Qatar's Slavery Museum, the Bin Jelmood House: A manifestation of cultural fluidity through the lenses of Minkov (2011) and Sumner (1906)

Abstract

Museums are representative of a nation’s culture and an incubator for constructing identity. The Bin Jelmood House, Qatar’s slavery museum, provides a case study to showcase how the museum informs the country's cultural identity. While the museum highlights the exclusion of enslaved people from mainstream society, it highlights narrow pathways that are evidence of a universalist shift. Drawing on the conceptual lenses of Minkov (2011) and Sumner (1906) and looking at the Bin Jelmood House as a case in point, this thesis argues that the slavery narration and trajectory in Qatar suggests, in multiple instances, a shift over into the universalism dimension. How can the museum’s presentation of the trajectory of slavery be addressed through Minkov’s (2011) and Sumner’s (1906) interplay of exclusionism and universalism? To what extent does Qatar’s Bin Jelmood House illustrate the culture’s fluidity and flexibility beyond limiting its presentations to the binary opposition of exclusionism and universalism? Cultural frameworks are often studied as rigid constructs that tend to essentialize culture. Examining the museums as a site of cultural fluidity through Minkov’s (2011) and Sumner’s (1906) understanding of universalism and exclusionism highlights the flexibility of its parameters, showcasing the various facets of Qatari culture.

Date of Award	2024
Original language	American English
Awarding Institution	HBKU College of Humanities and Social Science