Nationalist particularism and levels of legitimizing architectural and urban traditions in four Gulf cities

This article interrogates acts and levels of legitimizing traditions with the aim of originating discerning accounts from the perspective of ‘Modern State’ and ‘Nationalist Particularism.’ The analysis is undertaken at three different but related levels: chronological, representational, and interventional where each places emphasis on a particular aspect of legitimization. Gulf cities are identified as an appropriate context for this investigation, which is based on a multi-layered approach that interweaves procedures devised to probe each level separately while contributing to portray the overall milieu of legitimizing traditions. Genuinely legitimizing traditions necessitates employing bottom-up strategies while going beyond the practice of cloning traditions to embrace authentic responses to environmental, socio-cultural, and socioeconomic realities.