We need to talk about Saudi Arabia
architectsjournal.co.uk
architectsjournal.co.uk
I don’t really think that individuals need to feel especially bad for getting work where there’s work.
Some jobs just inherently involve asshole clients. If your job is to stitch the leather interiors for Rolls Royce, 100% of your customers are assholes. I don’t think that means you should stop doing that job and flip burgers instead.
https://web.archive.org/web/20241216122438if_/https://www.ar...
And sure as hell we would not mind our business, standing aside when evil is being done makes you participate in evil. Saudi Arabia needs to be named and shamed and boycotted, the same way Russia and Israel currently are.
The quickest path to a Saudi Arabia that doesn't abuse human rights is probably the path they're already on.
There is "Not my problem" here, because one or way another it will be your problem within ten years, maybe five.
And for some people here and reading this, within a few months.
Your choices about what to work now on affect your future, in a very direct, literal, potentially fatal way.
That's the point.
Any boycott that would get Saudi Arabia more humane government would be a good boycott. It just seems more likely that sanctions would wreck their economy and lead to a religious fanatic taking over.
In Saudi Arabia, if you're not someone he wants to torture or kill, you can enjoy increased religious freedoms, gender equality, and international ties.
It's a bit like Iran before the revolution: the Shah was liberalizing and modernizing his nation, while at the same using SAVAK to torture his opposition.
Increased compared to taliban rule? Wow, thanks so much to the benevolent dictator for allowing a woman to go out without a male companion without being stoned. And thank the benevolent dictator for not having an interest in me specially. All praise the guy who could dismember many people but chooses to do that only to a couple, and who could imprison many, but does it mostly to his family and whoever he pleases.
This quote is from a story from before Saudi women got the right to drive. The piece argues it was a common take:
Mashaal El-Maliki, a housewife:
"Female driving will destroy family life because it will give husbands a chance to know other women who (as drivers) will be free and without guardians."
The best path forward is whatever path is the shortest to making life bearable for liberal Saudis, but that doesn't end in conservative revolt (and deeper theocracy). When a considerable portion of a nation opposes basic freedoms, there are fewer viable options.
Quaint revisionism; in fact Mossadegh was already actually liberalizing and modernizing the nation while Pahlavi was turning it into a US/UK client state.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Iran
In Saudi Arabia, MBS is probably better than a more fanatical Wahabist government. I gather the power struggle between the royals and the clerics is ongoing. Human rights progress would reverse under the latter.
A building is a building. If you’re pouring concrete you’re impacting the climate.
This is like saying you’d rather build automobiles in the US instead of China. Either way you’re building an automobile.
The ideology of the government has very little to do with whether the thing you’re doing is impacting climate change.
Architects who want to reduce carbon emissions need to switch professions entirely.
Leaders like Assad and Kim Jung Un promised reforms but ended up ruling much like their fathers before them. People are quick to dismiss such early promises as Machiavellian posing but I believe the issues are more systemic. They end up as authoritarians because thats the only way for them and their kin to remain safe in the face of opposition. The ruling elites are comfortable in their local optimum and moving out of it will be politically chaotic. The status quo for them is the least worst choice.
I would not be too quick in expecting change from these regimes is I guess what I'm trying to say. They're not always as firmly established as they might seem.
We are calling this out. What is wrong with that?
Well, this is what the article proposes to architects indeed.