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Saudi Arabia
Beduin Economy in Tradition and Change
The word beduin is derived from the Arabic word bawaadin
(sing., baadiya), meaning nomads, and is usually associated
with a camel-herding life in the desert. The word, therefore,
describes an occupation and is not synonymous with the word tribe
(qabila), despite the fact that the two are often used
interchangeably. The word bawaadin, furthermore, refers
not only to camel-herding but is an elastic term that is understood
in relation to hadar, or settled people. People from
the city, for example, were likely to view villagers as part of
the bawaadin, but the villager would consider only the
nomadic people as bawaadin. Villagers and nomads, on
the other hand, would make a distinction between shepherds who
tend sheep and goats, staying close by the village, and the beduin
who raised camels. "While the physical boundary between the desert
and the sown is strikingly sharp in the Middle East . . ." notes
Donald Cole, "the boundary between nomadic pastoralist and sedentary
farmer is less precise." Beduin and farmers were united in a single
social system. Each relied on the other for critical goods and
services to sustain a way of life; they shared substantial cultural
unity. Tribal loyalties transcend differences in livelihood; many
tribes had both sedentary and nomadic branches.
There is a nomadic-sedentary continuum; at one extreme are completely
settled farmers and merchants, at the other are camel herders
who produce primarily for their own consumption and have little
recourse to wage labor. A host of finely graded distinctions exist
between the two extremes. Wealthy beduin frequently established
a branch of the family in an oasis with commercial and agricultural
investments. Individual households moved along the continuum as
their domestic situation changed. Part of the family might settle
to attend school, while others maintained the family's flocks.
Among nomads
there is a dichotomy--as well as a status differential--between
those who herd sheep and goats and those who herd camels. Because
sheep and goats are more demanding in their need for water and
thus more limited in their migrations, their herders migrate shorter
distances and have greater contact with the oasis population.
Camels, on the other hand, can endure much longer periods without
water, and camel herders are thereby able to range much more widely
than other pastoralists. Camel-herding tribes were usually the
most powerful militarily and had more status than other herders.
Alliances between beduin and townsmen have historically been
a defining feature of the politics of the peninsula. Just as beduin
could opt out of raiding a particular town, the town could pay
an agreed khuwa, the payment being the exchange of a
portion of their surplus production for a guarantee of peace.
At the same time that town and village relied on nomad protection,
nomads themselves relied on the sedentary populace for sustenance
and diverse services. Nomadism has never been a self-contained
system. Even camel-herding beduin relied on the oasis population
for a variety of needs. Their diet was supplemented with dates,
grains, and, more recently, processed foods; the sedentary population
provided medical care when home remedies failed, education, and
religious practitioners, tent fibers, and tent pins. Farmers who
owned animals entrusted them to nomads' care and the nomads in
turn received the animals' milk; beduin left their date palms
in the farmers' hands in return for a portion of the harvest.
Development policies in Saudi Arabia have encouraged the sedentarization
of most nomadic groups in the kingdom. The percentage of fully
nomadic people is unknown, but it was certainly declining in the
early 1990s. Those who continued to maintain their livestock faced
economic difficulties in spite of government assistance. The rise
in the cost of living in Saudi Arabia, coupled with the decline
in the commercial value of camels and other livestock, occasioned
a need for greater cash income. Consequently, beduin men had begun
migrating to the cities for wage work, often as drivers of cars,
trucks, and tractors. They frequently left their families behind
to tend the animals.
A study among Al Saar beduin shows that urban migration of men
resulted in increased work for women and, at the same time, denied
them the economic benefits of government programs designed to
improve the welfare of nomadic families. With the family together,
women generally tended only the sheep and goats; men herded the
camels. In addition to caring for animals, producing food, and
caring for the household, nomadic women also engaged in crafts,
primarily weaving household textiles, such as mats, tent cloth,
tent dividers, and sacks to contain their belongings.
The women in the study were left alone with children and had
total responsibility for caring for all the animals, camels as
well as sheep and goats, while their husbands remained in the
towns as much as six months at a time. However, because they were
not entitled to a separate citizenship card, being listed as dependents
on their husbands' citizenship cards, they were unable to apply
for livestock subsidies or for land or home loans issued through
government-run service centers near their summer grazing areas.
Similarly, women were denied use of the pickup truck, now ubiquitous
among nomadic families and indispensable for transporting wood
and water and for transportation between the encampment and the
herds as well as to government service centers. Although the burden
of labor was left to women, the truck could only be used by women
in the desert where they could not be seen by government authorities
because women were not allowed to drive.
One result of the increased burden on women has been the social
reorganization of labor based on the combined efforts of women.
Women with infants tended to carry out traditional female work
of child care and food preparation, whereas older women, widows,
and women without infants cared for the herds and also sold their
animals at the service stations, another task traditionally the
responsibility of men.
Data as of December 1992
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