The World in A Cultural Village!

On the 6 of March, I attended a very unique event that was held in Qatar University, and which was more like a celebration of different cultures, uniting a wide range of diverse countries and nationalities into a small village, called as “The Cultural Village.”



The Cultural Village is a great student event that enriches the audience with activities representing the variety of cultural heritages at Qatar University. It takes place annually and is organized by QU Students under the supervision and guidance of the Student Activities Department.



The event’s main objective is to introduce its audience to the different cultures of QU Students who come from various parts of the globe. The village will include a number of booths, exhibitions, and several cultural activities that reflect the uniqueness of each culture as perceived by the participants through folkloric shows, music, traditional customs, and plays. The best of all, this event is open to the public.





According to sociology, such event as considered a multi-cultural activity can be described using the Interaction Theory. It helps create cultural diffusion, which is the spreading of cultural traits, products, ideas, or behaviors from one culture to another. It is also a great opportunity for people coming from different countries to reflect their cultures by doing interesting and fun activities. Cultural village allows social and cultural interaction with a large, diverse audience and prevents any kinds of cultural gaps or stereotypes.



In addition to that, the Cultural Village is a great chance for the students to introduce themselves and know each other. It allows you to live between cultures and experience different countries’ norms and traditions by just setting there and having the spirit to observe and cheer.





What is also special about this event is that it is a great environment for the students to show off their talents and special capabilities, which helps enhance their self-confidence and leaves positive impressions on their community. I was really impressed by the students’ potentials as some of them were casting poems and speeches that they wrote by themselves. Others were acting, dancing, singing, and playing different musical instruments. In short, I can describe the Cultural Village as a fun and exciting way to travel around the world and explore different cultures and identities.

This video is one of the great performances done in the event, which is a Palestinian traditional dance called "Dabkeh."

Photography: A Silent Communication

Realizing the fact that cultures and civilizations from all over the world have distinct ways of approaching and interpreting art to express their identities, there might be one thing that they have in common: telling stories through photos. For example, it might be difficult for a lot of people who have no familiarity with music from the far-east of the globe to differentiate between J-pop and K-pop, while it’s easy for almost all people to tell what story lies behind a picture.

Since media is considered a major factor in spreading all forms of art in this century, the art of photography is no exception. It is that form of art that’s everywhere and we don’t often notice in our daily lives. It may not be as professional or spectacular as it sounds like from the name itself, but we do encounter it a lot in a single day. The simplest example that I can think of at the top my head is about something that you can’t leave your house without such as your national ID card, your health card, your driver’s license, or even your passport. But have you ever thought of that picture of yourself printed on either national documents? I mean, who took those pictures of you? Of course it wasn't anengineer or a doctor because each individual has its own role in order for a society to function well. To answer the preceding question, that person is definitely a photographer.

Like other cultures of art, photography has its own subcultures as well. As some photographers work in professional studios where people are usually the ones that would come to them to be photographed, others travel from a country to another for the sake of having a close-up of what they want to take a picture of because of the nature of their jobs, such as photography journalists.

Apart from considering photography as a career, some people enjoy it as a hobby. Many people would usually buy professional cameras, take creative shots, (maybe) edit them with special softwares like Adobe Photoshop, and publish them to online photography galleries such as Flickr or istockphoto to share them with people from different regions of the world. Those able photographers would even make money out of their photos by selling them to people who might be interested in photography. In relation to the cultural theories, this sort of collaboration between photographers and people in a society clearly serves the interaction theory of a culture, in which two or more members in a society work to benefit from each other without being suppressed by outer powers.

Early Adopters: Geeky or Savvy?

My earlier blog about consumerism and materialism reflects the effect of the culture industry in designing products that make us consume more and more, transforming us into mindless consumers of popular culture and cultural products produced by culture industries...



However there is another dimension of consumerism that I would like to explore further. I know a special kind of consumer, the person you usually find first in line to purchase the new phone, the new ipod, the new laptop, the new “gadget” and the latest technology or model of whatever it is the culture industry is selling us.
Meg is a Texas student in the petroleum engineering major. He is also what Grazian refers to as an “early adopter”, an early consumer of a given company product or technology. As far as early adopters are concerned, he is definitely a record breaker. I’ve known him for 3 years, and whenever I buy something new, he always has something newer. He always makes what I own look out of date. My phone is always at least three generations behind his, and my other entertainment gadgets like my ipod are definitely not the “best” option according to him.



If you aren’t an early adopter, I’m sure you know one. Yes I’m talking about the person who can’t wait to show you their new special edition ipod, their new laptop with new features, their new camera, and their new high-tech gadget that can do something so cool – way cooler than what you already own. If the new products are not yet available in stores for you to line up in a cue, he would be the first to purchase it online before it is available for sale locally.



Early adopters are not just geeky consumers as many may think. Their influence on brand success, and impact on society and the consumerist culture can be significant. Potential consumers often seek early adopters’ advice, as they are way ahead in terms of expertise and knowledge on the particular product or innovation. Early adopters would have had more time being acquainted with the product than potential adopters and so would have acquired better understanding of its functions, uses and features. It is then likely that I ask my friend Meg whether I should purchase a certain piece of technology or gadget. Knowing that he would already have that particular item or replaced it about three times he would be a good source for advice and information. Even though I might look up a lot of reviews and information online, the “word-of-mouth” aspect of the interaction theory could be more effective in terms of convincing me to buy a given product. As this analysis on early adopters states, early adopters may “serve as a role model for many other members of a social system”. Early adopters then become somewhat respected by their peers and exemplify a way of using and purchasing products introduced by companies.



When I ask Meg for advice on a given gadget or piece of technology, his role is then to lower my uncertainty of purchasing it and to provide me with a vicarious hands-on experience through his own. His experience may not always be the best. Early adopters can face downfalls, but these negative experiences can serve the benefit of others.



Meg is not an online review or brochure, but someone who is not just trying to sell me a product. Hence, it is only natural that his peers and myself look to him for advice on new products. The effect a “Meg” would bring on any given society is more or less equal. We look to these early adopters for hopes of a successful purchase. It is always rewarding when you invest in something that proves to be suitable and worthwhile. So can early adopters transform us into savvy consumers?

Online Multiplayer Games: Social Interactions in A Second Life!

Playing online games has become a social experience. It’s a recent and successful genre by which players can interact and connect with each other easily via different massively multiplayer online games. These new games are purposefully created to encourage social interactions among players. Members of these communities typically share an interest in online gaming and a great deal of the interaction between them is technologically mediated. However this phenomenon is dramatically spreading around societies that it’s becoming a threat in a way that people are becoming addicts to a virtual world, and forgetting about reality.





Sociology and Psychology tend to place a great emphasize on studying this virtual social interaction by applying different theories. For example, psychologists argue that one of the main reasons behind the success of this genre is that players are more likely to avoid stress-causing relationships when they develop an online society, resulting in more stable and social networks, and that’s is described by the Structural Balance Theory. In addition to that, sociologists best describe this behavior by the Interaction Theory, which basically talks about the following:





Online multiplayer games enable the formation of lasting relationships. They encourage interaction and collaboration between players, which may be through a certain condition for making progress in a game, or a game may be based on competition between players. For example, some online games enable its player to get married and have a virtual wife or husband with children!





Sociologists also argue that the technological communication tools that a typical multiplayer game offer to its players such as text, image, and sound, support this virtual interaction and enable communication between whole groups and communities. In addition to using the modes of communication offered by games, members of multiplayer communities may keep in touch face to face, over the phone, or even via email.



Moreover, long-term online interactions serve the whole world by gathering different communities, each with distinctive culture and identity in a small, social village. For example, appearance or age, are often insignificant in multiplayer gaming communities. A 15-year-old Arabic schoolgirl, a 30-year-old French housewife, and a 45-year-old American businessman can all be members of the same community.

Online social networks

The most popular online social network website

The first website that comes to everyones mind when they first hear online social networks is Facebook. Everyone in the world spends infinite amount of time on the internet, and the worst source of procrastination is Facebook. They spends hours on the website without even realizing the time whooshing by when they should be working on other more important things, such as writing blog posts on Qatar Culture Club! One way of explaining the phenomenon of Facebook is through the interaction theory as there are different groups of individuals coming together, sharing their experiences and culture with the friends added to their profile. Facebook is not the first website that began to fulfill this purpose, there are other online social networks that were online before Facebook even started. Who could forget Myspace, people still use it( just not as much as before), or Hi5 or Bebo, there were many different website that used to bring people together but Facebook is probably the most successful one at doing so.

I always thought the site One of the first social

was called HiS when i was younger network sites I joined

The new design of what was formerly Myspace is now My____. Perhaps it was altered to attract more people to join and stay on their website.

People are attracted to online forms of socializing because they all belong to their own social networks and it is easiest to keep themselves updated by using the internet. Lets go back to Facebook, where you can create different lists where you divide people on your friends list to the different social networks you belong to, such as having different options for family than those compared to high school friends or new acquaintances.

Online social networks are not merely used for entertainment, they can also be used for infotainment (meaning information and entertainment, as i learnt in a recent class). Through new or old acquaintances there could be useful connectors who would be useful for future reference. Theres always that one person on our list who seems to have an opinion on everything and ,as annoying as that might be sometimes, it is useful to have opinion leaders in your circle or friends so that you could have them share their expertise of knowledge about cultural products.