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In the Arabian Gulf, there is an understandable fascination with the future: smart cities, AI clusters, and economic zones that promise diversification beyond oil. But amid this forward momentum, we risk forgetting that the Gulf’s economy was once thriving not because of central planning or industrial zoning, but because of something far more organic: trust, adaptability, and deeply human connections.

Before the modern nation-state drew hard borders across the Arabian Peninsula and southern Iran, the Gulf was part of a far older and more fluid geography. Communities in places such as Qeshm, Dubai, Muscat, and Bandar Abbas did not simply trade — they lived, moved, worked, and married across regions. Their strength lay not in homogeneity or formality, but in intersectionality: the convergence of professions, identities, and roles within and across households and communities.

In my research on the history of trade in the Gulf — families with ancestral and economic ties stretching across the region — I found that their livelihoods were anything but linear. One person might be a pearl diver during the season, a scholar the next, and an informal arbitrator within his community when called on. Women, too, played roles beyond the domestic: managing household finances, facilitating trade relationships, and anchoring family ties across shores. These were not exceptions; they were features of a society that understood economic resilience as a communal endeavor, grounded in social versatility and collective trust.

There was no formal “cluster strategy” — but the Gulf functioned like one long before the term existed. People, skills, goods, and ideas came together not through infrastructure, but through relationships: between tribes and towns, merchants and craftsmen, men and women, elders and youth. The economy was informal, yes — but it was remarkably efficient, precisely because it was interconnected.

Today, when we talk about economic clusters, we tend to speak in terms of infrastructure. Zones are carved out, incentives are layered in, and success is measured in contributions to the national economy and employment targets. These are all important. But what made the Gulf economy thrive in the past — and what can make it thrive again — is something harder to quantify: intersectional connectedness.

In an age of fragmentation, intersectionality is not a soft value but a strategic asset. 

Maria Hanif Al-Qassim

The UAE’s recent experience building a national food cluster offers a powerful example. Launched in 2024, the cluster was developed not as an isolated zone, but as a living ecosystem built on values deeply rooted in Gulf tradition.

It prioritized trust, adaptability, and collaboration — not just between government and private sector, but across farmers, logistics providers, regulators, entrepreneurs, and researchers. The goal was not just economic output, but a shared sense of purpose and mutual accountability.

This approach echoes the pre-oil way of doing things in the UAE: where public and private blurred, where roles overlapped, and where economic activity was embedded in the rhythms of community life. The food cluster did not just revive a sector; it revived a mindset.

And that mindset is more relevant now than ever. In an age of fragmentation — where technology often isolates, and sectors compete for attention and resources — intersectionality is not a soft value but a strategic asset. It is what allows ecosystems to adapt, what allows people to participate meaningfully in change, and what anchors innovation in lived experience rather than in abstraction.

As we build the next phase of the Gulf’s economic transformation, let us not only look outward — to global competitiveness or cross-border trade. Let us look inward, at the web of relationships that have always been our strength. Because long before we had clusters, we had community. And when communities are connected across lines of class, role, geography, and function — that is when real prosperity begins.

• Maria Hanif Al-Qassim is an Emirati from Dubai who writes on development, gender and social issues. X: @maria_hanif