This article discusses the way in which the media frames the revolutions in Egypt. Its discusses the framing of the secularist vs. the Islamist, and what these terms actually mean through the lens of the media. According to this article, television channels in the Middle East have the power to define terms and names however they please.
Fatah and Hamas are on their way to war after long string of car bombings. ISIS may have planned some of these bombings in order to frame one side against another.
Girgis worked for a company that insisted as part of their global corporate culture that there be no “corruption.” Six years after opening its office in Egypt, they continued to be plagued by behaviors they understood to be “corrupt.”
I explained that wasta referred to a network of informal loans and favors traded by Arab men in order to move up in the world.
Encouraged by my open, neutral tone, Girgis opened up further. “My father mortgaged family lands to pay for my college,” Girgis said. “I owe him everything. If he asks me to find a job for his brother’s son, how can I say no?”
“You can send me anywhere else in the world and I’ll run the office by the book,” Girgis told his supervisor. “But I can’t do that here.”
any Egyptian man they hired to run the office would be equally suspended in webs of wasta obligations
“investment and return” frame I created for understanding, emphasizing the economic parallels between Arab families and running a business
, I’ve known several Egyptian businessmen who thought wasta was an improvement on Western models of hiring.
Net result: greater loyalty, less likelihood of theft, less likelihood of negotiating for new jobs behind your back and leaving you in the lurch, etc, he claimed.
This article is from the point of view of an anthropologist who was brought in as a cultural consultant to mediate an issue of "watsa" for a corporation in the Middle East. The company prides itself on its lack of internal corruption, and in turn hired a man named Girgis who grew up in the Middle East but lived and received an education in the US. In Girgis's first year he hired one of his cousins, which the supervisors saw as corrupt hiring practice. The author, and hired consultant, explained to the company supervisors that watsa was an "investment and return" framework in Arab culture, and that there are economic parallels between Arab families and businesses, families existing as economic units. Girgis conveyed that anywhere else in the world he would run the office by the book, but in the Arab world he must also adhere to social norms. The result of watsa through Arab eyes leads to greater loyalty, and less likelihood for deception and theft. The article basically introduces the idea that while in the Western world this may be seen as corruption, it is an embedded part of culture in the Middle East.
Framing Brunei's new Sharia system in terms of "anti-gay" and "anti-women" legislation, as it has been in US coverage and protests, obscures the actual motivations behind the Sultanate's decision and nourishes the tired trope of "those crazy Muslims", an angle which the US media has an all-too comfortable relationship with.
This is a great article written recently that is basically a timeline and personal vantage point from a Egyptian musician/activist named Ramy Essam. I enjoy this article because it tells the story of the Egyptian Revolution with avery current artistic frame. He elaborates on things that most story wouldn't, like the music and dialogue he experienced first hand during uprisings. Supposedly he is writing all of this while sitting in front a mural of people who dies during the uprisings also.
This is another cartoon from Oum Cartoon of a cartoon illustrating the current issue of censorship in Egypt. The cartoon is a reaction of how the media is now supporting the government and how it will not demean them.