This mal­treat­ment, and the attempts to resist it, are the top­ic of The Gulf: High Culture/​Hard Labor, edit­ed by Ross, a lus­trous­ly illus­trat­ed chron­i­cle of the efforts by the Gulf Labor Coali­tion to throw sand in the machin­ery of the repres­sion and exploita­tion con­fronting guest work­ers in the Gulf.

Such penury (rur­al South Asia holds near­ly half the world’s poor) con­trasts sharply with the opu­lence of the Gulf. In the desert cities of the penin­su­la, air con­di­tioned sky­scrap­ers con­tain ski slopes. Sand islands, built by Euro­pean engi­neer­ing firms, rise up from the sea. Mean­while, the rights of those con­struct­ing these tow­ers and islands are near­ly nonexistent.

In Qatar, while exact fig­ures are dis­put­ed , per­haps over a thou­sand work­ers, most­ly South Asians, have died dur­ing con­struc­tion for the World Cup. Employ­ers hold onto pass­ports of import­ed labor­ers and deport them if they get too restive, draw­ing on the mas­sive human well cre­at­ed by the agri­cul­tur­al mis­ery of South and South­east Asia.

Over the past decade, the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, Qatar and oth­er Gulf States have start­ed buy­ing up fran­chis­es — and not just McDonald’s. These days the Gulf States are pur­chas­ing branch­es of uni­ver­si­ties like NYU and muse­ums like the Guggen­heim in New York City, part of pep­per­ing their soci­eties with the ​“oblig­a­tory land­marks for the glob­al investor class,” in the words of NYU pro­fes­sor Andrew Ross. Ross is part of a net­work of artists and uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sors try­ing to change the absurd­ly oner­ous labor con­di­tions fac­ing guest work­ers in the Gulf.

This coali­tion and its off­shoot, the Glob­al Ultra Lux­u­ry Fac­tion, have spent the last five years work­ing from their loca­tion as most­ly New York City-based artists to dis­rupt the extreme­ly unequal sta­tus quo in the UAE.

They have — most­ly fruit­less­ly — been attempt­ing to nego­ti­ate on work­ers’ behalf with those helm­ing the var­i­ous cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions set­ting up shop in the UAE, near­ly all of which rely on migrant labor for build­ing their facil­i­ties. The coali­tion has demand­ed liv­ing wages for import­ed work­ers, the ben­e­fit of free­dom of asso­ci­a­tion as well as bonus­es for the work­ers to com­pen­sate for out­ra­geous­ly high debt bur­dens that nib­ble away at their wages, pre­vent­ing them from send­ing mon­ey back to their home villages.

Such demands have been made to the Guggen­heim lead­er­ship through let­ters, con­ver­sa­tions, and peti­tions which have gone large­ly ignored. The chief suc­cess of the coali­tion has been rais­ing the vis­i­bil­i­ty of Gulf labor mal­prac­tice, ​“expos­ing the role played by muse­ums in show­cas­ing, laun­der­ing, and mag­ni­fy­ing wealth accu­mu­la­tion among the ultra-lux­u­ry class” that dom­i­nates the mod­ern art-world, as Ross writes.

The Gulf is a most­ly use­ful account how the coali­tion has raised this vis­i­bil­i­ty, includ­ing actions such as occu­py­ing the façade of the Guggen­heim with a pro­jec­tion call­ing it a muse­um of the one per­cent, and leaflet­ing and bugling with­in the muse­um.

But in main­stream­ing this knowl­edge of human rights abus­es, the book is not with­out tensions.

The inclu­sion of an open­ing chap­ter by Leah Whit­son of Human Rights Watch (HRW) was a bad call. Whit­son gush­es over how the strug­gle of the artists and activists ​“has allowed us to find our own strength in glob­al­iza­tion, where the inter­con­nect­ed­ness of economies, busi­ness­es, and insti­tu­tions has cre­at­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties for activists to press for accountability.”

Put to the side any gen­er­al cyn­i­cism over HRW (it seems to exist large­ly to watch for human rights vio­la­tions in coun­tries the U.S. gov­ern­ment is itch­ing to invade, sanc­tion, or let loose proxy armies against). Glob­al­iza­tion has not pre­cise­ly been a gold­en goose for South Asia, or at least its poor­er seg­ments. It was the glob­al­iza­tion of U.S. agri­cul­tur­al exper­tise through the Green Rev­o­lu­tion in South Asia which exac­er­bat­ed the mas­sive rur­al pover­ty which has led to work­ers migrat­ing abroad. It seems, then, slight­ly worse than clue­less of Whit­son to praise such elite-dri­ven inter­con­nec­tion of busi­ness­es and economies, since they are exact­ly what have pro­duced the prob­lems of eco­nom­ic dis­lo­ca­tion in the first place.

Mat­ters of class and pow­er emerge far more force­ful­ly in the excel­lent chap­ter by Paula Chakravart­ty and Nitasha Dhillon. The authors note that the Gulf is expe­ri­enc­ing a metasta­t­ic cap­i­tal­ist growth amidst the post-2001 oil boom. But transna­tion­al cap­i­tal and labor flux­es and flows are noth­ing new. As they show, in the 1970s and 1980s the Gulf coun­tries were both very dif­fer­ent and very sim­i­lar to their cur­rent state. New­ly awash in rivers of petrodol­lars from the qua­dru­pling or more of oil prices through­out the 1970s, the coun­tries began build­ing booms.

They also began to bring in a lot of work­ers: Pales­tini­ans, Iraqis and Egyp­tians. These guest work­ers began min­gling with the native Arab pop­u­la­tions just as pan-Arab rev­o­lu­tion­ary nation­al­ism was flour­ish­ing across the Gulf and west­wards. A flur­ry of orga­ni­za­tions emerged: the Pop­u­lar Front for the Lib­er­a­tion of Bahrain, the Pop­u­lar Front for the Lib­er­a­tion of Oman, and the Pop­u­lar Front for the Lib­er­a­tion of the Occu­pied Arab Gulf. In Oman, cadre from these groups car­ried out a suc­cess­ful rev­o­lu­tion in the 1960s and 70s.

Plain­ly, the Gulf States and their West­ern allies were not hap­py with this arrange­ment, and sought out a labor force sheared off lin­guis­ti­cal­ly and cul­tur­al­ly from the Arab pop­u­la­tion. Enter the age of the South Asian guest work­er. They flowed often from Ker­ala in India — a Com­mu­nist strong­hold in the coun­try, where poor peo­ple have been far bet­ter off than in oth­er regions. Oth­er Indi­ans from the country’s poor­er regions, often those most dev­as­tat­ed by the dete­ri­o­rat­ing nation­al agri­cul­tur­al sys­tem, flowed to Ker­ala, fill­ing the gap in the labor force left by expa­tri­ates work­ing in the Gulf. Chakravart­ty and Dhillon speak with labor orga­niz­ers in the region and else­where, show­ing the glob­al nature of the sys­tem with­in which labor lurch­es from one coun­try to anoth­er in search of bet­ter employment.

The authors in the chap­ter do an excel­lent — and vital — job of show­ing the Unit­ed States’ cen­tral­i­ty to Gulf cap­i­tal­ism. Such a per­spec­tive con­trasts sharply with the rapid­ly grow­ing main­stream lit­er­a­ture, which lam­basts the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment for its rela­tion­ship to Sau­di Ara­bia but fails to note that this ​“spe­cial rela­tion­ship” is not a U.S. error but a U.S. interest.

Sau­di Ara­bia has sup­port­ed U.S. prox­ies world-wide with mon­ey and arms. Ide­ol­o­gy, finances and arms flows close­ly tie it to right-wing extrem­ist groups from Pak­istan to Palmyra. Since even the main­stream press is increas­ing­ly report­ing on this phe­nom­e­non, many sug­gest that the U.S.-Saudi ​“spe­cial rela­tion­ship” is a strate­gic error, the tom­fool­ery of the U.S. gov­ern­ment act­ing against its own interests.

Chakravart­ty and Dhillon deft­ly avoid this dead-end. They show the absolute cen­tral­i­ty of Sau­di Ara­bia and the oth­er Gulf states to U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy. In the process, they not only pro­vide an effec­tive analy­sis with­in which to under­stand the work of the Gulf Labor Coali­tion, but also note the chal­lenge of hav­ing a ​“clear under­stand­ing that we are com­plic­it in the con­di­tions that force a work­er to leave his or her home.”

The book also shows great aware­ness of the risks and chal­lenges inher­ent in build­ing a coali­tion span­ning con­ti­nents, meant to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly chal­lenge high-fly­ing cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions and to bet­ter the lives of work­ers across the world. In a way sim­i­lar to the cul­tur­al boy­cott of Israel — and it is prob­a­bly not a coin­ci­dence that many of the con­trib­u­tors to the book are also linked in some way or anoth­er to the efforts to boy­cott Israel — the book impor­tant­ly touch­es on the ​“class” ele­ments of cul­tur­al boycotts.

For exam­ple, Doris Bit­tar writes about the capac­i­ty of artists not mere­ly to view them­selves as part-and-par­cel of the lux­u­ry art world, but frus­trat­ed labor­ers, whose work, like that of all labor­ers, is exploit­ed by those with more pow­er. The piece calls for a con­nec­tion to the ​“labor move­ment [to] influ­ence leg­is­la­tion that con­cerns artists [to] set com­pen­sa­tion stan­dards with muse­ums, and [to] lever­age them to sup­port the com­mu­ni­ties that artists create.”

Bit­tar calls on artists and oth­er cul­tur­al pro­duc­ers to under­stand their loca­tion as not mere­ly that of lever­ag­ing rel­a­tive social priv­i­lege to assist those with less pow­er in the world. Instead, she iden­ti­fies her­self as not mere­ly moral­ly on the side of the pow­er­less, but among those who are, at least from one angle, pow­er­less in the cur­rent sys­tem. This per­spec­tive is less about Check Your Priv­i­lege and more about enter­ing a joint strug­gle from dif­fer­ent loca­tions. In this case, the shared inter­est of poor artists like Bit­tar and poor work­ers in Qatar in chal­leng­ing the cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem which oppress­es both.

At the lev­el of day-to-day pol­i­tics, the book is teem­ing with use­ful per­spec­tives and intro­spec­tion on the role of artists in chal­leng­ing this sys­tem. One wish­es, though, that the edi­tors had woven in a more con­sis­tent focus on the fun­da­men­tal role of the U.S. gov­ern­ment in prop­ping up the Gulf states. From lit­er­al­ly build­ing up their infra­struc­ture, to arms sales, to Gulf Coop­er­a­tion Coun­cil invest­ments in U.S. bonds and U.S. secu­ri­ties, the ties that bind the U.S. to the penin­su­la in the wake of the phased 1970s-era British with­draw­al are many and deep. Many of these coun­tries have made sure to car­ry out U.S. poli­cies, from con­tain­ing Iran to con­tain­ing their own pop­u­la­tion, from spread­ing reac­tion and oppres­sion from Tunisia, to Egypt and onwards.

So per­haps it would have ben­e­fit­ed more, too, from a more sus­tained focus on the U.S. — not mere­ly as a cru­cial enabler and ben­e­fi­cia­ry of this entire sys­tem, but an even­tu­al pres­sure point and tar­get for U.S. activists.