ABSTRACT
Before a packed audience in Zurich in 2010, the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, and his second wife, Sheikha Moza, held high above their heads the trophy to host the FIFA World Cup soccer games in 2022. This pivotal moment recalls another one exactly sixty years prior that saw Qatar export its first drop of oil and forever change its future. Since 1950, successive emirs, awash with new found wealth from oil and natural gas exports, set about fashioning a modern city-state. Their varied efforts to modernize Qatar’s capital, Doha, made it possible for the tiny state to host the world’s largest sporting event, and all those years of struggle would pale in comparison to the massive infrastructure investment Hamad and Moza would undertake to fulfill the promise of a FIFA-hosting nation. This chapter describes how, since oil first began flowing, Qatari emirs have used the construction of urban infrastructure as a means of political legitimization, first among the national political class, then an international elite, and finally a global audience for the 2022 games.
