CONCLUSION: Bahrain at the Vanguard of Change in the Gulf

A year before my first trip to the Arabian Peninsula I was part of a team of researchers and ethnographers exploring the impact of the offshore oil industry on the families and communities of southern Louisiana. In this large and multifaceted project, one of my principal assignments was to immerse myself in the world of the men at the bottom of the oil sector’s occupational hierarchy—the roughnecks and roustabouts who work on the rigs, platforms, and yards scattered across southern Louisiana and its coastal waters. I made my home at a down-at-the-heels motel next to the highway in New