Conventional analyses of state-society relations in the Arab Gulf region easily lend themselves to the spurious assumption that countries in this region are devoid of the modern political currents and counter currents that have shaped most contemporary societies. For some analysts, the Arab Gulf states are nothing but an extension of the “oriental despotic” cultural tradition according to which the state is always perceived as absolute – authoritarian and autocratic rule over a docile and passive society. For others, state-society relations have been collapsed into a form of tribal nationalism in which government and society are aggregated into informal socio-political communities with no formal institutions, public participation, or rule of law. In contrast to these prevalent approaches, it is crucial that we broaden the discussion of state-society relations in the Arab Gulf region to illustrate their dynamic and diverse features. Far from being monolithic, homogeneous and premodern, societies in the Arab Gulf region are, in fact, complex and multifaceted socio-cultural formations which primarily embody and express their domestic socio-political realities and affairs.
Within the variety of conceptual perspectives on contemporary state-society relations in the Arab Gulf region, some observers in the field have converged around the unequivocal conclusion that societies in the Gulf region have become pivotal sites for swaying and, in some cases, shaping state policies, attitude and practices.
Not only have social, civic and popular forces emerged, expanded and assumed new forms, they have become a crucial source of state contestation, legitimation (or de-legitimation) and power validation. However, and notwithstanding the new and emerging research on society and the politics of the region, the literature on this topic remains predominantly state-centered with great focus on the regulative and distributive capacity of the state.
More problematic, however, is the reductionist vision of what the renowned Emirati scholar Abdulkhaleq Abdulla characterizes as the “oil/security paradigm” in the field of Gulf studies. “The exclusive preoccupation with oil and the security of oil” Abdulla laments, “has prevented scholars from a deeper examination of the power relationships and social structures that shape and reshape politics and society in the AGS.”3 While socio-political dynamics in societies of the Arab Gulf region have been transformed beyond oil and security, the literature in the field has typically and ironically assumed a sharp epistemological distinction between oil and state, on the one hand, and culture and society, on the other. Consequently, social change, social movements and popular forces have received little or no consideration in investigations of Gulf societies because:
