REVISITING ḤAḌAR AND BADŪ IN KUWAIT: CITIZENSHIP, HOUSING, AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF A DICHOTOMY

Abstract

AbstractKuwait today is 99 percent urbanized. Though hosting a substantial desert population in the past, Kuwait no longer contains any Bedouin who practice a nomadic or pastoral lifestyle. And yet the term badū remains in popular use in Kuwait to designate a group considered sociologically and culturally distinct from the ḥaḍar, or settled urbanites, which in Kuwait's context refers solely to descendants of the pre-oil townspeople. This article explores why these social designations still exist in Kuwait and analyzes the origins of the conflictual relationship between the two groups. I argue that the persistence of the ḥaḍar/badū dichotomy is an outcome of state-building strategies adopted in the early oil years, mainly linked to citizenship and housing policies, that contributed to fixing ḥaḍar and badū as not only socially distinct but also geographically bounded groups. These state policies implemented between the 1950s and 1980s fostered the political integration but social exclusion of the badū. The article examines the lived realities of these incoherent policies as one way of explaining how the badū shifted from being the rulers’ main loyalty base in the early oil decades to becoming their primary opposition today.