Sociology on the road

Instead of learning from the typical power points presentations in class, our Sociology Professor, Geoff Harkness, decided to take us to the Al-Mathaf museum last Thursday during our 80 minute long class. We all showed up on time, which illustrates how disciplined we are to our role obligations. While we were all in the bus heading to the museum, we were all quiet and uncertain about how the trip will integrate the contents of our sociology syllabus. One of the students was brave enough to tell to Professor Harkness that museums are boring. Professor Harkness played his role wisely by responding “When I was younger, I didn’t appreciate museums, but as I grew older I started to gain this appreciation.”








Once we arrived, we were welcomed by the Head of Education Michelle Dezember who has a sociology degree. We spent the first 15 minutes discussing the formal organization of the museum. First to define formal organization; it is the coordinating mechanisms that bring together people, resources, and technology and then channel human activity toward achieving a specific outcome. So at the entrance, there were desks with computers that store the data about the visitors. An example of a formal dimension of the museum is asking the visitors about their nationality, gender, age and their visiting status to the museum. About the organizational values, the museum is quite flexible to the type of exhibitions it hosts. It’s not limited to a specific type of culture. It accepts exhibitions from various cultures, which highlight the involvement of significant cultural diffusion.





The museum had some norms like not entering to the Gallery hall with food and beverages and also not taking photos of the art work inside. The exhibition that we saw was called the Swalif project which means short stories. There were a plethora of traditional Arabic paintings but we only had time to analyze two paintings. The first painting was by Jassim Zaini and it was called oil on panel. The painting showed how the Middle East has gradually progressed towards urbanization. On the right of the painting, there were women on a rowing boat just simply sitting, and a young boy fishing with a stick. But moving onto the middle and left side of the painting, there was a man holding a book and switching on an industrialized oil panel. There were also two men lifting some heavy objects and a man fishing with a huge fishing net. The painting explained an aspect of the gender roles in Arab countries which was that men are the ones expected to work hard and engage in some physical labor and technology, while women are expected to just take care of the family and support them. The background of the painting had some buildings which is a symbol modernism. There were also palm trees and a sun, which are quite common in the material culture of the Middle East.

The next collection of paintings was done by Sultan and they elaborated again the role of women in the Arabic society. The paintings showed women in their homes, sitting on the ground and grinding bread or cooking. The women were wearing their long traditional dress and burqa,which explains how conservative the Middle Eastern culture is. Also, the women in the picture had many serving plates beside them, which reflect the symbol of generosity and hospitality of the Arabian culture.



Head of Education Michelle Dezember

The trip was immensely enjoyable and educational at the same time. Many thanks to our Sociology Professor ,Geoff Harkness, for his creativity in planning for our class and making us more interested in the study of sociology.