Questões de Concurso

Qatar has made itself into the diplomatic capital of the world. Dotted across Doha are the many palaces and offices that have hosted, over recent years, negotiations about the many intractable diplomatic issues that have taken place the world over.

The power Qatar has come to wield has taken many observers by surprise. As a traditional Muslim monarchy in the Middle East, Qatar is a new kind of location for the sort of high-stakes geopolitical deal-making transacted until recently in Geneva and Oslo. Yet since October, the nation’s massive investment in becoming the world’s go-between has come into its own. Having long cultivated close relations with both the US and Hamas, Qatar became the locus of ceasefire negotiations in major local conflicts, as well as discussions over aid and evacuating the wounded. Its mediation has grown from a strategy to enhance its own safety into a role that underpins the entire world’s security.

Nesrine Malik. The go-between: how Qatar became the global capital of diplomacy.

In: The Guardian. Internet: <www.theguardian.com> (adapted).

Qatar has made itself into the diplomatic capital of the world. Dotted across Doha are the many palaces and offices that have hosted, over recent years, negotiations about the many intractable diplomatic issues that have taken place the world over.

The power Qatar has come to wield has taken many observers by surprise. As a traditional Muslim monarchy in the Middle East, Qatar is a new kind of location for the sort of high-stakes geopolitical deal-making transacted until recently in Geneva and Oslo. Yet since October, the nation’s massive investment in becoming the world’s go-between has come into its own. Having long cultivated close relations with both the US and Hamas, Qatar became the locus of ceasefire negotiations in major local conflicts, as well as discussions over aid and evacuating the wounded. Its mediation has grown from a strategy to enhance its own safety into a role that underpins the entire world’s security.

Nesrine Malik. The go-between: how Qatar became the global capital of diplomacy.

In: The Guardian. Internet: <www.theguardian.com> (adapted).

Qatar has made itself into the diplomatic capital of the world. Dotted across Doha are the many palaces and offices that have hosted, over recent years, negotiations about the many intractable diplomatic issues that have taken place the world over.

The power Qatar has come to wield has taken many observers by surprise. As a traditional Muslim monarchy in the Middle East, Qatar is a new kind of location for the sort of high-stakes geopolitical deal-making transacted until recently in Geneva and Oslo. Yet since October, the nation’s massive investment in becoming the world’s go-between has come into its own. Having long cultivated close relations with both the US and Hamas, Qatar became the locus of ceasefire negotiations in major local conflicts, as well as discussions over aid and evacuating the wounded. Its mediation has grown from a strategy to enhance its own safety into a role that underpins the entire world’s security.

Nesrine Malik. The go-between: how Qatar became the global capital of diplomacy.

In: The Guardian. Internet: <www.theguardian.com> (adapted).

Qatar has made itself into the diplomatic capital of the world. Dotted across Doha are the many palaces and offices that have hosted, over recent years, negotiations about the many intractable diplomatic issues that have taken place the world over.

The power Qatar has come to wield has taken many observers by surprise. As a traditional Muslim monarchy in the Middle East, Qatar is a new kind of location for the sort of high-stakes geopolitical deal-making transacted until recently in Geneva and Oslo. Yet since October, the nation’s massive investment in becoming the world’s go-between has come into its own. Having long cultivated close relations with both the US and Hamas, Qatar became the locus of ceasefire negotiations in major local conflicts, as well as discussions over aid and evacuating the wounded. Its mediation has grown from a strategy to enhance its own safety into a role that underpins the entire world’s security.

Nesrine Malik. The go-between: how Qatar became the global capital of diplomacy.

In: The Guardian. Internet: <www.theguardian.com> (adapted).

Culture is ordinary. Every human society has its own shape, its own purposes, its own meanings. Every human society expresses these, in institutions, and in arts and learning. The making of a society is the finding of common meanings and directions, and its growth is an active debate and amendment under the pressures of experience, contact, and discovery, writing themselves into the land. The growing society is there, yet it is also made and remade in every individual mind.

The making of a mind is, first, the slow learning of shapes, purposes, and meanings, so that work, observation and communication are possible. Then, second, but equal in importance, is the testing of these in experience, the making of new observations, comparisons, and meanings.

A culture has two aspects: the known meanings and directions, which its members are trained to; the new observations and meanings, which are offered and tested. These are the ordinary processes of human societies and human minds, and we see through them the nature of a culture: that it is always both traditional and creative; that it is both the most ordinary common meanings and the finest individual meanings.

We use the word culture in these two senses: to mean a whole way of life ⸺ the common meanings; to mean the arts and learning ⸺ the special processes of discovery and creative effort. Some writers reserve the word for one or other of these senses; I insist on both, and on the significance of their conjunction. The questions I ask about our culture are questions about our general and common purposes, yet also questions about deep personal meanings.

Culture is ordinary, in every society and in every mind.

Raymond Williams. Culture is Ordinary. In: R. Williams.

Resources of Hope: Culture, Democracy, Socialism.

London: Verso,1989. p.3-14 (adapted).