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.

--------

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.

Why education is not a cure all or panacea

On Friday 1 June 2012, I submitted a complete draft of my dissertation to my committee members.  Since then, I got some feedback from my committee chair about removing some items from the 330 page document (or 82,632 words not including footnotes and references).  My next few posts might end up serving a similar purpose to this one--serving as a repository for the rejected prose from my dissertation.

When one sets out to write a book-length project, inspiration comes from everywhere.  That was the case for me, as I read Obama's memoir "Dreams from my father: a story of race and inheritance" while doing fieldwork in Morocco during 2009-2010.

-----------

            An alternative view to the near universal assumption that education is a quasi panacea is the viewpoint that formal schooling does not provide adequate education to marginalized or minority populations, including the poor and women.  In other words, formal schooling does not teach marginalized or minority students about the world based on their perspectives or experiences.  In one of his memoirs, Obama profiles educator Asante Moran, a character that may represent a composite of more than one real person.  Obama quotes Moran as saying, “Just think about what a real education for these children would involve.  It would start by giving a child an understanding of himself[/herself], his[/her] world, his[/her] culture, his[/her] community.  That’s the starting point of any educational process.  That’s what makes a child hungry to learn—the promise of being part of something, of mastering his[/her] environment.”[1]  While Obama’s character was referring to inner-city minority youths in 1980s Chicago, his thoughts are true and valid for all people, not just inner-city minority youths.  This point speaks to the importance of involving the targets of education (or the products of education, whether failed or inadequate or successful) into the curriculum and program designing process.  Such inclusion is challenging for Moroccan society, where teaching is a low prestige job, and teachers are largely not respected by the state or society.  There is growing research on the positive results of including different voices in designing curriculum and schooling programs.[2]

            The character in Obama’s memoir, Asante Moran, discusses the educational experience of his pupils through the lens of standpoint theory.  The challenge to formal schooling in Obama’s text cites the disconnection between the experience behind the curriculum that is being taught and the experience of the pupils to whom it is being taught.  Obama quotes Moran further, “From day one, what’s he[/she] learning about?  Someone else’s history.  Someone else’s culture, Not only that, this culture [she/]he’s supposed to learn is the same culture that’s systematically rejected him[/her], denied him[/her] his[/her] humanity.”[3]  This second quote is even more relevant to the women of Morocco, and the relevance increases as the intersectional identities increase.  Rural women, poor women, girls and teens (youth is another intersectional identity), Amazigh (Berber) women, single mothers, mentally or physically handicapped women, homosexual women, children born to Moroccan women and non-Moroccan men (this affects issues of nationality and the privileges associated with it), widows, mothers of daughters, non-Muslim women, and others.

            Indeed, inter-subjectively, the marginalized student is not being taught her history while the enfranchised students gets to benefit from an otherwise more robust educational experience when that experience is shared with students from different backgrounds.  Obama points out through his character Moran that, “The flow of culture [runs] in reverse as well.”[4]  The disenfranchised have “their own forms of validation.”  Their “claims of greater deprivation” afford them “greater authenticity.”  Furthermore, their mere presence in the classroom with privileged students provides those privileged students “with an education”[5] from the points of view of the disenfranchised (the poor, the deprived and other areas outside of affluence and privilege).  Inclusion leads to an improved school experience for everyone.


[1] Barack Obama. Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. 1st pbk. ed.  New York: Three Rivers Press, 2004. 258.

[2] See for example, International Working Group on Education (IWGE). "Critical Issues in Education for All: Gender Parity, Emergencies," (Paris: UNESCO: International Institute for Educational Planning, 2003).

[3] Obama, Dreams from my father: a story of race and inheritance: 258.

[4] Ibid., 286.

[5] Ibid.