University life... Is it alienating students from their real lives?

Students at Carnegie Mellon University spend most of their time at campus studying. They aim for better grades, better degree and a better job in the future. But if we were to look deeply at their lives, they have less social lives than they use to have before university. Most of CMU students spend around 12 hours a day on campus studying!

We are living in a Capitalist world!
Their hard wok and the long hours of studying is an illustration of capitalism. Students work hard to get the best grades and to be at the top, which makes college environment a competitive environment. Furthermore, some courses are designed to create this competitive environment for the students. Some professors limit the number of student who will get A in the course to a small present of the class. No matter what the student’s grade was, only top 20% for instance will get an A. this environment have made students compete against each other rather that just being friends and partners.

Karl Marx theory of alienation has described this situation where men are disconnected from other men. Competitive environments are established to get as much value as possible from the students. But at the same time it is disconnecting students from their peers as it makes them work against each other. His theory of alienation as he claims is a result of capitalism. On a talk with Sara BA Junior she said, “Almost all business related courses are competitive,” which shows that they are living in a capitalist environment.

Alienation from family
Due to the long hours CMUQ-ers spend at the university studying they barely see their families, not only on weekdays but also on weekends. Hassan Salatt, a BA sophomore said that he goes to CMU even on weekends. He prefers to study there rather than at home because he works efficiently there. It is the fact that every one is looking for the efficiency on everything we do prove that we are in a capitalist world.

Alienation from the product
In the process of working hard to get the optimal and higher grade possible almost all students tend to restrict their work to what the professor would like to see on it. They don’t work on the things they find interesting rather than they work on what their audience (professor) wants to see. This is actually disconnecting the student from the work he produces.

Can the alienation theory holds up in all situations?
Although the alienation theory is true in most of working places, but in universities where students are allowed to do independent studies, the alienation theory can’t be true! Because in independent studies, students are allowed to choose a topic of their own with the professor they wish to work with. Their work is almost always about a topic that interests them not what their professors ask them to do.

It is true that university students are disconnecting themselves from family friends by the long hours they spend studying and it is all results of our capitalist environment. However, their work is not always alienated from them. In fact they can work on any topic they want on an independent study.

Criticism Through Humor

Once again, Sociology gives me a chance to look at our society and culture from a different perspective. However, this time I will base my sociological analysis on Maz Jobrani’s comedy show that took place at the W hotel this Saturday.
In class, we discussed cultural criminology as a way to explore the ways in which “otherness” is socially constructed in films. We also learnt that the presence of outgroups create solidarity amongst ingroups such as Middle Easterners. This is where the main stereotype of Arabs and Muslims are introduced. They have been stereotyped as the “other” throughput history and still are by today. By doing so, the stereotypes of Middle Easterners have played a huge role on forming the public sense of whom and what is the “other” to the West.



Cinematic stereotype images of Arabs are a response to political and social events. However, it is also present within the notion of humor and comics. Throughout history, comics have been a reflection of social, political and cultural attitudes we have within our communities. Through humor, the viewing audience gets to accept racial stereotypes. This is because humor rarely offends the audience, as it is addressed in an informal, inoffensive, funny and harmless way.

Maz Jobrani is an Iranian-American stand-up comedian, whom bases most of his racial and satirical comics on the Arabs, Asians and Persians in the Middle East. For instance, at one point, on the behalf of all Iranians, he thanked one of the Pakistani audiences for how Pakistan’s problems have taken over the news industry and changed the focus of the news from Iran to Pakistan. At another point of the show, Jobrani criticized England’s colonial power in the Middle East. This was when he said, “you can’t let them in, and they’ll take over. They did it to India. Hello, we own it now.” Again, we get to see how Jobrani tackles political and social stereotypes by using humor. By doing so, he allows the audience to acknowledge the situations and stereotypes of the certain group of race, and laugh at the way they are understood by the majority. This could possibly be where the concept of counter culture comes in. By counter culture, I mean the group of people whose values and norms are at odds with the social mainstream.




Most stereotypes are a direct reflection to political events, such as 9/11 and the political state the Middle East is in at the moment. We could possibly say that stereotypes in the entertainment sector are all part of cultural fear. By cultural fear, I mean the exaggerated threats made through the media and the public’s mind that are designed to achieve political goals. I feel like nearly everything in sociology goes back to Karl Marx’s famous quote, “the ruling ideas of any epoch are the ideas of the ruling class because they control the mental means of production.” In other words, the elite use mass media and social events to maintain this social stratification. In this case, white people have been the elite amongst other races.

"The ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class."

In recent news, Qatar has been reported to have one of the highest densities of millionaires in the world. I found this extremely interesting because apart from the fact that Qatar has won the Fifa World Cup 2022 bid, it sheds light on its economy. But I’m sure that these statistics are exclusive to only Qatari nationals.
Article on Qatar having one of the highest densities of millionaires in the world here


As part of an assignment I had to do for my journalism class, I asked a couple of people what they thought about this report. Many people seemed glad that Qatar was making the news. Some people seem to feel that in comparison to other nations people in Qatar have better incomes. Others felt that if the media want to place Qatar in the limelight, then other aspects could have been focused on, like tourism.

Although it may seem to the international audience that the residents of Qatar are very well to do and experience upward social mobility, it isn’t entirely true. The vast majority of the population is comprised of expatriates, mainly laborers and workers. International news never seems to touch upon the increasingly dreadful conditions that the workers live in, maintaining their rather low level of social mobility.


Indeed there are some cases of upward social mobility. An example would be the occasional raffles hosted by various grocery or department stores in which a member of the working class may have won a Land Cruiser through sheer luck. Lulu and Family Food Center usually arrange these raffles. Another example, which is not inclusive to expatriates, is inheritance. If a member of the royal family, who is currently attending university or high school, inherits a fortune from his parents, then he will experience upward social mobility.

There is also an issue of job security in Qatar. If, for example, an expat is laid off or dismissed from work, then they have to leave the country unless they can sign another contract within a certain period of time. So, many expats are concerned about losing their job and what their situation will be once they have to leave.


Despite Qatar being a tax-free nation, the affordability of goods to working class individuals is not very feasible. Laborers and domestic workers usually reside in shared accommodations – at least 10-12 per house. Recently there has been an influx of workers in Qatar, which means that there will be even less housing to accommodate them.
Article on the increase of workers in Qatar here


Many locals have also protested against laborers living in residential areas for the reason that they lack respect towards local values and traditions. This can be viewed as an example of hegemony, when the culture and ideology of a dominant group are transmitted and accepted in ways that make them seem natural. Except in this case, the dominant group is stating that the tradition is not being followed.
Article on laborers being moved out of residential areas here


The issue of laborers is growing in Qatar, and many other expats are aware of the situation. While interviewing people for my story, one person said that Qatar should focus more on the issue of social stratification rather than the wealth of the people.

The Glamor of the lowbrow culture.

Fight Club blew my mind. It felt like a 136-minute rollercoaster ride. And if anyone ever said that Inception was intense, it wasn’t. Inception is an animated movie meant for children in comparison to Fight Club. I spent an hour later going over scenes, reading the script online and trying to figure out whom Jack is.

If the concept of social mobility has ever been appealing in a movie, this movie isn’t it. Social mobility is the movement of an individual up or down the social class system- either by marriage (like in The Lady and the Tramp, when the tramp moves up in social class) or by becoming the rocket scientist that you always admired (October Sky). Either way, movies have always been about upward social mobility or finding the American dream.

The American dream ideology: a set belief that through personal effort, a person can achieve upward social mobility. Disney is the perfect advocate for this idea. Walt Disney’s riches to rags story has 100,000 people in front of its Cinderella Castle every New Year screaming, “Dreams come true.”

Fight Club is NOT a Disney movie.

David Fincher, director of some of our generation’s most brilliant movies: Seven, Panic Room, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Social Network has also directed Fight Club.

Based on the book that Chuck Palahniuk, American author, wrote, the movie reflects Palahniuk’s life. Having grown up in a broken home and been the member of a rebel group called the Cacophony Society, his experiences and ideas seep through the movie with so much pain, cynicism and honesty.

The problem with the American Dream ideology (among many others) is that a lot of people who do work hard never see their dreams come true. This movie is the contraflow of every inspiring American Dream movie that you have ever seen- The Pursuit of Happyness, It Could Happen to You and Rocky.

Fight Club is the product of the rage of every person that never got what they dreamt of.
“We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won't. We're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.”

It is the story of an unnamed man- an insomniac, an over-stressed employee of “a major car company,” a man who is alone in the world. He talks about life, about how he wishes it would end – in a mid air collision when he’s on a business-related flight, having his coffee with a single serving cream, a single serving pat of butter, next to his “single serving friend.”

The unnamed man defines himself as a pathetic, mindless consumer who is sold out by clever pieces of furniture from IKEA. Desperately in search for a cure to his insomnia, he attends mutual aid movements for dying people so he has someone that he can talk to, someone he can cry with. Hitting rock bottom was the key. “Losing all hope is freedom.”

On a business trip, in a plane, he meets Tyler Durden- a man who is the opposite of everything that our Ikea man is. They talk about Durden’s work: making soap. Durden talks about how explosives can be made from “simple household items.”
Our protagonist is fascinated. Entertained.

Back in his city, he heads to his condo only to see it blown apart into pieces, nothing left of anything that he ever had. He calls Tyler Durden, and 3 pitchers of beer later; Fight Club was born- all because none of them had ever been in a fight before.

Tyler Durden and the unnamed man begin to live together in an old, abandoned house that is about ready to fall apart. “By the end of the month, I dint miss TV. I dint even mind the warm, stale refrigerator.” Durden begins to teach the narrator how money doesn’t matter and that we were never meant to be special. His philosophy was that fear is futile and that if you fear anything, you must master it.

“You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are the same decaying matter as everything else.”

Our Ikea man finds that he no longer cares about anything any longer- threatening his boss into giving him a check every week of the year and getting into a fight every week was all that mattered anymore. That was his freedom.

“You are not your job. You are not what’s in your bank account. You are not what you own.”
In the end, we find out a lot more about our unnamed-Ikea-protagonist-guy and everything we have ever known is all a confusing zero. Chuck Palahniuk has taken The Iron Cage of Rationality to a new level where “white collar slaves” are everything but attractive.

Karl Marx was disproved in this movie when he said that the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class.

You need to watch it- going to college is not going to make sense anymore.

Conspicuous Consumption in Sociology

I agree with Karl Marx that class conflict is the engine of social change and historical development. You can find many examples that serve as a proof of Karl Marx’s theory, whether it was here in Qatar, or any other part of the world. In a democratic society where social mobility is possible, people in lower classes work hard to earn the best education to later get a great job and be part of the highbrow culture.

Particularly in Qatar, people are in a constant struggle to improve their social class. They would do all it takes to “up-grade” their status. Some families would go as far as taking massive loans to purchase expensive cars that they obviously can’t afford. Here in Qatar, people indulge in conspicuous consumption, a sociology term that means that they purchase something in an attempt to display high status or class through the consumption of highbrow culture, luxury goods and services.

One cannot believe the lengths some people will go to just to show off their new house, car or even something as simple as their cell phone. How often do you see a person walking while holding his/her blackberry instead of keeping it in the bag or the purse? I’m guessing that you witnessed that a lot. Although the reasonable thing for a person is to keep his/her cell phone in the bag, these people will never quit showcasing their blackberry mobiles whenever they get the chance to!

I have to mention that this sort of action does not show that you belong to the upper class or you’re filthy rich. No, this just screams to me that you’re a poor or a middle class person who probably used up most of your savings just to purchase this blackberry of yours, which clearly indicates that you’re not used to buying luxurious things because people who can afford luxurious do so with ease. People who belong in the upper class probably won’t struggle financially this month just because they purchased a simple phone that only costs something around or even less than 2400 QR. People who are filthy rich have more money than they could count. My advice to such people is as follows, people if you want to brag or showoff then at least do brag about something that says ”I’m rich” not something that screams “I’m dying to look rich”. Of course ideally, people shouldn’t brag, but at least it would be more understandable if a guy bragged about his new Bugatti or new villa that is located in Palm Jumeirah or something.

Another example that shows the effects of conspicuous consumption is the sudden huge demand on the Mercedes-Benz G55 in the Gulf region, after the ruler of Dubai Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid appeared in a national event driving a G55. Many Emiratis and citizens of neighboring countries wanted to own a G55 to demonstrate to others that they don’t belong in the lowbrow culture because they can afford to buy a Sheik’s car.