Global Citizenship

I am often confronted with the puzzling question "where are you from?" Hmm.. this seems like it should be an easy one, shouldn't it? I was born and raised in Doha, Qatar, in 1991. My dad was born in New York, moved to Canada, finished his last year of high school in Egypt, and came to Qatar, where he remains to this day. My mother was born in Qatar, and both of my grandparents have mixed national backgrounds.



I went to a British kindergarten, an American primary and secondary school, and an American Jesuit university. I speak predominately Arabic with my mom and predominately English with my dad, and travel often, exposing myself to different cultures and languages. So whenever I'm confronted by the topic in a conversation, I usually announce, proudly and with a sheepish grin, "I guess I'm a global citizen then."



People often discount such a statement as too cheesy or cliche; however, rare is it when an individual realizes the implications of such a statement. I'm not saying I'm profound or anything, I'm just a byproduct of this global culture, of the phenomenon obsessively termed globalization by the masses. It connotes Western ideological domination over the East and Northern economic supremacy over the South. However, in his book Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture, sociology professor Roland Robertson, described the process of globalization as "the compression of the world and the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole," and sociologists Albrow and King define globalization as "all those processes by which the peoples of the world are incorporated into a single world society." Waters concedes that it is a "social process in which the constraints of geography on economic, political, social and cultural arrangements recede, in which people become increasingly aware that they are receding and in which people act accordingly." I see this everyday in Qatar; expatriate, or non-Arab/non-Muslim kids saying insh'Allah or getting karak,



or a Corvette with an American flag bumper sticker driven by a young Qatari male, or a non-married Arab couple walking and holding hands. More and more everyday cultural norms are readjusted and boundaries redrawn. The sheer proliferation of mixed-sex education in the Middle East shows the ideological rearrangement between what once might have been mores or even taboos (such as having Qatari men and women in the same classroom socializing outside of an appropriate cultural context). The fact that I sit in the atrium of Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar, where education based on the Western Jesuit experience is imported from the United States of America to Qatar, writing on a laptop that was manufactured in another part of the world, wearing clothes from designers that claim to be Italian but have factories in China and India. All our societies are connected on a microscopic level, and our ancient cultural heritage, although to be held with pride and regarded as majestic, has slowly changed and molded itself with the proliferation of mass media and travel, exposing a majority of people in all corners of the world to an ever-flowing milieu. For our last class, on Wednesday, we discussed functionalist theory, which views that different social environments maintain an orderly and consistent status quo, where people actively endeavor to maintain stability and order. David Grazian believes that popular culture is functional for society, acting as an agent that maintains stability the systematic nature of social worlds. Popular culture, accordingly, includes rituals and totems that are shared across the world through the appropriately titled "popular culture." Rituals are cultural acts of solidarity, social cohesion, and rebellion, according to Grazian, and that they enable groups to gather and enforce their collective identity. Through globalization and mass media, especially through popular mobilization media outlets such as Twitter and Facebook, we see people that would never otherwise have met build relationships and experiences vicariously. They become desensitized and their sense of understanding of the world they inhabit expands outside their immediate national sphere of influence, and a supra-culture that transcends national or regional boundaries is developed. Popular culture, as base and denigrating as it can get in some cases, unites people through ideas, songs, dance, blogs, personal pages, and other forms of expression, forming a massive culture paralleling the consumer culture, although more and more we are connected by ideas in lieu of commercial products.

Bibliography Robertson, Roland. Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture. London: Sage, 1992. Waters, Malcolm. Globalization. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2001. Albrow, Martin, and Elizabeth King. Globalization, Knowledge and Society: Readings From International Sociology. London: Sage Publications, 1990.

Beyond Boundaries and the Karak Culture

When I have to write something I usually take a drive down in my car to some coffee shop in Qatar. I keep a notepad in my car so that I can jot down points on my way to the café and then develop those ideas later on. I did the same last night, after a long nap till 9 pm, in order to brainstorm ideas for an active blog post. One of the first things I asked myself was, “Dona what do you do everyday on a regular basis in Qatar? What is that one thing you missed on your trip last time outside Qatar?” What I missed the most was, going to Bandar, the “tea – port” of Qatar” (Facebook page link: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Bandar-Doha-Qatar/110456542339707)

I could write pages on how much I missed the idea of all my friends driving up in their Cruisers, and me in my Chevrolet Aveo forming a large circle in front of the Bandar seaside. Each of us would have a Karak in our hands. Karak is a traditional sweet-tea brewed in teapots. For us, this is pastime. We do occasionally go to the City Centre or Villagio malls for a movie or to some hookah lounges for a time of Sheesha or a card game, but Bandar is where we meet, every single day after each of us get done with our work shifts or college. This is how we socialize. I like to call this the “Karak culture.” In my recent readings from Mix it up: Popular Culture Mass Media and Society, author David Grazian writes about how a culture is not the product of a solidarity person, rather a product of collective activity generated by interlocking networks of culture creators. Within his study of sociology, there are  four significant criteria that define culture: 1) the culture must be “well-liked” by the masses, 2) easily recognized and widely used, 3) It must be a mass culture intended for general consumption and lastly, 4) It must relate to folk expression. The “Karak culture” conforms to all four of these criteria, as it is a well liked, an easily recognized mass culture that relates to folk expression.

Hanging out in the streets of Chicago, where I did my residency two weeks ago, I lived through a different pastime. As a Chicagoan for three months, friends took me to several museums, a Cubs game at Wrigley Field or to Second City for an evening of laughing. I would sometimes wander around Macy's on State Street, spend a few bucks on some Frango Mints or walk leisurely along North Michigan Avenue (called "The Magnificent Mile") looking at the people and the fancy shops. This post is not about the difference in pastime cultures between two cities. Rather, about the sanctions I receive regularly from different people based on my lifestyle in Qatar. Sanction is a kind of control that the society holds steadfast in the minds of the people living within the community. To act differently means to receive negative sanctions from the people who adhere to the norms in the society.


I have been stopped several times on my road trips with my friends because I’m a female and I have male friends. I would be sitting on a brick wall, across the sea in Bandar, with a Karak in my hands, and a Fazaa (cop car) would drive by. He would reverse back and ask for my Identification Card. “Do you know what time it is?” a cop would ask. “1 a.m.?” I would mutter something like that. “Who are these people? You should go home and sleep,” he would say. “These are friends and I just woke up.” I usually answer. They never take action, because obviously I’m not doing anything wrong and there is no law in this country that states that I cannot hang out with male friends past certain hours of night.
I’m being deviant certainly, straying away from the standard norm of the people in Qatar. A young lady sipping on her tea past mid-night with a bunch of guys is just unacceptable.

Tea Time Time!

If you ask a Qatari guy to pick you up from the airport on your first visit to Doha, he will first take you for a cup of karak before he takes you to your hotel. This is because of the Arabic hospitality manners, and also because karak is this generation’s addiction. Karak, is tea with milk, but prepared by boiling the tea leaves to make the flavor stronger. This drink has become the Qataris' identity which, in sociology, means the expressions and conceptions of a person.

History:
A couple of years ago, AlNaimi cafeteria was popular because of its delicious karak that was served in the petrol station behind Landmark Mall. The location was not only popular because of the karak, but because people treated this location as an assembly point to meet before going out anywhere or just to chat. The place eventually created an organization of young adults where they would challenge each other in drifting skills as rumors say. I found a video on YouTube that actually proves that people actually were drifting there:

The cafeteria eventually became popular and opened a couple of different branches, and here came the competitor: “Tea Time.” AlNaimi owner did not know that the place will become what it is now, but Tea Time owner had a plan to compete against AlNaimi and beat him. Tea Time’s managing director, Mr. Abdulkareem, was very smart when he opened his first branch at AlMerqab Street, in AlNasr, located closer to the center of Doha than AlNaimi and capturing a wider variety of customers (because of the location). “Our inception was in 2002 at Al-Nasar, Doha. Since then we never looked back and we are still continuing our triumph successfully.” – Tea Time Website.

Tea Time, AlMarkheya Branch
Tea Time also had a wider selection of beverages, and snacks, with Soufflé as its leading top product; this delicious cake was the main reason many people went to Tea Time instead of AlNaimi cafeteria. Take a look at their menu here. Tea Time overtook AlNaimi cafeteria, but still there are some common things we can notice in both of these chains of restaurants: They both follow Ritzer's theory of McDonaldization - efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control. They both also stick to the popular culture, like the things that the consumers' love. The simplest example I can think of is how they stick to the "1-Riyal" karak, which is what the customers' expect when they go for a drink.

It is our Bar! (without the alcohol):
Aside from Sheeshas and Hookah Lounges, Tea stalls have sort of become our "bars" in the sense of gathering with friends, or alone, and drinking until you figure out your plan for the day. The good thing is that you can have your breakfast there, lunch, dinner, and even a midnight snack. These places are usually crowded by middle aged Qataris, 16-28 years old, from different classes of people, elites, middle classes, and lower classes, you can clearly identify them by their cars.

Beyond the Karak...
Karl Marx believed that it is the social conflict that drives the change in society. The government and the police hate these gatherings because it makes people want to drift and show off their skills. To stop that, cops often pass by to make sure everything is in order.
In addition, Karak sort of became the youth's most consumed drink; they drink to think, play, hangout, study, smoke, and to think about drinking karak.
To a certain degree, Qataris have been stereotyped as being karak-addicts; indeed it is a nice hot drink that you wouldn't mind enjoying any time of the day, but to Qataris, this has become their identity and that's how they feel as a part of the society they're in.

Don't believe me? I will let this annoying guy share his aesthetic feeling: P.S. This kid is not Qatari; his expressions about simply drinking karak tells us about his feelings of belonging to the society.