Editor-in-Chief's Speech

Dr. Mohammed Al Mutawa
Journal of Social Affairs,
Sociological Association of the UAE

The past few decades have experienced tumultuous and unprecedented change in societies across the globe. How the social scientists derive the truths about economics, political organization and society are correspondingly overhauled. We have shifted from life in villages firmly ensconced in time and place to life in a global village with seamless time and space flows. Seminal thinkers have attempted to comprehend and make intelligible the new relations interconnecting people instantaneously worldwide by satellite and on-line, with models bearing names like “The Third Wave,” “Internet Society,” and “Liquid Modernity.” Other vocabulary coined to describe the new social relations of people living in polyglot and pluralistic societies would be “transnationalism,” “multinationalism,” and “flextime.”

As much as any place in the world, the United Arab Emirates blends the traditional and local and the attachment to one's heritage, with the fast paced and incessant change of the global, in a constant attempt to meet the challenge of the future with the strength of the past. It is from this fertile interplay of past and present and the lasting commitment to scholarly understanding of the rapidly transforming social context, that stemmed the idea of this conference within the mission of the American University of Sharjah and in its fruitful collaboration with the Sociological Association of the UAE. Since last year, these institutions in tandem have published the Journal of Social Affairs, as a vehicle for dissemination of timely scholarly findings and an invaluable forum for the Gulf region in discussing and explaining new social formations.

The present conference on "Globalization and the Gulf" brings together today the seminal model builders from institutions across the vast arena of the Arab world, as well as from the United States and the UK. These eminent scholars are in the process of constructing the paradigm for understanding the networked relationships in this key nexus of global geo-politics. This conference marks the first such collection of global theorists steeped in regional expertise of this magnitude on this continent. We now convene three panels and two plenary sessions examining how globalization might impact government, economics and society/culture in the Gulf.

These panels and plenary sessions together with the lively interaction that undoubtedly will ensue, will break new ground not only for the savants of the academy but also for policy makers of the Gulf states, who anticipate and plan for the new directions.

I would like to express our gratitude to His Highness Sheikh Dr. Sultan Bin Mohammed Al Qassimi, Member of the Supreme Council, Ruler of Sharjah, for generously agreeing to support our efforts in holding the present international conference and for attending the conference today. I also wish to thank AUS former Chancellor Roderick S. French under whose guidance this conference was initiated, and current Chancellor Winfred L. Thompson for his unwavering contributions to our endeavors in this conference. I also would like to acknowledge my colleagues from the Sociological Association for their continuous support of this project. Finally, I will use Chancellor French’s own word to acknowledge our co-editor, Dr. Nada Mourtada-Sabbah, “whose indefatigable exertions and remarkable intellectual energy are already a legend in both organizations.” I wish this conference every success.