i'm pretty sure pierre bourdieu would have a field day in kuwait. for the non sociologists out there, briefly, bourdieu was a cultural sociologist who studied the relationship between taste and social position. at a very basic level, bourdieu argued that taste and social class are intimately related (ever wonder why people in the similar social classes tend to like similar things? this, according to bourdieu, is why). ok, end of brief sociology lesson, onto kuwait.
so, in kuwait, there is the upper middle class and the upper class (the lower class is reserved for the imported foreign national workers which i will get to in my next post). and guess what? everyone likes the same thing. i mean, the same things. to borrow again from bourdieu, there really is no distinction.
for instance, in the united states, there are multiple sub-cultures. individuals, particularly on college campuses, attempt to distinguish themselves from their peers in a multitude of ways--clothing , political affiliations, leisure activities, etc. but none of that distinction, that difference, of taste exists in kuwait (i should add in here that many of our students do not wear dishdasha's and burqas so that isn't the explanation). on campus everyone pretty much looks the same and engages in similar forms of leisure activities (as an aside, being bored out of our minds in kuwait we ask the students what they do on the weekends. the resounding answer is always, "we go to the mall."). maybe simplistically, this would be explained by bourdieu's theory that people in similar social classes tend to have similar tastes. but my hunch is that it's far more complex than that.
afterall, using the united states as an example, both the hippie and the hipster movements are comprised mainly of white middle-class individuals who have rejected (or tried to) their privileged social position (and even though i'm probably a part of it, i mean, lets be honest people, the voluntary simplicity movement really is a privilege--how many people have no choice but to live simply?). i digress. point being, in the united states, there are multiple expressions of taste (even if they are just a different mainstream) that i don't see in kuwait.
i'm not really sure what to make of this. perhaps it's all the social emphasis on beauty, on money, on the superficiality of life. but, i would argue, that we find that in the united states too--yet some people still resist. any ideas?
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oh, and how *sweet* is this truck? talk about the epitome of branding. we discovered this gem in a mall parking lot last night, no less.
1 comment:
I wonder if it has to do with these sociological cycles taking time to play out. Perhaps our country was more homogenous in taste in the 1950's. Maybe it has to do w/ how quickly technology (mixed w/ peer pressure) aids that homogenization of tastes. Kuwait has seen technology boom recently. In many ways they are ahead of the US, but in many ways perhaps they're in their '50's or 60's - embracing the mall like we embraced science. But it takes time and maturity to realize as a collective society that, gee, all those material things might not be so good for us. Or.. gee, maybe all this legalistic religion isn't the best thing.. we're going to rebel and be free. etc. And realizing it individually is easier than realizing it as a society. In the US, we had social norms against the hippie movement, but not laws. In any Arab country, I'd expect any kind of freedom movement to take a lot longer (if ever) to come around!
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