Journal of Gulf Studies - Volume 1, Issue 1, 2024

Drawing on the works of Deleuze and Guattari, which describe the constituent behaviour of cultural assemblages, this article argues that deterritorialization marks the twentieth-century Gulf educational landscape, which problematized Arab Gulf identity. What followed is characterized by what Gilles Deleuze describes as reterritorialization, specifically the proliferation of American and western institutions in the Arab Gulf countries. This article proposes Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of deterritorialization and reterritorialization as lenses through which to observe and respond to the resulting Arab Gulf epistemic and identity crises that arose in part from the ‘study abroad’ model dominating twentieth-century higher education in the Gulf states. In contrast, the ‘study at home’ model becomes an example of reterritorialization, which serves as a local epistemic response to the hegemonic internationalization of education. Deleuze and Guattari’s notions of deterritorialization and reterritorialization provide helpful conceptual tools to examine the western impact on higher education and identity formation in the Arab Gulf region. These two conceptual paradigms characterize two directions in which higher education has progressed during the second half of the twentieth century and well into the beginning of the twenty-first, especially in their intellectual and identity-related aspects. How can Deleuze’s concepts help us characterize an epistemic uqdah that places Arab Gulf education between two antithetical realities: the push towards international education and a sense of adherence to tradition and culture? How does the move for the internationalization of education within the recent history of the Arab Gulf inform identity formation? This conceptual study explores the impact of internationalized education on the Gulf Arab identity from cultural and epistemological perspectives.

Scholars have recently begun to turn their attention to the study of sensory perceptions, however to date their focus has overwhelmingly been on sight and sound: this is perhaps understandable, given the cultural importance of art, film and music. Crucially they are the sensations that can most easily and accurately be captured and arguably are more easily framed and described in most languages than are the sensations from smell, taste and touch. Yet smell is a crucial sense, and within this scent and fragrance are a core and universal feature of human cultures and activities. For as long as records have existed, there is plentiful evidence of scent being used in personal hygiene, mate attraction, religious ceremonies, life events, as a food additive and in a range of other social practices. The Middle East, and the Gulf more specifically, figures prominently in this history, extending to the present day, where scents and perfumes play prominent cultural and social roles and where there is a strong perfume industry with its own traditions and a growing global reach. This article is an initial scoping study and literature review of scent and perfume in the Gulf, seeking to begin a redress of the traditional neglect of the topic. It offers a case for much greater scholarly attention on the topic, given how scent and perfume connect to so many disciplines and fields within Gulf studies: history, sociology, anthropology, political science and other disciplines all stand to gain from more attention on the role and uses of fragrances in the Gulf, as do more specific interdisciplinary studies in areas such as identity, cosmopolitanism, sexuality, social class and others. While the article is necessarily cursory given the breadth of its scope, the intention is to identify an area of research currently underexamined, spark greater scholarly discussion and ultimately to trigger future research on an important aspect of the contemporary Gulf.

This article argues that the intervention in Yemen (2015–present) of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) exemplified a new phenomenon, of postmodern small-state imperialism enabled by globalized, extra-European capital flows. The particular tactic deployed for these imperial purposes was terraforming, which had a tangible effect on the country’s geopolitical map. It involved a complex web of ground troops, support for surrogates and mercenaries, economic investments, and strategic concentration on securing the entire Arabian Sea and Gulf of Aden littoral. This effort had the positive goal of securing westward oil exports by the UAE and of creating a marine security environment conducive to Emirati administration of the port of Aden. Especially post-2019, it is argued, the UAE did not merely opportunistically pursue its STC policy under the wings of Saudi Arabia but rather confronted its larger partner, bombing Saudi proxies at key moments and acting more like a rival than a bandwagoning ally. This Emirati enterprise was shaped by the interests of Abu Dhabi and its local proxies rather than by US or European imperialism, though it sufficiently accorded with US policy to receive no pushback from Washington.

This work makes a detailed enquiry into the origin, growth and spread of Gulf studies as an academic discipline in India, which in its customary frame is profoundly grounded in the European and the Northern American experiences of dealing with the region. The question, how did/does the study of the Gulf region in India differ in terms of its focus and motivation has been addressed through a detailed survey of institutions, scholars and literature that broadly represent the Gulf studies in the country. The enquiry begins with pioneering institutions and their decolonial motivations and aspirations in establishing a tradition of area studies completely or partly independent of similar institutions in the West. Gulf studies in India now travels along a new direction in the context of a growing synergy between India and the Gulf states as both the regions share considerable symmetry in the perception of regional and global economic and political issues. The contemporary initiatives suggest an alternative way of understanding the region, its economy, geography, politics, people and cultures. The work makes an overview of the Gulf studies in India covering major institutions which promote Gulf studies, individual scholars engaged in the study of the region and seminal interventions by the people from the academic institutions, think tanks and the press.

Review of: Energy Kingdoms: Oil and Political Survival in the Persian Gulf, Jim Krane (2019)

New York: Columbia University Press, 224 pp.,

ISBN 978-0-23117-930-0, h/bk, $34.00