I have been to souq waqif many times and each time I go there, I am amazed at both of these types of progresses.
I remember the first time I ever went to souq waqif was with my school, and I remember telling one of my friends “Why is there a Baskin Robbins in the middle of souq waqif? Isn’t this supposed to be a cultural place?” What I had failed to realize then was that even though Baskin Robbins was not part of my culture, it is still part of culture- just not mine. Baskin Robbins’ motto is “Your Neighborhood Ice Cream Store” which shows how dominant it is in American society, or how dominant it wants to be. I can’t be the judge of that because I’ve never actually been to California- which is where Baskin Robbins first started out. The same goes to the restaurants in souq waqif, for example the Iranian, the Indian and the Italian restaurants.
Also, another form of cultural progress is the art exhibitions that can be seen in the galleries of souq waqif. One of the exhibitions that I went to focused on Qatari artists and I could actually see the artist painting his work onto the canvas. Not only was it interesting to see an artist at work, creating a cultural object, but it was interesting to see a Qatari one because it was the first time that I’ve seen this type of thing. I’ve also seen an exhibition where more than one person has worked on a piece of art, so it was a collective activity and there was a division of labor amongst the people. I also heard many people talking about their thoughts of the many artworks and each person had a different opinion, which proves that cultural objects are multivocal.
The other kind of progress is the westernization and globalization. The Baskin Robbins example could be put in this category as well. As I previously mentioned, Baskin Robbins started out in the United States of America, specifically the state of California. So the fact that it is located in Qatar means that Qatar is becoming westernized, even if it is through a simple thing like ice cream. Another example of westernization in souq waqif is the fact that many of the cafés have multiple television screens in them that usually play some sort of western sport, usually football. Once when I was walking around the souq, I heard a loud cheering noise coming from the cafés, I assumed a team had won and the people were cheering because of that and that they were experiencing collective effervescence. Another example is the parking lot surrounding the souq. This is part of westernization because the need for parking lots came from the west, which is where cars were invented. Traditionally parking lots were not needed because all people needed were posts to tie their camels to.
