The spectral life of infrastructure: development and haunting in Gulf tourism landscapes

The state-led push to expand tourism markets in Arabian Peninsula states has spurred a transformation of local landscapes through the development of infrastructure, or the built environment that shapes economies, communication, and ways of life. This article examines how such projects are experienced by those who live alongside them, arguing that infrastructure becomes a site for affectively remembering past lifeways that haunt the present and produce alternative meanings. This “spectral” dimension to infrastructure is investigated through case studies in Muscat, Oman and AlUla, Saudi Arabia, informed by participant observation, interviews, and discourse analysis. In Muscat, luxury hotel development has enclosed the formerly public coastline and today stimulates memories of past lifeways, while remaining beaches are haunted by rumors of future privatization. In AlUla, the construction of fences around heritage and ecological sites has excluded some residents while fostering narratives of environmental restoration. In each case, infrastructure becomes a site where the past is sustained in the present, generating a spectral landscape wherein new developments also mark an absent or negated lifeway. Attunement to the spectral “registers” of a landscape may offer a grounds for resistance, revealing counter-futures that oppose the logics of extraction. • Infrastructure shapes affective experiences of the past and future. • Development landscapes are haunted by the memory of past lifeways. • The reshaping of local lifeways through tourism infrastructure is contested. • The spectral can be a resource for capital accumulation. • Spectral registers mobilize a politics opposing extractive logics.