© 2004 The MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies Vol. 4, Spring 2004 Crossing Boundaries: New Perspectives on the Middle East http://web.mit.edu/cis/www/mitejmes/ 59 Navigating Modernization: Bedouin Pastoralism and Climate Information in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Andrew Gardner and Timothy J. Finan * Introduction * There are four things a person cannot know: when you will die, where you will die, how you will live your life as planned by Allah, and what rains will come. These wise words were shared with us by an elderly Bedouin taking respite from the hot midday sun in a small market town in northeastern Saudi Arabia. We were working on a project funded by the Saudi Arabian government – a project with two distinct purposes. First, using ethnographic methods, we had set out to describe the impact of the Kuwaiti oilfield fires (set during the 1991 Gulf War) upon the rangelands of northern Saudi Arabia and, by extension, upon the people and livelihoods that depend on this rangeland. Second, we were to investigate ways that the Saudi Meteorological and Environmental Protection Agency (MEPA) might better disseminate climate and weather information to the Bedouin peoples of the northern deserts. The impacts of the oilfield fires have been discussed elsewhere, and in this paper we explore the role of climate information in contemporary Bedouin livelihoods. 1 Specifically, we wish to assess the need and value of government-generated climate information as well as its potential impact upon the livelihood strategies of the Bedouin peoples. The sentiment conveyed by the elderly Bedouin above—that climate prediction and climate forecasting are beyond the purview of the mortal—was a recurring theme in our conversations in Bedouin encampments. We argue here, however, that this cultural view is but one aspect of the complexities obscured by the notion of modernization. In unpacking the various strands implicit in this notion, we seek to portray a highly variable set of processes, in many ways unique to the Kingdom and its environs, and to contextualize the interface between climate, environment, and the Bedouin nomads in these larger arenas. Finally, we argue that numerous processes embedded within the notion of modernization have reshaped nomad livelihoods in the Kingdom, minimizing the importance of climate variability while simultaneously bringing a host of more pressing concerns to the fore. * Andrew Gardner is a PhD candidate in the department of Anthropology at the University of Arizona. Timothy Finan is the director of the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology at the University of Arizona.