Handbook of Families in the Arab Gulf States

Abstract

This open access book collates and advances the body of knowledge about the factors, directions, and magnitudes of change in Arabian Gulf families from interdisciplinary perspectives. Family life across the globe is being impacted by unprecedented diversity in household living arrangements and by sweeping economic, cultural, and social change, and this is not an exception in the Gulf region. The book demarcates how Gulf families are experiencing many formidable challenges and undergoing profound changes due to speedy economic transformation, educational reforms, extensive use of social media, rapid urbanization, migration, women empowerment, and the intersections of popular culture from both the East and the West. Notwithstanding such challenges and changes, Gulf families often seem to retain and continue many of the traditional roles and functions of families in a sustained manner. It contributes to current debates that revolve around questions of what has changed, and what has stayed the same, in family structures in the region. Sweeping and comparative, the book provides avenues for offering practical solutions for policy interventions in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and Saudi Arabia. It is a key academic text for sociologists interested in transformations in the family in relation to politics, economics, consumption patterns, education, gender, law, social media, religion, culture, social reforms, and the state.