City of Strangers: Gulf Migration and the Indian Community in Bahrain

{Excerpt} Unpacking and applying the concept of structural violence is one of the principal tasks of this book. To be clear from the outset, however, in lodging the experiences of the men and women I encountered in the larger rubric of structural violence, I do not intend to imply that we should ignore the agency exerted in the scenario I\u27ve just described, or in the scenarios that litter this book: we ought not ignore the basic fact that these scenarios are composed of humans choosing to abuse, exploit, maim, and dominate other humans. Rather, I seek to couple that basic fact with an analysis of the structural forces that cause, permit, encourage, or are in some other way involved in the production of violence between citizen and foreigner in Bahrain. In the final accounting, the episodic violence levied against foreigners in Bahrain becomes one facet of the more comprehensive structural forces that govern foreign labor in the Gulf states. The central mission of the anthropologist remains explication, and typically the explication of lives distant and different from those of the intended reader. The conceptual framework of structural violence, which I explore in detail, provides an analytic foundation from which I work outward in scope and, to some degree, backward in time. From that foundation I peer at the decisions and contexts that brought the men and women I came to know from India to the Gulf, at their experiences upon arrival in Bahrain, and at the strategies they deploy against the difficulties they face while abroad. I also examine the contours of the Bahraini state itself, the ongoing articulation of a particular idea of modernity in the Gulf, and the intricacies of the concept of citizenship as they have evolved in dialectic with the extraordinary flow of foreign labor to the island

The Journey to Arabia: A Visual Essay

This photographic essay includes numerous photographs portraying the journey transnational migrants take from South Asia to the Arabian Peninsula, and includes a short essay that describes the major features of this migration system

Migration, labor and business in the worlding cities of the Arabian Peninsula

This short essay, built on a foundation of more than a decade of fieldwork in the hydrocarbon-rich societies of the Arabian peninsula, distills a set of overarching threads woven through much of that time and work. Those threads include a discussion of the social heterogeneity of the Gulf State citizenries, the central role of development and urban development in these emergent economies, the multifaceted impact of migrants and migration upon these host societies, and the role of foreign \u27imagineers\u27 in the portrayal of Gulf societies, Gulf values, and Gulf social norms

City of Strangers

Exploring the everyday experiences of workers from India who have migrated to Bahrain, this study contributes significantly to our understanding of politics and society among the Persian Gulf states and of the migrant labor phenomenon that is an increasingly important aspect of globalization. "Andrew M. Gardner expertly combines in-depth ethnography with theoretical sophistication in this important look at the complex linkages between labor, migration, globalization, and the structural violence that accompanies the new world economic order. Gardner follows the labyrinthine paths of migrant workers in the Gulf, drawing on powerful qualitative data to complicate existing assumptions about the lives of skilled and unskilled workers in the Middle East's fastest growing region. Beautifully written and compelling, the book sheds light on a population and area of the world that remains understudied despite its rapid emergence onto the global market."—Pardis Mahdavi, Pomona Colleg

Savages, Deplorables, and the Promise of Anthropological Ethnography

This short essay describes a longitudinal ethnographic project on which I am embarking with successive coteries of students here at the University of Puget Sound. The essay starts with a discussion of the latent power of ethnography to cross thresholds of difference on a mission of empathy and understanding. I tie this mission to the legacy and definition of anthropological ethnography. In the second section of the essay, I discuss the fractious nature of the American polity, and the caricatures of rural Americans that I\u27ve encountered in the urban and academic environs of the west coast. In the final section of the essay, I discuss how student-led independent summer research projects endeavor to address these issues

How the City Grows: Urban Growth and Challenges to Sustainable Development in Doha, Qatar

This book chapter considers how sustainable development fits in the social, political, and cultural context of contemporary Doha, Qatar. After a review of sustainable development and urban development in Qatar, this chapter makes several contentions. First, it contends that sustainable development poses a challenge to the political stability of a society that distributes state-controlled wealth to its citizenry through urban development. Second, it points to the fact that Qatar\u27s tribal/authoritarian political regime is antithetical to some of the bottom-up democratic principles thought to underpin sustainable development. Finally, it suggest that the consignment of sustainable development efforts to the spatial discourse of urban planning in Doha and throughout the region also confounds the principles of sustainable development

On Teaching Ethnography In Troubled Times

In this essay, I describe an incident stemming from a field-based ethnographic exercise I utilize in one of the courses which I have designed and which I regularly teach. In my estimation, the contours of the incident I describe here reveal the institutional and ideological parameters of a paradigm that currently dominates contemporary American campuses. I suggest that my experience points to frictions between that seemingly hegemonic academic paradigm and the core values and practices that the discipline of anthropology endeavours to carry into the new millennium. I conclude that this experience, and the institutional practices and ideologies it reveals, portends a difficult future for an anthropologically moored practice of ethnography-one that seeks to systematically and empathically explore the experiences of diverse others in this world

A Window to Urban Arabia

This set of images collectively seeks to provide viewers with a window into Doha, Qatar, and into the urban heart of the modern Middle East that’s arisen on the Arabian Peninsula. Designed as an exhibit of photography, the images include overlapping themes that explore particular facets or threads of the urban landscape and life therein. In the final accounting, the collection as a whole is intended as an ode to the city itself

Student Ethnographic Research Experiences at the University of Puget Sound

This brief essay describes programming at the University of Puget Sound that allows undergraduate students to pursue independent ethnographic research projects. This programming undergirds all three of the subsequent student essays included in this issue. The mission of this programming is to encourage “experiential learning”—an objective that is aligned (and perhaps derivative) of the methodological toolkit long deployed by anthropological ethnographers. The essay describes the pedagogic goals that I have been able to integrate into the supervision of this experiential programming, and also discusses how we have sought to balance independently-derived student research interests with the broader research agendas codified in the Ethnographic Survey of Rural Cascadia (ESRC). The essay seeks to make useful observations about how one might teach ethnography, and about how, via collaboration and in the context of teaching this research method, undergraduate ethnographic novices might usefully contribute to our collective scholarly understanding of the human condition