Culture And Lifestyles: The Five Major Features Of Culture

Culture is the customs, lifestyles, social habits and shared pattern behaviors of cognitive constructs learned by socialization. It encompasses language, cuisine, the arts, and achievement ideals pertinent to a nation or organization of people. To loosely quote E.B. Taylor, creator of cultural anthropology, and the first to coin the term ‘culture’ in the eighteenth century, believes it is “the complex whole which includes knowledge, morals, beliefs…acquired by man as a member of society”. (A. Bhatt 2012) Culture is a way of life.

Five major features of culture are customs and traditions, religion, government and language. Every society tends to have its own unique culture. They are mostly are taught, creating a sense of normalcy, allowing

Many people live in urban areas because of the necessity of sharing scarce resources in the desert. Prices are high for everything from groceries and clothes to land and property, and the general population has limited ability to actually own property. Culturally, Kuwaitis have a caste system, where the royal family is the final decision maker. The lower in the system, the harder you work. If you are not a born Kuwaiti, however, there is no chance of you getting to a place of wealth, because they are taught to believe their home land should be enjoyed by them only. There are not any national political parties or leaders, yet several political groups act as de facto parties; these include the Bedouins, merchants, nationalists, Sunni and Shi'a activists, and secular leftists. These de facto parties are divided along the lines of class and religion. Presently, political and social controls are influenced by a combination of Islam and tradition, but this is being questioned in the increasingly multicultural environment of Kuwait (Loew, Heather

During the war with Iraq, many oil refining facilities were destroyed. Initially Kuwait suffered heavy losses on its society, as many Kuwaiti civilians were killed and thousands of others were tortured. Kuwaitis were also treated harshly to force them to flee their own country. Their economy suffered tremendous losses as the Iraqi army set fire to 600 out of the 950 oil wells in Kuwait damages to Kuwait amounted to over US $25 billion. Their being overturned by Iraq caused the American Army to intervene, and on January 16, 1991, Operation Desert Storm, the massive U.S.-led offensive against Iraq, began. Iraq was defeated, allowing Kuwait to begin their rebuilding process (History.com Staff, 2009). It has taken time, but, currently, Kuwait’s economy, people, culture, and oil refineries are thriving as they are protected by their army and American troop presence. This is of enormous importance to Kuwait. To protect oil interests, and to protect against larger countries taking advantage of Kuwait, the country was one of the founding members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries