Sociological Imagination Photo Essay

Introduction

Following the 9/11 attacks, cases of Islamophobia in the United States have been on the rise. McQueeney (2014) states that after the 9/11 attack, the human rights of Muslims and Arabs in the United States have been gradually threatened by airport screenings, anti-Muslim rhetoric, detentions, traffic stops, hate crimes, and deportations. The above photo is a presentation of how Muslims are treated during airport screenings. The aim of this essay is to demonstrate the writer’s sociological imagination by analyzing the photo from a sociological perspective. If you are seeking sociology dissertation help, understanding these societal issues and their impacts is crucial.

The sociological perspective of terrorism

From the social constructionist perspective, how and why people come to perceive a condition influences the construction if a social problem. From this perspective, terrorism is not seen as a real threat conducted by people that can be hunted down and killed. Rather, terrorism is seen as an interpretation of events, the use of language and symbols to make up claims, and using these claims to influence the society into believing these claims (Morgan 2016). The claim makers use dominant symbols and language that flow in the culture to construct social problems. In the above photo, there is a specific place where Muslims should queue during airport screening. It is also evident that a lot of attention is given to those coming to this queue. The screening on this queue also appears to be more rigorous compared to that in the first class and economy class queues. This can be understood from the social constructionist perspective, which holds that social problems are constructed through use of symbols and language that flow in the culture. Following the 9/11 attack, many people believe that women wearing veil or hijab (symbol) as well as airline passengers with Arab-sounding names (language) must be suicide bombers. With this belief, airline passengers wearing hijab or veil and speaking Arab or with Arab-sounding names are seen as terrorist thus must be rigorously screened. Therefore, terrorism among other social problems is constructed by people.

While many social problems such as terrorism are socially constructed by people, they are absolutely not creations of our imaginations. Karaffa (2015) states that once people perceive a problem to be real, they will have no any other option but to believe it. As W. I. Thomas put it, ‘it is not important whether or not the interpretation is correct – if people define situations as real, they are real in their consequences’ (Erasga 2010). Following the attack of 9/11, Americans highly believed that terrorists will attack them. This is evident from public opinion polls which indicate that since the 9/11 attack, terrorism is consistently ranked as the most serious social problem facing the US. In another poll, 58% of Americans are worried that a member of the immediate family will become a victim of a terrorist attack (Gallup 2013). This substantial level of worry towards terrorism explains the actions taken by the US to prevent terrorism attacks. That is, it explains why Muslims have a separate check in queue with rigorous screening as seen in the photo.

The fears that Americans will lose a high number of family members to terrorist attacks are highly exaggerated. According to Best (2012), Americans are more likely to die in car accidents than in terrorist attacks. For example; in 2001, car accidents claimed the lives of 12.5 times more people than the 9/11 terrorist attack. Despite the large difference, terrorism is socially constructed a more dangerous problem than car accidents. This subjective perception of terrorism explains why airport screening is more focused to the Islam religion as evident in the photo rather than putting mitigation measures to curb car accident incidences.

The above photo reduces Islam and Muslims to negative caricatures as well as marks a difference to stigmatize Islam and Muslims. Uenal (2016) writes that when Westerners first encountered the Arabs and/or Muslims, they viewed them as uncivilized and violent. The 9/11 terrorist attack further imprinted the American imagination of Arabs and Muslim. Thus, the attack served to confirm the perception American’s perception of Arabs and Muslim to be violent, which underscores the reason for heavy screening at airports as shown in the photo. On the other hand, Zaslavsky (2017) writes that the mass media paints the Middle East as a land of tyranny and barbarism and routinely cast Arabs and Muslims as terrorists, which further informs the American’s imagination of Arabs and Muslims. This misrepresentation has been instrumental in advancing political agendas such as restriction of civil liberties as evident in the photo.

Though the media has not directly influenced American’s perception of Arabs and Muslims, it is important to note that recurring exposure to images of Arabs and Muslims in acts of terrorism reinforces Americans assumption of Arabs and Muslims as terrorists (Saleem and Anderson 2013). This reinforced perception of Arabs and Muslims as terrorists creates a context in which human rights violations of ordinary Muslims and Arabs in US is seen as acceptable. In the photo, the Islam class is separated from others and subjected to heavy screening, which is an indication of human rights violation. However, Americans already perceive Arabs and Muslims as terrorist thus the violation of their rights is seen as acceptable. That way, any American will expect anyone dressed in hijab or with an Arab sounding name to be screened at the Islam class slot.

Sociologists are overly concerned with the role of media in reproducing reality and its effect on Islamophobia. According to Yusof et al. (2013), the media is full of political representations thus does not reproduce reality as it is. Rather, the media establishes reality and perpetuates it through language practices. In the same vein, Giroux (2016) states that the media does not only transmit the meaning but also constructs the meaning of reality. This means that the media will not cover an event as it is but rather construct a meaning and share this meaning to the society. Stańco-Wawrzyńska (2017) states that it is unfortunate that the media exaggerates reality such that it becomes vague. The construction of meaning around reality is what has influenced the association of Islam with terrorism. Today, any terrorism of radicalism event will have a controversial title and language that directly associated Islam with sadistic acts. As a result, Islam is seen as a religion of violence and cruelty a reason for which implications against the Muslims are enacted. It is no wonder there appear to be excessive anticipatory actions against the Muslims such as rigorous screening at airports as seen in the photo.

Islamophobia and surveillance

Prior to the 9/11 terrorist attack, all airline passengers were subjected to the same amount of surveillance. After the attack, some categories of people particularly Muslim are seen as more dangerous and therefore subjected to greater amount of surveillance. According to Aksürmeli (n.d.), state security agencies are supported by the public to increase surveillance to Muslims and Arabs due to the assumption that these minorities are terrorists. This implies that public support is a significant source of Islamophobia in the Western societies. It is this public support for increased surveillance that has informed the discrimination of Islam communities at crowded places such as airports as evidenced in the photo. Given that Arabs and Muslim others are minorities in the Western societies, violation of their privacy following heightened surveillance is not seen as a concern to human rights. Moreover, the state security agencies lean on public support while conducting these increased surveillance which has been socially constructed along the assumption that Arabs and Muslims are terrorists. Therefore, the need for increased surveillance for Islam is sociologically imagined and reinforced which limits the power of Islam as seen in the photo.

Lyon (2005) states that information collected using different surveillance mechanisms is profiled in a way that affects the social perception of Muslims. In the photo, Islam have a different surveillance mechanism which shows they are treated differently. Though the primary intention for the surveillance information is prevention of terror activities, this type of surveillance sorts people into categories of desirable and undesirable in the sense of who needs to be controlled and who is free from control (Monahan 2008). As seen in the picture, Islam travelers are paid extra attention which reveals them as the people that need to be controlled. The social effect of this sorting is that it further reinforces the American imagination of the association between Islam and terrorism.

Conclusion

The aim of this essay was to analyze the photo from a sociological perspective. Drawing from the social constructivist perspective, Arabs and Muslims are associated with terrorism thus subjected to increased surveillance as shown on the photo. Following the 9/11 attack, Americans believe that anyone in a hijab, with a beard, or with an Arab-sounding name is a terrorist. This belief has assured state security agencies public support in increasingly screening Arab and Muslim travelers thus the Americans are comfortable with the airport screening systems as seen in the photo even though it violates the rights of Arabs and Muslims.

References

Aksürmeli, Z.S.T., Islamophobia and Surveillance Directed at Muslims in the West. İlahiyat Akademi, 5(6), pp.183-196.

Best, J. 2012. Social problems (2nd ed.). New York, NY: WW Norton & Company.

Erasga, D.S., 2010. When story becomes theory: Storytelling as sociological theorizing. Asia-Pacific Social Science Review, 10(1), pp.21-38.

Gallup 2013. Terrorism in the United States. [Online] Retrieved from

Giroux, H.A., 2016. Beyond the spectacle of terrorism: Global uncertainty and the challenge of the new media. Routledge.

Karaffa, C.A., 2015. The Social Construction of Terrorism. In Terrorism and Counterterrorism Today (pp. 67-87). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Lyon, D., 2005. Surveillance as social sorting: Computer codes and mobile bodies. In Surveillance as social sorting (pp. 27-44). Routledge.

McQueeney, K., 2014. Disrupting Islamophobia: Teaching the Social Construction of Terrorism in the Mass Media. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 26(2), pp.297-309.

Monahan, T., 2008. Surveillance and inequality. Surveillance & Society, 5(3), pp.217-226.

Morgan, G., 2016. Global Islamophobia: Muslims and moral panic in the West. Routledge.

Saleem, M. and Anderson, C.A., 2013. Arabs as terrorists: Effects of stereotypes within violent contexts on attitudes, perceptions, and affect. Psychology of Violence, 3(1), p.84.

Stańco-Wawrzyńska, A., 2017. Terrorism and Media–an Interactive Modelling of a Message. Polish Political Science Yearbook, 46(1), pp.328-336.

Uenal, F., 2016. Disentangling Islamophobia: The differential effects of symbolic, realistic, and terroristic threat perceptions as mediators between social dominance orientation and Islamophobia.

Yusof, S.H., Hassan, F., Hassan, M.S. and Osman, M.N., 2013. The framing of international media on Islam and terrorism. European Scientific Journal, 9(8).

Zaslavsky, K., 2017. Kill or Be Killed: Seeing the Middle East as a Threat to the Western World. Proceedings of GREAT Day, 2016(1), p.5.

Dig deeper into Sociological Factors Contributing To Medication Non-adherence with our selection of articles.