Excavating Modernity in the Arab Gulf: The Case of Kuwait
Panel III-15, sponsored byAssociation for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies (AGAPS), 2020 Annual Meeting
On Tuesday, October 6 at 11:00 am
Panel Description
In his book on Dubai, Ahmed Kanna astutely recognizes that, “Today it still seems acceptable to present the Arab Gulf in ways no longer so acceptable” of other postcolonies: as traditional, tribal, religiously conservative, and struggling to retain authenticity in the face of overwhelming change (2011: 1). While Gulf rulers are sometimes described as obsessive modernizers steering their societies, for better or worse, into the hypermodernity of 21st century globalism, citizens are portrayed as either passively accepting these top-down changes or lamenting the “loss of local, Islamic values as their countries become enmeshed in global economic systems” (Exell 2016: 69). Tropes commonly drawn upon to depict Gulf societies as inherently bound to tradition and apprehensive of modernity include the existence of strict labor and citizenship laws that seek to preserve a cohesive national identity distinct from foreigners; the persistence of kin-based tribalism and/or upsurge of Islamism in political and social institutions; and the proliferation of heritage-based discourses and practices in local culture industries. However, as Kanna argues, such recourses to tradition in the contemporary Gulf are not “traditional” at all but are specific responses to the experiences of early oil modernity (31).
While significant strides have been made in the literature of the broader Middle East to counter orientalist depictions of the region as a timeless “repository of tradition … the Gulf seems a recalcitrant holdout” (Kanna 2011: 3). Most scholarly literature that examines the experiences of early- to mid-twentieth century modernity in the Middle East has overlooked the Gulf’s contributions to the formation of a postcolonial Arab modernism. This has been exacerbated by the deluge of social scientific research on the Gulf’s transformations since the late 1990s (especially the UAE and Qatar), which has created the impression that the region only really began to modernize in the context of late 20th century globalization.
This panel disrupts the “tradition versus modernity” dichotomy by which the Arab Gulf is persistently studied. With specific focus on Kuwait, the papers analyze how many facets of the contemporary Gulf assumed to be grounded in “traditional” or “conservative” values—labor laws, tribal politics, Islamist institutions, heritage cultures—were in fact modern products of and responses to modern problems originating in the early oil decades (1950s-1980s). In so doing, these papers excavate the agency of diverse social groups (workers, tribes, intellectuals, artists) alongside that of the state in the construction of a distinct Kuwaiti postcolonial modernity.
In her work on museums in the Arab Gulf, Karen Exell argues that Gulf citizens today view the incessant influence of “global” culture on their societies as a “cultural attack” (2016: 68). Other scholars similarly examine the Gulf’s burgeoning culture industries that reify pre-oil heritage and folklore as evidence that citizens are seeking to “emblazon a sense of local traditionalism within a sea of change” (Fox et al., 2006: 266). Nothing constructs an image of a society that is at once becoming hypermodern and global while also longing for cultural anchoring than the photogenic scenes (which adorn many book covers) of courtyard houses, mosques, or camels foregrounding skylines of spectacular skyscrapers.
However, what this discourse misses is that these constructed tableaus juxtaposing the Gulf’s pre-oil past with its hypermodern present are the products of state discourses and practices that have willfully eliminated all trace and memory of everything that happened in between: namely, the experiences of early oil modernity from the 1950s to 1980s. There is much that occurred in those decades—from public demands for political participation and social reform to sluggish urban and economic growth—that contemporary Gulf states seek to forget. Like so many other “postmodern” acts of city building, the proliferation of pre-oil heritage sites on the landscape of the contemporary Gulf city, alongside the demolition of much of what was built in the early oil years, entails “a conscious attempt to eradicate modernism’s oppositional or critical stance” (Boyer 1994: 6). The recourse to tradition in present-day culture industries should not simply be read as a conservative reaction to globalization but as a product of the challenges of mid-century modernity (to the authority and legitimacy of the newly modernizing state).
This paper analyzes newspapers, magazines, television shows, plays, and other cultural products to excavate Kuwaitis’ myriad experiences of modernity between 1950 and 1990. It then examines the resurrection of “pre-oil” heritage throughout the past two decades as an example of what Paul Connerton calls “repressive erasure,” deliberate acts that edit out and silence memories of struggle, of a past that might pose a political challenge in and to the present (2011: 41). I also analyze how young Kuwaitis today are starting to actively resist this erasure (e.g. by demanding the preservation of modernist architecture), disrupting scholarly assumptions that Gulf citizens identify more with traditional national culture than with the modernist culture that defined the post-1950 era.
This paper examines how support for opposition-aligned candidates among Kuwaiti citizens varies with the social composition of their surroundings. Previous research on the origins of support for oppositions offers mixed expectations: some studies indicate that opposition emerges from processes of elite competition, while others suggest that opposition emerges from economic marginalization. As most of this research has been directed at understanding the strategic interaction between regimes and opposition parties, the applicability of these theories to cases where political parties are weaker, as in the case of Kuwait, is unclear. Using elite interviews, election results, archival material, and census data from 1981 to the present, this paper challenges a widespread critique of electoral politics in Kuwait as exclusively "tribal." These critiques view tribalism as inimical to ideas of electoral participation centered on the idea of a rational, atomistic citizen who deductively and freely selects a candidate without family, kin, or social pressure.
This paper traces the origins of the contemporary opposition in Kuwait, beginning with the restoration of the National Assembly in 1981. I argue that in electoral districts where elites represented minority “groups” (tribal, familial, or sectarian), they were more likely to use Islamist and liberal ideological labels to mobilize citizens. I trace these patterns across several historical electoral districts and tribes. The presence of practices such as “tribal primaries” seemingly reflects the resilience of the tribe as a traditional and hierarchical social organization in Kuwait. But tribal and kin-based encounters with electoral institutions and jurisdictional boundaries belie a view of electoral politics as exclusively tribal. The paper traces how elites representing minority groups were more likely to use ideological labels to obtain electoral support. These findings suggest the value of understanding how identity and ideology have shaped Kuwait's electoral landscape and patterns of oppositional politics over time.
Drawing on corporate records, imperial archives, newspapers, periodicals, memoirs, and oral history interviews in English and Arabic, this paper traces the genealogy of Kuwait’s first comprehensive labor law, which was implemented in 1959. The law came into being after a wave of strikes that rocked Kuwait from 1948 to 1956. Workers called on the Kuwaiti government to protect their rights and bring an end to blatant racial segregation in the oil industry. Shaken by the protests and by the looming threat of nationalization, oil companies and imperial officials abandoned their fight against Kuwaiti government oversight, and grudgingly resigned themselves to working within it.
But even as officials changed tactics, they sought to build a state that would police worker dissent as much as protect worker rights. Their efforts received support from a cadre of British and Egyptian “labor experts,” who were convinced that Anglo-American oil firms represented the cutting edge of modern industrial relations. Untroubled by the industry’s pervasive racial segregation, they crafted a labor code explicitly based on corporate practices, going so far as to use the Kuwait Oil Company “Employee Handbook” as the basis of the legislation. Their belief in their modern expertise overrode Anglo-Egyptian geopolitical tensions, while their legislation retroactively legalized the discriminatory practices that had generated worker protests in the first place. In other words, the “modern” expertise of corporate and imperial officials, rather than engrained cultural conservatism, shaped the repressive labor legislation of the Persian Gulf.
In tracing the genealogy of Kuwaiti labor law, this paper argues that “modern” labor legislation perpetuated corporate practice by replacing a tiered hierarchy based on race with one based on nationality. This legal apparatus would have significant regional effects, as Kuwaiti legislation became the basis of Gulf labor law. Either through persuasion, as in Kuwait and Qatar, or by force of arms, as in Bahrain, imperial officials transplanted this labor legislation throughout the Gulf, forging a labor regime that divided citizen and noncitizen workers. It was this legislation, rather than supposedly traditional or conservative identity politics, that came to exclude noncitizens from the protections of labor law. Gulf states thus baked an array of corporate strategies—including segregation, divide-and-rule, and deportation as a mechanism of labor discipline—into their legal systems on the eve of independence, in the process providing them with a seemingly modern veneer of legitimacy.
