Ostensibly a comparison of the impact of modernity on elite students in Qatar with that on elite students in the United States, this slim volume actually is a long meditation on the meaning of modernity, its acceleration in the age of social media, and the social fragmentation that it forces and sustains. Joshua Mitchell taught at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service in Qatar and its counterpart in Washington. His book compares what he sees as the values and practices characteristic of two elite student cohorts and their different social milieux, and how they do and do not foster individualism and “democracy” or support the aspirations of democrats to achieve “well-being.” Looking back at Tocqueville's lack of enthusiasm in regard to the effects of the spread of “democratic” values in America in the 1830s, Mitchell gives reason to be even more concerned today.
Despite its ambiguous title—Tocqueville has not arrived in Arabia yet—this volume has much to offer to those similarly disturbed by “modernity.” To Mitchell, modernity consists in the atomization of the individual, the erosion of community, and the spread of self-oriented values—values that are “selfies” of the soul. They do not have to be directly harmful to others as are the values of a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives who think cutting food stamps to subsidize agricultural corporations is morally correct. Modern values simply put the individual at the top of each person's social hierarchy. Some of the differences that Mitchell sees between what he identifies as modern and traditional values and practices are revealed in his exploration of how each group of young people interprets fairness to others. He situates Qatari students in a culture of shame, where social control is exercised through public exposure of unapproved behavior. Qataris value personal relationships and avoid shaming others by moderating their public judgments. In the market, they prefer to pay a premium to preserve those relationships rather than seek the cheapest alternative. Mitchell contrasts the political and economic practices of Qatar, based on loyalty, honor, and a willingness to accept their costs, to the American late-capitalist rejection of what Mitchell argues is a basic condition of human life: we all live in a world of debt and payment. He says that his American students rejected the idea that payment to support social ends should be required of them, regardless of their positions on a left–right continuum. Instead, they prefer business and political practices that are “efficient and transparent,” leading them to support government regulations that protect them.
Values are complicated constructs, and Mitchell is ambivalent about the two sets of values he compares. One example is his argument from Tocqueville that democratic “equality” produces a permanent inequality in outcomes that compares unfavorably with the stable inequality of social hierarchies, mitigated by loyalty and honor, which operate in Qatar. U.S.-style “equality” produces anxiety in those struggling for prominence—and well-being—in a society where each individual is alone in that struggle. Which is better? Mitchell doesn't say outright but he leans toward what he calls modern values and practices throughout, even though he points out the advantages of the “traditional society” his Qatari students still embrace, or at least as much as the structural pressures of modernization allow. This might seem to leave an opportunity to blend these two sets of values, but Mitchell is not optimistic that traditional values can withstand the structural pressures of modernity.
Many influences on the transition to modernity go unaddressed in this volume. For example, one destructive result of “democratic” values and practices is social fragmentation, which Mitchell discusses and Tocqueville deplored. In historical perspective, social fragmentation can result from the sociological condition of rootlessness, which Karl Polanyi traced to the marketization of land, as enclosures and land claims by elites pushed tenants off properties that they had nominally controlled under traditional arrangements. In a desert culture, this mechanism applies less widely than in medieval Europe, but globalization nonetheless creates similar economic dislocations in both Qatar and the U.S. that remove youth from their familial contexts. Unfortunately, the book does not pursue this promising idea, despite the parallels between the transitions in both situations.
Another problem I see in this volume is the easy aggregation of the two groups of students Mitchell discusses. Even though they shared an elite status (to varying degrees), in my brief encounters with Georgetown students in Qatar, I observed many differences in students’ social attitudes and life expectations. Having taught in the United States for thirty-five years, I observed similar differences in more heterogeneous populations of students there. Mitchell attributes differences within each group to whether the individual prefers change that would take society back to an idealized past, or to revolution and the replacement of what exists now with an idealized future. To me, this is merely another set of categories for aggregation rather than an examination of the way in which these populations and individuals imagine the future.
Tocqueville in Arabia is not a purely academic book. It offers little reflection on many important literatures purporting to explain the many aspects of democratization and modernization. For example, Mitchell considers religion as a potentially moderating influence. Yet he ignores the literature on neoliberal Islam, which would allow for a very relevant critique of neoliberalism among Qatari and American students, many of whom subscribe to neoliberal Christianity. Along these lines, the volume also does not adequately situate the Protestant ethic Mitchell describes in the American context (with, troublingly, no mention of Max Weber). Nor does it interrogate the Catholic environment in which both sets of students learn. Georgetown's signature course, “The Problem of God,” taught in Qatar as well as in Washington, would have made an excellent platform for such an analysis. Instead, the author dismisses Georgetown's Catholic history and values, noting that only a minority of students at Georgetown are Catholic and, because religion is a concrete experience and few Georgetown students practice Catholicism, the institution's history and values are almost irrelevant to them.
Even so, this book is worth reading and even teachable on several levels. It can illuminate new ideas for those also concerned about the structural effects of social media on identity, personal integrity, and human relationships. Although the issues noted in Mitchell's book are not rigorously defined and contextualized in appropriate literatures, they are important for how we live today, whether in Qatar or the United States.
