ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on issues of development in the six Gulf Arab states: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, and Oman. In recent years, research and writing on the Gulf have developed in new and exciting directions. Critical interdisciplinary work has begun to challenge standard methodological approaches, in particular a dominant paradigm known as rentier state theory (RST). Scholars are also revisiting how the history of the Gulf is studied, bringing attention to the enduring legacies of British colonialism and the continuities that exist between the ‘pre’ and ‘post’ oil eras. Surveying these debates, the chapter begins by exploring the question of oil and the international recirculation of the Gulf’s financial surpluses. The chapter then turns to issues of class and state formation in the Gulf, including the crucial questions of migration, citizenship, and labour. The chapter concludes by asking what these social, economic, and political features of the Gulf might mean for processes of development across the wider Middle East.
