Ian Simpson: “Pearls along a Shoreline: Neoliberalism, Tribes and Heritage in the Persian Gulf”

Ian Simpson (PhD Student, Department of Anthropology, Stanford University) “Pearls along a Shoreline: Neoliberalism, Tribes and Heritage in the Persian Gulf” ISLAM PAST & PRESENT WORKSHOP SERIES All talks will take place in Stanford Archaeology Center, Seminar Room. Despite the decline of the pearling industry in the Persian Gulf in the 1930s, pearling and pearls maintain social, if not economic, significances in local contexts. For instance, state heritage discourses cling to pearling (rather than oil) as the founding basis of economic prosperity in the Persian Gulf, emphasizing that the region was one of the largest and most renowned producers of natural pearls. Examining the natural and cultural attributions given to pearls, this talk will first track their circulation among kin groups connected with economic and political power. I will focus on modern family-owned jewellery businesses that were historically involved in pearl trading - families which have managed to retain their social and economic position despite the disappearance of local pearl fishing. A process occurs in which the renown and historic identity of natural Gulf pearls and pearl merchants are bestowed on imported cultured pearls that are sourced from the global pearl market to be sold locally. While the jewellery industry and state-sanctioned cultural heritage draws on certain values of Gulf pearling identity, the historical importance of transnationalism in Gulf pearling is an aspect that is downplayed because of unease with current migrant-labor conditions and concerns about guarding citizenship. There is also an ambivalence and conflict about what to do with recently abandoned pearl-fishing settlements and seascapes which are under pressure from property development, illustrated by sites in Qatar and the UAE. Thus I try to illustrate how pearls and people are caught up in macro-structural power of capitalism and globalization.