Social Differentiation and Retribalization in the Persian Gulf

• In Event: Race, Ethnicity, and Minoritized Groups in MENA

Abstract

The profound economic and social transformations ongoing in the Persian Gulf have resulted in two, mutually reinforcing developments in societies in the Arabian Peninsula. This paper focuses on how social differentiation has fostered retribalization among national populations in Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. On the one hand, socioeconomic changes have resulted in the emergence of three broad categories of residents: migrant blue collar workers, who are mostly invisible except on jobsites, behind the cash register in small shops, or in the maid’s room in wealthier households; the nationals, whose customs and dress preferences make them starkly visible amid a sea of foreigners; and the professional expats, especially those from the West, whose new-found wealth is often visibly and ostentatiously on display through their flashy cars, their champaign-filled weekend brunches, and their frequent, thinly-veiled sense of superiority. Flowing in-between these stereotyped categories are armies of middle class professionals – teachers and accountants and engineers and technocrats – most hailing from other parts of the Middle East or from South Asia. On the other hand, in response to rapid changes and social differentiations, the national population has been experiencing a steady process of retribalization. By and large, the Gulf societies subject to change have put up little resistance by way of cultural inertia to the social changes dictated from above. What resistance has been generated has been more a complex type of accommodation in the form of retribalization, with societies going along with the changes and endorsing the states’ evolving but unspoken definitions of “modernity” while also adopting, or re-adopting, common perceptions of tribal heritage and outward practice.

Author

• Mehran Kamrava, Georgetown University-Qatar