Cultivating “Omani ambitions”: Entrepreneurship, distributive labor, and the temporalities of diversification in the Arab Gulf

Abstract

Despite substantial investments in the diversification and development of their economies, Oman and other Arab Gulf states have yet to experience structural changes that meaningfully reduce their dependence on oil. Pointing out that the “problem” of oil dependence has never existed independent of a development apparatus attempting to solve it, this article explores how developmental discourses and institutions in Oman produce unintended (but nevertheless salient) distributive effects. With scholarship on the region dominated by work on the rentier state that dismisses the importance of developmental institutions and the labor of citizens in systems of rent distribution, this article proposes a new framework that investigates how rentier development operates as a discourse in ways that shape the allocation of resources and the behavior of citizen‐subjects. Through the lens of an Omani entrepreneur named Mohammed and the organizations and individuals who encouraged and supported him, this article draws on insights from the anthropology of development to describe how efforts to transform mind‐sets and instill entrepreneurial dispositions generate not a structural change in Oman's economy but distributive arrangements that enable citizens to earn livelihoods and support through the enactment of virtues that resonate with the state's development narratives.