Social Science Research, especially foreign research, in and on the smaller states of the Arabian Gulf is a very new phenomenon. Only a few serious works on the area have been published in English, leaving an almost limitless opportunity for new research. There is, however, a common misconception that access to these states, at least for American nationals, is strictly limited as it is in neighboring Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. This is not really the case in the sheikhdoms, although it is true that all five states are somewhat wary of research, especially social science research, and the working atmosphere varies from one of relative openness to considerable skepticism. Still, a surprising amount of eminently rewarding research is possible here if one arranges it carefully in advance.

Praising the photographs of Francis Frith, the grocery wholesaler-turned-photographer who undertook three photographic expeditions to the Middle East between 1856 and 1860, an Athenaeum critic wrote: “Mr. Frith, who makes light of everything, brings us the Sun’s opinion of Egypt, which is better than Champollion’s, Wilkinson’s, Eōthen’s, or Titmarsh’s.” Viewed as re-creations of nature itself, unmeditated reproductions of the real world fashioned by the direct agency of the sun, photographs were extolled as truthful and unbiased representations of reality. This conviction, which ignored the input of the human operator, imbued early photography with a passionate enthusiasm and mission: to reproduce the world in its own image, to make light of everything. Photography emerged not as an art form, still less as the result of certain developments in painting as proposed recently by Peter Galassi, but as an accurate and highly efficient means of transmitting visual information.

Most research on the Gulf states focuses on oil and its impact on state power. The literature on rentier theory almost unanimously agrees that oil rents buy off citizens and lead to socio-political stagnation. Massive protests and government attempts to address citizen demands in Kuwait between 2011 and 2013 call into question that narrative. Since those protests, the Kuwaiti government has taken steps to increase its representation of public officials and accessibility in the public sphere, including by expanding the government's presence on Instagram. How have Kuwaiti citizens voiced their opinions to government accounts? And how has the government responded to online criticism?

This essay looks at the pattern of interactions between the state and Kuwaiti citizens on Twitter and Instagram using a content analysis of government accounts. The findings raise questions about the validity of the payoff thesis and understandings of consent and acquiescence. My analysis illustrates that there is a public dialogue that moves beyond the rigid structure of state and society by which the literature has traditionally understood Gulf rentier societies.

A New Academic fashion in the disciplines of history, anthropology, and cultural criticism is to “foreground” authors in works of scholarship. But it is not in imitation of what is currently fashionable that I have chosen to make my address autobiographical. I am a historian who enjoys writing narrative history and who elsewhere has argued that the narrative remains as valuable and as legitimate in modern scholarship as theory. So here I wish to tell a story that may hold some lessons for those scholars who seek freedom from the constraints imposed both by the norms of Middle Eastern societies and by the rules of the western academy. In our post-modern, post-structural, post-colonial world, all the certitudes have been shaken, and the narrative might well be the only kind of story that we can relate to with any kind of authority.

We live in an age of history-making. We live in an age of liquid boundaries, malleable categories, moving and movable human subjects. We live in an age of unspeakable horror, illegible events, incomprehensible human actions. We live in an age of unimagined heroics, unthinkable sacrifices, unforeseen human capacities.

We live in an age of uprisings, upended authorities, unbounded rage. We live in an age of speed, motion that seems unnavigable, movement that seems untrackable. We live in age of unprecedented documentation, inconceivable surveillance, uncontrolled intelligence. We live in age of megalith media, lightning communication, urgent immediacy from near and far.

Academics who concentrate on the study of Islam live in challenging times. The proliferation of “popular” sources of news and information evokes both significant concern as well as tremendous possibility. This is true across the academy, not only in our own field. In a recent issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, a team of medical scientists analyzed 153 videos about vaccination and immunization on YouTube. What they found was very disturbing. A staggering number of YouTube videos portrayed vaccinations in a negative light, and about half contained messages completely contradicting established medical science. Furthermore, the research team found that videos with negative portrayals of vaccinations were highly provocative and powerful, and received more views and better ratings by YouTube users than those videos that portray vaccinations in a positive light. The study concludes that this situation is extremely dangerous and that public health officials must consider how to effectively communicate their scientifically founded viewpoints through internet video portals.