Burke/Yaghoubian Chapter 5
Ahmad’s story helps us to understand the challenges RAPID economic and social transformations create for the people living there. Can you think of a time or place in history that underwent a similar transformation? What do you believe will happen to the relative importance of kinship and familial relationships in the Kuwait of the future? What strategic or other reasons can you think of to explain why Kuwait (a former province of Ottoman Iraq) has been given autonomy (and why do some believe it ought to be reunited with Iraq)?
The rapid transformations in Kuwait could be compared to those in China. While China used to be an isolated and traditional society, its modernization has propelled it into the world market as a leading competitor. Opening itself to the outside world may have brought many advantages in business and trade but has lead to the worsening of exploitation of workers in the production of exports.
With the discovery of oil and declining pearl diving economy, Kuwait underwent huge transformations toward modernization. This led to great wealth and standard of living, but also to the deterioration of kinship. Ahmad’s story gives us insight on the importance of the connection to one’s labor, which Ahmad believes to disappear with the establishment of new technology. Those, like Ahmad, who remained loyal to the old economy and way of life, were seen as outcasts and shunned by family members. Although this is just one occurrence, it's a reflection of how individual units reacted to the development of society. I believe these divisions in kinship will continue. Unlike in the old economy, in which one is obliged to their family and its debts, the new economy’s wealth and advancements in communication and education promote individualism and outside influences. These changes in influence can result in the change in opinions and priorities, and therefore can lead to inferior thoughts towards tradition.
Establishing Kuwait as an autonomy and maintaining foreign involvement prevents exploitation of the country’s oil supply. These exploitations may lead to conflict and affect the world economy, such as the Iraqi-Kuwait War.
The apartheid in South Africa (1948-1994) was the first movement that came to mind when thinking of rapid social transformation. The apartheid regime held a hierarchy of racial privilege in which Whites had total political and economic control.
The political transformation of 1994 resulted in a true democracy with a Black majority government for the first time in South African history. However, such changes failed to extinguish the class and racial segregation that had been engrained into society.
Similar to Ahmad’s story, the South Africans’ perceptions of their possible futures and place in society altered radically. Although the apartheid regime failed in the end, it succeeded in differentially structuring racial and political consciousness in the people.
While the Kuwait underwent its economic changes in under one hundred years, the United States has also seen, in relative terms, a very rapid change from an agrarian society to an industrial one. Interestingly America’s rapid industrialization was one of the major reasons that Kuwait, as a result of its oil reserves, saw such a rise in in its standard of living.
I think that family and kinship will become much less important as Kuwait continues to develop and become more westernized. Just like the large families Americans living in frontier regions used to have because lots of manual labor was needed to run the family farm, Kuwait has seen the lessening in importance of family ties to acquire a job because the economy has changed so drastically. If family does regain a significant importance, it will be in a supportive domestic role rather than an economic one. It will be interesting to see if the Kuwaiti economy ever moves away from its dependence on oil, what sort of effect that will have on family relations. Will the family become more emphasized if the economy becomes more service or financially based like the United States? Or will it find another mainstay for its economy which thrusts the role of the family into a completely new function?
The biggest time of change that comes to mind when reading the story of Ahmad the Pearl Diver would probably be Central European post-communist states that had to transform their ways from authoritarian to democratic, in order to be accepted by the global community and ultimately the European Union (a noble organization which most of their neighbors belonged to). Like in the case of the Czech Republic becoming an independent nation after the fall of the Soviet Union and consequently after with the Velvet Revolution where Slovakia broke apart, can show how Ahmad's children broke ties with pearl diving and modernized by studying at a university and becoming professionals, which is the new Kuwait that is emerging. It is no longer a poor, destitute Third World nation full of basic commodities and workers instead it is a thriving country ready to cope with our modern world and assimilate into Western culture. In the West, kinship and familial relations are almost non-existent seeing as the parents work long hours and only come home at night when most of the children are already asleep. I believe that Kuwait as well is losing the importance of kinship and family, and it is quite a shame.