Saudi Arabia’s Urban Revolution

Oil Urbanization and Protest in al-Ahsaʾ/ the Eastern Province

Claudia Ghrawi (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

268 Seiten

2025
Brill (Verlag)
978-90-04-73550-7 (ISBN)

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This book discusses oil urbanization and protest under the impact of petro-capitalism. It focuses on the emergent oil conurbation as theatre and object of contention by a variety of actors, including traditional local elites, oil workers and subaltern classes.

This book discusses popular contention in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province (until 1952 the governorate of al-Ahsaʾ) under the aegis of petro-capitalism. The notion of urban revolution takes on a double meaning, namely the rapid urbanisation which broke with the region’s urban past and destroyed the oasis environment and merchant economy, and the types of resistance and rebellious fervour that were triggered by the concentration of labour and industrial production in the new urban centres. The book uses archival sources from the United States, Great Britain, and Saudi Arabia as well as accounts of Saudi oil workers, activists, and other contemporaries.

Claudia Ghrawi is an independent researcher who has worked at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin (2011-2021). She studied history in Potsdam and Berlin and is co-editor of Claiming and Making Muslim Worlds. Religion and Society in the Context of the Global (De Gruyter 2021).

Acknowledgments

Note on Transliteration

List of Figures and Tables

1 Introduction

1 The Power of Oil

2 Oil Histories

3 A Word on Sources

4 Outline of the Book

2 Society and Politics before Oil

1 The Two Oases

2 The New Saudi State

3 Some Thoughts on Sectarianism

3 The Emergent Oil Conurbation

1 Labor Camps, Boom Towns and Hinterlands

2 Conflicts Over Land and Expropriation

3 Changing Social Geographies

4 Control and Surveillance

4 Popular Politics on the Oil Frontier

1 The Saudi Labor Struggle

2 Contested Frontiers – a Politicization of Space

5 Urban Revolution

1 Ambivalent Urbanities

2 Urban Struggle and Repression

6 Fractured Cities

1 The Old Polities

2 A New Urban Reality under the Aegis of Petro-Capitalism

3 How the Urban Revolution Unfolds

4 Alliances between Labor and Urban Classes

5 Social Malaise

6 Sectarianization as Counter-Revolution

7 Rural Rebellion

Epilogue

Appendix

Bibliography

Index

Erscheinungsdatum	26.09.2025
Reihe/Serie	Social, Economic and Political Studies of the Middle East and Asia ; 136
Verlagsort	Leiden
Sprache	englisch
Maße	155 x 235 mm
Gewicht	571 g
Themenwelt	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-10	90-04-73550-X / 900473550X
ISBN-13	978-90-04-73550-7 / 9789004735507
Zustand	Neuware