Probably not. Pan-Arabism, which at one time had a substantial following among at least the intelligensia, is tainted by the failures of the Nasserist era. Secular, quasi-socialist and, on the surface at least, pan-Arab regimes, birthed several of the ME/NA’s worst dictators ( including quasi-dictators like Mubarak ). It started dieing noticeably after the Six Days War, when Arafat and the young PLO rose to prominence championing a new paradigm - in that case secular nationalism ( actually it is probably a mistake to see this as a clear ideological break - Arafat made pan-Arab noises and folks like Nasser also promoted nationalism when it suited them - but it was still the beginning of a real shift in emphasis ). Of course the failure of pan-Arabism was a failure less of the ideology per se, than it was of the corrupt regimes that cynically mouthed pan-Arabist propaganda, but the stain remains.
Secular pan-Arabism still has its adherents and groups like the Arab League will continue to mouth vague pan-Arab homilies, but it is no longer a major ideological force in the region. Even if it were, there are now even more practical obstacles to its implementation than there was 50 years ago.
Can we hear from some Middle Easterners on this point? Is this really true? Because if it is, it suggests Iraqis and other Arabs might not be intellectually prepared for republican government.
For my part, I don’t assume everyone in the West has critical thinking skills. I wish!
I’m refering to generalities here. We teach a course from Kepner Tregoe called “Decision Making and Problem Solving”. This is the company standard (Well that is what upper mgmt claims anyway. You’d never know it given some of the things decisions I’ve seen, lol. Yes, I agree, never assume that critical thinking is the norm here, too) for deciding issues that there is no consensus on, or are very complex. A lot of the training is based upon case studies. As anyone who has taken this sort of training knows, not all information in the case study is relevant to the case. The nationals have hard time discerning what is relevant to the problem and what isn’t. More so than the expats from North America. I’ve talked to the instructor (20 years experience in this sort of training and very well thought of when it comes to this sort of stuff) about this. He says that in order to cover the course when he teaches it in the ME he has to drop a couple of the case studies to at least touch on all the information in the time alloted. And then with the remaining cases he has to emphasize that not all the information is important to solving the problem. Because most Nationals have at a fundemental belief that if it is written down then it must be true. Think about this for a moment… You and I look at a news paper from a critical point of view that the information might not be completely correct. A Yemeni (from which I base my experience) would look at it from the opposite point of view. It must be right otherwise they wouldn’t print it.
Don’t get me wrong, this is not because they are stupid, or inferior, but because they don’t have the basic schooling and the emphasis on thinking for yourself. Everything is group orientated in the ME as is expected in a collectivist culture. The group decides how best to solve a problem, not the individual. One of the problems that arises in this and other courses is an individual going off on a completely different issue than they are trying to solve in the case study. Few in the group are willing to keep them on track. The instructor spends quite a bit of time focusing their attention on the task at hand and trying to do it in a way that the person isn’t offended by the action. Otherwise, you’ve lost them completely.
If you want I can go into other aspects of the ME culture that I have observed while working there the last 3 years, but that would be a slight highjack.
Uzi, are you certain that what you’ve seen in Yemen is typical of the Arab world? I’ve read that Yemen has long been the most isolated and backward of the Arab countries. (It was once the most civilized and sophisticated place in Arabia, but that was long before the time of Mohammed.)
I don’t know the type of work you are in or the subjects of your case studies. But maybe you could begin with serving your audience case studies that have a connection with their culture instead of importing alien situations.
Maybe they already have a problem with getting a grip on the problem (and its context) you bring on as “case study”, yet that refers to foreign situations.
I think you have a wrong perception here. In my opinion your problem with this course is not that they believe “all what is written is true”. It is that you offer them a lot of information about alien situations to absorb and digest and then expect that they take from this that not everything you offer them is important.
I can easily hear comments such as: If he writes it then it must have importance for us to know this about that case and to reflect on it.
Since you speak as if you “know” everything about the ME, I find this highly offensive because it is extremely denegrating.
And unbalanced at the very least.
Could you look a little bit to the US attitudes regarding what is printed and said in the US media? If there is a vast amount of a population ready and willing to swallow no matter what “because it is on the news” or “because the president says so and he knows better then I do” or because" it is on the internet"… Take a look at the USA.
What? I must be an alien in my own region and culture.
This touches indeed one of the deeper causes of what seems to cause you problems. Not that much that “the group decides” but the tradition of talking things through with “the group” and see if you can come to a conscensus about how to solve a problem. (But at the end it is an individual who takes the ultimate decision).
This is a direct influence of the tradition of large families and tribal affiliatons with as result hierarchal structure, how flawed that may sometimes be (more often very strong then flawed). This creates the habit (or obligation) to consult those higher up in the line. This has as result a culture where people talk a lot about everything possible and with everyone possible.
An other problem that is strongly connected with this (and with State structures in geneneral) is that people who are in a group do not want to take personal responsibility. They will always search for someone “higher up” to rely on or to hand him over the problem. Who on his turn shall to the same.
This can cause great frustration for people coming from Western societies and wanting to have things done efficiently.
Yes, I can come easily in to that Endless talks about trivialities that are not solving anything or are not even related to what you talk about.
You need to make clear and very well structured points that do not invite to such side-walks.
This depends completely on the individual you are talking to.
I can’t wait for you to open a thread for that.
Salaam. A
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] Uzi, are you certain that what you’ve seen in Yemen is typical of the Arab world? I’ve read that Yemen has long been the most isolated and backward of the Arab countries. QUOTE]
Correct. In any discussions about culture you speak in generalities. Each individual behaves differently from another, but on average they are similar. Many people don’t like it, but we are nothing more than machines that are programmed. The culture you grow up in partly determines how you think and filter information.
Example: An airline recently has experienced some staff on the airplanes getting a rash. What causes this rash? Some staff on the same plane don’t get the rash. Also, included is a mention of a previous complaint about someone getting a rash 2 years previous. It turns out that only those showing how to use the safety equipment (life vest) get the rash. No one else does. The previous complaint of the rash doesn’t apply as the equipment in question wasn’t installed then. Nationals had a tough time filtering that out as they assumed it must be related to the current complaint. Expats tended to dismiss the reference unless new evidence showed that it was relevant. This particular case involved written material and video of testimonial.
Another case involved how to solve a problem with an engine. I don’t see how there are audience based. They have planes and engines in Yemen. None of the cases required you to have specialized knowledge. The only issue is that the course is held in English. It is a requirement for all employees to speak English everyone helps those who may have trouble with a particular word.
Correct. That is why the instructor emphasizes that not all the information in the case study is relevant to the problem. He tells them that at the beginning when he starts the work on the case. He does it througout the workshop. They still have problems determining what the irrelevant information is.
That is the nature of generalities. Not all people that I work with have such problems. Some are purely brilliant at solving issues. I have to note that most of the people who are this way are individualist by nature, not collectivist. Maybe that helps them in the work we do, maybe it hinders them at home.
I dunno. Are you a Yemeni? North American culture is predominantly individualist with low power distance ratios. That doesn’t mean that there are not collectivist minded individuals here. Look at Unions for example. Everyone is different.
Yes, that is the nature of collectivist societies. That doesn’t make them worse than western cultures, just different.
Definately. I see it all the time. It takes a long time to get some things done in Yemen because no one wants to make a decision. They still want results, but few are willing to step up to the plate. I causes frustration to most westerners.
Ah, you’ve been there. Yep, that is what you have to do. We do it all the time, but you also have to give people the chance to learn in their own way. You can’t direct how to do things all the time.
Why would this shake my convictions, not that I have any preconceived ones in this case? Hopefully you didn’t take what I have said as denigrating anyone. That was not my intention. I assume that each country and group within a country has different cultures. And it is different right down to the individual. I can tell you that the culture of Iraq and Yemen are closer to each other than they are to Canada where I reside when not at work. Do you agree with that at least? That doesn’t mean that they are inferior, just different. Some things are better, some things are worse. Some things work better in a modern world, others don’t.
If you want to say that my experience is only valid to Yemen, then by all means. All I can say is that things like power distance ratios and collectivist/individualist societies tend to have common threads throughout in how they work, no matter where you apply them. They are concepts, not predictions. You can use it to understand the person you dealing with at the moment, especiallyl if he is reacting in a manner that is unexpected. It probably doesn’t explain why some people shove hamsters up their butts, but that isn’t what I’m interested in, so I haven’t spent much time thinking about it.
I needed already to consult a dictionary for the word “rash”
For the rest: How can this be difficult if the previous complaint is brought on as an isolated case? I think what you got there is a mix of individuals who represent a variety of background in school-education. In my opinion that is the real problem.
The language can cause problems on its own. It is not because you understand a word or words, you can place it in its correct meaning within the context.
To give an example of language barrier: I may have a very different understanding of what you describe as “collectivist”.
Collectivist is what you saw in the former USSR and what you see in Japan (and specifically in work situations)
There is nothing of a “collectivist” nature in having strong family ties that are often also connected with tribal ties.
And no, being able to solve problems has no influence on being yes or no able to live your life as an individual and in accordance with your family/tribal situation and its specific rules. Nothing at all.
I don’t see how you come to make that strange connection or even the comparison with “collectivism”.
Definitely the case and much more then anyone coming from the outside can imagine at first sight.
If you refer to the differences between two different parts of the world, yes.
I just think that you are a bit too focussed on your “collectivism” theories. In my opinion that is a wrong angle.
The real problem is that you come from a culture where everything moves fast, is expected to move fast and is designed to move fast and are landed in a world where nothing moves fast - unless you do it yourself
However I can name you places on this globe where you can meet the same problems and they are not located in the ME.
All cars are blue,
All trucks are red,
Tom has a truck,
What colour is Tom’s truck?
All Trucks are red, so Tom’s truck must be red.
This “case study” highlights decision making. It was very common in Russia to dismiss the question and respond with, “I don’t know Tom, so how would I know what colour his truck is?”
The question requires filtering out the information about the car, since it was not required in the question. As a result a lot of people get confused and say, “well aren’t some trucks blue?”
Decision making is developed as part of your culture, which influences the nature of your education systerm. In the past few years I have taught a wide variety of cultural groups and noticed very common trends in how they approach and solve engineering problems.
Main Entry: an·ec·dote
Pronunciation: 'a-nik-"dOt
Function: noun
: a usually short narrative of an interesting, amusing, or biographical incident
I’ve got no problem with the speed of your reply, it’s just that you keep changing the terms of debate. Your thesis is that hostage-taking was invented by the Muslims, then that it was obviously invented by others, but Muslims are inspiring others nowadays. You conflate pan-Arabism and Islamism, then attempt to laugh that off too. These are serious errors that effectively destroy your argument.
Maybe I didn’t make myself clear enough. You talked of invading Iraq to deal with terrorism, and you linked Iraq with 9/11. You pointed out a list of countries where terrorists had come from. My point was that Iraq had nothing to do with anti-US terrorism, and that it was absurd to attack them on that basis; that using your logic, it would make more sense to attack these 3 countries you mentioned, since they were ‘host’ to terrorists.
The suggestion of using nuclear weapons is in itself hysterical. There ought to be a special Godwin’s Law in this kind of thread just for references to nuking the Middle East.
Fair enough. New word of the day for you, inspired by the SDMB - ultracrepidarian.
Or maybe the hostage-takings by the IRA, SLA etc inspired the Islamists. As you point out, there were a rash of airline hijackings in the early 70s, carried out by Arabs, with nationalist motivations, not Islamist ones. These came before the Islamist hostage takings as well.
This is another perfect example of you being ultracrepidarian. Another poster has already dealt with this.
Well, the concept of “Stockholm Syndrome” came from Nils Bejerot, who was a psychiatrist and a scholar. So it wasn’t a media creation (it certainly got into pop culture via the media though).
My point in bringing up Stockholm Syndrome was that it was based on an incident in STOCKHOLM. Hardly a hotbed of Islamist extremism. Hardly hot at all.
No, in the same sense that the Roman empire is not today’s Italy and the British empire isn’t the Home Counties. Besides, you were two hundred years off. It’s like saying that George Washington was the first president of Canada in the 16th century - I get your drift, but it makes your thesis a joke from a historical point of view.
I’m writing a thesis which involves Nasser, and he could never have become an Islamist. Besides, he didn’t dream of a caliphate, but of a modern nation-state. Once again, you’re confusing the issue by moving the goalposts (are we discussing a calpihate, as wanted by Islamists, or an Arab nation-state, as wanted by Nasser) and throwing in half-truthful, half-understood nuggets of history.
Just go away, grab a couple of history books, and come back with a decent, solid hypothesis.
And this is why you should hold back on nuking people till you know who exactly you are nuking.
See Tamerlane’s post above. This is completely wrong, yet you still state it as fact. You’ve gotta work on that.
Collectivist: Thinking of oneself as part of ‘we’. Having an extended family consisting of aunts, uncles, servants, any others considered part of the in-group. Not in the political sense as you have mistaken it as.
[QUOTE]
And no, being able to solve problems has no influence on being yes or no able to live your life as an individual and in accordance with your family/tribal situation and its specific rules. Nothing at all.
[QUOTE]
Really? If someone is always solving problems for you what chance do you have to practice doing it for yourself? If the culture says that if you fail it reflects just as much on your group as it does on you, you think that doesn’t have an affect on how whether you will make a decision on your own, or not?
That would be Geert Hofstede’s collectivism theories, not mine.
Yep. Each culture and person is different. Knowing about culture is like reading a guidebook. It doesn’t mean that when you actually hit the ground everyone is going to react in the same way. emacknight I place these anectdotes, from my experience and in discussions from other respected teachers in our company who work in Yemen with me, in the context of what I have read on the subject of culture. If my experiences prove the theory that I have read then I don’t feel that the anecdotes are out of place. I’m not trying to prove anything here, but say that people interpret things differently based partly upon the culture they come from.
Endless talks about trivialities that are not solving anything or are not even related to what you talk about.