Rentier states are often portrayed as powerful actors, with the ability to radically transform their societies, especially when oil prices are high. Drawing on archival and field research conducted in America and in Saudi Arabia from 2013 to 2015, this paper depicts the opposite story: namely, the failure of the Saudi state during the oil boom in the 1970s to deter a concerted campaign by multinational tobacco companies to make Saudis smokers. Overall, this paper and the unique sources it employs help us better explore the factors that limit the ability of even the wealthiest oil-funded rentier states to shape the behavior and national identities of their citizens. For decades, multinational tobacco companies viewed Saudi Arabia as a hostile territory in which senior foreign dignitaries were banned from smoking in public. But after the oil boom created a new middle class in Saudi Arabia in the 1970s, American companies came to view the Kingdom as a lucrative untapped market. Starting early in the decade, they commissioned Western social scientists to undertake the types of detailed surveys that had been successfully used in other parts of the world. Thanks to these surveys of Saudi and expatriate attitudes towards smoking, tobacco executives realized that they could win a new generation of smokers with marketing campaigns that linked smoking to American freedom and modernity but also tied tobacco companies with conservative Islam. In particular, innovative promotions, such as Benson and Hedges’ limited-edition pendent celebrating the new Islamic century in 1979, allowed tobacco companies to introduce their products to Saudi consumers while circumventing restrictions on advertising cigarettes. These advertising campaigns were sufficiently successful that they not only increased tobacco use in the Kingdom, but they also defeated an initiative to ban smoking supported by senior members of the royal family and the religious establishment. By 1995, 53 percent of Saudi men smoked, and U.S. tobacco companies dominated the Kingdom’s market. Ultimately, this paper sheds new light on smoking in Saudi Arabia—a little discussed but important aspect of contemporary Saudi society and the U.S.-Saudi special relationship. These events are especially important today as Saudi leaders again seek to curb smoking to (a) improve public health and (b) blunt the desire of pious Saudis to join the Islamic State, which prosecutes smokers and is creating the type of society in Iraq and Syria that much of the outside world assumes already exists in Saudi Arabia.

Rentier states are often portrayed as powerful actors, with the ability to radically transform their societies, especially when oil prices are high. Drawing on archival and field research conducted in America and in Saudi Arabia from 2013 to 2015, this paper depicts the opposite story: namely, the failure of the Saudi state during the oil boom in the 1970s to deter a concerted campaign by multinational tobacco companies to make Saudis smokers. Overall, this paper and the unique sources it employs help us better explore the factors that limit the ability of even the wealthiest oil-funded rentier states to shape the behavior and national identities of their citizens. For decades, multinational tobacco companies viewed Saudi Arabia as a hostile territory in which senior foreign dignitaries were banned from smoking in public. But after the oil boom created a new middle class in Saudi Arabia in the 1970s, American companies came to view the Kingdom as a lucrative untapped market. Starting early in the decade, they commissioned Western social scientists to undertake the types of detailed surveys that had been successfully used in other parts of the world. Thanks to these surveys of Saudi and expatriate attitudes towards smoking, tobacco executives realized that they could win a new generation of smokers with marketing campaigns that linked smoking to American freedom and modernity but also tied tobacco companies with conservative Islam. In particular, innovative promotions, such as Benson and Hedges’ limited-edition pendent celebrating the new Islamic century in 1979, allowed tobacco companies to introduce their products to Saudi consumers while circumventing restrictions on advertising cigarettes. These advertising campaigns were sufficiently successful that they not only increased tobacco use in the Kingdom, but they also defeated an initiative to ban smoking supported by senior members of the royal family and the religious establishment. By 1995, 53 percent of Saudi men smoked, and U.S. tobacco companies dominated the Kingdom’s market. Ultimately, this paper sheds new light on smoking in Saudi Arabia—a little discussed but important aspect of contemporary Saudi society and the U.S.-Saudi special relationship. These events are especially important today as Saudi leaders again seek to curb smoking to (a) improve public health and (b) blunt the desire of pious Saudis to join the Islamic State, which prosecutes smokers and is creating the type of society in Iraq and Syria that much of the outside world assumes already exists in Saudi Arabia.

This presentation examines the emergence of the category of “the citizen” ­­- al-muwatin – in the United Arab Emirates over the course of the federation’s first decade, from 1971 to 1980. This was a period of massive spatial transformation, as roads, new housing, electricity, and other modern infrastructure was extended to much of the UAE’s territory and urban streetscapes were transformed as workers from the Indian Ocean region and larger Middle East became the demographic majority in the Gulf. The presentation moves between different spatial scales – local, regional, and global – to challenge the prevailing understanding of citizenship as primarily a legal status. Instead, this presentation frames citizenship as an active engagement with state and society, shaped by the experience of rapid modernization and transformation of space. With a few exceptions, Arabic-language newspapers have only rarely been used in Gulf scholarship. Using the state-sponsored al-Ittihad newspaper (published in Abu Dhabi and distributed throughout the UAE), particularly its letters to the editor and feature-length investigative articles, the presentation analyzes how citizens responded to newly-built modern infrastructures. While the usual image of UAE (and to a lesser extent other Gulf states) citizens is that of political quiescence, these sources show how citizens actively asserted their right to critique and criticize the transformations they were experiencing. Recurrent themes included inflation, shoddy construction, unequal distribution of wealth, control of public space, and the challenges posed by newly widespread automobility such as car accidents, traffic jams, and petrol distribution. At the same time, these letters and articles show the limits of critique within the UAE system, as they shied away from issues of state security, defense, and foreign policy. By the end of the decade, the critiques of ordinary citizens and elites of a pan-Arabist bent coalesced into a movement for a more centralized and effective state apparatus, more equal distribution of wealth, and greater national unity. In short, these activists had begun to imagine the UAE as a unified, homogenous nation-state. These demands, as well as counter-demands, were expressed in public demonstrations and marches as well as memoranda published on the front pages of newspapers. The newspaper was thus a critical vehicle for the formation of UAE citizen subjectivities in a time of large-scale transformations.

Women often suffer from lesser status in society, particularly in terms of rights, opportunities, and other tangible aspects of inequality. Yet lesser “official” status need not mean an absence of power or influence. Even in highly patriarchal societies, women can project power in unexpected ways. This paper explores the paradoxical power of women in patriarchal societies. Using original experimental data from Kuwait, it tests the hypothesis that women can reduce corruption and cronyism by convincing men to pursue more ethically conscious and pro-social behavior: namely, actions intended to benefit others and the larger society, including helping, sharing, following the law, contributing, and cooperating. The hypothesis is motivated by the author’s prior research and fieldwork in the Arab Gulf. For example, in an experiment in the UAE, the author found that 82% of Arab male subjects cheated on a general knowledge quiz, compared to only 12% of Arab female subjects. Indeed, in experiments in a variety of cultural settings, women are often found to behave more ethically than men, and people’s perceptions align with that finding. To give a recent example, cross-national survey work in the Middle East (presented at MESA 2015) by Lindsay Benstead and Ellen Lust finds that female candidates for office are viewed as significantly less corrupt than male candidates (if also less qualified). Women may therefore influence men to abide by higher moral and pro-social standards, due to reputational concerns and social sanctioning; imitation and role modeling; higher trust and expectations of reciprocity; and/or a desire to impress. The research makes several contributions. First, it tests a novel hypothesis about the drivers of good behavior. The literature in this area has taken several approaches, including priming “God concepts,” heightening self-awareness, and introducing honor codes. However, research to date has not assessed the impact of priming positive gender characteristics, e.g. imagining positive interactions with female equals and role-models. Second, it offers descriptive data on patterns of prosocial and ethical behavior; research on this topic is very limited in the Gulf region. In addition to standard economic games such as dictator and public goods scenarios, surveys captured a range of attitudes toward hypothetical ethical transgressors, including government officials using public funding for family vacations. Finally, the research may make important theoretical contributions, such as helping to explain why more women in legislatures is linked to lessened corruption cross-nationally.

Whether regarding Bahrain, Lebanon, Syria or Iraq, explanations of “sectarianism” in the Middle East often follow a similar logic. Prevalent in both popular media and scholarship is the presumption that regional power dynamics and national political structure set the identities, roles and practices of individuals within these societies. In the case of Bahrain, this “sectarianism from above” approach effectively demonstrates the foundations for the Sunni-led, Shi‘i marginalized, political system, and the persistence of sectarian rhetoric across the Saudi-Iranian divide. Yet, this approach is not designed to address the other side of the equation: how is sectarianism experienced, performed, and thereby constructed, especially at the non-elite level? Stated differently, how can scholars account for “sectarianism from below” in Bahrain? This paper explores the applicability of a bottom-up methodology (from the level of non-elites) in understanding the ebbs and flows of sectarianism in Bahrain and the greater Arabian Peninsula during the late-20th century. Specifically, it locates sources that have proven useful to cultural historians to address how sectarianism, an interactive social phenomenon, is lived through non-elite Bahrainis. The “ordinary” population it takes as its basis is youth and young people, specifically from the oil boom of the 1970s to the protests of the 1990s. Methodologically, this paper argues that to focus on this moment of transformation in Gulf history, and a highly transformative population, elaborates the ways in which sectarian identity interacts with everyday life, and eventually becomes societally pervasive. In terms of sources, the paper finds that to analyze memoirs of young Bahrainis during the 1970s-1990s, and situate the interaction between state productions—from organizational programs to radio and newspaper advertisements—that attempt to tap into youth sentiments, and the actual practices of young people, can capture youth cultures, tastes and sectarian identity during this transformation in societal relations. The paper draws from the author’s previous research in Lebanon, which found that routine practices of belonging, strength and honor in masculine youth clubs were mobilized to perform violence during the civil war. Like young people in Lebanon during wartime, Bahraini youth of the 1970s-1990s experienced a rupture: from domestic prosperity to sectarian violence. This paper builds on these insights and continuities to explore the relationship between sectarian identity and everyday practices around moments of social transformation and protest in Bahrain. Indeed, to focus on changes in Bahraini youth during this period is to consider a “sectarianism from below” approach in Bahrain.