This review reflects on Gareth Doherty’s Paradoxes of Green, examining how the notion of “green” operates as both a visual condition and a conceptual framework within arid landscapes such as Bahrain. The discussion foregrounds a critical distinction between “green” as color and “greening” as process, revealing how these trajectories often diverge in Gulf urban environments shaped by rapid development and environmental constraints. Through an ethnographic approach, the narrative traces how landscapes are not merely physical settings but are deeply embedded in social practices, cultural meanings, and everyday life.
Doherty’s work highlights the symbolic and political dimensions of color, showing how it permeates religious rituals, public celebrations, and spatial expressions of identity. Landscapes emerge as layered constructs where environmental conditions intersect with social values, historical memory, and cultural representation. The emphasis on lived experience, walking routes, encounters, and local narratives, offers a nuanced understanding of how environments are inhabited and perceived.
At the same time, the review points to limitations in the reliance on descriptive ethnography, noting the absence of more analytical or policy-oriented insights. Nonetheless, the work contributes significantly to landscape discourse in the MENA region, particularly in articulating how cultural and environmental processes are intertwined. It ultimately calls for more context-sensitive and locally grounded interpretations of landscape that move beyond reductive binaries and acknowledge the complexity of contemporary urban conditions.
Read the full book review here.
