Mass Media Effect

One time, my brother entered someone he knows' car, not his friend but someone he knew. My brother noticed a big yellow thing sitting in the back seat. When my brother turned his head toward it, he freaked out, a huge Spongebob doll taking a space of a real passenger sitting in the back. My brother asked that person about the reason of having an Enormous Spongebob in the back seat. That person's reply was " for girls". Which is a lame reason in my opinion. 

Anyway to that person Spongebob is a symbol of attraction, his enormous size will probably attract the attention of anyone in the road. 

Because of the Mass Media and the cultural diffusion, Spongebob became a phenomenon that cannot be denied, you can see him everywhere in a different forms. The following images show few examples of Spongebob items: 

What really caught my attention is the fact that many adults are also interested in this character. Even though the main audience for this character are children.

Some questions came to my mind when I think about adults who like spongebob, like:

How do we look at an adult who is waering a Spongbob clothes, especially men?

How do the old generation people look at that person compared to people from the new generation?

Isn’t it important for those people to think about how people will at them?

Many people judge on others by their appearances. Spongebob is usually associated with children, a symbol; probably that person will be looked at as a childish person, especially from the people of old generations. People from the new generation on the other hand might look at Spongebob as a cute and funny character and obtaining his items is just a choice and nothing more.

Regardless, I think the Spongebob fan should imagine and role-take before wearing it?   

In general, is Spongebob a negative or positive influence on society?

Regarding this question, I would like to share an article called “SpongeBob SquarePants: Bad Influence on Children?” This article showed a result of a research in which 2 groups of 4 years old children had an attention tests after doing an activity for 9 minutes. One group spent the nine minutes watching Spongbob, while the other group spent the nine minutes in drawing. Surprisingly the children who scored a higher result are the ones who spent their time in drawing.

This phenomenon is not first of its kind, Power Rangers and Pokemon were a big hit too. It is the Mass Media and the cultural Diffusion are behind these phenomenon. God knows about what will come later.  

Works Cited: 

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/212095/20110912/spongebob-cartoon-cognition-concentration-problem-research.htm 

Language

Symbols in human cultures occur in different formats. Language is one of the most distinguished symbols in a culture it differs from culture to culture. Cultures and societies relay mostly on language for immediate communication. Observing my own culture and surroundings I can say that Arabic is the language in my culture and society, but lately English came along and put down strings of importance that made people want to learn and speak it fluently in order to keep pace with the vast development that is going on. With the development of Qatar English language is becoming even more important than before. Importing a large number of expats, contracts that are made with foreign companies, ..etc. made a need of having a language that is international in order to communicate with others.

Having English as a second language in Qatar made people aware of the importance of learning different languages. But some people took it a step further with exaggerating or overdoing it focusing on learning English. Some think that it enhances the social status of the individual, makes them look smarter, or even more accepted in the society or higher classes. That took their focus away from learning Arabic maybe just relaying on it being the mother language thinking that it is enough. That affected this generation the most having them not knowing their language properly and even not the very basics, some even don’t understand or speak Arabic because of the foreign education. For example the alphabets I went and tested a couple of graduates and students by asking them if they know the Arabic alphabet in order. One of them said yes, so I asked if I could test her and I asked her about two letters what comes before the other and those letters look alike so she answered I don’t know your question is too specific. But all who I asked were people who were educated in English and international schools which focus on English leaving the Arabic as a secondary subject. I continued asking them about if they faced any problems with their Arabic language? Most of them answered yes since we are local graphic designers we are expected to design bilingual graphics and we face a lot of problems when it comes to the Arabic part. Those problems I a face my self and during socializing with my extended family sometimes I add English words not realizing that the older generations such as my grandparents don’t understand English. In my opinion English language is breaking a barrier between our culture and other cultures, as well as creating a barrier within our culture.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCOP44K3_C4

Arabic Coffee within a Culture

Arabic coffee is a traditional drink that Arabs in the gulf serve to their guests as a welcoming drink, it is considered to be part of the Arab culture. Serving and preparing coffee embeds a number of cultural elements such as values and symbols that link directly to sociology, as well as remaining a focal point during social gatherings of all kinds. It is mainly derived from the Bedouin hospitality, but with new generations it is starting to change. The society values draw guidelines for how and when coffee should be served. When serving coffee strict rules are followed within the serving order. Age is a way to start serving the older than the younger, but when theirs a doubt a one can start serving with the person who is on the right. The coffee cups are only half filled and guests may have several refills, it is considered as an insult to fill up the coffee cup to the top. For the guest to indicate that he has finished and doesn’t want a refill he should jiggle the cup sideways. Refusing to drink the coffee either is considered impolite or the guest is trying to send a message to the host that he is here for something he wants. The guest may accept the cup of coffee but not drink from it, saying things like “your coffee isn’t to drink” meaning I will not drink your coffee unless you grant me what I came for. It is considered ashamed for the host to not grant them what they want. There are much more actions and body language during the ceremony of making serving coffee that sit on a rough surface of traditional and cultural meanings.


Nowadays with the new generation not a lot of them drink Arabic coffee since they are becoming more addicted to other types of coffee such as American, French, and much more types of coffee. It might be due to the availability of this product or due to global trends that are inherited from the west.

A link to a video I designed last year about Arabic coffee.

http://vimeo.com/20022199

Symbols in Qatar

What are the Symbols of Qatari Culture?

As a Qatari female, I have been influenced tremendously by society. Especially that I have to watch every word or gesture I make, the way I walk or talk to other people. In other words, I do not have much freedom as Qatari society has females under the microscope.
Symbols are anything that carries a particular meaning, which is recognized by the people who share a culture. Symbols in Qatar vary, there are certain words and things we are not allowed to say as these are recognized as wrong or “haram” which means it is against our religion. For example, asking a man what his mother’s name is; is considered wrong and intolerable unless you are part of the family whilst in other country there is no problem in sharing such information with a friend.
However, Qatari and Arab teens have now created a new sub-culture by the symbols we use to “Blackberry message (bbm)” or “text” each other with. As Western movies, songs, shows have entered our lives we have started communicating in English with one another. Arabic has not been forgotten but we prefer typing in English that is why we created a language called “arabeezii” which means Arabic/English in one word. Where we write an Arabic word in English and use numbers to make the certain letters in Arabic differ from one another. This is a new generation technique which was created with the rise of technology, but if you ask most teens and look at their phones, most probably you would not understand the language unless you knew what each number represented as a letter in Arabic.

A Bangladeshi Engagement Party: Observing Culture and the Process of Socialization

Qatar Foundation is a perfect representation of the multicultural society that exists here in Doha. According to the QF website, the QF community is made-up of 90 different nationalities. Being exposed to so many different people allows you to interact with, and learn about these cultures that can be found in one oasis. Whether you are a student, staff or faculty member in Education City, your chances of experiencing a taste of culture from all around the world prove to be unique and worthwhile. Here’s an example…



A few weeks ago, I was invited to Rezwan and Samira’s engagement party, friends of mine who were both students in Education City. Rezwan and Samira are both Bangladeshi. They share the same culture, languages, and understanding of the material and non-material culture that they grew up to become accustomed to. Culture has a social context. And my friends to be married, have both undergone a process of socialization in which they have learned and acquired a certain way of life, and a sense of self in the society they live in, in Doha as well as in the social environment of their homeland in Bangladesh. The process through which the Bengali way of life or identity that both Rezwan and Samira have learned, accepted, and taken as his or her own is called internalization. According to the book by Ferrante, through this process of internalization, the norms, values, beliefs and languages are passed on to them by their socializers.



The Bangladeshi people all belong to a group in which they share a distinct identity, interact with each other, and feel a sense of nationality, pride, belonging, and membership. There are different types of groups that act as agents of socialization. And the people who are probably the most influential in terms of passing on the Bangladeshi cultural identity to Rezwan and Samira are family members, especially parents, and elders – people who belong to the primary group, a social group in which members have strong emotional ties.



A Bengali wedding ceremony or any other party prior to a wedding such as an engagement celebration differs greatly from one that my family would host. It was a very interesting and enjoyable experience sitting there amongst his family, and friends (who were not entirely Bengali) watching what went on in this beautiful gathering. A wealth of sociological terms and concepts can be applied to all the elements I observed in the three-hour period I spent at the party. Everywhere I turned, I wanted to shout out one of the theories from class. But I saved it all for the blog, and stuck to “congratulations”.




As soon as I stepped into the party hall upstairs in the Indian restaurant called "Aalishaan", I was surrounded by symbols, material culture and non-material culture. The material culture consists of all the natural or man-made objects with attached meanings, for example the food, the traditional clothing, the festive decorations and gifts. The non-material culture includes the Bengali language, the values (the respect for the elderly, and the behavior towards them), beliefs (pertaining to the Muslim faith) and gestures (greetings, and ways of interaction among the guests and hosts, and celebration activities).



According to Ferrante, socialization involves both nature and nurture. Rezwan and Samira’s genetic make-up, “physical appearance” or biological inheritance, are related to nature. They “look” Bangladeshi, and similarly their Bengali friends, and family, look Bengali too. On the other hand, the social environment I witnessed including their primary group of relatives, close friends and family, and the interactions between them, are all considered the nurture part of socialization, through which Rezwan and Samira live their lives, have social experiences and human interactions. Although their appearances might suggest they are Bangladeshi, there is a reason why some of their relatives for example, do not speak English. Their relatives have not acquired the same education, experiences, and social contact as Samira and Rezwan did. Hence, nature and nurture are both critical to analyzing the process of socialization and either one cannot be ignored.





The ceremony started off with a Qur’an recitation, when all guests remained seated and quiet, followed by a short speech. A significant symbol was used to signify to people that they are expected to be still and quite for the recitation of the Holy Qur’an. That symbol, also used frequently prior to proceeding with a significant act or movement, is the phrase of two words in Arabic “bismullah” meaning, “in the name of God”. As soon as the speaker said those words, everyone sat down, and stopped their conversations, waiting attentively, knowing what to expect afterwards. Another example when this symbol was spoken is before the slicing of the cake.



The cake segment, was one of the one most intriguing and amusing of all the events in the party to me. In Bangladeshi culture, feeding sweets to the bride by all elders, relatives and those involved, is a key part of the ceremony. The glowing bride Samira, had to watch the big mouthfuls being fed to her, piece by piece…and I could see how the poor thing tried so hard to nibble off smaller manageable bits. Everyone wanted to take part in the feeding process, even the bride’s younger brother. Cake was flying at her at a constant speed. Luckily her husband-to-be finally took over, and he and Samira both started feeding their closest relatives in return.






This may be seen as a symbolic gesture between people of group in which the act of feeding cake to each other conveys a meaning of love, blessing, gratitude, respect, good will, and value from one person to another. Other examples of symbols and gestures include the gestures for expression between the mother-in laws to their son and daughter-in-law and the gesture in which Rezwan and Samira’s mothers placed their hands on the bride and grooms heads and hands as to bless them, also saying at times, short versus from the Qur’aan.



Another important part of non-material culture, that is also symbolic in nature, includes presenting the gifts to both the bride and groom from the mother-in-laws. Rezwan’s mother presents Samira with a gold bracelet and ring placing them on her arm and finger. And Samira’s mother presents Rezwan with a new watch, and also places it on his arm. This exchange of gifts is considered part of the engagement process, where both sides present gifts as meaningful tributes. The act of giving the gifts is the non-material culture, and the gifts themselves, can be considered tangible material culture.





Other tangible material culture includes all the different aspects of the bride and groom’s wardrobe: clothing, accessories, veils, bracelets, necklace, rings, jewellery, and henna.





The food that was served, was Indian cuisine not Bengali. And although there are a lot of similarities between the two in terms of spices and key foods, serving Indian food at a Bengali ceremony could be considered a form of cultural diffusion, in which other cultural items are borrowed from a source outside the Bengali culture.




Finally, all of these shared experiences, gestures, symbols, that are recalled, reproduced, and repeated in this ritual (engagement ceremony) or event are passed on from generation to the next in order to be sustained and preserved. Socialization is impossible without memory. Therefore, the only way through which this preservation and passing on of experiences is possible is through collective memory. Without collective memory, Rezwan and Samira’s families wouldn’t have passed on experiences that shaped the “Bangladeshi” engagement party I attended, groups with particular identities would seize to exist and I wouldn’t have been able to remember any of the things I just wrote about in this blog post!

Culture shock?

If someone would ask you, what makes you different from Person A or Person B, you would probably be able to come up with a list from the top of your head, without even having to think, like nationality, language, religion or even food habits or education.

In other words, the way you have been brought up is what differentiates you from the others. A sociologist defines this as culture. The way of life of people or more specifically, the human created strategies for adjusting to the environment.

For some of us, seeing different culture is the best part about traveling, where as for few other, they have a culture shock coming from place X to Y. Culture shock is the strain that people experience while traveling from one region to the other, and must reorient themselves to the ways of the new culture. And this was exactly what happened in the movie Outsourced, where an American products salesman (Todd) heads to India to because of his replacement, after his entire department is outsourced. Being unaware of the beliefs and values of India, he found himself in a very inconvenient situation. For example, in India, Cows are considered sacred and play an important role in the Hindu religion. Whereas when Todd goes to India, being ignorant, he talks about cows as a food product without realizing how sensitive a topic it was and he goes on doing the same sort of mistake, until he finally finds someone who could teach him about the Indian culture.

People’s behavior and values change from culture to culture, and that is rooted to the shortage and abundance of resources in different regions. For example, the video shows how common begging is in India. However, in Qatar it is hardly seen in public. The economic structure of the country breaks the conservation-oriented behaviors of its people.



According to Sociology, some of the most important types of non-material cultures are beliefs, values, norms, symbols and language. And some of these aspects were clearly noticeable in Culture Shock, an Al Jazeera documentary, on how African migrants find ways to deal with the European culture. These African migrants face instances of racist violence in Germany, where because of their skin color, people assign symbols. People assign offensive names.

Despite being immigrants, some of their habits perfectly match local customs, which is a case of cultural universals, which refers to things found in every culture. But sometimes people hold on to the viewpoint of ethnocentrism, because of which these African migrants are not being accepted by the social norms.

Click here to check out the documentary on Al Jazeera

Culture Shock: What is it like to live in Europe with an African identity?

A Sociological Perspective on Infrastructure Works in Doha

Sociology’s big question focuses on how existing larger social forces around us impact human activity and shape virtually every aspect of our lives. They affect the simplest mundane behavior and actions such as the way we address our mentors, the way we walk, talk, move, act and interact in public and with the public. In other words, sociology allows us to see and understand the world and the way it works in a whole new perspective. As sociologist Peter L. Berger explains: “the first wisdom of sociology is this – things are not what they seem.”



From using credit cards to the way we dress, to construction here in Doha, the influences of social factors become easier to interpret, detect, and understand, when we adopt a quality of mind that allows us to do so, called the social imagination.




First, when visiting a construction site, the most obvious social force to consider is the everlasting effect of the Industrial Revolution which according to the book by Joan Ferrante, is partly the reason for the emergence of sociology. Apart from the changes in transportation, tunneling and manufacturing which are all applicable to the construction industry in Qatar, Berger highlights the process of mechanization as the central feature of the Industrial Revolution. The process of mechanization is significant in infrastructure work sites. Skilled workers have shifted into the roles of machine operators and automated labor force, where the pile-driving machines do the excavations, and the cranes do the heavy lifting and moving of heavy materials such as pipelines.





The workers perform non-skill demanding tasks such as fixing pipe supports in place in the concrete tunnel, preparing to place the pipes on the side anchors inside the tunnel and placing the belt around the pipes for crane lifting.




Use of railroads is also applicable in infrastructure. The video below shows a battery-operated engine as it drives the tires that move the pipes along a railway into the tunnel. In addition to the rails on the bottom that are built for the pipes, there are rails on the top to transport workers into the tunnel as well.






At times where leveling and balancing the pipes in place required skill and timing-perfection of the laborers, the total station surveying instrument is a technology that enables the surveyor to accurately place the pipes to accurate level and alignment.





However, a process such as GRP pipe lamination still requires skill combined with the use of technology and machinery. Apart from technology, globalization is another force that influenced infrastructure in Doha by allowing western innovations such as GRP pipe lamination and other tactics and procedures to be integrated here in this region. By doing so, older methods are eradicated and newer ones are introduced. Adopted methods from other places around the world can also altered and improved to create more appropriate solutions.



Symbolic meaning is another social force that can be noted while observing a construction site. Symbols such as the workmen’s protection equipment, helmets, gloves, and protective clothing and the company’s logo have a shared assigned meaning or value. A particular dress code could signify a person’s station or job rank. The company’s name or logo on the workers’ vests can mean the company itself, the field of construction, site work, infrastructure or a even a shared feeling of affinity and belonging to a certain group, where all members of the company or workers feel a sense of solidarity.





The social status or ranks in a construction organization is the social force that determines how different employees interact with each other. The general hierarchy of positions in a construction company usually includes: the managing director, site engineers, superintendants, general foremen, foremen, crew leaders and workers. The social status of say, a foreman, and the associated roles and attributes of this role influences the way in which the workers respond to the foreman’s orders by obeying him, as well as the way they address him and speak to him. The foreman for example is most likely to be assertive and authoritative and the workers are likely to comply. Each status affects the way these people interact with each other. This sharing of meaning and interpretation of symbols relates to the sociological theory called the Symbolic Interactionist Theory, which in this case would be used to examine the role of symbols in shaping social interaction among individuals including their daily communication and response to each other.




Ultimately, industrialization changed more than just the way things operate. It changed how people lived their own lives and the lives of everyone around them. According to Ferrante, developments such as the railroads, electricity, and the steamship changed our perception of time and space. The time needed to complete a project such as the ones shown in the pictures, or for building a skyscraper, and the way engineers and project managers negotiate this time has changed dramatically and will continue to change. In turn these changes affect the entire execution of a project and its completion date. Moreover, the changes in the process of shipping of equipment and materials, introduction of new machinery and technology and moving them across sites contribute to the emergence of a fast-paced, mechanized, bottom-line thinking, consumption-oriented economy and wealth-pursuing culture.