Sociologist Rogers Brubaker once wrote: "That ethnicity and nationhood are constructed is a commonplace; how they are constructed is seldom specified in detail" (2006: 7). In this panel, we examine the "how" of nation building in the Arabian Peninsula. Our papers consider nationalism in the Arabian Peninsula as a shifting--and often contradictory--set of rhetorical and material practices. These practices range from the discursive production of civic and ethnic identity narratives to contest over kinship and historical memory, the appropriation of various symbols and materialities, and territorial imaginaries. Emphasizing the multi-scalar geographies of nation-building agendas, the papers consider the construction of the "nation" through the voices and actions of ordinary people, state-scale actors, and everyone in between.
The aim of this panel is to advance the current literature on nationalism in the Arabian Peninsula on several accounts. First, the panel seeks to deepen interdisciplinary conversations about nationalism and nation building by including a diverse set of disciplinary perspectives-- anthropology, geography, history, political science, and sociology--and multidisciplinary, nontraditional source materials. Second, the panel aims to move beyond the common platitude that the regimes of the Arabian Peninsula are best understood as "ethnocracies" (Longva 2005). We instead seek a more nuanced approach to identity politics and examine the various ways that ethnic nationalist scripts both intertwine with and challenge the production of civic nationalist identities in the region. Third, the panel combines theoretical questions about nationalism with unique and recent empirical research conducted in all six of the Arabian Peninsula states. Each paper focuses on one or two countries, emphasizing in-depth contextual knowledge over macro-level comparisons. Two explorations of Qatar reveal the extent to which nationalist rhetoric is intertwined with environmentally sustainable discourses and regionally competing historical narratives (especially vis-v-vis Bahrain). Saudi Arabia's contemporary arts movement is shown to provide a platform for society to discuss how to define national identity and address national challenges. A comparison of Oman and Kuwait sheds light on the importance of kinship distribution networks and their enduring impact on nation-building success. And an in-depth investigation of Ras al Khaimah, an understudied emirate in the United Arab Emirates, depicts the fluid identity boundaries between nationals and non-nationals that challenge the dominant assumption of an ethnocentric and exclusionary nationalism. In all of these accounts, the abstract concept of nationalism is grounded with empirical evidence to advance our current understanding of nation building in the Arabian Peninsula.
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Dr. Jocelyn Sage Mitchell
The archaeological site of Al Zubarah, an 18th-century city located on the northern coast of Qatar, was awarded UNESCO World Heritage Site status in June 2013, with the Qatar Museums Authority officially unveiling the site to the public with great fanfare in December 2013. Qatar’s official history of the site emphasizes the key themes of historical relevance, independent action, and tribal/territorial unity to a local and global audience. Yet this version of Al Zubarah is a carefully constructed image that leaves out important conflicts and influences—primarily with Bahrain and the Al Khalifa family—that call into question the unity and ownership that Qatar seeks to project on the city. The narratives that are removed or downplayed from the official history tell us as much about the politicized vision of Al Zubarah as the narratives that are promoted.
I argue that Qatar’s re-imagination of Al Zubarah’s historical, cultural, and religious significance—in ways that directly challenge the established record of events—is a key aspect of the state’s overall nation-building narrative. Beginning from the archives of the 2001 International Court of Justice case that ruled that Al Zubarah was a part of Qatari territory, I first investigate Qatar’s preferred narrative of Al Zubarah’s history. I suggest here that the founding of the city by Bahrain’s Al Khalifa family, and the subsequent violent history of the area—in particular, the tribal disunity between the Al Thani and the Naim—have been sanitized to remove all questions of Qatar’s unity and sovereignty. Second, I demonstrate that Qatar’s extensive archaeological efforts in Al Zubarah have been to serve the state’s cultural goal of receiving UNESCO World Heritage Site status, including a pragmatic shift in narrative from the Gulf pearling trade to an independent Gulf city-state once the original application was rejected. Third, I investigate Qatar’s bulldozing of the Qal’at Murair fort and its multi-domed mosque (built by the Al Khalifas in the 1760s) in the 1960s during a time of increased political tension with Bahrain, arguing that the mosque architecture has been appropriated as a powerful architectural symbol of Qatar’s Al Thani family. Fieldwork from Qatar and Bahrain, including archival documents, interviews with key players, and visits to the archaeological sites, supports the argument that the re-imagination of Al Zubarah is one of the key nation-building strategies of the Qatari state as it seeks to build a legitimizing national history.
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Dr. Natalie Koch
In the spectacular new capital cities of the GCC, actors from nearly all urban development sectors are increasingly drawing on narratives about the need for “green,” or environmentally sustainable, building practices. Recent urban development projects have rapidly become saturated with this rhetoric, but the cities’ explosive growth in the Arabian desert fundamentally defies the logic of sustainability. In this paper, I consider how and with what effect these narratives of sustainability have been deployed by various actors in Qatar. In particular, I illustrate how sustainability discourses are mobilized together with nationalist discourses about modernizing Qatar and building up the country’s international prestige, while preserving “local traditions” and “culture” in the built environment. This is commonly – but not exclusively – articulated with reference to the Qatar National Vision’s fourth environmental “pillar” of development, which emphasizes the need for the Qatari state to balance development with the imperative to “preserve and protect its unique environment and nurture the abundance of nature granted by God.” So although strongly paralleling other nationalist visions in the Gulf promoting “greenness” (e.g. Sheikh Zayed’s vision of “greening” the Emirates), the recent focus on urban sustainability in Doha is promoted through mobilizing uniquely Qatari nationalist scripts. I argue that the intertwining of these two ideological narratives (nationalism and sustainability) – and the identities and interests to which they are bound – are central to understanding the (re-)production of unequal power structures in contemporary Qatar.
Methodologically, this paper is informed by fieldwork in Qatar in Fall 2013, when I conducted interviews (n = 20), focus group interviews (3 groups with a total of 15 participants), and extensive participant observation at various events and conferences. This paper also employs textual analysis methods, drawing from a range of texts including newspaper articles and advertisements, governmental and private reports and policy briefs, as well as museums and landscapes. Through interrogating the discursive practices of a wide range of actors, as well as various initiatives, such as Kahramaa’s Tarsheed conservation campaign, Lusail City, and the Msheireb downtown redevelopment project, I shed light on the “disciplining” function of nationalist discourses in efforts to “green” Doha and produce the city as a spectacular “oasis” of modernity in the desert – and more ultimately perpetuate the legitimacy of the techno-modernist nation-building agenda in Qatar.
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Dr. Sean Foley
On October 26, 2013, the Saudi production company Telfaz11 released “No Woman, No Drive,” a four-minute video set to Bob Marley’s song “No Woman, No Cry” and which satirized Saudi Arabia’s restrictions on women driving. Within hours of its release, the video had gone viral and earned millions of views. The success of the video brought unprecedented global attention to the video’s star, the Saudi-American comedian Hisham Fageeh, Telfaz11, and the art movement in the Kingdom.
Although the movement has received little attention among Western scholars, it has provided a platform for Saudi men and women to discuss how to define their national identity and how best to address the challenges facing their nation today. These artists aim to create a fresh vision of arts and society that is both relevant to the daily lives of young Saudis and that transcends pan-Arab models in genres as diverse as comedy, cartoons, film, painting and sculpture. Members of the royal family (an entity related to but separate from the state) helped created a social space for the movement to thrive but left it up to individual artists to take advantage of these opportunities and to reimagine Saudi national identity.
Based on research in the Kingdom from April 2013 until January 2014, including interviews with the staff of Telfaz11, Fageeh, and a host of other leading Saudi artists and critics, this paper will argue that the Saudi arts movement reflects the nexus of four forces: 1) the internet 2) the emergence of art galleries, theatres, YouTube, and other spaces that are accessible to both men and women simultaneously 3) smart phones 4) the King Abdullah Scholarship Program. It also argues that the movement helps us better understand Saudi stability in recent years because it provided a space where Saudis could discuss and resolve the generational clashes, questions of national identity, and political disputes that have plagued other Arab societies since 2010.
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Scott Weiner
Why do authoritative kinship groups endure after states engage in nation building? What role does authoritative kinship play in the nation building process? Kinship is the genuine belief in a familial connection between members of a group, usually denoted in terms of a common ancestor. While many existing explanations of identity treat authoritative kinship as the creation of colonial powers (Herbst, 2000; Posner, 2005), less has been written about cases where colonial intervention mediated, but did not determine the salience of authoritative kinship during nation building. New constructivist understandings of identity formation treat kinship as a descent-based attribute activated in different social and political contexts (Chandra, 2012).
I argue that differences in the construction of kinship before nation building account for variation in the endurance of authoritative kinship structures. Nation building requires states to create new political identities for their residents. However, authoritative kinship groups resist such change because kinship is a “sticky” identity: it denotes not only a person’s national in-group, but position within that in-group. To explain this endurance, I model kinship as either “personal” or “impersonal.” Impersonal kinship means two people in an authoritative kinship structure mutually recognize each other as “relations” - descendants of a common ancestor. Such a relationship is similar to that between “co-ethnics” but with the added requirement of genuine belief in a mutual relation to one shared ancestor. In contrast, personal kinship means two people in an authoritative kinship structure mutually recognize each other as “cousins,” related through both a common ancestor and a more immediate relation. I hypothesize that where kinship ties are primarily personal, authoritative kinship structures exhibit high endurance through nation building. In contrast, where kinship ties are conceptualized as primarily impersonal, kinship structures exhibit low endurance.
I test this hypothesis with a most-different case comparison based on fieldwork in Kuwait and Oman, including five months of archival research (10 British archival sets, 2 newspaper archives, and 15 Arabic-language books on the Gulf) and approximately 40 interviews with experts and members of authoritative kinship structures. Kuwait and Oman share a history of pre-existing authoritative kinship structures. However, Kuwaiti kinship ties are personal, while Omani ties are impersonal. In the paper, I suggest this variation explains differences in the endurance of authoritative kinship structures in each state, and discuss the effects of these structures on the creation of new political identities during nation building.
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Martin Ledstrup
The ‘When,’ Not the ‘What,’ of Emirati National Identity
The modern history of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a story about fundamental and rapid societal change. One important consequence of this profound change for Emiratis is integral to the lived experience of modernity: namely, the perception of risk and fragmentation. In media and scholarship, the problematique of Emirati national identity is often generalized to a story about a bounded group of Emiratis extended between the perceived identity threat from migrants on the one hand, and the cultural excavation of nationhood on the other. As a corrective to this representation, however, I study how stories about national identity are always filtered into Emirati interaction with non-nationals by distinctive spaces, localized social plots and rooted interaction rituals. My argument for the importance of doing so is this: negotiated forms of national identity stories in concrete interaction are not necessarily so binary and in any event lesser fixed than the dominant version. By probing into locally textured presences and absences of identity boundaries, in other words, the question is transformed from the ‘what’ to the ‘when’ of Emirati national identity.
I flesh out this argument by zooming in on the Emirate of Ras al Khaimah (RAK), a politically and economically disadvantaged emirate with a long history of rivalry and fragmentation vis-à-vis Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Since the development of the federation is largely led by the oil-rich emirate of Abu Dhabi, and given the relative difference in power and privileges, it would not seem farfetched to expect local challenges to an Emirati national identity in RAK. Yet my ethnographic fieldwork in RAK brings out a more subtle story. Spanning from August-December 2013 and March-April 2014, my field work engages in participant observation and semi-structured interviews with youth (the target audience of national identity projects) in Ras al Khaimah (RAK), observations of National Day celebrations and student interaction at the American University of Ras al Kahimah. On the shoulders of that material, it turns out that in RAK, stories about an Emirati identity under cultural siege are interweaved with stories about a locally unique close interaction between Emiratis and non-Emiratis. While my study thus engages itself with a social scientifically and empirically understudied northern emirate, the suggested road ahead is also of a general nature: namely, to study the constantly unfolding median lines between micro- and macro-level imaginings about national identity and interaction.
