Page 245 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

Conclusion 225

It is striking how categories of ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ have continued to
demarcate the sectarian divide long after the disappearance of agricultural
and tribal landscapes. In the mid 1970s Fuad Khuri noted that: ‘Rural,
urban, city, town, and village are not clear-cut social categories when
applied to Bahrain society today – these are historical traditions and
5
must be understood in this context.’ A decade later the new suburban
Shi‘i dormitory communities were still identified with the ‘backward’ and
militant rural milieus of the pre-oil era. As Ilse Schumacher noted during
her fieldwork in Bahrain, ‘Shi‘iisdefined as a villager, farmer or labourer,
illiterate, emotional and revolutionary’ in stark contrast with the stereo-
typed image of the Sunni as ‘peace-loving, urban, wealthy and educated’. 6
By the 1980s, the urban arena was construed as the symbol of the pro-
gressive agenda of the Sunni-dominated state against the perceived reli-
gious and social conservatism of the Shi‘i rural population. The
persistence of this domain of sectarian contestation is the most poignant
testimony of the legacies of the past and of the contemporary relevance of
Bahrain’s urban and rural histories.

The city as the evolving frontier of modern Gulf politics

The British Empire and Arab nationalism acted as the key forces of
‘global’ development in the making of the modern city. They also fostered
the emergence of Manama as a space of modern political contestation
against the state in the first half of the twentieth century. The analysis of
imperial reform and of the emergence of proto-nationalist sentiments in
the 1920s frees the early modern history of the town from the teleological
vision of oil wealth as the agent of change. That said, the prominence
accorded to labour issues in the nationalist struggle of the 1950s certainly
reflected the paramount influence of the oil industry in promoting new
class solidarities among the urban population. As in Iraq, the combined
effect of imperial rule, the onset of oil production and integration into the
world economy produced a powerful nationalist movement. Yet the
symbols, rhetoric and channels of popular and elite mobilisation did
not differ substantially from those which characterised nationalist and
anti-British movements in those cities which did not experience oil
modernisation. New nationalist slogans, class divisions and ideas of
social progress were closely intertwined with old patronage politics,
quarter solidarities, manifestations of religious devotion and religious
organisations.

5 6
Khuri, Tribe and State in Bahrain, p. 249. Schumacher, ‘Ritual Devotion’, p. 53.