Repping the streets, repping the hometown : a sociophonetic analysis of dialectal variation in the Moroccan hip hop community

The following study is a sociophonetic analysis of coronal stop affrication in the casual speech of four Moroccan rappers from two regions of the country: the cities of Salé and Casablanca, where the phoneme is /t/ is realized as the palato-alveolar affricate [tʃ], and the city of Meknès, where the phoneme /t/ is realized as the alveolar affricate [ts]. Casablanca and Salé host two of the most important rap scenes in the country, and Meknès hosts a significant, but less prominent, rap scene; this would suggest that the rappers from Meknès will attempt to access the Slaoui-Cassaoui variant [tʃ] in order to access the authenticity inherent in the more important rap scene’s street code. However, the varying attitudes between the two Meknassi rappers towards adopting the Slaoui-Cassaoui street code indicates a more complex construction of the notion of authenticity within the Moroccan Hip Hop community.Middle Eastern Studie

Youth Transformations in Storytelling: Transmutability, Haunting, and Fen al Hikaya in Marrakech, Morocco

Fen al hikaya, the famous form of oral Moroccan public allegorical storytelling, is being “revived” by youth in Marrakech, Morocco at the same time as the general public discourse states that fen al hikaya is “disappearing” and that youth are suffering from lack of opportunity during the “youth bulge.” I argue that this youth revitalization of storytelling practice is haunted by the disappearing figures of older storytellers, but also that as youth move through the transmutable role of storyteller, they transform storytelling to fit their contemporary, internationalized, and economically precarious lives. While youth precarity, particularly in artistic spheres, is not unique to Morocco, my research provides a case study from which to examine how young people, influenced by the haunting of time-honored forms of expression, transform contemporary practices of cultural expression, “reviving” these forms but also innovating and changing conceptions of these practices. Through two and a half years of ethnographic fieldwork in Marrakech with over 40 storytellers and community members, this research examines how youth transform and innovate creative expression, one of the myriad of strategies youth employ to find belonging and meaning in their contemporary, precarious lives. I use conceptions of haunting and specters to examine how the figure of the storyteller and Marrakech’s Jemaa el Fna Square, the most famous location for storytelling performance in Morocco, haunt transformations Moroccan youth are making within their contemporary storytelling practice in Marrakech through elements such as performance configuration, language choice, and the use of costumes and props. I discuss how skills like public speaking and fluency in English through storytelling can lead Moroccan youth to different career paths both within and outside Morocco, contributing to their flexibility but also to their role as internationally influenced individuals

Legal Discrimination and Violence against Women Analyzed through a Feminist Lens Using the Advocacy Coalition Framework

This article analyzes the impact of discriminatory laws on violence against women (VAW) in Morocco. I utilize the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) from public policy to examine how feminist and religious coalitions compete along core beliefs, but at times may cooperate along policy core and secondary beliefs. My analysis is based on in-depth interviews and focus groups with more than 200 stakeholders across twenty Moroccan cities from 2013-2018. Respondents include women‘s and human rights associations, VAW listening centers, overnight shelters, and violence victims as well as members of the judiciary. The research boasts an inclusive sampling of perspectives from across the Moroccan political spectrum, including secularists, socialists, progressive Muslim feminists,1 and conservative Islamic associations. This amalgam of perspectives mirrors the complex fabric of Moroccan society and contributes valuable and unique insights into the sociocultural challenges to, yet potential for, cooperation and consensus-building to address VAW in Morocco.Keywords: legal discrimination, feminist, domestic violence, rape, conjugal rape, abortio

All this for a film you haven\u27t seen : Reflections on Much Loved

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College

Queer Connections: Social Media as a Versatile Tool of the Marginalized Moroccan LGBT

This paper examines the role of social media in the Moroccan LGBT sphere. It draws on personal narratives from LGBT men and women as well as activists in order to establish the various ways that social media is employed in the interests of the individual, the community, and the activist. While social media has been a tool to expand the LGBT community around the world, it is specifically and unusually useful in Morocco where there is considerable censorship of incoming and outgoing media. Additionally, many public displays of resistance are considered to be counter productive to the pro-LGBT movement because they are often construed as disrespectful to the cultural norms (which discourage all public displays of romantic affection) and hurt the efforts to find a unique Moroccan solution to the problem of LGBT discrimination. This work will attempt to add qualitative, first-hand accounts of how the progress of the LGBT movement in Morocco must be treated differently than the progress of similar Western movements and to highlight how access to information and privacy of the individual through the use of social media are essential to LGBT development. Finally, the intent of this paper is rooted in finding practical methods in which the mental and emotional health of LGBT individuals has already been and could further be improved by access to LGBT supporting social media

Effect of random sampling on spectrum sensing for cognitive radio networks

Cognitive radio is a mechanism allowing dynamic access to spectrum channels. Since its beginnings, researchers have been working on using this inventive technology to control and manage the spectrum resources. Consequently, this research field has been progressing rapidly and important advances have been made. Spectrum sensing is a key function of cognitive radios that helps prevent the harmful interference with licensed users, as well as identifies the available spectrum to improve its utilization. Several spectrum sensing techniques are found in scientific literature. In this paper, we investigate the effect of the random sampling in spectrum sensing. We propose a spectrum sensing approach based on the energy detection and on the maximum eigenvalue detection (MED) combined with random sampling. The performance of the proposed approach is evaluated in terms of the receiver operating characteristics curves and in terms of the detection probability for different values of signal to noise ratio. The obtained results are compared to the uniform sampling case to show the added value of random sampling

Packaging Morocco for the foreign eye: A survey into the Moroccan tourism industry

The history of tourism in Morocco cannot be separated from the country’s colonial legacy. Tracing its’ roots back into the 1920s, tourism was yet another medium where the West manifested their fascination with exoticness in “the other”. Within the past decades, the Moroccan tourism industry has witnessed continued growth in tourist arrivals and media attention. Morocco’s geographical and linguistic proximity to Europe has made it an “accessible” option to many European tourists. Tourism is not only a promising driver of economic growth, an employment generator, but also has become how many foreign individuals come to understand the country. Through the careful examination of marketing materials and observations in Marrakech, the project will outline a tourist’s experience from research to arrival. It will focus on material and experiences generated by Moroccan governments and private organizations. How is Morocco packaged? What is included and excluded? What is the end narrative? Ultimately, this paper hope to identify the intersection of tourism, economic pressure, and colonial legacies

Depicting and Documenting Violence against Women in the Contemporary Counter-Narratives of Moroccan Film

This article argues that films and documentaries made in the last decade by filmmakers working in Morocco challenge the State‘s ―hagiography‖; its official narrative of exceptionalism written by the monarchy to stand as uncontested truth. Since the dawn of the new millennium and the ascendance of Mohamed VI to the throne, this narrative often exaggerates the improvement in recent years of women‘s actual sociocultural, political and economic enfranchisement in Moroccan society. The documentary 475 (2013) by Nadir Bouhmouch challenges the positivism of the government‘s affirmation that it has ameliorated the lives of all women in Morocco. Equally important, the feature-length fiction film, Much Loved (2015) by Nabil Ayouch, serves to set the record straight on Violence Against Women (VAW) in a country where patriarchal tradition still takes precedence over women‘s overall societal enfranchisement.Keywords: Violence against women, Moroccan cinema, 20 February Movement, women‘s rights, human right

The tourist and the toured: How hostel owners navigate the age of global gentrification

Since the mid-1990s, numerous Moroccan riads, or traditional homes built around a central courtyard, have been converted into tourist accommodations in Morocco’s old medinas. This paper seeks to analyze the impact of riad-style hostels specifically on the medinas, as hostels are relatively new to Morocco and have various benefits and consequences for the community. Though hostels are often portrayed as a sustainable form of tourist accommodation compared to multinational hotel corporations, they have an acute impact by bringing tourists into previously residential spaces and exacerbating the effects of global gentrification. My research relies on interviews with hostel owners and employees, as well as supplementary interviews with guests or members of the community in four cities: Fes, Tangier, Rabat, and Essaouira. This paper discusses the dynamics of representation encountered by hosts and the interactions between hostels and the community. I also transition into a discussion I had not anticipated regarding the varying approaches of hostels toward receiving Moroccan guests. My research question is: how do hostel owners in Morocco navigate cultural representation and tourist intrusion in the medinas in the age of global gentrification