Saudi Culture Family and Authority in Saudi

Saudi Culture

Family and Authority in Saudi Arabia: A Prototypical Example of the GCC Countries

Understanding the attitudes towards authority and the importance of familial responsibilities in the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is essential to developing a comprehensive and effective understanding of how individuals and businesses in the companies do business. There are certain signs that these attitudes and responsibilities might be shifting, however, which complicates the study of such issues. A brief examination of Saudi Arabia, which can be seen as a typical example of GCC countries and cultures, will demonstrate the current cultural understandings and the complex changes that may be occurring.

Attitudes towards authority in Saudi Arabia have been largely proscribed by religion -- specifically, by the interpretation of Islamic religious law by the Saudi Arabian royalty and government (Moaddel & Karabenik 2008). There are signs that many youths are beginning to turn away from religious fundamentalism, however, and growing opportunities for a wide range of individuals has potentially begun to weaken the extreme authoritarianism and obedience to authority that has been a traditional element of Saudi Arabian and other Gulf Cooperation Council countries and cultures, however (Moaddel & Karabenik 2008; Metcalfe 2008). The economic and political structures in the country have both been heavily dependent on oil resources and revenues since the middle of the twentieth century, and the government has been actively working in the past few decades to diversify the economy and so create more jobs and greater stability (CIA 2011). This will necessarily have an effect on attitudes towards authority, as the centrality of authority in the country is reduced.

This reduction in he centralization of power will necessarily have an effect on the ways in which familial responsibilities are played out in the country; in the traditional way of life for Saudi Arabians and the other Gulf Cooperation Council countries and cultures, families stayed living together in the same immediate vicinity as a way to pool resources and combine strengths as herders, engaging in farming activities inasmuch as the environment would allow, and often pursuing nomadic or semi-nomadic ways of life (Cole 2011). This is quite obviously changing in drastic and rapid ways ad land is devoted to oil production and as Saudi Arabia (and other neighboring countries) becoming increasingly urbanized -- while authority is becoming less centralized, opportunities are becoming more centralized in the metropolitan areas in the region, and this is causing fragmentations in traditional family systems as moving away from family becomes more common and power relationships and decisions making becomes more individualized and employer- rather than family-oriented (Al-Ahmadi 2011; Ali 1993).