وإذا كان مكدونالد يفتتح فروعًا خاصّة بالمترفين في أماكن تجمعهم، وقد لا توجد على لائحة فروعه العلنية، فإن الفروع العلنية نفسها تخضع الجودة فيها لتدرّج هرمي حسب الشرائح والطبقات المخاطبة وأماكن وجود هذه الفروع. لكن المنتج المصري المقلّد للنمط لا يمكنه بناء مثل هذه الازدواجية في معايير الجودة لسببين: أولهما أنه ليس بماركة عالمية ذات ألق يحفظ عليها الطلب مهما انحدرت القاعدة الطبقية المستهلكة لمنتجاتها، وثانيهما ينبني على الأول؛ ذلك أنه يعيد تشكيل هويّته كل فترة، ليس بناء على معايير صارمة مفروضة من أصحاب العلامة التجارية في الخارج؛ ولكن استنادًا للواقع وللصورة الذهنيّة التي شكّلها المجتمع عنه. لهذا تنطفيء الماركات المحلّية بأسرع مما تنطفيء الماركات العابرة للقارات، وربما كان الأمل الوحيد للمنتج المحلي في إعادة إنتاج هويّة تجاريّة أكثر قوة واستقرارًا؛
America has the best democracy money can buy. This has become even truer with the latest Supreme Court decision. America is now an oligarchy rather than a democracy and the highest court has confirmed it.
I must be a bigger fuddy-duddy than I thought because I’m finding the rich-and-famous lifestyles of many religious scholars quite scandalous.
An estimated two million Muslims from around the world will converge on Makkah this month for the annual pilgrimage of Hajj. There are many dimensions to this most challenging of ‘ibadaat. ZAFAR BANGASH, Director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought sheds light on some aspects that have been virtually forgotten as part of a deliberate policy to ritualize and therefore, trivialize Hajj.
Materialist consumerism has become one of the defining characteristics of western/modern societies. YUSUF AL-KHABBAZ discusses how the problem can be addressed by Islam’s ethical and moral framework
1Imagery is the key to understanding TV, and there are several angles we could select in order to evaluate the impact of this imagery on our lives. We could look at biological or physiological impacts, or we could look at cultural or social impacts, even political and economic.
1It is important to recognize the possibilities of globalization as well as the challenges. As a business venture, it does not bode well for most of humanity, if the WTO and other trade agreements are any indication. One way to combat this is to "go global" with a resistance movement, that is create or link up with movements that are already identifying the problems of economic globalization and join their efforts.
TV has provided a way for people to consume images and ideas that the ordinary person would not have access to in the course of a typical life. However, while this might sound like a benefit -- and we are constantly reminded of this alleged benefit by the industries themselves -- TV is not simply about seeing new things. It is primarily about selling.
There are two different types of consumerism. One is associated with shopping and advertising, the other with consuming in general, which can include consuming ideas, thoughts, practices, behaviors, what have you. On one level, a consumer society is that which likes to shop a lot, but on another level a consumer society is a derivative society, one that has no sense of itself other than what it consumes, and this can be with respect to knowledge, education, technology and many other things.
In its 1997 report, the United States Agriculture Department revealed that, ‘Americans routinely toss away uneaten vegetables, day-old bread and other pantry items, wasting one-fourth of the nation’s total food supply.
