This review was first presented at the 2025 Graduate Student Book Review Colloquium on Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies organized by the Maydan/ AbuSulayman Center for Global Islamic Studies at GMU on December 18, 2025.
While the Arab Gulf states are often portrayed through the familiar lens of the oil world, international diplomacy, tourism attractions, and rapid urbanization, the deeper social and political foundations that sustain them remain comparatively underexplored. Behind their modern skylines and global ambitions lies a vibrant social fabric still profoundly shaped by kinship, lineage, and tribal belonging. Mariam Al-Kuwari’s Tribal Reawakening and the Future of State-Building in Kuwait and Qatar emerges as an essential and original contribution that reconsiders the role of tribalism in the modern Gulf.
This work stands out with its interdisciplinary and comparative approach, blending historical analysis of Qatar and Kuwait with methodologically deep ethnographic fieldwork and archival studies. Drawing on rich empirical research, interviews with tribal leaders, and participant observation in social gatherings and important events, Al-Kuwari shows how the legacies of tribal solidarity continue to influence contemporary citizenship, identity, and political participation. Qatar and Kuwait, the two chosen cases, share important similarities but also exhibit significant differences that make comparison meaningful.
“This work stands out with its interdisciplinary and comparative approach, blending historical analysis of Qatar and Kuwait with methodologically deep ethnographic fieldwork and archival studies. Drawing on rich empirical research, interviews with tribal leaders, and participant observation in social gatherings and important events, Al-Kuwari shows how the legacies of tribal solidarity continue to influence contemporary citizenship, identity, and political participation.”
The book explores how Kuwait and Qatar have redefined the role of tribes in the process of state formation. Al-Kuwari challenges the widespread assumption that modern state and nation-building inevitably weaken traditional structures like tribalism, social bonds, and local family ties. On the contrary, she demonstrates that tribal affiliation has not only persisted but has been consciously and actively reactivated, revived, and institutionalized by the Gulf states as a strategic mechanism of governance and legitimacy.
Rather than viewing tribalism as a relic of a pre-modern society, Al-Kuwari interprets it as a dynamic and adaptive force that Gulf rulers continue to harness in the face of globalization, regional crises, and international transformations. She opens space for rethinking conventional binaries such as tradition versus modernity or tribe versus state.
The book consists of seven chapters, with the final chapter serving as a brief conclusion. In the first chapter, Al-Kuwari begins with her positionality and personal memories, as she is a member of one of the most well-known families in Qatar. Her reflections open new questions about tribalism in recent decades and in today’s world. She introduces a general research puzzle on the revival of tribalism and provides a theoretical explanation of nation-building and state legitimacy within a tribal framework, linking her personal experiences to academic debates. She challenges the dominant rentier-state explanations of the Gulf (Beblawi & Luciani, 1990), which often frames legitimacy as a product of distributing natural resource wealth in return for loyalty. She argues that tribalism still matters and must be included in the picture, and that the rentier-state approach alone is limited (Herb, 2016) to explain social contracts and legitimacy in the Gulf states.
“Rather than viewing tribalism as a relic of a pre-modern society, Al-Kuwari interprets it as a dynamic and adaptive force that Gulf rulers continue to harness in the face of globalization, regional crises, and international transformations. She opens space for rethinking conventional binaries such as tradition versus modernity or tribe versus state.”
She also shows how tribal politics have become stronger and more intense in periods. The tribe has always existed and always mattered, but over the last decades tribalism has reached another level. Tribal identity has been redeployed within the strongly centralized state, shaping the interaction between state institutions and tribal influence. As she notes in her positionality, the arguments in the book show well-structured objectivity and criticism when needed. Additionally, conducting fieldwork as a woman in such contexts is difficult and challenging, which increases the value of the research.
In Chapter 2, she discusses how tribes and ruling families emerged within the tribal context of Kuwait and Qatar before the 20th century, during a period shaped by the influence of global powers such as the Ottoman State and the British Empire. Ruling families and tribal authorities developed alongside each other, but Kuwait and Qatar took different trajectories. Qatar became more centralized under the Al-Thani family, and merchant influence was more limited compared to Kuwait, where the Al-Sabah ruling family historically depended on merchants and the ḥaḍhar (city dwellers) class. This shaped Kuwait’s later political journey, including parliamentary elections and more political participation by elites.
Chapter 3 explains how two major developments weakened tribalism relatively. The first was oil industry itself, which made ruling families economically autonomous and less dependent on tribes and merchants, especially in Kuwait. Qatar’s ruling family was already highly powerful in terms of trade and population. The second factor was Arab nationalism which influenced new movements, groups, and Arab intelligentsia that challenged tribal structures. The influence of Nasserism is explained well and policies in Egypt pushed Muslim Brotherhood members toward Gulf states shaping the early relationship between Kuwait, Qatar, and the Muslim Brotherhood. She also explains how the working-class protest emerged in Qatar. This part indicates well how internal lineage changes within the Al-Thani family took place after this period altering power based on popular legitimacy.
Chapters 4 and 5 detail the post-independence period and the main arguments of the book, as Gulf states exploit tribalism strategically. While independence consolidated state power, legitimacy was still part of the social fabric. In addition to that, modernization and cultural changes introduced social shocks, which made traditional social bonds more valuable to preserve. Tribalism consequently revived within the context of legitimacy questions, cultural needs, and preferences. These two chapters give detailed discussion of practical steps for this, such as housing projects, requirements for state and security staff, citizenship politics, and so on. Political and international developments further contextualized this revival. These chapters provide detailed discussions of citizenship as an exclusive right in the Gulf and how citizenship laws interacted with tribal belonging and loyalty to the state. After the 1990s, particularly following the Gulf War in Kuwait and the 1995 coup in Qatar, tribal politics became crucial for the electoral process.
Revivalism grew across political, social, and cultural dimensions. The revival of tribalism shapes contemporary legitimacy and the state’s daily political strategies, including elections.
Chapter 6 shifts to everyday life, family, marriage, and women’s experiences. It argues that women face strong social pressure from tribal values and traditions, often bearing greater costs than men. Tribal bonds shape marriage, family relations, and social interactions. This chapter extends the analysis beyond politics and into the social realm. Women’s educational attainment has increased significantly, but participation in the workforce and politics has not followed at the same pace. The chapter discusses gender dynamics and the persistence of patriarchal norms.
While earlier chapters challenge Western-centric interpretations with contextual insights, this chapter’s critique of patriarchy sometimes shifts toward structural generalizations that appear less grounded in local context. For example, issues like women’s privacy, limited public visibility, or reluctance to use personal photos on social media can also be interpreted through the lens of various choice. These interpretations limit the conceptualization of agency to acts that further the moral autonomy of the individual in the face of power (Mahmood, 2006). Patriarchy is still strong criticism to elaborate power relations and exploitation of traditional norms. However, not all restrictions operate uniformly as patriarchal oppression, and some women may choose conservative practices based on personal or religious convictions as their cultivated subjectivity. While the analysis is valuable, a more nuanced contextualization would strengthen it.
Another important point concerns terminology. Tribe, clan, family, bidūn, and other social categories are distinct concepts, but the book sometimes uses them as if well known. External readers may become confused about the precise meanings and differences among these terms. Including a clearer explanation or referencing works that classify Arabian Peninsula social groups would enhance clarity such as Freer & Al-Sharekh (2021) elaborate similar themes and give detailed explanation to readers about tribal or familial concepts.
“The book focuses mainly on formal political processes such as elections, and symbolic representation but political power is not limited to these institutions – informal dynamics of power and its impact on overall power relations may be crucial parts of this story.”
The book focuses mainly on formal political processes such as elections, and symbolic representation but political power is not limited to these institutions – informal dynamics of power and its impact on overall power relations may be crucial parts of this story. For instance, the distribution of ministries in Qatar is significant parameter to see whether tribalism taken into consideration or not. Parliamentary processes or municipality elections offer strong unit of analysis, but the deeper sources of power such as how ministries or other crucial positions in government are allocated among tribes deserve further discussion because these positions are not symbolic.
Despite these criticisms, this book is a very strong and challenging work. It is one of the pioneering contributions in its field, offering a historical trajectory that helps readers understand the current positions of Gulf states, ruling families, and their international policies. It mounts an important challenge to the modernization and nation-building literature by demonstrating the revival and persistence of tribalism. Aside from some limitations, it is an excellent contribution and provides a valuable foundation for further studies.
References
– Beblawi, H., & Luciani, G. (Eds.). (1990). The rentier state. Routledge.
– Freer, C., & Al-Sharekh, A. (2021). Tribalism and political power in the Gulf. Bloomsbury.
– Herb, M. (2016). All in the family. SUNY Press.
– Mahmood, S. (2006). Feminist theory, agency, and the liberatory subject. Temenos, 42(1).
Abdullah Eren is a PhD researcher and Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at the University of Essex, UK. He holds a BA in Sociology from Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey, and is an alumnus of the ISAR Center, an institution providing specialised education in Islamic and social sciences. His research interests include military sociology, security and defence policy in the Middle East, the Gulf states, and the Eastern Mediterranean. His doctoral research examines the contemporary revival of military conscription and its broader social and political dimensions.