The Advertising Effect on Adolescents in Saudi Arabia - Essay Example

The Advertising Effect on Adolescents in Saudi Arabia and United States Introduction In developing countries around the world today, the population dynamics between the old and new generations has led to large differences in self-identity concepts and personal values between adolescents, parents, and the social authorities. Especially in countries with indigenous religious and cultural differences that are distinct and autonomous from the Western tradition, the conflict between traditional and modern values may arise as an aspect of generational identities and collective belief systems. This essay looks at historical and contemporary examples to research the gap in generational identity patterns and the conflict between traditional and modern values in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, widely considered to be one of the most conservative governments and political societies in the world. The availability and effect of modern media, particularly from Western sources of production, such as television, movies, and music in Saudi Arabia will be reviewed from contemporary reports and placed in the context of wider social change movements such as the “Arab Spring”, democratization, and reform that seemingly threaten traditional values and identities in the Kingdom. The introduction of Western and modern values or identity constructs through commercial advertizing will also be analyzed with reference to youth movements and new developments in the Saudi economy resulting from lifestyle pattern changes. The economic and social results of this process will be further related in context to the issues of globalization, democratization, and modernization as they portend a change in values in Saudi Arabian culture. The emphasis of this study will be in analyzing the effect of advertising on Saudi adolescents particularly, as this is psychologically when the most important aspects of personal character definition are formed, and socially this represents the time period when human individuals are most open to experimentation with patterns of identity, character, and personality formation. The research methodology of this essay will include a comparison of research into adolescent identity structures and behavior in the U.S. and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in order to determine the similarities and differences between the two experiences both subjectively and objectively. Rather than assuming that Saudi and American youth culture will develop on the same patterns of expression, the essay will instead look to build an understanding of the similarities and differences between the two adolescent experiences referencing the mainstream national culture and its values as the main social variable to which individual experience reacts, conforms, or rebels personally. The essay concludes with a review of the ways that both local and global mass-media values influence adolescent identity patterns in Saudi Arabia, and the way that these expressions differ fundamentally from adolescent experience in the USA due to the different constitutional historical and religious beliefs of both cultures. Modernity and Saudi Arabia The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is one of the most traditional countries on earth currently due to the combined effects of the political monarchy and royal system which rules as a protector of the religious and cultural values of Islam, represented in the most sacred holy places of the religion. The yearly travel of millions of Muslims to Saudi Arabia annually for the Hajj pilgrimage and to visit the holy places of Islam has made the country the traditional center for international Arabic learning. The protection of the holy places and Islam is arguably the highest duty that the Saudi Government is tasked with formally, though the exploitation of the country’s oil wealth and resources remains a top priority in the modern era. As Michael Slackman (2007) wrote about the Kingdom: "The Koran and the Sunna, the teaching of Prophet Muhammad, still serve as the constitution. People all over the kingdom said they lived by the word of the Koran, the literal word. But as with any other religious practice, the literal word is often a matter of interpretation. ‘Nobody wants to separate Islam from the state,” said Hussein al-Shobokshy, a writer and television commentator from Riyadh. “But, I am talking for myself, I want to separate sect from the state. We don’t have any choice but to open.’ It is in the space between religion and tradition where many Saudis say they are trying to have it both ways, to enjoy the benefits of the modern world without giving up the traditions of the old.” (Slackman, 2007) As a purely fundamentalist Islamic Kingdom, Saudi Arabia is a conservative country that is based 100% in the teachings of Islam in the Qur’an and Haditha. Yet, as modern Western values enter the country through media sources, outside cultural influences, travel, television, the internet, movies, music, and other sources of personal and cultural influence, there is increasingly a change in personal identities and also social or group values. Globalization and modernization are defined through rapid change in values that occurs as borders are broken down by technology and information is shared over traditional areas of exclusion. Yet, officially there is still considerable censorship in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Because of this, it can be expected that adolescent culture will be the crucial and ever evolving front where these identity changes are most prominently found. In the older generation, the existing value system and patterns of behavior are so well established both in individual and group identity that it is unlikely to be challenged thoroughly by new developments in the person’s life unless they are truly revolutionary and paradigm changing, such as the “Arab Spring”. However, for the youth or adolescent culture, this conflict of values can be expected to be even more acute and existential in basis, arising out of the educational system and also the media environment itself. “Although Saudi Arabia signed the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women in 2000, it also expressed reservations saying that any provisions in the convention that contradicted Shariah, or Islamic law, would not be applied. That huge loophole has allowed Saudi Arabia to continue to not allow Saudi women to travel abroad without permission of their male guardian, and to make access to medical care and education conditional on the approval of a male relative. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women released a report last week criticizing the kingdom for systematic discrimination against women across all aspects of social life.” (Rasheed, 2008) Thus, the conflict between traditional Islamic attitudes and cultural practices concerning women and women’s rights in society with the Western human rights and liberal democratic tradition can be seen as one of the most defining aspects of Saudi society today, both internally and in the global context. These issues will also be expected to appear prominently in the existential struggles of adolescent girls in Saudi society who must balance multiple interpretations of values and culture against their own conscience and social demands in the process of maturing into unique individuals and personalities. Because of this, a more detailed look into the types of social censorship, repression, and control of the Saudi Authorities should be investigated and contrasted with the global standards emblematic of America and the West in the understanding of the conflict. Saudi Traditional Values The Saudi government today can be described as a royal system rather than a de facto theocracy because the House of Saud is supportive of the religious establishment, scholarship, and academies rather than being itself formally composed of Ulemma or Islamic clerics. Nevertheless, the Saudi royal government enjoys its mandate to rule largely as protectors of the traditional pilgrimage centers of Islam, and no law or custom is generally permitted that goes in contradiction with Shariah or Islamic law. As the U.S. Library of Congress writes in its country overview of Saudi Arabia, “The country has its roots in the Wahhabism, an eighteenth-century reform movement that called for a return to the purity and simplicity of the early Islamic community. It was the alliance between the Wahhabi religious reformers and the House of Saud (Al Saud) that provided the Arabs of the peninsula with a new and compelling focus for their loyalties and helped to forge the unification of the peninsula under the leadership of Abd al Aziz ibn Abd ar Rahman Al Saud.” (LOC, 2011) Modernization, Westernization, Globalization, and Democratization are all reinforcing trends that define the experience of many countries in the 20th and 21st centuries. These forces directly threaten the rule and continuation of the House of Saud as political sovereigns in Saudi Arabia. Historically, it can be considered a very isolated and difficult to defend position culturally that the House of Saud has outlined, by being the custodian and also enforcer of a traditional system to a large and diverse population that may be fragmenting into differing interpretations of Islam in the modern world. That only Wahhabian interpretation would be encouraged and permitted may be itself an unsustainable tenet historically. These issues and their relationship to media censorship and popular control of public discourse in Saudi Arabia were discussed by Mai Yamani in the essay "Saudi Arabia’s Media Mask" (2011): “As a result, the Al Saud are engaged in a continual struggle to ensure that the officially sanctioned narrative includes only what is permitted – Islam, prosperity, virtue and heroism. Excluded from this story is the kingdom’s strategic dependence on the United States, rifts in the ruling family, and the contradictions of the Al Saud’s effort to ensure their legitimacy through partnership with the Wahhabi sect, whose puritanical brand of Islam nurtures terrorism abroad and anti-regime radicalism at home. Against this backdrop, the Al Saud narrative is increasingly fragmenting, as globalisation gives rise to an ever greater complexity. The Al Saud achieved leadership and prominence because of oil wealth and control of Islam’s holiest places, but the proliferation of new media alarms and irritates them because it exposes their narrative’s flaws. A loud and defiant voice from neighbouring Qatar, Al Jazeera, was the first to attack the Al Saud narrative directly. Indeed, the attack is implied by Al Jazeera’s very name, which means ‘the Peninsula’, suggesting that the Al Saud could no longer claim to speak for ‘al-jazira’. A subsequent wave of other satellite TV channels, from Hizbullah’s Al Manar to Iran’s Al Alam, has only intensified the erosion of the regime’s carefully crafted public façade.” (Yamani, 2011) This essay suggests that the adolescent age being the most important in formative experience in deriving or generating the self-identity concepts of personhood and being in the human individual that the social trends represented in the conflict in values between the modern and traditional in Saudi Arabia would make this group most prone to influence or the actual matrix of decision where the reform or change in values would occur socially. The Arab Spring and Green Revolution movements of the region support this in that they are also predominately youth led. Furthermore, the thesis will be advanced that the adolescent culture is more actively engaged in seeking out social values from popular and commercial media as found on the television, mainstream media, and internet, and that global values are more apt to erode or change the traditional values of Islam than the Ulemma would be willing to permit. Through this, the social conflict between generations is established that acts also on a political stage and as a possible reform in institutions or legal regulations in Saudi Arabian society itself. Media Censorship in Saudi Arabia The influence of outside ideas and values can be seen as the most transformative in effect on traditional Saudi Arabian and Islamic values, and as such there exists a strong conservative bias within the ruling family to support the clerics and administrators of the schools of religion against the influence of the western culture popularly. In media, this is established through the strict control of broadcast content in television, cinema, print publications, newspapers, magazines, and the internet. That any government can seek to control the influence or ability to read outside sources of information is typically a key or critical element in establishing a county as totalitarian and in violation of universal human rights such as freedom of the press, association, speech, religion, etc. In this context, the entire process of globalization in media, technology, business, and culture all seem posed to act against even the strongest intentions of the Saudi regime. For example, attempts to control satellite television and the internet in the Kingdom lead to a draconian State that positions Islam as an ally of ignorance rather than openness, this is unnatural socially and repressive and can only exist for short periods of time historically before it will be overturned by the larger forces it seeks to subvert. As such, the social media censorship of Saudi Arabia would appear as unsustainable historically or permissible only if Saudi Arabia itself becomes a type of isolated Islam only zone, a type of religious State surrounding the holy places and infringing the freedom of its citizenry due to the legitimate historical and ideological differences of the population itself, as contrasted with the globalized civil society and its benchmarks. Much as in the old Soviet or Eastern Block manners of totalitarianism, this also would involve a limitation of outside travel so that people could not travel to Europe, America, or other countries where liberal values could be discovered. Obviously, this is impractical if the goal is also to build a modern, prosperous, and internationally respected country functioning as part of the global economy, which the Saudi elite also seems to wish to encourage and even practice themselves. As such, the media censorship seems counterproductive and only creating a period of extremism that perpetuates royal control over society against global trends towards democratic governance. As the Committee to Protect Journalists (200() wrote in its report on censorship in satellite television in the Arab world: “Arab broadcasting was the realm of turgid news programming and state propaganda until the arrival in the 1990s of new satellite outlets such as Qatar-based Al-Jazeera. Despite being a target of government censorship and harassment, Al-Jazeera was able to provide millions of Arabs with unfiltered news and political debate. Today, the number of satellite broadcasters has grown into the hundreds, and viewership has jumped into the tens of millions as satellite access has become less costly. Although many stations are still owned or backed by governments in one form or another (Al-Jazeera among them), the region has seen remarkable growth in open discourse. A strong, collective message was sent in February when Egypt and Saudi Arabia introduced a pan-Arab regulatory framework for satellite television stations at a meeting of Arab League information ministers in Cairo. The document, titled ‘Principles for Organizing Satellite Radio and TV Broadcasting in the Arab Region,’ clearly targets independent and privately owned stations that have been airing criticism of Arab governments.” (CPJ, 2009) However, the Royal Saudi government has not only tried to censor satellite, commercial, and cable television broadcasts to limit broadcasts to those programs or opinion officially sanctioned by Wahhabi clerics, they have also applied the same model of censorship and control to the internet. As Khalid Alharbi (2010) writes: “In Saudi Arabia, Internet censorship is similar to other kinds of media censorship; TV, radio, newspaper, or books censorship. However, because the publishing of information through the Internet is faster than through other kinds of media, the government has created new departments to filter the content of the Internet. For example, it has established a new administration named Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) which is primary charged for filtering the illegal and harmful content and regulating the services that are provided by ISPs (Internet Services Providers). Although there are many international organizations which trying to stop Internet censorship in Saudi Arabia such as the reporters without borders that ranked Saudi Arabia in its list of the thirteen enemies of the Internet, this hasn’t stopped the government from filtering the content of the Internet. The Saudi government has real and important reasons for censoring the Internet which may have positive and negative effects on its citizens.” (Alharbi, 2010) The Saudi Arabian internet censorship campaign can be largely said to target pornography, terrorist propaganda or radical jihadist websites, anti-royal criticism, and political reform movements. The obvious fact is that this is an increasingly impossible task for governments to effectively administer, as there will be ever more ways to circumvent the censorship efforts and this only creates a wider gap between the government and the people. Because of this, the censorship efforts of the Royal Saudi government can be seen as alienating, anti-democratic, and unjust in the context of global human rights standards fundamentally, and can be predicted to lead to more social problems than it eliminates. The largest effect of this information battleground over social and cultural values can be predicted to occur in the adolescent culture of Saudi Arabia because the youth are in the process of identity formation that occurs in accordance with an existential process of education and becoming mature, not only as Saudi citizens and Muslims, but also as global citizens of an interconnected world. Adolescent Culture in Saudi Arabia Today It is thus in this context of censorship and Islamic fundamentalism under the royal Saudi system of Wahhbian values and governance that the adolescent youth of the country come of age and mature into adulthood. The school system is segregated and there is a vast inequality in rights enjoyed between girls and boys in the society. While the veil or full length burqa may be only one aspect of this for adolescent girls, there is also a difference in expectations and social roles that stems from traditional Arab and Islamic culture that contrasts vastly with the liberal traditions of the West in dress, conduct, and thought patterns permitted for both girls and boys in Saudi Arabia. The inevitable conflict of values occurs in the process of individual or personal development in each human being differently. Through this, each person will also evolve his or her own approach, accommodative or resistant, to the social requirements. In the age of globalization and international economic interconnection, the Saudi teens must determine their own self identity from influences of the family, community, nation, and global context. The Western or “outside” values may have a greater attraction if they are banned, excluded, or not permitted popularly, but this can erode both civil and religious authority. The process of democratization itself threatens the royal culture, and as such they seek to perpetuate their rule by discriminating against this through media censorship and other types of political control. Globalization and the exchange of ideas is inherently working against this, leading to widespread change in social values occurring rapidly in Saudi society. As the international survey “Teen Freedom” reported (2011): “Saudi Arabia’s education system leaves minimal freedom for the student to explore paths of thought diverging from the one prescribed by the Government. Prince Fahn bin Sultan, Tabouk District Governor, stated that ‘There is no room for personal commentary by a teacher who sets the curriculum aside. He must not deviate from it – even if he has spare time during the lesson.’ There is a ‘ban on teaching Western philosophy and religions other than Islam,’ and ‘informers monitor classrooms for compliance with limits on curriculums.’ All students of the education system must take a minimum of 3 hours of Islamic study courses a week. Education in Saudi Arabia is separated by sex, and curriculum is altered for the sexes. Girls are not permitted to enter into traditional Islamic education, yet there is higher female enrollment in secondary education than male enrollment. Female literacy rates are at 50.2%, and at 71.5% for males.” (Teen Freedom, 2011) The largest question this raises is about whether the society itself locally can establish the values universally for its citizenry, or whether the global context will inevitably become more important in the modern world. Furthermore, there is a decision that must be made individually, by the student at an adolescent age, as to where the allegiances and solidarities of his or her personality will follow existentially in building a life path and conduct. For Saudi Adolescents, the experience is undoubtedly dividing and the interpretation is determined by the exposure to various influences both popularly in mass-media and personally through friendships, education, family, and economic relationships. Youth Trends in Saudi Arabia Western media reports may not always present an accurate, indigenous, or unbiased review of the situation in Saudi Arabia due to the cultural bias, language restrictions, and lack of access traditionally that Westerners have enjoyed on the Saudi Arabian peninsula to investigate social forces. The Western alliance with the royal system over concerns for human rights and democracy in Saudi Arabia have long been a subject of debate, or at least since the rise to prominence of the Saudi’s through OPEC and the Oil crises of the 1970’s. Saudi youth, like youth in developing nations across the world, experience a conflict between traditional, indigenous values, in this instance rooted in Islam, and the hegemonic media and cultural influence of the West that relentlessly promotes modernization, globalization, and democratization as part of its foreign policy. The Saudi youth cannot be full and complete international citizens or human beings without being aware of the Western values, cultural perceptions, and the conflict of traditional Islamic viewpoints within this larger system. In a society where both media and education are controlled, as are social roles, strictly according to interpretive tradition of religion, the adolescent must process this divergence and make some type of resolution of the conflict in personal identity. Typically, this can be positioned as an alliance between international values represented in globalization and its standards, or traditional Islam and religious values. The two are in conflict, and the media is one area in which the competition of ideas and values is illustrated or constructed. The other main location of conflict is in the minds of the citizens who must decide, perhaps unnecessarily or unjustly, between a set of allegiances that are seemingly contradictory. The synthesis of values and the formation of an Arab modernism is largely occurring in the current generation currently, though this is a process that can be seen as continuing for the last 100 years or more popularly in developing nations around the world, i.e. the conflict between a Western hegemony of values represented through political, social, and cultural forces. The media saturated aspect is a continuance of the development of mass-communication technologies that have moved from printing press to television, cinema, and the internet. In the late-capitalist and post-modern view, these paradigms continue to shift rapidly as indicated by the influence of social media such as Facebook and Twitter in the Arab Spring revolutions. Conflicts between Old and New Values The conflict between traditional indigenous values and Western hegemony represented in media domination particularly can be seen as definitive for many developing nations in the 20th and 21st centuries who have sought to preserve their own unique heritages. In this regard, the Saudi Arabian experience is both indicative of this trend and also distinct from it due to the nature of its philosophy. For example, the Wahhabi strain of Islam is closely associated with the Royal Saudi tradition, but there are other interpretations of Islam popularly across both the Sunni and Shia world. There are modern Arab viewpoints represented in other nations that are more liberal and in accord with Western political and social practice that are also accommodative, tolerant, and permissive of individual interpretation and freedom in life. Thus, the Saudi experience has determined the response to the western hegemony of values in mass-media and communications in a distinct and particular way that is in accord with its own tradition. Other nations and individuals have and will make different choices both personally and in groups, making the long term sustainability of a system based in restriction of information difficult historically. Yet, it is the sexual discrimination and social limitation of rights for women and girls that may be the most contentious. As the New York Times (2008) reported, “The separation between the sexes in Saudi Arabia is so extreme that it is difficult to overstate. Saudi women may not drive, and they must wear black abayas and head coverings in public at all times. They are spirited around the city in cars with tinted windows, attend girls-only schools and university departments, and eat in special ‘family’ sections of cafes and restaurants, which are carefully partitioned from the sections used by single male diners.” (Zoepf, 2008) These social restrictions and limitations are going to be experienced as repressive by most, even within the Saudi society itself, and resisted subtly or overtly, if one believes particularly in the Western “universalized” model of individual freedom. Because of this, Western values are seen as a threat to the social base of the Ulemma or traditional Islam. The Saudi and American Adolescent Experience In the universalist viewpoint and interpretation, the human individual is fundamentally the same in all environments and experiences the same drives, instincts, hopes, fears, emotions, and range of existential possibilities to be able to believe in a common humanity and use that concept as a base of reference for social judgments and decision-making. In the cultural relativity theory, the social values on a local level overpower and over-influence the experience or definition of humanity in a way that is both self-definitive and expressive of individuality in groups and human beings psychologically. In practice, the difference between the adolescent experience in Saudi Arabia and America could not seem more different – the social values, the dress, the customs, the institutions, etc. are all so different in both nations that there is seemingly little common ground. Yet, others will argue that adolescents are going to be the same everywhere, drawn to the same types of activities and engagements socially and personally, even if the details are somewhat different in the language or fashion, the human nature is the same. What is certain is that the political, social, and cultural differences are interrelated and attain meaning within the context of each other. At some point, the individual will have to resolve contradictions between values in personal experience and this resolution will become definitive of personal identity, albeit changing in response to new events and experience over time. However, psychologically the adolescent mind is most open to influence and the formation of values in this period may determine the course of the life and further development of the human individual socially. The Saudis seek to censor television, cinema, the internet, as well as newspaper, magazines, and other forms of print publications to keep out morally offensive content primarily. This has a large effect in stopping the influence of Western advertising in the culture and society. The Saudis cannot preserve this censorship due to the aspects of globalization in mass-media communications such as the internet, satellite television, and other forms of digital transmission. In defining the adoption of Western values and cultural patterns as a defeat for Islam, the fundamentalists create a version of religion that is ever more difficult to defend against modernism. These conflicts are enacted in the family and personal relationships of adolescents in Saudi Arabia under a set of definitions and social standards completely different from that in America. Nevertheless, a combination of the universalist view of human nature with cultural relativism is required to thoroughly investigate the issues from a sociological or anthropological interpretation. Yet, this in itself carries a bias against Islam that can justify the religious fundamentalism and its reaction against it, requiring a further decision or allegiance between concepts of freedom and authority in the individual. What is resolved in adolescent identity may change or become the basis through which all other experience is interpreted individually. Conclusion The Saudi Arabian response to the preservation of indigenous values and social traditions against the wider influences of Modernization, Globalization, Westernization, and Democratization is clearly determined by the Wahhabian influence of the House of Saud and the royal structure of government. The adoption of media censorship patterns in television, cinema, print, and internet publications or broadcasts in Saudi Arabia seek to preserve Islamic law and prohibits any publication in contradiction to this. In a modern context where this view is a minority internationally, it is difficult for the Saudi’s to preserve their tradition in this manner without devolving into authoritarianism and totalitarianism. The adolescents in Saudi Arabia will experience these conflicts as part of their identity and personality formation, and the manner in which they define for themselves the answers to these conflicts will determine them as individuals and reflect their character or self-identity in life. The differences in tolerance and access to information socially in the two countries relates to a broad gap between the Western liberal tradition reflected in America and the Islamic fundamentalist position of Saudi Arabia. The adolescents of Saudi Arabia will come to terms with their own identity following culturally relative conflicts and value resolutions, and the censorship of information affects this in a manner different from what may be called an excess of information in the American system. Saudi Arabian families may seek to restrict access to information as they restrict or limit the expression of identity in social roles. From a validation of freedom, liberalism, and the post-modern Western mainstream, the Saudi position is anachronistic and failing. From the Islamic fundamentalist viewpoint, the Western values are failing in becoming morally corrupt and this is reflected further in social roles. Thus, on a definitive level, the two views are seemingly irreconcilable, and this conflict defines the experience of Saudi youth as once Saudi Arabian citizens and also global citizens. However, it is not clear that globalization is free of political, ethical, or cultural bias as it is defined and experienced today vs. indigenous value systems historically. Because of this, a combination of both the universalist view of human nature and the cultural relativism of social diversity in global history must be considered in evaluating the conflict of values in mass-media communications, advertising, and the value systems that inform them popularly. References Alharbi, Khalid (2010). Internet Censorship in Saudi Arabia. Khalbari Khalid, May 6, 2010. Retrieved from http://www.kalharbi.com/2010/05/internet-censorship-in-saudi-arabia/ Campagna, Joel (2009). Pre-empting the Satellite TV Revolution. Committee to Protect Journalists, Web. Retrieved from http://cpj.org/2009/02/satellite-tv-middle-east.php Library of Congress (2011). Saudi Arabia - The Society. U.S. Library of Congress, Web. Retrieved from http://countrystudies.us/saudi-arabia/18.htm Rasheed (2008). Saudi Arabia Must Choose to Join Modernity. Rasheed’s World, 10.02.2008. Retrieved from http://www.rasheedsworld.com/wp/2008/02/saudi-arabia-must-choose-to-join-modernity/ Santrock, John (2007). Adolescence – 12th Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill Humanities, Social Sciences, & Languages. Slackman, Michael (2007). Cultural Collisions in the Slow Lane to Modernity. RIYADH JOURNAL, New York Times, May 9, 2007. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/09/world/middleeast/09saudi.html Teen Freedom (2011). Saudi Arabia. Teen Freedom – An International Survey, Web. Retrieved from http://teenfreedom.wordpress.com/country-reports/saudi-arabia/ Yamani, Mai (2011). Saudi Arabia’s media mask. Chapter 15, PDF. Retrieved from http://www.maiyamani.com/pdf/Saudi-Media-Mask.pdf Read More