Sociological Look At A Family Event

Families play an important role in our lives and those of us who are fortunate to come from loving homes should feel blessed. That’s how I felt this weekend after attending a family event at my uncle’s house. The event was held in honor of a family member who had returned from treatment in Germany, and as a mini-birthday celebration for my younger sister. So, I came to the conclusion that they would be the subjects of my sociological blog.



This event, unlike most, had both males and females interacting together in an informal manner. This is partially due to the fact they are all family members, and aren’t complete strangers. Sitting in a corner of the room I thought to myself what is the most important feature of my family. Ins this culture the family (and not just your nuclear family) functions as the official law enforcers that make sure that no religious/social taboos are broken. Knowing that any member of your family could be watching you anywhere you go makes you think twice about just thinking about doing something that would harm your reputation, and of course the theirs.

My uncles are big on exogamy, whereas my aunts stuck to good old endogamy. Now this isn’t because they weren’t interested in marrying someone “different” to themselves, it’s because they aren’t allowed to. It’s definitely a double standard; men are encouraged and are socially praised (sometimes) for marrying outsiders, while women are shun upon. Three out of my five uncles have married either Europeans or someone from another Arab country other than Qatar.



While watching them all eat dinner I realized that the men were the ones with who did the productive work, and the women did the reproductive work. My uncles work as in the military, one of them is a pilot, and the rest are work as senior executives of organizations. They do all the practical work in order to produce something, take over the “manly” positions in society to look good to their families and the rest of society. On the other hand five of my six aunts are teachers, and one of them is stay at home wife. The women got stuck with the reproductive jobs of being the educators and the caregivers in the family.



My family has its weird quirks but that’s what makes it different from any other person’s family. It’s big family that supports all its members through thick and thin no matter what. Towards the end of the night old family videos were shown and in them I saw just how much my family have helped shape the way that I am, and the way the rest of my cousins. They did their job to the best of their abilities. The home videos showed exactly how they socialized us into individuals that this society would accept, and by looking around me I saw that they set an example of how to take care of the elderly. Life wouldn’t be worth living if you didn’t have people to share it with, people who love you unconditionally, because that’s they were socialized to do.

System of Untouchability

More than 160 million people in India are considered Untouchable – people tainted by their birth into a caste system that deems them impure and less than human.

Indian caste system is a system of social stratification in which communities are defined by thousands of endogamous hereditary groups called jatis. The values and ethics are strongly held by the people belonging to the castes. Their life chances, context, choices and social status in the society largely depended on their caste. There are 5 different levels of the Indian caste system followed over years:-

The untouchables or dalit faced non prejudiced discrimination and were not considered as citizens. Historically, they were associated to odd jobs such as butchering, removal of waste and animal carcasses. They were called untouchable as they were not allowed to come in contact with the other castes. This system has worked in Indian history. But present-day India forbids discriminating and practicing untouchability. Along with this law the government allows positive discrimination of the depressed classes in India. But positive discrimination have created new problems in the Indian society.

The video below is a brief description on the prejudice and discrimination faced by the dalits. The video gives us examples of movements held to destroy the system of untouchability.



Indians have become more flexible in their caste customs. In urban India, the people are less strict about the caste system than the rural. The biggest challenge in India is to overcome the violent clashes connected to caste tensions in remote villages. This will be a big leap to a more developed India.

Weddings in Doha

Family in any culture is very important, it is what shapes up a person. As a Qatari, family always comes first. Recently I attended a family wedding. At the wedding, I thought it would be a great idea to talk about the family relations and how weddings are set in Doha. There is so much to look at in weddings in Doha.
The first thing that I realized was the way the people were seated based on their age and their relation to the bride and groom. The nuclear family and the extended family sat at the very front next to the stage. However others were seated based on their age too. The older the person was, the closer they would sit to the stage. Out of respect the youngsters would let the elders take the good seats to get the best view.
In Qatari weddings, the men and women have separate weddings. However the women’s wedding has much more details. In a women’s wedding, loud music is played with a dance floor in the middle for the young girls to dance. This wedding that I attended was a marriage that was endogamy. Both the groom and the bride were related to each other, and were both from the same social group. However an exogamy wedding does not happen often in a culture like Doha. People tend to marry people from their same group.
Families in Qatar in most cases go with the Breadwinner system

; the husband works and earns the money to support his family. In the wedding, the groom enters the woman’s wedding for around 30 minutes and he leaves. When he enters, the women who are not related to the groom have to immediately cover up. He enters the wedding to take pictures with his wife on his wedding day and with his relatives as well.
When the groom leaves the wedding, the bride leaves with him as well. Women then uncover and the dancing continues. The close relatives usually stay till very late at night, however friends mostly leave early.