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عنيزة: التنمية والتغيير في مدينة نجدية عربية
يتحدد إطار هذه الدراسة، الذي جرى من خلاله جمع بياناتها وتحليلها، وفقاً لمفهومين من مفاهيم التغير الاجتماعي "التحول"، و"التنمية". والذي نعنيه بمفهوم "التحول" هو التغير الذي يجري على هيكل المجتمع ويتضمن تغيراً أساسياً في قاعدته الاقتصادية، وفي أشكال وعناصر الجماعات المكونة له، وفي القواعد والآليات التي تنظم التفاعل بين الأفراد والجماعات والمراكز الاجتماعية. أما مفهوم "التنمية" فنعني به تغيراً يتضمن معنى التصاعد ومعنى الإرادية. وليس من بين الأهداف المباشرة لهذه الدراسة طرح مناقشة نظرية للتنمية والتحول الاجتماعي.
وإن كانت البيانات التي تحتويها تعتبر مصدراً ثرياً للمعلومات المفيدة لمناقشة من هذا القبيل، وإنما تستخدم هذه الدراسة مفهومي التنمية والتحول الاجتماعي من أجل وصف وتحليل المتغيرات التي طرأت على مجتمع معين، وهو مجتمع عنيزة، الذي يقع إلى الشمال من الجزء الأوسط من شبه الجزيرة العربية، على بعد 270 كيلومتر من مدينة الرياض، عاصمة المملكة العربية السعودية.
أما الإطار الذي تنطلق منه هذه الدراسة فهو مستمد إلى حد كبير من المناقشات النظرية لمفهوم قوى وأساليب الإنتاج. وللعلاقة بين المجتمع والطاقة. وهو إطار يفترض أن الطريقة التي يتبعها المجتمع في تنظيم نفسه من أجل إنتاج حاجياته هي التي تحدد في نهاية الأمر مختلف جوانب السلوك الأخرى الاجتماعية والثقافية السائدة في هذا المجتمع، وأن قدرة المجتمع على إعادة الإنتاج (أو على البقاء) إنما تتوقف على قدرته على إنتاج حاجياته. بناء هذا المنظور، فإن التركيز طوال هذه الدراسة هو ما يبذل من نشاط في المجتمع من أجل الإنتاج، وتوزيع هذا الناتج، وما يطرأ على كليهما من تغيرات.
وإن كانت البيانات التي تحتويها تعتبر مصدراً ثرياً للمعلومات المفيدة لمناقشة من هذا القبيل، وإنما تستخدم هذه الدراسة مفهومي التنمية والتحول الاجتماعي من أجل وصف وتحليل المتغيرات التي طرأت على مجتمع معين، وهو مجتمع عنيزة، الذي يقع إلى الشمال من الجزء الأوسط من شبه الجزيرة العربية، على بعد 270 كيلومتر من مدينة الرياض، عاصمة المملكة العربية السعودية.
أما الإطار الذي تنطلق منه هذه الدراسة فهو مستمد إلى حد كبير من المناقشات النظرية لمفهوم قوى وأساليب الإنتاج. وللعلاقة بين المجتمع والطاقة. وهو إطار يفترض أن الطريقة التي يتبعها المجتمع في تنظيم نفسه من أجل إنتاج حاجياته هي التي تحدد في نهاية الأمر مختلف جوانب السلوك الأخرى الاجتماعية والثقافية السائدة في هذا المجتمع، وأن قدرة المجتمع على إعادة الإنتاج (أو على البقاء) إنما تتوقف على قدرته على إنتاج حاجياته. بناء هذا المنظور، فإن التركيز طوال هذه الدراسة هو ما يبذل من نشاط في المجتمع من أجل الإنتاج، وتوزيع هذا الناتج، وما يطرأ على كليهما من تغيرات.
- GenresAnthropology
284 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
2 people are currently reading
93 people want to read
About the author
Soraya Altorki
10 books14 followersSoraya Altorki is a professor of anthropology in the Department of Sociology, Egyptology and Anthropology at The American University in Cairo. She has been teaching at AUC since 1977, and served as department chair from 1989 to 1991. Her major fields of interest include family, gender studies, youth and comparative religion. She received her PhD in anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley in 1973.
Professor Altorki was a distinguished visiting professor at King Saud University (1982 and 1983-1984) and visiting assistant professor at King ‘Abd al-‘Aziz University (1974-1976). She has been a postdoctoral research fellow at Northwestern University (1973-1977), Harvard University (1973-1974), the University of Pennsylvania (Spring 1984), UCLA (Spring and Summer 1992 and Summer 1993) and at Georgetown University (Spring and Summer 1995). Additionally, she was the Arcapita Visiting Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University in Spring 2010. She is a founding member of the board of Nour, a women’s NGO established in 1993 in Beirut that focuses on Arab women’s issues and possesses an extensive research and publication program. She has served as a member of the Social Science Research Council’s Joint Committee on the Near and Middle East (1991-1995) and is a member of the American Anthropological Association and the International Association for Middle East Studies. Among her awards and accomplishments is a feature interview on Dutch Educational Television (DITS) as one of three distinguished Arab women in the Arab region, which was broadcast during the summer of 1995. She has received numerous funding awards from the Ford Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Population Council in Cairo and The American University in Cairo. These awards have supported, among other things, her field research which has taken place in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia as well in Cairo and the northwest coast of Egypt. She is also the author of many academic articles in professional journals and chapters in scholarly books. In addition, she has been interviewed frequently in the Arab media, including by the Beirut Daily, Al-Hayat and ART television in Morocco.
https://www.aucegypt.edu/fac/sorayaal...
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 19, 2017
Solid Saudi Study Sets Standard
The media images of Saudi Arabia concentrate on camels, dunes, huge crowds of pilgrims at Mecca and Madinah, and large installations dedicated to the oil industry. Outsiders see almost nothing of Saudi life (though we hear a lot about women not being able to drive, chopping of heads etc.) Without much tourism, without films that tell about life there, without any Saudi neighbors (I've met one Saudi in my entire life and that was over 50 years ago), a book like ARABIAN OASIS CITY can provide a major change in the way you view the country.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the area that would become Saudi Arabia still moved in traditional ways. It had never been much part of the larger empires that rose and fell in the Middle East. The appearance of the kingdom that became known as "Saudi Arabia" (in the 1920s) meant a gradual changing of the society and economy. Up to the 1930s and the beginning of oil production, change proceeded slowly. The two anthropologist-authors here interviewed many people (in the 1980s) who could remember those times very well. Through their memories, plus the straightforward writing of the authors, who do not embellish their text with jargon or footnotes, a picture emerges of a very stable society devoted to agriculture, animal husbandry, and trade. Farmers raised wheat and 30 kinds of dates on land that they owned or leased (some leases ran even to 500 years, surely one for the Guiness Book of Records !) Many craftsmen practised their trades and men drove herds of animals up to Syria or Palestine for sale. Both women and men sold produce and various craft items in the bazaar. Women also worked on farms as laborers. A network of trading/merchant families lived in many parts of the Arab world and even in India, expediting business for the people back home in `Unayzah, the central Saudi city that is the focus of this study. We look at family patterns, levels of indebtedness, and the market as a center of social and political interaction. "For a very long time and until not too long ago, `Unayzah had a complex economic structure and its population had a high degree of occupational specialization. It was a center tied into various networks that operated locally, regionally, and at an international level." (p.81)
Having established what once existed, the authors spend the rest of the book telling what happened as Saudi Arabia transformed itself thanks to the flow of oil money that became a flood after the oil price rise of the 1970s. We may say that five major changes occured. They investigate each thoroughly---secular education, new technology and new infrastructure, salaried employment especially in the government, the arrival of a vast, cheap workforce of expatriate laborers, and a cash economy. These affected family life, friendship patterns, male-female relations, daily behavior, expectations of the future, and attitudes towards nearly everything, especially work. The sub-title given to the book, "the transformation of `Unayzah" is thus very accurate. The research was done by a man and a woman working in tandem but separately in accordance with Saudi mores. The result is satisfying if you are looking for a descriptive work on how Saudi society has changed over the years. There is little or no theoretical content, little relating to the vast body of anthropological research that has gone on over the years. Some books err in having too much theory and not enough content. Not this one. The authors make a vague nod in the direction of theory with a discussion of a "rentier" model gleaned from several works, but only in the last ten pages. Frankly, it seems to be tacked on to what othewise is a solid descriptive work. They want to make the point that the present avoidance of manual labor by large parts of the Saudi work force is a function of the economic conditions prevailing since the `boom' of the 1970s and not something that is traditional in any way. I would say in conclusion that this book must be read by anyone who is concerned with Saudi Arabia or the changing societies of the Middle East. And, I think, that should include nearly everyone !
The media images of Saudi Arabia concentrate on camels, dunes, huge crowds of pilgrims at Mecca and Madinah, and large installations dedicated to the oil industry. Outsiders see almost nothing of Saudi life (though we hear a lot about women not being able to drive, chopping of heads etc.) Without much tourism, without films that tell about life there, without any Saudi neighbors (I've met one Saudi in my entire life and that was over 50 years ago), a book like ARABIAN OASIS CITY can provide a major change in the way you view the country.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the area that would become Saudi Arabia still moved in traditional ways. It had never been much part of the larger empires that rose and fell in the Middle East. The appearance of the kingdom that became known as "Saudi Arabia" (in the 1920s) meant a gradual changing of the society and economy. Up to the 1930s and the beginning of oil production, change proceeded slowly. The two anthropologist-authors here interviewed many people (in the 1980s) who could remember those times very well. Through their memories, plus the straightforward writing of the authors, who do not embellish their text with jargon or footnotes, a picture emerges of a very stable society devoted to agriculture, animal husbandry, and trade. Farmers raised wheat and 30 kinds of dates on land that they owned or leased (some leases ran even to 500 years, surely one for the Guiness Book of Records !) Many craftsmen practised their trades and men drove herds of animals up to Syria or Palestine for sale. Both women and men sold produce and various craft items in the bazaar. Women also worked on farms as laborers. A network of trading/merchant families lived in many parts of the Arab world and even in India, expediting business for the people back home in `Unayzah, the central Saudi city that is the focus of this study. We look at family patterns, levels of indebtedness, and the market as a center of social and political interaction. "For a very long time and until not too long ago, `Unayzah had a complex economic structure and its population had a high degree of occupational specialization. It was a center tied into various networks that operated locally, regionally, and at an international level." (p.81)
Having established what once existed, the authors spend the rest of the book telling what happened as Saudi Arabia transformed itself thanks to the flow of oil money that became a flood after the oil price rise of the 1970s. We may say that five major changes occured. They investigate each thoroughly---secular education, new technology and new infrastructure, salaried employment especially in the government, the arrival of a vast, cheap workforce of expatriate laborers, and a cash economy. These affected family life, friendship patterns, male-female relations, daily behavior, expectations of the future, and attitudes towards nearly everything, especially work. The sub-title given to the book, "the transformation of `Unayzah" is thus very accurate. The research was done by a man and a woman working in tandem but separately in accordance with Saudi mores. The result is satisfying if you are looking for a descriptive work on how Saudi society has changed over the years. There is little or no theoretical content, little relating to the vast body of anthropological research that has gone on over the years. Some books err in having too much theory and not enough content. Not this one. The authors make a vague nod in the direction of theory with a discussion of a "rentier" model gleaned from several works, but only in the last ten pages. Frankly, it seems to be tacked on to what othewise is a solid descriptive work. They want to make the point that the present avoidance of manual labor by large parts of the Saudi work force is a function of the economic conditions prevailing since the `boom' of the 1970s and not something that is traditional in any way. I would say in conclusion that this book must be read by anyone who is concerned with Saudi Arabia or the changing societies of the Middle East. And, I think, that should include nearly everyone !
July 29, 2023
A comprehensive and, to my knowledge, accurate study of the social and economic changes that occurred to the city after the oil boom of the 1970s.
I particularly enjoyed the interviews conducted with the people, especially with older women of Unayzah, which were made possible by the accessibility of the female author.
I particularly enjoyed the interviews conducted with the people, especially with older women of Unayzah, which were made possible by the accessibility of the female author.
October 3, 2013
من يتوقف عن القراءة لفترة إجازة يصعب عليه كتابة قراءة لكتاب بعد العودة، الكتاب كان بتوصية من ماما ويحتاج مراجعة بس لما يفتح الله
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews