Gulf Nationalism and the Geopolitics of Constructing Falconry as a ‘Heritage Sport’

This paper illustrates how G ulf nationals' claims to their homelands are affirmed and enacted through the ostensibly banal, but highly political, effort to construct falconry as a ‘heritage sport’. Taking the case of the U nited A rab E mirates, I argue that local elites have harnessed the global discourse of ‘heritage’ to construct an ethnicized and gendered vision of a primordial A rab homeland. Heritage discourses surrounding falconry play an important role in legitimating prevailing structural inequalities in G ulf societies, reaffirming the minority citizen‐nationals' claims to ‘ownership’ of the state, as well as naturalizing the masculinist imaginings of desert landscapes. Also considering the transnational dimensions of a geopolitics of falconry, I show how these nationalist narratives relate to cross‐regional networks between the A rabian P eninsula and C entral A sia. I argue that G ulf A rab falconry practices are not essentially ‘primordial’, but are made possible by and reinforce political economic inequalities institutionalized by contemporary territorial regimes.