Awards 2018
The AGAPS 2018 Winners
Dissertation Award
Dr. Lindsey Stephenson from Princeton University
Rerouting the Persian Gulf: The Transnationalization of Iranian Migrant Networks, c. 1900-1940
This dissertation is an exemplary case of transnational social history, innovatively applying critical perspectives on space, mobility, and power, to illuminate the experiences of Iranian migrants from southern Iran to Kuwait and Bahrain. Stephenson’s rich archival work offers new insights, not just about the Arabian Peninsula, its history, and transnational flows across the Gulf, but also makes important contributions to the wider fields of history, geography, migration studies, sociology, and anthropology.
Using a wide range of sources, the dissertation illustrates how the emergence of the modern state leads to the subjugation of traditional identities, but also the creative circumvention of state-imposed identity categories and the continued relevance of transnational linkages, bolstered by modern capitalism. The transition from the overlapping sovereignty of imperial, regional and local actors to that of the modern nation state is skilfully analysed. The dissertation shows how despite homogenizing claims of modern statehood, Iranian migrants on the western littoral of the Gulf have continued to deeply shape local societies, from food to architecture, while sometimes relocating their networks to smaller ports to defend their social identity and autonomy.
The work provides fundamental insights about identity formation and the reconfiguration and reinvention of transnational networks in the face of the modern regulatory state – insights that are relevant far beyond the field of Gulf studies.
Graduate Paper Award
Gabriel Young from New York University
Infrastructure and Spatial Strategies of Empire: The Port of Basra in Mandate and Wartime Iraq
In examining British imperial control of the port of Basra in wartime and Mandate Iraq, Gabriel Young’s paper begins with a fascinating puzzle, asking: “How can an infrastructure both unify and fragment territory?” (p. 1) He directs his careful historical analysis to some tremendously rich empirical data, skillfully weaving together findings from his own archival research and the existing literature. Young’s paper is an exceptional example of how historians have successfully deployed the lens of space and infrastructure, the focus of research in the field of geography, to pose new and exciting questions about power and colonial governmentalities in the Middle East and around the world. In turning these insights to the Gulf region, Young demonstrates how a spatial strategies were key to enabling British control of Basra, and allowing colonial administrators to extend their “jurisdiction far beyond the physical limits of the actual infrastructure, into the overlapping territory of sovereign nation-states, semi-autonomous municipalities, and transnational corporations […], strategically reinterpreting and remaking the political, legal, and even physical space of Basra and its environs” (p. 2).
The paper is well written and skillfully embedded in wider historical literature and its findings are of relevance far beyond Middle Eastern area studies. It analyses the subtleties of multi-layered imperial rule with great finesse. Key themes like the intrusion of military-supported capitalism and the emergence of new social and economic hierarchies in the British empire, but also the legalistic creativity of colonial authorities, are woven together into a compelling narrative. The diverging interests of APOC and of colonial authorities are investigated with particular subtlety.
Special Thanks to this year's Dissertation and Paper Awards Committee:
Steffen Hertog, Department of Government, London School of Economics and Political Science
Natalie Koch, Department of Geography, Syracuse University
Andrea Wright, Department of Anthropology, College of William and Mary
Inaugural Graduate Student Travel Grant
Ahmed Almaazmi from Princeton University
Belonging Across the Omani Sea: De-Soldiering Baloch History in the Arabian Peninsula
In his paper, Almaazmi seeks to recontextualize the Balochi people beyond their common depictions as merely ‘mercenary soldiers’ who serve in the armed forces of the Arab Gulf monarchies. Ahmed argues that the current scholarship misplaces the periodization of Balochi migration to the Arabian Peninsula and the subsequent migratory waves which resulted in distorting the nature of their identity development and sense of belonging across the Sea of Oman and the Arab Gulf States.