The Diwaniyya: guestroom sociability and bureaucratic brokerage in Kuwait

This dissertation is about men's guestrooms (sing. diwaniyya; pl. diwaniyyat or dawawin) in Kuwait and their place in the nation's unique welfare compact with its citizens. The central question guiding this research is unambiguous: Why do Kuwaiti men visit the dawawin? The answer, it is argued, lies in the nature of the distributive rentier arrangement in contemporary Kuwait that has allowed for the unprecedented expansion and utilization of these guestrooms. It is the position of this study that the creation of an inflated, underperforming bureaucracy tied to an intricate system of patronage and brokerage extending downward throughout the state from the ruling Al Sabah dynasty has created the conditions wherein actors must provide their own inroads if they are to tap into the government's vast resources. However, given the opaqueness of the Kuwait state system, the personalization of offices and institutions, and the imbalanced distribution of oil rents throughout the community, knowledge of precisely who to contact for what ends has become a regular nightly activity. Coupled with the benefits of luxury employment and subsidies that have bolstered discretionary incomes, hosting and visiting to foster and reinforce ties to governmental largess has become institutionalized in ways that have transformed these customary male guestrooms into indispensible marketplaces for facilitatory support.

THE DIWANIYYA: GUESTROOM SOCIABILITY AND BUREAUCRATIC BROKERAGE IN KUWAIT by James Clyde Allen Redman A dissertation submitted to the faculty of The University of Utah in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Anthropology The University of Utah August 2014 Copyright © James Clyde Allen Redman 2014 All Rights Reserved The Univers i ty of Utah Graduate School STATEMENT OF DISSERTATION APPROVAL The dissertation of James Clyde Allen Redman has been approved by the following supervisory committee members: Laurence D. Loeb , Chair 01/27/2014 Date Approved Pauline W. Wiessner , Member 01/27/2014 Date Approved Leslie Ann Knapp , Member 01/27/2014 Date Approved J. Steven Ott , Member 01/27/2014 Date Approved and by Leslie Ann Knapp , Chair/Dean of the Department/College/School of Anthropology and by David B. Kieda, Dean of The Graduate School. Peter John Sluglett , Member 01/27/2014 Date Approved Stephen Beckerman , Member 01/27/2014 Date Approved ABSTRACT This dissertation is about men's guestrooms (sing. diwaniyya; pl. diwaniyyat or dawawin) in Kuwait and their place in the nation's unique welfare compact with its citizens. The central question guiding this research is unambiguous: Why do Kuwaiti men visit the dawawin? The answer, it is argued, lies in the nature of the distributive rentier arrangement in contemporary Kuwait that has allowed for the unprecedented expansion and utilization of these guestrooms. It is the position of this study that the creation of an inflated, underperforming bureaucracy tied to an intricate system of patronage and brokerage extending downward throughout the state from the ruling Al Sabah dynasty has created the conditions wherein actors must provide their own inroads if they are to tap into the government's vast resources. However, given the opaqueness of the Kuwait state system, the personalization of offices and institutions, and the imbalanced distribution of oil rents throughout the community, knowledge of precisely who to contact for what ends has become a regular nightly activity. Coupled with the benefits of luxury employment and subsidies that have bolstered discretionary incomes, hosting and visiting to foster and reinforce ties to governmental largess has become institutionalized in ways that have transformed these customary male guestrooms into indispensible marketplaces for facilitatory support. TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT....................................................................................................................... iii PREFACE......................................................................................................................... vi Chapters 1 INTRODUCTION .........................................................................................................1 Untangling Civil Society from the Social Bureaucracy of a Welfare State...................3 Outline of the Research Project ...................................................................................20 2 SETTING: KUWAIT YESTERDAY AND TODAY................................................23 Pre-Oil: Migration, Settlement and Growth................................................................25 Post-Oil: Recovery, Realignment and the Welfare State............................................39 3 STATE AND SOCIETY IN THE AGE OF OIL.........................................................48 Rentier Dynamics: The Structure of Distribution.......................................................52 Facilitating Access to the Personalized Bureaucracy ..................................................68 4 INSTITUTIONALIZING ACCESS IN THE CITY-STATE THROUGH THE RITES OF GUESTROOM SOCIABILITY ................................................................85 The Diwaniyya: Elite Origins to Popular Proliferation...............................................95 The Diwaniyya: The Ascent of Institutionalized Social Capital...............................108 5 THE KUWAITI DIWANIYYA THROUGH FOUR CASE STUDIES ......................122 Case Study Number 1: Introduction .........................................................................123 Case Study Number 1: Uncle Ali's Bid for Parliament......................................124 Case Study Number 1: Discussion......................................................................130 Case Study Number 2: Introduction .........................................................................133 Case Study Number 2: The Invention of the Five Family Diwaniyya: An Expression of Sentiment or the Manipulation of Tradition?..........................135 Case Number 2: Discussion ................................................................................142 Case Study Number 3: Introduction .........................................................................146 v Case Study Number 3: Dissention within the Ranks and the Collapse of a Special Interest Diwaniyya ..................................................................................148 Case Number 3: Discussion ................................................................................154 Case Study Number 4: Introduction .........................................................................156 Case Study Number 4.1: Favors in the Diwaniyya: Workplace Permits ...........157 Case Study Number 4.2: Privileges in the Diwaniyya: Making the Grade........159 Case Study Number 4.3: Hospitality in the Diwaniyya: Community Charity...160 Case Study Number 4.4: Camaraderie in the Diwaniyya: The Pastimes of Youth....................................................................................................................162 Case Number 4: Discussion ................................................................................164 6 CONCLUSIONS .......................................................................................................168 Guestrooms for Bureaucrats ......................................................................................173 Directions for Further Study: Towards an Anthropology of Gulf Rentierism?........182 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................188 PREFACE This dissertation is about men's guestrooms (sing. diwaniyya; pl. diwaniyyat or dawawin) in Kuwait and their place in the nation's unique welfare compact with its citizens. The central question guiding this research is unambiguous: Why do Kuwaiti men visit the dawawin? My motivations for this study were driven by two principal matters. First, I wanted to delve deeper into the themes of male guesthouses, guestrooms and reception rooms; all institutions that sporadically appear in Middle East ethnographies1 but rarely have they ever been the focal point of ethnographic research about the region.2 So, I wanted to depart from the practice of adding such an establishment as a side note to a wider project and instead explore how the rites of guestroom socialization could stand at the forefront of a study about social, political and economic life in the Middle East. Second, there was my decision to concentrate my efforts on Kuwait and the visitation routines of Kuwaiti men. Part of the reasoning for this was purely serendipitous; I traveled to Kuwait in 2003 with the National Council on U.S. - Arab Relations (NCUSAR) and was afforded the chance to visit a diwaniyya. When I returned home and started looking for more information about Kuwait's dawawin I realized that not only were these parlors virtually absent from the anthropological literature but that Kuwait itself was grossly underrepresented; dual deficiencies that I 1 A few examples include Antoun (1972, 1979, 1997), Bujra (1971), Fernea (1970), and Slyomovics (1998). 2 Richard Antoun's enlightening account of conflict resolution in a Jordanian guestroom (2000) is a noteworthy exception. vii wanted to address that would still allow for a guestroom, in this case the Kuwaiti diwaniyya, to be the centerpiece of my research agenda. I spent 18 months collecting data in Kuwait between 2006 and 2010. With the exception of a six week pilot study in June and July of 2006 to gauge the feasibility of this project, my research calendar revolved around the fall, winter and spring months. This schedule was necessary because, as I noticed in the summer when I was trying to ascertain the best way to pursue a guestroom-focused venture, many Kuwaitis avoid the oppressive hot months by vacationing abroad. Expectedly, such a period when large numbers of Kuwaitis are traveling in and out of the country means that guestroom habits are going to suffer; attendance by hosts and guests is irregular, some diwaniyyat are open but devoid of any visitors, and other parlors only seem to act as temporary stopovers for callers busily searching for their usual cohorts. Also, the National Assembly is normally in recess for part of the summer and its absence tends to invite a lull to creep into some of the politically-oriented dawawin.3 Therefore, to ensure the availability of participants and maximize the accessibility of fully-operational guestrooms, my research was conducted at intervals from October to May. While in Kuwait, I sought lodging accommodations with non-Kuwaitis; that is, with expatriate workers. Financially, this was the most sensible solution to Kuwait's high-priced housing market for a lone male4 with a limited budget and without any real need for more than a single room. Additionally, this circumvented any of the contracts, deposits, or associated set-up fees that are standard rental requirements. There was, though, a more significant factor in my choice to live with foreigners and that is the fact 3 Of course, this tendency is reversed if special elections are being held in the summer. 4 Many apartment managers will not lease to an unmarried adult without a family. viii that the people who are actually soliciting roommates online or in local circulars are not Kuwaitis. The likely explanation for this is that Kuwaitis do not have the same fiscal pressures that compel expatriates to subsidize their housing by boarding strangers.5 Regardless of the grounds for this disparity, I was relieved to share apartments during my different stays in Kuwait with an assortment of Indian families, Indian and Pakistani bachelors, and an Irishman. Although this was a convenient answer to my housing woes, it also brought me face-to-face with how expatriates deal with their lives in the country - something that would otherwise have been sorely missed in the Kuwaiti-centric social world I was building for myself.6 However, living with expatriates in districts dominated by apartment blocks intended for foreigners had an extra advantage that I did not appreciate until a short stay of a few nights in a Kuwaiti household located in a Kuwaiti suburb:7 the abundance of taxis. Because personal vehicles are the preferred mode of transportation in Kuwaiti neighborhoods, it makes it difficult to find a cab without resorting to an expensive pick-up service. Needless to say, this logistical hang-up alone made it worth my while to reside in a taxi-infested expatriate quarter of Kuwait City. Initially, my fieldwork began when I arranged to meet with five contacts in Kuwait; one was a host during my first brief visit to the country in 2003 with NCUSAR, another was Yagoub Al-Kandari at Kuwait University who I reached out to after reading his book, Al diwaniyya al kuwaitiyah, and three others were recommended to me by an acquaintance who also happened to be their professor. After preliminary discussions 5 Nevertheless, in 2008 the Committee to Remove Irregularities on Public Property circulated flyers showing Kuwaiti homes with illegal shacks, used to house foreign workers, which encroached onto state lands, but this hardly qualifies as a roommate arrangement. 6 It is odd that as a foreigner I neglected the "expatriate experience" in Kuwait. 7 While Crystal notes that the government segregated citizen - noncitizen residential areas beginning in the 1950s (1995b:79), Longva argues that today's divisions are increasingly due to socio-economic factors (1997:37-38). ix with each of these individuals about my interests in discovering as much as possible about Kuwait's guestrooms, a purposefully broad objective given the scarcity of published research on these institutions, I asked for any referrals that they thought might be able to help me put together a candid portrait of the nation's diwaniyyat.8 Fortunately, these early relationships yielded far more links than I could have anticipated and I was quickly inundated with enough primary, secondary, and extended networks (Boissevain 1974:47-48) to allow me to begin gathering information. All of my data were collected by way of interviews and, within the short time of a few days following my arrival in Kuwait, direct participant-observation in the men's guestrooms. I used a combination of Arabic and English for all parts of this project. With interviewees, I left the choice of language to the discretion of participants, but most of those who took part had advanced English skills and oftentimes our talks merged elements of both Arabic and English. However, business in the guestrooms was carried out in Arabic, which I translated as much as I could hear into English in my notebooks, even though many of my own personal conversations in the dawawin were in English. The formal, scheduled interviews9 for this project were conducted in a semi-structured, open-ended fashion with 58 participants (49 of these sessions were with Kuwaiti men, six Kuwaiti women, and three expatriate males). I chose this approach because my research goal was exploratory and, ultimately, inductive; I wanted interviewees to have the opportunity to express and freely expand upon their experiences and opinions about the diwaniyyat with minimal direction or bias on my part. This was 8 As this indicates, all participants for this study were selected by word-of-mouth, or snowball, sampling. 9 I preferred to have participants choose meeting places where they would be comfortable. These locations varied but included homes, offices, Western coffee shops like Starbucks or the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, restaurants, diwaniyyat, or gahwa (literally "coffee" but used to refer to a men's shisha café). x critical at the outset because my own thoughts on the subject were too speculative and based almost entirely on decades-old studies executed in poor, rural environs that could not be more different than 21st century Kuwait City. Sample questions from this stage of interviews were mixtures and / or variations along the lines of: • "Can you talk to me about the diwaniyyat?" • "Do you visit a diwaniyya?" • "Will you tell me about your diwaniyya?" • "Why would a man host / visit a diwaniyya?" Then, from these general queries a rolling dialogue usually developed that gave me a chance to explore respondents' specific answers by prompting them to tell me more about what was just said. However, some of the Kuwaitis with whom I met did not need any encouragement from me and it was obvious that they had already formulated what they intended to share ahead of time. Occasionally, though, my attempts to persuade someone to stray from his predetermined script or my incessant probing about a topic brought up in the course of an interview, like internal family squabbles, were instantly rebuffed with the caution that, "We should not be talking about this."10 I always respected these warnings by switching to more amiable concerns.11 Later, once I had a better basis for understanding the guestrooms I refined my interview protocols to incorporate a pattern that kept emerging from the transcripts: social connections (wasta) and the necessity of generating contacts through hosting and 10 Anonymous. Interview conducted in Kuwait City, Kuwait on July 6, 2006. 11 Over time this became less of an issue due to a couple of reasons. The most evident is that the long-term relationships that were created between me and many of my confidants led to a degree of familiarity as well as trust about my promises of strict confidentiality. Also, when I was frequently cross-examined by anyone who knew by his own references who I had been talking to, my refusal to divulge anything was an important credential for follow-up interviews. xi visiting. Still, I did not deviate far from the aforementioned baseline questions about the diwaniyyat with new interviewees even after I narrowed my focus; instead, I made sure to ask for more details about wasta whenever it arose along with any personal, secondhand, or hypothetical scenarios that might serve to illustrate the points at which guestrooms and advantageous networks intersect. For the veteran participants who agreed to meet with me again,12 I typically framed our subsequent conversations around revisiting some of their previous remarks that I had not pursued too deeply before, particularly any prior references made about diwaniyya networking. The questions below, although by no means complete, do provide a sense of how I began giving wasta increased attention when it came up: • "What do you mean when you speak about wasta?" • "Why would someone need wasta?" • "Do you know people who visit the diwaniyyat for wasta?" • "Is there wasta in the diwaniyyat?" Yet, unlike my earlier, imprecise inquiries about guestrooms and the rituals of male hospitality in Kuwait, when my unawareness as an outsider seemed to have been anticipated by locals, the inclusion of wasta into the equation created quite a different reaction during interviews. Gradually, it became apparent to me that there was such an assumed obviousness attached to wasta and its utility in Kuwait that my desires to have 12 There were 16 participants who agreed to meet for repeat formal interviews. Not included in this number are 10 one-time interviewees that I saw and visited with regularly once I was sitting in guestrooms, and even though I recorded our later talks, it was more relaxed. From the 26 participants with whom I had recurring interactions, 14 became my closest confidants and they helped me with translations, rumors, gossip, and locating sources and materials. With the other 32 interviewees, some were uninterested in working with me further and others simply ignored my phone calls. I can only assume that in these cases I failed to establish a strong enough rapport and that meeting with me fulfilled the obligation to whoever it was that put us in touch originally. However, I must admit that I was also responsible for discontinuing a few associations that were at odds with my personality. xii people itemize their own encounters with it in the diwaniyyat were met with skepticism: How could I not comprehend something so basic and why should anyone even care about it in the first place?13 Yet, it was this very ordinary, habitual nature of Kuwait's guestroom - wasta interactions that I found so extraordinary; that they were so integrated into the daily consciousness of life in the city-state that they had become routine. Nonetheless, while the interview sessions proved to be an effective primer on many aspects of diwaniyya culture, I knew that my project, along with any semblances of ethnographic authenticity, rested on my ability to successfully get into a guestroom.14 I had prepared myself, not knowing what to expect or how people would react to my research, for the possibility that I might have to cold call guestrooms by actively searching for Kuwaiti men gathering in the vicinity of any house with a placard marked "diwaniyya" or "diwan."15 Luckily, I never had to resort to this measure because on my third day in Kuwait, a female interviewee offered to have her brother take me along on one of his evening rounds of visiting. That first night out, I followed my guide's lead - everyone in the parlor rose from their seats for a handshake when we entered and, starting on our right and moving counterclockwise, we exchanged greetings with each person present16 - and mimicked his mannerisms.17 On this same outing, I received more 13 I answered more versions of this question than any other about my fieldwork. My truthful answer, that I found wasta and diwaniyyat to be fascinating, often elicited disbelief or the kind of sympathetic looks reserved for someone who should know better. 14 This does not mean that the formal interviews ended with my participant-observation in guestrooms; rather, my days were devoted to interviews or tracking leads while my nights were reserved for diwaniyya activities. 15 Theoretically, this is feasible according to the tenets of hospitality but socially it is disfavored. As one Kuwaiti man summed up this idea, "The diwaniyya has an open door but in fact it is closed. Nobody can get in unless he is a member. A stranger can enter but he will feel uncomfortable." Ahmad. Interview conducted in Kuwait City, Kuwait on April 8, 2007. 16 As I learned, this is the fairly standard way that visitors, regular or special, are greeted when entering a diwaniyya. In informal guestrooms, or when a guest is late or he is a longtime participant, a collective as-salam alaikum (peace be unto you) may be given upon entry to the entire room, thereby bypassing the xiii invitations to guestrooms, and when combined with similar opportunities that stemmed from further interviews, the participant-observation phase of my study was rapidly taking shape. It did not take long, however, before I was faced with the problem of defining exactly what constituted a diwaniyya. Because nearly every Kuwaiti house has a parlor (Al-Naser 2001:11)18 and Kuwaiti men are often getting together inside of them to socialize, does every game of cards or late night chat within a diwaniyya room necessarily represent that a diwaniyya is meeting? This quandary initially arose as a practical matter after one too many nighttime visitations to guestrooms that doubled as occasional lairs for card players, hashish smokers, and video gamers. Even though my contacts promised me diwaniyyat, and they may have sincerely believed that such cases were sound exemplars of institutional variations, these trips proved taxing because they did not pass what became my own personal benchmark for a guestroom: Do those present recognize their assembly to be a diwaniyya? If not, then I could not classify such a group of men as partaking in diwaniyya socializing since they were not making that individual salutations; although once seated, a nod, wave or spoken masa'a al khair (good evening) might be given to friends or relatives. 17 Some of these customary behaviors can be shaking the shared coffee cup three times when finished, or touching noses with someone close (this is viewed locally as a tribal tradition), or saying fi m'allah (in God's protection) to those in the room when departing. The real novelty for me was interacting with the ever-present Indian domestic servants who tend to all of the guests' needs. 18 Even though it is impossible to accurately calculate the number of dawawin in Kuwait City, there are two resources that hint at the sum. The directory, Diwaniyya; The dawawin and diwaniyyat in the State of Kuwait (diwaniyya; al dawawin wa al diwaniyyat fi dawlat al kuwayt), has been issued annually during Ramadan since 2003 by Delta Group Publishing. It lists diwaniyyat by districts in each of Kuwait's six governorates. In the 2005 edition, there were 3,522 dawawin cataloged. For each entry, the formal name of the guestroom is provided, its moniker, an address, the day and time it meets, and a telephone number. Another source that can be turned to for guestroom figures is the office of Saud Al-Khatrash, the general coordinator charged with removing dawawin built illegally on public land. Between 2008 and 2010, in the document, "Total Number of Removals of Unlicensed Structures," Al-Khatrash's office estimates that 13,000 diwaniyyat were torn down (This record was faxed to the author by the office of Saud Al-Khatrash on November 28, 2010). xiv designation for themselves.19 Moreover, these impromptu mixers lacked my second set of criteria, which was founded on what all interviewees who were asked insisted was fundamental for a guestroom to be a diwaniyya: it must have a host who convenes it in a regular place on the same day and at the same time each week.20 Jointly, these guidelines served as the filters through which I prioritized my evenings' agendas and they are the nominal qualifications that I used to select whether or not a congregation of Kuwaiti males signified a diwaniyya. By the time that I had called on a dozen or so guestrooms, and I had begun to make repeat visits to a few that were especially receptive to my presence, I altered my approach and changed from being a one-off guest to a regular visitor. There were several reasons for this adjustment. Primarily, I wanted to take part in, and observe, the weekly life cycles of the diwaniyyat across the seasons; over holidays like Ramadan or ‘ashura, during major and minor elections, or when members were confronted with their own series of in-house bliss and turmoil. Furthermore, although I recorded some wonderful biographical features about the guestrooms that I visited just once,21 I was also always alert to the reality that much of what was put before me was incredibly stage-managed, for the sake of decorum, and almost exclusively centered on me since I was the unfamiliar curiosity in the room. To try to move past this, while not totally abandoning new diwaniyyat options, I reserved certain nights of the week for recurring visits to three guestrooms, each with its own public mission statement: family, political, and public 19 As stated, this was my decision for categorizing Kuwaiti guestrooms and there is certainly an argument to be made about the extent to which a group's dynamics can be understood by those internal or external to it. 20 I was given some other generalities about guestrooms, such as rules prohibiting immoral or illegal activities within their walls, but such notions tended to reflect individual ideals since there was little agreement about these proscriptions. Besides, I witnessed quite a few conversations in guestrooms that challenged many moral and legal boundaries. 21 There were a total of 19 diwaniyyat that I visited only one time. xv activism;22 and each playing host every week to between 15 and 30 men. 23 While I could never erase my status as a stranger within these meetings, by slowly becoming a fixture to these groups my attendance was normalized to an extent that I could interact with everyone without any of the fanfare that characterized my original visitations. For me, this meant that I could watch and listen-in to all that was occurring around me, or I could sit with someone for a spontaneous interview24 or request clarification about what was happening, or I could huddle with a cluster of men and engage in whatever subject concerned them at that moment. The product of these interviews, observations and "participant living" (Longva 1997:15) in the nightlife culture of Kuwait's men's guestrooms is a narrative that expands the range of rentier thought by examining it through the prism of everyday practices. In the earliest days of this project, I simply wanted to know why Kuwaiti men choose to spend their evening hours engaged in such spirited socializing in the dawawin. Frankly, I diverged very little from this straightforward research schematic, even after I had become quite familiar with Kuwait and its men's parlors, because the data that I was getting was fairly consistent across participants: men can visit guestrooms for a variety of reasons, but the need to foster social connections is almost always a factor. Nevertheless, acknowledging the existence of men's diwaniyya networks did not tell me about the utility of these interactions until I specifically asked about the uses of wasta, and only then did the state's role come into full view. From this point on, I concentrated 22 By public mission statements, I am referring to the reasons that these guestrooms' proprietors gave for hosting their diwaniyyat. 23 This gave me an opportunity to work with 45 to 90 men each week. When I had an evening without anything scheduled I usually dropped by a card-playing diwaniyya for entertainment and light chatter. 24 To my surprise, many guests approached to talk to me about the guestrooms, or a specific diwaniyya, after watching me visit for many weeks. Some of these led to outside confidential interviews about a diwaniyya where we were guests. xvi on how the dawawin can be used by supplicants to facilitate bureaucratic partiality and preferential treatments. I stress that this is solely my own application of the data that so many Kuwaitis provided for my benefit but I cannot say if any of them would endorse my interpretation of their experiences. Also, there is the distinct probability that I have used someone's words or actions in a context that was either unforeseen or that might be found unfavorable. Consequently, I have elected to use pseudonyms for both participants25 and guestrooms, and I have tried to omit any identifiers that could expose a source. I do, however, hope that I have not mishandled any of the knowledge that was so graciously shared with me in Kuwait. It is incredibly humbling to think about all of the people who have made this research possible and to realize how indebted I am to their contributions. Without the insight, support, and encouragement that countless individuals provided at each and every juncture of this project, it is doubtful as to whether this undertaking could ever have reached its final form. At the same time, there is a great sense of reward in knowing that so many people saw some merit in this study, at least enough to warrant the help on which I relied so heavily, and it is my sincere hope that this research will not fall too short of their expectations. To my family, I have to first extend my deepest gratitude for always being the enduring and everlasting champions of all of my efforts. Not only did they tolerate my repeated absences overseas, their good humor was a welcome respite to some of the frustrations that I faced as I tried to bring my protracted inquiry on Kuwait's guestrooms to its conclusion. Undeniably, I am perhaps most grateful for my family's openness to 25 I did not record the names of participants who requested anonymity nor did I provide them with an alias; they appear in the text simply as "anonymous." xvii learning about another culture and for their willingness simply to listen to me; in this regard it is hardly an exaggeration to say that they know more about how I experienced Kuwait than I will ever be able to express through my research. I also owe my committee an incredible amount of personal appreciation for all of their guidance throughout this process. Here, I want to fully thank Laurence Loeb for serving as chair of my committee, commend Polly Wiessner for tirelessly laboring to help me elevate the standards of my work, and recognize all of the members for the invaluable insights that they imparted to me: Peter Sluglett, Stephen Beckerman, Steve Ott, and Leslie Ann Knapp. It is not easy to articulate exactly how much their generous supplies of wisdom, enthusiasm, and patience have meant to me but I cannot envision a more fruitful intellectual atmosphere. It was honestly a privilege for me to have enjoyed the breadth of their knowledge. Of course, no ethnographic study is even conceivable without the charitable involvement of its participants. In my case, I can confidently state that at some moments I felt as if the whole country of Kuwait had opened its arms to me with what was nothing short of legendary hospitality. At every turn I found that my constant questions were tolerated, my ignorance was never ridiculed, and all of my misunderstandings were remedied with the utmost grace. Today, I am fortunate that I can count many of those I met during my fieldwork as friends and family. Thus, it is with a good deal of regret that I have chosen not to reveal these close confidants in any way so that I might preserve our confidentiality. Still, it would be careless of me not to mention at least some of those in Kuwait who selflessly gave their time and assistance to me through the years. At Kuwait xviii University, Fahad Al Naser, Muhammad Al Hussien, and Yacoup Al Kandari of the Department of Sociology and Social Work always kept their doors ajar and their phones turned on whenever I called, giving me a local academic and institutional base to rely upon when I was abroad. Also, there is Youssef Abdul-Moati, who was kind enough to allow me to access the remarkable library at the Center for Research and Studies on Kuwait. Each trip to Kuwait required accommodations and I feel obliged to give credit to a few of the expatriates I lived with who showed me the non-Kuwaiti side of life in the country: Cyril, Stephen, Tyron, and Declan. Financial support for this project was provided by a number of sources. While at the University of Utah, I received two Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships for fieldwork through the Middle East Center; the Barbara & Norman Tanner Center Graduate Fellowship for the Prevention of Violence; the College of Social and Behavioral Science Giles W. and Elise G. Mead Foundation Endowed Scholarship in Honor of Professor Charles Hughes; and the Middle East Center Khosrow Mostofi Fellowship. My last research excursion to Kuwait was funded by the Kuwait Program at the Chaire Moyen Orient Mediterrannee at the Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po) in Paris. However, this does not imply the endorsement of these entities for the analyses, arguments, and findings presented within this text and any errors are solely my own. There were two opportunities afforded to me by separate institutions that deserve particular recognition because both were responsible for introducing me to the wider community of scholars specializing in Persian Gulf studies. The Gulf Research Unit at the University of Oslo hosted me for a symposium and pre-Middle East Studies Association (MESA) brainstorming session for our shared conference panel. I distinctly xix recall that it was during these several intensive days spent in Norway with Bjørn Olav Utvik, Jon Nordenson, and fellow guest Michael Herb that the disparate pieces of my research initially began to crystallize into a coherent narrative. On the other side of the world, I have to thank the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore for bringing me in to present a condensed version of my study at their international meeting on the Gulf. To have this many area specialists in one place at one time was truly a resource when it happened to be precisely at the very moment I was trying to collect feedback on my polished report. Lastly, I must acknowledge the incalculable aid that Linda Morgan, Sandra McCarthy, and Ursula Hanly each made available to me just about anytime that I asked for it. Together, these three women have almost magical talents when it comes to making sure that the necessary forms get signed by the right people and delivered to the appropriate desks. Their collective expertise in all matters concerning university protocols and regulations is such that I never once lost sleep or agonized over any task with which they had been entrusted; I always knew that my questions would be answered, my problems resolved, and my mind put at ease. CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Rare are the nights in the small Persian Gulf nation of Kuwait when the roads are not packed with carloads of men on their way to a diwaniyya (pl. diwaniyyat or dawawin). Located at the junctures between domesticity and outside sociability (Tetreault 2001:206), local historian Khalid Al Mukames defined the Kuwaiti diwaniyya as "a place separate from the main household specifically for men… [it] is a club comprised of groups of people who constitute a small community which deliberates on various affairs of life from the household or commerce or politics or literary and intellectual" (1986:19).26 The Kuwaiti academic Yagoub Al-Kandari also portrayed the diwaniyya in similar terms, identifying it as a "forum of cultural exchange within which is debated various matters and affairs associated with daily social life" (2002:51).27 Western researchers, too, have given their reflections on Kuwait's diwaniyyat, describing them as "informal socio-political groups... [that] serve to coalesce, filter, and transmit Kuwaiti opinion on public issues" (Russell 1989:30); or, "regular private gatherings of relatives, friends, and colleagues that serve as forums for socializing, conducting business, and discussing politics" (Hawthorne 2004:8); to even labeling them as a 26 Translation provided by the author. 27 Translation provided by the author. 2 "gregarious place where many Kuwaitis... uniformly receive their knowledge and discuss, among other things, public matters" (Louër 2005:771).28 Yet, missing from the preceding discussions on the diwaniyyat as a context for male sociability in Kuwait are any conceptions of how these institutions interact with the country's all-encompassing bureaucratic networks. This is not an inconsiderable prospect. In a state that employees roughly 90 percent of all its citizens (Ghabra 1997:361), there is always a good probability that any assembly that includes adult male citizens will be synonymous with an unofficial gathering of civil servants. Nevertheless, when the diwaniyyat are presented in the literature as political entities it is almost always according to their roles in formal, state-sanctioned activities (Antoun 2000:442), like parliamentary contests and political campaigning (Al-Naser 2001:13-14), as well as the less savory components of electoral participation: vote buying29 and prearrangements of the pool of candidates via pre-election primaries (Gavrielides 1987:166-170). What is frequently left unsaid is that these institutions also facilitate the "low politics" (Singerman 1995:15) of informality that allows actors to access the state, its offices, and its benefits without the procedural indignities or obstructions that typify official channels (Kilani and Sakijha 2002:18). The goal of this research is to address this shortage by focusing explicitly on Kuwaiti reception rooms and demonstrating the utility of these institutions for providing points of contact between individuals and the overarching welfare state. Although popular local accounts tend to explain the diwaniyyat as being inherited legacies of the 28 Translation provided by the author. 29 Miq. Interview conducted in Kuwait City, Kuwait on July 7, 2006. 3 past (Gel'man 2004:1022),30 this inquiry seeks to orient the guestrooms of Kuwait as vital endowments of the present that simultaneously penetrate the state while remaining mostly detached from its official apparatuses. It is well documented that in Kuwait, along with its oil-rich Gulf neighbors, the development of an inflated, underperforming bureaucracy (Herb 2009:382) coupled with an intricate system of patronage and brokerage extending downward throughout the state (Hertog 2005:141-143) from the ruling Al Sabah dynasty has encouraged actors to provide their own inroads to governmental resources. What is less clear is exactly how an establishment like the customary guestroom fits into this alignment as a marketplace for facilitatory support in such a high income urban environment. The argument here is that the presence of this pervasive brokerage has become institutionalized to the point of normalcy through the Kuwaiti diwaniyya by virtue of its regular visitation networks that foster and reinforce ties to bureaucratic favors. Untangling Civil Society from the Social Bureaucracy of a Welfare State To fully appreciate how the diwaniyyat act as a conduit for circulating public assets through social avenues demands an explanation of how the state-society framework is realized within Kuwait's distinctive brand of rentierism. At first glance, the diwaniyyat found throughout Kuwait City might fit well into what John and Jean Comaroff called "the present infatuation with civil society" (2000:293). Although this 30 The most repeated version of this narrative authoritatively situates the diwaniyyat in an imagined, distant past: "The diwaniah is a historical phenomenon believed to have started thousands of years ago, long before the advent of Islam... [The] majlis, or board... very popular in the Khalifa era, later came to be known as the diwaniah" (Al-Naser 2001:6). Origins dating specifically to the Abbasid Caliphate of the 13th to 16th centuries have also been mentioned in interviews. What is always left out of these retrospectives are the intervening centuries between these historical roots and the appearance of the diwaniyyat on the Kuwaiti institutional landscape. 4 statement was written by the Comaroffs over a decade ago, its meaning continues to resonate to this day for legions of researchers, scholars, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and policy makers seeking to understand and evaluate, or even influence and shape, both grassroots and state-level sociopolitical realities (Hann 2003:55-57).31 In fact, it was the omission of any substantive discussion about the diwaniyyat that was explicitly cited by Richard Antoun in his appraisal of Richard Augustus Norton's two volume collection, Civil Society in the Middle East. Antoun criticized the contributors for their lack of any serious consideration of informal institutions, pronouncing that, "many authors [in these volumes] allude to patron-client relations, religious networks, sects, tribes, ethnic groups, groupings based on social type (village, town, neighborhood) and the diwāniyyah, without giving them any attention" (2000:442).32 So, what exactly does it mean to take notice of Antoun's comments and give the Kuwaiti dawawin greater appreciation within the broader dialogues on civil society? As already indicated, there is little argument that these guestrooms occupy what can appropriately be described as an intermediate space between the social world of household intimacy and the wider, unrestricted community (Tetreault 2001:206). Specifically, the country's diwaniyyat are presumed to reside somewhere beyond the privacy of the home though still remaining sheltered from intrusions by the state (Delmas 31 In academia, at least some of the focus on civil society can be said to revolve around the topics of local nonstate groups taking over a state's distributive functions (Hemment 2004:217, 222) or as a counterbalance to a government's authoritative presence (Kulmala 2011:51-53); hence, too much or too little government seems to pose questions as to where, and how, civil society fits into any particular state's social, political, and economic equations. For NGOs and official agencies, Partha Chatterjee's conclusion that, "Civil society as an ideal continues to energize an interventionist political project" (2004:39) reflects Amy Hawthorne's position that, "programs to ‘strengthen' civil society have become a standard part of the U.S. and European democracy-promotion tool kit around the world" (2004:5). 32 Even earlier, in 1993, Norton insisted that, "Arguably, the essential element in Kuwaiti civil society is the diwaniyya" (210). Again, as with Antoun's critique in 2000, Norton provided nothing to support this statement or reinforce its claim. More recently, Paul Salem listed the diwaniyya under the heading of civil society without expanding much on his designation (2007:10-11). 5 2007:3).33 This latter guarantee is rooted in customary local convictions that point to the inviolability of the family domicile,34 which is considered to include any diwaniyya regardless of whether or not it is actually positioned within the property boundaries of a household,35 along with legal provisions that are in place to ensure that the values of domesticity are not violated (Tetreault 2000:61-62). Under the Kuwaiti Constitution, this physical protection of the home from unwarranted disturbances by the state, and its consequent extension to the diwaniyya, is upheld by the language in Article 38. The safeguards to assemble within the walls a residence, again applicable in practice to the diwaniyya, are designated in Article 44.36 Importantly, these constitutional provisos mean that the diwaniyyat and their congregations are excluded from the restrictive Public Gathering Law (Law Number 65 of 1979) that sets out the criteria that must be met by other types of civic organizations (Kelly and Breslin 2010:238). It is for these reasons that, in the eyes of many Kuwaitis, the dawawin are repeatedly heralded as consummate "mini parliaments" where the "country's affairs may be addressed and discussed"37 devoid of state interference or arbitrary policing actions. Thus, it is this disposition of the diwaniyyat as guarded institutions that allow the country's citizens to harbor the expectation that they will continue to have these forums as outlets for their unhindered political expression.38 The traits listed here are the ideal kinds of qualities that likely make the 33 This evaluation is also shared by other authors including Louër (2005:771), Hawthorne (2004:5), Alnajjar (2000:257), Tetreault (2000:62), and Stephenson (2011:187). 34 Anonymous. Interview conducted in A. M. Diwaniyya in Kuwait City, Kuwait on March 7, 2007. 35 Haitham. Interview conducted in Kuwait City, Kuwait on October 15, 2010. 36 Recovered from the reprint of the constitution published by UNDP-POGAR (United Nations Development Programme - Programme on Governance in the Arab Region) at http://www.pogar.org, accessed on May, 05, 2012. 37 Abd Aziz. Interview conducted in Kuwait City, Kuwait on October 26, 2007. 38 Ahmad. Interview conducted in Kuwait City, Kuwait on February 7, 2007. 6 diwaniyyat of Kuwait such an appealing model to which some of the concepts that surround notions of civil society might be applied; particularly, the reception rooms' occupation of that valuable social terrain located between the familial house and the government (Delmas 2007:3). With these characteristics as a guideline, it is not too difficult to imagine the diwaniyyat being included in the laundry list of civil society associations that Robert Hefner provides in his brief summary of the term: Though writers differ on its details, most agree in describing civil society as an arena of friendships, clubs, churches, business associations, unions, and other voluntary associations that mediate the vast expanse of social life between the household and the state. This associational sphere is seen as the place where citizens learn habits of free assembly, dialogue, and social initiative. [1998:17] Phrased another way, albeit with less specificity about the variety of groups that can be encompassed by the classification, is Rosemary Coombe's explanation that civil society can be thought of as, "An amorphous space that lies somewhere between the state and society and mediates between the two by way of representatives circulating in the public sphere" (1997:3). Coombe continues with a more refined version of civil society that bars the most evident nonhousehold, nonstate entities from her definition: businesses and marketplaces. This further spatial clarity sets up a sectoral triptych where the state, the economy, and civil society can each be distinguished (Coombe 1997:3) along the same analytical lines that have been used by specialists in former Eastern Bloc and post-Soviet Russian studies since the fall of the European socialist regimes (Hann 2003:56). In this rendering, as in Coombe's evaluation, civil society is recognized idiomatically as a distinct "third sector" to emphasize its separation from the domains of governance and enterprise: "The third sector is a realm of informal groups - associations, clubs, or NGOs (non-governmental organizations). It derives its name from its role in a triad, where the 7 first is the state, the second is the private sector of businesses and enterprises, and the third is the realm of citizens' initiatives" (Hemment 2004:217). This three sector typology has also been amended to accommodate the addition of a fourth segment in appreciation of the possibility that contestants for political offices might not strictly adhere to the triad's framework. Therefore, civil society by this formula is proposed to be differentiated not only from the state and the economy, but from "political society" as well (Foley and Edwards 1998:11). Yet, this process of trying to cordon off civil society from any other forms of social interaction, whether economic, political, or state based, has had its relevance questioned as a universally valid theoretical paradigm (Comaroff and Comaroff 1999:17, 24). Principally, it is the obscurity engendered by delimiting where one zone ends and another begins, or assuming that certain sectors of associational life can enjoy absolute autonomy from all other facets of social intercourse without any intrusions, which makes isolating civil society an extremely subjective premise that ultimately undermines any semblance of clarity (Seligman 1998:28). Blair Rutherford makes note of this very shortcoming with his work on the impact that local power disparities and the national government's dispossessions can have on Zimbabwean commercial farm workers' involvements with an assortment of manifestations that typically fall beneath the rubric of civil society: An important part of this analytic is its emphasis on what a hegemonic definition of the concept misses or marginalizes… Attention focuses on the role of boundaries… The crucial boundary-making processes are those between society and the state, public and private, and civil and un-civil forms of association and rationality. Under the gaze of critical analysis, these boundaries have been shown to be illusory, discriminatory, and constitutive. [2004:128] 8 Joseph Buttigieg, in a tone not too far removed from that of Rutherford, directs his efforts towards restoring what he believes to have been Antonio Gramsci's views on civil society as put forth in his infamous Prison Notebooks. Like much of the current general usage of the phrase, Gramsci's outline of civil society came to minimally represent "the notion that the state and civil society are two separate and opposed entities" (Buttigieg 1995:4). However, Buttigieg contends that such a misappropriation strips the concept of all of Gramsci's original intentions; namely, that civil society is a hegemonic extension of the political elites' command of the state (1995:27). On Gramscian side of this coin, cast sharply at odds against a civil society that is "somehow more authentic, and untainted by the vulgarities of the state and party politics" (Hearn 1997:34), power and sociability are tightly intertwined: Civil society is not some kind of benign or neutral zone where different elements of society operate and compete freely and on equal terms, regardless of who holds a predominance of power in government. That would be the liberal view, which misleadingly portrays the formal restraints imposed upon the use of force held in reserve by the governmental apparatus of the state as a boundary line that demarcates the separation between the state and civil society. [Buttigieg 1995:27] For each of these criticisms that challenge the assumptions of a civil society that can exist as a "neat division between state and society" (Worby and Rutherford 1997:67) it is hard not to recall Eric Wolf's stance in Europe and the People without History on the pitfalls of disciplinary disarticulation in the social sciences. Although Wolf was not writing about civil society, his assessment of the study of social relations without any attention to the political economy within which such interactions transpire echoes many of the same sentiments expressed here: "What is the flaw in these postulates? They predispose one to think of social relations not merely as autonomous but as causal in their own right, apart from their economic, political, or ideological context" (1997:9). 9 Yet, if the conceptual case for a civil society comprised of "all the associational forms in society other than the state and the market" (Benthall 2000:1) is inherently deficient in its perspective, either through its ambiguity or its "cheerful illusion" (Comaroff and Comaroff 1999:24) of the existence of discrete limits for interpersonal exchanges, the diwaniyyat of Kuwait can only add to the growing bodies of literature that are uncomfortable with many of the underlying presumptions that accompany the idea. For instance, despite the fact that the Kuwaiti guestrooms do inhabit a midway point that is neither strictly household nor formally state controlled (Delmas 2007:3), it would be disingenuous to mark them as segregated, independent institutions that are able to persist apart from the government,39 the marketplace, or even the family. Otherwise, a strict pursuit of civil society would have to dismiss the diwaniyyat of politicians and contenders,40 not to mention those of the country's various political forums and associations,41 as straying too close to the state as well as "political society" itself (Foley and Edwards 1998:11). A similar problem can be posed for professional diwaniyyat in which the participants all share a common occupation or are invested in an overlapping field, like architects and engineers or lawyers and underwriters. Can a line be drawn with any degree of precision for these types of reception rooms that designates where they may sit in terms of a sectoral division of fraternity that excludes markets (Hemment 39 Authorities have always been inconsistent with those dawawin that have run afoul of the law. Illegal election primaries (Alnajjar 2000:245-246) and the illicit construction of diwaniyyat on state property are probably the most frequent violations (Redman 2012:28-33). However, more well-known are the government's raids on the diwaniyyat of the political opposition, the diwaniyyat al ithnein (Monday Diwaniyyat), in 1990 following the 1986 suspension of the National Assembly (Tetreault 2000:69-71). 40 These offices are not limited to the National Assembly but include positions on the boards of sports clubs, the municipalities, and supermarket cooperatives. 41 One active "friend" of the Kuwait Democratic Forum (KDF) recalled that five diwaniyyat, each gathering on a different night of the week in different neighborhoods, could be linked to the KDF. Anonymous. Interview conducted in Kuwait City, Kuwait on February 21, 2007. 10 2004:217)?42 These groupings are plainly off-the-clock and after-hours but their openness is curbed and trade knowledge is an expected topic.43 Then, there are the countless family dawawin that play host to some combination of kinsmen depending on the circumstances of the relationships at any given time.44 These, in conjunction with the guestrooms that are affiliated with individual tribes and tribal sections, complicate affixing the Kuwaiti diwaniyyat to any picture of civil society as "one in which a civic selfhood is (allegedly) distinguished from communal or collective roles and attributes" (Coombe 1997:3). Still, it cannot be ignored that this catalog of the diwaniyyat is rudimentary at best; in actuality, nearly every diwaniyya and most attendees mix these rough categories on a consistent basis: tribes and politics, families and businesses, politics and families, and so on. It is also no easy task to try to manipulate the dawawin of Kuwait into the more optimistic proposals that seem to be tied in with the existence of, or need for, a strong and mature civil society. Foremost, a diwaniyya is not a space for a participatory public despite many local protestations that would prefer to convey these reception rooms as available and accessible to all callers.45 As already stated, these are Kuwaiti men's 42 Take, for example, one long-established law firm in Kuwait City that took steps to create a "social role" for its solicitors requiring them to visit certain diwaniyyat. Throughout the week, the firm's lawyers are assigned specific diwaniyyat from which to recruit clients. Senior lawyers call on high-profile diwaniyyat because sending a junior attorney would insult an important host and reflect poorly on the law firm. Simple legal problems and issues are to be resolved free of charge by the visiting lawyer, but more complicated legal concerns will require a visit by the potential client to the firm for a no-cost consultation, with a fee charged only if the case goes to court or involves mediation. Anonymous. Interview conducted in Kuwait City, Kuwait on March 1, 2008. 43 Mishal. Interview conducted in Kuwait City, Kuwait on July 12, 2006. 44 It is not unheard of for family disputes to cause a diwaniyya of relatives to split into completely separate dawawin or for antagonistic kinsmen to withdraw from their familial guestroom until their differences are settled to avoid an awkward setting. Anonymous. Interview conducted in Kuwait City, Kuwait on March 16, 2008. 45 Ahmad A. M. Interview conducted in Kuwait City, Kuwait on February 21, 2007. 11 parlors (Al Mukames 1986:19)46 and this reality alone rules out any direct contributions from the vast majority of the population.47 This, too, calls into question the breadth of the civil society model (Seligman 1992:14) and if it is desirable to have its connotations attached to an institution that is so patently identifiable by its exclusionary nature.48 Another issue is that civil society is oftentimes envisioned as a remedy for the distributive deficiencies of welfare states (Hefner 1998:17) that will persuade "non-governmental groups to take on the functions of the state" (Hemment 2004:217). By providing services, it is hoped, civil society can reduce the reliance of citizens upon the government (Hefner 1998:17), thereby leading to the promotion of private markets founded on capitalist principles (Hemment 2004:221). This theme relies on there being a dialectical tension defining civil society (Coombe 1997:3) and the state, whereby the growth of one results in a reduction of the other; two realms that continually oppose each other (Hearn 1997:33). Once more, though, such expectations are especially inadequate insofar as the diwaniyyat of Kuwait are concerned. These are men's rooms, parlors, and meeting places and it can be said quite confidently that the individual proprietors hold no grand delusions 46 Translation provided by the author. 47 The most current report in 2010 by the Central Statistical Office of the Ministry of Planning estimated the country's total population to be 3,566,437 with Kuwaitis numbering only 1,133,214 (Recovered from http://www.cso.gov.kw, accessed on April 13, 2012). Of this number, there are 195,000 male Kuwaitis of voting age (Olimat 2011:81); in other words, this is the 18.2 percent of the total population that for the most part constitutes the demographic of the diwaniyyat. For the female portion of the citizenry there is one diwaniyya, that of Rasha Al Sabah, that stands as an often cited exception to male exclusiveness in these institutions (Tetreault 2003:38). Since women were first granted the right to vote in the parliamentary elections of 2006 and now have legal political power, there are questions amongst women as to whether or not their sittings (yam'ah) constitute a diwaniyya, whether or not women should try to appropriate an institution with such overt male connotations, and the extent to which men's diwaniyyat will accept them if they wish to attend. Social distance and unfamiliarity are also limitations to mixed gender diwaniyyat that cannot be overlooked and both of these themes are apparent in one woman's experience: "I was going to meet my father to hear a lecturer. But only upon arriving at the address did I realize that the lecture was going to be held in a diwaniyya. I called my father and did not enter the diwaniyya until he arrived to give me some [sense of] security. Even then, I strongly felt out of place and uncomfortable in the presence of so many strange men." E. Interview conducted in Kuwait City, Kuwait on July 3, 2006. 48 This segregation extends to male citizens as well. As one longtime diwaniyya guest explained the institutions' open-door creed: "The diwaniyyat are open for all, but not all are welcomed." Abd Aziz. Interview conducted in Kuwait City, Kuwait on October 26, 2007. 12 of one day replacing the state's massive welfare entitlements. Moreover, the amazing proliferation of these establishments over the last decades (Al-Kandari 2002:68-69) has done little to promote economic privatization; if anything, the public sector portion of the national economy is as lopsided as it has ever been (Herb 2009:381-384). Simply put, these additional examples show that civil society, as a concept, just presents too many limitations to properly serve as a starting point for understanding where the diwaniyyat fit into the social fabric of modern day Kuwait. This conclusion is largely in part because, in concurrence with Robert Hefner, "Rarely has so heavy an analytic cargo been strapped on the back of so slender a conceptual beast" (1998:17). Rather, what is proffered by this research is an abandonment of civil society as an ideational construct for situating the diwaniyyat, and instead it is proposed that it is much more profitable to examine the ways that these institutions are integrated into the state, albeit informally and without the obvious martial burdens that come with governance (Abrams 1988:77). Moving "beyond the old state-society dichotomy" (Pieke 2004:518), a contentious split that can easily become reified in the rhetoric of civil society's proponents (Rutherford 2004:128), the purpose here is to concentrate on how the diwaniyyat populate the interactional zones where state and society encroach upon one another to such an extent that it can make these areas practically indistinguishable. Whereas Hisham Sharabi derided such habits as symptomatic of Arab neopatriarchal customs, where the office is inseparable from the household salon (1988:131) and perhaps even the other way around as presently argued absent the essentializing overtones for the Kuwaiti diwaniyya, Timothy Mitchell suggests a more nuanced variation that is less of a cultural indictment: "How are the porous edges where official 13 practice mixes with the semiofficial and the semiofficial with the unofficial to be turned into lines of separation, so that the state can stand apart as a discrete, self-directing object" (1991:82). Likewise, as with Mitchell's summation, there is Philip Abrams' critique of the objectification of the state as a unit of study that can be thought of as distinctive from "the social agencies… of the society in which it operates" (1988:59); on this subject, Abrams was adamant that positioning the state as a detached, self-contained entity was a gross miscalculation that concealed the political truths about legitimacy and nonstate forms of power (1988:76-77, 82). This may be why the state tends to be more legible in those places where it is most unexpected: the everyday acts and deeds of the populous are precisely where the state's opacity (Das 2007:163-164, 169) gives way to "the reality of the mundane, interested, and often uncoordinated contests of power that make up the individual and institutional ‘state system'" (Candea 2011:312). Hence, it takes some creative effort to disregard or undervalue the complex interfaces that mediate the interchanges between the offices of the state, its bureaucracies, the informal arenas, and the citizenry (Pieke 2004:533). Certainly, in a fashion kindred to that witnessed with the privileging of the social component of the civil society concept, without caution there is also the acute dilemma of overstating the role of the state in any discussion of social life. If civil society is a nebulous body (Coombe 1997:3), it can be presumed that the state does not fare any better. Impressions range from it being no more than an idea or a mask that screens political practices (Abrams 1988:82); a "fragmented and contested conglomeration of individuals and institutions" (Hoag 2010:7); to a "machinery of intentions - usually termed ‘rule making,' ‘decision making,' or ‘policy making' - the state becomes 14 essentially a subjective realm of plans, programs, or ideas" (Mitchell 1991:82).49 Without a doubt, attempting to pry the state away from society is difficult to say the least (Rutherford 2004:128) and it is plausible only with a highly idiosyncratic set of standards in place (Mitchell 1991:81-83). Of course, this should not be interpreted to mean that the state and the localized daily trials that shape it (Bailey 1972:35-36) are always inseparable from the routines of day-to-day socializing, nor does it imply that the politics of the state are inescapable (Candea 2011:311-313). To think so, Marshall Sahlins insists in his whimsical refrain on Foucault that admonishes much of the current disciplinary fascination with power, is to universalize culture into a generic silhouette: "Power, power everywhere, and how the signs do shrink. Power, power everywhere, and nothing else to think" (2002:20). However, it is this definitional imprecision for locating the contours of the state's intersections with society, the unidentifiable boundaries that obscure where norms end and regulatory mores commence (Lomnitz 1988:43-44), that can lead to the informal institutional arrangements found within formal political and bureaucratic systems to be overlooked (Helmke and Levitsky 2004:725-727). The rentier logic50 of the Kuwaiti government's cradle-to-grave welfare arrangements with its citizenry makes this chore of delineating the lines of pubic and private propriety even more muddled (Horn 1988:403). This is because, under general 49 Notwithstanding the contemporary insights that these definitions have provoked, it is worth recalling the classic Weberian image of the state as an instrument for the rightful dispensation of violence within territorial limits (1991:78). 50 Chatelus and Schemeil give a fairly agreed upon synopsis of rent as, "any income not originating from the productive activity of the concerned unit, the flows and dimensions of which are not directly linked to the beneficiary's activity" (1984:255). For the rentier economy, as it is understood for the oil producing countries, it should be added that the rent monies come from sources external to the government and are accrued directly by the state (Robinson 1996:35). However, this is a matter of degrees dependent on the extent to which the rents make up government revenues and are circulated throughout the population. In fractional terms, oil rents are 93.2 percent of the Kuwaiti government's operating revenue (Al Khouri 2008) while in per capita rates this equals slightly less than U.S. $30,000 for each citizen, ranking Kuwait the third highest amongst the oil exporters. Compared to other petrol nations, these numbers qualify Kuwait to be considered an extreme, or rich, rentier (Herb 2009:376-377). 15 conditions where state-managed rents dominate the local socio-economic and socio-political landscape, it is scarcely an exaggeration that, In such a context, the role of the state is paramount: it is the unavoidable instrument of resource allocation whether in ‘liberal' or ‘socialist' regimes. Paradoxically, the state plays and even more determinant role in the economic activities of ‘liberal' countries through budgetary expenditures… state-controlled or state-supported enterprises, food subsidies, administered prices, etc. [Chatelus and Schemeil 1984:255-256]51 It is commonplace knowledge that the regime and the bureaucracy in Kuwait are the unrivaled mechanisms for allocating the state's resources. Basically, the government's welfare mandates have replaced the risks of the markets with the securities of entitlements (Pacek and Radcliff 2008:268-270) and it has inserted itself into many of the support roles that were once filled by "traditional societal institutions" (Quadagno 1987:112). Beginning with state employment, recognized today as a "right" by the citizenry (El-Katiri et al. 2011:27),52 close to 90 percent of all Kuwaitis are occupied in the public sector53 (Ghabra 1997:361),54 although many of these jobs are created merely to tackle unemployment and not to satisfy any pressing service shortages. Yet, the government of Kuwait is not restricted to paying only for its own employees as private enterprises are subsidized for hiring Kuwaitis so that they might meet the same levels of compensation that public service workers receive; or, reworded with a purposeful hint of 51 Montinola and Jackman contend that this is the "OPEC effect": a petrostate's total domination of markets in conjunction with an absence of political checks (2002:169-170). 52 The language of the Kuwait Constitution supports these assertions in both clauses of Article 41: "Every Kuwaiti has the right to work and to choose the type of his work… The State shall endeavor to make it [employment] available to citizens and to make its terms equitable." Recovered from the reprint of the constitution published by UNDP-POGAR at http://www.pogar.org, accessed on May, 05, 2012. 53 For the sake of comparison, Messaoud Hammouya, with the Bureau of Statistics at the International Labour Office in Geneva, calculated public sector employment to account for about 30 percent of the world's total workforce. Reducing this further, Hammouya found that, "Today the share of public employment in developed market-economy countries is close to 22 percent of total employment; the figure is around 40 percent in countries in transition and varies from 8 percent to 30 percent in developing countries" (1999:1). 54 By contrast, expatriates make up 98 percent of the private sector's labor force (El-Katiri et al. 2011:19). 16 irony, the state pays for Kuwaitis to work in the private sector to lessen their reliance on the government for jobs (El-Katiri et al. 2011:20, 27). This economic presence by the state is, in Paul Salem's opinion, not insignificant: The monolithic and statist aspect of the Kuwaiti economy is the main factor that gives the state a large measure of ultimate control and influence over society. While Kuwaitis agitate, oppose, and complain, their economic interests tie them firmly to the state and dissuade them from more openly shaking or challenging the system. Students and youth agitate for change, but when they graduate they invariably turn to the public sector for jobs. Even the so-called liberal reformers, who complain about the limited role the private sector plays in the economic development of Kuwait, suggest… increased government subsidies for private companies as a way to bring about such change. [2007:9-10] On top of these impressive employment figures for the public and the private sectors are all of the ordinary subsidies that are an accepted part of Kuwaiti citizenship: retirement pensions, free education, free medical care55 in domestic facilities or abroad if necessary, marriage gifts, electricity, water, food staples, housing assistance, and fuel. Occasionally, loans and consumer debts are also forgiven along with the periodic Amiri grants that are distributed to all nationals from the state treasury (El-Katiri et al. 2011:8, 11-13, 17, 18).56 It is undeniable that this sort of rentier contract put into place by the Kuwaiti government is much more consequential than just random allocations that are somehow 55 As with employment, the Kuwait Constitution upholds retirement support (Article 11), education (Article 40), and health care (Article 15) as responsibilities that are to be fulfilled by the government. This is not to suggest that the constitution's articles are infallible but to point out that there is a documented legal context, formulated by the state in 1962, which endorses the citizenry's expectations for their entitlements. Articles recovered from the reprint of the constitution published by UNDP-POGAR at http://www.pogar.org, accessed on May, 05, 2012. 56 One example of such sovereign discretion occurred in January 2011, around the same time that the uprisings of the "Arab Spring" swept through the region, when the Amir gave each Kuwaiti a KD 1,000 (U.S. $3,500) present and a 14 month grant of free food rations. Ostensibly, these were awarded to the populace to concurrently commemorate several events: the nation's 50th year of independence, the 20th anniversary of liberation from Iraq, and Amir Shaykh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah's own fifth year in office. Recovered from Arab Times Online; January 17, 2011; "KD 1,000 ‘To Every Kuwaiti'" at http://www.arabtimesonline.com/NewsDetails/tabid/96/smid/414/ArticleID/164462/reftab/36/Default.aspx, accessed on May, 05, 2012. 17 allowed to flow unsupervised to the populace. Instead, the rights that come with citizenship are buried deep within a byzantine bureaucracy (Hasenfeld et al. 1987:400) that is bereft of anything close to administrative transparency (Hertog 2010b:282-283). Surely, Kuwait's indecipherable bureaucracy is not unique, a point that Colin Hoag does not miss in his review of the occurrences of bureaucratic morass when observed across societies: Bureaucracies are profoundly ironic when viewed in terms of their policies and everyday practices. Despite their self-representations as rational and efficient… bureaucracies often represent precisely the opposite. For many people, bureaucracy signifies slowness and delays, unnecessary paperwork, complicated protocols, and other measures or conditions that generally constrain the individual. These organizations' rules and hierarchies are often clearly spelled out, and yet bureaucracies are always at some level opaque, inscrutable, and illogical to both "insider" and "outsider" alike. [2011:81-82] Still, what makes the Kuwaiti bureaucracy different from public employment in almost every other county (Hammouya 1999:1) is that the entire citizenry is essentially a part of it (Ghabra 1997:361). Kuwait is, quite frankly, a "nation of bureaucrats" (Herb 2009:375) where the state, for all intents and purposes, is operated by most members of the nation's citizenry. Every social right, entitlement, rent dispensation, and favorable allocation is secluded behind a wall of protocols (Silver 2010:284) that is overseen by a population of citizen bureaucrats (Verdery 1991:424-425) who possess a great amount of discretion for expediting or delaying requests (Lipsky 2010:14). Knowing someone or having a proper introduction can transform what is normally an "inscrutable, unpredictable" (Hoag 2010:6) bureaucratic encounter and turn it into an ingratiating, personalized exchange (Boissevain 1966:29). It is this malleability of roles (Boissevain 1974:4-5) in such a widespread system of government laborers - the relative-administrator, the friend-functionary, the acquaintance-clerk - that easily confuses efforts 18 "to distinguish between what is in the state and what is in society" (Kerkvliet 2001:268).57 What can be problematic is tracking down that perfectly positioned gatekeeper who can negotiate access on feasible terms. The presence of dysfunctional formal institutions like Kuwaiti's overstaffed and inconsistent bureaucracy (Hertog 2010b:282-283) is frequently cited as a precursor for their substitution by adaptive informal institutions (Tsai 2006:140). These latter bodies provide, according to Helmke and Levitsky, a "‘second best' strategy for actors who prefer, but cannot achieve, a formal institutional solution" (2004:730). As an offshoot of the official sector, or as a response to its defects, some alternative social practices can even compliment formal spheres without much apparent contradiction (Lomnitz 1988:47- 48). In the milieu of Kuwaiti male sociability, the ubiquitous diwaniyyat fill the gaps where the state's bureaucratic incoherence overlaps with opportunities for the personal utilization of governmental resources and privileges (Kerkvliet 2001:263). For it is within any guestroom that a menagerie of brokers, patrons, gatekeepers, friends, relatives, and clients can all be brought together under one roof.58 However, just because the diwaniyyat are pervasive and well suited to rectify the failings of the state's formal apparatuses it does not mean that they constitute any formative challenge to the ruling establishment (Scott 1985:33). To the contrary, the diwaniyyat host a competitive "informal adjustment" to the bureaucratic status quo that allows participants to bend the regulations without fracturing the structure of their governmental rewards so that they might "systematically deviate from the rules of the system in order to stay in it" (Lees 57 One is reminded here of Michel de Certeau's articulation of institutional subversion via interpersonal exchange: "Thereby the institution one is called to serve finds itself infiltrated by a style of social exchange… that is, by an economy of the ‘gift' (generosities which are also ways of asking for something in return)" (De Certeau et al. 1980:4). 58 Yousef A. K. Interview conducted in Kuwait City, Kuwait on April 2, 2007. 19 1986:619). It is not so much that the diwaniyyat permit the avoidance of bureaucratic controls altogether; more accurately, these men's parlors actually reinforce incorporation into the state's official channels by mending its perceived limitations for aggrieved supplicants. Therefore, the transactions that occur in a diwaniyya cannot be thought of in the manner of classic patron-clientelism whereby the patron provides "material resources seen to be strategically more important to the client than anything the client could supply the patron in return" (Wilson 1990:163). This neglects the "externality of benefits" (Corra and Willer 2002:180) being sought where the desired allowances are state resources, not private property, and what are brokered by intermediaries are bureaucratic admittances to these public assets (Hertog 2010b:289).59 It is true that the old saying, "It's not just what you know but who you know," (Lin 2001:41) captures the many of the constant reminders of all the frustrations that come with doing business in Kuwait's convoluted state system.60 However, this proverb's local derivative, wasta (connections), is all but inseparable from the men's visitation networks that are expressed by their nightly calls to their associated diwaniyyat and there is a good chance that discussions of one will invoke some mention, intended or not, of the other. Such was the case with a young surgeon who once offhandedly remarked, "I used to attend a diwaniyya with my father [because] I was told that I had to 59 This is not to deny the existence of Weingrod's political patronage in Kuwait by which "politicians distribute public jobs or special favors in exchange for electoral support" (1968:379). As widely reported there are plenty of "service" parliamentarians (Tetreault 2000:115) who, directly or through surrogate "election keys," use the diwaniyyat as a forum to barter state privileges for electoral backing. Nonetheless, far more common are those guestrooms where the participants are relatively equals. Such horizontality lends itself more to relations of reciprocity, helping out, and open-ended mutual assistance (Lomnitz 1988:43-46) than it does to outright hierarchical patronage (Wolf 1966b:47, 86). Parity does not, however, insinuate the absence of "lop-sided" (Pitt-Rivers 1971:140) friendships, pragmatic interactions (Boissevain 1974:6), and obligatory attendance (Antoun 1979:43-44). 60 Faisal. Interview conducted in Kuwait City, Kuwait on March 3, 2007. 20 go in order to develop connections [wasta]."61 There is nothing exceptional in this comment and there are many variations of it with more or less colorful details or intriguing circumstances. Still, this single sentence is clear in identifying Kuwait's guestrooms, the diwaniyyat, as the places where these wasta relationships can be crystallized. Yet, the real significance of this doctor's brief reflection is revealed when it is recalled that the wasta he is referencing is tantamount to a form of bureaucratic partiality; without the state this utility of the diwaniyyat as a liaison for wasta is incomplete since the core cause for these connections is unknown. It is only by emphasizing the state's day-to-day presence (Salem 2007:9) in the lives of Kuwait's citizens that the value of the diwaniyyat is immediately recognizable for harnessing the social capital (Portes and Landolt 2000:532) needed to make the welfare bureaucracy simultaneously navigable and flexible (Lominitz 1982:53-54). In this sense, the dawawin are emblematic of personalized hybrid institutions that act as surrogates for accommodating the government's rigid bureaucratic command over the state. Outline of the Research Project To understand where the diwaniyyat fit into interstices of state and society in Kuwait requires an examination of how the ruling contract that binds individuals, groups, and governing bodies together has been configured, amended, and rethought to adapt to changing circumstances. This is summarized in Chapter 2, beginning with a look at how Kuwait's pre-oil oligarchy used their control of trade to dominate local governance and control the town's populace (Crystal 1995:21). The mode of rule during this time distanced the sovereign from the public because the merchant elite were actually the ones 61 Anonymous. Interview conducted in Kuwait City, Kuwait on November 3, 2007. 21 holding all of the power (Tetreault 2000:36). The emergence of Kuwait as a major oil exporter in the mid-20th century ruptured this arrangement and established the dynastic Al Sabah family as the unrivaled political, economic, and social players in the country (Shah 1995:1018). The consequences of this new paradigm, a rentier state that legitimates itself domestically through its policies of redistribution, are reviewed in Chapter 3. This chapter is of particular importance because it highlights the nature of state-society interactions in Kuwait since it has been awash with petroleum profits: the creation of governmental leisure employment (Herb 2009:382), the abundance of obscure and redundant administrative procedures (Hertog 2010b:292), and the personalization of offices and state privileges. Chapter 4 introduces ways in which individuals can access or circumvent the state framework by relying on their own visitation contacts or by calling on the networks of others via the institution of the diwaniyya. It is stressed here that it is within these informal guestrooms that the intersection of state and society is most visible. Furthermore, an explanation is given for the proliferation of these establishments and what this expansion has meant for state brokerage. Chapter 5 elaborates on the value of diwaniyya networking with an in-depth review of seven case studies that serve to illustrate how supplicants can use these reception rooms to jockey for their positions along the continuum of state and society. While there are the obvious instances of political candidacy and government permits that clearly show the state's presence in the diwaniyya, there are also the acts of family unity, friendly favors, and community activism that can sometimes make the state's proximity appear less apparent. Nevertheless, this appearance should not be too deceiving when, provided the government's command over its own incalculable clientele, there is still the local truism 22 which holds that, "anyone who needs anything visits a diwaniyya."62 Lastly, Chapter 6 will review the arguments made in this study about state and society being actively transacted in Kuwait's guestrooms, and it will also look at some of the possibilities available for future research. 62 Reyadh. Interview conducted in Kuwait City, Kuwait on July 5, 2006. CHAPTER 2 SETTING: KUWAIT YESTERDAY AND TODAY Endowed with an astonishing array of cinemas, restaurants, shopping malls, and coffee shops, as well as its own brand of chic nightspots, Kuwait City today is the epitome of the globally homogenized (Hannerz 1992:234-237), transnational marketplace. Undoubtedly, the contemporary portrait of Kuwait City is not one merely indicative of fiscal modernization; but, rather a picture of hyper-modernization buttressed by globalization (Tetreault 2000:24, 50-51) and reinforced by the rampant consumption of imported, particularly Western, commodities. This reality is most colorfully expressed by the observations of Anh Nga Longva: The shelves of Kuwaiti supermarkets were filled with French yogurt, German sausages, Belgian salad dressing, Dutch lettuce, Swiss cheese, and American peanut butter. Flowers in the flower shops were flown in from the Netherlands, Cyprus, and Columbia, clothes were imported from Paris as well as Beirut and Taiwan, while cars and all electric and electronic equipment came from Japan and Korea. [1997:35] However, the pursuit of foreign-produced goods that characterizes personal spending habits in the country reverberates throughout the physical landscape of the city as well. In only a half-century, this coastal township (Ansari and Qutub 1983:52) emerged as a visual manifestation that adhered more to the blueprints and sensibilities of British, French, Italian, and Finnish architectural firms (Mahgoub 2008:164) than it did to local 24 traditions. The resultant built environment introduced an alien aesthetic that is notable for its departure from anything indigenous and its unquestionable determination to "loudly reject any association with the past" (Al Bahar 1985:65). Yet, Kuwait's appetite for the novelty of imported products is equally matched by its desire to fill the ranks of its manual, unskilled and low-status job sectors with migrant laborers (Shah 1995:1017) whose numbers, at nearly three-quarters of the total population, dwarf those of the citizenry (Tetreault 2000:50). Of course, it is unlikely that even a single one of these traits that outwardly exemplify Kuwait in the 21st century - the rampant consumerism that borders on fetishism (Taussig 1980:25), the sprawling superficiality of trendy residential villas (Al Bahar 1985:63) and modish public buildings, and what has recently been described as the "Asianization" (Longva 1997:34) of the state's labor force - would have even been possible were it not for the country's fortuitous location atop one of the world's largest oil reserves (Ismael 1982:78). Consequently, the nation prospered following the Second World War under what is deemed "one of the most dramatic rises in national income ever known" (Hill 1975:537); a status quo that is a direct outcome of the government's redistribution of its petroleum income to all nationals. Promises of guaranteed employment in an ever-expanding bureaucracy (Kaboudan 1988:50) and mandatory preferential hiring policies in private companies, free medical and educational services (Hill 1975:547), and generous early retirement pensions (Russell and Al Ramadhan 1994:581-582) are just some of the programs enacted that have given rise to Kuwait's present-day leisure class (Shah 1986:824-826). Ultimately, though, the regime's largess has fostered a welfare society that is almost completely reliant upon the reallocation of 25 capital surpluses generated solely by oil revenues (Ismael 1993:100, 154-155) and subject to external fluctuations (Kaboudan 1988:48). Still, it is easy for this current depiction of Kuwait to be deceptively convincing in its portrayal of a statewide bourgeoisie culture prospering in perpetuity. Indeed, this illusion is greatly bolstered by the fact that in the 1950s and 1960s the Kuwait Development Board organized the demolition of the town's old mudbrick structures and defensive walls (Mahgoub 2008:154-156) to pave the way for its ultramodern concrete cityscape (Dickson 1971:191); a declaration that structurally and symbolically denoted the severance of Kuwait's ties to its heritage in favor of a new order. Similarly, oil profits eradicated all traces of traditional production, along with any associated fiscal motivations (Crystal 1995:11), and replaced it with widespread civil servitude (Ghabra 1997:361). However, this semblance of development is notable precisely for its recent occurrence in that it was "an unprecedented fast transformation of [the] Beduin tribal mode of life" (Ansari and Qutub 1983:52). Hence, the image of affluent Gulf living is undercut by a not too distant history of hardship, scarcity and want; more simply, it is "the story of a humble, organic desert Arab village" (Shiber 1964:2). Pre-Oil: Migration, Settlement and Growth The textual existence of Kuwait before the 18th century remains shrouded in uncertainty (Slot 2003:8). Primarily, all earlier references are limited to vague cartographic identifications of the area as Kadhema and Kazima on a mid-17th century French map, or the even more general Ottoman legal designation of the territory as falling outside of the Porte's protection and thereby constituting part of the "Land of the 26 Tribes" (Slot 1991:10, 38). Yet, it is known that until the 1750s the entire environs of eastern Arabia were part of the dira, or customary lands and pasturage (Sweet 1967:1136), of the Bani Khalid (Abu Hakima 1983:1-5) and it is within this ambiguous setting that the Bani ‘Utub, the forebears of the country's dynastic Al Sabah ruling family (Abdulmoati 2003:13), first warrant mention. Local sources contend that during the second half of the 17th century a continuous drought in Najd (Abu Hakima 1983:4), compounded by sporadic livestock raids by opposing tribes (Fattah 1997:26) and intertribal conflict, drove the inhabitants of Haddar from their lands in al-Aflaj to search for better prospects on the eastern shores of the Arabian Peninsula (Al Juhany 2002:85). These migrant Najdis were a collection of related families (Abu Hakima 1983:4) who later combined under the ‘Utub clan moniker; and, although this is a designation of uncertain origin (Crystal 1995:18), the ‘Utub were definitively adjoined to the ‘Anizah Confederation through the Dahamshah Section of the ‘Amarat Tribe (Dickson 1956:26, 28). After wandering for several decades (Al Shamlan 2000:26) and unsuccessfully attempting to settle in a number of possible locations along both sides of the Persian Gulf, the ‘Utub finally found sanctuary with the Bani Khalid in one of their outposts, a fishing village and shaykhly summer residence (Abu Hakima 1983:3) known as Qorain63 (Longva 1997:19). Still, despite the contemptuous relations that accompanied the ‘Utub before their eventual piecemeal arrival in Qorain,64 the years 63 This settlement has been alternatively identified as Grain, Green, Grijn, Graine, Grane, and Gran by 18th century European Cartographers. However, Slot contends that this name does indeed correspond with the Persian designation of the village as Gran (Slot 1991:69, 107). 64 One tradition presumes that the ‘Utub were chased from Qatar to Qorain following a dispute with the resident Al-Musallam. Another version suggests that difficulties with Arabs along the Persian coast drove the ‘Utub to continue on to Qorain. Alternatively, there is the report which states that the ‘Utub were either forced from the Ottoman territory of Basra due to their propensity for raiding caravans bound for the city (Abu Hakima 1983:4) or the threat that they posed for shipping along the Shatt al Arab after arriving there subsequent to a clash with the Huwala in Bahrain (Slot 1991:70-72). 27 of migration were filled with the lessons of an oceangoing lifestyle that would prove beneficial to the nomads as they made the transition from desert husbandry to mobile seafarers (Fattah 1997:26) encumbered with the task to create a maritime community that could rightly be called "Najd by the sea" (Dickson 1956:25). Of course, while the establishment of the itinerant ‘Utub in Qorain marks what is popularly viewed as the founding origins of the territory that ultimately developed into Kuwait (Tetreault 2000:33-35), this perspective obviously discounts the constant cycles of immigrations and departures that defined the nation's past as Bedouin, Persians, Iraqis, Jews, and Gulf tribesmen found a place for themselves in the port settlement (Broeze 1997:163, 178- 179). While the protracted movement of the ‘Utub from Najd to its ultimate, though unforeseen, destination on the northwest shores of the Persian Gulf was a monumental undertaking, the confluence of serendipitous circumstances that benefited the nascent encampment and helped usher it into a burgeoning coastal town cannot be overlooked. Ecologically, the location of Qorain offered very little. It was devoid of surface water and its sandy, gravelly terrain (Dickson 1956:31) was unsuitable for agriculture (Haarmann 2003:38-39). Nonetheless, sweet subsurface groundwater and the nearby oasis at Jahra (Dickson 1956:26, 44) provided some reprieve for the small population. More significantly, the site afforded its inhabitants a superb natural harbor sheltered by reefs (Broeze 1997:149), the potential of which had never been realized by the Bani Khalid in their preoccupation with control of the desert (Crystal 1995:19). Further still, the administrative ambiguity of Qorain engendered a favorable political environment for the newly arrived ‘Utub. The neighboring Ottoman Vilayet of Basra was far too ill- 28 equipped, mismanaged (Anscombe 1997:91) and distracted by Persia (Abu Hakima 1983:11) to extend its influence into the tribal hinterlands of the Arabian subcontinent. Frederick Anscombe, in his summation of the Porte's affairs in the region in the late 19th century, presents a chronic condition that is applicable to the Sultanate's tenure in the Gulf at even an earlier stage: This record of ineptitude was the result of conditions…that also afflicted Iraq. Too little money, too little manpower, too little equipment hamstrung policy makers. More debilitating were corruption and the related increase in popular dissatisfaction with unfair, arbitrary rule. More important, however, was the problem of communication. Corruption flourished because officials had little supervision or fear of retribution. Policy had to be shaped in Istanbul without the benefit of prompt, accurate information about events in distant areas. [1997:91] As a result of this incompetence, despite the proximity of Basra, the ‘Utub were able to attend to their own concerns without fear of interference from Ottoman agents (Slot 1991:126). Similarly, Persia, the only other local power with considerable resources, was too preoccupied with its own survival to pose any realistic threat to Qorain. Lastly, the position of the Bani Khalid was already fractured enough internally to give the ‘Utub relative autonomy in their own undertakings, although they were still strong enough to police any recalcitrant tribes and provide the ‘Utub with the cover of protection (Abu Hakima 1983:3-5, 11, 17). Given the unobtrusive political situation that greeted the Najdi immigrants upon their debarkation at Qorain it is quite obvious that the settlers could pursue their own interests relatively uninhibited. The harbor that had gone largely ignored by the Bani Khalid (Crystal 1995:19) was a vital asset that had not begun to reveal its full potential and the ‘Utub, with their maritime skills developed in Qatar (Mansfield 1990:6) and honed throughout the course of their migration (Crystal 1995:18), were well-poised to 29 exploit this resource. Moreover, the surrounding barren landscape (Dickson 1956:31) dictated that any permanent, growing population would have to turn towards seafaring to support itself (Broeze 1997:153). Thus, this is the framework within which Qorain emerged from a nondescript seasonal abode for the Bani Khalid into a bountiful "safe haven for trade" (Slot 2003:13) that not only thrived in the Gulf (Crystal 1995:19) but linked the markets of the Indian Ocean with those of the Mediterranean (Slot 2003:10- 11). Upon the death of Shaykh Sulayman bin Muhammad in 1752, the last powerful leader of the Bani Khalid had passed and successional infighting complicated by an unease over the rise of Wahhabi strength in the Arabian interior effectively granted Qorain and its resident ‘Utub their independence (Abu Hakima 1983:5, 19). According to a prior agreement between three principal ‘Utubi families, the Sabah, the Khalifa and the Jabar, the Sabah assumed the reins of governance following the demise of the Bani Khalid. Husayn Khazal depicts this negotiation as one wherein, [In 1716]... the chiefs of the most important three tribes that inhabited Kuwait entered into an alliance. These were Sabah bin Jabar bin Salman bin Ahmad, Khalifah bin Muhammed and Jabar bin Rahmat al'ilbi (the chief of the Jalaahmeh). The conditions… [stated that] Sabah will have leadership in the affairs of government… Khalifah will have leadership of the financial affairs in commerce; and Jabar will control the affairs of work on the sea. All profits were to be equally divided among them. [Quoted in Ismael 1982:23] The execution of this covenant translated into arrangement that divided the labor amongst the primary ‘Utubi lineages; the Khalifa and Jabar would not have to distract themselves from their commerce to deal with executive tasks like peacekeeping and dispute management, whereas the Sabah did not have to divert their attention away from administrative responsibilities in order to generate a regular income (Tetreault 2000:33- 30 34). Also, it is around this same period of ascendant ‘Utubi sovereignty that the name Koueit, a diminutive of kut or "fortress" and indicative of either the existent Bani Khalid barracks (Abu Hakima 1983:1-2) or a walled town, first appears in European records through the travelogues of Danish expeditionary member Carsten Niebuhr (Haarmann 2003:39-40, 43-44). During the next two centuries, the ‘Utub prospered as mercantile "maritime nomads" (Slot 1991:110) with a fleet that already amounted to roughly 800 ships as early as the 1760s (Haarmann 2003:41). This Golden Age of Kuwaiti nautical prosperity ushered-in an era of near unrestricted trade and commercial expansion for the tiny shaykhdom. High customs levies imposed by Ottoman authorities in Basra deflected some traffic to Kuwait's duty-free port which released traders from any polls aside from a small subsidy for the Shaykh. The absence of customs officers also meant that merchandise was not scrutinized and goods prohibited by the Porte could be transferred without incident through Kuwait (Fattah 1997:9, 26-27). Additionally, the overland caravan routes between the Gulf and Aleppo conveniently bypassed the Basra - Baghdad circuit and saved several weeks traveling time for only the cost of the Shaykh's fee for safe passage (Abu Hakima 1983:6-7); a guarantee that the Al Sabah could afford to travelers partly due to the bonds of marriage that had enhanced their relationships with the inland tribes (Ismael 1982:27). As this makes clear, Kuwait flourished not solely because of aquatic shipping lanes or terrestrial transport, but rather due to its interposing position as an entrepôt hub that provided a "gateway…between the sea and the desert area of northeastern Arabia" (Broeze 1997:149). While the caravan commerce in and out of Kuwait was chiefly confined to the Al Sabah either awarding or denying transit to groups according to their payments of 31 appropriate tolls (Abu Hakima 1983:6-7) and the prevailing rapport between the Shaykh and the Bedouin tribes (Ismael 1982:27), the dynamics of the sea trade, on the other hand, were much more inclusive of the settled residents of Kuwait. With the limited exception of stock wranglers inside the town, the caravan workforce was populated entirely by pastoralists who, in turn, were themselves insignificant to the settlement's labor pool (Broeze 1997:162-163). Therefore, historic Kuwait proper could rightfully be classified as maritime-intensive economic entity; a sentiment that, though true, was somewhat overstated by merchant descendant Saif Marzooq Al Shamlan: "The sea was the basic element in the formation of Kuwait. It is the source of its life. Without the sea the name Kuwait would be lost to the world" (2000:59). This seaward orientation was a year-round endeavor for Kuwait's inhabitants and it rested on a mutually reinforcing occupational structure that Frank Broeze labeled the as the community's five pillars: "fishing, pearl diving, shipping, shipbuilding, and trade" (1997:152). There are several points here to note in terms of the settlement's seafaring agenda and its relevance for the Kuwaitis. Foremost is the reality that the port's population was absolutely dependent on imported provisions simply for their survival. Everything from the water shipped-in daily from the Shatt al-Arab in Iraq (Dickson 1971:83) to the products of Murtada bin ‘Ali bin ‘Alwan's detailed 18th century analysis that included, "Fruit, melons, and other victuals are brought to Kuwait from Basra by boat every day, for it is a port city… All the cereals, i.e. wheat and others, arrive by sea because… [the] soil does not allow for agriculture; even date-palms do not grow there nor any other trees" (Haarmann 2003:37-38). Ironically, the boatbuilding industry itself was even fully reliant upon timber and materials that originated in India (Al Mughni 1993:23). As this 32 illustrates, marine commerce was the only mode of production that could generate adequate sustenance for the townspeople; fishing and inland pursuits such as animal husbandry or farming were too insufficient to support the most basic needs of the populace (Ismael 1993:24). However, stocking the shelves of the souqs for local consumption in an environment that yielded no surplus in return required that Kuwaiti merchants focus their efforts elsewhere to garner capital: long-distance commerce and pearling (Ismael 1993:24-25). In fact, just to keep necessities in the markets oftentimes entailed keen trading practices and supply networks. One case in point was the importation of Iraqi wool that could be paid for with dates that had already been secured, either from the Al Ahsa oasis in eastern Arabia or from Iraq itself (Fattah 1997:68). In time, the traders spread throughout the Gulf and extended their reach all the way down the East African coast and across the Indian Ocean to the Indian subcontinent (Anscombe 1997:24); a journey subject to the seasonal monsoons that carried vessels out (Agius 2002:26) with the summer southwest winds (Bernstein 2008:12) and returned them home in the winter via the northeast currents (Agius 2002:26). Suhail Shuhaiber furnishes the following description as a sample of some of the cargoes that were transported each way during these voyages: Their imports consisted of piece goods, rice, sugar, timber, spices and cotton from India; coffee from the Red Sea; tobacco and dried fruits from Persia; grain and dates from Basra; cloth, dates, and fish from Bahrain. Their exports were ghee and horses coming from the inland tribes and going on to India, and local dried and salt fish to Basra. [2003:101] Naturally, as Alan Villiers discovered, this official ledger omits the black market enterprises of the crews which proceeded undetected and undeclared: 33 The sailors are inveterate smugglers; almost none of the goods they bring - apart from the main cargo - is declared… [And] since so much of their more highly dutiable goods are private ventures, such manifests as they produce to the authorities are useless. The mariner buys his goods himself, and sells them himself (though he does not mind disposing of them to boats alongside). He sees no point in accepting any official interference… [1948:404] It is plausibly argued by Jacqueline Ismael that the conditions that drove the sailors to earn what they could on the side were already well entrenched in Kuwaiti power relations by the time Villiers recorded his experiences at sea. In her estimation, the original pact between the leading ‘Utubi families was little more than the transference of their previous desert aristocracy into a sedentary model "that became the basis of differentiation between appropriators and expropriators… [The] Bani Utub became a class in themselves by their asserted right of control over the factors of production" (Ismael 1982:23). The most substantial of these factors of production (Ismael 1982: 23) for Kuwaiti coffers was pearl harvesting. Access to the rich, fertile oyster beds along the Arabian littoral (Agius 2002:24-25) gave Kuwaiti merchants more than just another commodity to transfer to foreign ports; to the contrary, pearls were the single surplus material available in these barren lands that were capable of delivering vast amounts of wealth. As a matter of course, a symbiotic connection bound each element of Kuwait's maritime economy (Broeze 1997:153): Pearling provided the capital for commerce, and commerce in turn provided the basis for the perpetuation of the pearling industry - the material subsistence of the community as well as the material needs of the pearling industry… [The] development of the pearling industry depended upon the commerce that provided the timber and other material resources for development of the fleet… [Ismael 1993:25] In this manner, the annual summer pearl harvest that took place between shipping seasons (Agius 2002:28) when the waters were calm and warm (Bowen 1951:169-170) 34 underwrote the generation of currency that could be reinvested in other shipping ventures (Broeze 1997:152-153). Furthermore, the prevalence of coinage in pealing is acutely exhibited in the dominant role that debt represented to the entire system: The whole economic structure of the industry, even more than in ship-owning, was based on debt. Everybody was in debt-the diver to the nakhoda [captain], the nakhoda to the merchant who financed him, the merchant to some other merchant bigger than himself, the bigger merchant to the sheikh. Even the broker who came out to buy the pearls was probably heavily in debt to some money lender who financed him. [Villiers 1969:353] Intertwined with this debt structure was a rigid division of labor without any occupational mobility; an overall symptom that epitomized the entire Kuwaiti seafaring economy and further distinguished the Bani ‘Utub as the community's resident elite class (Crystal 1995:19). Captains, divers, sailors, and deckhands, constrained by their fiscal limitations, could rarely expect any opportunity for promotion; while, for their part, the merchants would never betray their station by serving on a ship (Villiers 1948:406-407). The bleak nature of this lifelong debt servitude and the resulting reproduction of social boundaries is found in the account of the pearl divers' plight given by Richard LeBaron Bowen, Jr.: [Any] diver who accepted cash advances from a nakhoda [captain] had doomed himself to diving until death, and unfortunately death might not be an exit, as his debt was simply passed on to his son or brother, who then went on to incur his own debt. Once in debt a diver is prohibited from hiring to another nakhoda - he must repay his debt to the man who gave him cash advances. A diver or anyone else who accepts an advance in the pearling industry has sold himself to economic slavery, for the nakhoda owns his ability to work… Thus, a diver is bound to return to the purgatory of pearling… [1951:178] The consequential magnitude of the yearly pear harvest for the Bani ‘Utubi merchant monopolization of local labor and group relationships (Ismael 1993:33-35) is reflected in its pervasiveness as an estimated 20 percent of the total population took part in the trade (Zahlan 1998:29). 35 It is also notable that the very same bonds that indebted the general populace to the merchant oligarchs correspondingly restricted the office of the shaykh held by the family of the Al Sabah. The alliance that designated this one ‘Utubi lineage to act exclusively as political functionaries at the same time ensured they would remain financially dependent upon, and accountable to, the other two clans (Longva 1997:22). Thus, characterizations of pre-oil Kuwaiti politics are correct in their assessments of the polity as "a merchant republic headed by a coalition of Shaikhs" (Slot 2003:11) where "real power in the community resided in the financial-commercial class" (Ismael 1993:35-36). Although this appraisal conflicts with the details given by former British Political Agent H. R. P. Dickson of historic autocratic rule in Kuwait (1956:257), it cannot be disputed that the merchants were in complete command of the leadership by virtue of their total control over the economy. It was principally by the generation of trade by the merchants (Crystal 1995:21) that the reigning Al Sabah could collect their one (Shuhaiber 2003:100) to two percent duties (Abu Hakima 1983:101) on imports that maintained their position within the community. This state of dependency for the Al Sabah altered only slightly during their first 150 years of sovereignty. For instance, Istanbul awarded Shaykh Jabir I date plantations on the Shatt al-Arab for his services in an assault against Persian forces in 1837; these were extremely productive landholdings that eventually exceeded 30 square miles in size (Finnie 1992:6, 90-91). Later, an Ottoman stipend in 1872 (Anscombe 1997:65, 200) accompanied the bestowal of the honorary title qa'immaqam (provincial representative / subgovernor) upon Shaykh Abdallah II for deeds rendered in the Porte's expedition to Al Hasa. Concurrent with these episodic gains, the Al Sabah continued to amass dues from 36 the caravan trade in exchange for secure transit along the interior desert routes (Abu Hakima 1983:6-7, 87-90, 98). Nevertheless, even with this degree of economic self-sufficiency the Al Sabah remained beholden to the dominance exercised by the merchant class (Longva 1997:22), because not only did the shaykh need their trade to garner the associated fees (Crystal 1995:21), but the entire settlement was financed and sustained by their activities. Accordingly, the Al Sabah mode of governance was restricted domestically to dispute arbitration (Shuhaiber 2003:102, 103) and "the provision of [an] administrative infrastructure to support the community and its way of life - including enforcement of the labor contracts that allowed the merchants to accumulate significant wealth… [that] depended on the rulers keeping the system together" (Tetreault 2000:36). This laissez-faire policy at home was evidently noticed by Colonel Pelly, the British Resident in the Gulf, when he visited Kuwait in 1863. He declared that, "Indeed, there seems little government interference anywhere, and little need of an army" (Abu Hakima 1983:75). Given this lack of executive autonomy it is not surprising that even the order of succession itself had to be approved by the notables; for it was "from his contract with the notables and not merely from his nomination by the ruling family that the ruler derived his authority to rule" (Shuhaiber 2003:102). If the sovereign ever overstepped the limitations of his office it was to his own detriment as the merchants held the decisive verdict: secession and the resultant economic paralysis that would befall the town (Crystal 1995:21) as legions of laborers, more loyal to their employers than they were to their shaykh, would follow suit (Tetreault 2000:39). This last happened when Mubarak ibn Sabah (r. 1896 - 1915) attempted to raise revenue to support his military aspirations 37 by taxing pearls, imports, the pilgrimage, and housing (Crystal 1995:24). Mubarak's actions led to a mass exodus of up to half the total population to Bahrain (Ismael 1993:58) and humbled the Shaykh to the point that he withdrew his tariffs and convinced the merchants to return (Crystal 1995:24-25). Contemporaneous with Shaykh Mubarak's rift with the mercantile bourgeoisie was the increasing presence of European interests in the northern Gulf. Until the closing years of the 1800s, Western diplomats had expressed little concern in the shaykhdom's affairs (Busch 1967:187). Yet, before the turn of the century Britain would sign a secretive treaty of protection with Mubarak for the "negative imperative" (Schofield 2003:58) of keeping its rivals at bay. In the words of the Permanent Under-Secretary of the India Office, "… we don't want Koweit, but we don't want anyone else to have it" (Busch 1967:196). However, British awareness of its possibilities with Kuwait may not have been piqued had Shaykh Mubarak not sought its assistance following his fratricidal coup d' etat and accession to power, a message to Britain that he was not an Ottoman subject as they had assumed (Anscombe 1997:93-94, 99-102). Notwithstanding Mubarak's pleas, the Crown was already warming to the prospect of limiting the Ottoman coastline in the Gulf while curtailing the proposed construction of a German railway terminus in the area (Schofield 2003:59, 71) and preventing a rumored Russian coal depot (Busch 1967:192); essentially, maneuvers by Britain to transform the Persian Gulf into a "British lake" (Anscombe 1997:110) affixed to its Indian holdings (Busch 1967:188). The outcome of the 1899 pact was, for Mubarak, security from Ottoman encroachments both locally and in his neighboring Fao date plantations without sacrificing his independence (Finnie 1992:16-17), whereas Britain barred its rivals from 38 gaining any foothold in the Gulf (Schofield 2003:61). Although brief, this latter stipulation was the only one clearly specified in the agreement: … Shaikh Mubarak-bin-Shaikh-Subah, of his own free will and desire, does hereby pledge and bind himself, his heirs and successors, not to cede, sell, lease, mortgage, or give for occupation or for any other purpose, any portion of his territory to the Government or subjects of any other power without the previous consent of Her Majesty's Government for these purposes. [Abu Hakima 1983:184] Therefore, formal protectorate status was avoided by Britain so that it would not provoke an incident with Istanbul, a loophole that allowed Shaykh Mubarak the flexibility to appease each authority as it suited him: "Through astute role-playing - appearing for all the world as the loyal, subordinate Ottoman qa'im-makam in his dealings with the sympathetic wali of Basra…and reminding Britain of its ‘good offices' clause… Mubarak effectively ensured the continuance of his rule in Kuwait" (Schofield 2003:62). Political safeguards, though, did not yield dividends for economic prosperity and within a decade of the treaty with Shaykh Mubarak, Britain's fleet dominated the commercial trade in the northern Gulf and reduced Kuwaiti shipping back to its subsistence-oriented origins (Ismael 1993:57). After the First World War, the division of spoils by the victors firmly established boundaries where ambiguity once existed (Sluglett 2002:793-794, 800) and in 1922 the shaykhdom lost two-thirds of its customary territory to ‘Abd al-Aziz Al Sa'ud as Britain sought to establish borders (Dickson 1956:274) that would minimize the extent of its writ of protection over Kuwait (Schofield 2003:87). Further contributing to this steady flow of hardships was the 14 year (1923- 1937) economic blockade initiated by Ibn Sa'ud (Abu Hakima 1983:135) to prevent the seasonal musabilah to Kuwait by tribes seeking market outlets (Dickson 1949:49) in 39 order to redirect them to his own merchants (Abu Hakima 1983:135-136).65 Even seaward, the 1930s offered little respite as the worldwide depression diminished what commerce remained and the introduction of Japanese cultured pearls onto the market ultimately eroded the demand for natural products from the Gulf (Agius 2002:27). In less than 40 years, Kuwait had regressed from being a maritime presence whose influence was truly transcontinental to becoming an insolvent (Zahlan 1998:36), backwater British dependency that was gradually slipping into obscurity. Post-Oil: Recovery, Realignment and the Welfare State The discovery of oil in the Burgan fields in 1938 and the subsequent advent of the petroleum export industry following the Second World War (Ismael 1982:78) irreversibly altered the country's prevailing status quo and released the grasp that the merchant class had held on the shaykhdom's transactions for so long (Tetreault 2000:40). Interchangeably, oil has been labeled a "blessing" (Al Shamlan 2000:148), an "economic salvation" (Chisholm 1975:20) and a "windfall" (Zahlan 1998:39) for the simple reason that it is practically impossible to underestimate the impact that the resource has had on every aspect of the fledgling state's affairs. With the influx of petrodollars the country's inseparable political, economic and social structures were realigned (Hurewitz 1972:113) to a point of unimaginable change. In a matter of years, the longstanding but ailing maritime trade (Agius 2002:27) was completely displaced as oil earnings (Ansari and Qutub 1983:55, 59) fuelled new opportunities in formerly unknown sectors (Wolf 2001:231) and gave rise to an all-encompassing central bureaucracy. 65 Not only was this an economic strategy but it was also indicative of ‘Abd al-Aziz Al Sa'ud's desire to absorb Kuwait into the Saudi realm (Toth 2005:149). 40 To understand these transformations it is first necessary to acknowledge the configuration of Kuwait's oil concessions; that is, that these licensing accords were not between the Shaykhdom of Kuwait and foreign entities. Instead, these exploratory, drilling, and exportation contracts were solely between the ruling family and outside investors. Diplomatically, this eased the shaykh's reliance upon Britain for political backing (Tetreault 2000:41) and shifted the country's importance from one of strategic geographical location to that of a resource exporter, thereby alleviating some of its external dependency (Hurewitz 1972:112-113). More radically, these arrangements disrupted the domestic balance that had existed for 200 years between the ‘Utubi mercantile elite and the governing Al Sabah dynasty. Initially in the form of royalties, then proceeded by a profit-sharing scheme, the oil revenue (Hay 1955:365) accrued by the shaykh and his lineage firmly established the royals as financial independents. Since then, the rulers have no longer had to tread lightly to avoid offending the merchants or their economic preeminence. The effect of oil upon the shaykhdom is easily revealed in sheer monetary terms. In 1951, petroleum exports accounted for 16 million dollars in state revenues; in just one year, that amount increased tenfold to 168 million dollars (Shuhaiber 2003:105) and by the 1970s the oil fields were the source of an overwhelming 90 percent of all state monies (Kaboudan 1988:47). This endowment emboldened the Al Sabah to finally breach the union that had held them to their mercantile financiers, an association that the British Political Resident at the time dubbed, "the protection racket" (Crystal 1995:57). Nonetheless, the merchants' earlier opposition to their political exclusion had culminated in the short-lived Consultative Council in 1921 and Legislative Assembly of 1938 41 (Russell 1989:30) during the economic upheaval wrought by the interwar collapse of the maritime industry (Ismael 1993:73-75); two events that served to caution the royal family against the unbridled autocratic rule that their petrol wealth could have funded (Crystal 1995:56-58). In light of this, the Al Sabah employed a more equitable tactic to preserve their ascendancy and simultaneously co-opt any dissident factions of the elite: the creation of a redistributive welfare administration. With their seemingly limitless returns from oil exports, the executors of the state could easily afford to cede all of the country's business concerns to the merchants with the promise of minimal governmental interference in return for their political acquiescence. Sharon Stanton Russell explains this strategy as one which rehabilitated what had been a deteriorating relationship between the parties: For some time, the major source of challenge to the power of the ruling family had been the wealthy merchant elites - descendants of Kuwait's early merchant families. They comprised the core of what we would now call the private sector, whose members are engaged in commerce, trade, and banking… During the 1950s, the ruling family had made judicious use of newly available oil revenues to secure the merchants' support for the regime, granting them a lucrative monopoly over local business affairs in exchange for their tacit agreement to remain outside of politics. By the late 1950s and early 1960s, relations between the merchants and the ruling family were considerably improved… [1989:30] Thus, compliance by the merchants ensured their continued commercial viability and solidified the Al Sabah's leadership role. In other words, the pre-oil paradigm was replicated (Al Mughni 1993:30) although the benefactors and beneficiaries were now reversed. Oil fiscally relieved the Al Sabah from their reliance upon the merchants while it made the traders into their financial clients, an interrelationship that is accentuated through the selective distribution of governmental contracts and controversial programs like the Land Purchase Program that simply transferred state monies as part of a "subsidy 42 system for landowners" (Al Qudsi 1981:403) to those with insider knowledge of the government's agenda.66 In sum, to pacify the privileged required the allocation of "subsidies going almost entirely to wealthy Kuwaitis… Today, these schemes include agency commissions, monopoly privileges, and the permission to import labor… along with government bailouts of failed corporations, collapsed stock markets, and bad debts" (Tetreault 2000:156). Even for Kuwaiti wage-earners, the former subsistence laborers who once toiled on the traders' ships as mariners and pearl-divers (Ansari and Qutub 1983:53-55) as well as the inland tribesmen (Ghabra 1997:364-365), the regime repositioned itself to become the state's exclusive economic sponsor and relieve the merchants of their clientele. Hence, the Al Sabah collectively became the "benevolent patriarch" (Shah 1995:1018) situated at the apex of wealth disbursement for the whole population and they used their petrodollars to drive a wedge between the mercantilists and the general populace. Whereas in the past pearling alone consumed at least a fifth of the labor force (Zahlan 1998:29), by 1962 the government employed 46 percent of all Kuwaitis (Crystal 1995:78-79) excluding the police force and military branches (IBRD 1965:40); in the 1990s, this rate inflated to 90 percent (Ghabra 1997:361). What these figures reflect is the state's increasing function in place of the merchants as the country's primary employer of its nationals (Shuhaiber 2003:108) on a scale irrespective of the economic costs or benefits: 66 A contemporary critique by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development assessed this movement of capital from the government to the landed elite in the following manner: "The private sector has probably relied on land purchases for investment capital… At the same time, we are convinced that the purchase of land at high prices in excess of development needs is not a good use of government funds from the standpoint of a desirable distribution of the oil revenues within Kuwait, or as a means of promoting the orderly development of the private sector of the economy" (1965:89). While possibly correct in developmental or econometric terms this overview obviously neglects the sociopolitical investments that more accurately characterized the Land Purchase Program. 43 It seems clear that there are many unqualified employees in the Kuwait civil service… The 1963 [International Bank for Reconstruction and Development] Mission was told that less than 1 per cent of the Kuwaitis in the classified civil service are college graduates, less than 5 per cent have graduated from secondary school and only 13 per cent from primary school… [And] nearly 30 per cent, were rated as illiterates. These data perhaps are less a gauge of inefficiency than of the redundancy in the government work force. The subject of training in government service certainly requires attention, as does the problem of finding productive employment for the large number who draw pay without performing even a nominal service. [International Bank for Reconstruction and Development 1965:40] The purpose of creating this public