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Pearls of the Gulf
| Article
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19827 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1991 |
4,311 Words |
| Author
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Daniel Martin Varisco
Daniel Martin Varisco is an anthropologist and consultant in
international development. He is a member of the board of
directors of the American Institute for Yemeni Studies, and
was principal author of the Social and Institutional Profile
of North Yemen for the U.S. agency for International
Development. |
The invasion of Kuwait by Iraqi forces last August and the subsequent war in the Middle East have brought massive destruction, physically and psychologically, to both Kuwait and Iraq. Life in the region may never be the same. But what was Kuwaiti society--and that of the other Gulf States--like before the invasion and war? Had the affluent welfare states, created by the bonanza of oil, ushered in a golden age, or were there underlying societal tensions that would have exploded the bubble of progress even if their had been no war?
Before the 1920s, the towns and tribes along both the Arab and Persian sides of the Gulf depended on the age-old pearl-diving industry as the central support of the regional economy. However, the commercial exploitation of oil since the late 1930s and the expansion of an oil-driven technological revolution in Europe and America catapulted a variety of petty sheikhdoms into unforeseen affluence. Only one year ago, the Gulf Arabs enjoyed an economic renaissance in which vast amounts of oil revenues had "made the desert bloom."
Indeed, there is no more compelling metaphor for the economic and social transformation of the Arab Gulf states in this century than the substitution of petroleum for the pearl. Oil allowed the sparse populations in Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates to each have staggering per capita GNP levels of over $10,000 in the 1980s. (In Yemen, the highly populated but oil-less poor neighbor of the peninsula, the per capita figure hovered around $500 per annum.) And the billions of dollars in oil profits did not simply line the pockets of a few rich sheikhs. Large amounts were reinvested into Gulf society: Superhighways stretched across the desert sands, hospitals were equipped with the latest life-saving machines, and supermarkets and shopping malls in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates began to rival those of Europe.
But although oil is preeminent in economic importance, the pearl remains the most potent symbol of society and its evolution in the Gulf. Gulf writers have produced a stream of poetry, fiction, movies, and plays on the theme of pearl diving. A major emphasis of cultural institutions in the region has been the collection of folklore from the pearling tradition. And contemporary music in Kuwait owes much to the sounds and themes of the days of pearling. On the one hand, this glorified past represents the roots of the sea-oriented Gulf society and a time when values were easier to define and act on. Yet the realities of the harsh living conditions for many pearl divers in the past also symbolize the oppression seemingly inherent in the pursuit of
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