Sunday, November 13, 2005

Social Change ..

One of the subjects that really was intresting in collage was Sociology .. the lecturer we had made me visuale sociology and never considered it as boring subject as some others did "funny is that in the foundation course we had a different lecturer and I hated sociology then and never wanted to take it again".
Since then, I started trying to understand society and try to build some theories around my own .. which brings me to my post today .. Social Change.

Yesterday, my friend told me she passed through Ibra on her visit to Sur. She was woundering why some families are so attached to thier villages (or blad how we call it). If you see it from a vision or a person who lived in muscat, those villages are boring small villages that have no entertainment at all.

Well what happens here is, the head of the family (father, uncle, .. etc) lived all his childhood in the village. When Oman started to develop, most jobs were located to muscat. So, in order to earn a living, he moved to must with his village in heart. Therefore, he never consider Muscat as "home" even if he has a house and his family is setteled there. Every weekend or at least once a month he will go back to his village. You go ask one of these guys from which part of Oman he is and the first answer would be his village name and he would only mention muscat if he was asked where he currently live.

His children on the other hand, lived all thier lives in muscat and thier consider it thier home. They are attached to thier village as a place where they originated from (and a place where thier father consider it home) but at heart .. Muscat, where they lived is considered home.

When the story above happens to alot of Omani household, I find it intresting to see how the father and the son have different loyalities. It just gives me a glimps of how change happened rapidly in Oman and the affect is very visible now.

Another issue that I consider a major change change is Women's education. although this story doesnt happen to everyone but I saw it clear in some families. You would see the mother being illetrate, and a house wife .. she lived her childhood beleiving that its "3aib - bad" for a woman to go to school let alont work. Now, after 30 years of development, you would see the same mother scolding her girl for not being serious in her school work .. and praying for her other girl to get accepted in such and so interview. It amazes me how mind sets managed to change fast, and how mentalities started accepting things they would consider taboo as children.

with all the above, there are areas that take a long time to change and wouldnt change fast. lets take an example: Tribilisim. as much as they started accepting social change, they still didnt accept to change thier minds and attitude about tribilisim. What makes it differnet? I dont know. But I guess its one thing that is deeply rooted in the arab genes. Although I beleive its changing, as there are things that are more accepted today then they were yesterday .. but still the process is slow.

Isnt it intresting to live on the years of development? to see the changes before your own eyes :)

Labels: وأنا لي رأي

Posted by Arabian Princess :: 10:03 PM :: 4 comments

Post a Comment

---------------oOo---------------