Abstract
On Wednesday, August 14, 2013 Habiba Ahmed Abd Elaziz was shot in Cairo at the Rabaa Al Adawiya Square while protesting against the military ouster of President Morsi.1 Habiba was one of many young people caught in the violence of a generation. The Arab uprisings beginning in 2011 have challenged notions of citizenship, belonging and accountability in many societies across the region. They have also brought attention to major demographic trends in youth unemployment and education levels.2 The silver lining of a youth bulge across the Middle East and North Africa is a large population of young people like Habiba: well-educated, well-connected to global media, and intent on political participation. Habiba was a privileged member of this generational shift, one who had studied at a liberal American-style university and worked as a journalist. She was able to express her values and intentions to build a society that welcomed her political participation. Habiba was a recent graduate of the American University of Sharjah in the UAE, where I have taught for the last five years. Like many of my former students, she learned to write critically, to express her views and to believe in a new meritocracy of the Middle East. Her family had lived in the UAE for years. Exiled from Egypt and living in the UAE, her father joined many other expatriate Egyptians to support the Morsi administration as a communications adviser.
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Notes
For a discussion of the expected negative consequences of “idle youth” and the literature connecting a MENA youth bulge with the risk of extremism, see Rahel Schomaker (2013) “Youth Bulges, Poor Institutional Quality and Missing Migration Opportunities: Triggers of and Potential Counter-measures for Terrorism in MENA”, Topics in Middle Eastern and African Economies , Vol. 15, no. 1, May, pp. 116–140.
Mark Beissinger (2002) Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet Union. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Andrea Rugh (2007) The Political Culture of Leadership in the United Arab Emirates . London: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 4.
Naomi Sakr (1980) “Federalism in the United Arab Emirates”, in Tim Niblock (ed.), Social and Economic Development in the Arab Gulf. New York: St Martin’s Press and Centre for Arab Gulf Studies, University of Exeter, pp. 177–186
For census data cited in this paragraph, see Ali M. Al-Khouri, “The Challenge of Identity in a Changing World: The Case of GCC Countries”, Conference Proceedings: The 21st Century Gulf: The Challenge of Identity, University of Exeter, UK, June 30–July 3, 2010. Similar work by Al Khouri relates the challenges the state faces in tracking such extreme demographic shifts, and the social effects of a citizen population existing as a minority group. See Ali M. Al-Khouri 2010 “UAE National ID Programme Case Study”, International Journal of Social Sciences , Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 62–69.
Alanoud Al Sharekh, “Introduction”, in Al Sharekh, (ed.), (2007) The Gulf Family: Kinship Policies and Modernity. London: London Middle East Institute, SOAS, p. 9.
F. Gregory Gause III (1994) Oil Monarchies: Domestic and Security Challenges in the Arab Gulf States . New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press.
Michael Herb uses this term “family regime” to describe the UAE along with its GCC neighbors. I argue that there is a distinct difference in UAE domestic politics because of the federation and historical rivalry between ruling families, merchant class immigrants from Iran, and the disparate sources of wealth between emirates. See Michael Herb (2010) “Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates”, in Michele Penner Angrist (ed.), Politics and Society in the Contemporary Middle East. Boulder: Lynne Reinner, pp. 335–365.
Sultan Bin Muhammad Al-Qasimi (1999) Power Struggles and Trade in the Gulf, 1620–1820 . Exeter: University of Exeter Press.
There is some ground-breaking work in ethnomusicology and the performance of culture by Aisha Bilkhair Khalifa on the influence of African music by slaves in the Trucial States, namely in Dubai, in the nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century. The lyrical tradition of African melodies to soothe the pearl divers of Dubai is named Al-macaliyyah. Khalifa explains how British perceptions of race merged Arab and African identity, such that populations in the Trucial States were judged to be homogenous, when they were in reality extremely diverse. See Aisha Bilkhair Khalifa (2006) “African Influence on Culture and Music in Dubai”, International Social Science Journal , Vol. 58, No. 188, pp. 227–235.
The authority on the ethnography of pre-state tribal authority and family lines in the UAE is Frauke Heard-Bey. See Frauke Heard-Bey (1982) From Trucial States to United Arab Emirates. London: Motivate Publishing.
To put the process of state-building in some cross-cultural context, it is useful to consider Charles Tilly’s examination of the emergence of the modern bureaucratic state in Western Europe. The cohesion of diverse small communities into a nation is familiar in Europe as it was in the Gulf in the late nineteenth century, as a product of European mercantilist practices and general consolidation of political power by the Al Nayhan dynasty. See Charles Tilly (1985) “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime”, in Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol (eds), Bringing the State Back In. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 169–171.
Christopher Davidson (2011) Abu Dhabi: Oil and Beyond. New York: Oxford University Press, chapter two “Sheikh Shakhbut and the Great Decline”, pp. 25–43.
For a detailed examination of Sheikh Shakhbut’s rule and the trajectory of Abu Dhabi’s economic and political authority in the early twentieth century, see Christopher Davidson (2011) Abu Dhabi: Oil and Beyond. New York: Oxford University Press, chapter two “Sheikh Shakhbut and the Great Decline”, pp. 25–43.
See work by James Onley, who has written extensively on the administration of British interests in the Arabian Gulf, and the creation of the Trucial Oman Levies, then Scouts. James Onley (2007) The Arabian Frontier of the British Raj: Merchants, Rulers, and the British in the Nineteenth Century Gulf. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Also see James Onley (2009) “Britain and the Gulf Shaikhdoms, 1820–1971: The Politics of Protection”, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar, Occasional Paper No. 4.
See Frauke Heard-Bey (2005) “The United Arab Emirates: Statehood and Nation-building in a Traditional Society”, Middle East Journal, Vol. 59, No. 3, pp. 357–375.
Michael Herb (2010) “Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates”, in Michele Penner Angrist (ed.), Politics and Society in the Contemporary Middle East. Boulder: Lynne Reinner, pp. 335–365.
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© 2014 Karen E. Young
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Young, K.E. (2014). State Formation, Citizenship and the Invention of the Emirates. In: The Political Economy of Energy, Finance and Security in the United Arab Emirates. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137021977_2
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