Governing the Air: Regulation of Commercial Aviation in the Middle East

Abstract

This dissertation project explores airspace as an anthropological space in a century when the sky is becoming more and more connected with everyday life on the ground. It argues that the 20th century’s technological and legal developments co- produced airspace as a transit space between earth and sky. It discusses airspace as a vertical domain that has connected the sky with the earth.This dissertation seeks to offer a meaningful framework to analyze how the sky is imagined and used as airspace. Focused on the Middle East, a complex and contentious region key to the development of airspace and transcontinental air travel, the study examines the practices of key aviation actors who regulate and navigate the movement of aircraft in the airspace. Through ethnographic and archival research data, it explores how multiple groups of human and nonhuman actors utilize and manage this domain of aerial space so crucial to the 21st century everyday life, yet so different from our more familiar terrestrial world.