Media, advertising, and development in Morocco

The passage below comes my dissertation. The hulking monster is nearly 100,000 words (now that I've cut this passage, it's 98,939 words). I am posting this text, which seems too good to sacrifice completely but not good enough to include in the final version.

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Media and advertising play a role in development around the world, and Morocco is not an exception. Advertising sells everything to everyone without distinction, as if the masses of society were classless.[1] To do this, advertising tries to reflect “an ideal world, sanitized of any tragedy.”[2] Commercial advertising ignores the underdevelopment, poverty, insecurity and exclusion that stem from the hardship that advertising sanitizes away. Commercial advertising never mentions weapons or wars. Commercial advertising presents an innocent, optimistic, and utopian world, full of happiness where there is absolutely no injustice or inequality.[3] Moroccan writer Abdeslam Bouhani asks: In the absence of representations of inequality and injustice, where in commercial advertising is the evidence or representation or validation or testament of the hundreds of millions of excluded people and outcasts, condemned to living their entire lives in abject poverty? How do marginalized people fulfill and perceive the fantasies or illusions of happiness which commercial advertising promises and which almost never come true?

Commercial advertising conveyed via the many types of mass media is targeted, well-defined and precise. For the advertisers, there is no consideration of those who are not a part of the targeted demographic and how they may be negatively affected or suffer harm as a result of consuming commercial advertising intended for a different audience. The individuals and communities not targeted by commercial advertising often comprise an overwhelming majority. Thus, for Bouhani, these audiences consume and process commercial advertising as aborted dreams and unfulfilled longings, accompanied by feelings of deprivation, frustration (especially among the impoverished) or even exclusion and marginalization. Those who are almost always excluded from the target audience demographic include rural residents, the handicapped, ethnic, racial, and religious minorities, overweight people, poor people, and any others who do not assimilate easily into the rosy picture that forms the heart of the image that commercial advertising creates and exploits. In the case of those living in poverty, Bouhani concludes that their exclusion and marginalization inevitably increases their awareness of the horror of the economic injustice and social inequality that they experience as a part of their everyday lives.[4]

In sum, Bouhani considers commercial advertising to be playing a pernicious role in development. Because commercial advertising presents only a fantastical, sanitized, ideal version of life, the images create a world where development is unnecessary because there is no suffering or inequality or poverty. Furthermore, commercial advertising exacerbates the exclusion and marginalization experienced by the poor and other subaltern populations because they consume that which was created for the consumption of others. Because commercial advertising is created for mass consumption by an imagined homogenous, prosperous, dominant population, those outside of that demographic experience exclusion and marginalization as a part of their media consumption.

[1] Ignacio Ramonet, "La fabrique des désirs," Le Monde Diplomatique, Mai 2001. cited in Abdeslam Bouhani, Sauvez la femme sauvez le monde, 1st ed. (Aïn Sebaâ: Les Editions Maghrébines, 2010). 70.

[2] Louis Quesnel, "La publicité et sa "philosophie."," Communications 17(1971). cited in Ramonet, "La fabrique des désirs." cited in Bouhani, Vers le declin de "la machine à vendre"?: 70.

[3] Quesnel, "La publicité et sa "philosophie."." cited in Ramonet, "La fabrique des désirs." cited in Bouhani, Vers le declin de "la machine à vendre"?: 70.

[4] Bouhani, Vers le declin de "la machine à vendre"?: 70-71.

This is what all 94,668 words of my dissertation look like

Feminism fail: Jadaliyya blames illiterates and illiteracy for causing prostitution

In a story called "A Monarchical Affair: From Morocco to the Arabian Peninsula," from 10 April 2012, Samia Errazzouki writing for Jadaliyya discusses the relationship between Morocco and Gulf countries. While her article covers some important and interesting information, she nonetheless falls into the all-too-common 'illiterates are ruining the world' trap. About two thirds through her article, she writes:



"Aside from the lack of legislation that addresses sex trafficking, high illiteracy and poverty rates, especially in rural areas, have turned the sex industry in Morocco into a lucrative market."



A quick reading of this sentence might not reveal the offensiveness of her point, so allow me to draw it out for you. First of all, how many times do we need to be reminded that CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION. In other words, high rates of illiteracy correlate with increased lucrativeness in the sex industry, at least according to Errazzouki. Fine. I need to get back to finishing my dissertation, so I am not going to take the time to look that one up. But illiteracy does not CAUSE prostitution or make prostitution a more appealing or make sex work a more lucrative career. In fact, both illiteracy and prostitution are caused by a complex set of structural factors rooted in patriarchy, economic inequality, and poverty. While it is true that there are sex workers who claim that they entered into sex work by choice, there are also sex workers who enter the trade because it pays better than cashiering at Kmart, or in the case of rural Morocco, anything else. Illiteracy doesn't cause women to become prostitutes, and being illiterate certainly doesn't increase a sex worker's earning potential, as Errazzouki's ambiguously worded sentence might suggest. More troubling, claiming that "high illiteracy...[has] turned the sex industry in Morocco into a lucrative market" in Morocco does not go into enough detail about who is profiting and how.



In any case, there is a lot more I could say about this, but I need to get back to my chapter on gender relations in Morocco so I can get my Ph.D. already...

Where you can come to hear about how illiterate women are transforming governance!

I will be presenting my dissertation research on the role of illiterate women in political change at the following three conferences.




Virginia Social Science Association Annual Conference
3:15 – 4:45 PM, Saturday 26 March 2011
Potomac River Room, Webb Center, Old Dominion University
Norfolk VA USA


and

1st Annual Intercultural Communication Graduate Research Expo

10am until 5pm, Saturday 9 April 2011--my presentation will be sometime between 1-2:30 (program)

The Commons building

University of Maryland, Baltimore County

1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore MD 21250

and


Women’s Worlds 2011 “Inclusions, exclusions, and seclusions: Living in a globalized world”
3-7 July 2011
co-hosted by the University of Ottawa, and Carleton University
Morning plenary sessions will take place at the Ottawa Convention Centre
Ottawa Canada

Where do dissertation topics come from?

This is the story of how my dissertation was born. During my 2nd year (fall 2007) of PhD coursework in the Graduate Program in International Studies at ODU, in Dr. Kurt Taylor-Gaubatz' course on democracy in the international system, a great friend and fellow PhD student Kim passed along a fantastic article from Foreign Affairs. Firstly, Kurt is amazing, and definitely one of the best things about GPIS. Secondly, Kim changed my life with that suggestion. The article led to my paper topic for the course on whether electoral quotas for women enhance democracy.

The research for that paper led me to the amazing organization, IDEA, where I hope to work someday (I finally have a concrete, true, and reasonable answer to inquiries about where I hope to end up!). IDEA's work on parliamentary quotas for women is superlative, and their publications drew my attention to the participation of illiterate women in local councils in Pakistan. That tidbit was the next step in the life change that Kim's suggestion sparked.

That spring (2008) Dr. Jennifer Fish taught Gender and Globalization. Jennifer, like Kurt, is one of the gems of ODU--a real treasure. She is the one that nurtured the the idea into the topic that it is today. And of course, as a work in progress, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the chair of my dissertation committee, Dr. Francis Adams, and my 3rd committee member, Dr. Fran Hassencahl. Dr. Adams has a gift for massaging 'ideas' (by which I mean scatter diagrams, really) into cogent organization. Dr. Hassencahl provided invaluable support at the WOCMES 2010 conference in Barcelona, and is the first professor to witness me present my fieldwork from Morocco.

As of this moment, I am moving forward, fast as I can, to become Dr. Baines. There is a deadline with the end of the world scheduled for 2012 and all.

5th annual Virginia Council of Graduate Schools Graduate Student Research Forum

On Thursday 3 February I presented a poster of my research at the 5th annual Virginia Council of Graduate Schools Graduate Student Research Forum. My university, Old Dominion, chose me to present my Morocco field research via a full color 3' x 4' poster at the Library of Virginia. I was the only student from my department, the Graduate Program in International Studies, to be chosen.

I got some useful feedback. I find, as my research develops, and the more I talk about it with people, that there are 2 frustrating reactions.

Firstly, since the working title is: Women, Illiteracy and Public Participation: Barriers to Transforming Governance in Arab states?, many people make a pensive gesture and mutter something like, "oh, I see, you're educating women." No. Not at all. That is not AT ALL what my research is about. In fact, you might say just the opposite. I am DRAWING ATTENTION TO THE FACT THAT our notion of 'education' is actually not clearly defined. I am refuting the culturally biased assumption that knowledge ipso facto means being literate. What do we mean by education or literacy anyway? What if your native language isn't written? How are you supposed to be literate, and is it really reasonable for the world to assume that you are doomed to be useless or unproductive in this case?

Secondly, 2 people so far have denied that the stereotype of 'illiterates as obstacles to development' is a common theme throughout development literature. This baffles me, but I have to admit that it merits investigation since more than one person has suggested it. Obviously I will take great pleasure in refuting them. Not only is this stereotype almost universally present, it remains virtually uncontested! This is just one of the treats I will be offering to the world.

Here are the specifics of what I presented in Richmond:

Degree Program: Graduate Program in International Studies (PhD)

Research Working Title: Women, Illiteracy and Public Participation: Barriers to Transforming Governance in Arab states?

Illiteracy is a gendered factor across societies at all levels of development and globalization. Literacy is not simply an indicator of class, social status and educational level, but is assumed to serve as a major barrier to large swathes of society—namely women. Women have marginalized voices, both written and spoken, yet are counted in number in terms of their participation in politics at all levels of governance. "Most women fight wars on two fronts, one for whatever the putative topic is and one simply for the right to speak, to have ideas, to be acknowledged to be in possession of facts and truths, to have value, to be a human being."[1] By investigating the ways in which illiteracy affects women’s agency in terms of obtaining, or desiring to obtain positions of influence and decision-making across all levels of governance, this paper analyzes the capacity of literacy to empower and exclude women from public participation.

The role of illiterates in society is complex and largely defined by agents other than the literates themselves. My dissertation focuses in part on the (non)existence of illiterate women in the literature that considers women’s political capacity. Historically where developing states achieved extensive advances in literacy, an increase in political participation also occurred. In Morocco there is expansion of participation without advances in literacy. If literacy is not necessary to empower women as assumed, how does the traditional focus of foreign aid and development regimes on literacy programs miss the mark in terms of the role that illiterate women play in political transition?

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[1] http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174918

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE: WOMEN & NEW MEDIA IN THE MEDITERRANEAN REGION

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS/ABSTRACTS: ISIS CENTER FOR WOMEN & DEVELOPMENT: INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE: WOMEN & NEW MEDIA IN THE MEDITERRANEAN REGION

Source: Isis Center for Women and Development

With the growing dominance of the Internet, blog, chat and mobile telephony, the great "big bang" of the new media has begun. Communication is rapidly changing and becoming mobile, interactive, personalized and multi-channel. This extraordinary revolution is affecting the basic structure of Mediterranean societies, especially those in the south, and is raising various discussions and debates that profoundly impact women: the rapid transformation of the boundaries between the public and the private spaces, the relationship between new technology, orality and women’s literature, changes in the relationship between written and oral languages, the increasing use of mother tongues (mainly oral) in the field of education, and the challenges of new transmissions of women’s knowledges. Deadline for abstracts: March 1, 2011.

These issues are the five main axes of the International Congress Forum on “Women and New Media in the Mediterranean Region”, to be held on June 24, 25 and 26, 2011 at the Palais des Congrès, Fez , Morocco :

1. The transformation of the relationship "gender and public space / private space" in the era of new media

2. New media, orality and literature Women

3.Femmes, written languages and mother tongues

4. The new media and education

5. The challenge of new transmissions of women's knowledge

Papers may be in Arabic, French or English and will last 15-20 minutes.

The deadline for receiving abstracts is March 1, 2011.

The successful participants will be notified by March 31, 2011, and the completed papers need to be emailed send before June 1, 2011.

Participants are responsible for their trip and lodging expenses.

Contact Information:

Fatima Sadiqi - sadiqi_fatima@yahoo.fr

Senior Professor of Linguistics and Gender Studies (MA, PhD)

Co-Founder of International Institute for Languages & Cultures (INLAC )

Director of the Isis Center for Women and Development - Fez, Morocco

http://www.isiscenter.com/Presentation.php

Socrates and Literacy

I am presenting my field research next Tuesday at the World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies in Barcelona. While I put together the PowerPoint presentation and re-read my research so far, I am reminded of a clip I presented this idea--it hadn't yet become my dissertation topic. Dr. Fish, an incredibly supportive professor at ODU, encouraged me to take the idea farther. Anyhow, the first 45 seconds of this clip sum up my approach to knowledge and knowledge construction. Enjoy!




Illustrated Books And Newspapers

Discourse was deemed Man's noblest attribute,
And written words the glory of his hand;
Then followed Printing with enlarged command
For thought -- dominion vast and absolute
For spreading truth, and making love expand.
Now prose and verse sunk into disrepute
Must lackey a dumb Art that best can suit
The taste of this once-intellectual Land.
A backward movement surely have we here,
From manhood, -- back to childhood; for the age --
Back towards caverned life's first rude career.
Avaunt this vile abuse of pictured page!
Must eyes be all in all, the tongue and ear
Nothing? Heaven keep us from a lower stage!

By William Wordsworth, 1846

Melodee in the Media

I have made it into the Moroccan print media (Femmes du Maroc, a national magazine) and international broadcast media again (and see me totally work my rhinestoned silk scarf)! You can also see me here and here and here.

Boys' literacy

While spending this year in Morocco (September 2009 to September 2010), part of my time here is dedicated to working on my dissertation. I am rounding up the 4th year of the International Studies doctoral program at Old Dominion University. This fourth year is also a first year of sorts. On 16 September 2009 I successfully defended my PhD comprehensive exams, a brutal 2-day (8 hours per day) writing exam (without notes or resources other than what I’ve learned and prepared between the 3-year period between matriculation and satisfying class/lecture requirements) followed by an oral defense. I am now ABD—all but dissertation—and dissertating full time instead of attending lectures full time. As an ABD, my dissertation is on my mind at all times, even when I am relaxing, which for me often includes reading or watching something inextricably connected to my research interests.

My dissertation topic is the role of illiterate women in political change. I am specifically looking and illiterate women’s agency in developing states, and Morocco is one of my chosen country studies. When my thoughtful aunt forwarded me the most recent issues of my favorite women’s magazine—Bitch—I read them with interest, finding particular inspiration from an article about boys’ literacy. I offer up here some [superficial but thoughtful] insights and critical commentary.

Jeffrey Wilhelm, coauthor of the male literacy study Reading Don’t Fix No Chevys: Literacy in the Lives of Young Men, declares that, “[i]t’s understood that boys, in general, struggle with literacy.” I wonder, is this universally true? Or only true in the US/North America/developed countries? Is there an implication for Morocco?

Later the author concludes that, “boys aren’t (as is sometimes claimed) reading worse than before, but they are reading consistently worse than girls.” In Morocco, where women’s illiteracy is consistently much higher than men’s (except in Western Sahara…but that point deserves its own special focus), what can we learn from the case of Morocco from how/what boys read compared to girls, including how boys and girls are taught differently about literacy, its function in their lives, and how they perceive literacy as benefiting or fitting into their lives as citizens, activists, and everyday folks?

According to Jon Scieszka, founder of Guys Read, a literacy program for boys, “there [is] hardly any research on the connection between gender and reading.” This is my chance to fill that gap, while integrating an international perspective, an Arab perspective, an African perspective, and perhaps even an Islamic perspective.

“Scieszka’s theory is that because boys develop at a different rate than girls, many of them simply aren’t ready for reading—‘the very abstract task of learning to make literary sense of combinations of 26 different squiggles on a page’—when it’s first taught in school.” In the case of Morocco, public primary and elementary education is lamentable, and thus an issue that requires analysis and deconstruction in its own right. Nonetheless, this hypothesis (not so much a theory), inspires critical analysis of the pedagogical approach to boys’ and girls’ education in Morocco. Is it a given in Morocco that boys develop at a different rate than girls? What are the value judgments assigned to or accompanying perceptions about differential rates of learning between the sexes? Or does a separate understanding altogether exist in the Moroccan approach to pedagogy and sex? Is there a particular approach anyhow?

The author asserts that reading preferences are largely socialized, a point that seems fairly obvious, certainly to anyone who would be reading Bitch magazine.

More insightfully, the author declares that feminists should be at the forefront of [innovative] literacy approaches, especially prepared to approach them critically. “After all, if boys are having problems with reading, that negatively affects how the men they become see both themselves and women. When we read, we see from other perspectives—including other perspectives on gender.”

Is this true? Or is this simply reinforcing the status quo notion that readers are more intellectually adept or are intellectually superior to non-readers…where do language, diglossia, linguistic prestige, etc. fit in?

The author continues that, “[t]he uncommonly honest accounts of men’s and women’s experiences that can be found in literature make the gender construct seem a cartoon of human experience, and offer boys the chance to transcend simplistic, dehumanizing notions of masculinity and femininity. For boys to access these accounts, though, they first have to want to—they first have to make sense of those squiggles on the page.”

This is laying a LOT of responsibility on literacy, not to mention assuming that literacy sine qua non provides enlightenment. I am not convinced. What do you think?

Jonathan Frochtwajg. “Paper Boys.” Bitch Magazine. Winter 2009. Issue no. 45. Page 11.