Culture and the Queue

As pissed off as I get about certain things in the Middle East, this post from Emirates Economist regarding a recent article in Abu Dhabi's The National, reminds me that perceptions of politeness and rudeness are often cultural in nature and, therefore what I perceive as an act so rude as to deserve a beating, people from another culture may not even think twice about. Here's a quote from the article:

...queuing, in its many forms, is alien to the UAE, says Dr Alnajjar [Syrian origin, worked and studied in US for a long time, so has both ME and Western perspective]. This does not mean the country is rude. On the contrary, he says, the UAE, especially Emiratis and Asian workers, are scrupulously polite. But there are sharp differences between the Gulf perception of politeness and the West.“Every society has its own ideas on what is polite,” he says. “In the UK, it is polite to ask a lady on a date. Here it is not. In the UK, it is polite to say to a lady, ‘You are beautiful’. Here it is not. If you go to a man’s house and invite his daughter out, he might kill you.“In the UK, people will eat in front of you. Here, it is impolite not to offer food if you are eating.”

There are any number of examples here to illustrate the point, however, I think that some cultural phenomena are fine, while others (such as jumping queue and the other associated behaviors) are damaging economically, socially, and politically. These behaviors, at root, show a cultural propensity not to obey the rules of society, whether those be unwritten societal norms or actual laws. This is a cultural phenomenon that the Middle East and other developing regions must overcome in order to reach their full potential. If everyone (to a degree) respects the rule of law, the societies will lose some of the wasteful practices that hold back efficient production in general, and generally piss a lot of people off. Some of this is a question of public education, but it also takes enforcement. People obey speed limits when they are forced to by police or radar. People stay in queue because employees will not serve line-jumpers and (in New Jersey and other similar places) you'll get your ass kicked by a pipefitter or teamster if you try it. But in order for this enforcement to work, the individual needs to know why he was corrected for his behavior.