Global Citizenship

I am often confronted with the puzzling question "where are you from?" Hmm.. this seems like it should be an easy one, shouldn't it? I was born and raised in Doha, Qatar, in 1991. My dad was born in New York, moved to Canada, finished his last year of high school in Egypt, and came to Qatar, where he remains to this day. My mother was born in Qatar, and both of my grandparents have mixed national backgrounds.



I went to a British kindergarten, an American primary and secondary school, and an American Jesuit university. I speak predominately Arabic with my mom and predominately English with my dad, and travel often, exposing myself to different cultures and languages. So whenever I'm confronted by the topic in a conversation, I usually announce, proudly and with a sheepish grin, "I guess I'm a global citizen then."



People often discount such a statement as too cheesy or cliche; however, rare is it when an individual realizes the implications of such a statement. I'm not saying I'm profound or anything, I'm just a byproduct of this global culture, of the phenomenon obsessively termed globalization by the masses. It connotes Western ideological domination over the East and Northern economic supremacy over the South. However, in his book Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture, sociology professor Roland Robertson, described the process of globalization as "the compression of the world and the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole," and sociologists Albrow and King define globalization as "all those processes by which the peoples of the world are incorporated into a single world society." Waters concedes that it is a "social process in which the constraints of geography on economic, political, social and cultural arrangements recede, in which people become increasingly aware that they are receding and in which people act accordingly." I see this everyday in Qatar; expatriate, or non-Arab/non-Muslim kids saying insh'Allah or getting karak,



or a Corvette with an American flag bumper sticker driven by a young Qatari male, or a non-married Arab couple walking and holding hands. More and more everyday cultural norms are readjusted and boundaries redrawn. The sheer proliferation of mixed-sex education in the Middle East shows the ideological rearrangement between what once might have been mores or even taboos (such as having Qatari men and women in the same classroom socializing outside of an appropriate cultural context). The fact that I sit in the atrium of Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar, where education based on the Western Jesuit experience is imported from the United States of America to Qatar, writing on a laptop that was manufactured in another part of the world, wearing clothes from designers that claim to be Italian but have factories in China and India. All our societies are connected on a microscopic level, and our ancient cultural heritage, although to be held with pride and regarded as majestic, has slowly changed and molded itself with the proliferation of mass media and travel, exposing a majority of people in all corners of the world to an ever-flowing milieu. For our last class, on Wednesday, we discussed functionalist theory, which views that different social environments maintain an orderly and consistent status quo, where people actively endeavor to maintain stability and order. David Grazian believes that popular culture is functional for society, acting as an agent that maintains stability the systematic nature of social worlds. Popular culture, accordingly, includes rituals and totems that are shared across the world through the appropriately titled "popular culture." Rituals are cultural acts of solidarity, social cohesion, and rebellion, according to Grazian, and that they enable groups to gather and enforce their collective identity. Through globalization and mass media, especially through popular mobilization media outlets such as Twitter and Facebook, we see people that would never otherwise have met build relationships and experiences vicariously. They become desensitized and their sense of understanding of the world they inhabit expands outside their immediate national sphere of influence, and a supra-culture that transcends national or regional boundaries is developed. Popular culture, as base and denigrating as it can get in some cases, unites people through ideas, songs, dance, blogs, personal pages, and other forms of expression, forming a massive culture paralleling the consumer culture, although more and more we are connected by ideas in lieu of commercial products.

Bibliography Robertson, Roland. Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture. London: Sage, 1992. Waters, Malcolm. Globalization. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2001. Albrow, Martin, and Elizabeth King. Globalization, Knowledge and Society: Readings From International Sociology. London: Sage Publications, 1990.

On the Cultural Significance of Sham El- Nassim

Yesterday we had an unusual banquet at our house, one that particularly smelled horrible! Yes I did say this. It was a celebration for the ancient dating feast of “Sham El Nassim”. While most Egyptians today think Sham El Nassim is an Arabic word (شم النسيم) meaning the “the smell of the Zephyr” because it is celebrated during the spring time, the word was found to be more ancient than one could think of. This feast of Sham El Nassim has ancient Egyptian origins with the word "Shemu" being used in the ancient Egyptian culture during harvest days meaning “the day of creation”. Greek historians of the first century have recorded accounts of ancient Egyptians eating salted fish, lettuce and onions. That’s what I meant by the horrible smell! Egyptians were thought to celebrate the Shemu since 2700 B.C. and surprisingly it is still celebrated to that day with minor changes.

Later on, Coptic Christians in the second century A.D. found that the feast came during the Christian Lent and were not able to celebrate and eat the salted fish during that time, so they moved the feast to the following day of the Easter. The day of Sham El Nassim has to occur on Monday, since Easter has to be on Sunday. It’s also interesting to mention that the ancient Egyptian word “Shemu” developed to the Coptic word “Shom Ennisim” then finally to the Arabic transliteration “Sham El Nassim”.

While this blog post was not intended to be a historical class, it was important to give a brief background to understand the culture behind what we just celebrated yesterday.

You are probably wondering how the feast is supposed to be on Monday while we celebrated yesterday on Friday. Indeed “Sham El Nassim” is celebrated on Monday following the Eastern calendar of Easter which was meant to be on Monday May 6 this year. However, due to some family circumstances and traveling the feast was postponed a little bit.

Let’s just get to the sociology of this ancient feast!

According to the functionalist approach, Sham El Nassim can be seen as an event with its own rituals and practices that brings people together in social solidarity. Sham El Nassim, as a collective celebration, that makes all Egyptians, regardless of their religion; join together to celebrate in the same way. Also, what is more fascinating is Egyptians in Qatar who unite in family groups to celebrate this event. To us, Egyptians, the culture of Sham El Nassim meets the four characteristics of popular culture: being well liked by everyone, is easily recognized by all Egyptians, all classes in Egypt understand the rituals associated with the feast and finally everyone can relate to it in different ways.

The main practice in Sham El Nassim is family gathering either in public parks or in houses. Yesterday, over seven families came and joined our feast at our house. None of these families are direct relatives of ourselves, but they are friends who we relate to when living abroad. Such a family gathering makes us all appreciate the unity it generates and the sense of togetherness.

The main ritual of Sham El Nassim is to eat “Fisikh”, which is an Egyptian dish of salted fish, and onions, as you can see in the images below. However, yesterday I noticed that the table of fisikh was 80% women with only two or three men only eating fisikh. Those who found fisikh distasteful, like me, were mostly men who had another table with other types of food like pastas, kofta and salads.

Even though everyone who attended enjoyed the family gathering on Sham El Nassim, not everyone enjoyed the rituals of eating fisikh. Therefore, I do wonder with Grazian in his book “mix it up” if such a ritual will continue to be passed through the main agents of socialization. And even if it did will it still generate the same sense of social solidarity and unity amongst the celebrating community?

I also noticed the segregation that Fisikh has made, most women sat on the Fisikh table and most men and children sat on the normal food table. It could be because of health or dietary choices, especially because Fisikh has direct correlation to high blood pressure, dehydration and occasionally food poisoning if not cleaned well. But this phenomena of less than 50% eating Fisikh could be also because of the other options that were available that included Italian pasta. Hence, globalization can be a factor that interferes with cultural elements of Sham El Nassim.

Will the feast that survived more than 4700 years be able to survive the 21st century? While, globalization might seem to be destroying the rituals of eating Fisikh on Sham El Nassim, it has given me an escape from eating it so maybe having more options can be good! Yet fisikh lovers like my mother will still love Fisikh anyways.