Consumer Citizenship: National Identity and Museum Merchandise in Qatar

Abstract

While Qatari museums strive to provide a platform for the nation's "voice," this article argues that museum merchandise occupies a new, elevated role in Qatar's contemporary neoliberal environment — as an extension of the country's global outreach and nation-branding. Since state-sanctioned museum merchandise is necessarily expressive of state policies, this article contends that Qatar's museum gift shops are reformulating the signifiers of Qatari national identity through contemporary commodities and redrawing the parameters of national belonging.