Regulation Of Emotion In Moroccan Culture
In collectivist cultures, there is a tendency to regulate through injecting feelings of shame guilt and culpability. A constructive discussion will highlight the child’s wrong doing as a violation of a rule to assure that they would properly behave the next time when dealing with the same behavior or emotion. However, in a society that works with observational judgment rather than discussion, Moroccans came up with the word hchouma. This term encapsulates all the needed regulatory power to stop or not repeat the ‘ the wrong doing ‘, leaving the rest to the doer, the culpable, مكیحشمش اللي since discussing it is just as hchouma as the violating act. “We don’t do this; we don’t talk about it either”.
The constant use of We (instead of I) with hchouma in daily speech, can be explained either by the collective nature of the culture” You are one of us, so you will do as we do”. Or it can refer to superiority; those who came up with the term, elderly, parents… “We are superior therefore; you will do as we say”. This concept and this –ness imply a number of expectations that individuals need to meet by working on their “shortcomings”. Focus is on negative attributes of oneself and the desired endpoint is the “socially rewarding” relational embedding.
Morocco, as a seemingly conservative society, or more preferably a shame-based culture, resorts to this face-saving regulatory rule to monitor individuals. This may promote social harmony or lead to self-effacement under the pretext of self-improvement. Just like driving on the left side of the road, the system worked for years because people agree to it. Expression of emotion is also subject to the power of this term as it moderates not only negative emotions such as anger but can also attenuate intense display of natural and positive emotions such as love and desire if viewed as socially threatening.
Confronted with two option: Perceiving the context as static with fixed norms, non-negotiable duties and a changeable self, ready to “fit in. ” Or, a self that is more or less stable within an adaptive changeable environment. Even more, belonging to a collectivist culture is a matter of birth or right, whilst from an individualistic angle membership is earned; not given. In the former, the chances of entering a new group are low if not considered a wrong doing, especially with the notable concern of maintaining close relationships and by extension preserving the collective identity. Morocco seemingly fits this profile. Unlike loose cultures, where several normative networks operate, Morocco seems to have established a system where religion and traditions seem to have the final say. Or do they? The prototypical emotions experienced and expressed by people within these context are a good example to understand the situation. Emotions are strong predicators of which type we are dealing with; self-satisfaction oriented individuals or social norms allegiance.
Basic or not, emotions when seen in light of a cultural context vary within and between subjects. Appraisal and display rules help explain these differences. With Appraisal, comes the ability to interpret and evaluate events which eventually result in a reaction. This accounts for individual difference, if there are any. Then, come display rules with their external examination of or regulation on those previously stimulated reactions. These rules exert pressure and control how, when, and to whom emotions are directed, the antecedents as wellas the consequence of an emotional event. They can also dictate what should or should not be expressed both verbally and non-verbally. The extent to which these parameters do so, vary from one culture to another. This process can take place at many stages: situation selection, attention deployment, antecedent change, response modulation etc…and in many ways, this happens in the context of our relationships with others; thus, others can have a hand at shaping our emotional experience. This starts in the first years of life, with parents structuring their children’s lives almost entirely to promote situation where certain experiences are aligned with valued endpoints which is always justified by the desire to help their children to thrivingly manage their social relationships. relationship; complex ideologies about certain emotions transpire and new nuanced vocabulary for regulatory rules take place.
Besides being aware of their inner emotions, individuals also have a sense of belonging to a certain cultural background and living in a given social reality. This becomes afforded when acknowledging the other and contrasting one’s identity (individual or collective) to that of a different one. I, a 26 years old female, think of myself as an independent, want to be a world traveler, book reader, food eater, thought sharer 26 years old female. On the other hand, my origins, nationality, religion, among many other attributes bound me to every other Arab, Moroccan, Muslim, and discriminates me from anyone who is not.
This uniqueness of the self and of the other within a distinct context may account for the remarkably different ways of conceptualizing and dealing with emotions, which dismiss the commonly held assumption that they are invariant states triggered and manifested in a pre-programmed manner. By fitting emotion into their cultural environment, we adopt a socio-culturally functional stance that portrays them as ever changing while we move from a context to another or even as one context changes. Culture, as kluckhohn (1954) said “is to society what memory is to individuals”. It comprises what seemed to work in the experience of a society and seen as worthy of being transmitted to the next generation. Useful ideas, values, habits (who is to judge?) and the like get adopted and become part of the shared affinity. In individualist cultures, such as those in Western Europe, there is a tendency to samplewith high probability elements of the personal self (e. g. , “I am pretty, I am getting married”). On the other hand, In collectivist cultures, for instance in Asia, the sample is largely elements of the collective self (e. g. , “They think I am pretty, my family thinks I am ready to get”). The homogeneity of the latter creates this tightness with which members of that society adhere to a number of rules, with the promise of punishing those who may deviate from the normative behavior. Contexts where people do depend on each other and where population is high, non-conformity is un-tolerated. In other words, there is a correlation between collectivism and tightness that renders people highly interdependent with their in-groups (family, tribe, nation, etc. ), by prioritizing the common good and endorsing conventionalism, which entails a negative correlation between collectivism and otherness. In fact, in any situation one is these foreign languages (to be specific French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, and English) bring to the Moroccan scene. Notwithstanding that English is considered to be a relatively newcomer in Morocco, it had and still has a tremendous impact on Moroccans; especially new generations. For the past four decades, Education, tourism, and new information technology encouraged the expansion of English. In fact, it is gradually overshadowing French in some domains especially in higher education and in all likelihood; it might fiercely rival French as a means of communication with the exterior world and as a channel of Western norms and values. The inclusion of English in Morocco can be seen as another imposed language. Given the striking widespread of English as a lingua franca, and like many other countries, Morocco by force or some alleged choice, had to accommodate this modern life requirement. The question is how much of a threat English represents for the aforementioned languages?
Partially, because of the growing desire amidst the new Moroccan generation to disaffiliate themselves from their colonial past as well as the conservative one, English comes as an alternative, especially in academics, where the French is a dependency, rather than an academic choice. Abdelilah Benkirane, the former Head of Government, repeatedlymentioned that English should be the primary language of education as “it is the language of today’s science, technology, and commerce”. And though there is a strong bond that cannot be broken, Benkirane maintained that it is not morocco’s destiny to remain faithful to French. The ubiquity of English seems to endanger the latter; however, the emergence of the former does not appear to be a threat to Arabic” for now”. Thus, English is now in the picture, French is not monopolizing the linguistic milieu, and all that is kept to know is how do Moroccans deal with this multiplex situation?
