"This is a timely and important book that highlights the power of ethnography to engage questions that cut across scale and national boundaries. Bringing to the center notions of mobility and belonging that exceed national frames, it adds to an emergent field of scholarship on the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Peninsula, and other fluid transregional spaces."
Jatin Dua
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"A thoroughly refreshing exploration of a Gulf community's experiences of the sudden changes that come with the discovery of oil, and its uncertainties about the future, given the knowledge the wells will one day run dry. Limbert skillfully shows how everyday understandings of an affluent present—what may be a dream time—rely on diverging conceptions of the past. Beautifully written and cogently argued, In the Time of Oil presents an insightful analysis of the impact of oil on the form and content of social relations."
Beth Baron "Instead of beginning with gender segregation, veiling, honor, and modesty, Limbert considers how women's sociality must be understood in terms of political economy and transformations of modernity in Oman. This book is innovative, deeply interesting, and fascinating to read. I highly recommend it for graduate and undergraduate students as well as all anthropologists and historians of the Middle East."
Anne Meneley
Trent University
"In the Time of Oil is compelling ethnography. Mandana Limbert offers unusual insights into contemporary Arabian Peninsula society. She engages current thought on how memory and identity are forged and maintained in an era when both younger women and men have been 'schooled' by the state. This is an exemplary book for a region in which such books are few and far between."
Dale F. Eickelman Show Less