Culture?

We always hear the word culture, but what does culture really mean? Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. However, the word "culture" is most commonly used in three basic senses:

▪ Excellence of taste in the Fine Arts and humanities, also known as High Culture.
▪ An integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning.
▪ The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization, or group.

Sitting in the last sociology class, I have realized that culture can simply be explained, just like sociology, to be a mixture of fun and interesting things. Simply put, culture is determined by many aspects including history, tradition and behaviors.

An example, the “Simpsons.”

The Simpsons has been on television for quite a while, created and broadcasted through Fox Broadcasting Company. The Animated sitcom was created to resemble the American middle class life style and brought with it all the domestic problems.

Due to its popularity, The Simpsons gained many viewers and still remains a favorite among societies consisting of all ages. From the dysfunctional family outlook, to the composed inner harmony of the characters, the Simpsons was seen to have brought with it many aspects of family and societal behaviors demonstrated in real life America.

How does the Simpsons relate to culture? Well, America was founded on the basis of a new world; there was no specific culture that was obtained by the so-called- Americans. However, American culture, or western culture as parts of the world call it, was developed through popular behaviors. From the Simpsons we reveal that even with such a simple television show, people’s ideas shift to the direction intended.

There is no way to say that culture was brought upon by mediums such as films and television shows such as the Simpsons. However, you can be sure that it has enhanced the ideas of culture to compass around it.

Formal Organisation In An Event

Events require a lot of planning and time in organisation and execution. Teamwork being an important part of formal organisation, events also require input from people with diverse skills and capabilities.
I recently helped in the organisation of a marketing event for Hermès and Haute Muse Magazine at The Pearl in which they were presenting new products. It was an event of high culture and attracted a clientele of discerning style and taste and who had high expectations of personalised service.
In the division of labour, each person was given a task in order to simplify the duties involved in the organization of the event and to ensure smooth coordination towards a successful outcome.
My task was to welcome guests into the event and send them off at the end with goodbye presents. The team had an informal approach of friendliness and engagement to set the tone of relaxation and welcome for the guests to feel special and to get them interested in the products that were being marketed. This approach was quite different from the false friendliness that is encountered in shops and similar environments the purpose of which is to get customers to buy, buy, buy.
Each person in the team was involved in the event for utilitarian purposes either to gain experience for future personal advancement or to network and gain contacts in that high profile environment. We all benefited in some way, if not monetarily.
Events such as these, while they look effortless, are organised in a precise and almost militaristic way.

Images courtesy of Haute Muse Magazine

Society’s Dissatisfaction with Aberrant Beauty!

Every individual is judged by his or her aberrance from the norm of beauty; that’s when sociological imagination appears to explain the nonconforming behavior. Humans act by their nature, and we all are actors who play our role in life. The question of to whom we offer respect is controlled by the social status. Individual achievement that we create and personal choice to present who we are, are the way to define our self, such as graduating, having a respectful job and achieving a dream. We define each other by how we look and by what we do. Everything we do adds to our status in society. Difference must appear so we can define each other. We are born with blue or brown eyes, rich or poor, and with given names. God gives us His blessing by creating us as a human being so the life circle continues.

According to the author, poet, and playwright, Rabindranath Tagore, “Beauty is truth's smile when she beholds her own face in a perfect mirror.” How do we define beauty? In my country perfect skin, wide eyes, tan color skin, and curvy body are defining the main ideal of Arabic beauty. Beauty obsession becomes a large issue that societies suffer from. There are strong pressures on people to be perfect because they want to present who they are in a fake way and accept being treated by the way they look. But yet there is a bright side of this beauty.

Make up, beauty salons, latest trends, jewelry, latest handbags, latest shoes and latest hair cuts are the main material culture, which is a favorite and hot topic these days. When I talk about these topics with my friends, we get excited and a lot of debates start. Qatari culture is really concerned about the appearance. Girls are wearing the latest model of abaya and boys are wearing the bright new Thoub. Male beauty in Qatari culture is taking on greater emphasis, although not as strongly as women’s beauty, but quite fair. Qatari man likes to wear new watches, new sunglasses, new cufflinks, and new soles. Also, they often go to the barber to shave their beard or get a hair cut.

People’s choices of custom and clothing are depending on society to present their cultural tradition and values. Qatar is a nation with high culture, in which there is luxury and splendor because of high income that came from the gas and modernity. With the rising economy Qatar’s modernization included the clothing for both men and women. The cultural values are still in the society. Furthermore, people kept on developing without forgetting their religion and tradition. For example, Qatari women still cover their bodies and they translate the old customs into a new design of body and hair covering. Wearing the abaya is not for religious matters because there are Muslim women who are covering their bodies without the abaya in other countries. However, Qatar society expects Qatari women to wear the abaya in order to be loyal to the country’s tradition.

What happens when thinking of beauty goes too far?
On weddings

At wedding parties Qatari women exaggerate their make up and wear the latest designed dress. Lack of confidence and fear of not getting accepted in the society led the women to spend a fortune on the wedding supplies, such as the latest wedding dress, famous make up artist and hair dresser, which causes a series of problems for men and increases the number of unmarried women because women demand a high dowry to arrange their imagined wedding and men can’t afford it.


“An estimated report presented by Abdul Aziz al-Ansari, the director of the Marriage Bureau located in Doha, stated that nearly 50% of the Qatari women are unmarried…. The biggest hurdle in arranging a partner is due to the high dowry demands by the bride's family” (Himadree, par.2, 4). Women obsess over beauty, exaggerate, and have a strong feeling to be perfect that has led them to never experience the beautiful touchable moments that they will get to when they marry. In role conflict women can take a role by their actions, being mature and balancing their beauty needs. Is it worth it to spend this amount of money? This depends on the goal that they want to achieve.


Religious point of view
In Islam wasting money is forbidden, yet some people do that, and guilt may cause an ongoing series of problems. The ideal society is built on the human relations and their organized interests. Also, it is characterized by its ideas, values and morals, law and systems, which establish boundaries and stop these problems from happening.



Work cited
Himadree, C. “ Spinsterhood Among Qatar Women On The Rise. “The Muslim Woman. 19 July 2006. Web. 23 Oct. 2011.

Bryan Adams rocks Doha (sort of)

Sociologists do their best to describe the differences between what they call high culture and popular culture. High culture typically refers to cultural objects found in the fine arts -- classical music, the writings of William Shakespeare, the ballet, and the opera -- and often confers high status upon the consumer. Popular culture is basically the culture consumed by the masses. You know, American Idol and that sort of thing.



Something that's not easy to come by in Doha is live music. Sure, you can catch the occasional oud player in the souq, but live bands are a true rarity. Even more rare is a concert by a well-known musician. You have to fly to Dubai or Beirut for that type of thing. But on December 16, my wife and I actually got to see a real concert by a genuinely famous musician, one Bryan Adams.



Now, I've never been what you might call a big Bryan Adams fan, despite the fact that he's the top-selling male Canadian artist of all time. But in Doha, you take what you can get, and if Bryan Adams was coming to town, we weren't going to miss it.

And you know what? It wasn't bad. Granted, seeing Adams play his many many hits live didn't transform me into a superfan or anything, but we had a really great time singing along with about 5000 other folks. "Cuts Like a Knife?" Check. "Summer of 69?" Check. "(Everything I Do) I Do it for You?" But of course. Adams aims to please, which means hit after feel-good hit. And, wow, the dude's got a lot of hits. It was one of those concerts where you pretty much knew every song, even if you didn't realize it was a Bryan Adams song. All in all, a fun night, very similar to the one had by the couple in this video.



Now, had I known that these guys were playing in Abu Dhabi the same night, Bryan would have had to do everything he does for someone else. But it was a nice night on the beach in Doha. Yeah, that's right, the beach. It's winter here, which means it gets down into the upper 60s at night on occasion. Brrrrr!