Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

Abandonne progressivement depuis les annees 1970, le patrimoine vernaculaire de la region de l’interieur de l’Oman vit ses derniers feux et il y a urgence a collecter des donnees tant ethnologiques qu’architecturales avant que celles-ci ne tombent definitivement dans le domaine de l’Histoire et de l’Archeologie.C’est dans cette optique qu’une prospection visant a relever les amenagements dedies a l’evacuation de l’eau au sein de trois quartiers traditionnels de briques crues de l’interieur de l’Oman (Birkat al‑Mawz, Izkī et al‑Ḥamrā’) a ete realisee en mars 2020.Cette prospection a permis de mettre en lumiere les techniques et les amenagements lies a l’evacuation des eaux dans ces quartiers traditionnels omanais qui n’avaient jamais fait l’objet d’une attention particuliere, mais egalement d’ouvrir des perspectives ethnoarcheologiques, une discipline qui postule que l’ethnographie permet d’enrichir l’interpretation de donnees archeologiques, voire l’absence de ces dernieres.Sur 359 installations recensees, les gargouilles representent 99 % de l’echantillon. L’absence d’installation au sol (puisard, canalisation, egout) a notamment montre que des solutions tres simples en matiere de gestion de l’eau au sein d’une architecture de briques, permettaient de depasser la dichotomie des couples absence/defaillance ou presence/performance generee par la partialite des donnees archeologiques.

/pdf/architecture-vernaculaire-de-terre-et-evacuation-des-eaux-1n9dvi8qpu.pdf

Architecture vernaculaire de terre et évacuation des eaux. Études de cas dans l’intérieur de l’Oman et perspectives ethnoarchéologiques

IN THE TIME OF OIL: PIETY, MEMORY, AND SOCIAL LIFE IN AN OMANI TOWN Mandana Limbert Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010 (264 pages, illustrations, map) $2495 (paper)Reviewed by Jatin DuaMandana Limbert's In The Time of Oil: Piety, Memory, and Social Life in an Omani Town is a richly textured ethnographic analysis of the transformations and tensions of everyday life in Bahla, a small town in the interior of Oman, in the aftermath of the massive infrastructural, bureaucratic, and social changes that followed the discovery of oil in the 1960s While peripheral to the larger theater of petroleum extraction, refining, and export in contemporary Oman, historically Bahla was an important town in the interior region (al-Dakhiliyya), a territory that until the 1950s was a "quasi-independent theocratic state, the Imamate of Oman, based on Ibadi doctrine, a third branch of Islam after Sunnism and Shi'ism" (4) Using an ethnographic lens, Limbert's narrative eschews the simple (and simplistic) narrative of rupture and radical change that dominates popular accounts of the oil boom in the Arabian Gulf and instead highlights the complex and multiple temporalities and modes of reasoning through which Bahlawis "inhabited and understood Oman's dramatic oil produced transformations" (3)Critical to Limbert's argument is the relationship between the past, present, and future In an important intervention into our understandings of social memory and the construction of temporality, Limbert posits that in Bahla, as in the rest of Oman, the present is deeply inflected by multiple visions of the past and the future The prosperity of today is seen as an aberration between the remembered poverty of the past and the probable poverty of the future From official discourse to everyday conversation, the discovery of oil and the transformations that have resulted from the oil boom are not seen as a step along a linear developmental trajectory, but rather as a miraculous interlude that will end as soon as oil supplies dwindle-a future that is simultaneously known ("twenty years") but also constantly deferred As Limbert argues, this vision of temporality helps revise notions of permanence and linear teleology that scholars take to be at the heart of development discourses Oman's development discourse promises no future of endless prosperity or national maturity, but rather brings to the fore the miraculous, the fleeting, and the ephemeral Additionally, this discourse intersects with other ways of framing pasts and futures and other sensibilities and anxieties There are questions about hereditary rule, especially given that the current Sultan Qabus, widely believed to be responsible for Oman's "renaissance," has no heir And there is the historical memory of when Bahla, far from being on the periphery, was the center of the Ibadi imamate, which could potentially, and redemptively, rise againIt is these multiple sensibilities, temporalities, and modes of time reckoning that occupy the remainder of the book Specifically, through a focus on the shifting spatial geography of Bahla, tensions about sociality, the implementation of public education, infrastructural development, and the reimagining (including forgetting) of the relationship between East Africa and Oman, Limbert's text brings to light the "contested understandings of the past and the uncertain expectations of the future" that structure Bahlawi and wider Omani ways of making sense of the "dreamtime of oil" (3, 1)Chapter two begins in the shadow of the Bahla fort, a structure dating back in popular memory to the pre-Islamic Sassanid dynasty (226-651 CE) and indexing the town's antiquity This chapter examines the intergenerational ways in which the spatial geography and the built environment of the town have been remembered and refashioned since the 1970s In a familiar move within the ethnographic genre, this chapter serves to locate the author's field of study, but instead of describing a "static backdrop for anthropological research," Limbert shows how the town of Bahla, the fort, the walls, and the road are all dynamic entities that reflect changing material and social realities (21) …

In the Time of Oil: Piety, Memory, and Social Life in an Omani Town

A Separate Place

Abstract Oman and Brunei are two countries with a long history of sultanic regimes. A sultanate is a kingdom ruled by a Muslim monarch. Because of these two countries’ geopolitical and geostrategic locations, they are very important in global affairs. At the same time, although situated in the highly tense regions of the Middle East and Southeast Asia respectively, Oman and Brunei are generally quite stable. They have recently become involved in China’s global economic project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Using a theory of small states, this article applies a qualitative research methodology focusing mainly on foreign policy analysis in a comprehensive analytical framework. The study uses face-to-face and by-correspondence interviews with government officials from both sultanates. It investigates whether the domestic determinants of small states’ foreign policy directly affect the bilateral relations between the two sultanates. The main finding of this study is that Oman and Brunei have greatly benefited through the establishment of a satisfactory bilateral relationship based mainly on four pillars from the list of determinants of small states’ foreign policy: historical connectivity, an Islamic monarchical dynastic system of governance, a state rentier economy, and shared foreign policy principles.

The tale of the two Sultanates, Oman and Brunei: Foreign policy and bilateral relations

/pdf/think-place-geographies-of-national-identity-in-oman-12kb896hzp.pdf

Think Place: Geographies of National Identity in Oman

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Think Place: Geographies of National Identity in Oman