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Oman is a country under severe water stress. Currently Oman produces around 1 Mm3/day of desalinated seawater for urban purposes to expand supply. This policy was partially imposed by the irregularity of rain and the concentration of the population on the coastal areas. Most of the conventional water resources are in the form of groundwater and are used in the agricultural sector. Abstractions from wells are subject to licenses. But licenses so far do not carry any limits. The result is a race for water with overabstractions in the coastal areas causing seawater intrusion and damage to the aquifers. The government is planning to introduce progressively water quotas to farmers and monitoring through smart meters and online system. Large volumes of tertiary treated wastewater are produced daily and are only partially reused for landscaping. There is a mismatch between the willingness of farmers to pay for treated wastewater and the price set by the public authority leading to a limited demand. The actual context of free and unlimited access to groundwater does not encourage to shift the demand toward high-quality treated wastewater. Plans are being considered for recharging some of the aquifers with the treated wastewater. Irrigation efficiency improvements have been observed mainly for vegetable producers where the adoption of irrigation technology resulted in higher revenues and lower labor costs. Urban water prices are at 1/3 of their costs discouraging water saving and adoption of water saving/recycling devices at homes or industries. Urban water security is being addressed by aquifer storage and recovery techniques using excess winter desalinated water.

En 1970, Qābūs devient sultan d’Oman par un coup d’Etat qui renverse son père avec l’appui des Britanniques, principalement en vue de moderniser le pays : cette politique est qualifiée de « renaissance bienheureuse » ou « Nahḍa ». La politique du logement est le levier majeur de cette action, et prend la forme principale de la promotion de la maison individuelle sur parcelle de terrain octroyée par le souverain. Ce choix est au cœur de la redistribution de la manne pétrolière et de l’objectif de justice sociale qui légitime le pouvoir royal. S’il a des points communs avec ceux des pays voisins, le dispositif omanais se distingue en ciblant l’ensemble de la population de nationalité omanaise. Cette politique du logement a permis de faire accéder la population à une vie urbaine moderne, mais elle n’est pas sans poser de nombreuses questions aujourd’hui, en particulier sur le plan de la cohésion sociale ou d’un étalement urbain problématique face à l’objectif de développement durable.

With over 1700 km of coastline, the inhabitants of Oman have had a deep and enduring relationship with the sea for millennia. Located between the Arabian Gulf and the western Indian Ocean, its fishermen have relied on the sea for sustenance. Its mariners were involved in developing long-distance maritime trade from at least the Bronze Age and continued sailing the monsoonal trade routes well into the twentieth century. Periodically, its rulers have established maritime polities extending to Zanzibar and the Makran coast, creating sea-based migrations in the process. With such a rich and enduring seafaring past, it is therefore not surprising that the modern nation-state of Oman has had an active interest in studying and preserving its MUCH.

In Oman, Bangladeshis are now the most important community of migrants among South Asians. Among them are fishermen who represent a paradigmatic example of the difficult situation most low skilled workers have to face in the Gulf countries. Based on fieldworks in Hatiya, a small island of the Bay of Bengal from where these fishermen are originating, and in several harbours of Oman, I intend to highlight the different mechanisms which make migration a very risky gamble for these men. From the recruitment process through local networks, the conditions of work and salaries, the unavoidable path to an irregular status and eventually the arrest and deportation of most of these workers, I propose to show how, structurally, their migratory experience almost always leads to failure and increased poverty.

Few regions in the world are as torn by conflicts as the Near East, in which Iran plays a central role. Opportunities to engage with Iran are abundant, ...

During his five-decade reign, Sultan Qaboos bin Said relied on heritage as a key tool for nation-building. Old forts and objects central to Omani traditional culture like the coffee urn and the ceremonial dagger became symbols of a unifying national ethos. At the same time, their former political significance was downplayed. But some Omanis have held onto memories of a different conception of the past. And now, after the sultan’s death in 2020, heritage is becoming more of a privatized business sector.

"Muslim marriages have been the focus of considerable public debate in Europe and beyond, in Muslim-majority countries as well as in settings where Muslims are a minority. Most academic work has focused on how the majority Sunni Muslims conclude marriages. This volume, in contrast, focuses on Twelver Shi'a Muslims in Iran, Pakistan, Oman, Indonesia, Norway, and the Netherlands. The volume makes an original contribution to understanding the global dynamics of Shi'a marriage practices in a wide range of contexts--not only its geographical spread but also by providing a critical analysis of the socio-economic, religious, ethnic, and political discourses of each context. The book sheds light on new marriage forms presented through a bottom up approach focusing on the lived experiences of Shi'a Muslims negotiating a diverse range of relationships and forms of belonging"--

In contrast to other states in the Gulf Cooperation Council, Oman has declined to participate in the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen and has opted to facilitate dialogue between the conflict's warring parties. Oman has embraced a strategy of diplomatic deterrence in Yemen, facilitating dialogue to counter the perceived threats that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates pose to its foreign policy independence. The article explores how the Sultanate's diplomatic deterrence strategy manifests at the local, regional, and international levels, building on English- and Arabic-language source material and interviews.

, ABSTRACT:, This article investigates the social and political effects of the introduction of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in Oman. With oil reserves dwindling, Oman faces the challenge of transforming a society and economy long dependent on distributive state spending into a diversified economy capable of continuing the nation’s prosperity after oil. As a seemingly market-based solution to the problem of “too much” government, CSR has been championed by officials and practitioners as a tool to empower private sector businesses to replace the state as a provider of welfare and services. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with members of Oman’s business community, state officials, and others, this article challenges these presumptions, demonstrating that CSR has been implemented in Oman in ways that perpetuate the nation’s dependence on oil revenues and distributive state subsidies. Pointing out that the Omani state’s subsidy-driven development has long relied on the incentivized collaboration of private sector businesses, this article argues that the introduction of CSR in Oman has occurred in ways that resonate with older practices of corporate generosity. Instead of introducing market-based alternatives to state-guided subsidies, CSR has been instituted in Oman in ways that allow the state to leverage private sector organizations to extend its distributive reach. In conversation with scholarship on the role of neoliberal discourses and practices in the diversification efforts of states of the Arab Gulf, this article highlights the discrepancy between development plans and their outcomes to demonstrate how seemingly neoliberal interventions may be co-opted to achieve alternative ends.

This article looks at a specific southern Arabian sailing vessel named the Wolf (al-Dhi’b), in order to better understand the life of a coastal trader on the southern Arabian coast that lived in the last days of commercial sail. Vessels such as the Wolf carried local products such as sardines, abalone and frankincense to northern Oman and Yemen, returning with dates and necessary foodstuffs shipped to Aden from India and East Africa. The article examines the remains of the Wolf, based on data from multiple documentation surveys, in conjunction with information gained from oral history interviews in order to highlight the central role that vessels such as the Wolf played in the maritime economic and social networks of the region.

The abolitionist principles were foreign to Algerian society that was being brought to the colonial realm, between 1830 and 1871, in a sense that there was no public discourse on the issue of possessing humans by other humans. It was a practice that had its foundations in the very religious texts used at the time. The colonial officials considered the abolition of slavery as one of the sites of imposing their world views on the colonized population, challenging the very foundations of their socio-religious structures. The debates between officials at the center, those at the periphery on the one hand, and between the colonial minds, and the learned elite of the Algerian Muslims on the other, will be the focus of this presentation. It will concentrate on the intricacies of a colonial endeavor that was humanitarian and uninterested on the surface, but as I will show it was highly connected to the political, economic, social and religious goals of the colonial enterprise in French Algeria.

"Ode à mon île" est un recueil de poème dédié à l'île de Djerba. Il vous emmène en voyage à travers mes souvenirs, les éléments, la vie, mon coeur et les lieux qui habite cette douce île

This book makes a substantial and extremely timely, relevant contribution to discussions on energy security in Oman