The Heritage State examines the emergence and growth of a tradition of heritage and its preservation in the Arabian Peninsula following decades of the region's marginalization in global heritage debates, largely due to a Eurocentric worldview that prioritizes secular over religious ideas of heritage value and its circulation. Through an exploration of the rise of a powerful advocate for global and local heritage at the turn of the century in the State of Qatar, this book describes the possibilities for thinking about and acting on a heritage that expertly negotiates secular and religious contexts and purposes.

Trinidad Rico invites a postcolonial examination of heritage traditions in the Middle East beyond the lens of iconoclasm and terrorism to shed light on and celebrate the ingenuity and hybridity involved in growing a culture of heritage. She describes how representation of agency and decision-making in the Middle East and Arabian Peninsula are still dominated by the theme of conflict and terrorism and, further, how cultural heritage debates are deeply implicated in this misrepresentation.

It is critical to the future of cultural studies to demonstrate empirically, through historical records and contemporary practices, the extent to which these regions have been represented unfairly and excluded from developing more sophisticated identities and authorities in the emergence of global heritage. The Heritage State puts Qatar at the center of such a conversation, suggesting that Qatar is not a place where things happen but a place that makes things happen in the cultural sphere.