Date: September 26 2009, (Sat.), 10:30～18:00
Venue: Conference Room (AA447), the 4th floor of Research Bldg. No. 2
(Faculty of Engineering Bldg. No.4), Yoshida Main Campus, Kyoto University
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Dear all,
If you have any inquries, please contact to inq-kias@asafas.kyoto- u.ac.jp.
【Presentation】
1. Shuji Hosaka “Japan and the Gulf Area”
2. Motohiro Ohno “Reconsideration of modern meaning of the tribal ties in the United Arab Emirates: Abu Dhabi Emirate in early '90s”
3. Koji HORINUKI “The Controversy over the Naturalization of Labour Force: 30 years on Emiratization in the UAE”
4. Masaki Matsuo “Ethnocratic regimes in the Arab gulf states”
5. Aiko Hiramatsu “The Parliamentarism and the Islamic Movement in Kuwait: With a Special Focusing on the Political Participation of Women”
6. Jun Hagihara “Modernization and Traditional Values in Saudi Arabia”
This workshop is the first large-scale exchange program in Japan to have focused on research about the Gulf countries. While previously this region had been recognized as an important source of natural resources such as oil, it had not drawn any significant attention from academia. This has changed with the arrival of young researchers in recent years, however, resulting in a great deal of excitement across all areas of research.
For details of each individual presentation, please see the summary of presentations; here we will focus on the general debate that was held at the end of the workshops. Professor Eiji Nagasawa (Tokyo University) was invited to the workshop as a discussant, and six participants reported on their work. In the first half, participants situated their own role as one of “situating research on Gulf countries within research on Arabic, Middle Eastern and Islamic regions,” with presentations broadly split between the themes of “tribes and politics” and “labor market and national unity.” Discussions on the first theme emphasized issues such as: the continuing importance of tribes as a subject in research on Gulf countries, the need for research that goes back as far as colonial rule and nation building, and the transformation of tribal social ties accompanying a changing living environment. The second theme touched on topics such as the curious lack of an anti-foreigner sentiment in Gulf countries, and the possibility of a split emerging between social classes which are able, and those which are unable, to adapt to globalization.
In the general debate in the second half of the workshop, members of the audience shared their responses to the presentations and also cited examples from their own experiences in the field. Critics differ in how they treat relationships among globalization, tribal values, and the nation-state. Nonetheless, there is a common sense of both the robustness of the Gulf countries, still together 40 years after they were founded, and of their undeniable importance as a subject of research, reaffirming the significance of this workshop as an exemplification of the total body of research on Gulf countries.
(Hiroshi Yoshikawa)
