Historic Oman to the United Arab Emirates, from 600 A.D. to 1995: An analysis of the making, remaking and unmaking of a socio-discursive formation in the Arabian Gulf

This study is a socio-discursive analysis of Arabian Gulf society, with emphasis on what is now the contemporary U.A.E. It covers four periods: the Islamic period (600 A.D.-1500 A.D.); the transformational period (1500-1820); the colonial period (1820-1971) and the contemporary period (1971-1995). Socio-discursive analysis is used in treating each of these periods. This means that the emphasis is on the social formation, or the political, economic and cultural structure of Arabian Gulf society that arose during each period, and on the discourses, or the socially constructed power relations arising in Arabian Gulf society during each period. As Arabian Gulf society is analyzed for each period, Arabian Gulf society is examined both in relation to previous periods and in terms of how it interacted with the global system, or other societies, surrounding it during each period. However, this study avoids treating the periods and stages through which Arabian Gulf society passed in terms of the pre-oil/ post oil, or the pre-colonial/post-colonial model. Instead, it analyzes Arabian Gulf society during each period in relation to its own construction, in relation to continuities and discontinuities from previous periods, and in relation to other societies within the global system of each period with which Arabian Gulf society interacted. This study assesses how each period's socio-discursive formation has been able to transform and reproduce itself, and how the contemporary socio-discursive formation has done so in relation to its predecessors.