The oasis of al-‘Ulā between two waves of change

– The oasis of al-‘Ulā between two waves of change
Collaborative work of the project al-‘Ulā AS (al-‘Ulā AS Project: Anthropological survey of al-‘Ulā community and its oasis system, work in progress.
– Edited by Vincent Battesti, with contributions from Élise Gaury and Léo Marty, the participation of Blandine Destremau, Joëlle Puig, and Maxime de Serre de Saint Roman, and the assistance of Pierre Séraphin and Pierre Deschamps on water resources.
with technical support from Cursives.
A volume of around 320 pages in (possible) 20 x 24 cm format.

– This richly illustrated book is intended as a scientific summary, accessible to the general public, of the recent evolution and current situation of the al-‘Ulā oasis in Saudi Arabia.
This collective work from the al-‘Ulā AS project covers in an exhaustive and accessible way all the themes addressed by the project, from social structure to the environment. It will present them as scientific-level reference material, but in a synthesised and illustrated format.

After several years of ethnographic fieldwork, the CNRS research project al-‘Ulā Anthropological Survey (al-‘Ulā AS: 2019-2024), directed by Vincent Battesti (CNRS anthropologist), is planning a description of al-‘Ulā oasis in Saudi Arabia through a collective and interdisciplinary work.

Located in the north-west of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the al-’Ulā oasis, until recently considered a remote and isolated territory, is the focus of an ambitious development project by the Saudi monarchy (a project led by the Royal Commission for AlUla, as part of the national Vision 2030 framework). (The al-‘Ulā AS project does not fall under the RCU. See this page.) From a scientific data point of view, the al-‘Ulā AS project wanted to fill the knowledge gap on the current state of the oasis. At the time, this oasis had no sociological or ethnological analysis (other than a self-published work in Arabic in Saudi Arabia by the historian ‘Abd Allah Naṣīf, 1995).

The collective work envisaged aims to provide a detailed description of the al-‘Ulā oasis (in its urban and agricultural aspects) with a general and interdisciplinary diagnosis aimed at both relevant local anthropological issues such as the social structures of the human components of the oasis and its region (particularly in its Bedouin and sedentary components), recent social transformations since the oil rent, and in particular issues of identity, work, gender, etc., but also an ethnoecological approach to understand local resources and the functioning of oasis agriculture - the main local resource - and its interweaving with the social, and to grasp more broadly the links between local communities and their oasis and desert environments, and more specifically a socio-agronomic assessment of the types of palm groves and farming systems, etc.

The thread running through this book is the description the functioning of the oasis as a result of adjustments (on different time scales), but a functioning that allows a certain social and ecological reproduction in change. By change, we mean in particular two waves of radical mutation: one (past) in the 1980s from the fallout of oil revenues and the other (rising) from the monarchy’s plan to transform al-‘Ulā into a vast international tourist destination (a first for the kingdom) for culture and luxury (see “Journey Through Time Masterplan”).

In practical terms, the ambition is for the book to be both a highly scientific work (which will also act as a kind of final report on the project) and a ’beautiful book’ aimed at a broad, cultured readership. In formal terms, the idea is to have a book written by several hands, supervised by the project’s PI, which is open to a rich iconography, both photographic (from the ethnographic fieldwork) and drawn.