to have fuel, and my fuel is my grandchildren in the house; they are my oxygen. That is the main fuel to me. It’s not just all business.” Also Al Habtoor is shown with British Queen Elizabeth II; in this and similar images, he indicates that he considers England his second home, where he has invested heavily; he has professed himself an admirer of British leadership. Hussain Sajwani. Sajwani is the founder and has been the chairman of DAMAC Properties, a property development company. He is active on social media (Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn). An image depicts him with Sheikh Mohammed during the Cityscape property development exhibition discussing his plans and achievements, both of them wearing traditional dress (once more, thawb, agal, and shemagh, the absence of the bisht indicating that this was an informal work visit). An image shows Sajwani with three of Sheikh Mohammed’s sons, Sheikh Maktoum, Sheikh Ahmed, and Sheikh Mansour, at the wedding of Sajwani’s daughter. Accompanying text reads It was an honor for my family and me to receive blessings and good wishes on the occasion of my daughter Amira’s wedding from our leaders HH Sheikh Maktoum bin Mohammed Al Maktoum, HH Sheikh Ahmed bin

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Mohammed Al Maktoum, and HH Sheikh Mansoor bin Mohammed Al Maktoum.

In this image, Sajwani and his family members wear traditional garb (including the bisht, since a wedding is a formal occasion). A formal photo of Sajwani in conservative Bedouin attire portraying him as a highly trustworthy, wise, and charismatic executive; thus, his gaze is directed toward the viewer of the image. The accompanying text, “Ambition only kick-starts success; it is hard work and persistence that actually carries [sic] you through,” emphasizes his hard work and persistence as an explanation for DAMAC’s past achievements and a suggestion of its future potential. In another image, Sajwani poses formally with two of his children in conservative Bedouin attire, his daughter in the middle with a long abaya2 with loose wide sleeves and a traditional Emirati hijab.3 Text accompanying the photograph reads “All my children have been highly entrepreneurial in nature from childhood, with a real passion for business and real estate in particular. My eldest two play key roles in the day-to-day operations of DAMAC, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for them both.” This photograph reinforces the textual message to communicate explicitly the importance of family in Sajwani’s values system and life and also communicates to various stakeholders that the heirs who will manage the business after him will be similarly successful. Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair. Al Ghurair is an Emirati businessman and has served as chairman of Mashreq Bank and director of the Abdullah Al Ghurair Group of Companies, one of the largest business groups in the Middle East. In one image, Al Ghurair is shown walking beside Sheikh Mohammed, both of them in traditional dress (thawb, agal, and shemagh with no bisht because this was an informal work visit). In another image, Al Ghurair with Sheikh Mohammed, clad in black and white, their gazes focused on some important message, thereby showing that effective leadership involves listening. The accompanying text,  The abaya is a loose, simple, robe-like overgarment worn by some Muslim women in the Arabian Peninsula and some parts of North Africa. 3  The hijab is a veil worn by some Muslim women that covers the head and chest. 2

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from a tweet by Sheikh Mohammed, reads “I applaud the initiative of businessman Abdulla Al Ghurair in donating a third of his fortune to education.” Another image presents a formal photograph in which Al Ghurair wears conservative Bedouin attire and projects physical attractiveness, high status, a leadership gaze, and business success. The frontal view and gaze directly into the viewer’s eyes project trust and authority, while the placement of Al Ghurair’s left hand upon his right hand indicates his circumspect character. Another image depicts Al Ghurair in conservative Bedouin attire speaking from behind a podium at the 2018 Business Achievement Awards. His body language and eye contact with his audience at the awards ceremony indicate personal engagement, and his hand gesture, with his left index finger extended, indicates that he has lived up to his promises. Such images of Bedouin business leaders and the associated textual messages have been widely disseminated through Arab business media. These leaders manipulate textual, verbal, and visual communication in their exercise of power over their followers through the construction and dissemination of heroic images that create and reinforce their leadership myths. Two main themes emerged immediately from my analysis of the heroic images constructed by leading Bedouin businessmen. The first theme is that they framed their business leadership in terms of traditional Bedouin leadership beyond the world of commerce. Thus all four businessmen are depicted in the images just discussed in traditional, and usually informal, attire. However, they are rarely are seen living a traditional lifestyle, for instance, seated on the ground or in a Bedouin tent, and they are only rarely shown interacting with Bedouin animals, such as horses, camels, or falcons (an exception being Fig. 7.4). The second theme is that of achievement, with all four Bedouin business leaders presenting themselves as focused and goal-oriented. Indeed, this is the main notion upon which they centered their messages. While these four leaders clearly made an effort to communicate their leadership power and to do so in traditional Bedouin terms, their efforts to construct their leadership mythologies were, however, limited in some respects. In particular, they did not avail themselves of the power of

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poetry to frame their realities as Bedouin leaders. As has been seen, the Bedouins are great poets and storytellers, thus raising the question of why Bedouin businessmen have not been composing and reciting poems to connect with their followers and construct compelling leadership discourses. Doing so could—especially given the aniconism of Islam discussed in previous chapters—offer some balance in their predominately visual self-presentation. In light of the analysis presented here and in Chap. 6, Bedouin business leaders could, I suggest, enhance their communication of leadership messages by giving careful consideration to the following additional themes. To begin with, their messages should be inspirational; thus Sajwani’s images and the accompanying texts encourage others to look to him as a role model (especially the image with Sajwani’s quote about hard work and persistence; note also the image with the quote about Al Ghurair donating a large portion of his fortune to education). Second, messages can be inspirational by portraying leaders in a charismatic/ heroic manner, something that is typically done through gaze; however, heroic leadership has been limited to political leaders’ efforts to construct their images with reference to the collective social unconsciousness of their people. The third additional theme, related to the first two, is the patriarchal nature of traditional Bedouin leadership. Patriarchal relationships are obvious with respect to the association between business and tribal leaders and the depiction of business leaders as the protectors of their firms. Conversely, business leaders derive legitimacy from the endorsements that they receive from tribal leaders. A fourth theme is the visionary notion of leadership. In the Bedouin patriarchal context, the tribal leaders establish the vision for the tribe; in turn, business leaders follow their tribal leaders’ visions and reflect them in their own. Fifth, a visionary business leader must also be perceived as humane, being driven, like the tribal leaders, by compassion for their followers and the community as a whole (once more, Al Ghurair’s bequest to education is a good example). Sixth, concern for the happiness of his followers is linked to a leader’s humane nature; so it is that Bedouin patriarchs are held responsible for creating happy and healthy environments for their dependents. Tribal leaders are thus diligent about looking after the contentment of their followers; on the level of government, for

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instance, the UAE created the world’s first Ministry of Happiness, the purpose of which has been to develop a fully realized strategy for making the country among the five happiest in the world by 2021. Business leaders, however, have not yet taken the opportunity to align their images with this creative initiative by communicating to their followers their plans for creating happiness. The last two themes that Bedouin business leaders should consider when crafting their messages are in a sense two sides of the same coin. The seventh theme is achievement; as has been seen, this is in fact the dominant image that business leaders are communicating, but it is recommended that they be more self-aware about associating themselves with their successful ventures. Confidence, the eighth theme, is clearly inspired by achievement. Thus Bedouin business leaders communicate confidence in their performance by celebrating their achievements. Through this analysis of a few select photographs of key business leaders in Dubai, I hope to have mapped out a path that other Bedouin business leaders can follow in their efforts to improve the effectiveness of their messages to their followers.

Conclusions, Limitations, and Recommendations One clear conclusion that this book supports is that leadership is a complex socially constructed phenomenon with multiple meanings and therefore cannot be described in terms of one or a few models. In a sense, there are as many models of leadership as there have been leaders throughout history, and effective leadership is context-specific, as is true of all social phenomena. Notions of the truth tend to be similar among individuals who share similar cultural and historical backgrounds. New discourses continue to arise at various historical moments, characterized by evolving relations between power and knowledge and creating new versions of the truth. Thus Foucault (1980) rejected the Kantian notion of an a priori truth:

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Each society has its regime of truth, its “general politics” of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true. (p. 131)

The arguments presented in this book are founded on the Foucauldian understanding of power relations as being based in modern times on discipline through the interrelation of power, knowledge, and the body. In particular, I have referred throughout this book to Foucault’s (1977) argument that this mechanism serves to produce docile bodies through the manipulation of both space, as in the creative architecture of the panopticon, and time, as in the minute-by-minute regulation of prisoners’ routines. The ultimate aim of such measures is to align human bodies with the norms of the controlling authority through self-discipline. Again, the type power/knowledge relationship that takes shape is specific to a given social, cultural, and historical setting and therefore differs across societies. As I see it, Bedouin leaders are like other leaders in their efforts to create docile, self-disciplined bodies that will follow a leader unthinkingly. Communication obviously plays a central role in the power/knowledge mechanism that shapes relationships between leaders and followers; that is, language is the means by which subjects construct and share their realities. I have accordingly argued that the visual myth created by a Bedouin leader is effective to the extent that it evokes and reifies Bedouin cultural symbols and rituals. In this way, the created image can be “normalized” to a particular social group. The Foucauldian concept of normalization is widely visible in the media in the repetition of particular messages so as to make them seem a natural part of a society. Visual art can be disseminated in this way so that repeated viewing of it reaches the targeted audience, manipulating followers in subtle, barely perceptible ways that mythologize a leader (Wehrle, 2016). Hence, discourse and sense-making (and myth-making) are very closely related. In the Bedouin context that I have described, this discipline is reinforced by the portraits of leaders serving as a form of visual surveillance. Visuality in this respect

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is part of a social discourse intended to impose a leader’s social domination through a display of his metaphorical disciplinary power; that is, visuality here takes the form of a kind of internalized panopticon. Academic research on Bedouin Arabia also has the potential to shed light on the inspiration for the ideas and actions of terrorists who have claimed to be furthering the cause of Islam. This research has drawn attention to the fact that, over the centuries, Arabia has been constructed from the outside by outsiders whose hegemonic visions of “the Orient” were full of fantasies, including fantastic visions of evil (Said, 2003). Leadership in patriarchal Bedouin society has been little studied thus far, but there is an urgent need for such work given the outsized role that Bedouins have been playing worldwide for the past century in particular. As the cradle of the problematic identities of Arab and Muslim, Arabia, its people, and its historical and sociocultural backgrounds merit study from a native perspective apart from the hegemony of Orientalists. Greater understanding in these regards represents a first step in the long journey to defeat the terrorist totalitarian notions that attempt to co-opt Islam as their divine raison d’être. Foucault’s notion of genealogy lies behind this perspective on disciplinary power, in which the power of gaze turns humans from subjects into objects. Because leadership is not a general phenomenon amenable to a single explanation, theories about it must continually be reconstructed for each society and for each age and must be localized to specific social groups within every single society. In the case of visual art, various discourses connect meanings and build on historical and social contexts in order to communicate a message. Power relations among subjects create discourses, but the causal relationship between the discourses and subjects remains bound up in a kind of chicken-and-egg paradox. Discourse, through power, creates certain forms of knowledge and thus various versions of truth. Returning to Foucault’s panopticon, this notion has been questioned and refined by subsequent thinkers, for instance Mathiesen (1997), who proposed the term “synopticon” to describe the surveillance of the few by the many in an inversion of the panopticon in which the many surveil the few. This phenomenon can also be seen at work in my analysis of Sheikh Mohammed’s social media presence, and I note in this context that the

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UAE has the highest level of social media penetration of any country (Kemp, 2019). The theoretical contributions of the work presented in this book include the model describing the development of a leader’s image communication process (Fig. 7.2), which incorporates the three key components of the leadership visual communicational process, namely visual discourse, meaning construction, and sociocultural context. I tested the model using three distinct datasets and analytical methods in order to demonstrate that this empirical framework can explain the influence of visual leadership messages. In the process, I confirmed the discursive nature of any visual message, which involves the creation of a powerful virtual authority for the aesthetic object that converts it into a subject capable of influencing a viewer. In this sense, the process by which meaning is constructed also varies across cultures and time and must, again, be investigated in light of the cultural and historical contexts. Accordingly, in order to explore the discursive dimension of visual communication across various Bedouin geographical, historical, and intellectual contexts, I referred to Foucault’s interconnected notions of power/knowledge, discourse, subjectivity, body, symbolism, and gaze. I also referred to the work of such other theorists as Said (2003), Sharabi (1992), and Gramsci (1989). Turning now to methodology, the main contribution of this study is the use of a novel set of qualitative approaches that, as just observed, involved three distinct datasets and types of analysis. First, in order to explore the leader’s perspective, I reflected on publicly available images and social media posts, drawing on a few techniques from visual genealogy to reconstruct the meanings of this material from Bedouin social and historical perspectives. Second, I considered the perspective of those who actually create leaders’ visual messages by interviewing eight Arab artists regarding how they created visual messages. Lastly, I considered the audience’s perspective so as to differentiate the ways in which leaders’ messages may be received, relying on discourse analysis to identify key themes in the messages. This combination of sources of data and analyses, I hope to have shown, represents a novel and effective method for investigating the complex phenomenon of leadership in the Bedouin sociocultural setting and from the perspective of aesthetics.

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I close with a frank acknowledgment of the limitations of this book, which also point to directions for future study. To begin with, my analysis of leadership, since the focus is on perceptions and attitudes, has necessarily been subjective (Davison et al., 2012). Second, the discourse analysis that is the basis of my methodology has been criticized for yielding overly vague results (Barrett, 1991; Rose, 2012), and it is certainly true that I have not offered here any specific steps for crafting a message that will sway a Bedouin audience. Third, the sample sizes of the individuals interviewed and of the visual messages analyzed were fairly small, though I sought to minimize the impact of this limitation by conducting semi-­ structured, in-depth interviews and, in the third phase of research, focusing on only the three photos of the Bedouin leader that were used during the first phase. A further limitation relates to the availability of relevant information. Thus, on the one hand, few academic studies have focused on Bedouins in their sociocultural context. On the other hand, the translation of Arabic terms—beginning with “leader” and “leadership”—is by nature imprecise, for which reason I chose to interview artists who had received a Western education and used English terms along with their Arabic equivalents in communicating with them in order to ensure that the meaning remained clear. Turning lastly to recommendations for future study, I first note that my discussion of the myth of progressive autocratic regimes in the Middle East points to the need for deeper and broader consideration of the panoptical effect of leaders’ images and the use of these and other forms of visuals as political propaganda. I again draw attention to the enormous opportunities for academic research in the area of social media use by Arab leaders and their followers. One aspect of leadership that fell outside the scope of this study but deserves particular attention is gender. While I did interview one female artist and analyze a couple of images featuring women and girls, I left unexplored specifically feminine perspectives on leadership in the patriarchal masculine-dominated societies of Arabia. Especially fruitful in this regard would be consideration of Mitchell’s (1996) argument, alluded to above, that the image of an individual can transform a subject into an object. With respect to the panoptical effect and surveillance, future research could explore the notion of individual privacy in an age in which

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governments and corporations are becoming increasingly adept at digital surveillance. Again, this research will benefit from sensitivity to the specific conditions of Bedouin and Arab society with regard to such issues as surveillance justified as a national security measure and the marketing of collected data (Berry, 2014; Hardt & Negri, 2001; Weber, 2010). In this book, I have sought to raise awareness of such important but problematic concepts as language, culture, identity, and meaning within the distinct sociocultural and historical contexts of Bedouin life and from the perspective of leadership. These issues are of interest to members of the academic and business communities as well as government officials in the Arab world and beyond. Dubai in particular has lessons for other modern societies in terms of the panopticism at work not only in the display of leaders’ images but also in the ever-expanding use of CCTV and monitoring of Internet usage by businesses and governments. In closing, I observe again that “there is no absolute, unconditioned, transcendental stance from which to grasp what is good, right or true. … There is no objective grounds of knowledge” (Solomon & Sherman, 2003, p.  294). This ambiguity, I have argued, represents perhaps the greatest challenges for leaders and leadership studies when it comes to aesthetics and ethics. Thus leadership, as a socially constructed phenomenon, involves the management of various meanings and individuals’ experiences of these meanings.

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Glossary to Arabic Terms

‫  )العباية‬is a loose, simple, robe-like over-garment worn by some Muslim women in the Arabian Peninsula and some parts of North Africa. The traditional Abaya is black, and it covers the whole body except the head, feet, and hands. Agal (‫  )العقال‬is the Arabic term for an accessory worn by Arab Bedouins; it is a cord, worn doubled, traditionally black and made of goat hair, used to keep the Shemagh in place on the wearer’s head. It is usually worn in the Arabian Peninsula, some parts of Iraq, eastern Syria, Palestine, Jordan, Ahwaz in Iran, and some parts of Yemen. Bisht (‫  )البشت‬is the Arabic term for the flowing cloak worn over the Thawb for prestige on special occasions, such as festivals and weddings. It is traditionally made of woven camel hair or wool and trimmed with a black cord or golden braid and ranges in color from white to various shades of gray and brown. Druze (‫  )الدروز‬are Arabic-speaking ethnoreligious group originating in the Levant, the majority of them lives in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel. The name Druze is derived from the name of Muhammad bin Ismail Nashtakin ad-­ Darazi. The Druze faith incorporates elements from Ismailism, Gnosticism, Hinduism, Christianity, and other philosophies and beliefs. Hijab (‫  )الحجاب‬is a veil worn by some Muslim women that covers the head and chest in presence of any male outside of their immediate family. The term Hijab in Arabic refers to curtain in the metaphorical sense. Abaya (‫العباءة‬or

© The Author(s) 2020 A. Bitar, Bedouin Visual Leadership in the Middle East, Palgrave Studies in Business, Arts and Humanities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57397-3

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Glossary to Arabic Terms

Janbiya (‫ )الجنبية‬

is the Arabic term for a ceremonial dagger that originated in Yemen that men typically wear as an accessory to their clothing. Khanjar (‫  )الخنجر‬is similar to Janbiya, a ceremonial curved dagger worn during formal occasions in Oman, that men typically wear as an accessory to their clothing. Muzzar (‫  )العاممة‬is the Arab word for a traditional headdress worn by Omani and Yemeni men consisting of a square of woven wool or cotton fabric wrapped and folded into a turban. Sharif of Mecca (‫  )رشيف مكة‬was the title of the traditional stewards of the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina and the surrounding Hejaz region in what is now Saudi Arabia. Shemagh (‫  )الشامغ‬is the Arabic term for a type of Bedouin headdress that takes various forms and names. In the Arabian Gulf, where it is also known as the Ghutrah, it is a plain white cotton cloth; in Palestine, where it is known as the Kuffiyeh, it is a white, orange, and black cloth made of wool and cotton; and in Yemen and Oman, where it is known as the musar, it is a colored cloth of cotton or flax. Thawb (‫  )الثوب‬is the Arabic term for an ankle-length garment with long sleeves made of cotton or sheep’s wool worn by Bedouin men. Wazar (‫  )الوزر‬is the Arabic term for a woven cloth wrapped around the waist made from cotton, white or colored worn by Omani men.

Index1

A

Abu Dhabi, 77, 94 Academic studies, 2, 212 Aesthetic leadership, 17, 55, 59 Aesthetics/aesthetic, v, 7, 8, 14, 33, 34, 41, 42, 44–48, 54, 57–59, 136, 171–213 Alabbar, Mohamed, 201–203 Analogy, 50, 51 Arabia, 1–34, 71, 76, 77, 78n6, 82–84, 86, 175, 177, 181, 200, 201, 210, 212, 218 Arabian horse, 95, 103, 143, 144, 156 Arabian Peninsula, 3, 29, 71, 72, 76, 77, 82, 112, 144, 176, 177, 205, 217

Arabic, 2, 3, 26–29, 72, 75n5, 75n4, 76, 78n9, 78n11, 78n7, 78n8, 78n10, 95, 98, 99, 101, 102, 107, 108, 144, 149, 150, 152, 153, 174–177, 190, 212, 217, 218 Arabs, 2–5, 29, 32, 71, 95, 177, 178, 187 Architecture, 15, 55, 59, 134, 136, 186, 187, 200, 209 Arnaut, Fawaz, 109–112 Art, 13, 15, 42, 44–47, 53–56, 58, 108, 111, 114, 115, 118, 124, 137, 142, 146, 148–152, 171–173, 176, 177, 179, 180, 184, 186, 188, 192, 193, 197, 199, 209, 210 Artifact, 46, 47

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2020 A. Bitar, Bedouin Visual Leadership in the Middle East, Palgrave Studies in Business, Arts and Humanities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57397-3

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220 Index

Assad, Hafez, 4, 5, 113, 185, 189, 198 Authority, 8, 11, 12, 27–29, 43, 45, 72, 93, 102, 107, 142, 181, 183, 184, 191, 206, 209, 211 B

Bahrain, 77, 85, 86 Bani Yas, 92 Bedouin, 1–34, 48, 58, 60, 71–89, 78n7, 78n8, 91–95, 97, 99, 101, 103, 104, 107, 108, 113, 114, 117, 119, 121, 146, 154, 156, 159, 163, 165, 168, 169, 175, 178, 184, 185, 187, 190–197, 200–213, 218 Burj Khalifa, 95, 96, 143, 186, 193, 202

D

Disciplinary power, 6, 10, 11, 100, 210 Discourse, 5–8, 10, 17, 19, 24, 25, 27, 28, 33, 43, 48, 51, 56, 58, 91, 92, 99, 100, 104, 107, 113, 114, 121, 130, 137, 146, 160, 176, 181–183, 186–189, 198, 209, 211, 212 Docile bodies, 4, 7, 186, 209 Dogma, 49 Domination, 10, 12, 18, 28, 29, 77, 210 Druze, 2, 217 Dubai, vii, 23, 24, 26, 28, 30, 34, 77, 89, 91–93, 98, 99, 101–104, 109, 113, 119, 126, 131, 137, 142, 159, 160, 162, 165, 167, 169, 177, 184, 186–188, 193–195, 198, 202, 208, 213

C

CEO, 13, 15, 30, 198 Charisma/charismatic, 12, 55, 163, 168 Christian, 2 Climate, 74, 173, 177–178, 191, 199 Communication, 5, 9, 12, 16, 17, 21–23, 33, 44, 54, 56, 59, 92, 97, 100, 101, 105, 107, 108, 142, 145, 154, 159, 163, 168, 174, 180, 182, 183, 190–194, 196–201, 206, 207, 209, 211 Culture, 71–89, 174–175, 191

E

Egypt, 3, 77, 83, 176, 196 Emirati, 93, 97, 99, 101, 102, 107, 114, 117, 118, 124, 126, 142, 178, 179, 184–187, 203, 205 Epistemology, 20–23 F

Facebook, 101, 202, 204 Faisal, 78–82, 88, 105 Faith, 175–177 Al-Falasi, Al Bu Falasah, 92 Fertile Crescent, 29, 31

 Index 

Foucauldian analysis, 5–7, 19 Foucault, Michel, 4–8, 10–15, 17–21, 23, 25, 26, 28, 34, 47, 56, 92, 100, 134, 160, 181, 184, 186–189, 195, 208–211

221

Islam/Islamic, 2, 3, 73, 74, 174–177, 185, 188, 207, 210 Israel, 2, 77, 217 J

Jordan, 2, 77, 81–82, 88, 175, 217 G

Gaze, 14–16 Genealogy, 56–57, 76–77 Geography, 29, 71, 119, 126, 173, 177–178, 191 Germany, 49, 52 Al Ghurair, Abdul Aziz, 205–207 Goebbels, Josef, 49 Grand Sharif of Mecca, 78 H

Al Habtoor, Khalaf, 204 Al Halyan, Moosa, 107, 142–147, 156, 185, 186 Hashemites/Banu Hashim, 78, 81 Hegemony, 6, 32, 156, 186–188, 210 Hitler, 49, 52, 55, 189 I

Imagery, 4, 8, 11, 50, 56, 59, 60, 125, 130, 135, 136, 142, 162, 166, 193, 200 Intertextuality, 160 Iraq, 24, 52, 76–81, 83, 150, 175, 176, 185, 198, 217

K

Kawoosh, Sattar, 107, 136–142 Al Khalifa, Hamad bin Isa, 85–86, 88 King Farouk, 83 King Hussein, 81–83, 88 Knowledge, 6, 7, 12, 17, 19–22, 33, 45, 47, 56, 57, 97, 100, 104, 111, 137, 186–188, 208–211, 213 Kuwait, 77, 83–86, 88 L

Language, 3, 7–9, 15–17, 19, 21, 22, 26–29, 49–51, 55, 58, 72, 101–104, 151, 152, 154, 159, 172–177, 180, 183, 185, 186, 189, 190, 199, 201, 206, 209, 213 Leadership, 1–34, 41–60, 72, 73, 75, 77–89, 91–94, 99, 100, 102, 104, 107, 108, 112, 113, 154, 156, 159–166, 168, 169, 171, 178, 181–195, 197, 198, 200–208, 210–213 Levant, 2, 3, 176, 196, 217

222 Index

Linguistic, 10, 17, 19, 27, 42, 50, 51, 182, 199 LinkedIn, 101, 102, 195, 202, 204

O

Oman, 77, 78n8, 86–89, 177, 218 Ontology, 18–19 Oppression, 6, 10, 32, 185 Orient, 2–5, 210

M

Makki, Najat, 107, 118–131, 137, 175–178, 185 Al Maktoum, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid bin Saeed, 23, 24, 30, 34, 89, 91–105, 109, 110, 148, 156, 159–169, 181, 182, 185, 187, 188, 190–195, 197, 198, 200, 202–206, 210 Manipulation, 10, 12, 49, 58, 209 Media, 4, 7, 12, 13, 15–17, 23, 32, 33, 42, 44, 49, 54–56, 79, 80, 84, 92, 95, 101, 103, 105, 135, 177, 186, 187, 192, 197, 199, 201, 202, 204, 206, 209–212 Mesopotamia, 3, 29 Metaphor, 50–52 Methodology, 17–24 Middle East, 2–4, 49, 71, 111, 117, 131, 162, 165, 174, 175, 188, 200, 205, 212 Murib, Wail, 107, 149–155, 173, 174, 176 Muslim, 2, 4, 162, 191, 205, 210, 217 Myth, 57, 189, 190, 192, 193, 195, 196, 200, 209, 212 N

Najd, 84, 86 Nazi, 49, 55 North Africa, 3, 76, 205, 217

P

Paintings, 14, 49, 53, 55, 56, 59, 108, 109, 114, 121, 126, 130, 137, 147, 150, 151, 153, 154, 172, 173, 178, 196 Palestinian territories, 77 Panopticon/panoptical, 14, 15, 25, 34, 100, 171, 184, 186, 187, 209, 210 Patriarchy/patriarchal, 75 Picasso, 49, 50, 173 Portraits, 13, 53 Power, 5–12, 14–16, 18–21, 24, 26–29, 32–34, 43, 45–48, 52, 53, 57–59, 75, 76, 79, 97, 100, 107, 108, 111, 130, 133, 134, 136, 137, 144, 145, 155, 156, 162, 171, 172, 180–191, 194, 196–198, 201, 202, 206, 208–211 Power of Images, 179–182 Propaganda, 4, 5, 41, 49, 135, 212 Prophet Mohammed, 74, 191 Q

Qaboos bin Said, Sultan, 86–89 Qatar, 77 Quran, 29, 73n2, 75, 174, 175, 177, 190 Quraysh tribe, 29, 78, 175

 Index  R

Rafai, Ismail, 107, 112–123, 137, 150, 172–174, 178, 180, 185 Riyadh, 77, 82 S

Al-Sabah, Emir Sabah al-Ahmad, 83, 86 Sabour, Nizar, 107, 130–136, 180 Saddam Hussein, 79–81, 185 Al-Sahhaf, Mohammed Saeed, 52 Sajwani, Hussain, 204, 205, 207 Al Saud, Abdulaziz, 82–84 Saudi, 77, 78n6, 82–84, 86, 175, 218 Al Sayed, Waddah, 107, 145–152 Sensory, 17, 22, 33, 34, 43, 45, 46, 57, 154, 171, 172, 197 Sheikh Hamdan, 94, 202, 204 Sheikh Zayed, 114, 142, 145–147, 179, 185 Subjectivity, 17, 211 Surveillance, 6, 11, 14, 25, 33, 34, 107, 171, 184, 209, 210, 212 Symbols, 5, 7, 8, 14, 16–19, 25, 49, 53–55, 59, 89, 92, 94, 104, 114, 126, 134, 136, 144, 171,

223

172, 174, 175, 180, 181, 186, 190, 192, 196, 199, 209 Synopticon, 210 Syria/Syrian, 2, 4, 24, 26, 76–79, 84, 108, 112, 113, 117, 130, 150, 172, 173, 175, 176, 185, 198, 217 T

Twitter, 101, 202, 204 U

United Arab Emirates (UAE), 77, 91 United Kingdom, 104 V

Violence, 10, 150, 152 Visibility, 15, 134 Visual/visualization, 7–8, 12–14, 41–60, 77–89, 135, 155, 182–188, 209 W

Welch, 198, 200 World War II, 77