Participation Culture in the Gulf

Networks, Politics and Identity

Nele Lenze, Charlotte Schriwer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351061681
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book examines the civil–social interactions which have shaped and continue to influence the political and social development of modern Gulf societies. It analyses the influence of public and private social spaces, such as sports arenas and dawawin as well as developments in the legal and cultural spheres.

Geographically, the volume covers Bahrain, Iran, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Each chapter discusses a different aspect of current trends in society, offering a multidimensional perspective on recent developments. In so doing, the chapters highlight the existence of a growing participation culture as a force for dynamic social change in a global context. Bringing to attention the continuing social change in public and private spaces, which have increased public social interactions within the last ten years, this books also demonstrates the opening of dialogues between the public and the authorities. The contributors are established scholars living in the Gulf, as well as academics with long-term field research in the region, thus providing unique perspectives on current sociopolitical trends in the Gulf states.

Participation Culture in the Gulf will be useful to students and scholars of Middle Eastern politics and society, as well as social movements and political participation more generally.

Part I

Sociopolitical transformations and civil society engagement

1 New spaces and sociabilities are reshaping Emirati society

Jane Bristol-Rhys

While the clubs, groups, and voluntary associations often used as indicators of civil society are still required to have an official, royal patron in the UAE, it appears that new forms of sociability and association are reshaping Emirati society. One significant change that has occurred might be called “retaking the public sphere.” In the early 2000s, while Emiratis were ubiquitous in shopping malls, it was rather rare to see them in restaurants, hotels, and venues associated with the foreign population. Now it is commonplace to see young Emirati couples dining out in a hotel restaurant, or two or three women having lunch or coffee in a location known to serve mostly foreigners. Another change has been that friendships made in high school and university have now extended women’s social spheres far beyond the family and the tribe, linking them across the public and private organizations in which they work. The same holds for young Emirati men who are also linked, or should I say forged, by the bonds of national service that is breaking down tribal isolation. While these new, nonfamilial ties are charting into territory unknown to older Emiratis, more familiar, traditional modes of sociability and association have also been adapted to new purposes. Most noticeable of these is the majlis (plural: majālis) that, in the past was both the location and the structure used by ruling shiyukh (singular: sheikh) to meet with men of the tribe, various petitioners, and, oftentimes, businessmen presenting plans. While the new majālis retain elements of the traditional structure such as being hosted in a separate structure (room or tent), much has been altered, starting with who hosts a majlis and why.

This chapter explores how a rapidly growing Emirati population that is young, highly urbanized, and educated is experimenting with new forms of sociability and association that are changing perceptions about Emirati social life. The observations and research presented here represent a decade and a half of participant observation, research, living and working in Abu Dhabi, where I teach at a national university. I have made use of my former students in much of what follows but I have changed all names to preserve anonymity.

Although accurate and reliable population statistics are difficult to obtain in part because a full census has not been taken since 2005, and because Emirati numbers and percentages are commonly believed to be “massaged,” two facts are clear: the Emirati population is growing and it is young and highly urbanized.¹ Young Emiratis, in the age group eighteen to thirty, also receive free college and/or university study and so the majority is also well educated.² These three factors – youth, an urban environment, and education – have coalesced in recent years to create the basis for new forms of socialization that are distinct from the previously practiced that were centered on the family and tribe. In the still-recent and -remembered pre-oil days, women socialized exclusively with relatives and, while men might have friends and associates outside of the family because of trade, for them, too, the family was the social circle.³ In Abu Dhabi, there was no public life per se prior to 1952, no schools save the local mutawwa teaching the Quran, and virtually no spaces that could have been considered to be public other than a beach or inland sand.

Now, in 2016, Abu Dhabi is a bustling urban center with a myriad of educational institutions from preschool through university, a wealth of public gardens, dozens of malls, hotel lobbies, cinemas, and manicured walkways along the Corniche beachfront. The city has expanded laterally onto adjacent islands and the mainland, and, of course, straight up with towering high-rises, and has been made more vibrant with new shopping areas, hotels, universities, galleries, marinas, and residences. It is not only the shape and size of Abu Dhabi that have changed since 2010; it is who is occupying – establishing a presence – in the new spaces that have been built. Whereas once Emiratis were seen publicly in malls almost exclusively and were “the phantoms” in cars behind darkened windows, twenty- and thirty-something Emiratis have laid claim to both private and public spaces throughout the city with enthusiasm. Groups of young career women talk in restaurants and coffee shops; young men gather at the new marinas and upscale shisha cafes; and married couples enjoy dinner out in one of the exquisite new restaurants – all of which would have rarely occurred six years ago (2011) and would have drawn startled attention in 2001. Emirati society has changed significantly since oil was discovered and those early changes, like health care and education, continue to effect further change as the population has grown and now a very well educated generation joins the work force.

“Schools made friends happen”

Schools cut across family and tribal lines by introducing students to those outside the immediate family, but in the early days of school (the first proper schools opened in Abu Dhabi emirate in 1966 after several faltering attempts), there was familial pressure to socialize only with respectable families” or “those like us,” which meant the same tribe. Latiefa went to high school in the mid-seventies and when I asked her about friends from that time she looked surprised:

We were not familiar with the idea of going to a stranger’s home! We went to our cousins, our grandmother, and our aunts – yes, but we would not go anywhere else and we did not for once think of inviting someone from school to come to our house. Our mother would not know what to do with that idea.⁴

Yet, her daughter entertained schoolfriends frequently, organized birthday parties, hosted end-of-term celebrations, and rented limousines for graduation. When she wasn’t entertaining at her parents’ house, she was at one of her schoolfriends’ homes. “By her time things had changed so much and all the daughters were the same, wanting to spend time with their new friends from school – it was natural by then.”

High school friends then became university friends who continued to socialize and even, sometimes, study together. In most of my classes at Zayed University, there are two or three pairs of students who have been friends for years, some since primary school. These long-term friendships encompass students from both private and public schools and, while the English language skills of those from private schools are commonly superior, the friendship factor is on par.

School friendships such as these are evolving rapidly into networks of professional women who connect frequently, discuss opportunities, exchange gossip, and interact with other such networks to evaluate prospective employees and bosses. Some of these women have married and many of those have children but they remain as active in their groups as the single women. “It is our women’s waasta,” jokes Maitha during a discussion of who has the most powerful job. “Waasta used to mean your family or tribal connections, like how far up your father could ask for something sort of thing. We have our own kind now, knowing each other and valuing our experience and judgment.”

Adding to the increased sense of connection with their network and the city spaces where they gather is the fact that these women are mobile. Only two of the dozens of these former students rely on a driver; the rest have cars and drive where and when they like – within reason, points out one:

I wouldn’t just take off for Dubai without letting my mother know, for example, but otherwise I go to work, to the gym, out for coffee or dinner, and shopping. I go where I want when I want to go.

One who does use a driver insisted upon hiring (and paying) her own employee. “Not that I am doing anything bad, mind you, it is just that the family drivers treat me like I am still a ten-year-old kid and I won’t put up with that!”

“Women entrepreneurs are the best!”

The leaders of the nation have been encouraging Emiratis to innovate and create, especially in business. In some cases, their encouragement has included financial support, seed money for start-up ventures, and, in all cases, successful entrepreneurs are praised publicly.⁵ It appears to be young Emirati women who are responding most enthusiastically, especially in Abu Dhabi, where several of the most popular restaurants are owned and managed by women in their late twenties. Other ventures include a bespoke gift selection and presentation service, artisanal biscuits and cakes, extravagant floral arrangements, catered events in a Hummer limousine, and design studios and galleries devoted to fashion, jewelry making, photography, and painting. The city’s first (and only) gluten-free bakery and café is the result of one woman’s frustration with the choices available for her gluten-intolerant daughter.

In these businesses, the women have taken on very public roles that would have been inconceivable forty years ago. Inconceivable in that no one would have imagined the growth of the city or the opportunities that growth would offer, but unthinkable because of sociocultural norms or mores as Emirati women did engage in market activities in the past. In more recent times, a small percentage of Emirati women owned beauty salons throughout the city but were removed from day-to-day operations, relying on managers to deal with staff and client issues. Prior to the introduction of a citywide taxi service in 2009, women owned roughly half of the gold-and-white Abu Dhabi taxis – they owned but did not drive. The nature of being in the “public” has altered radically in the intervening years and women today are interacting not only with other women in the market (or the occasional kinsman); they are engaging and communicating with their staff, who might be Filipino, Lebanese, Russian, or South African; with clients and customers, who could be any of the 200 nationalities who live in the UAE; and, perhaps most notably, with a broad spectrum of Emirati society.

Yet, despite the significant change that this new, public engagement represents, the women interviewed were rather nonplussed to be considered “trendsetters” in any way. As one put it, “our parents are behind us 100 percent even though my mother would not be comfortable doing what I do, she sees nothing wrong with me doing it.” Another, Noura, who operat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• Preface: the changing Gulf states
• Acknowledgements
• PART I: Sociopolitical transformations and civil society engagement
• PART II: Non-traditional actors in the public political space
• PART III: Nation, identity and change
• Index