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New York 2002, 217–32.Etin AnwarThe Gulf and YemenThe oil economies of many of the Gulf emirates
and states have undoubtedly had an impact on
social hierarchies. The shifts in social hierarchies,
however, should not be seen as simply transforming
from “traditional” to “modern.” Indeed, local
practices and social organization, such as tribal
affiliation, have both accommodated and been
remobilized by new state bureaucratic systems.
Nevertheless, the dramatic transformation in the
region’s economy – from subsistence agriculture
and pastoralism to rentier – has certainly affected
how hierarchies are both produced and main-
tained. Similarly, it should be noted that while some
of the Gulf emirates and states, such as Abu Dhabi
and Kuwait, have substantially more oil than oth-
ers, the others, such as Yemen and Bahrain – espe-
cially through trade and remittances – are not
exempt from the dramatic transformations wrought
by oil, forming what some scholars have argued to
be an integrated regional economy (Owen 1985).
Oil revenues and the structure of the oil market,
however, have not affected social hierarchies on
their own: notions of “tradition” as well as national
education systems, enabled by oil revenues, are also
seen to have transformed social and gendered hier-
archies (al-Falah 1991).
Although what might be understood as tradi-
tional and modern hierarchies might not necessar-
ily correspond to the shifts in how certain identities
have come to matter in the post-oil era, there have,
nevertheless, been changes in how hierarchies are
produced and reproduced. To understand the ways
hierarchies have transformed, it is important to
examine hierarchies in the early days of oil and the
establishment of the modern states. In Bahrain, for
example, hierarchies in the late 1960s, at least, were
reproduced primarily through profession or craft
(Serjeant 1968), sometimes intersecting with tribal
affiliations. As in a caste system, certain professions
(such as butcher, tailor, barber, carpenter, office
worker, agricultural worker, poultry dealer, pearl
diver) were relegated to the lower strata of society
while other professions were preserved for the
upper strata (Bujra 1971). This division of profes-
sions was and is important for men as well as
women. At the same time, according to Serjeant,