Social Customs

Ahmed Sadiq Eidan
Supervisor: Eng. Ahmed Obaid Oraibi

Customs are a set of inherited actions, methods, and behaviors passed down from generation to generation and linked to a specific time and place. Customs are considered practices produced by the popular conscience to meet its living desires and remain alive with the development of society over time and its social and cultural history. They thus become inherited by individuals because they follow typical behavior patterns in society, customs gain authority and status in society with their repetition, and exercise hidden authority over individuals derived from the collective conscience in society. Therefore, scholars have linked social customs to popular methods and folklore, as customs reflect the characteristics and patterns of a culture characterized by a collective and social character. (Al-Jawhari, 1979: p. 65) Habit is the singular of the feminine plural of “habits” in the Arabic language. It is derived from the verb “to accustom,” which is derived from the root “to accustom,” and in language, it means everything that is accustomed to until it is done without effort. Habit is the state repeated in a manner (Al-Hassan, 2007: p. 471). Accordingly, it means everything that people are accustomed to and are accustomed to doing and performing, and their work is repeated until they become familiar with it and accustomed to it, where due to its frequent repetition, a person does not find it strange. So you say, “Awda so-and-so did such-and-such,” meaning he became accustomed to it, and “Awad” something means he made it his habit. Habit is what a person is accustomed to returning to repeatedly. In general, habit is “a state in which behavior is repeated in a single pattern” (Al-Bustani, 1973: p. 504). As for the terminology, habit expresses a pattern of behavior that an individual or group accepts for themselves, and thus, it becomes fixed over time and is transmitted genetically. This transmission between generations helps it expand and grow, thus gaining authority in society and habit. The Arab Encyclopedia was not without Linguistic and intellectual from the phrase habit through a set of concepts such as Eid, which essentially means return; we do not return to something except after familiarity, and the Arabs in the past were very keen on their customs for fear of the disappearance of their authority and the loss of society, some behaviors that they to remain alive in them. (Al-Zaqout, 2000: p. 5).
Types of social customs: –
1- Individual customs: – According to what we notice daily, they are a group of customs related to the behavioral appearance practiced by individuals, such as the habit of styling hair or the habit of speaking. Therefore, we can say that they are customs related to the person because the individual can practice them without society’s need. They exist for his needs so that he can organize his life, but they make life easy when the work is repeated, and accordingly, they are a personal expression of responses to life circumstances. (Abdul Ghani, 2006: p. 153)
2- Collective customs: Collective customs constitute a way of life that does not go beyond the framework of social life and result from the interaction of members of society with each other, so a person cannot go outside its framework, as it is a means of preserving the entity of society, and arises automatically to achieve purposes related to the conditions of the group and aspects of its behavior, as it expresses the set of behavioral patterns that the group maintains and transmits through imitation and interaction with others. (Ghaith, 1965: p. 72)
Collective customs are divided into two types: traditional customs that are inherited through generations and preserve the cultural heritage, and modern customs that enter society in the form of fashions and express clothing and appearance and touch people’s ideas and beliefs. Modern customs reflect changes in social behavior and may be temporary and fade away with the passage of