This essay is based on the presentation given at the Home/Making Symposium, Concordia University, Montreal on May 12, 2023, with editing suggestions from Elaine Cheasley Paterson and Molly-Claire Gillett
Introduction
Most of the writing about architecture and design on the Arabian Peninsula focuses on either ancient, archeological finds or huge modern edifices. This essay concentrates on the domestic sphere, specifically common practices in decorating a middle-class family house in Dhofar, the southernmost of the 11 governorates in Oman. Dhofar is 99,300 square km and the southern border is the coast of the Indian Ocean. Yemen lies to the west, Saudi Arabia is north, and the other Omani governates are to the east/ north-east.
This paper begins with an overview of how houses are designed, then gives a description of the types of rooms. There is then is a discussion of who decorates the house and how decorations are decided/ agreed on. At the end are several bibliographies on various aspects related to housing on the Arabian Peninsula and links to images of houses.
My Positionality
I lived in Salalah for 19 years, teaching at a small, local university. I taught education, literature and cultural studies classes; my research circled around the question: how do middle-class, Arab, Muslim, tribal, Dhofari people live day to day?
I started research on houses in the summer of 2019 as I was working on my book about foodways. I had to write about how kitchens are situated, designed, decorated and used in Dhofari houses and I found this work so interesting, I started taking notes and asking questions about other rooms in houses, as well as collecting photographs. When the food book was sent to the publisher, I began working on houses full-time by finding and reading texts about houses on the Arabian Peninsula. Between 2020-22, I did targeted interviews and went back through my research notes to compile charts about which houses I had been in and for what reason.
The information presented here is the result of academic research and interviews, as well as simply being friends with Dhofaris and thus being invited by women into their homes for social visits, birthday parties, wedding parties and condolence visits. There are Dhofari houses I have been in more than 30 times and “social visits” include Eid visits, iftar meals at sunset during Ramadan, to meet a new baby, a formal dinner party and to be given a tour of a new house.
With the men in my research group I have been on almost 400 picnics, more than 30 camping trips and over a dozen boat trips. As it is less common for an American woman to be friends with a Dhofari man, I have only been in a few of their houses, for a meal with other men, but eight of the men have sent me photos of their houses and explained the layout.
I also have been invited to see several houses that were being built by Dhofari friends and snuck into more than a dozen houses that were being built in the neighborhoods where I have lived. In addition, I lived in two Dhofari-designed houses within Dhofari neighborhoods for a total of 17 of the 19 years I lived in Oman.
There are no texts which deal with interior design/ room layout in the Dhofar region. As houses are predominately a space for family, the way people know what the inside of other houses look like are ads for rental houses and photos taken on special occasions which circulate through social media. So while I was focusing on houses, I spent a lot of time reviewing what Dhofari friends were posting about houses.
I would like to make clear two limitations of my knowledge. First, all the houses I was in/ saw photos of belonged to middle-class families. Extreme poverty is very rare among Omanis; the government gives subsidies for electricity, water and gas as well as monthly pensions for people in need. There is no homelessness, healthcare is free or with a minimal fee and students with high grades are given free university tuition. I do not know anyone with food scarcity or who could not afford the basics of shelter, clothing, transportation and the ability to host friends, celebrate religious days, hold weddings, etc. On the other side of the scale, I don’t know anyone with extreme wealth, e.g. multiple houses, several cars, ability to pay thousands of dollars for non-essentials such as vacations or jewelry.
Secondly, the houses I describe are Dhofari-designed and decorated. Most of the houses I visited belonged to people who were part of the hakli (Gibali-speaking) tribes. I visited many houses which are rented by expats, but have only included descriptions of the layout if the structures were Dhofari-designed. I have not included descriptions of interior decoration of houses which were lived in by expats or non-Dhofari Omanis.
I have aggregated the evidence I collected into the data presented below, with caveats about personal choices.
Finally, I would also like to be clear that I was visiting houses for many years before I approached design as an academic topic. When I decided to start research on houses, I let my Dhofari friends and informants know this. I asked permission to use descriptions of their houses and did over a dozen interviews. I asked them to please send me photos of their houses (as this was during Covid) if they wanted to. Thus for several houses, I first saw the space as a guest, then as a researcher, then again as a regular guest.
Designing a house
The Dhofar region is considered BWh [arid-desert-hot] in the Köppen-Geiger climate classification. But is often described in non-scientific texts, especially tourist brochures, as tropical or subtropical. From March to the beginning of June is the hot season, with temperatures often in the high 90s with high humidity. In the middle of June, temperatures drop as clouds move in for the South-East khareef (monsoon) season; there is frequent drizzle, occasional rain storms and high seas until the start of September. In the middle of September, the clouds disperse, leaving a green landscape and pleasantly warm weather with blue skies. By December, the grasses have died off, leaving the hills brown and people prepare for the frequent, strong, sand-bearing, north winds from December to March.
This weather pattern means that all houses built in the last 40 years are made of cement block which keeps the wind and drizzle out, but are not energy effective. The houses need air conditioners constantly working to keep cool and the metal and wood window frames and door frames often let in sand and rain during storms.
Dhofari houses are designed by the people who will live in the space so the rooms are built to the families’ specifications.[1] Given than most Dhofaris live in multi-generational clusters of thirty or more family members, this means consulting the wishes of many people. This also means that many people can help contribute. For example a sister might give cash from her salary for building supplies while a brother who does not have a job can do the work of finding the right equipment to rent, bringing workers to and from the job site, supervising, being on hand to answer questions, etc.
The decision to build does not rest solely with the men of a family. Mothers, wives, sisters and daughters are part of decisions relating to the home. Men may not say publicly that they are making decisions based on their relatives’ wishes, but it is expected that the women’s opinions will be consulted. I have heard complaints from Dhofari women that, for example, the kitchen is not well-designed, but among my informants in the hakli group of tribes and in the hakli houses I have visited and seen photos of, the women always had a say in how the house was set up. Several hakli men I know simply handed over the room location and decoration to the women.
Rooms
The most important rooms are the majlis, usually explained as the male or male visitor’s sitting room, and the salle, usually explained as the women’s or family’s sitting room.[2] As the majlis is used more frequently for guests, it is often more showy with a larger TV, elaborate curtains, wall hangings, and gypsum decorations on the ceiling. Care is taken that the two rooms do not have the same color scheme but the spaces are not color-coded for gender in Western terms. For example, the majlis might be light purple or peach while the salle is dark blue or brown.
I think of Dhofari houses as the antithesis of expensive Victorian-era houses in the United Kingdom with many little rooms which each have a separate purpose: the morning room, the seamstress’ room, billiard room, the music room, the library, etc.. In Dhofari houses, there are usually only four types of rooms: sitting room, bedroom, kitchen and bathroom and the first three types are furnished with the same pattern of furniture next to the walls and empty space in the middle.
Another way to think about types of rooms is to consider that many middle- and upper-class North American homes have rooms for work, relaxation and/ or exercise such as a home office, craft room, gym, yoga studio, etc. which might be the former bedroom of a child who has moved out. There is a standard trope of a child going to college and his/ her room ‘disappears’ as it has been entirely repurposed.
In Dhofar, while the people who stay in a room might change, the purpose seldom does. For example, three brothers might share a bedroom on the ground floor. In time, an additional story is added and two boys move to an upstairs bedroom while the original room is redone for the oldest boy and his bride. After this couple have a few children, they move to a suite on the first floor and the bedroom is refurbished for a grandparent who cannot manage to walk upstairs.
Foyer/ main hallway
Looking at the front of a Dhofar house, there are almost always two doors. The smaller/ less decorated door leads to the majlis, explained below, and the larger door opens into a large, wide hallway. This hallway, which runs from the front to the back of most houses, is widest by the front door. There is usually no furniture in the hallway except perhaps a tall, rectangular side table pushed against the wall near the door with a mirror above it or nearby.
This is a staging-area that is used only for a few moments of time several times during the day but is necessary given common Dhofar behaviors. A large foyer is needed because there are usually more than five small children living in one house and they can use the space as a play area in hot weather; also, children love to run together to the door when someone knocks (or they are sent to see who it is).
As children like to move in groups, they often stand near the door to look at a person arriving or leaving; for example, younger children often gather in the entrance way when older children are going to school. With a large foyer, there is space for the mom, the children who are going to school and young children to all wait inside where it is cool. Or the space can be used by a group of sisters waiting for a car to take them shopping or visiting relatives so they don’t have to stand outside the house in view of the neighborhood.
In some large, recently-built houses, there is no hallway but a circular, open area with a salle through a wide-open archway, the door to the majlis, the door to the kitchen and the steps leading to upper floors. This space is sometimes big enough for chairs/ a sofa and is used as a play area for children, a pass-through/ staging area and an intermediate/ indeterminate location.
For example, a strange man would come to the majlis through the outside door, but a new bride’s brother who wants to visit might not want to ask her to come to the majlis (where there are other men) and might not be comfortable in the salle (where there are women he doesn’t know and is not related to) but could stand with her in this open space to chat.
Majlis
In some cultures on the Arabian Peninsula, the majlis is strictly male territory but in Dhofar among the hakli tribes, a woman, for example, might sit in the majlis and speak with her uncles or male cousins who have come to visit. Further, the space might be used for children to have lessons with a tutor in the early evening. Women use it to entertain female guests or for wedding parties, during which women usually take over the whole house while men are entertained outside. A husband might sit in the majlis in his wife’s parent’s house as a place to talk to his wife when she is temporarily living at her parent’s house if she is caring for a sick member of her family.
When I visit female Dhofari friends at home, where we sit depends on several factors. If their husbands and/ or brothers are not at home, we sit in the majlis. When I visited one male Dhofari friend, we sat in the majlis, but I went to the salle to eat lunch with the women.
The majlis is usually decorated with sofas or cushions on a low wooden frame surrounding the sides of the room, a few coffee tables, a TV, and sometimes decorations such as photos of the Sultan Qaboos or Sultan Haitham. There is an AC and the walls are always painted to coordinate with the curtains and sofas. Often there is a rug in the (empty) center of the room; the color scheme might be shades of beige, pastels or dark shades of brown, blue, or green.
Majlis always have two doors; the first leads to the outside, so that guests may come and go without moving through or seeing other spaces in the interior of the house. The second door leads to the main hallway of the house and is always closed, if not locked. There is often an open sink, to wash hands before and after eating, and a small toilet/ shower room.
In a very small house, sometimes the majlis is completely repurposed by becoming a bedroom. Then the salle functions as majlis. In one house which was arranged like this, when I was sitting with women and a man entered to meet with the husband, the women and I went to sit in the couple’s bedroom.
There can also be a majlis in the house as well as another majlis in a separate building. This is not common in Dhofar and is usually a marker of a religiously conservative and/ or wealthy family. The outside majlis is usually located close to the wall (sometimes with a doorway cut into the wall) so that visitors do not go anywhere near the house. This majlis often has a large sitting room and bathroom with sometimes a small kitchen (with its own entrance) and/ or a bedroom. When I was with some of the men in the research group visiting a man we knew, we sat in the separate majlis and lunch was brought to us, carried by our friend.
Salle
In the same way that the majlis can be used by women in Dhofar, the salle can be used by men who are not in the family, for example older men who are close, long-term neighbors might sit with women in the salle if there are no men in the house to entertain them.
The salle is always at the front of the house, close to but usually not visible from the front door. The room has three sides, often with windows to the front and side of the house, the side to the front hallway completely open, with a blank back wall. Like the majlis, it is usually decorated with sofas or cushions on a low wooden frame surrounding the sides of the room, a few coffee tables, a TV, and decorative elements such as vases. The bathroom area might be attached to the salle or further down the main hallway of the house.
Although the norm in Dhofar is for a house to have one majlis and one salle, some larger houses have a series of rooms, i.e., a formal salle at the front of the house and then a (usually less formal) salle further inside. Sometimes also a few sofas are placed upstairs in an open area at the head of the stairs (out of sight of the front door) for family members only.
A salle can be a place for siblings to watch horror movies at 1am, somber when the house is in mourning and women come to pay condolence visits, joyful for a graduation celebration, intimate when sisters come to visit and share all the family news, loud when the children are playing, and welcoming for neighbors and guests. The salle is the center of a Dhofari house.
This could be seen as valid for a North American family as well, i.e., someone in Wisconsin might say that the family room is the heart of the house, yet North Americans may also use different home spaces. They might gather in the kitchen or dining room for a meal; go to the den, basement or spare bedroom to watch TV; sit in the living room for formal visits and send children to their bedrooms to play with toys. All of those activities would take place in the salle of a Dhofari house.
Kitchen/ Dining Room
The kitchen is located to the side or back of the house; in newer houses it has its own entrance used by family members if there is parking near that entrance, as well as those who don’t live in the house, for example people bringing in supplies such as bags of groceries and/ or jugs of water for water dispensers. Like bathrooms, kitchens have tiled walls and floors, usually in shades of grey, beige or brown. There are florescent tube lights, a ceiling fan and an extractor fan, but usually not AC. If there is a window (most often over the sink) it has opaque glass.
Often there are long, high counters along one or two walls, with shelving underneath and cupboards above. The below-counter cupboards, as well as the stove, fridge and washing machine are set slightly above floor-level on platforms so that the floor can be cleaned by mopping/ sluicing. Usually the gas canisters for the stoves are located outside the house, next to the kitchen door, with a small hole drilled in the cement wall to bring the gas pipe to the stove/ oven.
As it is common to have thirty or more people (from different generations) in one house, kitchens are big enough to make large meals. Like most rooms, everything is placed around the sides of the room. Sometimes there is a table, but often you can find an empty area in the middle of the room that is five feet square or larger. This is so a lot of women can work together for parties and also because some cooking is done on the floor. For example, large pots of meat are sometimes cooked on gas rings set on the floor because it is easier to stir from a standing position than trying to reach into a pot set on the stovetop. Some kinds of bread are cooked using small gas burners set on the floor.
Kitchens are utilitarian; pretty trays might be leaned against the back-splash or there might be a vase to hold wooden spoons, etc., but kitchens are seldom decorated or set up as welcoming/ comforting spaces in which to sit and relax.
As soon as you walk in, it’s easy to visually orient yourself; often the cupboards have glass fronts so you can see inside them. Most families will have items for hosting in sight and easy to reach: several sets of teacups and saucers, tea and coffee pots, carafes, glass bowls or plates. There are usually several trays as almost all food, drinks and eating utensils, plates, cups, etc. are moved on trays, not carried by hand
Larger and newer houses may have small suites for each married son. This will usually consist of a bedroom with an attached bathroom and a sitting room which might have a galley kitchen with a small sink and microwave so they can make tea and simple meals for themselves. Thus, there will be one large kitchen for a house, with perhaps a few smaller mini-kitchens for couples.
Bedrooms
If the house has one floor, bedrooms are at the back of the house, usually behind the kitchen. In a two- or three-story house there are often one or two bedrooms on the ground floor for older and senior relatives with the rest of the bedrooms on the upper floors.
There is usually a bed with matching nightstands and large wardrobes, as well as a sofa or padded chairs and coffee table. Sometimes there is a desk and chair if the inhabitant is school-age. I have never seen a built-in closet; everything is stored on or in shelving units or cupboards.
In addition to the overhead, usually fluorescent, lights, bedrooms often have a sconce (wall light) with a low-watt or colored bulb so, if the room is shared, one person can move around and/ or parents can look in on children without turning on the bright overhead lights. There is always a fan and AC.
It is very common for the upper stories to have a series of suites, meaning a door on the main corridor which leads to a small foyer space with three or four doors: two rooms and a bathroom, perhaps a storage room. This configuration can be easily changed as needed. For example, the two rooms might be used as a bedroom and a sitting room for a newly married couple or single older relative; a shared bedroom and a study/ play room for several children; or two shared bedrooms with a variety of configurations such as younger children in one room with an older child in the other or a married couple in one room, children in the other, etc. If the second room is used as a sitting room, there is often a small kitchen area.
If a man has more than one wife in the same house, each suite will be considered as belonging to the wife and the husband will move between the suites. If his second wife is in another house, he will move between houses as, in Islam, a man should spend equal time with each wife. In old-age or in times of sickness, an older man might sleep alone in what was a room for guests.
Sometimes a Dhofari woman will stay in her parent’s house and her husband will move in with her. This doesn’t happen often; usually it occurs when the husband works close to his wife’s family house, if she is the only daughter or her mother has no sons living with her.
Bathrooms
For some houses built in the mountains in the 1980s and before, the bathroom can be a small, separate building. In this case it is a low ceilinged, tiled space with a toilet, sink, shower and washing machine.
Since the 1980s, bathrooms are within the house, usually rectangular and built with the narrow end on an outside wall or lightwell to allow for the window and extractor fan. They usually have tiled walls and floors with an open design (e.g. no interior walls such as a low partition to screen the toilet) with a pedestal sink or sink on a counter with empty space beneath and a shelving unit next to the wall. The sink is always closest to the door.
The shower area usually does not have a curtain and is marked off with a slightly lowered floor with a drain. Some have tiled steps along one side. Bathtubs are rare; if there is one, it usually has a seat. The steps and seat are for the ritual washing before Muslim prayers during which face, hands and feet must be cleaned.
Bathrooms in the family/ private area of the house are often plainly decorated and are built open-plan for one person to use at a time, unless it is a parent helping a small child. Some North American bathrooms are set up with the toilet half-hidden behind a low wall and shower curtains so that two people might use the room at the same time but I have not heard of that in Dhofar. For unmarried inhabitants, if there is not a bathroom attached to the bedroom, there is one nearby.
The guest bathroom that is attached to or near the majlis and salle often has a space with one or more sinks, then there is an inner door which leads to a small room with a toilet, shower and sink so that guests might wash their hands while the toilet/ shower room is in use. These rooms are usually nicely appointed with fancy faucets and attractive tiles.
Who decorates
Given that most Dhofaris live in multi-generational clusters of thirty or more family members, interior design means consulting the wishes of many people. Usually older family members have a more decisive say but different people can be in control of different areas. For example, the senior woman might be in charge of decorating the kitchen, the senior man might choose the colors of the main sitting room, while a sister might design the room for her brother and his new wife. If there is one person in the family who is known for their flair, they might be given responsibility for the salle, main hallway and majlis. Adults usually decorate their own bedrooms.
Some Dhofari women are frustrated that they don’t have a say in designing and decorating but this is often a function of age and tribe. In the hakli families I know mothers, sisters, wives and/or daughters are always consulted or had design control over the parts of houses they lived in and used daily, i.e., salle, kitchen and bedroom.
However, unmarried women in their teens or early twenties might not be consulted, except for the color choices in their rooms, because of age and the expectation that they will not stay in the house for long given that almost all women move to their husband’s house when married.
When a man is getting married, he is either given a new room or his room is completely redone: re-painted, new furniture, new lighting and often a new dropped or decorated ceiling. This room, out of respect for whoever decorated it, should not be changed for several years, so a woman might not have power over her living space until she is in her late twenties or thirties, but from then on, the decorating is made in consultation with her or left entirely up to her.
Decorating a house
Houses are decorated when they are new or when the family moves in. Usually, a family will bring all new furniture as the old furniture is given away. Refurbishment, new furniture and/ or painting, usually takes place before the two Eids (Muslim holidays) and/ or before a wedding.
Generating Ideas
Getting design ideas for the exterior of houses is simple, one only has to drive around and see what other people have done. But there are not many chances to get design ideas about interior spaces beyond a few, large furnishing stores that have opened in the past few years. Dhofaris will visit relative’s houses and might stay in hotels or vacation rentals, but there are limited opportunities to see a wide variety of interior styles.
Dhofaris might post photos of a newly decorated room on social media and people who manage rental houses might post photos of interiors but there is, for example, no Omani equivalent of Zillow or Redfin with photos of the inside of millions of homes.
On the other hand, there are many carpenters, iron-mongers and tailors so that Dhofaris are not limited to furniture and curtains they find in stores. As with designing the house, people can take a photo or hand-drawn sketch to a workshop and have beds, wardrobes, sofas, chairs, drapes, etc. made to their specifications.
Handmade objects
In North America, people often design their houses with personal items which reflect their travels, accomplishments and interests. But in a majlis or salle, there are usually few or no signs of the individuals who live in the house such as photos, books, souvenirs or knickknacks. The window might be decorated with five kinds of fabric, tassels, pull-backs, swags and ruffles, but you won’t be able to tell very much about the family.
While many Dhofaris have an interest in design per se, it is usually manifested in the design of clothes and making of perfumes, not in creating objects that would be on display such as quilts, crocheted afghans/ throws, needlepoint cushions and paintings. The one handmade object which is found is a majmar, a small clay, footed bowl which is used to hold a lit piece of charcoal with a piece of frankincense. The burning tree sap produces clouds of perfumed smoke which create a lovely fragrance in the house.
Conclusion
Most Dhofaris follow the principle of “people, not things.” When visiting a hakli at home, the house itself is never the focus of the conversation. If it’s a new house, there will be compliments and a short discussion about where and how items were bought but that is only a few moments but the important most element of owning a house is to create a comfortable place for one’s family to gather.
Risse – bibliographies, essays and images for Houseways
main webpages on research about houses:
references list: Selected references related to Houseways in Southern Oman, Oct. 2022
images:
Risse – publications – books
This book outlines strategies for current or soon-to-be business professionals, government employees, anthropologists, researchers and teachers to communicate, study and work effectively on the Arabian Peninsula. Using first-person accounts, as well as scholarly research from the fields of anthropology, history, literature, political science and travel writing, this text gives clear advice so long- and short-term visitors can create successful interactions with people from Arabian Peninsula societies. By discussing how the practicalities of work and research intersect with cultural norms, this book fills the gap between guides aimed at the casual tourists and academic texts on narrowly defined topics.
This book explains how modern, middle-class houses are sited, designed, built, decorated and lived in with an emphasis on how room-usage is determined by age, gender, time of day and the presence of guests. Dhofari houses are also compared to houses in other Arabian Peninsula countries and positioned within the theoretical frameworks of the “Islamic city” and the “Islamic house.”
This book examines the objects, practices and beliefs relating to producing, obtaining, cooking, eating and disposing of food in the Dhofar region of southern Oman. The chapters consider food preparation, who makes what kind of food, and how and when meals are eaten. Dr. Risse connects what is consumed to themes such as land usage, gender, age, purity, privacy and generosity. She also discusses how foodways are related to issues of morality, safety, religion, and tourism. The volume is a result of fourteen years of collecting data and insights in Dhofar, covering topics such as catching fish, herding camels, growing fruits, designing kitchens, cooking meals and setting leftovers out for animals.
This book explores how, in cultures which prize conformity, there is latitude for people who choose not to conform either for a short time and how the chances to assert independence change over time. The main focus is on how the traits of self-control and self-respect are manifested in the everyday actions of several groups of tribes whose first language is Gibali (Jebbali/ Jebali, also referred to as Shari/ Shahri), a non-written, Modern South Arabian language. Although no work can express the totality of a culture, this text describes how Gibalis are constantly shifting between preserving autonomy and signaling membership in family, tribal and national communities.
Risse – publications
“Lifeways of Traditional Fishermen in Dhofar, Oman,” in Fish as Food: Lifestyle and a Sustainable Future. Helen Macbeth, ed. International Commission on the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition – Alimenta Populorum series. 2024: 155-170. https://archive.org/details/macbeth-young-and-roberts-ed-fish-as-food-anthropological-and-cross-disciplinary
“An Ethnographic Discussion of Fairy Tales from Southern Oman,” Fabula: Zeitschrift für Erzählforschung / Journal of Folktale Studies / Revue d’Etudes sur le Conte Populaire 60.3-4 (De Gruyter, Berlin) 2019: 318–335.
“Understanding Communication in Southern Oman,” North Dakota Quarterly 84.1 (Special Issue on Transnationalism) 2017: 174-184.
“Generosity, Gift-giving and Gift-avoiding in Southern Oman,” Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 45 (Oxford: Archeopress) 2015: 289-296.
“Cultural Refraction: Using Travel Writing, Anthropology and Fiction to Understand the Culture of Southern Arabia,” Interdisciplinary Humanities 26:1, 2009: 63-78.
Risse – conference presentations
“Conducting Research on the Arabian Peninsula: Creating Effective Interactions,” Middle East Studies Association Annual Conference. Upcoming, Nov. 11-15, 2024.
“Windguru and Other Gurus: Fishing off the Coast of Dhofar, Oman,” Navigating the Transcultural Indian Ocean: Texts and Practices in Contact Conference, sponsored by the Rutter Project. June 5, 2024
“Crafting a Home: Interior Home Design in Southern Oman.” Home/Making Symposium, Concordia University. Montreal. May 12, 2023. https://www.concordia.ca/finearts/events/home-making.html
“Good Governance and Open Spaces: How the State and Residents Negotiate the Use of Government Land in Dhofar, Oman.” AnthroState Talks for the European Association of Social Anthropologists Network on Anthropologies of the State. May 4, 2023. https://easaonline.org/networks/anthrostate/talks
“Private Lives in Public Spaces: Perceptions of Space-Usage in Southern Oman.” Middle East Studies Association annual conference. Montreal, Quebec. December 2, 2021.
“The Costs and Benefits of Fishing in Southern Oman.” Fish as Food: Lifestyle and a Sustainable Future, annual conference of the International Commission on the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition, hosted at the University of Liverpool. Sept. 1, 2021.
“Ethical Eating in Southern Oman.” Just Food, virtual conference of the Association for the Study of Food and Society; Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society; Canadian Association for Food Studies and the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition, hosted by the Culinary Institute of America and New York University. June 12, 2021.
“Foodways in Southern Oman,” for the session “Uncovering Truths, Building Responsibility in A Pandemic: Insights from Emerging Monographs at the Nexus of Culture, Food, and Agriculture.” American Anthropological Association. Nov. 9, 2020.
with Keye Tersmette. “Ghurba at Home – Views from Oman.” The Arab World as Ghurba: Citizenship, Identity and Belonging in Literature and Popular Culture, University of Warwick. June 21, 2019.
“Female, Femininity, Male and Masculinity in the Gibali-speaking Tribes of Southern Oman.” The Gulf Research Conference, Cambridge University. August 2, 2017.
“‘I Came to You for Good’: An Ethnographic Discussion of Folk Tales from Southern Oman.” Third Joint Seminar of The Folklore Society and the Royal Anthropological Institute, Royal Anthropological Institute, London. Oct. 26, 2017.
“‘Words Mean Nothing’: Fluency in Language and Fluency in Culture in Anthropology Fieldwork in Southern Oman.” British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, University of Wales. July 15, 2016.
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[1] To help pay for the building costs, the house might be rented out for a few years before the owner moves in. Also, if a family moves into a new house, they may give their previous one to a relative.
[2] Salle is pronounced ‘sall-la,’ not as the French, ‘sall.’
Practicalities: Managing a Short Research Trip to the Arabian Peninsula
working bibliography for Researching and Working on the Arabian Peninsula: Creating Effective Interactions – M. Risse – https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-96-5326-3
[photo: Dhofar, Jebel Qara in khareef, by M.A. Al Awaid]
authors in bold have additional publications which are not included in this list
Abdul-Jabbar, Wisam. 2024. “Towards a ‘Study at Home’ Education in the Arab Gulf Region: Reterritorializing the ‘Study Abroad’ Mode.” Journal of Gulf Studies 1.1: 21-39.
Abu-Lughod, Lila. 2016/1986. Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.
—. 2016. “The Cross-publics of Ethnography: The Case of ‘the Muslimwoman’.” American Ethnologist 43.4: 595-608.
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Marielle Risse
Books
Houseways in Southern Oman. Routledge, 2023
This book explains how modern, middle-class houses are sited, designed, built, decorated and lived in with an emphasis on how room-usage is determined by age, gender, time of day and the presence of guests. Combing ethnography and architectural studies, the author draws on over sixteen years of living in the Dhofar region to analyze the cultural perceptions regarding houses and how residential areas fit within the urban areas in southern Oman. Dhofari houses are also compared to houses in other Arabian Peninsula countries and positioned within the theoretical frameworks of the “Islamic city” and the “Islamic house.”
Foodways in Southern Oman. Routledge, 2021
This book examines the objects, practices and beliefs relating to producing, obtaining, cooking, eating and disposing of food in the Dhofar region of southern Oman. The chapters consider food preparation, who makes what kind of food, and how and when meals are eaten. Foodways connects what is consumed to themes such as land usage, gender, age, purity, privacy and generosity. It also discusses how foodways are related to issues of morality, safety, religion, and tourism. The volume is a result of fourteen years of collecting data and insights in Dhofar, covering topics such as catching fish, herding camels, growing fruits, designing kitchens, cooking meals and setting leftovers out for animals.
Community and Autonomy in Southern Oman. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019
This book explores how, in cultures which prize conformity, there is latitude for people who choose not to conform either for a short time and how the chances to assert independence change over time. The main focus is on how the traits of self-control and self-respect are manifested in the everyday actions of several groups of tribes whose first language is Gibali (Jebbali/ Jebali, also referred to as Shari/ Shahri), a non-written, Modern South Arabian language. Although no work can express the totality of a culture, this text describes how Gibalis are constantly shifting between preserving autonomy and signaling membership in family, tribal and national communities.
Publications – scholarly articles and chapters – anthropology/ culture/ travel writing
“Lifeways of Traditional Fishermen in Dhofar, Oman,” in Fish as Food: Lifestyle and a Sustainable Future. Helen Macbeth, ed. International Commission on the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition – Alimenta Populorum series. 2024: 155-170. https://archive.org/details/macbeth-young-and-roberts-ed-fish-as-food-anthropological-and-cross-disciplinary
“An Ethnographic Discussion of Fairy Tales from Southern Oman,” Fabula: Zeitschrift für Erzählforschung / Journal of Folktale Studies / Revue d’Etudes sur le Conte Populaire 60.3-4 (De Gruyter, Berlin) 2019: 318–335.
“Understanding Communication in Southern Oman,” North Dakota Quarterly 84.1 (Special Issue on Transnationalism) 2017: 174-184.
“Generosity, Gift-giving and Gift-avoiding in Southern Oman,” Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 45 (Oxford: Archeopress) 2015: 289-296.
“Understanding the Impact of Culture on the TESOL Classroom: An Outsider’s Perspective,” TESOL Arabia’s Perspective 18.2, 2011: 15-19.
“Cultural Refraction: Using Travel Writing, Anthropology and Fiction to Understand the Culture of Southern Arabia,” Interdisciplinary Humanities 26:1, 2009: 63-78.
Publications – scholarly articles and chapters – literature/ pedagogy
“Using Cultural Understandings to Improve Teaching in Oman,” in Unpackaging Theory and Practice in Educational Sciences. Abdülkadir Kabadayı, ed. Lyon: Livre de Lyon. 2023: 129-141. https://www.livredelyon.com/educational-sciences/unpackaging-theory-practice-in-educational-sciences_595.
“Teaching Paired Middle Eastern and Western Literary Texts,” in Advancing English Language Education. Wafa Zoghbor and Thomaï Alexiou, eds. Dubai: Zayed University Press, 2020: 221-223.
“Teaching Literature on the Arabian Peninsula,” Anthropology News website, October 7 2019. http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2019/10/07/teaching-literature-on-the-arabian-peninsula/
“Selecting the Right Literary Texts for Middle Eastern Students: Challenges and Reactions,” in Focusing on EFL Reading: Theory and Practice. Rahma Al-Mahrooqi, ed. Muscat: Sultan Qaboos University Press, 2014: 165-188.
“Frosty Cliffs, Frosty Aunt and Sandy Beaches: Teaching Aurora Leigh in Oman,” Ariel: A Review of International English Literature 43.4, 2013: 123-145.
“Who Are You Calling ‘Coddled’?: ‘Cloistered Virtue’ and Choosing Literary Texts in a Middle Eastern University,” Pedagogy 13.3, 2013: 415-427.
“Do You know a Creon?: Making Literature Relevant in an Omani University,” in Literature Teaching in EFL/ESL: New Perspectives. Rahma Al-Mahrooqi, ed. Muscat: Sultan Qaboos University Press, 2012: 302-314.
“Reader’s Guide” for the English version of Khadija bint Alawi al-Thahab’s My Grandmother’s Stories: Folk Tales from Dhofar (Translated by W. Scott Chahanovich, U.S. Fulbright Scholar at Dhofar University, 2009-2010). Washington, D.C: Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center, 2012: 17-23.
Conference Presentations – anthropology/ culture/ travel writing
“Conducting Research on the Arabian Peninsula: Creating Effective Interactions,” Middle East Studies Association Annual Conference. Nov. 14, 2024.
“Windguru and Other Gurus: Fishing off the Coast of Dhofar, Oman,” Navigating the Transcultural Indian Ocean: Texts and Practices in Contact Conference, sponsored by the Rutter Project. June 5, 2024
“Crafting a Home: Interior Home Design in Southern Oman.” Home/Making Symposium, Concordia University. Montreal. May 12, 2023. https://www.concordia.ca/finearts/events/home-making.html
“Good Governance and Open Spaces: How the State and Residents Negotiate the Use of Government Land in Dhofar, Oman.” AnthroState Talks for the European Association of Social Anthropologists Network on Anthropologies of the State. May 4, 2023. https://easaonline.org/networks/anthrostate/talks
“Explorations in the North-west Indian Ocean: The Research Journeys of the ‘Palinurus’ along the Omani Coast in the mid-1800s.” Research Expeditions to India and the Indian Ocean in Early Modern and Modern Times, sponsored by the German Maritime Museum / Leibniz Institute for Maritime History. Nov. 3, 2022.
“Private Lives in Public Spaces: Perceptions of Space-Usage in Southern Oman.” Middle East Studies Association annual conference. Montreal, Quebec. December 2, 2021.
“The Costs and Benefits of Fishing in Southern Oman.” Fish as Food: Lifestyle and a Sustainable Future, annual conference of the International Commission on the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition, hosted at the University of Liverpool. Sept. 1, 2021.
“Ethical Eating in Southern Oman.” Just Food, virtual conference of the Association for the Study of Food and Society; Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society; Canadian Association for Food Studies and the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition, hosted by the Culinary Institute of America and New York University. June 12, 2021.
“Foodways in Southern Oman,” for the session “Uncovering Truths, Building Responsibility in A Pandemic: Insights from Emerging Monographs at the Nexus of Culture, Food, and Agriculture.” American Anthropological Association. Nov. 9, 2020.
with Keye Tersmette. “Ghurba at Home – Views from Oman.” The Arab World as Ghurba: Citizenship, Identity and Belonging in Literature and Popular Culture, University of Warwick. June 21, 2019.
“Accounts from the Journeys of the Brig ‘Palinurus’ Along the Dhofar Coast in the mid-1800s.” Maritime Exploration and Memory Conference, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, England. Sept. 15, 2018.
“Recent Views on Oman.” British Society for Middle East Studies, University of Edinburgh. July 6, 2017.
“Female, Femininity, Male and Masculinity in the Gibali-speaking Tribes of Southern Oman.” The Gulf Research Conference, Cambridge University. August 2, 2017.
“‘Words Mean Nothing’: Fluency in Language and Fluency in Culture in Anthropology Fieldwork in Southern Oman.” British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, University of Wales. July 15, 2016.
“’Why Would I Hurt a Woman?’: Respectful/ Respecting Women in Southern Oman.” Middle East Studies Association Conference, Denver. Nov. 21, 2015.
“Generosity, Gift-giving and Gift-avoiding in Southern Oman.” British Foundation for the Study of Arabia’s Seminar for Arabian Studies, The British Museum, London. July 27, 2014.
“‘I Do Not Need the Night’: The Gibali Conception of Self-Respect in Southern Oman.” Middle East Studies Association Conference, New Orleans. October 12, 2013.
“They Came, They Saw, They Fought, They Compromised, They Left: The Foreign Military Presence in the Dhofar War (Oman, 1965-1975).” Royal Geographical Society Annual Conference; Edinburgh. July 3, 2012.
“Waiting for [both] the Barbarians”: Tourism in the Dhofar Region of Oman.” Traditions and Transformations: Tourism, Heritage and Cultural Change in the Middle East and North Africa Region; Amman, Jordan. April 6, 2009.
Conference presentations – literature/ pedagogy
“Finding the Right Texts for Teaching Literature, Cultures, and Empathy in the Middle East.” American Comparative Literature Association Conference. April 9, 2021.
“‘I Came to You for Good’: An Ethnographic Discussion of Folk Tales from Southern Oman.” Third Joint Seminar of The Folklore Society and the Royal Anthropological Institute, Royal Anthropological Institute, London. Oct. 26, 2017.
“Antigone, Alcestis, Deanira and Philoketes visit the Empty Quarter: The Reception of Greek Drama on the Arabian Peninsula.” American Comparative Literature Association Conference, University of Utrecht. July 8, 2017.
“‘A Man Was Always Catching Fish’: Fairy Tale Elements in the Ali al-Mahri/ Johnstone/ Rubin Gibali Texts from Southern Oman.” American Comparative Literature Association Conference, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. March 18, 2016.
“Analyzing Arabic Teaching to Improve English Teaching.” TESOL Arabia Annual Conference; Dubai. March 14, 2014.
“John Clare Looks Good in a Dishdash: Linking John Clare to Middle Eastern Poetry.” Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Chicago. January 7, 2011.
“How Can You Hate the Sun?: Translating Western Conceptions of Nature.” Humanities Education and Research Association, Chicago, Illinois. April 9, 2009.
“Do You Have Anything on Cowboys?: Creating a University Library in the Middle East,” with Chris Sugnet. Southwest/Texas Popular Culture Association Conference, Albuquerque. Feb., 2000.
Creative Non-fiction
“Yemen with Yul,” in Emanations 11. Independently published, 2024: 417-429.
“Questions About Food and Ethics,” in Emanations: When a Planet was a Planet. Brookline, MA: International Authors, 2021: 403-408
“Ok Kilito, I Won’t Speak Your Language: Reflections after Reading Thou Shalt Not Speak My Language,” in Octo-Emanations. Carter Kaplan, ed. Brookline, MA: International Authors, 2020: 233-236.
“Predator Anthropologists, Anthropologist Predators: Anthropological Metaphors in Popular Movies,” Open Anthropology Research Repository. Aug. 25, 2020. https://www.openanthroresearch.org/doi/abs/10.1002/oarr.10000333.1
“What’s in Your Bag?” Anthropology News. American Anthropological Association. Oct. 30, 2019. http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2019/07/23/whats-in-your-bag-2019-edition/
“Living Expat,” in Emanations: Chorus Pleiades. Carter Kaplan, ed. Brookline, MA: International Authors, 2018: 308-318.
“Throwing Children in the Street: Explaining Western Culture to Omanis,” in Emanations: Third Eye. Carter Kaplan, ed. Brookline, MA: International Authors, 2013: 265-274.
“To Learn Arabic, You Have to Talk the Talk,” The Chronicle of Higher Education. May 31, 2012. http://chronicle.com/article/To-Learn-Arabic-You-Have-to/132057
“Bringing Theory Home in Oman,” The Chronicle of Higher Education. July 10, 2011: B24. http://chronicle.com/article/Bringing-Theory-Home-in-Oman/128139/
Practicalities of Moving to the Arabian Peninsula: Dealing with Loss
Ethnography – Navigating Shaking Hands on the Arabian Peninsula
Leaving Oman: Grief, Grandeur, Museums and Bringley’s ‘All the Beauty in The World’
(photo by Hussein Baomar)
My chapter “Lifeways of Traditional Fishermen” has just been published. Because of editorial delays the information presented is now out-of-date as the interviews were conducted at the beginning of the Covid epidemic and the prices have changed. But the manner of and results from fishing remain the same.
“Lifeways of Traditional Fishermen in Dhofar, Oman,” in Fish as Food: Lifestyle and a Sustainable Future. Helen Macbeth, ed. International Commission on the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition – Alimenta Populorum series. 2024: 155-170. https://archive.org/details/macbeth-young-and-roberts-ed-fish-as-food-anthropological-and-cross-disciplinary
abstract
Although most of Oman’s gross national product is derived from oil and gas products, fishing still plays an important role in providing jobs which create a cash-producing export and help ensure food security. However, there is little current information about the lives of traditional fishermen. This chapter presents the results of extensive interviews conducted in 2020-2021 to explain the daily lives and customs of fishermen in the governorate of Dhofar, in southern Oman. The chapter focuses on two important questions about fishing economics: how much does it cost to catch fish and how does that expense create a social benefit for fishermen, regardless of the money earned from the catch?
My research concentrates on the hakli/ qara groups of tribes who speak Gibali/ Jibbali (also known as Shari/ Śḥeret, a non-written, Modern South Arabian language) as their first language. I have been looking at the theme of generosity, including sharing food, for more than ten years and in this chapter I explain how much a typical day and season of fishing costs a fisherman, as well as how giving away part of every catch creates a benefit that is more than monetary. Using interviews and personal experiences, I explain how the cash outlay for gas, nets, bait, etc. is transformed into social, in addition to economic, capital for fishermen.
Now that my time in Oman is ending, I am thinking about when I first came here. My friendships began in the usual ways: meeting colleagues, accepting an invitation to dinner, deciding to take an evening class, accepting a lunch invitation, deciding to teach a summer class and deciding to take language lessons. These small decisions had many consequences, but not life-changing consequences. If I had not accepted that dinner invitation, there would have been another one, or if I had not met that person, I would have met someone else.
Starting my unexpected foray into ethnography was quite different; my academic work hinged on two insignificant, random acts: reading a footnote and cutting vegetables. Thanks to those two actions, I published three books and several articles, gave many presentations and tried to help newcomers with orientation sessions. I also have a whole set of life skills I will probably never use again from making a fire with damp wood to driving up steep inclines to sitting patiently for hours to speaking colloquial Arabic.
The story of the footnote starts on the first day of khareef (the monsoon season) in June 2006. A few Omani men (who were part of a larger group of Omanis and expats that I was part of) sent me a message saying they were in town and wanted to meet. I invited them to my house, sad that the heavy mist would mean that we would have to sit indoors instead of enjoying my nice garden.
But when they arrived, they picked up the trays of water, soda, chips and cookies and brought everything outside. “Khareef!” they proclaimed joyfully as we sat amidst the mosquitos and drizzle. “This is not fun” I thought, but their enjoyment of the humidity and light rain made me realize that there was a lot about them I did not understand. And what field of study helps people comprehend foreign behavior? Anthropology.
So I asked my dissertation professor, Michael Beard, if he had any recommendations for basic anthropology texts to help understand the cultures I was now living amongst. By chance he had a friend and colleague who taught anthropology and was retiring; Gretchen Lang kindly boxed up 20 texts and sent them to me.
I read the books throughout the fall. They were interesting but so few of the texts’ examples dealt with the Arabian Peninsula, I felt that they didn’t pertain to my life. Then I read a footnote that referenced Wikan’s work in Oman as an example of a particular phenomenon. And it was off to the races.
I read all of Wikan, then started reading the works in her bibliographies, leaving my home provinces of literature, pedagogy and travel writing for archeology, architecture, cultural studies, folklore, history, Islamic studies, political science and tourism, then farther afield to animal husbandry, city planning, house construction, fishing, ornithology, use of public spaces and zoology. I ended up writing about Dhofar/ Oman in terms architecture, comparative literature, cultural acquisition, ethnography, fairytales, foodways, gift/ gift theory, houseways and urban studies.
The second act happened in August, 2013. By this time I was part of two research groups with Dhofai men, which were centered around A and B (see note). B’s group included C and some of his friends. In August, C invited me for a picnic dinner with only his friends. We all had a good time and one week later, C invited me again. As we settled down on the mat, he handed me a plate of vegetables and said, “cut these.” I took the metal plate and knife and got to work. From that night until covid hit and we stopped meeting, cutting vegetables was my job. After the covid restrictions waned, the guys started to bring prepared food from home and my job changed to bringing the soda and water.
Years later, when we were talking about how we all met and how long we had all known each other, I mentioned those first beach picnics and C said that his asking me to cut vegetables was a test as he wanted to understand my personality. If I had refused, then he never would have invited me again.
His words were not surprising because by then I knew how the men always teased and tested friends, but it struck me that so much had rested on one small act.
All the men in A’s group spoke at least some English and had traveled; most of the men in B’s group spoke some English and had met other Western people. Also, when I hung out with A’s and B’s groups, we usually met in spaces where they would not see anyone they knew.
But in his group, C was the only one who spoke English so I generally spoke only Arabic. In over 300 picnics with C’s groups I had the chance to improve my Arabic, meet dozens of men, go camping and ask endless research questions. We celebrated weddings and births, mourned deaths, ate a lot of (too spicy!) meals and discussed all sorts of geo-political upheavals.
And, since none of the men had ever socialized/ eaten a meal with a Western, female Christian we went through a lot of steep learning curves together. This June I handed a package of cookies to one man and he replied by saying “Duck?” in Arabic. I thought that was odd, so I repeated “Duck?” then thought, he is making a joke by asking if I am giving him duck food! So I said, “Duck” again and began to quack.
C, who was scrolling through his phone, said, “Open” in English. Oops! I misunderstood; the man said “Open?” in the local slang of Hindi, not “Duck?” in Arabic – two words which sound somewhat similar. And by “Open?” he meant: should I open the cookies now or save them for my children? So I said, “for your children” in Arabic. No one commented on the fact that I had enthusiastically quacked for 10 seconds. This is what you have to put up with when you have friends from different cultures.
Reflecting on over eleven years of meetings, I brought up the subject of how we started to work together with C a few weeks ago. I asked him if he remembered the first time he invited me to a picnic, then the second invitation and “did you ask me to cut vegetables?”
He said, “yes,” then asked me why I was thinking of that subject.
The conversation in Arabic went something like this:
me: Now that I am going, I am thinking of the beginning, and I remember you told me once that when you asked me to cut vegetables it was a test. And I am thinking that it was a chance, an important chance, and if I had said no, then we would not be friends.
C: It is important to test people you don’t know. If they will just sit and never work, there will be trouble later. So it is better to see how a person is at the beginning.
me: I understand, but I am thinking if I was in a bad mood or sick and said “no,” maybe I would have missed knowing you and these men. It was just that one chance. You said you would have not invited me again.
C: I would have invited you once or twice more. You have to give space for a person, maybe they are tired or maybe they are saying “no” because they don’t know what to do. If you had said, “no” I would have given you another chance, because maybe you would have said, “I don’t know how.”
I nodded and we changed the subject. The next day I decided to check my recollections by looking at my excel spreadsheet where I have information (date, place, names, what we ate, what we talked about etc.) on all picnics and camping. For August 11, 2013 I have an entry about meeting at ‘the place’ with C and four of his (now my) friends. For August 17, there is another entry about meeting at the same place with the same people and after the summary for what we had for dinner is the note “me cutting vegetables.”
It’s nice to see my research life validates two of my constant talking points with other researchers: document everything and you may never know the good thing you do that will open doors for you.
Note: For the research guys, their friend groups are never conceived of as being “centered” on one person. I use this terminology as it reflects my reality. In each group there was one man I met first, who introduced me to the other men and ran interference in terms of me asking questions (what should I wear?) and other men asking questions about me.
Antigone and Ismene – Making Difficult Choices
Conference presentation about conducting research on the Arabian Peninsula
Reflections on Ethnographic Work: The Grasshopper
Reflections on Ethnographic Research: Claiming Knowledge and Shifting Perceptions
Reflections on Ethnographic Research: What is Missing and What Changes
One aspect of talking to expats is that if I intimated that something they did might not be safe in my opinion, my advice often had to be negated by them pointing out my actions were unsafe, particularly me going camping with only Omani men. This makes me think of how to define “safe” in terms of my life in Oman. On one hand, I camped with men I had known for years and I had usually met members of their family: brothers, cousins, parents, wives and children. On the other hand, I frequently felt insecure and lost. I was constantly telling myself to trust them, trust the process and that, if nothing else, I was going to have a useful learning experience. “Useful,” not necessarily fun or easy.
One Wednesday night, I got phone call at 9pm. It was hard to hear with the sound of wind and waves in the background. A group of the research guys were camping at a beach far from town and they had decided I should come. I wrote out what they wanted me to bring (water, more water and wood), hung up and started prepping. I had to proctor an exam at 8am, which meant getting up, going to work, stopping at store on the way home while I was still in regular clothes, putting everything in the car, buying drive-through McDonalds for lunch, then lots of driving.
I got to the beach around 4pm. We talked, then they decided that they would take me for a short boat ride. This was not “How are you feeling?,” “Would you like a boat ride?” or “What have you eaten today, as in what are the chances you will throw up if we go out in the boat?’ No, it was: “Now you will go in the boat.”
So, I changed into boat clothes and out we went. It was very nice; the sea was calm and it was lovely to see the shore and hills… but wait. We appeared to be stopping. They were maneuvering a large barrel full of fishing line with many 4 inch hooks imbedded in soft foam to the edge of the boat. Oh, it was a curtain met, a long, strong fishing line to which plastic laundry soap bottles are tied at intervals so it didn’t sink and every 6 feet of so, a short line going down with a hook which they baited with a sardine (like the “icicles” type of Christmas lights which have a long horizontal line with short verticals going down).
Hooking sardines and tossing the line out took over an hour. The sun sank lower, it got colder, they didn’t let me help so I watched the ocean, shore and seabirds trying not to think about being cold. Then we drove off in the direction opposite camp. I wanted to say that I wanted to go back, but I stayed quiet. If we were driving over to the other side of the bay, they must have a reason.
As the guy who was steering the boat turned off the motor, I realized we were going to a stop next to a fish-trap buoy. He had driven to one of his “boxes” (fish traps) which was very close to shore, meaning it probably had lobsters and since they know I like lobsters, he was deliberately going to the box most likely to have them for my sake (they think lobsters are so-so and would much rather have fish). And, yes, the trap had 8 large lobsters but no fish.
We drove back to shore and moved our camp to up to the top of small headland with a small bay to one side and the large bay (about 2km across) on the other. There were no lights visible so the sky was full of stars. They made a dinner of white rice, a kind of chutney made from various cooked vegetables and lobster taken out of the shell and cooked directly on rocks heated by coals.
As the rice was cooking, one of the guys took a small shark they had caught earlier in the day and prepped it for drying. He cut it open, took out the guts, then cut the meat into long, thin strips which are all attached to the back of the head so it looked sort of like an octopus (or a small alien from the movie Alien). This is tossed over a rope to dry in the sun for a few days, then eaten. I saw the man cutting the shark, but hadn’t realized he had had put it on a rope that was tied between my truck and their truck.
After dinner, I glanced over at my truck and saw something white, taller than a cat and odd-shaped underneath it. This thing was less than 10 feet away from me so I called the name of the guy who was sitting closest to me, about 6 feet away.
He did not respond, so I said his name again. He said, “fox.” I said fearfully, “that is not a fox” as I have never seen a fox come so close to humans and the thing seemed to be square-shaped. I heard him shift, then his phone light shone on exactly the place I was looking. It was a fox whose hair for some reason glowed white in the darkness and it was standing at an angle so I could see the side of its body and hindquarters, with its tail was wrapped around its body so it looked like a square.
The point of this story is that when I turned back around, I realized that I had been blocking his view. The research guy heard me say his name, saw me looking back towards my truck and said, “fox” without knowing why I was saying his name or what I was looking at. He had instantly put together from how my head was turned that I was looking at the area below where the drying shark meat was hung and the anxiety in my voice meant there was something I could not understand – so the answer had to be “fox.” When I said, “that is not a fox,” he moved over and picked up his phone to show me that, with no visual or sound cues, he knew what it was better than me, the person who was staring at the fox.
So sometimes I felt cold, confused, tired or worried and yet, at the same time, always secure.
Reflections on Ethnographic Work – Trying to Make Sense of Words and Actions
Two poems for courage: “Against Hesitation” by Charles Rafferty and “Thalassa” by Louis MacNeice
Presentation – “Windguru and Other Gurus: Fishing off the Coast of Dhofar, Oman”
Predator Anthropologists, Anthropologist Predators: Anthropological Metaphors in Popular Movies
photo by Hussein Baomar
Overview
By chance in the past few weeks I have read several articles about labor and migration on the Arabian Peninsula such as
There are lots of numbers, data sets, opinions and ideas in these texts – but no sense of what it’s like to interact with other expat workers. There is ethnographic work with and about them, but nothing about the writer’s personal economic exchanges: how to hire, discuss and pay wages, decide work load, etc. This isn’t a fault of the articles which have different objectives, but reading these texts made me reflect on my connections to other expat workers, how I manage them and how they manage me.
This essay will talk about my decision to hire help, later essays will talk in detail about some of the people who have worked for me and the types of adjustments that we both make. [The information about wages and dates are from monthly lists of expenses that I have kept since I moved to Dhofar. 1 Omani Riyal is about $2.40; there are 1000 baisa in one Riyal so the 500 baisa bill is worth about $1.20.]
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(photo by S. B.)
It is difficult to write about hiring people without sounding complacent, a point that was brought home when I read an ethnographic text about Western expats on the Arabian Peninsula who hired nannies and housekeepers. The author vilified the employers as spoiled, lazy, racist and delusional. The author had obviously never hired anyone to do work for them and had a healthy dislike of those who did.
Writing back against that attitude is not easy. I know I could do all the housework myself but I choose to hire someone to clean my house. This can be seen as indolent but I think it’s more helpful to situate one’s positionality when being critical. “I would never…” is very different than “I have never been in the position to…”.
My decision to hire help is predicated on several lifestyle differences such as how housing designs here allow bugs and sand to enter, the monsoon season and the size of houses.
When I visit my mom in the summer it always takes me a few days to tone down my bug vigilance. “MOM, CRUMBS!!!” I yell on the first morning when I walk into the kitchen and see evidence of sliced bread on the countertop. I quickly rinse the bread board, wipe down the bread knife and inspect the countertops for any speck of bread. Luckily, she has great tolerance for this and within a day or two I mellow out as I remember that a few crumbs on the counter sink will not induce hordes of critters to invade her kitchen.
When I get back to my own kitchen in Dhofar, I return to my watchful ways because I live in a cement block house where ants and cockroaches come out from cracks in the tiling and up from the sink and floor drains. They even crawl out though the electric outlet openings. Twice I have had mice scurry up to my first-floor apartment through the washing machine outtake pipe. There are lizards on the walls, bees flying in through the AC vents and spiders galore.
When I talk about the people I have hired to help me by cleaning my house, I know it can seem like I am lazy. I moved to the Middle East with bona fides of self-sufficiency. When I was a child, I had daily chores and once I lived on my own, I have doing all the cleaning myself. But life is different herein Oman.
For example, I have done my own laundry since I was in 6th grade and it’s simple: put everything in washing machine, then the dryer, fold and put away. But there are no dryers here and my top-loading washer has two bins. You put the clothes in the left-hand side bin, add soap, let it fill with water and turn the knob to agitate the water. Then you let the water drain and lift the sopping wet fabric up and place it in the right-hand bin which spins the water out. Then you hang everything on drying racks, wait for it all to dry, fold and put away. Going to a friend’s house and using her washer/dryer combo in the States makes me ask, “What do you do with all your spare time? Put your clothes in the machine, come back an hour later to find everything clean and dry? It’s a dream!”
Also, my friends’ houses are not in close proximity to deserts. “Sweeping the floor” means one thing in my mom’s house and something very different after a 3-day, 40 kph sandstorm in my Dhofari house where you can see daylight between the window frames and house walls. It’s a joy to sweep in my mom’s house; it takes about 5 minutes and you end up with a tiny pile to discard. After a sandstorm here I need to sweep the entire house and dust everything which takes hours. And there are usually more than 5 sandstorms every winter.
In addition, from June until the end of August, Dhofar has a monsoon season with drizzle and fog on most days. As this is also the time of annual vacation, if there is no one to clean the floors, turn fans on and off and keep watch, mold can grow. I brought a friend home from the airport when she returned to start the school year and when we walked into her living room, her sofas were coated with black mold. When I came back from vacation this summer and opened my car door, the front seats and dashboard cover were green with mold, there were even threads of mold hanging down from steering wheel.
When I lived in Madison, Boston, Minneapolis, and Grand Forks, I had a studio or one-bedroom apartment which was easy to take care of. In Salalah, apartment buildings are usually exclusively expat and I want to live in Omani neighborhoods, which means renting a small house or a floor of a house which are built for extended families. My “small” apartment has a salle, majlis, kitchen, 3 small bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. Friends who have rented houses with 4 or 5 bedrooms just shut the doors of the rooms they don’t use but I would rather hire someone to clean all the spaces.
A related point is that it’s better for me to have a slightly larger place to live as there are fewer “third spaces” here. In the month of Ramadan, for example, cafes are closed until after sunset. In the monsoon season, roads can be so crowded, it’s better to stay home. During Covid lockdowns and curfews I was really grateful I could turn the 3rd bedroom into a work space for on-line teaching. I also like that the woman who cleans my house has a key and can feed the cats if I am away for the weekend camping.
In addition to the calculations of spending time (washing clothes, sweeping, getting rid of mold) vs. spending money (paying someone to clean my house), there is the aspect of how easy it is to get help from someone who wants to work.
When I owned a car in the States, I would wash it now and then but here it is a government regulation that cars must be clean. So I could either spend ten minutes every morning wiping the sand off my truck or I hire someone to do it for me. In most parking lots of large stores, there are expat men who do this work for a small fee. Where I work, there are two men who come every morning to the covered parking area. You can pay them 500 baisa for each cleaning if you want it now and then or 10 Riyal for the month.
There are many such opportunities and I usually much hire and/ or tip everyone both because it makes my life easier and because I have been in need in my own life. I spent years without health insurance because I couldn’t afford it. I have always worked since I was in high school but I had to take out student loans for college. If my older brother had not kindly settled my student loans, it would have taken me at least a decade to pay them off. After the 1997 Red River flood, I ate Red Cross meals for weeks. Having received so much help in my life, I feel I need to be generous.
Every week, I give a money to the people who clean the building where I work and I tip the men who bag groceries. Although it’s not habitually done here, I always tip wait-staff and delivery men. When expat government employees are cutting weeds near my house, I hand out cash and bottles of water. If it’s safe to pull to the side of the road and I have cash in dashboard cubby hole, I give cash to the men who sweep streets. If I have time when there is a team of expat men gardening along the roadside near my house, I will buy cookies, as well as liters of water and soda, and hand them over.
Before I became an Associate Professor, I worked in sandwich shops, restaurants, libraries, a bookstore and an antique store and I can push my own grocery cart. But if I am walking in the parking lot of a grocery store and a man in the jumpsuit uniform of a cleaner walks towards me with his hands extended, I know he is asking to bring my cart to my car for a 1 Riyal tip. So I step away from my cart and let him push – a move that can be seen as being lazy/ exploitative or giving someone a chance to earn extra money.
I recently read two ethnographic texts about the Arabian Peninsula and was troubled that neither author articulated how their perceptions of the people of who they were studying (or themselves) were changed by their months in-country and years of writing.
The learning curve was perfectly flat – i.e. my conception of the project was X and this is what I found – without any mention of what might have been misunderstood or missed. I am not sure if the years of writing smoothed out the research process so that it appears seamless, or perhaps the researchers did not want to publicize or dwell on lacunas. But I don’t think any anthropological work can ever be complete or finished and it’s better to be clear about what changed/ what’s not there/ what questions weren’t asked, etc. I also think it’s important for authors to reflect on how they themselves have changed.
I wrote a book about food (Foodways in Southern Oman, 2021) and weeks after it was at the publisher I realized I had not been clear on the issue of Dhofaris not talking while they are eating. I was having dinner with someone who would say half a sentence, take a bit of food, chew carefully, then finish the sentence. This meant no one else could talk and, at the end of the meal, this person left one bite on their plate and talked on for 20 minutes as no one could leave the table until everyone was done eating. As I was thinking about their actions, I realized that this kind of conversation-hijacking doesn’t happen in Oman.
I had missed a whole series of interrelated food/ dialog practices and understandings. In Dhofar, there is an understanding that being upset can be physically harmful; for example, children (who can’t yet control themselves) should not be allowed to cry. Another example of this belief is that no one should say or do anything distressing while eating. There should be either no conversation or light/ polite/ general talk.
If someone wants to talk, they can – but side conversations are fine and people are concentrating on the food. When a person is done, they will usually stand up to wash their hands. If someone has something important to say, they will not do it during a meal.
In my book, I didn’t include the insight that a whole series of actions/ tropes which are normal in American culture, such as loud arguments at the dinner table (perhaps with screaming, throwing things or stomping away) are very rare in Dhofar. As is someone saying something dramatic, then calmly drinking or eating while everyone else is in an uproar. Eating should be done in a peaceful atmosphere and the Dhofari way to show fury at the dinner table is usually to not eat and not talk.
And as I read the two ethnographic texts about the Arabian Peninsula and wondered at how the authors didn’t change, I questioned how I would make that articulation about myself. How have I been changed by years of working with one group of tribes in Dhofar?
I would say that I am more patient, although this is not the perception of the men in my research group. And I have adapted the belief from the Dhofari people I know that you should frame learning that a friend is untrustworthy as positive. Even if someone you have been friends with for years betrays you, you should be glad that you finally know understand that person’s character.
I realized I had internalized this belief when I watched the last episode of the long-running series Endeavor. The main character (Morse) and his supervisor/ mentor (Thursday) are investigating the death of drug-dealer and trying to find the body of a long-dead boy. Their work is complicated by the impending marriage of Thursday’s daughter, Joan, to another policeman. Thursday is warned that if he continues to search for the culprits, Joan might be put in danger and Morse is torn between finally telling Joan that he loves her and staying stoic.
At the end, Morse figures out that Thursday is connected to a murder; his long-trusted and respected mentor is revealed as a self-serving hypocritic. Quoting Harry IV, Morse breaks with Thursday as Prince Hal did with Falstaff and, in their final scene, rejects Thursday’s attempt to regain their previous friendship when Thursday refers to Morse by his first name. As it’s clear that they will never speak to each other again, it’s a startling end to nine seasons of watching their camaraderie grow and deepen.
My reaction to Morse’s brush off of Thursday’s last effort at reconciliation was thinking, “oh, it’s a good thing that Morse never told Joan he loved her as there is obviously a flaw in the character of that family and who knows when it would have shown up in Joan.” Then I thought, “that’s the POV of the people I do research with.”
It was an interesting moment as I realized that I should have felt sorry for Morse [he lost his mentor and the woman he loved!] but I have adopted another POV over the years of living in Dhofar. When I have gone to a Dhofari friend with a tale of “this person did this awful thing,” I have gotten two reactions. One is, “That’s good! Now you know how that person is” and “Why you are upset when you already knew that person was bad?”
I joked in my first book about how there is no bad news – it’s like living in Voltaire’s Candide without the skepticism. Leibniz and his phrase “the best of all possible worlds” would be at home in the tribes I work with as the Dhofaris in my research group strive to find a positive outcome from negative events.
The framework is that all knowledge is beneficial. If someone revels themselves to be dishonest, this is a good thing because now you can avoid them. Perhaps you might have continued to be friends with them for years without knowing their true personality, unwittingly trusting a misleading and deceitful person. Or perhaps they might have tried to trick you or someone else out of large sums of money or something important. So you should celebrate the fact that you have learned that they are not good. You should not focus on the pain of this betrayal, but on the happiness of avoiding any further (perhaps worse) treachery.
Reflections on Ethnographic Research – Getting it Wrong
Reflections on Ethnographic Research: (Not) Asking Questions
Ethnography: Conversations about Men/ Masculinity, part 1
Reflections on Ethnographic Research: Changes within Cultures
I have been looking at collections of ethnographic essays and several essays show in up most or all texts: Bohannan’s “Shakespeare in the Bush” (1966), Lee’s “Eating Christmas in the Kalahari” (1969) and Miner’s “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” (1956). There is another essay that is often included, Geertz’s “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight” (1972). In looking over these 4 essays, I wondered, why are these the most widely anthologized?
What they have in common is that in Bohannan’s, Lee’s and Geertz’s essays, the first-person authors are revealed to be completely wrong in an amusing and memorable fashion. In Miner’s essay it is the reader who learns that they were wrong as the essay is set up to de-familiarize American culture (Nacirema = American).
In Bohannan’s, Lee’s and Geertz’s texts, the first-person narrator starts out facing a common field-work task and ends up being the one out of control. Bohannan wants to explain Hamlet to a group of interlocutors she has been gathering stories from, but she is taught the true meaning of the play. Lee wants to get a fat bull to give his interlocutors a feast but, although he gets the largest animal he can find, he is accused of being stingy. Geertz and his wife are trying to integrate into their new research environment, a small village in Bali. They succeed not by their academic reasonings but because they run away when police raid a cock fight. Fleeing in terror and ending up in a stranger’s courtyard pretending to drink tea is what gets them included in village life.
Bohannan, Lee and Geertz confidently set out on their paths, get linguistically/ culturally/ physically lost but end up with valuable insights that help them understand the cultures they are studying. To me, they are popular for the same reason The Wizard of Oz, Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland and the new Super Mario Brother’s Movie are popular. It’s fun to watch someone else live through a tornado/ drop down a rabbit hole/ fall into a tunnel, arrive in a foreign county and slowly learn the ropes.
And I think there is something hopeful and reassuring in hundreds of anthropology professors assigning these essays over the last 50-odd years. Reading them is a reminder that things can go very wrong in fieldwork and still turn out ok. They are anthropological equivalent of the Tolkien quote:
It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going, because they were holding on to something.
Brief, non-life-threatening panic is useful, like the concept that nightmares aren’t telling you something terrible will happen, but simply trying to get your attention. And it’s helpful that all three essays highlight the randomness of the panic in that the three narrators felt confident in what they were doing until, suddenly, they were lost. That’s exactly how ethnographic research goes; the panic can come at any time.
A few months ago, I brought food for a meeting with the research guys. I usually bring the firewood and drinks as I don’t cook, but there is one restaurant in town that is trusted so I try to bring dinner now and then.
Like Lee, I was happy to know that I had managed to bring good food for people who have been helping me with my research for years. I unpacked the hummus, salads, bread and plates of grilled meats with pride. One of the men motioned me to put one of the plates of meat back into a cooler, saying “there is enough.” I knew this was in keeping with their normal practice of not setting all the food out as untouched food could be given to other people if not needed. It’s better to have everyone eat from one or two plates which are picked clean than have three or four half-eaten plates with the leftovers thrown out for animals.
We started to eat and, after a while I noticed that the plates were emptying faster than I had anticipated. Soon, there were only scraps left on table. I looked at the man I know best (X) and he glared at me. I felt horrible. I had failed. I had not provided enough food. I was miserly. What a stupid mistake to not bring enough! I glanced again at X and he glared at me again. I was a huge disappointment! I wanted to sink into the sand.
Then I reflected – wait, these guys do not care about food! I wrote an entire book about these men do not care about food. They can handle being hungry for hours; they take pride in their self-control. And they had all eaten at least some meat; no one was starving. So why was X glaring at me?
I looked at X for a third time and he glanced over at the cooler. Suddenly I remembered, I had put an extra plate in the cooler to save for a late comer. So I reached over, opened the cooler, pulled out the plate, took off the tin-foil and set it in the middle of the mat. Everyone dived in.
Ah-ha! The issue was NOT that I had not brought enough dinner but that I had not offered all that I had. Given the importance of self-control in their cultures, they were not going to ask me to give them more food. I brought the meal, so I needed to be the one to offer it. Since I was not offering the last plate, perhaps I wanted to keep that food for myself. And they were not going to lose their dignity by asking for it.
X wasn’t glaring because I had underestimated how much to buy but because I was acting like a miser. Not buying enough is ok; selfishness and stupidity are not ok. I should have remembered the last plate and immediately set it out.
A few weeks later, I checked my insight with X and he agreed with my understanding. He thought maybe I had forgotten the extra plate, but he wasn’t sure, and he had to leave the decision up to me. Then I ran this whole story by another research guy who was not there that night and got the same reaction: no one would care if I didn’t provide as much as everyone wanted to eat, but to have food in the cooler and not share it – that was bad behavior.
The event made me think of Lee’s essay and Alice playing croquet with flamingos. It’s fun to read about other people’s moments of confusion and frustration, and so difficult to live through those moments yourself.
(photo by S. B.)
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Reflections on Ethnographic Work: Shopping, Safety and Maneval’s New Islamic Urbanism (2019)
(photo by S. B.)
For the first few years I was in Oman, I often went on picnics with mixed groups of Omanis and expats but that gradually stopped as I got frustrated with what I perceived to be situations in which the Omanis were doing all/ most of the work. I started having picnics with just the research guys and the few times I brought an expat, I ended up frustrated or embarrassed by expat behavior such as showing up empty-handed, sitting passively, dominating the conversation and not showing gratitude.
But a dear friend, T, was coming for a short visit and I was sure that she had the temperament to enjoy and appreciate a beach picnic, so I got in touch with the guys. This started a series of adjustments on all sides which illustrate the importance of compromise in effective inter-cultural communications/ interactions.
First of all, the morning of the picnic I told the guys that T did not like fish and asked that they not bring fish for dinner. This is completely out-of-bounds behavior. People who meet up together should never show any preference (or really, any interest at all) in the dinner that someone else will bring. But given that some of the research guys are fishermen, I guessed that they would want to bring freshly caught fish and cook it over the fire as a special dinner. I wanted to stop that as I knew T would not enjoy it and I wanted to protect her from either being hungry or forcing herself to eat a dinner she didn’t like.
On the other side, before we left my house, I told T that wearing long, loose clothing was my way of being respectful and asked if she could please wear one of my long tunics over her pants and t-shirt. I held out a white tunic with a toile print, something she would ordinarily never wear, and she agreed. Then I said that I cover my hair in front of the guys and that while she didn’t have to… She instantly agreed so I grabbed a lossi (headscarf worn with a thobe, the Dhofari-style housedress). Usually you wouldn’t wear a lossi outside the house, but it was 105 degrees, so I thought the light cotton would be the most comfortable choice for her. I knew the guys would say that she didn’t have to, but I also knew they were going to make an effort to bring a good dinner and this was a small gesture she could make to be polite.
When we got to the beach, we set out the mat and then put out cushions, Kleenex and the cooler with water and soda. I made a fire and we chatted until we heard cars. Then we stood up and I draped the headscarf on her and wound mine tightly.
When the guys came to the mat, one began fussing with the fire, setting rocks in two lines which usually means that fish would be grilled. I was disappointed and said to one of the men quietly in Arabic, “she doesn’t like fish!” He said, “there is chicken.” I nodded, then I saw one of the men open a plastic bag with lobster tails, removed from the shell.
I should not have worried. The men had listened to my (unreasonable) request for no fish, but as I had suspected, wanted to bring something freshly caught, so it was lobster. And, as I have never seen them take the meat out of the shell before, I knew they were showing politeness to a guest. [In contrast, the first few times I had lobster with them, they handed me a whole one and I had to twist off its head, pull off the small limbs, etc. – if I wanted to eat a lobster, then I had to deal with the lobster!]
The whole night was a series of modifications on their part – actions I had never seen in over 15 years of picnics. For example, instead of placing their chairs right at the edge of the mat as usual, most of the men sat about 6 feet back. Instead of eating by lights from cell phones or small battery-powered lanterns, one man set up a large, area-light attached to a car battery. Instead of a usual dinner with one dish (rice with meat, chicken or fish), there was a big container of rice and chicken, plus the grilled lobster tails, a salad in a separate bowl and a dessert.
Instead of people dividing themselves into two equal groups (or one-off if there was an odd number) around the two platters, the best pieces of chicken were put on one platter for me, T and one of the research guys, while the other five gathered round the second plate. Half the lobster tails were put on our platter as well. I had forgotten that T might not be used to eating with her hands, but one of the men brought spoons. The man eating with us gave her a spoon, then proceeded to eat his dinner with a spoon, which I have never seen him do before. No one commented on any of these adjustments and T did not comment on the bother of wearing a tunic and headscarf.
T chatted, answered questions, gave profuse compliments and (bless her!) was happy to sit quietly and look at the stars and ocean during the times the men were speaking in Gibali (Jebbali).
I was a little nervous – hoping that there would be a comfortable meeting between my friend of 25 years who was only 2 days into her first visit to the Arabian Peninsula and the research guys, most of whom had never socialized with a North American besides myself but everything worked out well.
By giving up some comfort/ in doing something unusual, we all helped create a positive atmosphere. I am very grateful to T and the research guys for a lovely evening and a lovely example of the necessity of all sides making adjustments to create harmony.
Houseways: Podcast, a discussion with Ahmed Almaazmi and Ayesha Mualla
Houseways: Including/ Excluding Expats in Discussions about Housing
Reflections on Ethnographic Research: Changes within Cultures
Reflections on Ethnographic Research in Dhofar Oman
Reflections on Ethnographic Research: (Not) Asking Questions
Come From Away 
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