Morphologies of Social Flows

Abstract

In this chapter, I will focus on the reenactment of sexual segregation in the Yemeni port town of Aden during the course of the 1990s.¹ In order to see what segregation means from the perspective of the public sphere, I will compare the present situation to Aden of the late colonial era in the 1950s. My interest is to see what makes the present situation entirely different not only from the era when segregation was played down (during the 1970s and 1980s), but also from the colonial period when segregation of all kinds—social, ethnic, and sexual—was the norm. What do such differences tell about the public sphere? In a larger perspective, how do local social dynamics interact with current translocal and global processes and constitute local variations that make up what actually is special to a particular town? To approach these questions, I will take a critical look at Charles Taylor’s notion of social imaginaries (Taylor 2004) and to some in Middle Eastern studies currently influential deliberations on the public sphere.

Ideas always come in history wrapped up in certain practices, even if these are only discursive practices.

—Charles Taylor (2004, 33)