Why do young Saudis, night after night, joyride and skid cars on Riyadh's avenues? Who are these "drifters" who defy public order and private property? What drives their revolt? Based on four years of fieldwork in Riyadh, Pascal Menoret's Joyriding in Riyadh explores the social fabric of the city and connects it to Saudi Arabia's recent history. Car drifting emerged after Riyadh was planned, and oil became the main driver of the economy. For young rural migrants, it was a way to reclaim alienating and threatening urban spaces. For the Saudi state, it jeopardized its most basic operations: managing public spaces and enforcing law and order. A police crackdown soon targeted car drifting, feeding a nationwide moral panic led by religious activists who framed youth culture as a public issue. The book retraces the politicization of Riyadh youth and shows that, far from being a marginal event, car drifting is embedded in the country's social violence and economic inequality.

Pascal Menoret (born 1976 in Marseille) is an urban historian whose research focuses on the cities of the Arabian Peninsula. He currently teaches at New York University Abu Dhabi. Menoret received his PhD from the Sorbonne-University of Paris-1 (2008) and became a post-doctoral fellow at Princeton's Transregional Institute (2008-2010), and a Harvard Academy Scholar (2010-11 and 2013-14). Before conducting research in Riyadh (2005-2007 and 2009), Menoret studied Arabic with Houda Ayoub in Paris and German philosophy with Gérard Lebrun at the Université de Provence. He wrote his M.A. thesis on a Saudi TV series, Tash Ma Tash, and his B.A. thesis on religion and politics in Hegel's philosophy. He graduated from the Lycée Lacordaire in Marseille in 1994.