Dissertation_Dr Faisal Almubarak

97
self-employed peasant earned a meager annual income of $250. 63 In addition, the
provision of services in the oil-producing region's towns has aggravated urbanization
pulling, bedouins and peasants from the vagaries of rural life into large towns. In 1970,
the agricultural sector accounted for 40.4 per cent of the Saudi labor force and, by 1975,
the agricultural labor force declined to 28 per cent. 64 By 1989, it decreased to eleven
percent. Another major indicator of the transformation of the society is the diminishing
proportion of the bedouin population in the country's demographic composition. From a
majority at the birth of the Kingdom, by the 1980s, their share of the population decreased
to ten percent. 65 Secondly, urban change owed its impetus to the indirect effects of the oil
industry. Since the formation of Saudi Arabia, the Saudi monarchs have vigorously
engaged in spending oil revenues on the non-oil producing parts of the country to convey
legitimacy, as well as to maintain order and security.
TABLE 3.4
Foreign Employment Growth
Year
Migrant Employment
1962/63 60,000
1966/67 240,000
1975 723,400
1980 1,023,600*
Source: C. A. Sinclair and J.S. Birks (1982), 164. * This number comprises two-third of the national labor
force.
The shift from the traditional subsistence economy to a modern economy based on
exportation of crude oil meant the connecting of the country's economy to the international
economic system. This disrupted the spatial stasis of the society which hitherto took the
form of scattered, isolated populations with disintegrated traditional economies. A new
situation of "commercial dependency" emerged in which the entire national economy has
become organized around and conditioned by the exploration of a stable commodity, that is
oil. This was reflected in the sprouting of new towns in the oil-producing East Province.
In Third World countries, foreign capital has been instrumental in transforming traditional
economies into modern ones geared toward the Developed world markets' needs. This has
resulted in a dependency situation whereby developing countries' economies rely on those
of the developed world. In the case of Saudi Arabia, the exploitation by foreign capital of a
natural resource, that is oil, renders the entire national economy organized around the