Vol. 4 · No. 2 · 2000

Dawn Chatty

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The Bedouin of Arabia, the nomadic and now mainly seasonally mobile livestock herders of the peninsula have, over the last fifty years, adapted to and adopted many modern technological innovations. These adaptations can be regarded as attempts to keep up with, if not survive, the rapid transformations of the second half of the twentieth century. Despite such efforts, the Bedouin in much of Arabia have been unable to keep up with the rapidity of change and have ended up, at the close of the twentieth century, economically and politically marginalised, unable to accumulate the power needed to represent their community interests within the State. Basic government improvements in health, education and infrastructure for Bedouin communities have lagged far behind that for most other populations in the State meaning that, as individuals and as groups, the Bedouin remain a greatly disadvantaged population. The Sultanate of Oman, however, presents a different picture: political and economic change has been such that the nomadic pastoral communities have been able to access government services. The increasingly less nomadic, but nonetheless mobile, pastoralists of Oman have begun to accumulate the power needed to represent their interests and to ensure that opportunities for wage labour and trade remain open to individual members of the community.