McDonaldization in the Petrol Station

Yesterday I went to Abou-Hamour Petrol station to study the effect of McDonaldization in Qatar. I also looked on how aesthetic designs in food outlets affect the way people behave inside them. I start by showing the pictures that I took around the petrol station through a realistic everyday life scenario.If you have a Mitsubishi car, like me, or if you have a Toyota or a Nissan you may want to send your car for routine service at the service centers...

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Lost in the cage of McDonaldization

During my primary school years in Qatar, I was taught how to write the alphabets and for entire weeks at a time we wrote the alphabets, on sheets after sheets of paper, many hundred times as class work and homework. Years later as a young girl out of secondary school and as an assistant teacher at one of Qatar Academy’s Kindergarten classes, we had an “apple party” during the first few weeks of classes in order to teach the alphabet A. The children...

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McDonaldization in the Darwish Household

                  Today in class, we discussed the theory of McDonalization, which is a process where society is increasingly run like a fast food restaurant. While the professor was explaining the four dimensions of this concept, I could not help but notice how the processes relate to my everyday life and family structure. The first dimension, efficiency, is the optimum method of completing a task. My...

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Authenticity Wars

Pokemon was one of the things that my life revolved around in my childhood. I remember the days when I watched Pokemon on television every day, collect Pokemon cards, and play every Pokemon video game. As a matter of a fact, my relatives and I used to gather at my grandfather’s house and start doing many Pokemon activities. Throughout the years, this tradition started to disappear and my relatives and friends moved on with their lives. However,...

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Authenticity of bread, yes bread.

What is authenticity? And what defines an object, or an action, or a person, or a place, as authentic? Grazian explains authenticity by, what is defined as real or true or pure by a group of people. But who determines which group of people? Or how they interpret that object of authenticity? When I was younger, I had a Croatian neighbor. She lived right across the street. Everyday, she would come to my house to have some authentic “Arabic bread”,...

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The Outback in Qatar

I recently found out that an Outback Steakhouse opened up here in Qatar. My parents decided to take us there, having been there during the opening and trying out the food. When I asked, dubiously, if it was any good compared to the franchise in Canada, the first answer I got was "It's in Lagoona!" As if that answered my question, but to them it did. Having recently learned about authenticity and what it means to different people of different social...

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When Car Showrooms Persist on Displaying Social Class Divisions

To get a clearer understanding of the class system and its effect on cultural consumption, I visited the Nissan car showroom and took some pictures to show the distinction between different class categories in Qatar. In the Nissan showroom there were the smallest forms of family cars like the Nissan Tida. Then bigger cars like the Nissan Sunny and Nissan Altima. Then there were race cars like the 350Z and the Nissan Maxima. Then there were varying...

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Behind the Scenes

When we look at Qatar, there are so many narratives that are a part of the everyday life in the small emirate. One can describe the glamor and sheer flamboyance engulfing the small yet wealthy state. It is an attention-grabbing, hopeful story that would easily blend into the general scene of international cinema. However, a group of Northwestern University-Qatar students are making a short film about the other side of the coin. This young bunch...

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Life of a Code Switcher

Yesterday during the sociology class lecture I went into a world of class systems. Perhaps these are things that I’ve recognized all my life and have deliberately ignored them for no reason. I grew up in a middle class family where my dad went to work in order to provide for the family and my mom would stay home to take care of my sister and me. Since there are only so many times that you can make something work that would not, by the time I was...

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Risk Management Strategies

          Today in class, I had to analyse the risk management strategies of Sidra supermarket in the Student Centre. I was extremely interested in this project and examining the way the store was set up and thus decided to do the same when I went to shop for make up today at 51 East. While I was walking around trying to find all of my favourite items, I was paying close attention to the conventions used by the store and...

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