Contested Modernity

Omar AlShehabi is Director of the Gulf Centre for Development Policies and Associate Professor in Political Economy at the Gulf University for Science and Technology, Kuwait.

• PrefaceIntroduction: Approaching Absolutism, Nationalism, and Sectarianism in the Gulf 1 The Ethnosectarian Gaze and Divided Rule2 Politics and Society Before Divided Rule, 1783–19003 Al-Nahda in Bahrain, 1875–19204 Contesting Divided Rule, 1900–19205 ‘Fitnah’: Ethnosectarianism Meets al-Nahda, 1921–1923 Postscript: The Rise of Absolutism and Nationalism, 1923–1979Conclusion: State and Society Between Sectarianism and NationalismBibliographyIndex

‘AlShehabi’s book is important in several respects. First, it contributes to historicize the ethnosectarian categories that both scholars and social actors use when trying to make sense of contemporary Bahraini society and politics… It underlines how much Bahraini ethnosectarianism, before becoming a political practice, was first a form of colonial knowledge that different actors contested but also espoused, often strategically. The book is also important politically…because it proposes a scientific reading of Bahraini history in a context where history has been hyper-politicized, and thus often distorted, by local actors seeking to substantiate their respective positions in the hierarchy of power.’