The ardah: the body when it becomes a collective
Two rows, a drum and a poet. What happens socially when a hundred men move to a single rhythm?
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النتائج
What is anthropology? A first question
A short answer for anyone approaching the field for the first time: what does an anthropologist study, and how?
A Market at Dusk
The sellers fold away their voices as the mats are folded.
How do we document an oral account? A short practical guide
Before you start the recorder: what to ask, how to listen, and what to write down after you switch it off.
Mud houses in Qassim: an architecture that lets you answer the climate
Mud architecture in Najd is not primitive. It is a sophisticated environmental engineering system that answers climate, society and economy with an efficiency modernity has yet to match.
The aflaj: engineering water before the pump
How did people divide scarce water fairly for centuries, with no central authority to impose the share?
Names and titles: how we name ourselves
A name does not designate an individual so much as a position in a network. A reading of the structure of the Saudi name.
Generosity in the Saudi tribal structure
Generosity in Saudi tribal culture is not merely an individual virtue. It is a complete socio-economic system that redistributes resources and produces standing and belonging.
Sadu: the weaving of the badia and its visual language
Ornament in sadu is not decoration. It is a system of signs that people of the badia read the way writing is read.
Clay Remembers
They say: this is an old wall. And I say: this is a breath that stopped.
The old souq: the city’s theatre and its memory
The old souq in the Arab city is not only a place of buying and selling. It is a social theatre, a civilisational archive, and a map of identity drawn in people, smells and sounds.
Pearl diving: a trade that vanished and a memory that stayed
Before oil, pearls were the entire economy of the eastern coast. What remains of a trade that ended within a single generation?
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