Geography for All!

This map shows tha tthere are an overwhelimg amount of Arabs especially in centeral Syria. And then on the coast lline it is mostly mixed with pink representing the overwhlming other majority.

It appears from this article that Syria is a complicated country. The map shows the different ethnic and religious groups of Syria, along with other groups, all of which live within a small area. Syria, along with other countries within the Middle East have been faced with one serious issue or another. Many different people live within a very small area; those people practice different religions and are ethnically and culturally different. Unfortunately, being different in this part of the world may get you killed.   

Maps such as this one are very valuable when trying to understand conflict.  In Syria and the greater Levant area, unbalanced power and representation in politics is the result of many different religious and ethnic groups living in such close proximity each other, allowing conflict to become very invasive.

With an ongoing hunger crisis in the Sahel, areas such as Chad, Niger and Mali find it hard to make ends meet. These areas in the Sahel are not having the best of luck with their crops this year. Areas suffer from infestation of locusts, drought, and high food prices. Over 13 million people are affected and could suffer from hunger.

This map presents the struggles being faced by those living in the Sahel region during their major food crisis. The Sahel region is a transition zone separating Northern Africa from Central and Southern Africa by a dry, harsh landscape. Besides acting as just a physical divide, it also divides the Arabic and Islamic northern region from the southern and central regions and their differing religions and languages. While the Sahel region is historically very dry, droughts have become more and more common. The people living in the Sahel can no longer depend on the land for food and have turned to aid in order to stay alive. As an area of increased desertification, many are worried that climate change will make this region unlivable, thus uprooting different peoples and causing strife in other regions. 

The Sahel is a region that lies basically in the middle of Africa and extend from West to East. It represents the boarder between the desert and the savannah. Having a semi-arid climate this region is not the most ideal place for living conditions. This comes in part because Africa is so large that the transport of goods and travel is almost impossible without the use of motor vehicles and access to the coast. Taking this into account one might predict severe hunger in areas of the Sahel, especially those that lie in the middle. As the population continues to rise, the shortage of food continues to take a toll on the local communities. Aside from food, proper healthcare is also needed to prevent lethal diseases from spreading

The olympic games have become only about the podium winners in the media, if you dont win you dont matter. Tahmina Kohistani was the only female athlete from Afghanistan to compete in the games back in 2012. It is an amazing feat in itself that a female from Afghanistan even managed to get to the games never mind partacipate. She didnt win, she finished last, but it was her personal best time and the fastest she had ever run the 100 meter. But because she was not up on that podium none of that matter and many people did not even know she had run the race.  

The coverage of the Olympics after opening ceremonies is heavily centered on the medal count and I don’t actually see a problem with that. Reason being is that the story, that supposedly never got coverage, was something I remember commentators speaking about when the Afghanistan team walked out on stage during the opening ceremonies thereby showing how “politics and social culture” are intertwined. Her journey qualified her as a “champion” right away and people saw that. Secondly, when there is a ridiculous amount of events and people to cover, one needs to pick and choose. Since the point of the Olympics is to win, it isn’t surprising that the most coverage is given on the metal winners. There are stories outside of Kohistani’s in which someone who didn’t make it to podium was covered (i.e. winter Olympics regarding Ryan Bradly or Jonny Wier). Typically when that happens though, the person is from our own country. What I think is wrong with the coverage is the huge focus on just our country. While the Olympics is a time where patriotism surges as we root for our own team, it is a symptom of a large problem. Americans are too America-centric in general. Just looking at the normal daily news cover in the states is a clear indication of the issue and I think that is why some of the more analytic pieces that show “politics and social culture” are generally under reported

I don't think popular culture and folk culture interact very well. They believe in completely different things and live different types of lives according to their values. The speaker means that the cultural interaction is intertwined together because of the islamic people who have borrowed cultural ideas from other ancient and modern civilizations and adapted it to their own. That's why it's meshed as a opposed to clashing or mash. For example, the music video channel that's like MTV. I think it's kind of funny how they made the people in that music video, that's from the USA, look like we also worship Allah. Also, the comic books show religious values in it, especially since the characters come from it. They want young people to not get sucked in to the outside world or modern culture from different societies, so instead they want to incorporate their religion with our ideas of culture.

unit 3

This TED talk cleverly discusses the cultural processes of globalization by examining two examples from the Islamic world.  The examples of the TV station 4Shbab and the comic book series The 99 show that all global cultural interactions don’t have to result in a homogenous “melting pot.”  Local cultural forces can tap into the powers of globalized culture that can create dynamic local cultures that are both intensely local and global. 

Questions to Ponder: What does the speaker mean when she by refers to cultural interactions as a mesh (as a opposed to a clash or mash) of civilizations?  What other examples of cultural meshes can you see that show these processes? 

Tags: TED, religion, culture, Islam, globalization, popular culture, unit 3 culture.