Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-fwgfc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-11T14:54:05.702Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - The Dogma of Development

Technopolitics and Power in Saudi Arabia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2015

By
Toby C. Jones
Edited by
Bernard Haykel ,
Thomas Hegghammer  and
Stéphane Lacroix
Bernard Haykel
Affiliation:
Princeton University, New Jersey
Thomas Hegghammer
Affiliation:
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey
Stéphane Lacroix
Affiliation:
Sciences Po, Paris
Get access

Summary

In late September 2009 Saudi Arabia celebrated the grand opening of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) near Jeddah overlooking the Red Sea. KAUST’s founders harbored great ambition for the new institution, declaring that they hoped to see it become “a globally renowned graduate research university that makes significant contributions to scientific and technological advancement, and will play a crucial role in the development of Saudi Arabia and the world.” In a tribute to Islam’s rich scientific history, King Abdullah, for whom the university is named, declared it a new “house of wisdom,” a reference to the center of research founded in ninth-century Baghdad. The original House of Wisdom was the site of considerable scientific and intellectual achievement, where for more than three centuries Muslim thinkers made seminal contributions to the study of mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. Mongol invaders razed the center in the thirteenth century. Their destruction did not undo the foundational work carried out there or undermine the achievement of its contributors. In encouraging and supporting the construction of a new “house of wisdom,” Abdullah announced that the “University shall be a beacon for peace, hope, and reconciliation and shall serve the people of the Kingdom and benefit all the peoples of the world in keeping with the teachings of the Holy Quran, which explains that God created mankind in order for us to come to know each other. It is my desire that this new University become one of the world’s great institutions of research; that it educate and train future generations of scientists, engineers and technologists; and that it foster, on the basis of merit and excellence, collaboration and cooperation with other great research universities and the private sector.”

Type
Chapter
Information
Saudi Arabia in Transition
Insights on Social, Political, Economic and Religious Change
 , pp. 31 - 47
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Dallal, Ahmad, Islam, Science, and the Challenge of History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010)Google Scholar
Saliba, George, A History of Arabic Astronomy: Planetary Theories during the Golden Age of Islam (New York: NYU Press, 1995)Google Scholar
Saliba, George, Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007)Google Scholar
Huff, Toby E., The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003)Google Scholar
Hertog, Steffen, Princes, Brokers, and Bureaucrats: Oil and the State in Saudi Arabia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010)Google Scholar
Jones, Toby Craig, Desert Kingdom: How Oil and Water Forged Modern Saudi Arabia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Long, David E., The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1997)Google Scholar
Vassiliev, Alexei, The History of Saudi Arabia (London: Saqi Press, 1998)Google Scholar
Bronson, Rachel, Thicker than Oil: America’s Uneasy Partnership with Saudi Arabia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006)Google Scholar
Gregory Gause, F., Oil Monarchies: Domestic and Security Challenges in the Arab Gulf States (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1994), 25Google Scholar
Commins, David, The Wahhabi Mission and Saudi Arabia (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2006)Google Scholar
Hecht, Gabrielle, The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity after World War II (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 15Google Scholar
Scott, James, Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998)Google Scholar
Hughes, Thomas P., Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1888–1930 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983)Google Scholar
Mitchell, Timothy, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-politics, Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 74–6Google Scholar
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Ministry of Agriculture and Water, Seven Green Spikes, 1965–1972: Water and Agricultural Developments (Riyadh, 1974), 21Google Scholar
Vassiliev, Alexei, The History of Saudi Arabia (London: Saqi Press, 1998), 409Google Scholar
Faisal, Kingal-Aziz, Ibn Abd, “The Duties Incumbent upon Us,” in Da‘wat al-haqq: al-majmu‘a al-kāmila li-khitābāt wa aqwāl wa ahadīth sāhib al-jalala al-malik Faisal bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, al-Juz’ al-Thani (Riyadh: Dar al-Faisal al-Thaqāfiyya), 1
al-Farsy, Fouad, Saudi Arabia: A Case Study in Development (New York: Kegan Paul International, 1978)Google Scholar
Niblock, Timothy, “Social Structure and the Development of the Saudi Arabian Political System,” in Niblock, , ed., Social and Economic Development in the Arab Gulf (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980), 75Google Scholar
Gilman, Nils, Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007)Google Scholar
Engerman, David C., Gilman, Nils, and Haefele, Mark H., eds., Staging Growth: Modernization, Development and the Global Cold War (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×