Cultural Hegemony

I visited a café today known as the Aroob Tourist Coffee Shop and got into a conversation with one of the workers. Dil Mohammed is from Nepal and he has worked in this café for the past seven years. Mohammed works 18 hours a day and sleeps in a one-room accommodation with 10 of his colleagues. He is a kind of person who wouldn’t look at you when he speaks to you. What struck me the most is, Mohammed has not been paid for the past 4 months and he is frightened to death to ask his manager for his wage. He has borrowed money from his colleague to survive this period. “Has this happened to you before?” I ask him. “Several times,” he answers. “But I do not ask him because he will pay me every time after a few months,” he answers. What infuriates me most about this is he is afraid to ask for his wages on time, which is his right. He believes that the manager has reasons of his own and a better plan for his life.

According to interaction theory, people behave based on what they believe and not based on what is necessarily true. In his book, Mix It Up: Popular Culture Mass Media and Society, author David Grazian explains the idea of exploitation through the examination of popular culture. According to him, certain kind of entertainment provided by popular culture deludes the mindset of the consumers to the point that they do not realize that have been “exploited, underpaid or overworked.” (Grazian 49) Similarly Mohammed and his colleagues feel inferior in many ways that they are ready to be overworked and underpaid; they consider their manager a better planner for their life than themselves. This also relates to the looking class theory, where people reflect and judge each other based on certain perceptions in the society.
      
Within the hegemonic culture practiced in the country, the elite class of people in Qatar: those that are nationals or working in prestigious institutions, use their influence to convince those who do not have such privileges to act according to their will. For example, according to folkways in Qatar, most people stay in their cars and honk in front of a grocery so that an Asian looking guy will run outside the shop and take orders. Growing up in this culture I sometimes follow these norms too. I sometimes ask those guys “I was here a while ago and you came out and rushed to the guy in the cruiser.” Some of them just apologize but some of them tell me that they are afraid to get reprimanded by those in Cruisers, so they move to those cars first. Here, “Cruiser” is a symbol of some kind of power. The workers follow the rules of the “Symbolic interaction theory.” The proletariat do not revolt because they are afraid to lose their jobs. The idea is, “if you don’t like it here, you can go back to your country.”