Western Rebellion

We have to give them that [Western] culture, knowing that it will spoil them and that they will lose their own culture…

BBC NEWS | Special Reports | Teen rebellion – a Western export?

I was surprised to see this article among the top five BBC News stories, because it deals with an issue I have often felt concern about: that Western culture is gradually destroying other ancient cultures around the world. Children in India and Vietnam, for example, run around in Western designer jeans and t-shirts with English writing on them, play with blond plastic Barbie dolls, and claim that America is their “favorite country,” disregarding their own national identity and traditional heritage. However, even more disturbingly, these children are picking up a culture of rebellion to go along with the outward changes. Due to the breakdown of family life in this country, youth have spent an increasing amount of time without adults around, and this has led to the emergence of a peer-culture. The main message kids get here is that their friends know what’s best. Therefore, it is not very startling to hear that as children in Asia and Africa become Westernized, they show signs of rebellion that we would consider to be typical for a ‘normal’ adolescent in the USA. But in countries like Ghana or Korea, it has always been demanded of children to honor those older than them. As one father lamented, “In the past, you had to show respect to your parents, you had to be careful how you talked back to adults — now it is no longer the same.”

The question is, why is America idolized in this way? This is something that the parents find hard to understand: “Your clothing, your eating habits, everything. I don’t know what is so special about Western culture that [they] get attracted to it without any self-control.” Personally, I think the illusion of happiness and fulfillment through material wealth appears extremely desirable, especially to children and young people in third-world countries. Also, since television is the primary medium that exposes these kids to Western culture, when they see the “cool” people on TV, they begin to think that if they act in a similar way, they will find similar success. Part of this whole metamorphosis is, of course, due to globalization, as previously children in other parts of the world might have never even heard of America. Ultimately though, reading this makes me sad because our world is beginning to lose the cultural diversity that makes different people unique.

When Children are Fought Over…

12-Year-old girl must return to Scotland
“I think Molly is going to be quite scared and confused. I just want to tell her that it is all going to be okay – it’s all going to work out.”

BBC NEWS | UK | Scotland | Highlands and Islands | Court victory for Misbah’s mother

    In this article, the Pakistani court ruled that Molly Campbell, also known as Misbah Iram Ahmed Rana, be returned to her Scottish mother, who is her legal guardian. The girl, who asked to be called by her Islamic name Misbah, disappeared from her mother’s home in September, when she flew “of her own free will” with her 18-year-old sister and father to his home in Lahore, Pakistan. Since then, Ms. Campbell (her mother) has demanded that she be returned. According to her, the court dispute is not about who will get permanent custody, but to determine whether or not her rights to guardianship were violated. About the custody decision, Ms. Campbell has said that her daughter will “have the chance to say who she wants to live with.” When questioned, Molly declared that she did not want to return to the UK: ” I would like to stay here in Pakistan forever. And my name isn’t Molly, it is Misbah.”

    Clearly the child is in a situation where she feels pulled in both directions at once, and her own comments indicate this: “I knew my mum would miss me, but I missed my family and it was hard.” Not surprisingly, the pressure of a ‘dual identity’ (Molly/Misbah, Scottish/Islamic-Pakistani) is difficult to deal with. And the situation is actually not unusual for the UK, where numbers of “International child abductions” to Pakistan are increasing, as often, the daughter of UK-Pakistani parents is brought to Pakistan in order to enter into an arranged marriage. Although this was not the case with Misbah, her situation is typical of marriages that split under inter-cultural stress, leaving the children torn between two worlds.

    While I can understand the mother’s joy at getting her daughter back, I found her comment about the future saddening: “I want to tell her that it is all going to be okay — it’s all going to work out.” What disturbs me is that this, unfortunately, is not going to be the case, as Misbah is reported to be “devastated” by the ruling. When children are fought over, the problem is too deep to be solved — “worked out” — by a court order, and no matter who is supposedly to blame, leaves children with lasting scars and confused feelings.

The Great Divide

We fear going to the market. We fear going to work. We fear stepping out onto the street. Even at home we sit in fear.

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Displaced Iraqis: Shia family’s story

I hate using these terms, and I hate saying ‘Sunni’ and ‘Shia‘.

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Displaced Iraqis:Sunni family’s story

These two articles eloquently witness to the inside story of sectarian violence in Iraq right now. They approach the issue equally from both sides, with the histories of a Sunni family and a Shia family. In the first case (Shia), the Adnan family shop was blown up by terrorists, leaving them with no place to go but a camp, with no work or way of supporting themselves. The other family investigated (Sunni), were given threats of death if they didn’t leave within 24 hours. They fled in fear and were taken in by the inhabitants of the village of Adhamiya.

What unfolds through these articles is both shocking and heart-rending. Most striking is the fact that the two families underwent almost exactly the same thing. Both speak of living in fear of the armed terrorists who abduct members of the “other side”, murder them for no other reason than that they happen to belong to a different Islamic sect, and then leave their bodies in the dump for the relatives to find the next day. Initially my reaction to reading this was, “They’re all of the same religion! How can they justify doing this to each other (and even blowing up each other’s mosques)?” Then however, I got to thinking about The Troubles in Northern Ireland. There too, people of the same religion — Catholic and Protestant Christians — were killing each other in an endless cycle of tit-for-tat, eye-for-an-eye attacks. Just like with Jamal Anour (Sunni story, quoted above), in Ireland there were actually many people who hated the exaggerated sectarian divisions, but ended up getting involved in the conflict against their will. In the end, the violence continued for more than 30 years, because retaliation kept calling for retaliation. This is especially tragic because it gets senselessly perpetuated, as people are killed “for” each other. One song from the conflict in Ireland that I always thought expressed the situation very aptly is “There were Roses” by Tommy Sands (excerpt below):

“Allan was my friend,” he cried. He begged them with his fear,

But centuries of hatred have ears that cannot hear.

An eye for an eye was all that filled their minds

And another eye for another eye till everyone is blind.

 

 I hope that the killing in Iraq won’t continue in this way, but it certainly is saddening to read what a mess that country is in right now.

The Truth about the Minimum Wage

    In her revealing book, Nickel and Dimed: On (not) getting by in America, Barbara Ehrenreich explores the inside story of existing on the minimum wage.  In order to discover the realities of the low-wage lifestyle, she took some months out of her White-collar journalistic life to actually try it out.  Essentially, she experienced what it was like to be a “nobody”, discovering that our country has a huge gap between rich and poor, and is not as ‘classless’ as we would like to think.

    Starting out as a waitress, one of the first things she discovered was that she could legally (!) be paid only $2.13 per hour.  The theory behind this was that, as a waitress, she would “make up the rest in tips”.  However, as she soon discovered, a lot of the customers left disproportionately small tips, if any, and tended to treat her as someone who deserved her fate (as a low-wage laborer) and had most likely brought it on through some kind of “bad” behavior, “…as if they were confusing waitressing with Mary Magdalene’s original profession.”  Other slights she experienced were the way bosses rarely addressed their underlings by name, rather depriving them of their dignity by saying “Girl” or “Boy“, no matter what the person’s age was, and by how ordinary assumed privileges were not granted: “No chatting for you, girl!” 

    In a later job as a cleaning woman in Maine, Barbara felt the tacit social stigma of being “an untouchable [in] a supposedly caste-free and democratic society” because she worked as a kind of servant, and did “outcast’s work, invisible and even disgusting.”  The way people looked down on her and brushed her aside as unimportant says a lot about the prevailing attitudes that govern our country, where the worked-for live off the “blood, sweat and tears” of the workers.  One obvious example of this was when she tried to order iced tea at a diner (in her maid’s uniform) and “the waitress just kept standing there chatting with a coworker, ignoring my Excuse me’s“.  Also, her having the energy to work every day, was due — she realized — to the fact that she wasn’t really a minimum-wager; all the other women (and men) had already had their bodies ruined by the grueling repetitive motions of the work.

   As much as I am impressed by Ehrenreich’s investigative, real-life journalism, I was also shocked by her findings.  The capitalist system that we subscribe to runs at a considerable cost to human lives/the wellbeing of low-wage workers.  I think it is important to know the grim reality about what it takes to keep us fed and well supplied with consumer products, and to have our houses and hotels cleaned for us, and to realize that it is unacceptable to justify the way these laborers are treated by assuming that “it’s what they’re paid to do”.

Child Soldiers

Elements in the Sri Lankan military are helping a breakaway rebel faction to abduct children as soldiers to fight Tamil Tiger rebels

BBC NEWS | South Asia | Sri Lanka youth ‘seized to fight’

    This article puts forward the claim that Sri Lankan government troops assisted the “breakaway rebel faction” led by Col Karuna to forcibly abduct children.  These underage victims are being used by the faction to fight the Tamil Tiger Rebels as child soldiers.  Although the Sri Lankan government has vehemently denied recruiting children, claiming the allegations to be “completely misleading”, a senior UN official has said that there is “credible evidence that troops…rounded up children to fight with the renegade rebel Karuna group”.  A spokesperson from Col Karuna’s faction has also denied the charge, suggesting that the government security forces only “offered protection to children fleeing fighting with the rival Tamil Tigers”.

    Sri Lanka has a long record of strife with the Tamil Tigers, an ethnic group who is fighting for an independent homeland in the northeast of the country to escape alleged discrimination from the Sri Lankan Sinhalese ethnic majority.  Over the past years, the Tigers have several times been accused of recruiting underage fighters, as they sometimes “simply cannot get enough adults”.  Although they signed a treaty a year ago under which this practice would cease, there have since been 300 cases of abduction/recruitment (Sri Lanka’s Child Soldiers), indicating that children are still serving in rebel forces.  However, in a shockingly similar counter-move described in this article, the UN is accusing the government security forces of at least being complicit in the kidnapping of young teens to fight in Karuna’s splinter group, against the Tamil Tigers.

    If these allegations are true, they show a shocking episode of civilian (child) abuse by a government.  One thing that this suggests to me is that the conflict in Sri Lanka is getting out of control, if the government is so eager to strike back at the rebel Tigers that they (covertly) support oppositional factions in ways that exploit their own people.

   

Captives of Desire

    In her piece Hunger as Ideology, Susan Bordo explores the notion of ‘thin-female attractiveness’.  Rather than focusing on the widely discussed topic of the modern woman’s tendency to equate beauty with thinness, she looks deeper for the causes and psychological implications of this obsession, identifying the problem as a “long-standing, devastating ideology that has held women captives of their own desires”.   By examining ads from today, as well as looking to Victorian etiquette codes for historical reference, she comes up with an alarming proposal: the ‘perfect’ woman is one who is, essentially, void of desire.  Not only does she control her eating, but she does not even feel the need to eat — for her, it’s “no big deal”.  This projects an image of a cool, ‘in-control’ female who “is not starving herself (an obsession, indicating the continuing power of food), but neither is she desperately and shamefully binging in some private corner….She has achieved a state beyond craving”.  Clearly such a state is unimaginable, let alone unattainable for most (American) women.  Because the ideal is out of reach therefore, many females are haunted by a feeling akin to guilt — they know they need to be slender to ‘look good’, they are constantly trying to control their eating (and usually fail to do this as much as they would like), and as a result, they feel pressured to pretend that they are not hungry.

    This general attitude towards food plays into traditional perceptions of gender roles: the woman (specifically, the mother) is the one who provides the food — she is characterized as a giving individual who never needs someone to care for her in return.  On the other side of the cast is the male image of one who often expresses his masculinity by proving his appetite: “Men…are supposed to have hearty, even voracious, appetites…[and] it is a mark of the manly to eat spontaneously and expansively.”  Under ideological social constraints like this, it is hardly surprising why women find it so hard to fit the pattern, and all too often end up with an eating disorder caused by unconquerable feelings of inferiority.  Also in relation to these gender dualities, Bordo makes the connection between a craving for food and the sexual appetite.  While it is considered “appropriate, even adorable” for men to boldly express their desires, similar emotions would be considered “vulgar” in women, who traditionally are supposed to behave demurely or coyly, playing ‘hard-to-get’.  Ultimately, all these cultural expectations have a psychological effect on women, keeping them captive by the desires they are not allowed to express.

Tampering with Life

UK scientists have applied for permission to create embryos by fusing human DNA with cow eggs.Researchers from Newcastle University and Kings College, London, have asked the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority for a three-year licence.The hybrid human-bovine embryos would be used for stem cell research and would not be allowed to develop for more than a few days.But critics say it is unethical and potentially dangerous.

BBC NEWS | Health | Plan to create human-cow embryos

From the leading nation exploring stem cell research, scientists in UK laboratories claim to have found a viable alternative to using human embryos. Instead of destroying human embryos by extracting the stem cells, the Newcastle/King’s College scientists are proposing to “insert human DNA into a cow’s egg which has had its genetic material removed and then create an embryo by the same technique that produced Dolly the Sheep”. According to the researching team, who has applied for a 3-year license to test the procedure, this would enable them to learn what they can from animal eggs, “which are readily obtainable, before moving on to valuable human eggs when or if this becomes necessary”.

This attitude shocked me. Stem cell research is not a new debate, especially in this country, with conflicting opinions on all sides regarding the sanctity of life versus hope for victims of incurable diseases. Personally I am unable to support research that sacrifices human embryos, even those considered ‘superfluous’, for the sake of ‘miracle cures’ (for details about the dangers associated with these cures: Stem cell ‘wonder cures’ warning). However, what really strikes me about this proposed plan is the way it tampers with the most fundamental workings of human life. In the article, critic Calum MacKellar made the claim that “the research undermines the distinction between animals and humans and breaches human rights”. The problem as I see it is that in our modern world very few things are still respected as sacred: prospective parents can choose the gender of their child, babies judged as ‘undesirable burdens’ can be eliminated, and thousands of fertilized human eggs are used for medical research. While I would wish for a way to cure people with Parkinson’s or diabetes, I find it alarming, to say the least, that we are trying to “play God”, even going to such lengths as engineering hybrid human-bovine embryos. It certainly makes one fear for the future — what next?

Class Identity and the Politics of Dissent: A Commentary

    In this excerpt Julie Lindquist shares her experience of the “working class” as seen in the Smokehouse neighborhood bar.  Here she observes the conversation of the patrons, in particular the arguments of Jack, a garrulous regular.  Through writing about Jack, she raises an interesting point: argument can be used as a “performance…that allow[s] Smokehousers to experience cultural solidarity in expressions of difference”.  What she seems to be saying is that while Jack’s arguments may appear to be a sign of dissent (“expressions of difference”), they are essentially a declaration of commonly held values that give him and the other Smokehousers their class identity (“cultural solidarity”). 

    “Whether or not Smokehousers will tell you they are “working class,” they want you to know that they are people who work.”

    Coming from the working class, Jack — and the others — are primarily concerned with “people who work”.  This is a common bond they share because it is what their daily lives revolve around as they struggle to make a living as best they can.  It gives them a sense of dignity to identify themselves as people who support themselves in a concrete, “real” way, as opposed to politicians who just “talk about issues” and get “paid all the TIME!”  Clearly Jack, as representative speaker for the Smokehouse working class, has little use for this kind of politician.  The only presidential candidate he supports is Ross Perot, the Texas billionaire who “had a company that PAID people!” and who talks about introducing more jobs.  From Jack’s point of view, Perot is the only one who knows about the ‘real world’ and is therefore by far the most promising candidate — he will understand what is important to the people, by which Jack (perhaps subconsciously) means the working class.  Throughout the argument, no other point than this is ever really made.  Rather, he is using potential opposition (in the person of Julie) as a rationale for expounding his theories and stating the common working class outlook, while at the same time proving his own self-importance in having an opinion to discuss.  He is using argument to express “cultural solidarity” in a way that still preserves his individuality and makes him feel like an independent man, just ‘having his say’.

Blocking out Illegal Immigrants

Mexican officials have opposed the fence, with outgoing President Vicente Fox calling it “shameful” and likening it to the Berlin Wall.About 10 million Mexicans are thought to live in the US, some four million of them illegally.

BBC NEWS | Americas | Bush signs Mexico fence into law

    On Thursday, October 26, President Bush signed a bill proposing the construction of a 700-mile-long fence designed to “secure and modernize our Southern border”.  Basically, the aim here is to keep the illegal immigrants who are trying to enter the country from Mexico from doing so.  The response to this decision from the Mexican government was predictable — they condemned the move as “shameful”, and likened it to the Berlin Wall.  Even politicians from the various Mexican political parties have temporarily put aside their disputes, uniting in opposition to the proposed security fence.

    Clearly our government will have to deal with the issue of illegal immigrants in the USA sometime in the near future.  Today there are at least four million who live here illegally, constituting (in most cases) a significant percent of the low-wage labor force, and the number is growing almost everyday.  The issue that needs to be dealt with is the fact that there are a large number of people who are living unrecognized in our country, with no legal protection from abuse of any kind, or basic rights under the Constitution.  However, simply attempting to block out future illegal immigrants with an elaborate, expensive structure (the fence will be funded from the $1.2bn set aside for “homeland security”),  doesn’t seem to be a good long term solution.  For one thing, it will certainly strain relations with our neighbor, Mexico, who has already made it clear that it is offended by this idea, and may therefore be hesitant to ‘do its part’ by patrolling the border on its side.  Even many US Congressmen, while recognizing the need for some kind of action, don’t support the fence project, claiming that it will be ineffective.

    In defense of the bill, President Bush has stated that this “tightening of the border” will be “balanced with a temporary guest worker program and moves to grant eventual citizenship to some of the illegal immigrants already in the US”.  Maybe this kind of action would be the better thing to pursue…

The Scholarship Boy

“Scholarship boy: good student, troubled son.”

This quote encapsulates the dilemma that Rodriguez explores through his piece, The Achievement of Desire.  In it he tells how he discarded his heritage and the Mexican culture of his parents for the pursuit of an education.  Through examining his own development, he gives us a glimpse of what it means to be a “scholarship boy” — and what the costs are.

For much of his school days, Rodriguez was driven largely by a desire to please his teachers, because in his eyes, they were heroes who had found the keys to success, in contrast with his ‘uneducated’ parents, who spoke with an accent and worked low-paying jobs, at the mercy of their bosses.  Idolizing them, he imitated their actions and absorbed their ideas.  Having somehow discovered reading as crucial to advancement, he poured all his efforts into his books, at the cost of his family life.  These habits increasingly led to tension between him and his parents, who could not understand what he “saw in his books”, eventually resulting in a separation of home and school for him.  It is this separation, or dual identity, that Rodriguez sees as crucial; in choosing a life among books, the scholarship boy loses his most basic connection to the rest of humanity — his family — and ends up in self-isolation.

In denying his heritage, the scholarship boy suffers a certain loss of self.  His mind is crammed with the ideas of others, ready-made answers that he has absorbed in his dedication to books.  Although in class he is a ready speaker, he lacks originality and cannot give his own opinion on any one issue.  As Rodriguez puts it, “There is no simple map through the heart of a scholarship boy,” by which he means that the scholar has never taken time to figure himself out: he mechanically stores away opinions in order to parrot them back (e.g.. on a test), apparently afraid of trying to navigate his way through them, deciding for himself what’s important, and what he does or does not agree with.  Ultimately, this conflict is the problem that is bound up with the life of the scholarship boy — he is a “good student” that can give the ‘right’ answers, but as an individual, at home with his parents, he is the “troubled son”.