17 March-21 March: Middle Eastern and Western Stereotypes
Please leave your thoughts about this Soliya session.
6 comments:
Anonymous
said...
This second session was really great. We did not have much time to discuss, because of tech issues, but we had enough to discover the other members of the group, and to introduces some issues about which we are going to speak in the next session. And I hope that before next week, all tech issues will be fixed. It's really a pity to lose contact with some people you're talking with, or to be forced to read the translation of what one said because he or she has mic issues.
I can't say that we completely tackled today's topic : "the relation between the West and the ME". We discussed that fractiously, and we talked about related topics, but not enough. In fact, not everybody was equally speaking, and I did'nt heard the opinion of nearly half the group. Maybe we're too much in a group : 9 people is a lot. Last time, with 4 or 5 people was better. You lose greater diversity, but you get a better quality of discussion, and you follow it easierly.
For people that read this and are not taking part in Soliya, I'll try to summarize what we did. The others can jump to the next paragraph. We began to separates in two groups, one from ME and the other from the West. We were asked to give four words that qualify the West, then ME, without avoiding stereotypes. In fact, those words were supposed to be "what we think when we hear ME" (resp. the West). The West (tW) group chose "democracy", "technically advanced", "power hungry" and "rule maker" for tW, and "religious", "oil producer", "terrorist" and "fractious"for ME. The ME group chose to separate tW between the US and the EU. For EU they chose "objective", "genuinly concerned about ME" and "common interest", for the US "Ignorant", "Self Centered" and "Naive", and finally for ME the chose "patriarcal", "primitive", "terrorist" and "conservative". Then we confronted those lists of words, and began to discuss them.
What I found interesting is that there are a lot of negative words. Does this means that we have more tendancies to see the failings than the good traits ? Or that the media are more focusing on bad traits rather than good ones ? I don't know. Another thing that impressed me was the fact that the EU has really a good image among ME. I don't know if the EU does really have those qualitifes, but that's really different from how the US are seen.
For me too, the second session was really great! I was worrying that nobody will speak, because they seemed to be timide. But as we begin to know each other better, everybody relaxed and we have great discussions.
An interesting thing is that an important part of the discussion was about vocabulary. For example, "muslim world" or "arab" doesn't mean the same for US or ME. Which made them read the article in different way, and maybe cause some tension during the discussion (not really tension, but more engaged discussion :) ). I have approximatetly the same comment than pierre about the tech issues and the rest of the discussion, so I will not repeat everything :)
About the final project, I 'd like to do something on the vision of homosexuality in ME. This is not exactly the topic of soliya, but I am very curious about that. And I was good surprised : lots of people was interested to work with me on that :)
And about the media project, it seems to be very long... So I wonder if we could do it in pairs (with people from grenoble). It could be more interesting and funny... But maybe it is not possible.
Though my optimism for this program registered a very low level after my first session, the second one took me to the opposite side. The lack of technical problems gave us the opportunity to engage ourselves in discussions concerning the subject of the day. This way I got to know better the others from my group, to better communicate with them.
We discussed about our fears and expectations that we've had before this program started. Then we were asked to propose some topics for the next weeks from which "cultural differences" was the most voted topic (however not by me:) ) A little presentation of our due projects was also made. But some controversial discussions started when we were asked to give some main causes for the conflict between East and West. Most of my colleagues opted for cultural differences but I stick to my own opinion which is economic interests. I agree that in order to reach this interests hot subjects like cultural differences are used . Probably I'm wrong, probably I'm not but that's why I've joined this program, to try to find out more:). As for the final project it will be either the Joint Article or Community Interviews. I haven't thought very well for a topic but I should start doing because until the next session I have to come up with something:D.
In order to finish I will just add that this video conferences have a bigger effect if the number of participants is not so great. I had the chance to interact only with 4 students and the facilitator and it was better than being 10. Now I don't know if the facilitator was just polite but she agreed that it was one of the best conferences she ever attended to.
We talked about stereotypes. Which stereotypes do we think the ‘others ’ have against us? Perfect, this it exactly what I wanted to talk about!
The Palestinian girl in my group was completely convinced that we believe, they’re still living in tents. For me, if I think of the Arabian world and tents, I see refugee camps, and I know, not all Arabs are living in refugee camps, they even live in luxury apartments as you can see in Dubai.
About the USA, we quickly came to the Fast Food stereotype. Yes, I have that too, but I was surprised the US-American girl didn’t mention another very very current stereotype in Europe. As I know, Europeans consider the US-Americans being stupid, very stupid. Yes, that hurts, but we wanted to be honest.
I mentioned, the Arabs might consider us being very democratic and maybe they don’t like our equal status of men and women. Bum, it seemed as if I got straight to the point. The reaction of the Palestinian girl really surprised me. Actually, she didn’t respond to my impressions, she went straight away to the cartoon discussion. It was humiliating she said, Westerns haven’t the right to publish those cartoons. Arabs don’t judge Jesus neither. In contrast, they think he was a good boy – what effectively means they judge him. Hmm, I couldn’t go into this subject because I didn’t see the cartoons, but I think it is the freedom of press to criticise and question. And In fact, I expect the media to do so as they are an important democratic institution. The difficulty is to find the right way to transmit your message that everyone hears and understands it. Of course, no Muslim, who believes in the infallibility of Mohamed, will ever accept any criticism of Islam or Mohamed himself.
The discussion continued more tranquilly until we came to the question of the root of the Western-Middle East conflict. Financial interests in oil, unsolved conflict between Israel and Palestine, different ideas of humanity and way of government, lots of misunderstandings that nurture extremists.... were some of our ideas. And then, it was once again time for the Palestinian girl: it’s Israel’s fault! In fact, they’re taking our land and after that, they even kill us. It hate Israel, the Muslim world should build an alliance against Israel to realise their own ideas. – hard stuff, mainly if you think it out completely and have a quick look at Europeans past. I was shocked, I couldn’t respond anything to that. Maybe I was too naive at the beginning, but I’ve NEVER expected to meet a Muslim saying these words. Ok, an extremist coming from a terror camp, but I’d probably never meet him or the other “5%” of violent Islamists. What leads her to hate Israelis, what happened to her family that she even regrets being in Qatar and not to can fight for Palestine? Is it even necessary to understand her and her non-tolerance? Did she consider in her optimal solution of the conflict, that I, as a catholic, would like to have free access to the religious sites in Jerusalem, too? – Just as a little sign of interreligious respect?
Hi everyone, my second session was last thursday. I was - as usual - with fabien, and the whole session was nice. First, some had tech problems, some were late, other in holidays ... but I finaly think that it is the way things are to be in webconferecing. After that slow beginning - at least 45 min- facilitators started to lead the activities. We had to wrote down the first 6 words that come to our mind: 3 about The West and 3 about the Arab and Muslim World. Surprisingly, the egyptian and emirates girls expected us (french and american) to say "terrorist", "fanatics" and so on. But none of us think about that, first step for a reconciliation ... Ideas were more like "tradition", "nature", "oil", "women treated like dirt" for the Muslim World and "technology", "modenism", "democracy", "sex" for The West. Only ten minutes left to finish the session, just enought to organize the final project, groups, subjects,... What strike me the most during this session is that none of the facilitators said anything about the readings ! Don't know if we will deal with it one day ... But that is sad because some of the text are interesting. Will see next time.
This second session was better than the first one.
After a slow start, cause a lot of people were late and still had technical problems, we talked about stereotypes : how the Arab world qualifiate the USA-Europe and vice-versa. Arabs were surprised we (frenchies : Nicolas and I) aren't considering them as totally ill fanatics, but worried a little that they are seen as countries of "Oil", which is more a part of the Arab Emirate countries... Amercican girls qualified Arabs as countries of inequality men-women rights. And I was perhaps too virulent in expressing my view of the United States : I let understand that they aren't the world police they pretend to be...
i regret ideas were launched without any real links, and cause everybody has to speak, some points were not exploited as I believed.
it was however funny to look at pictures of students : a girl in the USA showed a picture of her during her hazed-session! And an Egyptian girl showed us that yes, Egyptian girls can speak to guys, touch them and be with them on pictures!! Perhaps you can think it is fully stupid to believe they can't, but my last trip in Tunisia permit me to see that it is still not the case for the generation born in the 60's...
I disagree with a student telling that it is boring to have to read some typed text, cause as a limited-skills student, I'm sometimes really happy to see written text when I didn't get the meaning of the sentence. I concede it is slower to type than to speak, but writing permit a more organised presentation....
To conclude, I was a bit surprised we didn't speak a lot about the readings..... Facilitators didn't event told us anything about it... And even if some groups were formed, I was a bit sad not to be included in a group...... ;'-(
I start to enjoy theses sessions, cause we know us more and more and some links are starting.... (at the end some attendees showed us dance moves thanks to their webcams!!!!! lol)
6 comments:
This second session was really great. We did not have much time to discuss, because of tech issues, but we had enough to discover the other members of the group, and to introduces some issues about which we are going to speak in the next session. And I hope that before next week, all tech issues will be fixed. It's really a pity to lose contact with some people you're talking with, or to be forced to read the translation of what one said because he or she has mic issues.
I can't say that we completely tackled today's topic : "the relation between the West and the ME". We discussed that fractiously, and we talked about related topics, but not enough. In fact, not everybody was equally speaking, and I did'nt heard the opinion of nearly half the group. Maybe we're too much in a group : 9 people is a lot. Last time, with 4 or 5 people was better. You lose greater diversity, but you get a better quality of discussion, and you follow it easierly.
For people that read this and are not taking part in Soliya, I'll try to summarize what we did. The others can jump to the next paragraph. We began to separates in two groups, one from ME and the other from the West. We were asked to give four words that qualify the West, then ME, without avoiding stereotypes. In fact, those words were supposed to be "what we think when we hear ME" (resp. the West). The West (tW) group chose "democracy", "technically advanced", "power hungry" and "rule maker" for tW, and "religious", "oil producer", "terrorist" and "fractious"for ME. The ME group chose to separate tW between the US and the EU. For EU they chose "objective", "genuinly concerned about ME" and "common interest", for the US "Ignorant", "Self Centered" and "Naive", and finally for ME the chose "patriarcal", "primitive", "terrorist" and "conservative". Then we confronted those lists of words, and began to discuss them.
What I found interesting is that there are a lot of negative words. Does this means that we have more tendancies to see the failings than the good traits ? Or that the media are more focusing on bad traits rather than good ones ? I don't know. Another thing that impressed me was the fact that the EU has really a good image among ME. I don't know if the EU does really have those qualitifes, but that's really different from how the US are seen.
For me too, the second session was really great! I was worrying that nobody will speak, because they seemed to be timide. But as we begin to know each other better, everybody relaxed and we have great discussions.
An interesting thing is that an important part of the discussion was about vocabulary. For example, "muslim world" or "arab" doesn't mean the same for US or ME. Which made them read the article in different way, and maybe cause some tension during the discussion (not really tension, but more engaged discussion :) ).
I have approximatetly the same comment than pierre about the tech issues and the rest of the discussion, so I will not repeat everything :)
About the final project, I 'd like to do something on the vision of homosexuality in ME. This is not exactly the topic of soliya, but I am very curious about that. And I was good surprised : lots of people was interested to work with me on that :)
And about the media project, it seems to be very long... So I wonder if we could do it in pairs (with people from grenoble). It could be more interesting and funny... But maybe it is not possible.
I wish good session to the other...
Though my optimism for this program registered a very low level after my first session, the second one took me to the opposite side. The lack of technical problems gave us the opportunity to engage ourselves in discussions concerning the subject of the day. This way I got to know better the others from my group, to better communicate with them.
We discussed about our fears and expectations that we've had before this program started. Then we were asked to propose some topics for the next weeks from which "cultural differences" was the most voted topic (however not by me:) ) A little presentation of our due projects was also made. But some controversial discussions started when we were asked to give some main causes for the conflict between East and West. Most of my colleagues opted for cultural differences but I stick to my own opinion which is economic interests. I agree that in order to reach this interests hot subjects like cultural differences are used . Probably I'm wrong, probably I'm not but that's why I've joined this program, to try to find out more:). As for the final project it will be either the Joint Article or Community Interviews. I haven't thought very well for a topic but I should start doing because until the next session I have to come up with something:D.
In order to finish I will just add that this video conferences have a bigger effect if the number of participants is not so great. I had the chance to interact only with 4 students and the facilitator and it was better than being 10. Now I don't know if the facilitator was just polite but she agreed that it was one of the best conferences she ever attended to.
Au revoir;)
My second Soliya discussion:
We talked about stereotypes. Which stereotypes do we think the ‘others ’ have against us? Perfect, this it exactly what I wanted to talk about!
The Palestinian girl in my group was completely convinced that we believe, they’re still living in tents. For me, if I think of the Arabian world and tents, I see refugee camps, and I know, not all Arabs are living in refugee camps, they even live in luxury apartments as you can see in Dubai.
About the USA, we quickly came to the Fast Food stereotype. Yes, I have that too, but I was surprised the US-American girl didn’t mention another very very current stereotype in Europe. As I know, Europeans consider the US-Americans being stupid, very stupid. Yes, that hurts, but we wanted to be honest.
I mentioned, the Arabs might consider us being very democratic and maybe they don’t like our equal status of men and women. Bum, it seemed as if I got straight to the point. The reaction of the Palestinian girl really surprised me. Actually, she didn’t respond to my impressions, she went straight away to the cartoon discussion. It was humiliating she said, Westerns haven’t the right to publish those cartoons. Arabs don’t judge Jesus neither. In contrast, they think he was a good boy – what effectively means they judge him. Hmm, I couldn’t go into this subject because I didn’t see the cartoons, but I think it is the freedom of press to criticise and question. And In fact, I expect the media to do so as they are an important democratic institution. The difficulty is to find the right way to transmit your message that everyone hears and understands it. Of course, no Muslim, who believes in the infallibility of Mohamed, will ever accept any criticism of Islam or Mohamed himself.
The discussion continued more tranquilly until we came to the question of the root of the Western-Middle East conflict. Financial interests in oil, unsolved conflict between Israel and Palestine, different ideas of humanity and way of government, lots of misunderstandings that nurture extremists.... were some of our ideas. And then, it was once again time for the Palestinian girl: it’s Israel’s fault! In fact, they’re taking our land and after that, they even kill us. It hate Israel, the Muslim world should build an alliance against Israel to realise their own ideas. – hard stuff, mainly if you think it out completely and have a quick look at Europeans past. I was shocked, I couldn’t respond anything to that. Maybe I was too naive at the beginning, but I’ve NEVER expected to meet a Muslim saying these words. Ok, an extremist coming from a terror camp, but I’d probably never meet him or the other “5%” of violent Islamists. What leads her to hate Israelis, what happened to her family that she even regrets being in Qatar and not to can fight for Palestine? Is it even necessary to understand her and her non-tolerance? Did she consider in her optimal solution of the conflict, that I, as a catholic, would like to have free access to the religious sites in Jerusalem, too? – Just as a little sign of interreligious respect?
Hi everyone,
my second session was last thursday. I was - as usual - with fabien, and the whole session was nice.
First, some had tech problems, some were late, other in holidays ... but I finaly think that it is the way things are to be in webconferecing. After that slow beginning - at least 45 min- facilitators started to lead the activities. We had to wrote down the first 6 words that come to our mind: 3 about The West and 3 about the Arab and Muslim World. Surprisingly, the egyptian and emirates girls expected us (french and american) to say "terrorist", "fanatics" and so on. But none of us think about that, first step for a reconciliation ... Ideas were more like "tradition", "nature", "oil", "women treated like dirt" for the Muslim World and "technology", "modenism", "democracy", "sex" for The West.
Only ten minutes left to finish the session, just enought to organize the final project, groups, subjects,...
What strike me the most during this session is that none of the facilitators said anything about the readings ! Don't know if we will deal with it one day ... But that is sad because some of the text are interesting. Will see next time.
Hi!
This second session was better than the first one.
After a slow start, cause a lot of people were late and still had technical problems, we talked about stereotypes : how the Arab world qualifiate the USA-Europe and vice-versa. Arabs were surprised we (frenchies : Nicolas and I) aren't considering them as totally ill fanatics, but worried a little that they are seen as countries of "Oil", which is more a part of the Arab Emirate countries... Amercican girls qualified Arabs as countries of inequality men-women rights. And I was perhaps too virulent in expressing my view of the United States : I let understand that they aren't the world police they pretend to be...
i regret ideas were launched without any real links, and cause everybody has to speak, some points were not exploited as I believed.
it was however funny to look at pictures of students : a girl in the USA showed a picture of her during her hazed-session! And an Egyptian girl showed us that yes, Egyptian girls can speak to guys, touch them and be with them on pictures!! Perhaps you can think it is fully stupid to believe they can't, but my last trip in Tunisia permit me to see that it is still not the case for the generation born in the 60's...
I disagree with a student telling that it is boring to have to read some typed text, cause as a limited-skills student, I'm sometimes really happy to see written text when I didn't get the meaning of the sentence. I concede it is slower to type than to speak, but writing permit a more organised presentation....
To conclude, I was a bit surprised we didn't speak a lot about the readings..... Facilitators didn't event told us anything about it... And even if some groups were formed, I was a bit sad not to be included in a group...... ;'-(
I start to enjoy theses sessions, cause we know us more and more and some links are starting.... (at the end some attendees showed us dance moves thanks to their webcams!!!!! lol)
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