Goodness, time certainly flies, I can't believe it's Week 4 already!
I don't know if you will be connecting to Soliya from your usual computer, if not PLEASE make sure you do a tech test WITH THE TECHNICIANS before using a different computer. If you will not be able to attend, please let Soliya know, but please do our best to attend, it's detrimental to the group having people missing from each session!
Let me know if you want to connect from the Department so I can be here.
A few words on your diaries - I need to evaluate you on these, so you need to write a bit more, focus on what strikes you, give your reflections. I will send you some samples of good diaries to give you an indication. Also, please write them in word and do a spell check before sending it.
I do understand why you might want to write private diaries, but sharing them with others is like having a discussion, you can see what others are doing, comment on them too and share strategies, reflections etc.
Video projects - remember you don't have much time left, this week you should be putting your clips together to create the v ideo package.
Finally, remember if you are interested on Monday there is the showing of the film Gaza Strophe (see my previous mail).
Happy Holidays and have a good session!
Francesca
I don't know if you will be connecting to Soliya from your usual computer, if not PLEASE make sure you do a tech test WITH THE TECHNICIANS before using a different computer. If you will not be able to attend, please let Soliya know, but please do our best to attend, it's detrimental to the group having people missing from each session!
Let me know if you want to connect from the Department so I can be here.
A few words on your diaries - I need to evaluate you on these, so you need to write a bit more, focus on what strikes you, give your reflections. I will send you some samples of good diaries to give you an indication. Also, please write them in word and do a spell check before sending it.
I do understand why you might want to write private diaries, but sharing them with others is like having a discussion, you can see what others are doing, comment on them too and share strategies, reflections etc.
Video projects - remember you don't have much time left, this week you should be putting your clips together to create the v ideo package.
Finally, remember if you are interested on Monday there is the showing of the film Gaza Strophe (see my previous mail).
Happy Holidays and have a good session!
Francesca
This is my VP finished!
RispondiEliminahttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7KGMiSVoBA
Razvan
Here's my video project. Enjoy! Happy holidays!
RispondiEliminahttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju7YTGTePKk
Hi all,
RispondiEliminabelow you can see my video Project. Is a two part video: sepia and coloured. The contrast has been done to underline the western position, very clever but static, versus the non western position full of hope for the future.
Gianluca
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hX-my13zyE
Weekly diary wk4
RispondiEliminaThis week has been full of demanding activities: the video project, the readings, the weekly diary and the Soliya’s meeting.
The meeting is started with the engagement on the ground rules inside the group. Jesse, the facilitator, suggested that "if we hear something that upsets us try to listen more and ask more questions".
It has been clever to define some ground rules, It is clear, facilitators are well prepared to manage and especially to avoid conflicting situations that could emerge.
The discussion, actually, has been hot, specially on the second part.
Indeed, in the first part, we split in two groups to discuss about culture and tradition. Unfortunately we had Waleed, the other facilitator, that could just write in the chat but he couldn’t speak because of technical problem.
The room was very quiet and silent, so, I tried to introduce, softly, a discussion about the Islamic veil. Sophia, the American girl with several relatives Muslim, tried to ask what it means for the Muslim culture and what the veil represents.
We knew that the veil is part of the Muslim culture but we didn’t understand really if they feel that the veil restricts women's freedom.
Moreover, I would like understand how much we are aware of our culture and specifically of all our constraints because of our religion. All these “have to” are social obligations, sometime perceived as needs, but actually they are just to be part of a group.
We didn’t receive any answer, but at this point the rest of the group joined us and we changed apparently the discussion.
In this second part the focus has been on religion: the role of the religion in our life and the most important elements of our own religion.
I said religion played and nowadays still play an important role in our societies. Social cohesiveness is the most important property that I see. We could compare religion against sect. Sect is a close group of people, religion is open to the others. In this sense religion gave us a message of social culture. Anyway, personally, I think we don’t need religion. Personally, I am aligned to the Durkheim’s thought (1893) when he speak of “collective consciousness” that is not necessarily based on religious values.
These my considerations probably upset several Muslim fellows. In fact they started to ask me questions and make consideration not so politically correct.
I know this kind of position, there is more respect between different religion with their common beliefs than between people that believe and doesn’t believe in God.
In my opinion society, at least the western, is increasingly secularization, religion is becoming more a personal question, perhaps just spiritual. Day by day we face the Roman Church that fight against relativism. It is another sign that give us the gauge of the phenomena: we are substituting the church constrains (but someone call them value) with a shared understanding of social norms.
Next time I’ll try to discuss in these terms, explaining these my reflections clearly.
Let’s see their faces!
Gianluca
Hi
EliminaI'm glad the project is becoming more demanding :-) This is what should happen. I'm curious to know why you say your considerations probably upset your Muslim fellows, what kind of questions did they ask? Why were their considerations not so politically correct? Yes, do explain your reflections clearly - and also find out more about why they react the way they do!
Keep up the good work
Francesca
Week 4 diary - pt 1
RispondiEliminaHi again!
So last Monday I had my Week Four Meeting with the other guys and I must say it's definitely been the most satisfying I've had so far. Of course there is still a certain amount of incomprehension to deal with during our discussions, but as this project comes along in a continuum I think one needs to appreciate the difficulties he successfully gets through each time.
There are a couple of issues for which I'm glad we made a step forward: to begin with, the group defined a set of 'ground rules' to be followed in order to prevent any member to feel prejudged when making his/her point. They are, indeed, very simple and common sense guidelines, still it seems to me that the most troubles one has to cope with in such culturally diverse discussions come from not paying attention to those rules. Respecting them can help the conversation making some progress.
The first golden rule is to always ask questions, particularly if you don't agree with the opinion one's made. This is to help you not to be judgmental, especially when you feel your peer's thought is way distant from yours - sometimes it really is a matter of asking him/her 'why' in order to get things clearer.
The other golden rule is to treat the other as an individual rather than a stereotype. Again, it's a pretty straightforward one, but still it implies some less obvious suggestions, which are trying not to identify the individual's opinion as a social-national-religious stereotype and to criticize one's idea rather than the person having a certain opinion.
Coming up with some ground rules in which you can work with each other productively without causing hurt was really worth doing; testing the same rules was, on the other hand, more challenging. Nevertheless I must say I'm quite satisfied with the way the group applied them. To make an example, we were split in pairs and played a game - the so-called 'why game' - in which we had a face to face conversation focusing on asking open questions. It was nice to chat with Maha (one of my Egyptian colleagues) about a couple of events that were really important in our lives in a friendly and more informal way than when talking with the whole group. Moreover, I heard also the other guys were happy about these one-on-one discussions since we all appreciated the importance of talking to each other to get to know us better.
- pt 2
RispondiEliminaThis last comment leads me to the second important issue I've given some thought to after Week Four Meeting, that is the importance of 'going personal'. As it was also mentioned during the catch-up we had with professor Helm last Tuesday, this project works the best when people go beyond what's 'politically correct'. That said, during the last meeting we had the chance to share our own views on such a delicate topic like the role of religion in one's life is. To me, it clearly came out how religion still plays a significant part in defining a Muslim-born man/woman values, even when he/she's a non observant one. If one considers how religiosity - by that meaning the attachment to spiritual and moral values within a certain community - deeply affects most part of Muslim societies, I guess it then becomes clearer why the fear of being disrespected as a member of such society is so impactful in their approach towards Westerners. As we all know, the post 9-11 decade has made predominantly Muslim societies extremely sensible to this issue, but I think we'd miss the whole point were we not to consider that that attachment before mentioned is perceived as essential for the progress of a community itself.
I think that's one of the reasons why, at least most of the times, the 'non-Westerner' members of my group put themselves on the defensive when talking about religion-related stuff. That's also when I, as a 'Westerner', perceive the different cultural background I've been raised into: living in a 'predominantly secularized' society affects my own perspective as much as living in a predominantly Muslim society affects Maha's, Imen's or Yaseen's ones.
Hope next time will make some progress as this last did. Also, last but not least, here's the video project I made: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKhFVR3Bbpc
All the best,
Massimo
Hey Guys! welcome back to Soliya for the summary of day 4!
RispondiEliminaAt the opening of this session our facilitator Mary illustrated us the varieties of questions:
1) Answer with yes/no
2) Cross examination
3) Points of clarification
4) Open-ended questions
Open-ended question gives more context to what someone is saying.
Mary sudgested to use cross examination and Open-ended questions.
The real part of this day's session, began with a new experiment. We have all been shared into pairs, and we all had private meeting in single breakout rooms. I was together with my Turkish friend mehmet. He's a good person, and I can say we are good friends. Even if he's Muslim, his ideas are not different from mines. The target of this “game” was to know each us better, and to know better the others community persons and the issues we were going to talk about.
It was an absolutely free conversation, and we began it by talking about the Countries where are we living in.
He told me that, in his opinion, it doesn't matter the religion, or the skin's colour, or the Nationality. But the Soul and the heart, the personality of a person, are more important. We also had a private conversation, and we exploited this opportunity to talk about political and economic situation of our Countries. He told me that Turkish economy is developeing fastly right in this moment while the entire world seems to be freezed by International financial bankrupts worldwide. In Turkey you can find a lot of modern factories producing a big part of consumer products for the most important brands in the world. The citizens's life becomes better and better everyday. I am sure this is due to economic improvement, but Mehmet thinks this is mainly due to better human relations between people. I explained him that Situation in Italy is almost the opposite at the Turkish one. Italy needs a government as soon as possible, but the elections results have not been aid, in decideing who deserves to lead the Country.
At the end of privat meeting with Mehmet, we came back to the main meeting room, where we exchanged our opinions.
The issue of the day was religion, and our facilitators prepared some questions to ask us. The questions were about the role of religion in today's society. We had a lot of different answers.
Another question was about the relationship between political life and religious Institutions. Rami, a muslim guy living in United States, said that in his Country (U.S.) there's freedom of worship for every single citizen. Someone other said that religion should not be separated from political life. My point of view is that, religion is very important in regulatorying social life, and this is important for policy. But it's very important that policy respect different opinions and religions.
Our mate Sana from Tunisia said that religion and culture are linked. My friend Mehmet answered her while remembering to everyone that already happened in the past, that policy did not allow religion to exist. The main example of this idea is Communism. This kind of ideological economic system did not allow religions.
Hala from Jordan thinks that religion leads our way to live, but I said that in my opinion, cultural backgrounds are very important for Peace.
Our weekly session ended here. What do you think about it?
See you soon, take care!
Matteo
I believe in the separation beetween politics and religion. Social rules have to be defined on shared principles independent from any kind of beliefs.
EliminaGianluca