[MUSIC]

This week we'd like to look at Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states.

And as you can probably imagine there

is something very peculiar about this place.

This, probably the most startling observation that external observers make

is the discrepancy between a very traditional society clinging

to old ways of arranging social affairs and

at the same time its super modern, super new.

It is a very, very large degree of

conspicuous consumption of cities that are extremely modern looking.

So this tension and this discrepancy between the very old

and the very new in one place, is one

of the characteristics in the region that we will try to explore this week.

The region is, at the same time, it's

the heartland of Islam, both geographically and spiritually.

Geographically is obvious when you look at the map, but spiritually also, because

it's the centre of the two key, the most holy sites of Islam.

And also the region from which, you know, the prophet started his

propagation of this new religion, something that we discussed in the first

week. Here you see the Kaba, the central

focus of the annual pilgrimage that Muslims

have to undertake and in a sense the very geographical centre of Islam.

And this was an old image and here you see the,

the current shrine that has been bulit around it.

To, you know, to accommodate the annual

pilgrimage, which is now a very, very large affair, and something

which is a tremendous source of pride and legitimacy for the

Saudi government that is in charge of these two holy shrines.

As reflected in the one of the official

titles of the Saudi king, who calls himself the

custodian of the two holy shrines.

The dualism that I just referred to, this tension between the

old social relations and the modern way of life is

reflected in the, the characteristic of all of these

societies in the Arabian Peninsula, with the possible exception of Yemen and

slightly less Oman, because they are slightly less rich than the others.

But all of them are very avid importers of Western consumer goods,

Western weaponry, here you see a cityscape in, in Dubai, you know, the

Annual Camel Race, and in the back the skyscrapers that have been built

up, and here you see a Saudi F-15 fighter plane.

And these two things, the conspicuous consumption and

the importation of Western weaponry and western protection, these

are two of the things that characterize the tension that exists in

this region. And it raises the obvious

question and you might've probably already thought about this, how does it

work out in practice to have a society that claims to be

very traditional, that does not want its social norms

or organizational structures changed that

does not adopt the dominant pattern that exists in the world.

Yet, at the same time, tries to live in a modern environment,

here you see a, an Arab family a Khaliji

given the dress of the ladies.

In some Western tourist spots, so they are living in the modern world,

but they don't want to be part of the modern world, and the question is

whether this works out without tension, and I leave that to your imagination

and to your exploration in this week as we jointly look at this region.

To see whether this is a process that works out well,

or whether there remain tensions that remain unresolved.

Perhaps the most startling and most commented upon feature of

these societies is the role of women in public life, you have, on the one

hand a very modern, Western-looking

society, as you see here. A city

that is full of high skyscrapers, and all the modern conveniences of modern life,

yet you have very stark restrictions on the on the lives of women.

Perhaps best symbolized in the prohibition of

driving that most women are subjected all

women are subjected in most of these

societies in the Arabian Peninsula.

And at this point, it might be useful to point out the difference between

truly genuinely religious prescription and

cultural patterns that exist and the role of custom

in the development of Islamic law. Something that we have referred to in

the first week so, the Arabian tribal

society has a particular role, and a

particular expectation of what constitutes proper female behaviour.

And that as we already mentioned, is

very different from the role women are perceived,

And the functions they serve in

society in many of the other Islamic societies.

So here we need to distinguish between

cultural patterns and truly religious dogmas and

one of the things that's also important to pay attention to is that,

the exclusion of women from public life,

also means exclusion of women from economic life,

and that's something you actually have to be able to afford in the first place.

If you look at very poor Muslim societies

like even in, in very restrictive environments like

Afghanistan, it's simply not possible to exclude women,

to that degree from public and economic life.

The gulf

states; however, due to the oil wealth that they exist, are actually able to do

that, they are able to dispense with

the productive capacity of half of their populations.

And that's what they do, but it's

something that is not readily transposable to

many other societies, that I'll leave to, to your imagination and to ponder a bit.

But at the same

time I'd like you to draw your attention to one

of the features, that is probably the outcome of the very

aggressive Islamization program that many of the Gulf

States, particularly Saudi Arabia, have engaged in the last decades.

Which we now see the growing appeal of the Khaliji, the Gulf way of dress,

the gulf way of the particular customary practices

with respect to women that is now growing among

many other Muslim societies and something we will, you can observe for yourself.

For example in the patterns of dress of immigrant Muslim women in Western

societies, most of whom are not

originating from the Gulf because these societies

are rich, they don't export populations.

But you see sometimes now, you know, people who are originating from

Pakistan or the Indian subcontinent who are now dressing like the Khaliji women

in elsewhere. And that is a direct outcome of the

growing propagation of the particular practices that have

sprang up in the Arabian Peninsula and are now gaining a greater foothold

due to the ability of these states to propagate them due their oil wealth.

And this obviously increases the tensions that we already have among

immigrants, Muslim societies and their Western hosts, something that we

will return to in the next to last week

of this course when we talk about Muslim minorities.

Here you have an image shown from the Munich, Bavaria, I believe.

The key characteristic of all of the societies that we look

at this week on the Arabian Peninsula is the, what I would

call, the patrimonial welfare state and the, funded by

the rentier income from oil and gas.

And, this patrimonial arrangement, we will explore

Further in a special video

later this week.

But what is characteristic now is the perpetuation of premodern ways of

social organization that paid an inordinate

amount of importance on descend and lineage.

And that are based on traditional ordering system that

evolves around patrimonial duties of care and loyalty on the other hand.

So we have a patron-client relationship that is

very much unchanged from pre-modern times.

and, what we see here is a peculiar iteration of what some social scientists

have called the Arab social contract, so the

ruling house, the person in charge of

the state can dispose of the state and the

income of the state in a quasi-personal manner.

So there is an expectation that its the state and its income and its resources

are the personal property of the ruler, but in exchange,

he will take care of his subjects, of their economic and social needs.

And then in return,

they owe him a duty of obedience and there is no expectation of participation

or political involvement in the affairs of the state.

But the state will take care of them, so we see here a particular form of an

oil-driven welfare state that

is far more comprehensive in the,

the types and the degree of services that the state is

supposed to provide for its subjects than

any other welfare state that you might know.

And, it's important to understand now that

the basis for this traditional social arrangement is not peculiar

to the Arab or Muslim society, we see, as you

can see in this picture from the European Middle Ages.

Patron client relationships and, and these mutual relationships of duty

and care is something we see in many other cultures perhaps

in all cultures the, what normally leads to the disintegration of these

pre-modern Patron clients relationships is that the economic base from which the.

The ruler normally receives the resources that he

needs to dispense to his, to those who follow

his clients, disintegrates and therefore he's no

longer able to keep his part of the bargain.

So, his clients then are released from their duty

of obedience, we see here a picture from Akira Kurosawa's

film Ronin, which shows marauding Samurais that we've

discussed the Samurais in the first week of this course.

There we have exactly this problem that the old social order in which,

the Shogun would take care of his Samurais is now disintegrating.

He is no longer able to provide for them economically, so

they are no longer following him obediently and this economic change that

leads to the disintegration of

patron-clients relationships, that is now not

taking place in the Arabian peninsula, something that we would normally expect.

And the reason it does not take place is

the discovery of oil, and basically free income, provided by foreign

oil companies that explore this oil, sell it, and pay

a fraction of the profits to the local leaders which

they then in turn use to provide patronage to their followers.

And here it's important to understand the nature of these economies as

rentier economies and here I would like to draw your attention to the fact that

this characteristic of these economies as rentier economies, i.e.

Are economies that rely to a very large extent,

normally more, it's defined as more than, let's say,

40% of the income is from one source, and

there is no local input required for that income.

this is

the key characteristic that defines these economies

and therefore their societies and the way that they arrange their social affairs.

And you already will guess that this

is an arrangement that has absolutely nothing to do with religion.

It's a point that is

[Homa Katouzian]

and his political economy of modern Iran stresses very much.

He says the rentier characteristic of these oil-exploring

economies is the key characteristic that defines social arrangements and the

way the state is built up, and it's something that

is completely divorced from the religious nature of these societies.

So here we see perhaps the most important

social factor that is not linked at all to religion.

So, if you remember the danger of

essentialism that I referred to in the first week.

Of ascribing to individuals and groups characteristics based on one facet

their being, in our case the fact of them being Muslims,

is misleading, because here, perhaps, the characteristic of their economies

is far more important than the nature of their religious beliefs.

If you recall the, the four response patterns that we outlined in the first

week of this course, the four patterns, the four ways that

society can respond to the challenge of modernity, they were emulation of.

The dominant Western ways, Islamic reform, traditionalism, based on

the idea that no change is needed, or fundamentalism.

And as you can easily imagine now, we

are dealing here with societies that have explicitly followed

the traditionalist conservative model, they say there is no

change needed and both in social terms and in

governmental terms.

We are dealing here with states that explicitly claim to be able to perpetuate

habits and modes of organization that they have inherited from premodern times.

So you will now wonder, whether what I've told you in the first week is

actually accurate, because if you remember, I was referring to the challenge

of modernity, the competitive international systems, something that

Kenneth Waltz in his book Theory of International

Politics refers to, that is now imposing a

socializing effect on all the units in the system.

So as Professor Waltz had pointed out, he says,

in a competitive system innovations that any one unit introduces

must be adopted by all the other units, otherwise they face annihilation

and they cannot survive in that competitive system so, Professor

Waltz had predicted that, in this structure, the

units would become alike. They would socialize to look like each

other, and we have now just discussed that the societies and the states on

the Arabian Peninsula are explicitly rejecting change.

They do not want to become like the

Western nations that are more dominant than they are.

So, which one is it going to be?

Is there a change that is, well, the pressure for change that is inevitable?

Or are they able to isolate themselves?

So we're dealing here with society that explicitly

reject the need for change, but what Waltz and

any other realist or materialist would predict is

that position is not open to a society

in a competitive system.

If you don't adopt a competitive economy able to procure the weaponry

you needed, if you don't set up a defence force sufficient to protect

you, you will not be able to survive in a competitive system that's what Waltz would

predict and what realists would have accepted.

And this is what the,

the Arabian Peninsula seems to contradict, so we're dealing here with a paradox.

That they, they apparently seem to be able to survive in

a competitive system, in a hostile

environment, without adapting to these pressures.

And how do we account for this paradox?

And there are two reasons, one is the relative geographical isolation

of these societies, ever since the 15th Century

they were basically left alone by external forces

because there was not much interest by external

forces in these areas, because they are relatively poor.

Relatively remote and communications were difficult, so

their societies could continue unperturbed by external events.

That is perhaps the main reason why the societies have not undergone the,

the transformations that we have discussed with respect

to Turkey or Egypt or some of the other places.

So, they remain relatively unchanged well into the 20th Century,

but what allows them now in the 20th Century to continue with

their traditional patterns is, on the one hand, the discovery of oil

but more importantly the protection by

external forces that is now given to them.

If you look at the map of the Ottoman possessions at

the region, the Ottomans left the interior of

the Arabian peninsula relatively to its own devices.

They were not interested in that, as I said, this is

the lack of interest in the region, but what you see then,

in the context of the growing British colonial possession and global empire.

The region assumes a certain degree of importance

but not an overwhelming importance would then leads

to the establishment of British protectorates

in this, you know, particularly around the coast.

So they are now

protected by an overarching external hegemony, and therefore, can continue

with the ways of traditional ways of life without having to worry about defence.

And, this pattern now continues in

the 20th Century with the discovery of oil.

And now what Waltz would predict is that if you

have small societies, small states that are not able to

defend themselves very well but have lots of wealth, that

one of their neighbors would come and gobble them up.

And this is exactly what we see in the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, here's an image

from the burning oil fields that the the Iraqis set ablaze when they left Kuwait,

again. But the Kuwait incidence also very

graphically illustrates, exactly the arrangement that explains that paradox.

Kuwait did not have to adopt modern ways because

it could rely on the United States and its

allies to defend it, to protect as then happened

in the operation Desert Storm when Kuwait was liberated by

foreign forces.

Here we see the, the Saudi Commander- in- Chief

who was normally put in charge of the Arab forces

that led the, or that participated in the liberation

and behind him is General Schwarzkopf, whom you see here.

And here, it's important to note that despite the,

the appearance and the rhetorical posturing of, in this case, the Saudi

Commander- in- Chief as being on equal footing with the American general.

There is absolutely no doubt that the Saudi contribution to this liberation was

absolutely marginal, it was only there for political effect.

This is an army that is unable to do very

much of anything, despite the very advanced weaponry that it possesses

and that's one of the things that we will discover

in the context of this week and we have already

discussed last week in the context of Egypt.

It is not enough to simply purchase weaponry, you

also have to operate them, and in order to

do this, you need to have to state machinery,

and the educational machinery, and the training facilities, etc..

That go hand in hand and that they

are necessary to operate these aspects of modern life.

That's exactly what Kenneth waltz refers to when he's speaks

about the socialization tendency of an international system.

The Saudis have not done this, so what they have de facto done, they've relied

exclusively on the Americans to ensure their defence.

And, we will now look in the, in the next video, we

will look at Ottoman and Colonial

history as this particular arrangement has developed,

how these, these states have sprung up, how

they have been able to divorce themselves from

the pressures of an international competitive system, and

I look forward to seeing you back then.

MUSIC

4.1 People, Place and Patterns

穆斯林世界的基本冲突

与讲师见面