Maryam Al-Shamlan -Acculturation in Reverse

Posted by Maryam Al-Shamlan at Tuesday, March 15, 2011 10:03:58 AM EDT

Below is a copy of the short paper i wrote for my anthropology class but it can somehow be related to our Gulf encyclopedia project:

As we discussed the six videos of the pioneers of anthropology I was very interested in tracking and analyzing examples of what one might call ‘acculturation in reverse’. I mean I was interested in the way Margret Mead allowed herself and more importantly her daughter to be ‘double’ cultured. We see that Mead allowed many aspects of the Somoa and New Guinea cultures to influence the way she raised her daughter.

I enrolled in this course of cultural anthropology with a question in my mind regarding a book that I enjoyed reading several times and always wondered about its intended purpose and audience. And watching the six videos further complicated the question in my mind. This question is about Violet Dickson the wife of Colonel Dickson who was positioned in Kuwait by the British Government of India. Her husband had a political reason to integrate and intermingle with the Kuwaiti society, however, her book shoes that she also integrated with society and even chose to live there after her husband’s death. What is surprising is that she allowed the Kuwaiti culture to enter her private sphere and even gave her first son an Arabic name.

On the other hand, even though the female society welcomed her, she does not describe in her book any kind of western influence that she might have imposed on Kuwaiti women, instead it was Violet Dickson, known as Um Saud, who allowed herself to undergo a process of acculturation in which she became an individual who was half way through British culture and Kuwaiti/Gulf culture.

My question remains as to why she allowed herself to undergo such cultural/social changes when she was not an anthropologist nor was she there for scientific research purpose. Also, is her book –which was written in English and later translated and edited by my uncle Saif Al-Shamlan- just a memoir of her life in Kuwait or is it a mere attempt to reflect and theorize on how West and East can merge to create a ‘tolerant’ culture that is far away from ‘othering’.

What drew my attention to this question is that most British agents (men) wrote only about their experiences in the public/political spheres of the Arabian Gulf, yet here I see a woman reflecting her experience to a Western audience and at the same time insisted on translating her work into Arabic. Should one consider this piece of work another work of ‘Orientalism’ or is it an addition to anthropological literature.