Feeling the Pulse of the Street: Socio-Cultural Demands and Regime Responsiveness in the Arab Monarchies of the Gulf
type: CreativeWork
description: In August 2021, statues of Aphrodite were removed from a Burberry shop by the Kuwaiti government after it received multiple complaints from citizens about the statue offending cultural and religious sensitivities. In December 2016, the Qatari government cancelled National Day events after local developments left the national population undesirous of celebrating. And in June 2011, after residents of Al Ain, Oman complained to a newspaper that nothing was being done to stop a goat herder using a local cemetery, an act they felt violated its sanctity, the municipality forced him to relocate. These examples prompt an important question: why, in response to citizen complaints, did the Kuwaiti, Qatari and Omani governments take action? While this question may seem simple, current Gulf and Middle Eastern scholarship and, indeed, wider political science struggle to provide an adequate answer because of their inattention to the place of popular socio-cultural contestation in state-society relations. Where the literature does investigate the socio-cultural, it does so either from: A state-centric perspective, which examines how regimes undertake nation-building projects and promote local cultural heritage through, for example, new museums, national days, and cultural villages; or, A citizen-centric perspective, examining how people enact, protect and propagate identities and heritages in their own lives and through their own actions away from the state, for example, through art, literature and fashion. This thesis adopts an alternative approach, however, by examining the nexus at which state and society meet - regime responsiveness to popular socio-cultural demands. Using Kuwait, Qatar and Oman as case studies, this thesis demonstrates both that Gulf citizens frequently make socio-cultural demands on their governments with an expectation of a positive response, and that in certain circumstances the Gulf monarchies implement or change socio-cultural policies to satisfy the dem…
abstract: In August 2021, statues of Aphrodite were removed from a Burberry shop by the Kuwaiti government after it received multiple complaints from citizens about the statue offending cultural and religious sensitivities. In December 2016, the Qatari government cancelled National Day events after local developments left the national population undesirous of celebrating. And in June 2011, after residents of Al Ain, Oman complained to a newspaper that nothing was being done to stop a goat herder using a local cemetery, an act they felt violated its sanctity, the municipality forced him to relocate. These examples prompt an important question: why, in response to citizen complaints, did the Kuwaiti, Qatari and Omani governments take action? While this question may seem simple, current Gulf and Middle Eastern scholarship and, indeed, wider political science struggle to provide an adequate answer because of their inattention to the place of popular socio-cultural contestation in state-society relations. Where the literature does investigate the socio-cultural, it does so either from: A state-centric perspective, which examines how regimes undertake nation-building projects and promote local cultural heritage through, for example, new museums, national days, and cultural villages; or, A citizen-centric perspective, examining how people enact, protect and propagate identities and heritages in their own lives and through their own actions away from the state, for example, through art, literature and fashion. This thesis adopts an alternative approach, however, by examining the nexus at which state and society meet - regime responsiveness to popular socio-cultural demands. Using Kuwait, Qatar and Oman as case studies, this thesis demonstrates both that Gulf citizens frequently make socio-cultural demands on their governments with an expectation of a positive response, and that in certain circumstances the Gulf monarchies implement or change socio-cultural policies to satisfy the dem…
author: Allison, Tony
language: en_AU
date published: 2026
date modified: 2026-07-24T00:54:38Z
provider: Australian National University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Australian National University

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: https://hdl.handle.net/1885/733811223