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The Bedouin have been exoticized as nomads and essentialized as representatives of segmentary lineage organization and tribalism. This essay shows more complex and multifaceted existences and argues that "Bedouin" has changed from denoting a way of life in the past to marking an identity today. A multi-sited perspective presents socioeconomic and sociopolitical change among Bedouin from Algeria to Saudi Arabia and includes colonial impacts, commercialization of pastoral production, occupational change, and sedentarization. Bedouin involvement in tourism and the manufacture of Bedouin heritage for sale as a commodity and as a component of (some) Arab national heritages are also discussed. The coexistence of segmentation, markets, states, and Islam is stressed, with class divisions now becoming predominant. A concern with Middle Eastern ethnography in general, largely implicit, runs throughout the text [Bedouin, Arab World, segmentation, complex society].
The overall outlines of Arab Bedouin society are well known to anthropology, despite the lack of detailed studies.
-Robert F. Murphy and Leonard Kasdan 1959:18
To answer the question "Where have the Bedouin gone?" requires identification of who are the Bedouin, consideration of where they have been, and understanding of their contemporary presences in wider Arab state societies and national cultures. The question is simple and straightforward; but an answer is neither easy nor clear-cut. "Bedouin" is not an occupation recorded on national identity cards or passports. The category of Bedouin (or nomad) existed and was counted in the censuses of colonial governments; but Bedouin are not enumerated as such in today's national censuses.1 Indeed, the Arab Human Development Report 2002 does not even mention the Bedouin in its analysis aimed at "creating opportunities for future generations" (United Nations Development Program 2002). Have the Bedouin ceased to exist? Are the Bedouin a part of the past with no present or future roles?
Educated urbanites I met during the course of fieldwork in Saudi Arabia in 1968-70 usually told me that the Bedouin were all but gone. They had become taxi drivers, traders, worked for the Arabian American oil Company (ARAMCO), served in the National Guard, were low-level government employees, and so on. Many families were settling, boys were going to school, young and middle-aged men were putting aside old-fashioned styles of Bedouin clothing in favor of a new, more...