Journal of Global Affairs Spring 2011

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Journal of Global Affairs

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Letter from the Editors What is a global affair? As we all watched and perhaps participated in the protests across the Middle East, particularly Egypt, as well as the earthquake in Japan, we were experiencing global affairs. And these events, whose ongoing effects will be unfolding for many years, certainly took hold of the media and our imaginations. The Journal of Global Affairs is committed to providing a forum for discussions about these kinds of tremendous occurrences. In fact, this year’s Journal has a piece addressing the uprising in Egypt by NYU Assistant Professor Sinan Antoon whose research interests lie in pre-modern Arabo-Islamic culture as well as contemporary Arab culture and politics. This work is followed by responses from his students, in line with our dedication to providing students the opportunity to bring their thoughts out from classrooms into the wider community. As work in the classroom includes questioning such tremendous events, so too does it extend to many events and questions not as widely publicized. We are committed to providing a forum for these important discussions as well. We believe that the many workings of the world are worth investigating and understanding, so we seek to publish the best work that demonstrates the vastness of the possible answers to the question: What is a global affair? ‘International affairs’ has long been a term used to describe an approach to understanding the world through historical and economic lenses. This is an incredibly valuable way to investigate the systems and trajectories that contribute to a currently observable position. This year’s journal has excellent examples of this method including, for example, a comparative exploration into the implementations of participative employee strategies across nations and an assessment of the benefits of statelessness, temporal and geographical, in Somalia. In the word global, however, we hope to expand our scope to also include distinct but related approaches. These unique perspectives include: looking at sociology and psychology to understand gender inequality across cultures; investigating the relationship between the culturally particular and the universal in narrative, memory and policy concerning genocide; and documenting one’s experience of a place. These are all, we believe, valid and fruitful ways to approach the world. In publishing works that expand possible ways of thinking about worldwide situations, we also hope to expand possible ways of documenting and eliciting such thinking. Through poetry, narrative and photography, the dynamics in question find a deeper expressive power. As the world becomes more and more connected, the questions we find ourselves asking have less to do with individual or even interacting nations and instead with more broad, global solutions. In particular, as the well-being of the globe itself becomes of increasing concern and we begin to realize our connection to it, questions regarding our responsibility will expand as well. In this year’s Journal, one author addresses the question of environmental refuges in this changing world. We expect in years to come, these questions and many more will demand further creative, curious and investigative study. We thank the contributors to this year’s Journal of Global Affairs and hope that they inspire you, as they inspire us, to continue asking: What is a global affair?

Editor in Chief Sarah Zapiler

Executive Editor

Managing Editors

Jenna King Brill

Maggie Carter Laura Esposito Amanda Holpuch

Creative Director Sarah Zapiler

Associate Editors Colleen Veltd

Mary McCullough


Singing for the Revolution

Dr. Sinan Antoon

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Student Responses : Colleen Veldt and Mitchell Weaver

A Decomposing Castro

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Ambush

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Oppenheimer

Danny Herman

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Gender Inequality Spanning Cultures Through Triabalization: Tribal Afghanistan and Tribal American Mormons

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Patricia Guarch Wise

Drew McKenzie

Shana Oppenheim

From Dirt to a Dream

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Essays on Consumerism in Asia

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The Signs of Globalization

Leigh Rome

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Religion, National Identity and Education in the Islamic World: A Look at Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia

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Locura

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Contextualizing Genocide

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Peace and Quiet Emily Pederson

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Hugo Chรกvez, Chavismo and Rethinking Latin American Populism

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Olivia Jovine

Laura Esposito

Jenna King Brill

Emily Pederson

Julia Burnell

Darius Lerup


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It Was Just a Thought

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The Unmarketed Economy

42

Dreams of Ascension

44

Somalia and the Mixed Blessings of Anarchy

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Under the Influence: Patterns of Dependency in Latin American Development

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Identity

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La Bandera

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Protecting Rights and Promoting Development: Participative Management in Germany and Argentina

Andrew Boston

Yasmin Ogale

Jamie Denburg

Zachary Caceres

Maggie Carter

Drew McKenzie

Ana Radolinski

Paz Petersson Appendicies

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Ekphrasis

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Chaos and Cosmos: Madidi Park, Bolivia

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Eleuthera

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Environmental Refugee Status: International Reception of Climate Displacement

Drew McKenzie

William Roberts

Emma Young

Jacqueline Hall

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Notes

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Bios



Antoon| JGA

Singing for the Revolution Dr. Sinan Antoon This piece was originally published on Jan 31, 2011 as a blog post on Jadaliyya (www.jadaiyya.com) under the same title. Antoon is a co-founder and co-editor of Jadaliyya, an independent ezine produced by a network of writers associated with the Arab Studies Journal. Antoon is an editor of the Arab Studies Journal as well as Banipal and Middle East Report. Antoon is a published poet, novelist and translator and is an assistant professor at NYU’s Gallatin School for Individualized Study. So was it Wikileaks, Facebook, or Twitter? Perhaps all three contributed to the revolutionary winds in the Arab world? This is one of the questions repeated ad nauseam by a great number of commentators and parroted by many in the United States and elsewhere in the “civilized world.” Others wonder if perhaps it was Obama’s speech in Cairo or even the Bush doctrine (for Fox-infested minds and they are many). Yes, new technologies and social media definitely played a role and provided a new space and mode, but this discourse eliminates and erases the real agents of these revolutions: the women and men who are making history before our eyes. Members of our species have done that before, you know, before “Bookface” and “Kleenex” [Wikileaks] as Qadhdhafi calls them. In a very familiar gesture displaying the discursive cargo of colonial mentality, any positive phenomenon has to, somehow, be traced back to this or that white man (well, in Obama’s case, it’s a black man, but his words are white). As if the inhabitants of the region didn’t have a long history of struggles and revolts against all kinds of oppressors, indigenous, but mostly foreign colonizers (white men, by the way). As if liberationist inspiration has only one boring trajectory always emanating from the west and then heading east. As if the uprising in Iran wasn’t an inspiration as well. But why do I even have to expect the citizens of the civilized world to know about the strikes, riots, uprisings, intifadas and protests of previous decades. As if there wasn’t a proud and potent revolutionary tradition and a collective memory crowded with symbols, martyrs, moments, poems and songs about freedom and justice. One of the rallying chants in Tunisia was a line from the Tunisian poet Abu ‘l-Qasim alShabbi (1909-1934) “ If, one day, the people want life, fate must yield” Every literate Arab knows this line by heart. These new revolutions are spearheaded by a new generation and they already have their symbols and aesthetics. If Bouazizi’s self-immolation was the spark in Tunisia, the brutal beating to death of Khalid Said, a 28-year old man from Alexandria, at the hands of two undercover policemen back in June of 2010 angered many Egyptians and spurred

demonstrations. A few days before the Day of Anger last week, Said’s mother recorded a message that was posted on YouTube on January 23rd. She urged young Egyptians not to stay at home and to go out on January 25th and protest against injustice, emergency laws and torture and said she too would protest. Facebook has a number of pages for Khalid Said with clips and links, including one titled “We are all Khalid Said.” Two days ago, the great vernacular poet, Ahmad Fu’ad Nigm, was on al-Jazeera. He told the youth who had led the revolt: “Egypt is cleansing herself through you.” Nigm is one of those great symbols of resistance and opposition, not only for Egyptians, but Arabs. He’d been an outspoken critic of Mubarak and his regime and supported the various opposition movements that sprang in the last decade. In May of 2008, he recorded a YouTube message in support of a movement called “ Solidarity: Project Hope.” “A Message from The People's Poet, Ahmad Fu’ad Nigm" People of precious Egypt. Egypt is a bride, but it needs a groom. We all feel what we’re going through. I can’t imagine that anyone is thinking alone. We all have the same thoughts and have one concern. I recently received a piece of paper from a group of youth. May God save them and multiply their numbers. It fascinated me that there are people who think this way. They say that their project is called “Solidarity: Project Hope”. Let’s all get together, brothers, and forget about those in power. We have nothing to do with them. Let’s see why our country is drowning and how we can save it. What can we do? You will read the paper, of course, after these words. Whoever is in agreement, just give us your signature. Let’s act to save our country. Our country is drowning. Do we want to look

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JGA | Singing for the Revolution back and say: we wish what happened had never happened? No! It’s still in our hands. There are a lot of us. . . There are many of us. . . who love Egypt. Let’s see what we can do for Egypt. Let’s put our hands together in solidarity. I don’t know what this solidarity would look like? Like this? [clasps his hands] Let’s stands in solidarity to save our country and save the future of our children. And to save ourselves as well! (May 2008) Nigm is one of the greatest vernacular Arab poets of the 20th century. I came across one of his books when I was still a teenager back in Baghdad. The title was Ishi ya Masr (Egypt, Wake Up!). A few years later, like so many across the Arab world and beyond, I listened to his lyrics sung by al-Shaykh Imam (1918-1995), the blind musician, with whom Nigm formed an immortal duo. Their songs spoke to the struggles of the poor and the downtrodden and celebrated the spirit of resistance to dictatorship and imperialism. Imam would’ve been leading with chants these days at al-Tahrir Square, but he isn’t alive. His songs, however, are living and can be heard everywhere. The protestors in al-Tahrir Square are singing them as I write this. Imam’s comrade, Nigm, lived to see and take part in the revolution he wrote about for five decades. So many of Nigm/Imam’s songs are memorable and apt these days, but the determination and resilience of Egyptians these past few days reminded me of “Ana sh-Sha`b” (I am the People): I am the People I am the people, marching, and I know my way My struggle is my weapon, my determination my friend I fight the nights and with my hopes’ eyes I determine where true morning lies I am the people, marching, and I know my way I am the people. My hand lights life Makes deserts green, devastates tyrants Raising truths, banners on guns My history becomes my lighthouse and comrade I am the people, marching, and I know my way No matter how many prisons they build Mo matter how much their dogs try to betray My day will break and my fire will destroy Seas of dogs and prisons out of my way I am the people and the sun is a rose in my sleeve The day’s fire horses galloping in my blood My children will defeat every oppressor Who can stand in my way?

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I am the people, marching, and I know my way Another of Imam’s immortal songs is Unadikum (I Call on You). The words belong to the Palestinian poet Tawfiq Zayyad (1929-1994) and the peom’s title was that of Zayyad’s first collection, published in Haifa in 1966. When one of the Egyptians protesting outside the Egyptian embassy was asked what he wanted to say to Egyptians back home, he recited this poem: I Call on You I call on you I clasp your hands I kiss the ground under your feet And I say: I offer my life for yours I give you the light of my eyes as a present and the warmth of my heart The tragedy I live is but my share of your tragedies I call on you I clasp your hands I was not humiliated in my homeland Nor was I diminished I stood up to my oppressors orphaned, nude, and barefoot I carried my blood in my palm I never lowered my flags I guarded the green grass over my ancestor’s graves I call on you I clasp your hands

We all clasp your hands!


Veldt and Weaver | JGA

Student Responses to “Singing for the Revolution” Pioneers of Revolution in the Internet Age Colleen Veldt When I first read through this article, I sympathized with Antoon’s premise that the West is not the gatekeeper of revolutions in the Arab world. To claim that this wind of change has blown into the Middle East directly from the West discredits the efforts of the revolutions’ participants and ignores the history and political climate of the region. Additionally, to say that Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo or the Bush doctrine led to the Arab revolutions would also be a fallacy. However, Facebook and Twitter are not Obama and Bush. I feel as though Antoon is implying that these social networking websites and U.S. presidents are interchangeable because they are Western. This could not be further from the truth. Facebook and Twitter did play a role in the Arab revolutions, but that role was not inherently Western and does not in any way diminish what the people of these nations have been able to accomplish. Social networking cannot have an ethnicity because it is innately dependent on the individual user. This is a revolution of people who used social networking sites effectively, not a revolution brought on by Facebook. Employing the Internet to work for your cause is no small feat. In a world where everyone has a voice, what you say into that mouthpiece is a self-defining choice. The Arab revolutionaries deserve full credit for what they have accomplished politically and socially, and that includes giving credit for the compelling way tools like Facebook and Twitter were used to spread information, videos and inspiring words. Even more to their credit, they have been able to maximize this potential of connecting people to bring about incredible social change in a way that other young people in other areas have yet to do.

The Double Edged Sword of Social Media Mitchell Weaver Like many aspects of our lives that social media has had an effect on, when it comes to broadcasting the news and current events social media is a revolution into a new way of being informed, but it is also a desensitizer that weakens the

impact and realness of what is actually going on. College students and young people are not only the future, but as the revolutionaries in the Arab world have proven they are also the present. It only makes sense to reach youth – as well as others – through the social networking sites that they have come to depend on. Using these sites to post videos about revolution has been the best way for revolutionaries to spread their message to peers and sympathizers quickly, as well as an effective way to catch the attention of young people in other countries. Through these videos and Internet advocacy, we have been witness to a constant stream of information via social networking sites as well as the social media of news networks. In a way, the coverage of these protests and revolutions has been comparable to the revolution that took place in the United States during the Vietnam War. Like the “television war,” these protests are being brought to us through the outlet that we use for our news information. Unlike the television war, however, these images, posts and videos are being brought to us instantaneously. This is the first revolutionary event in history that is being digitized and spread through outlets and mediums such as Twitter, demonstrating how closely the world is connected. Newscasters are now Tweeting about their experiences in the foreign countries and posting their footage on various social media sites. Though the instantaneous spread of information is amazing, we cannot ignore the problematic side effects it comes with. Desensitization comes as a result of being tuned into social media literally almost all day. Yes, we are all aware of what is going on; we are plugged in and knowledgeable about the events taking place around the world, unless we are making an effort not to use the tools available to us. But except for those revolutionaries in the Middle East, we are not doing much about it (unlike the wide-eyed American youth of the 1960’s and ‘70’s). We have yet to experience the extent to which this desensitization will affect world events. American youth see images of the destruction taking place around the world, but we go on living our lives. We click out of that web page. We do not take the time to understand the origins or results of revolutions, we do not feel for the effort and sacrifice of the people whose faces we see on CNN’s news feed. It is amazing that we can be “plugged in” and seemingly know exactly what is going on and what is happening across the globe, but it is sad that we treat it like a television show; it is over when we turn if off. The credits roll, and we go on to the next big thing.

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JGA | A Decomposing Castro

A Decomposing Castro Patricia Guarch Wise

When Fidel Castro dies, when he really dies, when his flesh and bones – once filled with promise for the people on the 42,000 mile island south of the United States, and east of Mexico, in the Caribbean north of Jamaica and south of the Bahamas – are decaying and decomposing and turning to dust, eaten by bugs, by maggots and worms – Miami will be a party. Cubans dance to salsa music and shake their curvy Cuban butts that don’t fit in the straight cut jeans made for American girls. Cubans eat bistec empanizado and croquetas and empanadas and platanos and flan and tres leches and drink cortaditos and coladas and mojitos. Cubans talk so fast it sounds like they’re singing; less clean than Colombians, cleaner than Puerto Ricans. They forget the letter s, switch ch for sh, and sometimes leave out syllables. They do all this in Miami. When Castro dies, when he’s buried far, far in the ground, Miami will see a celebration like they’ve never seen. Like eighty Super Bowls or like two hundred Fourths of July or like twenty Macy’s Day Parades. For the past decade at the tiniest rumor, or lie or misunderstanding or exaggeration or word or indication that it could be true, Calle Ocho, home to hookers and home-made food, is flooded with MiamiCubans. The exiles. They wear flag beaded necklaces and painted faces and have boom boxes blaring Celia Cruz and booties shaking and mojitos and rum and Cokes flowing. There have been rumors regarding his death since 2006; five years and several false alarms later, the plans are in place for the real party. When Castro dies, his blood is drained from his corpse and pumped full of embalming fluid. He is buried with a face full of makeup to make him look like he is alive. They fill him with formaldehyde to disinfect him, keep him from spreading any more disease, and keep the proteins in his skin from swelling and blistering in decomposition. We consider this part of the grieving process. The prisoners of Cuba will probably have to pretend to pay their respects until he is safely underground, but in Miami they will publicly and promptly celebrate post-burial, his decay of figure and corpse. When Castro dies, my best friend’s parents, Lili and Julio, will be in the same room. They’re always in the same room. They are both exiles. Julio is a judge and Lili makes the best Cuban food in Coral Gables. Once, the pressure

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cooker exploded and formed a geyser in her kitchen so black and full it looked like smoke and she had to clean black beans off the ceiling crying. Lili will be pronouncing ships as chips and chips as ships and Julio will be telling her what he wants for dinner like a good Cuban man. Lili will call her three kids, Carlos, Katia and Lisa, the angels of her world, the focus of her Cuban mother neurosis, worse than Jewish mother neurosis, and shriek to them in Spanish to go to Calle Ocho. No matter how important it is, how life changing, how historic, she will tell them to be careful and ask who’s driving and tell her cuchitas her preciosas her entire vida to be careful. Because there’s already one important person in her life dead that day. When Castro croaks, when he’s crumbling in the ground, when he couldn’t recover from another heart attack or whatever, my brother, Jorge, will be thanking Buddha. He gave up on Catholicism or Christianity about two years into his thirteen year Catholic education, but he prays everyday for Castro to die before his graduation so that he can have days off of school. His Jesuit school is run by a priest who can’t speak English and an administration of only Spanish speakers and filled with enough first generation students to be in a Columbia University textbook as a case study of a school with disproportionate success rates for immigrants compared to the rest of the country. They take Latin American History as a mandatory class junior year, and the school anthem is in Spanish. The mascot is the Wolverine. The founders of the school, who brought it over from Cuba, wanted it to be the little wolves but they didn’t know how to translate it from Spanish to English properly and thought it was wolverine. At the games they cheer in Spanish “bombo chia chia chia,” and they’re better at baseball than football. When Castro is dead Jorge will have at least a week off of school while they wait for their world to settle, and he’ll hang on the beach or have an excuse to play a week’s worth of Rock Band. When Castro dies, when the bacteria that was eating the food in his intestines starts eating the intestines from inside his coffin, my father and mother will be the most Cuban they have ever been. My mom will probably be sitting at home watching Law and Order, maybe SVU. We used to


Guarch Wise | JGA have TiVo and OnDemand and all that good stuff until someone told my dad that they could hook him up with a stolen cable box so he wouldn’t have to pay for cable. They installed them in every TV in the house and now there’s no guide or menu or TiVo or OnDemand, and channels have started to disappear. It’s more primitive than basic cable. No matter how many channels disappear, there’s always Law and Order. A ticker tape announcing the breaking news will run across the bottom of the screen the same way it did when Princess Diana died. When Princess Diana died, I kept watching Family Matters; when Castro dies, everyone will get up. My dad will call her and the house phone will ring. The one next to the couch has a broken battery so she has to walk all the way to the kitchen. He’ll tell her he’s picking her up to go to Versailles, the Mecca of the Cuban community, a restaurant and bakery that takes up a full block of Calle Ocho. They will discuss how bad the parking will be and he’ll pick her up to go pretend to be Cuban. He was once called a Cubano arrepentido, or a man ashamed of being Cuban. He said he would be Cuban the day that Castro died. This is his big day. When Castro dies, and the graveyard shift doesn’t hear a bell ring, the Miami-Cubans can start to visit. Mami is Panamanian, but we eat our take-out from Versailles, and she’s been in Miami for forty-three years. She wants my brother and I to go to Cuba so we can understand what we’ve heard about forever, about the families on the island who owned all the juice or coffee or fabric or paper. These are things American children don’t understand – ownership. An island owned by families. But we’ve seen it in Panama; how they close the jewelry stores when my grandfather walks in, how the maids at the hotel know his name. But, no one else gets to see it because Cuba has been closed; not my boyfriend or his mom or my college roommate or her dad. When Castro keels over, his body will attract death flies and houseflies and blowflies and they will start to eat his flesh, and the parking lot at Versailles will be full. The Cuban restaurant and cultural hub of dominoes and conversations of coup d’états, is decorated like a French palace and filled with reporters from CNN, MSNBC, FOX, NBC, ABC, CBS, CW and, of course, Univision and Telemundo. They’ve rented out parking spaces for the vans of the major news outlets years before. My boyfriend’s mom, a Spanish news anchor for Univision, who was friends with Gloria Estefan in high school, will be there interviewing my college roommate, Alex. Alex is Princess Versailles; her father inherited the restaurant from his father. Alex used to be a fat girl from eating too many pastelitos and medianoches, but she got skinny and now she wears spandex. No matter how skinny she gets, she can’t get rid of her curves. Alex will be wearing a tight Dolce and Gabbana dress. They are Miami pseudo-celebrities celebrating together with the rest. When Castro dies, gases including hydrogen sulfide,

methane, cadaverine and putrescine will be released by the bacteria and omit putrid smelling liquids. Tata is in her bata de casa, her house robe. She is wearing the everyday garb of a Cuban grandmother, even though she isn’t my Cuban grandmother. I don’t have a Cuban grandmother, but I have Tata, my cousin’s Cuban grandmother. Tata will probably be putting water in her husband Tuto’s whiskey and giving it to him while he smokes Marlboro Reds in the garage, in his house across the street from Julio and Lili’s house. Tata has been waiting for Castro to die for my entire lifetime. She left and rebuilt and re-conquered and lives in a two-story house from which she’ll celebrate her dictator dying with her husband of fifty-four years. When Castro dies, though no one knows when exactly that will be, no one will know what to do. Lili and Julio will worry about their kids drinking too much at Versailles, and Lisa, Katia and Carlos probably will drink too much. Jorge will drive to Best Buy and stock up on video games for the next week so that he can keep busy while his school’s administration recovers. When they start school again, the boys will come back in their navy blue and white uniforms, and the teachers will continue to threaten them by yelling Spanish profanities at them. My mom will still sit in her living room in Coral Gables, Florida, with no aspiration to move to Oriente, Cuba and soon an episode of Law and Order will pop up that is based on a shooting, or scandal, or some other semi-fictional spin off of some event that happened as a result of this huge political change, so close to America, and Miami and New York, which will most certainly cause enough controversy to have an episode based off of it. If Anna Nicole Smith did it, Castro can too. My Dad will feel no more Cuban because he is dead. It’s possible that he will feel less Cuban, that his connection was to the culture that was a result of this man, to the croquetas that he can pick up at a cafesito window before work and not to the island; the translation of the exile culture to America, not really the culture itself. We’ll go visit. Americans will visit. If the borders open, when the borders open, they’ll go the way they do now. They’ll say, “Oh, mercy me, just look at all the old cars. It’s just like being in the fifties. Isn’t it so cute dear?” But the Versailles celebrators will know that the Cadillac with parts from the 1950s and the record players are sad. And the tourists will snap pictures and perhaps pledge to preserve the history, to keep it so cute, but anyone from Versailles will not. Because the only reason Cuba is aesthetically so cute is because it’s communist. They will surely celebrate at Versailles, but after that – they will wait. They will probably want to go back, but they won’t, not right away. Because after Fidel Castro is dead, when his body is made-up and pumped and gassed and crumbling, there is still another Castro.

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Ambush Drew McKenzie

Having just drank a Turkish coffee, I walked down a wide street with commercial storefronts and trolley cars. Much like in SoHo, the streets were crowded with unaware tourists and unenthusiastic locals, everyone together but alone. Without warning, clapping and whistling began to grow all around me. The monotony of street life was drowned out by the beat of hands clapping and whistles that had been distributed. The abrupt awakening transformed into a parade, where pink balloons appeared by the thousands. A large number of balloons were being marched down the block, while thousands more were released from rooftops onto the crowd below. The whistles and clapping had mutated into piercing bangs as the crowd stomped and popped the pink balloons that now came up to their waists. The public was amazed by the delightful ambush. Children wildly popped the balloons while music played. It was like a serene war zone. The group responsible for the surprise parade was a young organization attempting to elevate public happiness and well-being in Istanbul. Within twenty minutes, street sweepers had removed all the deflated balloons shards, the whistling had ceased and the event had passed.


Oppenheimer Danny Herman The atom will yield its secrets to you the kaleidoscope of fission under blue eyes. Rooms of fine modern art empty like Nagasaki, what do we all see in photographs? Desolation they became caves of echoes centuries old. Tears echoing forward through childhood photographs and photographs of you in New Mexico. And photographs. But what do these say about you in ponderance of destruction and death? You who loved the basin and range of deserts, you as nature’s antithesis—your brain was a wave that cleared the moss of the rock, it hit so hard. How can photographs iterate the wiring of your psyche? The unwiring of thousands of psyches, lives, eyes. Destroyer of worlds, the snipping of the wiring in a bright death.

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JGA | Tribalization

Gender Inequality Spanning Cultures Through Tribalization: Tribal Afghanistan & Tribal American Mormons Shana Oppenheim

When it comes to gender inequality, the American public ranks the “Muslim World” at the bottom of the list, but at the top of their priorities. From a gender education gap of nearly zero percent between men and women in Iran (incidentally the same as the U.S.’s gender gap in higher education) to women in Pakistan needing a 73 percent increase in women’s education to equal that of men, there is a vast range of both gender equality and the perceptions of gender equality in the Muslim World.1 A fundamental question exists: What is causing different levels of gender equality between Muslim nations, when majorities in many Muslim countries believe women should enjoy the same fundamental rights as men?2 This paper will compare Tribal Afghanistan to Tribal Mormonism in America on the topic of gender inequality in relation to the theory of tribalization.i It will consider the interaction between modern states and tribes as a primary causal mechanism in the process of tribalization, and it will make the conclusion that tribalization causes gender inequality. The first section of this paper will look at the evolution of human society as a sociological justification for the theory that tribalization is the primary cause of gender inequality. The second section will compare the case studies of tribal Afghanistan with that of tribal Mormons in America to assess the validity of state and tribe interactions in tribalization theory as the causal factor in gender inequality in societies that fit the model. If the theory of tribalization holds true, this paper will show that the conflict between the purest form of social grouping, the tribe, and the evolving forms of society, the state, created a psychological group effect called tribalization which resulted in a shift from what was essentially an egalitarian society to a gender repressive society.

i Tribalization is defined by Whitehead (1993) as existing “in situations where state form or expand, that this process is resisted by some sections of an ethnic group and not by others, and that the resistant groups then go on to become (or remain) ‘tribal,’ at the periphery of the state.”

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Theory Tribalization, as used in this paper, is a combination of sociological developmental theories and the psychological effects of group consciousness that are brought about by contact between the state and the tribe. The psychological process of group consciousness radicalization that occurs in the conflict between the tribe and the state is tribalization. The stages of social development, although they vary according from author to author, are generally separated into four stages. Although these stages are inherently flawed because of imperfections in demarcation as well as the lack of homogeneity among the groupings,3 defining the tribe and the state coherently from a historical basis will later help in comparing this paper’s case studies. The first of these stages, called ‘bands,’ is the earliest of human grouping comprised of anywhere from five to eight people who, as a rule, are extended relatives.4-5 Bands exist where there are not enough dense local resources to permit many people to live together. Labeled the original egalitarian society by many social theorists, bands do not contain the formal social stratification of leadership or a monopoly of decision-making power. At the most basic unit of social organization, then, gender inequality is an almost zero-sum situation.6-8 In terms of gender equality models, the band is the theoretical ideal that can never be recreated in modern societies. The next tier up the social evolutionary ladder is the ‘tribe.’ In historical terms, tribes began to emerge around 13,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent. A tribe consists of 100 to 200 members that have moved beyond the extended family structure of the band to a slightly more formalized clan-based relationship. Generally they have a settled location and more than one formally recognized kin group. In a tribe, land and other possessions belong to particular clans and not to the whole tribe.9-11 Early tribes were egalitarian to an extent. It is important to note that women were not inherently at a disadvantage or repressed. Tribes usually had a merit based leadership position or council, although the position of leader was codified.12 The modern tribes in this paper’s case studies most closely resemble


Oppenheim | JGA ancient tribes with a “big man” as the leader. Around 5,000 BC in the Fertile Crescent, chiefdoms, the next stage of social development between tribes and states, began to emerge. Chiefdoms consisted of several thousand to several tens of thousands of people who were most notably not related. The massive gap in size between the populations of a tribe and a cheifdom caused a problem where strangers fell under the same authority. The solution was the development of a Chief, who exercised a monopoly on authority, and had the right to use force and information to control the population.13 States began to appear in Mesopotamia about 2,000 years after chiefdoms first arose. From around 3,000 BC until just over 1,000 years ago in West Africa, states evolved from chiefdoms to become the largest and most modern form of society.14-16 States evolved from chiefdoms but consisted of far larger populations. Information was confined to an elite few, and control was centralized and monopolized. Extreme economic specialization became the norm, and a multilayered bureaucracy arose as a necessity in order to maintain control over a much larger population. The state was, fundamentally, different from all earlier forms of society in that it was organized on political and territorial lines instead of kinship lines.17-20 In terms of gender inequality, the early state saw some of the largest gaps between the social status’ of men and women. In the U.S. it took 144 years for women to get the vote. In 1776 Abigail Adams famously pleaded in her letters to John Adams, “I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power in the hands of Husbands.”21 Today, women are still paid on average 77 cents to every dollar that men earn.22 Yet through the mechanism of democracy, which is only possible through the state structure, women have earned the same rights as men. While some of the originally egalitarian tribes have maintained a near-equal status for men and women, other modern tribes have become some of the most unequal societies in the world. The tribe and the state are polar opposites in terms of human organizational structures. It then follows logically that conflict would arise between these two frameworks when they co-exist within the same societal boundaries.23-25 In general there are two theories on how and why tribes are formed when they come in contact with a state. The first is that warfare is the primary force of tribal formation. The argument goes that modern tribes are a reaction to state intervention, particularly colonial state intervention, into societies that would have naturally evolved from band to state of their own volition with far fewer tribal outliers.26 The second theory argues that intensifying contact between various autonomous kin groups is the primary force for tribal formation. This theory of tribal formation is more grounded evolutionarily and is a realistic look at how society

progresses. But the tribes that experience tribalization are those that form either from within the state in resistance to it or those that are already in existence and reinforced by state force. Thus for the purposes of this paper, the theory of conflict in modern tribal formations is more accurate. It is important to keep in mind that not all tribes are formed through conflict with the state, nor are all tribes unable to reconcile their tribal identity with that of the state.27 Psychologically a society defines itself by two broad categories: internal and external. Essentially the individual must be aware that (s)he belongs to a group. Once the member is aware that (s)he belongs, then (s)he evaluates this membership and places some sort of value connotation on participating. Finally, the individual member associates an emotional utility with belonging to the group. This is bolstered by the external processes labeling them as part of this group. An outside consensus that the group exists is critical to psychologically belong to a coterie.28,29 The formation of group identity has often been compared to the cognitive process of stereotyping.30-37 Members of a group stereotype not only their adversaries or the outside world, but also themselves. Members of both tribes and states, and indeed of any type of social group, form an identity for themselves that they then are able to tie to their membership. That membership psychologically oversimplifies themselves and the opposition in a process similar to that of stereotyping, which reinforces the group membership. 38-45 Out of this mindset, women within the group begin to be defined by traditional, and thus subservient, roles. Additionally, the tribe has an incentive to portray the women of the out-group in a negative light (as they are portraying everything of the out-group in a negative light in order to codify their own in-group status). In contrast to the modern state, where there is greater gender equality, the modern tribe takes the opposite view point and begins to justify the repression of women. There are two schools of thought regarding how outgroup members are stereotyped and in turn stereotype other groups: based on individuals non-typical or typical to the group. The first, supported by the works of Rothbart et al. in their article “From Individual to Group Impressions: Availability Heuristics in Stereotype Formation,” holds that out-group members can identify groups negatively by the actions of a few individuals, thus reinforcing in-group stereotyping and membership.46 The second school of thought holds that groups can only be stereotyped (by the out-group) by the actions of their individual members if those individual members are typical of the group, thus reinforcing the process of group psychology. In the book, Intergroup Relations: Essential Readings, authors Michale A. Hogg and Dominic Abrams make this case based on works by Johnston and Hewstone.47 In cases of realistic contact between in and out-group members, typical members of both groups are associated

9


JGA | Tribalization with negative attributes to the detriment of their interaction. In both of these arguments it is clear that psychological group formation occurs because of how individuals are perceived when their group interacts with other societal formations. Where there is contact with an outside, opposing or different group, there tends to be the development of a more positive self-view and a more negative view of others. The stereotyping goes both ways and is reinforced by contact with individuals of the group, whether typical or atypical.48-50 Conflicts over status, or other scarce resources, often precipitates a greater psychological group effect. Scarce resources can refer to land or food in less economically developed situations or to non-material resources of rank, status and prestige. When the norms of the social situation encourage and legitimize this competition, there is more of a tendency to express in-group preference.51 When there is already a basis for competition over the scarce resources of status and physical gains between the in-group and the outgroup, there is more incentive for tribe members, already stereotyping “their women” as the opposite of modern state women, to decrease the status of women in order to eliminate some of the competition for limited resources such as status and jobs. Tribalization is the extreme of these in-group preferences. It is the general contact with an out-group that provokes an inward spiral of group psychology in the individual members, and a disinclination to assimilate into a larger group. It is a perfect storm of stereotyping which leads to adverse reaction against the modern gender equality among the sexes present in the state as well as stereotyping of intra-group demarcations, most notably that of women into traditional roles. It leads to conflict over scarce resources (both the material and non-material) which result in women competing with men over status and jobs in a climate already predisposed by stereotyping to justify gender inequality. Tribalization leads directly to the repression of women.

Experiment & Methodology To test whether tribalization is the causal factor in gender inequality in modern tribal societies, this paper compares two case studies from two different models of states and two different cultures to avoid the culture bias claim. For the test case of Tribal Mormons in the U.S., this paper will look at the town of Colorado City/Hildale (which for the purposes of this paper will be referred to as Colorado City) spanning the Arizona/Utah border. The towns contain a combined population of about 5,000 people, almost all of who are members of the Fundamentalist Church of the Latter Day Saints.52-53 The second test case is the Ghilzai Pashtun Tribe in Afghanistan. A historically tribal group, the Ghilzai are part

10

of the ethnic ruling Pashtun Tribe but part of the nomadic poorer subset that is concentrated mainly in the south and east of Afghanistan.54-56 Since it is difficult to find data on this nomadic tribe, a group that often distrusts outsiders, this paper will concentrate on the data that does exist on the four provinces that have the highest concentration of Ghilzai: the Paktika, Zabul, Ghazani and Paktya provinces.57-58 The application of the theory of tribalization as the causal factor in gender inequality makes two assumptions. First, the modern tribe must be in interaction with a state, whether on the borders of an undefined state (as in Afghanistan and the Federally Administered Tribal lands that fall between Pakistan’s western and Afghanistan’s southeastern borders) or inside of a clearly defined state (as in the case of Tribal Mormons living in the U.S., although the argument can be made that their extended tribal ties stretch to communities across parts of Mexico and Canada).ii Second, this modern tribe must be in the process of resisting the state influence, not integrating as in the studies of West Indian and Asian children in Britain done by Mullin (1980) as well as Davey and Norburn (1980). This resistance, which this paper classifies as tribalization, is the causal factor in gender inequality in cases that fit this model. The independent variable in this study is whether or nor the two case studies fit within these two assumptions: interaction with a state and tribalization. This can be measured by looking at the history and sociological makeup of the two case studies. The dependant variable is the presence of severe and measurable gender inequality. This can be measured from the limited data available on these two societies and how they treat their women. Specific indicators of this inequality fall under the two categories of education level and marriage age. The history of the mainstream Mormon Church is one of a separatist society trying to flee the state in order to preserve its way of life but eventually succumbing to the pressure to integrate.59 Whitehead (1993) gave three options for tribal societies coming into contact with the State: assimilation, destruction or tribalization.60 The Colorado City Mormon Tribe belongs to The Fundamentalist Church of the Latter Day Saints (FLDS) which broke off from the mainstream Church of the Latter Day Saints primarily over the issue of polygamy. Mainstream Mormons deny that Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, practiced polygamy and was married to at least 33 women and probably as many as 48. Polygamy was one of the sacred credos of the early Mormon Church, canonized as Section 132 of The Doctrine and Covenants, one of the three holy books of the Mormon faith.61 ii An estimated 30,000 to 100,000 members of the Fundamentalist Church of the Latter Day Saints polygamists live in a swath from Canad down to Mexico. Since 1830 more than two hundred schismatic sects of Mormons have slit off from the main church (Krakauer, 2003, p. 6).


Oppenheim | JGA After Smith was murdered by an Illinois mob in 1844, Brigham Young became the leader of the Church and led the Saints to what would become Utah, where they established a colony that embraced polygamy.62 The persecution of early Mormon society continued with the Utah War in 1857, when President James Buchanan sent the U.S. army to invade Utah to put a stop to polygamy. The war was unsuccessful, but in 1887 the Edmuns-Tucker Act was introduced which would disincorporate the Mormon Church and forfeit their property, worth more than $50,000, to the Federal Government if they did not renounce polygamy.63 In his book Under the Banner of Heaven Jon Kraukuer defined the choice they faced: Mormon Fundamentalists...believed that acceptance into the American mainstream came at way too high a price. They contend that the Mormon leaders made an unforgivable compromise by capitulation to the U.S. government on polygamy over a century ago. They insist that the Church sold them out -- that the LDS leadership abandoned one of the religion’s most crucial theological tenants for the sake of political expedience.64

The early Mormon Church faced a dilemma: assimilate, be destroyed or tribalize. Mainstream Mormonism assimilated, while the Mormon fundamentalist groups (including the FLDS church) tribalized. Colorado City is home to a FLDS tribe that split from the main LDS church in the 1920s. A few dozen families left the LSD church and set up a community in a back country stretch of the Arizona strip that is cut off from the rest of the state by the 277-mile-long Grand Canyon. It fiercely resists the influences of the state, demonizing the outside world and defying one of the U.S.’s most basic creeds by practicing polygamy. Residents of Colorado City are forbidden to watch television, read newspapers or have contact with people outside of Colorado City including family members who have left the Church. Krakauer articulates their situation: “They live in this patch of desert in the hope of being left alone to follow the sacred principle of plural marriage without interference from government authorities or the LDS Church.”65 The United Effort Plan, the business name of the FLDS, owns all of the church assets and all of the land in the town under the direction of Uncle Rulon, the prophet and leader of the society and the governing board of all male Church elders.66 Uncle Rulon has married at least 75 women and fathered more then 65 children. Some of his wives were given to him when they were 13 or 14 by their fathers.

All of the public officials in the town are FLDS members. Every city employee, the superintendent of the school and the police force answer solely to Uncle Rulon, effectively cutting the town off from outside influence.67 Sam Roundy, Colorado City’s police chief asserted, “What goes on in our homes here is nobody’s business”.68 Colorado City is a modern tribal society that has gone through the process of tribalization in its interaction with the state. It has physically and mentally isolated itself from mainstream society by cutting off contact and flouting its laws against polygamy. It has a history whereby the choice between assimilation, destruction and tribalization plays a large part in its societal myth. There is a documented pattern of abuse in Colorado City. Frequently married early and against their will, it is not uncommon for women, girls in truth, to be raped by their fathers or brothers at an early age before being given to an elder of the city as a wife.69 The son of Mayor Barlow of Colorado City molested five of his daughters over a period of ten years. Charges were never brought against him in the closed society of the tribe. Ruth (only first names are given to protect identities), the wife of a Colorado City police officer, was given to him when she was 16 years old. She was one of the few women that managed to escape and press charges. But the community rallied around her husband, and when it came time to bring him to court, Ruth backed down under the pressure of her tribe.70 Stories like those of Ruth and the granddaughters of Mayor Barlow are far too common in Colorado City. On May 3, 1987 Ruby was born in Colorado City. She was 14 when she was discovered kissing a boy she liked. For this she was forced to wed an older man and was raped so brutally that she spent her wedding night hemorrhaging blood. She fled to her brother’s house, but in May of 2001, she was allegedly abducted by members of the FLDS Church and brought to her stepfather’s house, the second councilor to the prophet of Colorado City. At 16 Ruby gave birth to a child, and since the summer of 2001, nobody outside of Colorado City has heard from her. In the view of anti-polygamy activist Lorna Craig: Ruby Jessop was born into a polygamous community that has been allowed to break state and federal laws with impunity for many decades.... because the mayor, the police, and the judge in Colorado CityHildale are themselves polygamists who are absolutely obedient to the prophet, there is “nowhere for victims of abuse to turn... I would say that teaching a girl that her salvation depends on her having sexual relations with a married man is inherently destructive... a crime, not a religion.71

11


JGA | Tribalization The stories of abuse in Colorado City are indicators of extreme abuse, but on a day-to-day basis there is also more subtle gender inequality. In Colorado City the percentage of women with a bachelors degree is an average of seven percent compared to the national average of 24.4 percent.72 This could be attributed to state averages. Both Arizona and Utah have high Mormon populations. According to the Association of Religion Data Archive, Utah is ranked first for the most mainstream LDS congregations while Arizona is ranked fourth.73 The estimated total percentage of FLDS members in Utah as of 2003 is around 1.126 percent. So FLDS members make up a statistically insignificant percent of the total population of Utah, and according to the Association of Religion Data Archive, Utah’s percentage of those above 25 who are college educated is 27.9 percent, well above both the level of Colorado City and the national average.74-75 It is evident that Colorado City has a much lower than usual rate of higher education among the whole population and especially among women. The second measure of gender inequality falls under the broad category of marriage. There is no data on the age of marriage for women in polygamous unions in Colorado City and state-wide. The mean ages for these marriages are not calculated because of the illegality of the unions. This paper substitutes the average household size in Colorado City as a possible indicator for large families and evidence of the early polygamous unions Krakauer shows are occurring. In Colorado City the average household size is 7.81.76 When compared to the average household sizes of 3.14 for Utah, 2.59 for Arizona and a national average of 1.7, it is clear that the households in Colorado City contain a far higher number of residents.77-78 This suggests higher birthrates over the long term, which may lead to fewer educational opportunities for women. So for the case study of Mormon Fundamentalists in the U.S., it is clear that tribalization is a causal factor in gender inequality and even abuse. However, the effect could be argued to be produced by the unique tribal situation or the impact of an individual culture. To counter this argument, the next case study is set in tribal Afghanistan. Afghanistan has been characterized by many as a “peasant-tribal society.”79 Only 12 percent of Afghanistan’s land is arable, and less than a quarter of that can hold a permanent crop. Given the geographic and climate realities of this region, population dispersion is naturally preferred over centralization. Anthropologically there are two typical types of settlement patterns: the nuclear clusters around

12

villages or the linear settlements along waterways and other vital routes such as roads. Afghanistan’s population is distributed in the nuclear pattern. The population is clustered around the cultivated pockets of Kabul, Kandahar, Mazar-i Sharif and Herat.80 This anthropological climate allows easier formation of isolated tribes on the edges of the societies that defy the highly centralized government. The stage is set for the formation of tribes. Afghanistan is a heterogeneous country with 21 different identified ethnicities. The Tajik, Uzbek and Turkomen ethnic groups straddle the borders of their respective homelands north of the Hindu Kush Mountains that bisect the country from east to west. The Hazaras and some of the smaller ethnic groups have settled into the valleys of those mountains. The tribe that is the case study for this comparison is the Pashtun tribe, mostly located south of the Hindu Kush Mountains.81 The Pashtun represent the largest tribal entity in Afghanistan, and within it the Ghilzai federation of Pashtun has the strongest tribal institutions. Ideally a Pashtun tribe features egalitarian, democratic decision making through jirgah councils.82 The four provinces that contain the greatest population of the Ghilzai federation of Pashtun are Paktika, Zabul, Ghazani and Paktya.83,84 The Ghilzai Pashtun are a good case study because they are not of the dominant Tajik ethnicity that rules in Kabul, but they are part of the Pashtun ethnicity that composes most of Kandahar, one of the most secessionist and anti-state provinces in the country.85 Most political scientists agree that modern Afghanistan is composed of two types of societies: modern, those that are clustered around city centers, and tribal, those that are spread through the rest of the country. Where experts disagree is on the role that tribes play in the overall society. Bernt Glatzer (2008) argues that economics and close kinship overshadow the role of the tribal system while Kenneth Christie (2008) argues that common kinship, language, self-sufficiency and mythology create a stronger tribe that is better able to resist state influences. Christie’s tribe is also defined as having a high degree of internal conformity and little tolerance for outsiders.86 Both, however, agree that tribes in Afghanistan have been encouraged by the modern history of a weak state and the influence of foreign state apparatus.87 Whereas the FLDS members reacted against a state already in place and tribalized based on a history as a separate community, the Ghilzai federation of Pashtun have been in and out of control of Afghanistan for centuries, competing with the Durrani Pashtun and other groups for


Oppenheim | JGA dominance.88 Having established that both case studies fulfill the independent variable criteria of interacting with the state and tribalization, we can now examine the dependant variable. Since 1959 growing numbers of women in Afghanistan, mostly from urban backgrounds, have been joining the public arena, participating in politics and working. Gender reform was first officially introduced in the 1964 Constitution, which enfranchised women and guaranteed them the right to education and work. Although statistics showed by 1978 that women were joining the workforce, only about eight percent of the female population of Afghanistan received an income. Under the Taliban, a mostly rural Pashtun group, conservative mujahidin leaders repealed the gains made by women up until that point.89 Following the Taiban, major strides have been made in improving women’s rights including the passage of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in 2004. Under the second chapter of the new constitution, Article 22 states that “the citizens of Afghanistan - whether women or men - have equal rights and duties before the law”.90 A recent Environics survey showed that a majority of Afghans believed that the situation of women in their country had improved dramatically since the Taliban was deposed. 75 percent of women in Kandahar, the mainly Pashtun (but not Ghilzai Pashtun) province, believe that they are better off today than they were under the Taliban.91 Although the overall situation in Afghanistan for women’s rights is still deplorable, the situation within the four provinces inhabited by the Ghilzai Pashtun are worse. The Paktika, Zabul, Ghazani and Paktya provinces that contain the largest percentage of Ghilzai Pashtun (although it is difficult to count them because of their nomadic nature) are ranked 20th, 21st, 14th and 10th respectively out of the 32 key provinces in Afghanistan for women’s rights. In Paktika and Zabul provinces, 5.7 percent and 1.4 percent of girls, respectively, attend primary school as compared to the national average of 63 percent. In Paktya, Ghazani and Zabul the female literacy rate is three, nine and five percent, respectively, as compared to a sub-par national rating of 29 percent.92 Although gender equality in Afghanistan is among the worst in the world, within the country the regions which the Ghilzai Pashtun inhabit have some of the worst records. A history of traditional tribalism, exacerbated by multiple instances of state interference, has caused extreme tribalization in this region and the results can be seen in the horrific record for gender equality.

Findings and Limitations At the start of this paper, I posited that tribalization is the causal factor in gender inequality in instances that fit the model. In order to fit the model, the society in question must have undergone a process of tribalization when it came in contact with a state. Qualitatively, both the FLDS community of Colorado City and the four provinces inhabited by the Tribal Ghilzai Pashtun fit the required model of having undergone tribalization. However, this tribalization occurred in two different manners. Colorado City separated from within a state apparatus when they faced the choices of assimilation, destruction or tribalization. The Ghilzai Pashtun have been a formalized tribal society for centuries and have sometimes formed the coalition necessary to control the region. In their current iteration, they are a fiercely nomadic tribal society that has undergone repeated contact with states, both internal and external, and radicalized as a result. Additionally, both cases showed extreme instances of gender inequality satisfying both the independent and dependant variables necessary to validate the theory. Although this author is confident in the causal logic this paper takes, the data to prove the theory beyond a shadow of a doubt does not yet exist. To quantitatively prove the theory of tribalization as causing gender inequality, statistics would be needed on the long term effects of tribes in contact with the state and the way the treatment of their women has evolved. Also, more than two case studies is preferred with the condition that at least one or two of the cases not have instances of strong religious associated within the tribe in order to avoid the confounding effect of religion. Further research is required in this area.

Conclusion The original theory of this paper was that tribaliation is the causal mechanism of gender inequality in modern tribes. Although the theory holds for these case studies, a lack of data as well as a necessity for more case studies and the possibly confounding effect of religion make it difficult to authoritatively say that tribalization is the sole cause of gender inequality in modern tribes. But it can be confidently stated that tribalization is a causal theory in the creation of gender inequality in modern tribes. Understanding the underlying causes of gender inequality in these modern tribes may help create lasting solutions to the problems these women face.

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From Dirt to a Dream Olivia Jovine

This timeline is a road map (pun intended) to America’s highway history and the correlated growth of the auto industry. The timeline begins in year 1900 and ends in year 2000. In 1910 there were only ten miles of paved road, making it very difficult for cars to navigate the system. In the early 1900s roads were still primarily traveled with horse drawn carriages. In 1919, Second Lieutenant Eisenhower joined a military cross-country convoy; the trip took 2 months and averaged about 50 miles a day. Clearly, America’s roads were dangerous, unpaved and difficult to navigate. This convoy served as Eisenhower’s inspiration for the Federal Highway Act. The Federal Highway Act was first brought to congress in 1921 by the Bureau of Public Roads, where it failed due to lack of funding. It then reemerged in 1938 with the addition of a toll-financed system and introduction of the super highway; but the act failed once again. Only in 1952 was Eisenhower’s Federal Highway Act successfully passed, partially due to the joint ‘Federal-Aid Highway Act’ that proposed funding solutions. The primary motivation for building a federal highway system was to promote national security for the Unites States. After the act was passed, Eisenhower and members of congress proceeded to develop the national highway system. 1952 also marked the explosion of the auto industry, measured in number of cars owned by Americans. My conclusion is that this is no coincidence, and that the development of the Federal Highway System spurred the American dream to own and drive cars.

10 Miles of National Mileage Surfaced

23% of National Federal Highway Act of 1921 the Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) gave support for states to build a two-laned, paved interstate highway system

Office of Road Inquiry (ORI) within the Department of Agriculture; Responsible for the development and promotion of new rural roads.

1910

1908 Henry Ford introduced the Model T. It was affordable, efficient and popular

1919 Eisenhower (Second Lieutenant) began thinking about the nation’s road system when he joined a cross-country military convoy that took two months at an average of 50 miles a day

20

WWI

1916

"The Big Three" auto companies of General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler emerged

Urban Expansion: for the fist time in American history more people live in cities than in rural communities

8,000

7,500,000

3,500,000

387,000 Miles

of National Mileage Surfaced

30

The Great Depression

1908 - 1916

Number of Cars Owned By Americans

The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1938 called on the BPR to study the feasibility of a toll-financed system of three E - W and three N - S superhighways

Mileage Surfaced

40

The Ford Model A Sedan

Military Jeep Design Contest 1939

50

WWII

Su mo cre dep

Funding for roads was cut to focus on military spending

Depression Era Road Projects were administered by the BPR to state and local governments in order to create jobs

For

30,000,000

37% of National Mileage Surfaced

14

1944 “National System of Interstate Highways” Eisenhower signed legislation that would develop a system of urban and rural express highways. The legislation lacked funding and failed.

31,035,420 8/2/1947 Commissioner MacDonald and Federal Works Administrator Philip B. Fleming announced the selection of the first 37,700 miles of the proposed system. No funds allocated.


Highway Revenue Act of 1956 created the Highway Trust Fund as a dedicated source for the Interstate System Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 wasdeeply supported by Eisenhower and marked the birth of the (41,000 mile) Interstate Highway System, the "greatest Public Works Project in history"

n nd

0

Suburbia: families start to move to from urban areas, creating an even greater dependence on cars

Ford Country Sedan

60 I-44 first contracted Interstate Highway using Interstate Highway funds

62,020,343

By 1960 Americans owned more cars then the rest of the world combined

1967 the BPR was renamed the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA)

1966 the growing number of cars and roads prompted legislation to establish the U.S. Department of Transportation

73,589,518

Interstate is know as the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways

70

Ford Mustang 1,214 rest areas reported to be in existence

FHWA helped the states create 99% of the designated 42,800-mile (expanded) Interstate System

105,128,686 The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1968 authorized the system's expansion to 42,500 miles

80

1980 DOT recorded 1,527,295 trucks on the highway

90

1989 DOT recorded 2,096,487 trucks on the highway

Use of the highway grew between 1982 and 2002; vehicle miles traveled increased by 79%, while highway lane miles only increased 3 % during the same period

161,614,294

Ford Cosworth

1991 Interstate Cost Estimate, states may use other appropriate classes of Federal-aid funds to add additional capacity to their part of the Interstate System

20 00 96% of all roads in the U.S. (2 million miles) are surfaced with asphalt

201,530,021

2/11/1998 as stated in the Federal Register, no modifications can be made without approval from the Secretary of the Department of Transportation

15


JGA | Consumerism in Asia

Essays on Consumerism in Asia Laura Esposito

Consumption and Production in China and Using Culture to Distinguish Social Class

16

In Xun Zhou’s work, “Eat, Drink and Sing, and Be Modern and Global: Food, Karaoke and ‘Middle Class’ Consumers in China,”1 and Douglas Holt’s “Does Cultural Capital Structure American Consumption?,”2 both authors discuss the role of consumption in determining social class and conveying status. However, while Holt is focused more on the differentiation between high versus low cultural capital accumulation and its relation to class formation, Zhou analyzes the Westernization of Chinese consumption patterns and how this in turn reflects emerging societal values. Additionally, Zhou’s argument stresses the tension between traditional rituals and the adoption of Western ideas that conflict with cultural and social values. Embedded in both Zhou and Holt’s texts is also the idea of the adoption of artificial taste and practices in order to achieve societal recognition as belonging to a specific class. This idea was furthered in a radio broadcast3 that identified the artificial representation of luxury goods as coming from sophisticated countries, while in fact the majority of goods are produced in China. Zhou’s description of the emerging middle class of consumers in China was particularly interesting because of the limitations of being identified as middle class. Similar to how Allison Pugh4 identifies the boundaries of children’s interactions as unique enough to set one apart, but not so unique as to be considered strange, Zhou writes that by consumption of certain activities, “consumers are not only able to define their individual status and identities, but [are] also transformed into a desired social collective—the ‘middle class.’”5 In order to be considered part of a certain group, one must adhere to the consumption limitations that are imposed by that group. Another component of Chinese consumption patterns reflects the desire to be accepted on a global scale. Zhou notes that China began importing foreign foods because the ‘local’ became a sign of backwardness, “while imported goods from France, England or Germany were embraced as prestige symbols.”6 This corresponds

to the argument that we have constructed ideas of where valued goods come from and which cultures produce them. However, this construction is also contradicted by the radio broadcast7 that points out the irony of luxury good production in China that still allows the luxury good to maintain the illusion of cultural sophistication. In Holt’s argument and interpretation of high versus low cultural capital accumulation, he suggests a similar pattern of identifying some countries as being more sophisticated and therefore more adept at cultural capital accumulation. However, he also points out that increased access to cultural goods has undermined this system of class differentiation. Holt writes, “Thus, as cultural hierarchies have dramatically blurred in advanced capitalist societies, objectified cultural capital has become a relatively weak mechanism for exclusionary class boundaries.”8 The ability to easily gain cultural capital threatens existing class boundaries and is further weakened by the production of imitation luxury goods. In addition, Holt maintains that high levels of consumption cannot only be reached by elites, but that now “to consume in a rare, distinguished manner requires that one consume the same categories in a manner inaccessible to those with less cultural capital.”9 Therefore, a sign of class is consistently engaging in high cultural capital accumulation because class can now be determined based on how frequently one is able to consume. This is a mechanism for the upper class to surpass the “symbolic indulgence”10 of lower income families who cannot afford to maintain consumption at such a high level, and instead are only able to gain status by occasionally prioritizing expensive goods. In conclusion, Zhou and Holt both address the new ways for people to gain cultural capital accumulation and status in society through consumption practices. Zhou’s example of the emerging roles of food and karaoke in China reflect the idea that Westernization of consumption practices signifies sophistication and luxury. Holt’s examination of cultural capital accumulation addresses how class is determined based on access to culture and highly regarded goods. However, he also argues that people with high cultural capital accumulation can no longer rely on lack of access to create exclusionary class boundaries. Underlying both arguments is the idea of artificiality – of culture,


Esposito | JGA consumption and values that considerably clash with notions of luxury (imitation brands and luxury production in China) and tradition (food in China). Eventually, people will need to reevaluate what they actually value, as opposed to what advertising, desires for sophistication and aspirations to be set apart dictate that they value.

The Dualities in Shoveling Smoke In his work, Shoveling Smoke,11 William Mazzarella analyzes the Indian advertising industry and its role in changing the consumer culture and mindset in postindependence India. He begins his study by detailing the historical context of India’s consumption – how since gaining independence and choosing to implement protectionist economic measures, people have been faced with the dualities of progress versus tradition, protectionism versus liberalization, developmentalist versus consumerist, global versus local, and the new versus the old swadeshi. Mazzarella explains swadeshi as literally meaning, “of one’s own country,” but identifies the new swadeshi as “heightening rather than effacing the importance of locality and local identity.”12 Using examples from the advertising industry, such as the campaign for KamaSutra condoms, Mazzarella furthers the idea of the new swadeshi by analyzing how local brands can become widely consumed and how tradition and cultural significance enable an advertising campaign to become both locally and globally relevant. Mazzarella also discusses the ability to access these new goods and brands that became available after India opened its markets. Mazzarella writes, “The tension between individualism and standardization was justified in terms of equity: equal access to the dream of self-transformation.”13 Part of the transition from protectionism to liberalization involves making choices, as an individual and as a society, as to the value of national traditions and rituals compared to those of the rest of the world. Advertising influences this decision because it creates value and meaning, filling the post-colonial and post-protectionist void. Xun Zhou discussed this with regards to the Chinese adopting forks and knives and reducing their use of chopsticks. The Chinese do not need to have forks and knives, and while chopsticks are more prevalently used, their role has been compromised by Western values adopted by the Chinese. Through the examples of condoms and utensils, we can identify that the divide between incorporating local culture and dismissing it lies in the culture’s ability to withstand the standardizations of globalization. For instance, the KamaSutra brand was successful in merging one of India’s cultural components

with a mass-marketed product. Because the advertisers were able to build demand for the KamaSutra condoms through the local culture, they simultaneously strengthened and reinforced the value of that cultural symbol. Instead of completely replacing the condom market with a foreign brand that would have no cultural relevance, KamaSutra represents a brand with which people can identify. Overall, Shoveling Smoke presents an interdisciplinary approach to advertising and the presence of brands and consumerism in postcolonial countries. Through his research, Mazzarella questions the contradictions of the local and the global and the role of tradition and culture in a global market. As a result of globalization and the liberalization of economies, we must learn to recognize and measure the presence of local versus global values, brands and goods. This will allow us to determine how consumerism and globalization allow both the local and global to exist without limiting or eliminating the other.

Internal and External Dualities within Globalization In Golden Arches East,14 the presence of McDonald’s in East Asia is shown both to globalize and localize the region’s economies and cultures. James Watson discusses how the introduction of McDonald’s in Beijing, Hong Kong, Taipei, Seoul and Japan has created a variety of responses and has played an integral role in merging cultural traditions with global markets. Several aspects of the McDonaldization process encourage development and market success that require the negotiation of the global and the local, similar to the advertising campaigns in Shoveling Smoke. Watson notes that many people view McDonald’s as a form of American cultural imperialism, working its way into popular culture. This can create the presence of an exotic foreign brand, which in this case eventually became a staple of local culture. With regards to Douglas Holt’s work on cultural capital accumulation, McDonald’s became absorbed into local culture and thus lost its exoticism. However, this did not diminish its appeal in East Asia, but rather allowed it to also integrate local specificities, such as cultural and religious dietary restrictions. In addition, Watson also comments that McDonald’s, during its initial years in the People’s Republic of China, “was celebrated as a model of modernization, sanitation, and responsible management.”15 Perhaps stemming from previous development theories that used immigration of Europeans to spur industrialization, McDonald’s is providing the same efficiency and standardization of the labor process. McDonald’s, therefore, can be utilized as a development technique, able to socialize

17


JGA | Consumerism in Asia and educate citizens in the Western manner (which Watson also refers to as “consumer education.”)16 Another aspect of Golden Arches East focuses on the invariability of one product coupled with the cultural specificity or locality of another. For example, Mazzarella’s KamaSutra condoms combined Indian culture with a common, global product. McDonald’s accomplishes a similar outcome: its French fries represent the standardized product, while the “hamburger” portion varies depending on the country’s preferred food. In his chapter on Taipei,17 David Wu discusses a different tension that arose from food and the globalization of McDonald’s – one that is specific to Taiwan’s role as a post-colonial state and its strained relationship with China. He describes eating as a political act, one that distinguishes mainlanders from Taiwanese and prompted the revitalization of ethnic culture through consumption of betel nuts. Wu explains this connection further: “Whereas McDonald’s is a reflection of the globalization process that has transformed Taiwan into a modern industrial power and a center of world business, betel-nut chewing is associated with the symbolic revival of a ‘Taiwanese’ rural lifestyle among people who are searching for ways to construct a new national identity.”18 As Wu discusses the success of McDonald’s in Taiwan, he also notes the demographics and how McDonald’s growth has been steady because of generational absorption into local culture, which is somewhat dependent on parents and children being educated in the U.S.19 This contributes to how McDonald’s lost its exoticism by becoming a local fixture for future generations. Additionally, present and future generations must develop a connection between

18

McDonald’s and Westernization in order to completely understand the role of McDonald’s and how it has shifted cultural norms and family dynamics. Wu’s research also suggests that the food tensions that arise within states are a result of a preexisting political or social hierarchical tension. The presence of globalization and localization becomes completely intertwined with businesses, trade, the political and social structures of countries. In Golden Arches East, the cultural specificities of a global brand are explained and detailed in relation to its success. McDonald’s depends upon local success to create aggregate success, which is why the convergence of globalization and localization is integral to its presence and success in the global market.

The Commoditization of Buddhism In “Penetrating the Tangle”20 by Stephanie Kaza and “Marketing the Dharma”21 by Thubten Chödrön, both authors discuss the commoditization of Buddhism and the conflicts between Buddhist and consumerist culture and ideologies. Kaza analyzes the moral issues that arise because of the Buddhist principle to not cause harm. Ultimately, her solution encourages more self-awareness of the processes by which we engage in consumerism – what is motivating our desires and are we happier or more satisfied by obtaining them? Chödrön, in contrast, discusses the commoditization of Buddhism and how the practice has evolved into a


Esposito | JGA consumer/market-oriented relationship instead of a spiritual one. In addition, she discusses the many similarities between Buddhism and consumerism –how they cultivate and express taste and connoisseurship, the individual versus the community mindset, the use of numbers to determine success and the loss of genuine meaning or authentic Buddhism. Kaza’s arguments for moralistic decisions within the consumerist framework are very similar to other texts that discuss the negative consequences of consumerism. While Kaza is primarily concerned with the environmental repercussions of harmful and destructive actions taken by large companies, her analysis of the need for morals can also be applied to discussions on culture and authenticity. For example, what are the moral consequences of a homogenized culture, i.e. the McDonaldization of the rest of the world? Who is responsible for these choices and changes? In addition, Kaza notes the perpetual cycle of consumerism and encourages individuals to take responsibility for the unsustainable and harmful effects of their consumption. For Kaza, this has significant implications on the formation of self-identity and allows the individual to take full advantage of spiritual practices that may be neglected by the desire to consume. Building upon Kaza’s idea of prioritization of the individual and spirituality over consumerist vices, Chödrön discusses a variety of factors that hinder the ability to engage in healthy consumerist practices. For example, Chödrön describes the commoditization of Buddhism, which allows it to appeal to more people and gain more support within popular culture. However, the very methods that enable

Buddhism to grow are deeply consumerist ideals and practices that conflict with Buddhist ideology. Chödrön writes, “We don’t give to support earnest practitioners who don’t teach. Instead, we give to teachers when we’ve received their services.”22 The idea of exchange – receiving some good or service for one’s personal benefit – has replaced the previous Buddhist practice of giving because one wants to give (which is intended to create positive karmic energy). She also evaluates the West’s inability to form communities because of a lack of commitment, which allows us to neglect responsibility and continue the on-going search for satisfaction through material gain.23 Chödrön’s argument is also similar to Bill McKibben’s24 and Tim Kasser’s25 because she identifies the lack of happiness and fulfillment that results from the commoditization of spiritual life. What was once above the market and its money-oriented motivations is now subjected to the same consumerist standards. Kaza and Chödrön’s discussions of the role of Buddhism in a consumerist culture are both fascinating and devastating. Both fear that Buddhism could become susceptible to consumerism and success as determined by numbers if it continues to grow within popular culture. The commoditization of Buddhist ideals and spiritual life, as shown by Kaza and Chödrön, corresponds to all other aspects of consumerism that we have previously discussed. Both on individual and communal levels, it requires that people reevaluate the happiness and satisfaction that they receive from real Buddhism as compared to the marketmotivated Buddhism.

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The Signs of Globalization Leigh Rome

Africa’s sign culture is fascinating and demonstrates the reality of global systems of cultural production. These images of signs taken throughout East and West Africa range from advertisements for local businesses to public service announcements. The West often perceives Africa as disconnected, but implicit in these signs is a demonstrated awareness of popular culture worldwide, repurposed to serve the aims of African proprietors. Signs are an indicator of social conscience since they must adhere to norms in order to be understood by their intended audience – what is on a sign reveals what resonates with the people. Therefore, these signs from Africa evidence participation in a globalized culture far beyond continental boundaries.


King Brill | JGA

Religion, National Identity and Education in the Islamic World: A Look at Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia Jenna King Brill

“In no other sphere of social life does the question of Islam make itself more starkly apparent than within the national education systems of Islamically-oriented nations.”1 INTRODUCTION In 2007, 35 percent of people in the Arab world did not know how to read or write.2 Couple this with a population growing at an estimated rate two times that of the rest of the world’s already quickly increasing population, and there is a clear challenge presented to governments of these countries hoping to put their future generations in a position to be competitive in the global market.3 Education has consistently played a central and highly valued role in Islamic culture throughout its history. Seeking knowledge is framed as an honor and an obligation.4 During the early years of Islam, before its spread across the Near East and North Africa, learning was focused solely within religious centers such as mosques and kuttabs (small schools where the Qur’an was taught and memorized, and sometimes supplemented with other subjects of learning). Quickly though, as Islam’s influence spread to surrounding areas, the natural sciences too became a center of focus and prestige. The colonial era marks a pivotal point in the development of Islamic history generally, and the upheaval of the educational systems is an example of the societal restructuring that took place at the hands of reigning colonial powers at this time. With independence, the newly sovereign countries were faced with a choice, in developing new systems of infrastructure, between the progress and “modernity” of the West and their own history of cultural and religious development. There is now a debate within the Islamic world about the best way to build a generation able to compete in the global political and economic markets while also maintaining a morally and culturally Islamic society. Over the past few decades, leaders have also had to respond to a return to religion by younger generations as a reaction to the Westernization of the colonial and postcolonial years of their parents’ generation. Recent popular

Islamic resurgences in all three of our case countries, Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, offer a new challenge to the formation of education policy, and government responses to these challenges have shifted the discourse between religion and secularism in the larger Islamic world. Education policy reflects and in turn impacts everything from cultural development to political movements and unemployment levels. How a country develops and structures its educational system is a significant indicator of its broader goals and values. Thus, there is an unlimited number of ways to approach a discussion of education. As case studies, these three countries together offer particular insight into the relationship between government policy on education and on religion. Egypt and Turkey offer two very different examples of a mainly secular education system, while Saudi Arabia will offer a brief look into the challenges and complexities of an education system that is outwardly and staunchly religious. In the West, we often make the mistake of analyzing everything within the Islamic world in religious terms. This is a trap that this paper will do its best to avoid. There are an unlimited number of influences and events that have made the educational systems of these countries what they are today. This paper is a brief, limited look at how a developing sense of Islamic identity in these three countries plays out in their educational systems.

Egypt

The Egyptian educational system is comprised primarily of a central public school system, first developed under British colonial rule and now attended by the large majority of Egyptian students. There is also a parallel primary through university system under the auspices of al-Azhar University, a global center of learning for Sunni Islam, which less than

21


JGA | Education in the Islamic World four percent of the student population attends. If someone wants to become a religious scholar they must enter this system, but it also provides a basic modern education and offers advanced degrees in non-religious subjects (such as medicine).5 In all systems, nine years of primary education are compulsory,6 after which students can attend either an academic (preparatory) or vocational school. If a student earns a diploma from one of the general or academic secondary schools, they are eligible to enroll in a university. Exam scores at the end of the primary and secondary levels determine which further schools a student is eligible to apply to. Thus, for instance, if a student is not among the top scorers on their Basic Education exam, they are not allowed to attend an academic secondary school and will be far less likely to have the opportunity to enroll in university. All levels of education (even university) are paid for by the government, except for the approximately eight percent of students who attend private school. Curricula in the public, private and al-Azhar systems are entirely government mandated and regulated, and its main goal is to cultivate a strong national identity within its younger generations.7

Turkey

Like Egypt, the Turkish national educational system is centralized, with all decisions concerning the management of the school system, such as curriculum and textbook development, coming from the Ministry of National Education. Education in Turkey, as in Egypt, is compulsory through primary school, though in Turkey this is equivalent to eight rather than nine years. This primary education is extremely intensive, putting a student’s level in math at the end of five years on par with what would be expected of an eighth-year student in some parts of Europe.8 Post primary education there is, as in the Egyptian system, a general preparatory and a vocational or technical track and it is difficult, though not impossible, to enter university from the vocational track.9

Saudi Arabia

As in Egypt and Turkey, the Saudi government fully funds education at all levels. In fact, it spends more than any other country in the region on the education and training of its citizens (19.3 percent of total government spending in 2008, down from 38.5 percent in 2003).10 However, education is no longer compulsory, even at the primary level. Despite this, Saudi Arabia maintains enrollment rates on par with (if not higher than) the rest of the region. Where it fails to compete is in its university completion rates. Intermediate education offers a specialized religion track to male students, but Islamic studies play a central role in curricula at all levels.

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i

EGYPT % of Gov’t Spending % Literacy ii Primary

66.4 (2006)

Secondary (Vocational or Academic)

99.7% (2007)

11.9

79.3% (2004)

University

28.5%

Enrollment of gross

Enrollment of gross

Enrollment of gross

Free & Compulsory

Free

Free

TURKEY % of Gov’t Spending

14.7

(1994)

% Literacy

88.7

(2007)

Primary 99.3%

Secondary (Vocational or Academic)

82.0%

University 38.4%

Enrollment of gross

Enrollment of gross

Enrollment of gross

Free & Compulsory

Free

Free

SAUDI ARABIA % of Gov’t Spending

19.3

% Literacy

85.5

Primary

98.4%

Secondary (Vocational or Academic)

94.6%

University

29.9%

Enrollment of gross

Enrollment of gross

Enrollment of gross

Free

Free

Free

i All percentages are from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators, (http://data.worldbank.org/indicator), 2008 except where otherwise noted ii Literacy rates are for adults age 15 and above


King Brill | JGA THE ISSUES Egypt: Nationalism vs. Secularism

Egypt is not only an example of, but in many ways is central to, the history of and current debate over educational systems in the Arab and larger Islamic world. Education was key to the development of a larger culture of Arab nationalism that began in the 1940s and began to decline after Egypt’s defeat at the hands of Israel in 1967.11 In the West, our recent emphasis on the importance of understanding and analyzing Islamic culture and history has lead to an upsurge in focus on issues of education and secularism in our own press and academic circles. Far before this, however, Egypt, along with much of the post-colonial world, had turned to education as the instrument through which it would rebuild its place in the post-colonial world. In 1952 the Free Officers party overthrew the parliamentary government in a military coup. The subsequent restructuring of the educational system under Gamal ‘abd al-Nasser’s government reflected a wider societal transformation that was taking place. This restructuring was characterized by standardization of curriculum and teaching philosophies and a centralization of administrative control within the hands of the new military government. In Nasser’s Egypt the focus was on building the identity of a nation that was increasingly influential and competitive within the global community. Thus, the focus from secondary school on was overwhelmingly on science and technology. Arabic became the main vehicle for the shaping of this identity and the unification, not just of Egypt, but also of the larger Arab world. The language itself received overwhelming emphasis in Nasser’s new educational system.12 As the character of Egypt’s international involvement began again to change, with the loss of the Arab-Israeli war in 1967, followed by the signing of the Camp David accords in 1978, the government had to respond to a fear of many Egyptians that their country would revert to a position subservient to the West.13 Failure within the educational system, compounded by issues such as an overtaxed economy and steep population growth, had helped form a society poised to turn elsewhere for a solution. Religion (in addition to nationalism) became the focus of this search.14 The character of religious identity within Egypt was brought to a startling new light in the wake of the 1981 assassination of President Sadat by members of the Muslim Brotherhood. That same year, the government instituted a five-year process of significant education expansion and reform. As mentioned above, the majority of Egyptian students today attend secular public schools. The focus of Nasser’s education reforms was the development of an Arab, not an Islamic, identity. Yet, Egypt’s population is overwhelmingly Muslim. The largest minority, Coptic Christians, make up about 10 percent of the population.15 Even in Nasser’s

Egypt, there was a required three hours of religious education each week, either Muslim or Christian, built into the primary curriculum. However, with the increased emphasis on religious interests in the political sphere over the past few decades, the government has felt pressured to adjust and clarify the role religion plays in society at large and in the educational system specifically. Before the recent uprisings, it had become politically important to Mubarak’s government, in a way it had not been for Nasser’s, that it assure the population of its dedication to maintaining the significant role Islamic history and religion play in the Egyptian national identity. In the West, one of our popular fears is of a system which, combining religion with government, may leave itself vulnerable to infiltration by forces of violent extremism. Mamoun Fandy makes the argument that extremist religious tendencies among today’s Egyptian youth are a result of the Egyptian government losing control of its own “xenophobic nationalist rhetoric and policies that created a system of education with the sole purpose of generating regime support.”16 In the early 90s the government sought to rectify this situation, firing 3,000 teachers, apparently for holding radical views that they were passing on to their students.17 Interestingly, most Egyptian extremists were educated, not in the al-Azhar religious system, but in the secular schools and universities, receiving their religious education from other places, such as mosques.18 The pre-February 2011 Egyptian government believed that it was not secularism, but a proper understanding of religious values, that would successfully combat religious extremism.19 A Ministry of Education publication in 1996 stated that: “Religious and moral values should be deeply ingrained among our children. Religious instruction should push our children to adhere to lofty values and morals.”20 The government had also instituted a set of non-religious ethics classes at the primary level. As of 2003 the lessons included: cleanliness, hygiene and environment, honesty, love, sense of beauty and order, peace and tolerance, among others.21 In the textbooks for these lessons is an overarching sense of patriotism and national unity. It will be interesting in the wake of the recent the uprising to see what the result of a national revolution centered on popular, universal rights will have on an education system that currently has the dual focus of promoting tolerance and stalling resistance.

Turkey: National vs. Islamic Identity

The 1923 revolution that marked the formation of the Turkish Republic significantly shaped the priorities and methods of the new government. The Turkish government has used education as one of the most important tools not just with which to modernize but also to secularize. Thus, the system is inherently political and often acts as the stage of the larger secular versus religious debate. After

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JGA | Education in the Islamic World the revolution, Turkish became the required language of instruction, whereas before minorities were taught in their own languages. In 1928 the Arabic alphabet was replaced with a Western one, and Islamic history was removed from school curriculums. The adoption of Islam, a force portrayed as innately Arab, was touted as the pivotal point in the downfall of the Ottoman Empire and thus religion was seen as a threat to the survival and prosperity of the Turkish state.22 The West and modernization became the new goal and education was, as in Nasser’s Egypt, the central force through which Ataturk, the Republic’s new leader, sought to formulate a new national identity. By 1965 education was second only to defense in the national budget.23 In many ways, this approach worked. Literacy rates went from nine to 48 percent between 1924 and 1965 and are now somewhere near 90 percent. Today Turkey has a higher university enrollment rate than either Egypt or Saudi Arabia. The system still faces problems, especially in terms of access to education in many non-urban areas.24 Overall, however, in terms of national development the educational system in Turkey appears to have been generally successful. Some of the biggest changes in the education system over the past three decades have stemmed from a rethinking of the importance of Islam to the Turkish identity. The qualification of modernity as inherently secular and Islam as anti-Turkish was called into question by a group of intellectual Islamists, know as the Intellectuals’ Hearth, who gained access to power in the aftermath of a military coup in 1980. These scholars, and other thinkers like them, put forth the idea that the clash between Western modernism and Ottoman tradition had occurred, not because Islam or religion are antithetical to modernity, but because Western culture and the way it conceptualizes the individual does not fit with traditional Islamic and Turkish values.25 Like Egypt, the primary goal of Turkey’s educational system is to foster a sense of Turkish unity and inimitability. The effect of the loosening of staunch secularism, which began in 1980, is simply that this uniqueness is now taught as stemming from a natural connection between Turkish tradition and Islam. In textbooks and classrooms Turkey is now portrayed as having been vital to the successes of the Islamic world. Post-revolutionary history has been rewritten to portray Ataturk as having exemplified this special Turkish-Islamic relationship.26 Out of this has come a sense of a uniquely Turkish Islam. It is this Islam, and only this Islam, that the government allows to be taught within the school system. Secularism is still ingrained in the constitution of the state, and what exactly “Turkish Islam” looks like is constantly being debated. Headscarves for instance, the universal symbol by which the world often mistakenly judges the Islamic fervor of any given society, are still strictly banned within schools and universities.27

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Saudi Arabia: Religion vs. National Advancement

“The basic principles of Islam are integral to Saudi education, and courses in religion and Islamic culture form a core curriculum for students of all ages.”28 The story of Saudi Arabian education has been one of late and rapid growth. Despite its significance as a religious center of the Islamic world, for a long time it was far behind in the development of a modern educational system. In 1925 (two years after the Revolution in Turkey), the Directorate of Education was founded. Until this point education had been dispersed and unregulated, left largely up to kuttab. 1926 heralded the establishment of an entirely new educational system. Much like during the reforms in Egypt and Turkey, elementary education became free and compulsory for all males of student age.29 Education, along with textbooks, health services and travel costs are all still free today, though no level is compulsory.30 By 2001 there were more than four million students in over 23,000 institutions throughout the country,31 compared to just 10,000 students in 65 schools in 1947.32 In the same year, the literacy rate for youth ages 15 to 24 was 93.1 percent, likely a consequence of the 94 percent of children who had attended five or more years of school.33 Different from both Turkey and Egypt, the Saudi system of education is professedly religious. The Saudi Ministry of Education sets out several principles, which outline its goals for its education system. Among them is the intent to, “strengthen faith in God and Islam, and in Mohammed as God’s prophet and envoy.”34 Similar to Turkey, Islam in Saudi Arabia, at least as it is put forth by the government, is uniquely Saudi. The monarchy’s close, interdependent relationship with the country’s leading Wahhabi ‘ulama (who represent a very fundamental, orthodox version of Islam) leaves the educational system vulnerable to infiltration of extremist ideologies. For example, because of the deficiency of its own system, when it began to institute reforms in the 1920s, Saudi Arabia had to bring in teachers from other Arab countries to teach in their schools. In 1975, 51 percent of Saudi teachers were foreigners.35 Because of the strict religious standards of the ‘ulama, the only teachers that qualified to teach in a Wahhabi system ended up being largely members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a violent extremist party founded in Egypt. Once hired, these teachers, as in Egypt, tended to use the classroom to propagate their own views.36 By 2000 the number of foreign teachers in Saudi Arabia had still only lowered to 25 percent, which signifies to a certain extent a failure of the Saudi system to become fully self-sufficient.37 Part of this failure is the problematic level of Saudi unemployment rates. Although at 29.9 percent, Saudi university enrollment seems comparable to Egypt’s 28.5 percent,38 the dropout rate in Saudi Arabia is extremely


King Brill | JGA high. Additionally, over 40 percent of those enrolled in university choose to major in Islamic studies.39 Thus, many graduates are largely unqualified for anything except religious positions, leading to estimated unemployment rates far above 10 percent,40 and a nearly $9,000 drop in the average per capita income between 1980 and 2001.41 Thus, despite its claimed intent to build a generation able to “raise the nation’s standard of living,”42 the Saudi government is struggling to reconcile this goal with its own emphasis on the importance of religion above all else.

CONCLUSION The educational systems of Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia offer insight into the debate on the role of religion in the modern Islamic state. The integration of religious and government institutions does not have the contradictory connotation in these countries (even, it seems, in Turkey) that it tends to in the West and, if taught right, religion has the possibility of offering a strong and unifying moral

structure. Yet as the Saudi case especially teaches us, in order to benefit the progression of the state, education for the majority of students must lead somewhere other than a high degree of religious knowledge. There are some who believe that Egypt’s al-Azhar system is an encouraging example of a religious education system that also offers advanced technical degrees. However, the complicated histories Egypt and Saudi Arabia have with extremism act as a warning of what can happen when governments do not adequately monitor the ideas being disseminated through their curricula. Religious thought is an inherently personal process and yet what these three countries teach us is that it is also a powerful political tool. In all three cases Islam has been used, and often reinvented (most clearly in the case of Turkey), throughout history to fit the needs of a threatened or overly ambitious government. Education is just one of the spheres in which religion takes its political form. This politicization of religion is, of course, not a uniquely Islamic process. It is however one that, with the recent popular upsurge of orthodox religious identification, especially among its youth, the Islamic world is being forced once again to confront.

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Locura Emily Pederson

When I was in Peru in the month of July 2007, all the teachers and taxi drivers went on strike, and for a few days the roads leading to Cuzco, the ancient Incan capital, were blocked by burning tires. Soldiers started patrolling the streets more and more because of the unrest in the city. I was drawn to the people who were authorized by the government to use violence, to record their faces, but also show them as everyday people who smile and fall asleep in the sun. The second photograph is of a festival in a small town called Paucartambo that celebrates its patron saint with a notorious fiesta every summer. At nightfall the town square is full of bonfires and giant homemade firework towers, and dancers and musicians careen around leaping over the fires. These photographs are memories of two different sides of Peru, the total chaos and joy of a small town in the middle of the night and the political fever watched over by soldiers under the bright sun.



JGA | Contextualizing Genocide

Contextualizing Genocide: An Examination of Complexities in Cambodia and Guatemala Julia Burnell

Why Study Genocide

Genocide is an immediate and visible expression of mass human aggression. And it is perhaps due to the extreme nature of such violence that it is often characterized as unthinkable or as an anomaly. This characterization often allows for genocide to be dismissed as outside of history’s trajectory.1 However, genocide is not a spontaneous event but rather the manifestation of historical constructions, politics and economic stressors, whose confluence – within the right context – can be disastrous. Although these factors can shape genocide, the violence itself is not the only form in which they are present in a community, and they do not dissipate when the violence finally abates. In this way, contextualizing genocide becomes a project in pursuit of clarifying genocide itself, and also those influences and the legacies it leaves in its wake. Because genocide requires some level of popular participation and affects all layers of society, there are many divergent experiences and accounts of events and their significance. These differences further complicate narratives surrounding the violence, and these nuances have concrete implications for genocide prevention, for postgenocidal societies and their relationship to the past. Although a convenient response to this complexity would be dismissal, the extreme nature of the violence as well as the complexities themselves beg examination and contextualization. These nuances can provide insight into questions that historians, human rights workers and policy makers have to confront when working with societies that are moving forward from extreme violence. Questions regarding what can cause such violence, how people are galvanized into participation and what role historical legacies play in shaping the violence are of paramount concern. Although genocides are destabilizing, they do have specific political goals, whether they are the maintenance of the status quo, a return to an historical order or a revolutionary shift in relations. Further, the way that groups are delineated, how justice is conceived of and how some histories are told while others are silenced all have concrete implications for people’s lives. I am not introducing new stories of genocide, but rather taking a critical look at the way that genocides are understood and portrayed. Through this examination I

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will work to draw out a space where cultural and contextual specificity and institutional mechanisms can inform each other rather than compete, as well as demonstrate how cultivating awareness of a specific context has the potential to strengthen institutional responses.

Approach and Purpose

In order to delve into questions regarding causes, narratives and responses to genocide, I focus on two specific cases: Cambodia and Guatemala. Both countries had centralized civilizations prior to being colonized by European powers. Similarly, after independence both countries struggled with economic, social and political instability and eventually devolved into genocide. These were particularly complex cases in which historical narratives, international political environments, economic stressors and perceptions of ethnicity and ideology converged and emerged as violent fissures in society. Indeed, my examination of genocide in Cambodia and Guatemala highlights that genocide is supported by deep historical legacies of inequality that are inflamed through changing political currents and struggles over resources. In order to gain an understanding of how to mitigate the destructive nature of these forces, I examine how they evolved. Both of these countries have colonial pasts that cultivated legacies of inequality based on the marginalization of many. However, these legacies preexisted the genocides and do not seem sufficient to constitute a singular explanation for the violence that was perpetrated using ideological language. Neither historical legacies nor political, economic and ideological struggles for supremacy are solely responsible for genocide. Rather, popular participation gives those legacies power by acting upon them, while conversely popular participation in the violence looks to those legacies as justification. The genocides of Cambodia and Guatemala demonstrate how these legacies can be wielded to galvanize and legitimize a policy of violence and the elimination of a group of people. Because of the power that narratives wield, institutional responses to genocide should work to render


Burnell | JGA them impotent through a process of examination and deconstruction. In this way, an examination of genocides in both countries will sharpen the understanding of their underlying processes. Indeed, these genocides have many similarities. However, their rhetoric is driven by specific conditions and historical legacies that have traction within their social contexts.

Elongating the Lens

In an effort to understand these complex processes, explanations for genocides tend to truncate history or dismiss its relationship to the violence altogether. In his book, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda, Mahmood Mamdani challenges understandings of genocide as either spontaneous or inevitable.2 When genocidal violence is divorced from the forces it sprung from, broader culpability as well as comprehension is inhibited. The genocides and political upheaval in both Cambodia and Guatemala have been met with such horror that they have similarly been severed from the social roots that sustained them. Not only does such a limited vision preclude functional responses to the violence, it establishes certain countries and their associated ethnicities as inherently violent. This perspective is not only incorrect but also dangerous. Therefore, the context out of which each period of genocide erupted is an essential element of the picture. Prior to the arrival of Spanish colonizers, the Mayan empire as well as an array of other indigenous societies called contemporary Guatemala their home. With the arrival of the Spanish, both indigenous appearance and practices became markers of lower social standing. However, the Spanish also constructed a class of intermediaries. By raising such groups as the indigenous K’iche and the Ladino class above others, the Spanish simultaneously cultivated resentment and a system of self-sustaining repression.3 These class divisions, which relied heavily on the rhetoric of indigeneity, persisted after independence. Although Guatemala’s independence was recognized by Spain in 1850, the majority of citizens continued to live in abject poverty without the possibility for political participation. As in other countries in the region, the early and middle 20th century saw increasing organizations of those seeking to reform their marginalization and exploitation. This movement, comprised primarily of peasants, students, teachers, military reformers and emerging middle class, succeeded in ousting the dictator Jorge Ubico. His removal ushered in a decade of democracy known as the “ten years of spring”, during which time successive governments worked to alter the socio-economic structure of the country through land reform, increased transparency and participation.4,5 However, these changes were dangerously destabilizing for

elites who benefitted from the old order. Indeed, Guatemala’s archbishop Mariano Rossel y Arellano cited his concern that this democracy and the resulting structural shifts were encouraging the emergence of a political outspokenness that was distinctly undesirable.6 This shifting social landscape was deeply destabilizing for those who benefited from the traditional power structure. Indeed, “faced with an unprecedented challenge to their authority, the state, the military and the oligarchy, supported by the United States, identified Indians as the collective enemy and launched a wave of repression” that the United Nations has classified as genocide.7 The Khmer Empire (800 AD – 1200 AD), which flourished in what is contemporary Cambodia, is central to Cambodians’ understanding of their past. The legendary strength and advancement of that society continues to carry nationalist weight in Cambodia today.8 However, even before the French colonized the area as part of French Indochina, Cambodia was the center of border disputes and competing spheres of influence including those of China and Vietnam.9 Once France gained control of the area, it brought large numbers of Vietnamese settlers into Cambodia to work as civil servants, teachers and laborers.10 Indeed, the French developed a colonial system based on elevating Vietnamese above either Cambodians or Laotians who they regarded with distain.11 In this context, many Cambodians felt pride regarding their historical inheritance and simultaneous resentment for their degradation under the French. These competing narratives of greatness and inferiority cultivated a growing sense of nationalism among Cambodians in general and ethnic Khmer especially.12 The extreme nature of World War II meant that France was greatly occupied with domestic policy and became increasingly absent from its colonies in Asia. Japan occupied Cambodia during this time, and the shift in power provided a window that nationalist movements seized upon.13 In this way, Cambodia gained its independence from France in 1953 but quickly plunged into political turmoil. In the greater Cold War context, armed struggle over the leadership of Cambodia, territory, resource and ideological disputes became increasingly volatile. It is within this context that the Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975. Their four years in power saw the deaths of approximately two million people as they, based upon these historical narratives and resentments to justify genocide, aimed at purging nonethnically Khmer residents and other ‘undesirables.’ Through the use of a longer lens that can incorporate historical legacies as well as contemporary forces, the structures that support genocide come into focus. This expanded lens of engagement accentuates the ways in which a circumscribed approach to context alters the understanding of violence itself, but more importantly, the legitimacy of

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JGA | Contextualizing Genocide its causes. When confronting a society marked by genocide, this approach provides space to simultaneously question assumptions such as those that construct distinctions within societies as well as give credence to constructed narratives, insofar as they have power to incite action and dictate interactions.

Cultivating Divisions of Convenience

The construction and juxtaposition of two groups as inherently antagonistic is present in both the cases of Cambodia and Guatemala. In Cambodia, a central tenet of the Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s was the creation of a country only populated by those deemed true Cambodians through the elimination of other groups and the creation of a Khmer State. Their image of the ideal Khmer State was based on the conflation of Khmer ethnicity and Khmer Rouge communist ideology. In this way, the division between enemies and supporters of this violent state was negotiable, but conversely, one could be targeted either because they were not ethnically Khmer or because they did not embody the agrarian Khmer ideal.14 This negotiability created a sense of arbitrary fate that has shaped the lives of the survivors portrayed in the documentary “The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine.”15 In the film, documentarian Rithy Panh brings the artist Vann Nath and fellow ex-prisoner, Chum Mey, back to the notorious Tuol Sleng prison (S21). The two not only revisit the prison itself but also confront former guards and their families in order to probe their justifications for taking part in genocide. It quickly becomes apparent that Chum Mey is deeply troubled by the fact that he survived when so many others did not. Further, the guards’ inability to defend their actions or even communicate a consistent reasoning for their participation augmented the sense of arbitrary fate. Nath similarly expresses survivor’s guilt through his matter of fact assertions that he survived because the Khmer Rouge wanted a portrait artist and he fulfilled their requirements. Even though they were intent on eliminating those elites deemed detrimental to the creation of an agrarian peasant utopia, such as artists, he was saved. In this way, Nath’s fate was determined based on Khmer ideology, selectively implemented. His status as ethnically Khmer could have categorized him as part of the Khmer State. However, he was an artist, an intellectual, and therefore a target. Ultimately, the Khmer desire for his elite art imbued him with the usefulness necessary to survive. Nath’s survival demonstrates the permeability of categories in this context of ruthless violence, and this instability of categories continues to haunt Cambodians on both sides of the violence. Further, Nath’s story reveals the ideological justifications for genocide to be

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debatable, even among its strongest proponents. Although there was some level of negotiability within the categories in genocide, for many the narratives of historical and colonial legacies placed them in one group or another. One of the groups that was targeted for elimination in Cambodia was the ethnic Vietnamese, who were a remnant of fluctuating borders and French Colonial practices of divisive rule. Despite their status as long-term residents of Cambodia, groups of Vietnamese were deemed ‘occupiers’ and therefore targeted for elimination. Other groups were also targeted, such as the Chams, whose claim to residency in Cambodia was challenged by the Khmer Rouge.16 This discrimination had traction among many Cambodians, and has survived and been fortified by the presence of an actual Vietnamese Occupation in the wake of Khmer Rouge rule. Delineating social divisions in this way gives credence to underlying social tensions through the use of an ahistorical or a circumscribed historical perspective. This removal of history allows constructed identities to be abstracted, naturalized and then easily politicized. Similar logic was also deployed in the case of Guatemala where divisions relied on racial, ethnic, economic and ideological indicators. However, discriminatory identification was not depicted as being solely on the basis of origins but rather on a desire for a new, modernizing Guatemala. This desire to enter the world stage and market did not include the rights of the majority of the nation where colonial legacies and systematic disenfranchisement created a state reliant on manipulation and repression. However, the early and middle 20th century saw increasing organizations of indigenous groups seeking to reform their marginalization and exploitation through challenging those in power. These contentions and challenges were not mitigated by the state. Indeed, the exclusionary nature of the state rendered it “incapable of achieving social consensus around a national project [and] concomitantly, it abandoned its role as mediator between divergent social and economic interests.”17 It was within this context that indigenous Guatemalans were depicted as stagnating the progress of Guatemala becoming a modern state.18 In this way, indigeneity became synonymous with movements against Ladino power and therefore contrary to a modern Guatemala. Although the 1894 census in Guatemala defined Ladino as a “mixture of European and Indians,” the term signified more than a racial category.19 Over the years it evolved to refer first to Indians who mastered “enough Latin to participate in the Catholic mass” and later to those who mastered enough Spanish to circulate and negotiate the world of the Spaniards.20 Ladinos therefore found themselves negotiating two worlds and were often used as the gatekeepers who maintained the demarcation between categories, but they also represented the vision of progress that was synonymous with the erasure of indigenous


Burnell | JGA practices and identities but relied on propertied citizenship. In this way, those indigenous to the area were transformed into the illegitimate residents and the settlers legitimized their own presence through an ingenuitive narrative that promoted neoliberal market values.21 Neither the divisions in Guatemala nor those in Cambodia were omnipotent and some members of groups targeted for elimination negotiated their social position and were reclassified. This negotiability reveals ethnic categories to be undergirded by ideology and struggles for power. Indeed, these categorizations were carefully deployed and manipulated as mechanisms in struggles for power and land. Their use as political tools is apparent in their deployment when convenient. In Cambodia, members of targeted groups were exempt from the violence if they rose in the ranks of loyal Khmer Rouge.22 Similarly, in Guatemala, the division between Ladino and Maya and other indigenous populations was negotiated, exploited and reproduced by the K’iche elites who garnered power through their ability to circulate between social categories.23 However, genocide was a means to assert or reassert control over the relaxing categories and their corresponding claims to power. In Guatemala, as this middle ground gained salience in the political system, its destabilizing nature led to a repression in which “the most virulent aspects of Ladino nationalism metastasized into a counterinsurgency that, while it had many causes and purposes, singled out Indians in its rural campaign of repression and murder.”24 The ability of some to manipulate the divisions that demarked who was targeted for state violence is an indication of the role that other factors had in the production of genocide. Both Cambodia and Guatemala were in the process of redefining and solidifying the state apparatus when the violence escalated into genocide. Indeed, economic and political struggles were paramount to both of these cases. The context of political and social transformation allowed for genocidal policies. However, the tenuous conditions persisted after genocide had ended. Therefore, neither Cambodia nor Guatemala has employed large-scale, state-sanctioned policies of memorialization, recognition or compensation. In Cambodia there is little more than official silence on the genocide and in Guatemala the government has repeatedly negated accounts legitimated by international bodies.

Looking Beyond Constructed Narratives

In both countries, the international community has played a key role in pursuing justice and producing an account of the events so as to fill the gap left by officials in the countries themselves. In Guatemala, a report was issued by the Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico

(“CEH”) that details and historicizes the civil war and genocide. However, the CEH’s “mandate was circumscribed by the limits of Guatemala’s dubious political transition.”25 This limitation created the potential for a more nuanced approach; because the CEH was unable to pursue retributive justice, it was able to look deeper into the past and at complex causalities that do not put perpetrators in prison but do shed light on how human beings and nations can marginalize a group so that an incitement to genocide has traction. Similarly, the United Nations has been instrumental in the creation of Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (“ECCC”) to prosecute human rights abuses that occurred under the Khmer Rouge regime. However it has received little support from the government and has not received widespread recognition.26 Indeed, the predominance of official silence in both Cambodia and Guatemala has meant that the role of recounting, memorializing and documenting genocide has fallen to international institutions, non-governmental organizations, communities and individuals such as Rithy Panh, director of the documentary “S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine.” In this way, personal accounts of violence and the lives that it touched are integral to understandings of genocide. Through interviews compiled and edited by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, Rigoberta Menchu shares her story as a politically active, poor Guatemalan Indian woman in I, Rigoberta Menchu.27 Through her story, Menchu presents herself as depicting and, indeed, exemplifying the experience of all poor, indigenous Guatemalans. Although her ability to share her story with a world audience demonstrates that her life is not like the majority of those whose voices she claims, she is saddled with the responsibility of shedding light on the systematic injustice that Indians organized against and were subsequently killed to maintain. To this end, her nuanced depictions of the circumstances in which Indians live and the discrimination that they faced humanize them and legitimates their claims against landowners. Through her personal negotiations with the expectations of specific categories, Menchu deploys and simultaneously challenges such conflations as indigeneity and poverty. As resistance to the political violence directed at indigenous Guatemalans, Menchu works to claim a space for Indian traditions and practices. However, this pursuit is sometimes in conflict with her goals of shifting their systematic economic marginalization. Menchu declares that Indian society does not privilege one gender over the other and that all are celebrated, respected and expected to share amongst each other.28 However, her story also reveals that her work outside of the home and community, as well as the decision not to have children, were all deeply antithetical to Indian tradition and only acceptable because of the repression they were facing that was causing increased demand for mobilization. Indeed, when Menchu became an

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JGA | Contextualizing Genocide active political organizer she came into conflict with fellow Indians who did not want to be under the leadership of a woman.29 In response, she directly challenges the men who exhibit this opinion. In this example of her own tenacity, Menchu criticizes her compañeros for being too indigenous. This episode reveals a tension between two understandings of indigeneity. The understanding of indigeneity that Menchu attempts to cultivate respect for in her pursuit of economic justice conflicts with Guatemalan society’s construction of indigeneity as inextricably identified with poverty. In this way, challenging the economic circumstances of indigenous Guatemalans also presented a challenge to practices that had been codified as tradition. However, it is not only within her community that this tension was negotiated. Menchu’s realization that Ladinos and tourists “think our costumes are beautiful because it brings in money, but it’s as if the person wearing it doesn’t exist,” underscores how fundamental the performance of one’s role was to Guatemalan society.30 Therefore, transgressing the performance of indigeneity was dangerously destabilizing for the system of exploitation that Guatemala was founded on. The state and its elites were deeply invested in maintaining the categorization of people into narrowly defined groups with correlated behaviors. Therefore, an increased movement to organize collectively challenged these categories so that those in power reacted with extreme violence to retrench them. Because of the absence of official accounts regarding the civil war and genocide in Guatemala, accounts such as these join the public narrative. Similarly, accounts of the genocide in Cambodia such as that of the S21 survivors in “S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine” become a part of the public narrative of genocide. Throughout the documentary, both the survivors and the director seem to be searching for an understanding of why young men would support, join and kill for the Khmer Rouge; they also seem to be in pursuit of an admission of guilt. However, the process of creating this narrative means that the guards are also able to challenge their position as perpetrators and claim victimhood. As these guards, and indeed most of the Khmer Rouge rank and file, were peasants or workers living in extreme poverty, they asserted that their choice was to cooperate with the regime or starve. It is then left to the public, who will circulate these competing narratives of victimhood, to weigh what they see. In this way, “S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine” clearly depicts a concrete challenge for countries after genocide. Not only are many of the same narratives of discrimination still present, but the dire economic conditions that led to such desperation continue to leave many of the former perpetrators with no means to support their families. Within this context, the lack of an official policy regarding genocide, its participants and its legacies leaves social vulnerabilities unaddressed. In the absence

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of an official narrative, informal historicization, such as this documentary, remains an avenue through which communities engage their history of genocide.

Living Inheritance

As time passes and new generations come into communities with the inequalities and ideologies that fostered genocidal policies, questions regarding memorialization become paramount. How does this history get passed on and how does it live in communities? Whether cultivated by a government, an international committee or individuals and their communities, history and memory are inherently political and personal. In the creation of any narrative, some experiences are privileged over others, and through this process, identities can be further entrenched. In the wake of genocidal violence, the divisive ethnic categories and colonial hierarchies can remain salient. Both Guatemala and Cambodia have had external forces shaping their memorialization, and often people from elsewhere cannot understand the complexity of memory but are still intent on the project of memorialization as a healing process. Although there are few projects to address the genocide in Guatemala that are actually created by Guatemalans, those that do exist have to carefully negotiate indigenous traditions, nationalist rhetoric, international pressures and the continual knowledge that “perpetrators of war crimes are still at large.”31 Whether memory is a tool for healing, a means to shed light on inequalities and ideologies or a tool in new political projects, its presence in post-genocide society is the tool through which the complexities of genocide can be contextualized and examined. As the international community leans on the judicial structures of organizations such as the United Nations to dole out justice, it is all too easy to dismiss underlying causes of genocide that are particular to a place and its past, which are inherited through narratives of struggle and reaffirmed in daily practices. However, relying solely on history as an explanation for genocide does not recognize that these legacies only boil into violence when human beings are moved to kill. It is for this reason that I am calling for an approach to genocide that does not negate either approach but can conceive of them as deeply intertwined and mutually dependent. An over universalization of genocide can erase the particularities of a place and therefore leave the motives of those actors unaddressed and vulnerable for future exploitation. Conversely, the dismissal of universality would shrink our understanding of genocide and make invisible those commonalities – such as a colonial past – that should be recognized so as to create a nuanced and informed understanding of this phenomena.


Peace and Quiet Emily Pederson

What touched me the most about Eastern Europe was the mysteriousness that suffused every little thing. Time seemed different, slower, older. In these places that have been Nazi puppet states and Soviet territories with dissent pushed deep underground, there is as much beauty as darkness. Out the windows of the trains are miles and miles of farms, forests, open fields and hills sprinkled with ramshackle villages, no superhighways or strip malls of chain stores like on the roads of the U.S. I kept thinking about all the madness the people and places had known. In the markets and streets, elderly women old enough to have lived through all of it sold flowers. Younger women worked behind the counters of the meat markets, wearing makeup and tiny lacy hats. Eastern Europe today is at peace, but there is still a deep sense of bleakness there. The ghosts are just beneath the surface of what our eyes can see.



Lerup | JGA

Hugo Chávez, Chavismo and Rethinking Latin American Populism Darius Lerup

Introduction

In the mid-twentieth century, Latin America saw a boom in the emergence and appeal of populist governments. The success and sustainability of the populist political platform was derived largely from the vast chasm between the upper and working classes resultant of a history of widespread colonialism. Furthermore, the socio-political structure established by colonizers seemed to endure into the post-colonial world. This meant that there was a small social elite controlling the majority of a country’s capital leading to widespread poverty, illiteracy and continued exploitation of the working classes. Thus, Latin America became fertile ground for a political movement focused on pitting el pueblo, or the people (referring to the working and middle classes), against the elite and aiming to restructure this archaic governmental paradigm. One must ask, however, whether it sufficient to define populism simply as a reaction to a draconian system of cultural exploitation? The definition of populism is still largely debated. Nevertheless, there seems to be a degree of consensus in the conclusion that populism is loosely identified by three characteristics: 1) A Manichaean discourse pitting the people against an elite, 2) the notion of a singular popular will (mediated through democracy) and 3) a charismatic leader who establishes a rhetoric that appeals to the dialectical class tension and is synthesized with the popular will to create a functional political entity. However, such a vague definition raises a critical question: what distinguishes one manifestation of populism from another? An analysis of writings from Daniel James, Kirk Hawkins, Carlos de la Torre and other scholars of populist politics suggests that it is the leader who, through embodying and shaping the will of the people, defines and differentiates the various forms populism has taken in Latin America over the last century. This essay aims to establish a common understanding of the term populism, as well as investigate which characteristics differentiate populist movements. Against this backdrop, one of the most intriguing contemporary manifestations of populism has been that of Chavismo and its namesake, Venezuelan President Hugo

Chávez. Political scientist Kirk Hawkins goes as far as to proclaim Chavismo to be “a paradigmatic example of populism,”1 and as such a necessary case study for students of the phenomenon. Furthermore, the writing of Hawkins, and of journalists Christian Parenti and Jon Lee Anderson, testify not only that Chávez is the quintessential populist leader, but also that his personality and personal agenda have effectively defined Chavismo as a manifestation of both populism and present day Venezuela. Finally, the case of Chávez and Chavismo will be considered as evidence supporting the claim that it is the charismatic leader who characterizes the movement.

Defining Populism

So far, scholars have been unable to agree on one comprehensive definition of the term populism. In his article “Populism in Venezuela: the rise of Chavismo,” Hawkins suggests that, “much of this confusion results from a tendency to lump together a set of social, economic and political phenomena that occurred together during the early part of the 20th century.”2 As such, he describes the populism of the 20th century as “a populism without adjectives,”3 implying that although there is a general understanding of what populism is, it has little to do with the characteristics that differentiate its numerous manifestations. In Populist Seduction in Latin America: The Ecuadorian Experience, Carlos de la Torre describes populism as “a style of political mobilization based on strong rhetorical appeals to the people and crowd action on behalf of a leader... It is a rhetoric that constructs politics as a moral and ethical struggle between el pueblo and the oligarch.”4 By juxtaposing politics with the struggle for freedom from countless years of oppression, populism creates a moral and ethical binary casting a dialectical tension, not only between classes, but also between those who want freedom (the people) and those who do not (the elite). Implicit in the construction of this Manichean discourse is the democratic notion of equality on which Hawkins elaborates: “The very word ‘populism’ refers to a modern democratic context, a situation in which almost

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JGA | Chavismo and Populism

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all adults in society are accorded equal political value.”5 Therefore, as equals, the people not only have the power to overthrow the elite, but also a personal responsibility to do so. However, as Hawkins notes, one must keep in mind that “the populist appeals to an exaggerated notion of popular sovereignty, one that in Rousseau-like fashion presumes the existence of a single popular will.”6 Here, Hawkins references Rousseau’s work Du Contrat Social, in which he suggests each person has both a personal and general will, and that the mystical, general will is the key to freedom. Furthermore, Rousseau posits that the general will can only realize itself through democratic self-legislation. Therefore, Hawkins aptly observes that a fundamental characteristic of populism, the singular will, is strikingly similar to the notion put forth by Rousseau. However, Hawkins rightfully points out that it is an exaggeration of Rousseau’s original formulation, in that within populism the importance of the existence of the singular will overshadows the importance of its institutionalization and democratization – a characteristic of paramount importance within Rousseau’s work. The presumption of ‘a single popular will’ is of particular note when juxtaposed with the Manichaean discourse; together they presume that if indeed this popular will exists, the elite (those finding themselves on the anti-freedom side of the binary) somehow fall outside of the populace. This seems broadly to be a remnant of the disdain still felt for foreign colonizers who instigated generations of exploitation. Casting the elite as foreign intruders serves to further strengthen the bond between el pueblo as a nationally unifying force. Furthermore, the assumption of a popular will requires that there be someone to communicate and administer it, a role filled by the charismatic leader. The populist leader de la Torre states that, “Charisma is understood as a double-sided interactive social process that allows us to understand how populist leaders are created by their followers and how they have constructed themselves into leaders.”7 The notion that the followers construct the leaders (at least initially) is key to understanding how leaders function within the country as cultural icons. The process of becoming a populist leader entails the transformation of the leader into a vacuous icon, achieving public support by allowing the people to create multiple uniquely appealing conceptions of the leader on an individual basis. Thus the leader simultaneously becomes the face and the shaping characteristic of the movement. Therefore, perhaps it is the leader who becomes the ‘adjective’ of his or her unique manifestation of populism. These fundamental characteristics aside, some populist movements bear little similarity to one another. For example, this ‘adjective’-less political entity does little in terms of offering insight into the intricacies of Chavismo. Accordingly, it is critical to understand populist movements on an individual basis, rather than trying to capture a universal concept of the function and manifestation of

this political enigma. This in turn begs the question: what characteristics distinguish populist movements? The discussion above seems to suggest that it is the leader who is largely responsible for the expression of the fundamental struggle within populism. Since the leader simultaneously attempts to understand, shape, uphold and become an eternal symbol of the popular will, he or she becomes the face of that movement. Moreover, the leader is largely responsible for defining the elite (those which el pueblo oppose) as well as formulating the rhetoric that demonizes them. Therefore, one can surmise that understanding the leader is key to understanding the populist movement.

Hugo Chávez, Chavismo and Venezuela

The conclusion that populism is characterized more by the element of leadership rather than political structure and institutionalization seems to sit well in the context of Latin American politics. The case of Venezuela provides convincing evidence that it has been Chávez – his personality, background, politics and rhetoric – that has come to distinguish Chavismo as a populist movement. For instance, his uncompromising vilification of the international elite is undoubtedly a reflection of traditional populist discourse. However, upon closer investigation one can see that he himself has a deep personal resentment towards the role of the oligarchy in his country. In his biography of Chávez entitled ¡Hugo!, historian Bart Jones reveals that Chávez grew up in utter destitution in a house that had “no refrigerator, no fan, no running water, no indoor bathroom.”8 Since his parents were too poor to support him, he and his brother grew up with his grandmother Rosa Inés Chávez in the small town of Sabaneta, “located in los llanos, a vast expanse of sparsely populated marshlands that were Venezuela’s version of the Great Plains of the United States…”9 Chávez recounts: “At Rosa’s side I got to know humility, poverty, pain, sometimes not having anything to eat. I saw the injustices of this world… I learned with her the principles and the values of the humble Venezuelan, those that never had anything and who constitute the soul of my country.”10 His youth spent in los llanos – once a battleground for freedom fighter Eziquiel Zamora – left a lasting impression on him and ultimately laid the foundation for the worship of his idols: Simón Bolívar, Zamora and Simón Rodríguez – three men who stand as symbols of the Venezuelan struggle against oppression. With this in mind, it is clear that the burning conviction behind Chávez’ venomous rhetoric is rooted in his childhood and is thereby a reflection of his own personal struggle. Furthermore, an investigation of his rise to power and political administration will reveal that Chavismo is a reflection of Chávez, rather than of some abstract populist political entity. Moreover, this investigation will suggest that perhaps it is the differences between populist leaders that


Lerup | JGA should come to identify populism as a political entity rather than the similarities across movements. Eventually, Chávez left Sabaneta; driven by his passion for baseball, he applied to the military academy in Caracas in what he hoped would be a stepping-stone on the road to baseball stardom. However, in the academy he found that his true passions lay in the army. In the years following his graduation, he discovered the body of Marxist and Leninist literature that formed the basis for his desire to reform Venezuelan politics. The catastrophic election of President Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1989 was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. The Pérez administration’s clear abuse of power led Chávez and the MBR-200 (Movimiento Bolivariano Revolucionario 200) to organize Operation Zamora – a military coup-d’état to overthrow the Pérez administration. Although the coup failed, it gave Chávez the opportunity to address the Venezuelan people in what has become the famed “por ahora (for now) speech.” Chávez has polarized his critics with his sharp tongue, but it is hard to imagine his words invoking such profound resonance without his monumental charisma. His por ahora speech is often cited not only as his entry into the political scene but also as the first time that he initiated a charismatic link with the Venezuelan people. Venezuelan economist Moises Naím commented that although brief, his appearance that day “contributed more to destabilizing Venezuelan democracy in two minutes than all the shots fired through the night.”11 Journalist Christian Parenti, writing about the dynamics of populism in the Chávez presidency, suggests that Chávez’s post-coup speech did two things in particular that garnered popular appeal: “First, he took personal responsibility for the botched coup. This seemed to many viewers like a significant break from the standard political tradition of lying and blaming others for failure. Then, in explaining the defeat, Chávez said, ‘For now, the objectives that we have set for ourselves have not been achieved.’”12 Powerful words, undoubtedly aided by his oratory skill, on which writer Jon Lee Anderson comments, “Chávez has a gospel preacher’s deftness with language and an actor’s ability to evoke emotions. Within a single soliloquy, he comes up with rhymes, breaks into song, riffs on his own words, gets angry, cracks jokes, and loops back to where he started.”13 Thus, from the beginning Chávez has wielded the gleaming gift of charisma – a gift that has become a hallmark of Chavismo. The Venezuelan president’s unwaveringly direct approach to oration is clearly reflected in Chavista policies: the immediacy with which relief was provided for the barrios (slums), the formation of an assembly to reform the Venezuelan constitution, the establishment of Bolivarian missions aimed at improving social and economic conditions; the list goes on. Reflecting on his presidency, it is clear that Chávez’s unique charismatic qualities have essentially superseded conventional governmental structure. Hawkins is quick to

point out that in Chavismo, “the rule-based structure is much less important than the voice of Chávez.”14 The exaggerated importance of Chávez himself has been evident since his campaign for democratic election in which he represented the Movimiento V [Quinta] República (MVR) party. His current role seems to be largely due to the fact that “far more people supported MVR because of their identification with Chávez than because of their identification with the party.”15 However, the lack of significance of the party is, at least in part, due to the fact that “the party relied on two symbols – a red paratrooper’s beret and a silhouette of a soldier’s face under the beret – that represented Chávez’s role as leader of the February 1992 coup.”16 Thus the MVR’s reliance on the image of Chávez as its figurehead led to the development of ‘Chav-ismo’ rather than ‘MVR-ismo.’ Thus, it is clear that although the appeal of Chavismo’s political goals are rooted in populist discourse, Chavez’s success in Venezuela is fundamentally due to his charisma and his mediated image. As previously discussed, the desire to understand and uphold a singular popular will is one of the fundamental characteristics of a populist leader, and understanding the popular will was exactly what Chávez set out to do. In the years following the failed coup, he underwent “a programme of self-education in the country’s problems and its possible solutions by traveling around the country, meeting Venezuelans, and studying books and ideas…”17 This served as preparation for the broader project of ‘democratic revolution,’ in which he would represent the MVR and be elected president of Venezuela in 1998 after receiving a presidential pardon for his involvement in the coup. However, Chávez’s program of self-education was inevitably colored by his position in the Manichaean discoursei – his desire to help the poor and oppose the elite.ii Literally this meant representing certain sectors of the Venezuelan population and alienating others. This intentional polarization has been reflected in the reception, both in Venezuela and internationally, of Chavismo: it is either loved and revered or disdained and criticized. There is no greater testament to the importance of Chávez himself as the sole guiding force behind Chavismo than his televised program Aló Presidente (Hello President). Anderson recounts an installment in which government action literally occurred during the show: “[Chávez] called out to Rafael Ramírez, the president of P.D.V.S.A [Petróleros de Venezuela, S.A., a Venezuelan state-owned petroleum company]… and he promptly stood up and began taking i This underlies an overarching point: that the populist leader’s duty to represent the ‘popular will’ necessarily implies a reflection of the populist leader, since the understanding of ‘popular will’ will always be colored by the personal views and goals of the leader. ii Chávez’s desire to help the poor being a reflection of his youth, rather than of the Manichaean discourse; their agreement being largely coincidental.

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JGA | Chavismo and Populism notes, nodding furiously. This was not a rehearsed moment; to an unusual degree Aló Presidente is Chávez’s government in action, and it is a government that Chávez does not so much administer as perform live.”18 Anderson’s suggestion that Chavismo is a performance more than administration is an odd concept, though it is not totally farfetched. To continue with Anderson’s analogy, Chávez’s charisma puts him at center stage in the global political theater and his inflammatory character has cast him as the lead in a very real political drama. However, the political drama playing out in Venezuela is peculiar in that its lead actor is also its director.

Conclusion

What is the importance of understanding populism? And thereby, what is the importance of understanding Chávez? The dwindling status of the world’s oil reserves have set into motion an immense number of social, political and economic shifts that have only just started to manifest themselves. The shifts that have begun to occur suggest that an understanding of populism will, for specific reasons, be of paramount importance in the coming future. For example, the most abundant regional source of oil in recent history has been the Middle East. However, there is now growing evidence that the oil reserves in Saudi Arabia (though they account for approximately 25 percent of the world’s oils reserves) are drying up. This, in turn, means that if and when the Middle East is unable to provide oil as it has, Venezuela may become a cornerstone in the oil-based global economy. Considering that all of Venezuela’s oil is state-controlled, understanding Chávez and populism will be key to accessing that resource. Moreover, Chávez is one of the only Latin American leaders who has successfully taken a stand against American imperialism. Therefore, in order to access Venezuelan oil, it would be necessary to alter the relationship between the United States and Venezuela, which in reality means altering the relationship between the U.S. and Latin America more broadly.

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Keep in mind that these developments are largely speculative; Venezuela could run out of oil, or the global economy could find an alternative to oil. However, modern circumstances aside, populism plays an important role in the ongoing struggle for human freedom. Erich Fromm addresses this timeless struggle in Escape From Freedom, in which he writes: “While a class was fighting for its own liberation from domination, it believed itself to be fighting for human freedom as such and thus was able to appeal to an ideal, to the longing for freedom rooted in all who are oppressed.”19 Which is to say, as long as freedom from oppression is considered an inalienable human right and populism demonstrates itself as an appeal toward that ideal, understanding it will be of great importance. With such heavy reliance on a Manichaean discourse and the clear presence of a charismatic leader who purports to represent a singular popular will, there is little doubt that Chavismo is fundamentally populist; but how does Chavismo inform an understanding of populism? Chavismo sets itself apart from other manifestations of populism in a disregard for traditional party structure, replaced by a reliance on Chávez himself as the sole commanding political entity. In doing so, Chávez has created a political system that is a direct reflection of his own personal agenda. It is precisely because his personal agenda agrees with the common understanding of populism that Chavismo is, in fact, a populist movement. Therefore, the above analysis of Chavismo suggests that perhaps it is more helpful to rethink our understanding of populism in terms of the differences in the element of leadership rather than in the political similarities across movements. To be sure, in a Manichaean discourse the presumption of a singular popular will and a charismatic leader to enact that will are undoubtedly characteristics of populism. However, it seems to be more informative to focus on the leader as the basis for political structure rather than the aforementioned characteristics. Ultimately, the case of Chávez and Venezuela suggests that perhaps focusing on the element of leadership can dispel Hawkins’ assertion that 20th century populism is, in fact, “a populism without adjectives.”20


It Was Just a Thought Andrew Boston

1. No matter how bad you think things are going They’re probably going much worse. And isn’t it for the best That you’ve never been elected mayor Of a small central Arizona town Or asked to decide Who would sit next to who At the Potsdam Conference? 2. I’ve known people who’ve disappeared In a completely everyday way. The only time I suspected foul play Was when I was asked to examine myself. 3. I think that a simple history is what’s needed, But a precise if pockmarked history. Too much responsibility Is given to the sunburnt and clueless. We need to delegate someone To be in charge of the mashed potatoes. 4. When the committee adjourned, I had already cut you a large slice of papaya And you were giving me lessons in bear baiting. When I touched your hand, it was an afterthought. When I kissed your foot, it was a thought experiment. When I cuddle up to you in the night It will be somewhere between a television show And a psalm And I do not know exactly what it will feel like.

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JGA | Unmarketed Economy

The Unmarketed Economy Yasmin Ogale

In Accra, Ghana, markets are the one-stop-shop for locals and visitors alike, but that does not necessarily mean one-price-fits-all. Bias, at a micro-level, abounds and could mean difficulties for the economy of the developing nation. Accra’s Kaneshie Market is a three-story complex – bright yellow and jaundiced. A mammoth among markets, micro-economics swarms within. It is infested with things living, dead and inanimate, ranging from soap, salt, tilapia, fabric, peanut butter, pigs’ feet, papayas and then some. Transactions of buyers and sellers can be heard across tables, dozens of which are piled high, littered identically with merchandise. Traversing through obscure walkways, Western conceptions of economic speculation – of buyers reading prices before purchases or sellers reading demand corollary to supply – become extinct. It is the buyer, not the good, which is speculated by the seller; love or hate at first sight. According to experience, bias, rather than regulation, determines profit margins in the Ghanaian marketplace. Like most markets in Ghana, in the dismembered Kaneshie capita is not fixed by price tags or stamps, but by word of mouth. Bargaining is an integral part of Ghanaian culture; value can inflate or deflate at will, by the flip of the tongue. Not unique to Kaneshie by any means, haggling over everything from goat’s heads to notebooks is commonplace. In an ideal situation, a potential customer walks past a neatly displayed table. A particular article piques his curiosity. He stops to make an initial inquiry as to the cost, which is subsequently finagled over (upwards and downwards and occasionally backwards) until a mutually accepted price is established. The seller rolls her prize into the folds of her pelvic cloth, and the buyer leaves with his polythened item: both players happy with their equal share. But reality on the micro level is different. With prices not fixed, fluctuation is implied, and thus economics is subjective on the seller’s behalf. “I think that is prejudice, it is definitely prejudice,” says local Godwin Ofori-Attah, director of the Microfinance and Community Development Organization, “because if you [as the vendor] look at me and feel that, because of the way I

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look, the way I dress, [then] I have money, it is prejudice.” Godwin was educated in Ghana and has worked in Kaneshie for over nine years, but he spends weeks at a time traveling around the world for business meetings and conferences. Locally, he engages the market climate on the ‘small-small’ scale, educating and organizing susu boxes for market women to deposit and store a percentage of their incomes. But despite his expertise, even Godwin has felt the judgment of his own customers: “most of the time, the market women look at you and weigh you, they say like, ‘well I know this person can afford like, this price.’” Rarely does he venture into the moisture of the marketplace for his groceries; rather, he sends his female coworkers to negotiate for him. For Godwin, the pandemic gets physical: “When it comes to men, men do not have time to be bargaining…so men are always quoted a higher price [than women].” As a female, however, I do not feel immune to price hikes. However, it is not sexism I’ve experienced, but anever-so slight racism. Lighter-skinned than most vendors in the market, I have frequently experienced personal economic frustration to find that a loaf of sweet bread, usually 50 pesewas for a local, has been quoted as 1.5 GHS for me (a 300 percent price increase). Godwin empathizes, remembering a time when one of his interns wanted to get his hair weaved and was told a price more than 100 times the norm. It is true that the ignorance of foreigners has been and always will be taken advantage of, but I have been living in Ghana for the past four months. I know what the value of bananas, pencils and fish should be. Furthermore, I am well versed and practiced in the various quirks like ntosoɔ (too soh), or “dashing,” in which a little more is given, topping off your purchase, at no extra cost. Aware of buyer’s manipulation, however, I am still cheated. Because of my dress, my look, my skin – the price of any tabletop commodity swells. “As soon as they see [you], they know that ‘oh! [you] came from the West, or [you’re] somebody who could have money,’” says Godwin, between good natured bouts of


Ogale | JGA

“they-told-me-so” laughter, as if hearing the experiences of an obruni (“foreigner”) reinforced the legends of his youth. But this prejudgment, sexist, classist or racist, was current. And not exclusively to me. “They [the market vendors] think that if they charge me a certain way, I will just go with it,” says California native Ashley Millhouse, who has spent the last three months in Accra as a part of a New York University Study Abroad program. “Honestly, the markets are just a flood of the senses…It isn’t worth the time and the haggling; I would rather go to a store where everything is in one place and the price is the same for everyone that goes there, obruni or local.” No longer shopping at local markets or kiosks, Ashley now buys her packaged produce and marked goods from formal retail stores, like Koala Market and Shop-Rite (eerily similar to the squeaky-tiled American ShopRite). But homegoods seller, Theresa Quaye, would disagree. In her opinion, the price adjustment philosophy is not practiced in Kaneshie; it is a “bad habit” germinating elsewhere. To her, the burgeoning formal sectors of Accra pose no threat: “they don’t disturb our business, no, they don’t do that. We, too, we don’t disturb them.” Her business philosophy is based on friendship and trust: “you have to be nice to your customers so that they bring more people to come and buy and then you get money…” But even friendliness may be subjective: “some people can also pretend, they can act,” says Godwin, who has fallen victim to pay-more-in-sympathy tricks, too. Unregulated prices give the sellers the power in the hundreds of markets like Kineshie. And although there are some honest vendors, like Theresa, their existence, according to Godwin, is “isolated.” He notes, “even if someone quotes you the direct price, somebody will feel that, ‘well, the price should be less, and I will have to bargain.’ So it has become a culture that the sellers or those who sell in the market, always quote you a higher price.” Godwin, who doubles as a private microfinance consultant outside the market, says that the biases might in fact be affecting the economics of the shopping center and the developing economy of Ghana: “it is not helping the economy, because there is no fixed price…when a commodity becomes scarce…automatically the price will go up, and when the price goes up, then only the rich people can afford, and the poor people will be left out.” Not only would this increase social division, but the bargaining and biased market culture would attract

future sellers to the informal sector, wherein regulation is nonexistent and taxes are often evaded. Some buyers, too, would be lured by the belief that goods are cheaper in the marketplace (not considering the condition, quality or sanitation of such things first). This can have potentially harmful effects in the long term, according to Godwin. While sellers may read males/ females, obrunis/friends or people who travel in private cars/ trotros (shared taxis) differently, an influx of the stereotypical ‘more expensive customers,’ would only bandage poverty: “more tourists would stimulate…but the danger is that it would make the tourists mistrust because they will always feel like they are being cheated.” What can be done to eliminate the prejudice and price fluctuations of the micro-market economy, according to Godwin, is a regulation of prices. “If we can change our attitude, and educate our market women to ‘call a spade a spade,’ and always insist on the normal price [then that would prevent mistrust and cheating].” Financial literacy and governmental control would have to be gradual, however, and would not be met without their difficulties; but they might clean up the catacombs of the markets like Kineshie, for a more user-friendly, if still putrid, atmosphere. But it would also geld the place. While government regulation would likely eliminate the gumming flies and lack of electricity, it may also mean imbedded taxes, higher rental fees, monopolized businesses and perhaps even job loss. Not to mention an overhaul of the nation’s economic system. “[With price tags] you will get a little money,” says Theresa, still faithfully beside her kiosk, “meanwhile the government will tax you big money. No, I don’t want price tags. I want to bargain with the person.” Shopping in the market would no longer be a way to connect and satisfy material needs as well as social networks. Like in the West, it would risk becoming a chore. Such is the price of progress. Prejudice in Kaneshie, although a microbe of what it could be, still contaminates the Ghanaian national body. Solving it would deliver a civil right, but also remove what is perceived as ‘right’ by some of civil society. “Even though I personally do not like going to the market, I don’t think markets should be regulated,” says Ashley with a box of Special K® Red Berries. “I think being overcharged is part of the experience of coming to Africa. [B]eing overcharged makes you realize and understand that you are different or a minority, and that is vital.”

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Dreams of Ascension Jamie Denburg

While the serenity of daily life in Buddhism seems common throughout the region of Southeast Asia, the peacefulness of the Burmese people particularly inspires me. Myanmar (still commonly known as Burma) has a history of oppressive regimes. From British colonialism, to Japanese invasion, to the harsh militaristic single-party rule established in 1962 and ending just this spring, the Burmese people have endured endless trials and injustices. Yet they are the most resilient, harmonious of people and their faith in the spiritual and in humanity is unwavering. My intention was to capture moments when a personal interaction helped me understand and take in a little of the magnificence and breadth of a magical place and people. All the places I visited and all the people I met still reverberate in my consciousness. These images are the notes of an experience in careful observation, sincere admiration and respect.

The cover of this year’s journal is part of this photo essay.


JGA |Somalia

Somalia and the Mixed Blessings of Anarchy Zachary Caceres

Somalia is a nation riven by tragedy. Although once lined with bustling ports frequented by Arabic merchants in North Africa, it is perhaps best known today for piracy, domestic ‘lawlessness’ and its stubborn resistance to international development efforts. Somalia’s troubles throughout history can largely be traced back to the actions of both intervening foreign powers and domestic political actors. Subsequently, as Somalia lapses further into statelessness,i its development can be best understood as a return to indigenous, pre-colonial institutions, which offer at least a partial escape from generations of violence and predation. At the turn of the 20th century, Somalia was colonized by both England in the north, and Italy in the South. Britain administered the colony as part of its interests in India, mostly concerning itself with cattle exports despite Somalia’s mineral and oil wealth.1,2 However, Italy settled southern Somalia, with its legal apparatus in tow.3 Neither imperial power consolidated total control over its territory; each allowed customary Somali law to exist alongside British Common Law and Italian civil codes. This preserved native institutions by allowing customary law to arbitrate certain disputes, despite the presence of foreign occupiers. In 1960, Britain and Italy merged their colonies to create the independent “Somali Republic.” Unfortunately, much of the colonial machinery remained and the government of independent Somalia became an engine of patronage and corruption.4 Using evidence of widespread political corruption as a rallying cry, General Mohamed Siad Barré staged a successful military coup in 1969. He adopted an explicitly Marxist, state-led mode of development, believing ‘Scientific Socialism’ would bring Somalia wealth and industry.5,6 But Barré’s process of nationalization was also rife with corruption: land was allocated on 50-year leases to useful political coalitions and those nearest Barré plundered the treasury and extorted Somalia’s poorest.7,8,9 Barré i The terms ‘state’ and ‘statelessness’ thorough the paper should be understood as distinct from ‘nation-state’ which refers to a geographical area on a map. ‘State’ refers to the political machinery used for coercion within a nation-state and ‘statelessness’ its relative absence.

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also aggressively sent his military to Kenya and Ethiopia, believing Somali-inhabited land in these nations were rightfully his own.10 He also forbade ‘clanism’ii--deeply at odds with Somali history and their legal heritage--and resorted to outright repression to control recalcitrant groups well into the 1980s.11 During WWII, Italy brought modern weapons to Somalia and armed bands of Somalis to be unleashed onto British lands. This, combined with the policies of the U.S. and other foreign powers throughout the later part of Barré’s regime, spurred a culture of perpetual violence in Somalia, as well as drawing the international arms trade into the country.12,13 After WWII, Barré was courted by both the Soviet Union and the U.S. as part of their proxy feuds during the Cold War. As his early ‘Scientific Socialism’ proved economically moribund, he broke ties with the Soviet Union. The USSR had provided Barré with trained development advisors as well as military aid; but after Barré realigned with the U.S., he opted instead for outright militarism – backed by the US -- to maintain his oppressive regime. Much of the funds for this activity were provided by aid programs through the IMF and other international bodies. As one author described it, Barré moved from “Scientific Socialism to IMF-ism” using structural adjustment loans to ‘privatize’ national assets, typically putting them in the hands of powerful, ancillary political actors.14 While nominally these were ‘market reforms,’ Somalia – like many other African nations – became increasingly militarized by redirecting social spending to fund the military.iii Barré’s rather modest economic achievements under Socialism swiftly retrogressed.15 By the mid 1980s, Somalia’s entire development budget was funded by foreign powers and 50 percent of its operating costs came from international loans and grants. ii A form of societal organization based on kinship, real or fictive. iii Frequently when governments implement structural reform programs, they are required to reduce government spending. This at times results in less funding going towards social programs. In the case of Somalia, the funding previously allocated to social programs was reappropriated by Barré to fund the military.


Zachary Caceres | JGA Indeed, foreign aid counted for 57 percent of Somalia’s Gross National Product.16 Most of this was spent on reining in and arming Barré’s rapacious military.17 The USSR, Italy, U.S., Egypt and China all provided Barré’s regime with various degrees of military support according to the vicissitudes of world geopolitics.18 Despite Somalia’s poverty and relatively small size, Barré fielded one of the largest standing armies in Africa, which he used to protect a massive and corrupt ‘civil service’ from an unruly populace.19 Barré’s policies favored some clans over others, causing disproportionate suffering and resentment amongst other groups. Somali economist Jamil A. Mubarak writes that towards the end of Barré’s rule, “the political base of [his] government narrowed down to his own clan,” which “dominated most of the key positions in government.” Barré and his favored few had, “committed so many atrocities against various clans that he was no longer capable of introducing political reform even if he wanted to.”20 This helped seed the violent relations between some clans in contemporary Somalia; today, they vie for control over centralized political institutions. In January 1991, as the Cold War wound to a close, the U.S. drastically cut military aid to Barré’s regime. Violent militias that had intermittently sparred with Barré during the last 10 years of his rule were waiting in the wings; they forced Barré from Mogadishu and then skirmished amongst themselves to fill the political vacuum. The specter of a ‘failed state’ invited international attention from the United Nations and the U.S. The years following Barré’s fall were riddled with foreign interventions, including the infamous “Black Hawk Down” incident in which 19 U.S. soldiers were killed after a failed assassination.21 Worse still, this upswing in civil strife occurred during a deadly famine, which claimed the lives of about 300,000 Somalis.22 Despite incursions by Ethiopia, the U.N. and the U.S., Somalia settled into a baffling “statelessness” by the mid1990s. Indeed, by as early as 1994, Somalia was mostly peaceful – especially outside nodes of political power like Mogadishu.23 The violence that remains in modern Somalia is disproportionately centered in areas most affected by foreign intervention. The structural differences between Italian and British colonialism in Somalia carry to the present day. The site of greatest civil strife, violence and clan-feuds for control of Somalia is in and around Mogadishu, where the Italian state brought its settlers and built legal and physical infrastructure for its colonies. In contrast, in the Northern province of Somaliland, which was once the British Somaliland Protectorate, the only mildly stable quasi-state in modern Somalia has formed.24 Despite British control over this area being relatively loose historically, even under colonialism, is, Somaliland has declared itself an independent nation. While unrecognized and weak, its state maintains

internal order while skirmishing on its borders. These two areas, with their occasional flare-ups and attempted coups, stand in stark contrast to the rural majority of Somalia, which is stateless and largely peaceful.25,26 But even in Mogadishu and on the fringes of Somaliland, a stateless or near-stateless ‘militia equilibrium’ has repeatedly emerged in the absence of foreign intervention. Andre Le Sage explains, “The power base of Somalia’s warlords declined further as a result of the limited resources at their disposal. Opportunities for plunder gradually disappeared and the amount of foreign aid available for diversion dwindled… The large clan-based militias – the basis for the worst fighting in Somalia in the early and mid-1990s – became difficult to maintain.”27 Western governments and much of the press see in Somalia nothing but “the very definition of a failed state,” invoking images from Hobbes.28 Perhaps regrettably, these images of ‘anarchic’ Somalia as violent and barbaric seared their way into the popular mind.29 But economists studying the nation find that Stateless Somalia significantly outperforms its ‘governed’ predecessors. Economist Peter Little explains: “Indicators of Somali welfare remain low in absolute terms, but compared to their status under government show a marked advance. Under statelessness life expectancy in Somalia has grown, access to health facilities has increased, infant mortality has dropped, civil liberties have expanded, and extreme poverty (less than $1 PPP/day) has plummeted.”iv,30 This growth in humanitarian indicators has moved at a faster pace than in surrounding African nations governed by central, predatory states.31,32 For many Somalis, states are synonymous with corruption, plunder and oppression; their experiences historically have taught nothing else. The inability for democracy to take hold in Somalia, despite all the interventions nominally aimed at that end, is in large part because warlords rush to claim the state apparatus for themselves because of the potential gains from using it to exploit the population. Indeed, in some parts of the country, “citizens are safer than they’ve been in three decades,” and “atrocities against civilians are now almost unheard of.”33,34 In fact, violence is worse across the ‘governed’ Kenyan border than in nearby Somalia.35 Perhaps the strongest endorsement of relative safety in stateless Somalia comes from its citizens themselves: 400,00 Somali refugees ‘voted with their feet’v by returning to Somalia in the same year that Barré’s government fell.36 Moments of protracted violence in Somalia tend to follow attempts–usually foreign—to re-unify or establish a iv Other improvements have occurred in immunizations, access to water, sanitation, birth weight, maternal mortality, ownership of TVs, radios, telephones, measles fatalities and physicians per 100,000 people. v ‘Voting with their feet’ has nothing to do with ballots. People are opting to return to Somalia, which can be interpreted as an endorsement of statelessness over previous regimes.

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JGA |Somalia Somali state. These moments, unsurprisingly, receive more press-coverage than long periods of relative stability and growth. After botched early attempts, the U.N. in 2000 organized a “Transitional National Government,” which was promptly expelled by scuffling clan militias–all of whom were vying for control over the Federal apparatus.37 Again in 2002, heads of states began planning to establish a “Transitional Federal Government.” Immediately, armed clashes aimed at control over Mogadishu spiked and continued for the next two years.vi,38 In 2006, the U.S. sponsored an Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, which also caused a spike in clan violence.39 One economist studying Somalia’s currency has noted that after U.N. troops evacuated in 1995, the Somali economy, rather than deteriorating, actually improved.40 Jamil Mubarak argues that the relative success of statelessness in Somalia during the low-points between interventions is the fruit of a long tradition of informal legal and economic institutions. Under colonialism, and then under Siad Barré’s regime, black markets flourished behind state-central planning and corruption. As Barré’s state toppled and the subsequent war to fill his placereached a stalemate, these markets burgeoned. Mubarak declares, “In communities which provide a peaceful environment, private sector economic activities have thrived… and opened new opportunities for growth and prosperity. In the local economies of these communities, ‘no-government’ has proven to be far better than the repressive government of Siad Barré.”41 Just as informal markets sustain economic activity in Stateless Somalia, informal legal institutions maintain law and order. Legal disputes, especially in the peaceful regions beyond Mogadishu, are typically settled using customary law called “Xeer.” In fact, the most peaceful regions in Somalia are those areas most thoroughly ‘governed’ by traditional Xeer.42 This tribal law uses numerous levels of restitution according to the severity of the crime instead of punitive punishment. Somalis all belong to a “diya” group, a familial ‘insurance pool,’ which is held responsible for the crimes of its members. Once a trial is held with neutral ‘elder’ arbitrators, the criminal is expected to provide restitution (priced in livestock or their money equivalent) to the victim.

vi Other fighting has occurred because of U.S. financing of particular warlords for the “War on Terror.” This destroys the balance of power in Somalia and encourages warlords to try to expand their territory (“Somali Criticizes US Terror Moves” BBC).

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The ‘diya’ is responsible if a convicted criminal in their midst refuses to pay restitution. This encourages clans to force its members to uphold the Xeer. If a member still will not comply, a clan can declare that he is no longer in their ‘insurance group,’ effectively making him an outlaw and unprotected by the clan. This system, while intricate and imbued with traditional religious sentiment, still functions well in modern Somalia to adjudicate both civil and criminal disputes.43 Even piracy, now the international watchword for Somalia, is testament to the robustness of traditional Somali law. One Somali pirate, when interviewed, called ‘foreigners’ the real pirates. He complained that illegal trawlers from surrounding nations overfish and dump toxic waste, robbing Somali fishermen of their subsistence and livelihoods. Pirating, he claims, was the last resort of a desperate industry to secure rights to fishing waters. Moreover, Somali pirates generally do not prey on Somalis and, indeed, a vast network of support industries have emerged from land-dwellers to support their piratical countrymen.44,45 Somalia, in many ways, has come full-circle. Having started as a trade center it is, despite many handicaps, slowly regaining its former stature as an exporter, as a ‘dutyfree port’ and even as a center for small-scale finance.vii It should be no surprise that Somalis have proven nearly ‘ungovernable’ in recent years. They suffered tremendous hardship at the hands of states for generations. While one cannot romanticize Stateless Somalia, which remains poor and troubled, one should not brand it as an abject failure in desperate need of political and military intervention. In a world of imperfect alternatives, statelessness in Somalia should not be dismissed. Somalia’s indigenous institutions, though confusing to some Western eyes, have proven robust and conducive to peace and economic growth. Moreover, they are a return to an era that preceded the actions of irresponsible states that condemned Somalia to a century of blood and poverty.

vii Somalia currently has several competing currencies from past regimes as well as the U.S. dollar and notes from Somaliland. Interestingly, the only currency that risks complete destruction through hyperinflation is Somaliland’s – the only currency (other than the U.S. dollar) that is supported by a State-entity. A massive market in foreign remittances from Middle-East economies provides free-flowing credit to Somali businessmen. See (Mubarak, “A Case of Private Supply”)


Carter | JGA

Under the Influence: Patterns of Dependency in Latin American Development Maggie Carter

Latin American colonialism ended with the hardwon independence of its nations, however it remains to be seen if these countries have truly become independent and escaped the legacy of oppression the colonizers set in motion. The colonialists maximized the output of the colonies by strategically dividing production into different areas of the continent. Though this was a successful tactic for the colonizers looking to exploit the land, when individual nations rose out of the struggle for independence, it left each country economically dependent on the one or few commodities it already produced. In its struggle to overcome this and become self-sufficient, Latin America has repeatedly looked outward to the developed world, and consequently invited new forms of colonialism that have kept its head underwater for centuries. As colonialism fell, Latin America gained its freedom, but was also left without the financial support of its former oppressors. As Spain and Portugal moved out, England, France and the United States provided a new market, eager to pick up where the others left off, and quickly gained control of trade in Latin America. They began investing in transportation technologies such as railroads and steam engines, as well as developing port cities in order to efficiently export the products. However, the trade relationship created was by no means an equal one. Dependency and Development in Latin America,1 by Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletti, illustrates how colonialism worked to oppress Latin America, even after the end of the Spanish and Portuguese empires: When Latin America emerged from its colonial dependence and entered a period of dependence on Great Britain, Britain sought support from national producers of export commodities who, because of the growth of their economic base – already under way in the colonial situation – could effect a new accommodation with emergent dominant forces at world level. Thanks to this they gained, if not absolute control, at least a privileged position in local structures of power.2 Though they profited during colonialism and neocolonialism,

the landowners and producers, the domestic elite, were dependent on whoever could purchase their products and set up the infrastructure to export them, which allowed foreign control. Out of the common desire to become prosperous independent nations, which was expected to come with the wealth brought in by the export boom, Latin America dug itself deeper into a circular pattern of dependency. Due to Latin America’s export-based economy, established during colonialism, the majority of commodities had to be supplied by importation. After gaining independence, the only way these poor, newly formed nations could afford these imports was by continuing the production of their export goods, which was enabled by foreign investment. The developed countries with a new stake in Latin America brought with them modernization but only in order to make exportation more efficient. The railroads only ran from the plantations to the port cities, and “cities and towns were chiefly commercial, administrative, and service centers.”3 These new developments only entrenched Latin America’s exportbased economy more deeply, as now the continent’s entire infrastructure was designed to support it. Soon foreign investors owned or controlled much of Latin America’s production industries and with the modernization came a price: “Progress brought a new brand of imperialism from Great Britain and the United States. The same countries that modeled progress for Latin America helped install it there, so to speak—and sometimes owned it outright.”4 The new era of modernization and advancement had not elevated the inferior position of Latin America, and though the powers shifted during neocolonialism, Latin America could still not claim sovereignty. Neocolonialism brought Latin America a vision of progress rooted in technological advancements, and many held these developed nations to be models for the future of Latin America. The great proponent of neocolonialism, Juan Baptista Alberdi’s essay, “Immigration as a Means of Progress,”5 described as his “utopian representation of the future,” suggests that Latin America cannot become great without significant European influence. He asks, “How and in what form will the reviving spirit of European civilization come to our land? Just as it has always come. Europe will bring us its fresh spirit, its work habits, and its civilized ways with the immigrants it sends us.”6 To Alberdi, Europe, as

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JGA | Latin American Development the developed world, represents civilization that will come, “just as it has always come,” which historically refers to colonization, the original force that brought Europeans to the South American shores. He almost blatantly condones colonialism, but with a nationalist argument. He believes that the nations of Latin America can only become civilized by embracing “the qualities of English liberty, French culture, and the industriousness of men from Europe and the United States.”7 Clearly, foreign influence in Latin America was not limited to the importation of modern technologies but extended to the importation of new ideals. Alberdi wants freedom, culture and efficiency, which he believes result from development. However, this is not development in the general sense, but a very specific kind development. After his plea for Europeanization, he outlines his plan to achieve this, stating, “Important advice to men of South American countries: Primary schools, high schools, universities, are, by themselves alone, very poor mean of progress without large manufacturing enterprises that are the fruits of great numbers of men.”8 He undervalues education of the public, a necessity of equality, which cultivates both skill and culture, and instead emphasizes industrialization. This tendency to first implement the physical aspects of progress, assuming that the social ones will follow, is commonly repeated throughout the course of Latin American development. At least for the duration of neocolonialism, this strategy failed to reorganize society. As Chasteen writes, “Despite many transformations, neither Latin America’s subordinate relationship to Europe nor its basic social hierarchy – created by colonization – had changed. Hierarchical relations of race and class, in which those at the top derive decisive prestige and advantage from their outside connections, remained the norm.”9 Ultimately, the progress promised by neocolonialism was unable to improve the lives of most Latin Americans, and instead upheld the superior status of the wealthy elites. The period of neocolonialism solidified Latin America’s dependence on exports, so when depression and war struck its market, its products piled up with no buyers and the nations of Latin America were forced to completely restructure their economies. This led to the widespread implementation of Import-Substituting Industrialization (ISI) in Latin America. ISI was an effort to free Latin American countries from dependency on foreign nations, and by creating a domestic industry and enforcing trade protection, it attempted to keep out foreign influence, a significant change from neocolonialism. However, I argue that ISI only redefined Latin America’s economic and ideological dependence on the developed world. In terms of economic dependence, though Latin America was no longer importing finished products, it still had to import the raw materials and machinery needed to create them. More notably, it remained dependent on the developed world for technological advances in the manufacturing of their products, as the technologies they used were simply imported and knowledge did not extend past operation. In

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Albert O. Hirschman’s extensive analysis of ISI, “The Political Economy of Import-Substituting Industrialization in Latin America,”10 he describes this problem: “ISI thus brings in complex technology, but without the sustained technological experimentation and concomitant training in innovation which are characteristic of the pioneer industrial countries.”11 This recalls Alberdi’s mistaken assessment that education and its benefits will follow from large-scale industrialization, rather than the other way around. In Latin America, the physical aspect of progress and development are installed, but the social ones are again neglected. The circumstances surrounding the failure of ISI provide even greater evidence for the reaffirmation of Latin American foreign dependency. Cardoso and Faletti present the perspective that industrial capitalism is a modern manifestation of the colonial model of the exploitation of peripheries by the core: It has been assumed that the peripheral countries would have to repeat the evolution of the economies of the central countries in order to achieve development. But it is clear that from its beginning the capitalist process implied an unequal relation between the central and the peripheral economies. Many “underdeveloped” economies – as is the case of the Latin American – were incorporated into the capitalist system as colonies and later as national states, and they have stayed in the capitalist system throughout their history. They remain, however, peripheral economies with particular historical paths when compared with central capitalist economies.12

Through industrialization, Latin America attempted to mimic the model of development that was responsible for its own oppression and exploitation during colonialism. It was ultimately unsuccessful because it has been and remains a periphery, without peripheries of its own where it could exploitatively extract raw materials and export its surplus. This problem is evidenced by the fact that “Import substituting industry is affected by seemingly congenital inability to move into export markets,”13 meaning that at some point, once the domestic market has been saturated, ISI is no longer profitable. Another disappointment of ISI was its failure to create social derivatives. Hirschman writes: Progressive Latin Americans had long hoped that industry would introduce new, much needed disciplines into the behavior of their governments. The very nature of industrial operations – their precision, the need for exact timing, punctuality, reliability, predictability and all-around rationality – was expected to infuse these same qualities into policy-making and perhaps


Carter | JGA even into the political process itself.14 Here again is another example of the tendency to first install the visible aspects of development and expect the values and practices commonly associated with it to follow. Rationality was expected to come out of industrialism, and yet the frequent irrationality in policymaking contributed to its downfall. Hirschman’s conclusion makes the point: “Industrialism was expected to change the social order and all it did was to supply manufactures!”15 At the top of this long-standing social order of Latin America was the elite class, which retained its superior position and “imposed upon the entire society an orientation based on its own interests.”16 During the periods of ISI and neocolonialism, the dreams and ideals of Latin Americans were rooted in the modernization and technological developments that the world’s most powerful countries had already harnessed, which seemed to be markers of influence and importance on the global scale. Latin America chose to emulate these countries rather than take a path of development that responded to its own problems and preexisting structure and cultural foundations, a habit that has historically and repeatedly hindered its great potential. The failings of ISI led to the accumulation of vast amounts of debt by Latin American countries, but by the time the repayment was due, the nations had not gained enough profits to pay it back. In response, the U.S. created a set of conditions that must be accepted by any country prior to the dispersal of more loans. In his article “What Washington Means by Policy Reform,” John Williamson writes that the objectives that the Washington Consensus wishes to achieve by its implementation in developing countries are “…growth, low inflation, a viable balance of payments, and an equitable income distribution.”17 However, despite its intentions, the Washington Consensus presents the obvious problem of a developed country imposing conditions upon and dictating the terms of its relationship with developing countries. This is again a replication of colonial structures, where the developed country has the upper hand. In this scenario, it is hard to believe that the U.S., the dominant power, is not exploiting its superior position. Williamson notes that though it is understood that the U.S. is only interested in the growth and prosperity of Latin America, “the most obvious exception to this perceived harmony of interests concerns the U.S. national interest in continued receipt of debt service from Latin America.”18 The Washington Consensus presents the two objectives as parallel, as prosperity in Latin American countries would enable them to pay off their debts, but some of the policies suggest evidence of the U.S.’s prioritization of debt repayment. For example, the Washington Consensus promotes the policy of debt-equity swaps, on the argument that this can “simultaneously further the twin objectives of promoting FDI and reducing debt.”19 However, though debtequity swaps do allow nations to pay back their debt quickly and acquire more loans, it is at the expense of state-owned industry. Alberdi, wrote, “Grant foreign investors what they

require: investment capital is the sure arm of progress for our countries.”20 If a country does not own its industry, nor have any power to dictate its own terms of development, it might as well be a colony. The question remains, then, can Latin America gain true independence? In response to the strict conditions of the Washington Consensus, a new economic policy has risen out of Latin America in an effort to escape this latest attempt at imperialism. The Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), spearheaded by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, was developed as an alternative to the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas and aims to create a self-sustainable and independent Latin America through regional cooperation and assistance. Though it is a viable attempt to deny the conditions of the first world, it possesses characteristics that embody the very process it condemns. The economic foundation of ALBA is based on a system of bartering that promotes trade between countries specializing in certain areas in order to gain each nation access to resources they do not produce. For example, Venezuela’s contribution is oil, Bolivia’s is natural gas and Argentina, should they choose to join, would offer livestock to the equation. This model comes dangerously close to reproducing the colonial system that made these countries so dependent in the first place, conditioning their industries to produce only one export. It is important to note that Venezuela’s reasons for participating cannot be purely economic as the gain from the trade in most cases significantly favors the other nation. For example, Bolivia’s contribution is mainly natural gas, practically useless to the oil rich Venezuela. But what Chávez loses economically, he gains politically. By offering to pay the debts of Latin American countries, Chávez implements his own kind of debt-equity swaps, gaining not financial ownership, but political allegiance as well as acceptance of the conditions of ALBA. The relationship of Venezuela to the other nations involved is also reminiscent of the colonial model, as Venezuela, the core, extracts vast amounts of oil with its expansive industry, exports its surplus to the periphery, and gains raw products from their less developed industries.21 In this sense, Venezuela overcomes the problem of industrialization in developing nations that Cardoso and Faletti present. Ultimately, ALBA is unable to escape the influence of colonialism because its existence is born out of a desire to resist the Washington Consensus. As long as Latin America continues to respond to its colonial legacy, whether by embracing it through neocolonialism, reversing it through ISI or blatantly refusing it through ALBA, progress will be impossible. If Latin America desires independence, it must turn to an organic model of development that is itself independent of a past stained with oppression; one cannot move forward while looking backwards.

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Identity Drew McKenzie

To Spaniards, the flag is of great social relevance, even today. Its association with Franco and the transition into a national democracy heighten its social connotations and its political statement. The photo is of Plaza de Colón, in the heart of Madrid. In it, the commanding Spanish flag billows above the entire plaza, including the concrete macro-sculptures by Joaquín Vaquero Turcios. For months, I spent every afternoon here skateboarding. It is here that I became friends with local skateboarders, whose extension and acceptance gave me insight into the Madrileño youth.

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(La Bandera) Ana Radolinski

Espa単a sangrante. Empeorando, se recupera 多Es posible? El optimismo flota sobre el desierto del dolor. Las cicatrices gotean bajo el vendaje mojado de las memorias que no se pueden contener.

(The Flag) Bleeding Spain. She worsens, she recovers. Possibly? Optimism floats over the desert of pain. The scars drip below the bandage drenched in memories that cannot be contained.

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JGA | Participative Management

Protecting Rights and Promoting Development: Participative Management in Germany and Argentina Paz Petersson

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Since the advent of Human Resources theory, the valuing of employees as individuals has been at the top of the list of things to do to create a happy, productive work environment. To what degree this theory is actually practiced, and to what degree it affects financial sustainability and growth is a set of questions all its own. Some have contended that a “High Road”i business model, with great degrees of employee participation and more skilled workers creates both a happier work environment and greater financial growth, serving as a golden goose for some of the problems faced by enterprises.1 While in theory, and in many real cases, the High Road is clearly the better option for businesses, the majority of global businesses still follow the hierarchical, low workerinvolvement, “Low Road” model. This begs the question: if High Road Participative Management (PM) systems are so desirable, why do more companies not adopt them? There are a number of obvious reasons, including resistance from powerful employers and managers in hierarchical workplaces and lack of general government assistance. Additionally, the High Road model has not been widely recognized in the global economy as the better option. Keeping this in mind, I will look at the specific debate for PM in the workplace, focusing on the history of two very distinct examples, which clarify some of the reasoning for High Road models and some of the reasons why they do or do not prevail in societies. Namely, I will analyze in detail the lauded German model of Codetermination, dating back to the end of WWII, and the much smaller and more contentious worker-run enterprises in Argentina, appearing during and immediately after the national economic crisis of 2001. These examples, and their contrasting progressions, bring light to the discussion of what worker participation can mean for businesses and show how it can manifest in very different ways. Before detailing the two examples, I will introduce some of the arguments for and against greater employee participation in the workplace and its implication for business. The two examples I will focus on were chosen

because of their similar outcome of high levels of employee participation despite huge differences in scale and in the way they came about. Germany, on the one hand, has established a mainstream, national, government-supported business model in which workers are given a voice. Argentina, on the other hand, has experienced a small-scale movement in which unemployed workers forcefully claimed a voice after their situation became unbearable, and they have managed to maintain that voice and maintain the businesses without bosses. These two examples will be detailed individually and then compared in the last section in terms of their inception, productivity and efficiency over time and their relationship with their respective governments in order to illuminate what lessons they can teach us about the future of the High Road model.

As mentioned above, the established argument for employee participation in the workplace dates back to the first shift in industrial relations theory with the creation of “Human Resources” theory.ii Pioneered by Dengler, Likert and McGregor towards the middle of the 20th century, its basic idea is that humans are resources in and of themselves, and treating them as such will increase their motivation and productivity, whereas treating them as expendable will do the opposite. This now widely accepted theory came as a stark contrast to Classic industrial relations theory, which characterizes employees as unwilling actors who work only because they have to and whose effort only reflects wages.iii While Human Resources departments in the workplace have become mainstream, there is still a huge disconnect from the actual theory and the way that Human Resources are dealt with in businesses.2 In many ways, the comparison of Classic vs. Human Resources industrial relations theory is very similar to the newer contrasting Low Road vs. High Road industrial relations systems, especially regarding PM.

i There are many qualities, which characterize the High Road model, all of them, deeply interdependent. For the purposes of this paper, I am focusing particularly on the essential aspect of participative management in any High Road model. For a delineation of the characteristics of a High Road vs. Low Road model, please see Appendix 1.

ii These are some texts that argue for participative management much earlier than this. See, for example, Ben Selekman. Sharing Management with the Workers, New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1924]. iii For a detailed description of these theories, see: John Sheldrake. Management Theory, (London: Thomson Learning, 2004) chpt. 2, 16, 25.

Worker Participation in Management Theory


Petersson | JGA These terms encompass a variety of characteristics (See Appendix 1), but most importantly, High Road systems include high worker involvement and less hierarchy in the workplace with fewer lay-offs, while Low Road systems result in the opposite.3 Classic examples of successful High Road systems include the Japanese and German models, in which employees have a significant voice in the workings of their business (which is guaranteed by the government in Germany) and are generally more skilled. Classic Low Road examples are competitive factories and sweatshops, most well-known in China, among many others, in which employees are highly expendable, with few necessary skills and with little or no say in the workings of their business. Just as Human Resource theory was lauded in its time, so too, almost as a continuation of this, is the High Road model of PM valued today. Part of the appeal of PM is that it has been shown to have a positive effect on productivity,4 and a strong positive effect on worker satisfaction.5 Aside from its effect on productivity and satisfaction, PM provides a solution to the inherent principal-agent problem found in hierarchical businesses. As economist Joseph Stiglitz describes, “managers have imperfect incentives to ensure that [workers and shareholders] are well-aligned.”6 Stiglitz describes this aspect of hierarchical businesses as not only unfavorable, but also as a cause of market failure in the East Asian economic crisis. As he explains, leading up to that crisis, “outcomes were clearly not in workers’ interests and were probably not even efficient.”7 Efficiency plays an important role in PM, since participative businesses often involve a higher level of skill and job rotation than more hierarchical ones. The basic idea is that workers know how to do more and therefore can do more than one simple task.iv When describing High Road vs. Low Road industrial relations systems, the High Road clearly emerges as the ideal option. Yet on the ground, the Low Road, less participative model is more likely to be used. This is true across the board, and is not dependent on the level of development of a country (as can be seen ny the U.S.’s Low Road structure). McCaffrey et al. have argued that “barriers to participative systems are embedded in social, economic and political principles” and that these are where attention needs to be focused to facilitate a transition to greater participative management.8 The prevailing principles in Low Road systems, driven by differential wages, tend to incentivize personal advancement, a by-product of this being that those on top in Low Road systems will most likely be the strongest resisters of any transfer of power towards a less hierarchical, iv Recalling the discussion of Classic vs. Human Resources theories, another facet of the Classic theory was that work should be based on tasks. Human Resources theory took the opposite approach, emphasizing the importance of workers’ ability to carry out entire processes, and therefore have more understanding, ability and personal-meaning added to the work they are doing. This added personal-value was argued to increase efficiency.

High Road system. This fits in line with McCaffrey et al.’s principle, but still leaves unanswered the question of how to change those principles. To answer this question, lessons must be learned from successful cases. This brings us to Germany and Argentina, both of which managed a transition to a High Road system via rather unique moments in the histories of their countries. In each example “those on top” lost their power prior to the shift to PM. While this was the case in these examples, it is certainly not the only way to make the transition. Nonetheless, they do provide an idea of what does and does not work, both in the transition and in overall functioning of a PM model.

Codetermination in Germany Germany’s industrial relations model has been lauded for its high levels of productivity, worker-involvement and its general successful High Road structure. Often grouped with Japan in discussions of High Road models, both nations’ current participative industrial relations models date back to the end of WWII, when each national economy essentially had to recreate itself under close international observation after losing the war. In Germany’s case, the top priority was to make a system that would never allow for the kind of centralized power that had occurred under the Nazi regime. As it turned out, this ended up including many aspects of the pre-Nazi Weimar regime, in which workers committees and Works Councils (essentially businesslevel micro-unions) were legally included in the industrial relations system. Abolished under Hitler, a new version of these structures would appear after the death of his regime. These structures form the current industrial relations system in Germany, called Codetermination, in which workers hold 50 percent of the seats on the supervisory board of their companies, and Works Councils are present in all sizable businesses so that workers’ voices enter into management and decision-making. This model, supported and protected by the German state, is designed to directly address the conflicting interests of workers and employers. It has so far been successful in doing so, in many ways redefining the role of collective bargaining. The term ‘Codetermination,’ or Mitbestimmung in German, is defined in the Oxford American Dictionary as “cooperation between management and workers in decision-making, especially by the representation of workers on boards of directors.” Although Codetermination as we know it today originated as a Post-WWII model, the concept of worker involvement began early in Germany’s history, even prior to WWI. The very first efforts toward worker-involvement legislation were in 1848 when factory committees made demands for participation rights and improved working and living conditions. These efforts went unanswered, their success “hampered by employers fearing

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JGA | Participative Management an erosion of their power of decision.”9 About 70 years later, under the Weimar Republic Constitution, labor legislation was passed which gave workers and staff equal rights to participate “together with the company in the regulation of wages and working conditions, as well as in the complete economic development of the producing powers”10 via Works Councils. Works Councils are organizations run by workers for workers’ rights at the shop-floor level. They essentially function as micro-unions within each business, safeguarding employee interests and carrying out at the business-level what trade unions carried out at the national and industry level. The “Works Councils Act” set the stage for another act two years later that introduced worker representation at the high level of supervisory boards. These legislations facilitated a high worker involvement system, and functioned well until a number of external and other factors led to the fall of the Weimar regime and the rise of the Nazi regime. In 1934, under Hitler, all of these labor legislations were repealed under the “Act to Regulate National Work.”11 One of its many negative effects of the Nazi regime was to leave Germany’s economy in shambles. Emerging out of the destruction of war, Germany now has one of the largest global economies and is the highest exporter after China.v This trajectory is a story worth studying. Under Allied occupation starting in 1945, a revived emphasis was put on industrial democracy and worker participation. By 1946, the “Allied Control Council Act No 22” was put in place, directly modeled after the 1920 “Works Councils Act.”12 Over the next 30 years, a number of new legislations came into place, each of them increasing PM by provisioning for Works Councils in every workplace, culminating in the “Codetermination Act” of 1976 which universalized Codetermination in Germany. This law stipulated that businesses with over 2,000 employees have 50 percent of the seats on the supervisory board allocated to employee representatives.13 While this law certainly differs greatly from most countries’ industrial relations legislation, it passed with an overwhelming majority in Germany. Workers and unions were not incredibly enthusiastic, since all sides regarded it as a “compromise.”14 This scenario only further emphasizes the unique political-economic context in Germany. Since 1976, the legislation has not changed drastically, but it has been amended a few times in the 2000s. The only significant change in industrial legislation was the 1988 “Executive’s Committee Act,” which provided a legal basis for executive interests at the establishment level.15 Compared to the legislation of 1976 and earlier, this Act slightly modified the system in favor of employers. The conflicting interests of employers and workers in most of the world, and the conventionally high level of power v The “Germany” focused on here refers to West Germany until 1989, and then the greater nation from there on.

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that employers have, is what creates the need for collective bargaining by workers in order to have their demands met. In Germany, “Codetermination operates on a company level, while collective bargaining...is conducted on an industry level,” therefore alleviating the inherent conflict between worker and manager. Nathan goes on to describe this as one of the reasons for Germany’s success.16 This argument adds a piece to the puzzle, but as McPherson holds, contrary to Reich, industry level collective bargaining does indeed occur in other countries, yet managers have still shown no interest in transitioning to a Codetermination system.17 The main difference in Germany is the labor legislation, which bolsters the two-leveled structure, separating shop-floor conflicts from industry conflicts through the existence of Works Councils at the plant level and trade unions at the industry level. That the German model succeeded and made leaps and bounds is no question since Germany still remains one of the largest economies in the world. It is, however, true that its economic trajectory over time has not been a continuous upward shoot. The miraculous growth in the 1970s and 1980s changed speed in the 1990s when the world’s economy was experiencing a decline, and globalization was applying new pressures on national economies. As Jacobi describes in “Renewal of the Collective Bargaining System?,” the once lauded “German model” took on a new name in the 1990s decline, the “German Disease,” due to inflexibility in German industry in the face of worldwide competition and demographic change.18 In the face of this slow decline, Jacobi argues that while Germany did indeed experience decline due to political and labor inflexibility, new social and political reforms were already beginning to take place to adjust to these.19 The cause of this decline was new international competition under globalization, which hurt many world economies in the 1990s. The common approach to this problem was to restructure the labor market. For Germany (and Japan), this meant becoming Americanized. For the U.S., this meant the inclusion of new Human Resources management practices (PM being among these).20 Another aspect of the German decline, and the entire German system in general, is that Germany has relatively high unemployment levels compared to the U.S. A question for future research would be to look into how Germany’s PM system affects unemployment. Despite the slight decline, the German model is still highly praised and has been recognized and introduced on some level in a number of European countries: “[e]mployees in 18 of the 25 European member states have the right to have their interests represented in their company’s top administrative and management bodies.”21 At an event celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Codetermination laws, the General Secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation called Germany’s model “a remarkable


Petersson | JGA piece of economic democracy and participation” and went on to say: “[w]hat we need...is the Europeanization of a coherent concept of participative democracy in the social and economic context.”22 This overview of Codetermination in Germany’s history and present provides some answers and many lessons regarding how and why an economy can and should develop a high participation industrial relations system.

Argentina’s Worker-Run Factories Argentina’s recent financial crisis in 2001 was devastating on a number of levels, with unemployment reaching 25 percent at its peak, unemployment and underemployment combined reaching 35 percent, while 60 percent of the population lived below the poverty line.23 Out of this economically precarious state emerged a national movement of unemployed workers, characterized by widespread protest and a socio-economic phenomenon: the worker takeover of factories. Laid-off workers, whose factories had been shutdown, came together to reclaim their old jobs by occupying their closed factories and going back to work under their own management. The worker-run factory, or Empresa Recuperada por sus Trabajadores (ERT), essentially a very egalitarian, individual-level cooperative, became a global example of economic democracy and employee participation. Worker-run factories became a small portion of the economy towards the peak of the crisis in December 2001. In June of 2002, the country’s center-right wing newspaper reported 80 ERTs with nearly 10,000 employees,24 and by January 2003, the number of factories had reached 140 (with the number of employees not changing drastically).25 A study published in 2006 (conducted by professors and students at the University of Buenos Aires) located 200 recovered factories employing 10,000 workers.26 More recently, an article published in January 2009 by the country’s left-wing newspaper reported 150 operating ERTs employing 13,000 workers.27 In a country of 40 million, the worker-run factory represents a minuscule portion of the economy, yet it stands as a very different, very organic example of PM. Its smallness in scale also reinforces how impressive it is that the factories managed to maintain business, and even grow a little, in the last (economically grueling) ten years in Argentina. Unlike the German model, which was planned and organized over time, and existed within the system of its national government, the Argentine case was a form of protest in reaction to its nation’s failure to maintain a stable financial system in which people could hold onto their jobs. To understand the existence of ERTs, I will present a description of the political economic context followed by specific examples and finally an analysis of media coverage and the international discourse surrounding these factories. The recent economic crisis in Argentina resulted from

a history of dictatorship, combined with poor neo-liberal policies in the 1990s, pressure from international banks and an unsustainable peso to dollar convertibility law, all of which led to the explosive devaluation of the currency and the freezing of bank accounts in 2001. This crisis included the classic symptoms of investor withdrawal and widespread unemployment, which became common at end of the 1990s as business-owners on a micro level were closing down their businesses, in some cases because they were unable to pay back their own debts and in others because they recognized the decline and chose to get out before things got worse. Protests by mainly lower class citizens had begun towards the end of the 1990s, but at the peak of the crisis in 2001, the number of unemployed had risen so high that protests became ubiquitous, uniting the lower and middle classes. These national protests caused the resignation of the then president on December 21, 2001, and in the following 11 days the nation saw four new presidents come and go, essentially run out by the protesting nation that had lost faith in its government. The fourth new president only stayed a year before resigning. The sovereignty and competence of the state was clearly compromised, and with no one else to turn to, and no one to legitimately stop them, workers simply went back to work. This was not restricted to one industry, but famously spanned across a variety of factory industries.28 Ironically, the ERTs were not well supported by Argentina’s labor unions. Yet they still managed to survive, and thrive, mainly through help from fellow factories.29 A 2002 news article reported that some self-managed (autogestionada) factories30 achieved salaries higher than their historical average and had also managed to hire new employees.31 This financial stability continues today, yet it still functions, in many cases, outside of the law and outside of the norm of any standing business model. Over the years, some legal concessions have been made, including a law on bankruptcy and expropriations, making it possible for some factories to legally own their businesses. Notwithstanding these examples, a large number of factories continue to face claims by previous owners, or previous creditors who attempt to regain ownership of the factories. Nonetheless, business continues. Since the seized, self-managed factory is a relatively new concept, it is by no means a homogeneous, clear-cut model, yet there are some overarching characteristics which appear in most ERTs. The most well-known, well-studied aspect is that these factories are run by direct democracy, with frequent (in most cases, weekly) meetings in which employees vote equally on decisions.32 Also, employees take on new positions and rotate jobs, becoming more flexible and skilled workers (embodying the High Road model). This structure is like a grassroots version of the German model, having a similar positive psychological effect to what Codetermination fostered years before. Ranis, after

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JGA | Participative Management researching and visiting a number of ERTs, noted that “[w]orking for the enterprise is no longer seen as external to the worker.” This view is supported in a number of accounts, along with a feeling that workers have not only rescued their lost jobs, but have also entered into a much better arrangement than their previous one.33 Although in the beginning things were difficult, these ERTs are now economically stable and competitive, all the while experiencing irreplaceable economic solidarity. One factory even managed to open up a health clinic in its neighborhood.34 Many academics and alternative media journalists, along with some factory members themselves, proudly chronicle these events as anti-neoliberal and anti-capitalist.35 While this reading is understandable, especially regarding the question of private property rights, it is much more productive to interpret it as a political movement of social rights that fits into our capitalist framework. To say that it is anti-capitalist to fight for the social right to employment is to ignore the actual workings of some of the most capitalist modern societies. If we take the U.S. for example, even with its high employment rates, welfare is still offered to those who cannot find work. China also offers a good example, since employment there is seen as a fundamental right. In his seminal work The Great Transformation, Polanyi gives some insights into the emergence and importance of social rights in the capitalist economy.36 He looks back to the origins of industrialization and describes that, as the world became industrialized and labor commodified, the economy came to the forefront and society became dependent upon it, whereas historically, economy had been secondary to society. This shift made possible huge violations of social rights, and out of this grew the political need to protect those social rights, and account for the harshness of the economy. With this in mind, we may recall the situation in Argentina and see that neither the employers, nor the creditors, nor the government were doing anything substantial to protect the social rights of the thousands of employees who were laid off. Despite all of this inaction, the people still had the political impetus to protect their social right to work. And when they did finally begin working again, the factories neither went bankrupt nor shrunk in size, but rather stabilized and even grew. In this sense the workers’ actions are ultimately capitalist, by generating gains on means of production that would have otherwise not necessarily have been used at all. Argentina stands as a case in point of how PM and economic democracy can occur organically, and thrive doing so. Yet its very specific context limits it to being a model to learn from, not necessarily to implement elsewhere. In contrast, the German, and also the Japanese, model, have desirable, replicable qualities.

Comparative Analysis and Conclusions

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Now that the two examples have been historicized and described in detail, we may compare them and think about what worked and what did not work in each, looking separately at their beginnings, their overall performance, the experience of the workers and their relationship with the state. The beginnings of each example are quite dissimilar, mainly on the level of the state’s role and each country’s place in the world economy. Whereas Germany had just experienced the end of Nazism and was receiving controlled support from other nations for its restructuring, Argentina was in economic crisis as a result of its own bad policies combined with pressure from global banks. The similarity in the examples’ origins is that they arose out of a malfunctioning system. This suggests the tentative conclusion that PM systems are more likely to prevail when the contemporaneous system is not doing well. Without this, it becomes difficult to imagine a scalable implementation of the model, since hierarchical employers will do their best to resist this. The effect of PM and a High Road structure on productivity and efficiency remains a debated question. Many have argued a positive or insignificant correlation, while others have contested it.vi A recurring contestation is that it is basically impossible to measure whether or not higher productivity is causing higher performance and satisfaction, or vice versa (as proponents of PM want to prove).37 Although this classic correlation problem can never be fully solved, one way of addressing this question is by comparing like businesses with different management systems. Researchers Locke and Romis do just this in a recent research paper on work conditions in global supply chains and offer promising findings.38 Comparing two shirt factories in Mexico (both Nike suppliers) of “roughly the same size and age...and producing more or less the same product” and “subject to the same labor regulations,” the authors find that their different management systems (one more High Road, the other more Low Road) lead to a difference in working conditions, worker satisfaction, wages and even efficiency, with the High Road factory doing better in all of these areas. This adds important empirical evidence to the debate by bridging the vi For support of positive or insignificant correlation, see: Addison, Schank, Schnabel, Wagner. “Do Works Councils Inhibit Investment?” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 60:2 ( January 2007):187203.; Ichniowski et al., 1996; Tyson, David and Levine, D’Andrea . “Participation, Productivity, and the Firm’s Environment,” 1990, quoted in Stiglitz, “Democratic Development,” 12.; and Osterman and Kochan, 2006. For contestation, see: William H. Form. “Auto Workers and Their Machines: A Study of Work, Factory, and Job Satisfaction in Four Countries,” Social Forces, 52:1 (September 1973): 1-15. Hall; Jones. “Why Do Some Countries Produce So Much More Output Per Worker Than Others?”The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 114:1 (February 1999): 83-116.


Petersson | JGA question of efficiency and of worker experience, since the better management of one factory led to better treatment of workers and better efficiency. More studies such as Locke and Romis’ would help to clarify the debate and bring concrete conclusions. While the debate on productivity remains, very few disagree that worker satisfaction increases greatly when workers themselves participate in decision-making and have personal stake in their workplace. Additionally, the effect of PM on collective bargaining is undeniably beneficial for all parties. Recalling Stiglitz’s discussion of the principal-agent problem, we see that in both examples this problem was gracefully dealt with. In the Argentine case, the classic principal-agent problem does not exist, since workers became the sole actors in the business (this would probably change if the Argentine model grew in scale and became more institutionalized and if investors became more interested). By doing this, the Argentines now only need to use collective bargaining when dealing with the state. The prices they receive are entirely based on the market. Germany, by making workers both principals and agents (principals because they are part of the decisionmaking process and are also receiving their livelihoods; agents because they are representing the interests of their investors as well) and by separating plant-level conflicts from industry-wide ones (with Works Councils and trade unions), managed to create a less conflict-ridden collective bargaining system. The help of the state was essential in making this an established structure. Looking at Germany’s success and Argentina’s example brings two main findings. First, that PM works and can appear in virtually any society. Second, for PM to become successfully established in an economy, labor legislation is needed to overcome resistance from self-interested employers. The most significant difference between the two examples was that in Germany, PM had the state behind it, whereas in Argentina it was the failure of the state which caused people to act. Germany’s model became nationally ubiquitous, while Argentina’s remained localized. Argentina’s ERTs and the Mexican shirt factory are two isolated examples of successful High Road systems, proving that PM works even when it is not the established model. Germany, however, provides lessons for how to establish this desirable model. In The Mutual Gains Enterprise: Forging a Winning Partnership Among Labor, Management and Government, the authors make clear that any successful High Road business must include the three groups mentioned: labor, management and government.39 Without government support, there is not a strong enough impetus for employers and managers to cede power for the greater good of their corporation. There is a particular aspect of the PM system’s role in

the public eye – in both these examples and in general – that deserves some attention here. A prevailing opinion of high worker involvement workplaces is that they are part of a system which shies away from capitalism and moves towards something much more socialist. The worker-run factories in Argentina, to give an extreme example, have been regarded both by outsiders and even by people within the movement as anti-capitalist. When looked at more closely, we can see that this line of thinking is wrong, both intuitively and in practice. High worker involvement does not mean that work and wage is standardized and equalized by a sovereign power, but rather that wages become a true reflection of the market. By having PM systems, businesses manage to avoid possible monopolies by rent seeking employers. These potential micro-monopolies of labor in hierarchical workplaces are deemed impossible in situations of high worker involvement. A quote from an Argentine recovered factory worker perfectly highlights my point: “we are going to fight with everything to maintain the levels of production.” 40, vii Overall, these two examples are inspiring manifestations of highly participative systems, one becoming very successful and established, the other remaining tiny but resilient. Comparing the German and Argentine cases brings new insights because of their extreme differences. Among these insights are some lessons for the future, of what to do (and what not to do) when making the transition to a High Road PM model. Of course, many economies are far from making that transition, although as Ichniowski et al. describe in “What Works at Work,” new high-involvement, high-skill trends have been slowly appearing in the United States and other countries since the 1990s.41 Also, international media and the supranational European Union have begun to pay attention to Germany’s successful social market economy, especially in the face of the most recent economic crisis.42 On every count, Germany embodies an ideal successful model worth emulating. The fact that the Argentine example even exists, however, speaks greatly to the value of participative management in any workplace. In many ways, the fact that these examples of successful PM arose out of mal-functioning economic systems makes it difficult to imagine their expansion on a global scale. However, history is beginning to tell a different story, with examples like the Mexican factory and increased worker involvement in a number of economies. On a last note, the fact of the recent economic crisis may indeed represent just enough economic mal-functioning to see a global transition to a more stable, and more satisfying, social market economy.

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For a further theoretical discussion of this, see Appendix 2

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JGA | Participative Management | Appendix Appendix 1: High Road and Low Road

Enterprise Characteristic

Low Road

LABOR MARKET

Inducement to high effort High unemployment and efficiency wage Compensation Wage differentials

Contractual wages

Employment security

Low; dismissal is credible threat for discipline

High differentials as incentive for individual adavancement

Training costs

Paid by individual to increase marketability

Macro-environment

Can adjust to and contribute to larger recessions with layoffs

PRODUCT & FACTOR MARKETS Relationship

Arm’s-lengh, market-oriented, and competitive

Product Curb to opportunism

Standardized (to foster competition) Exit and competition

High Road

High involvement induces effort even with low unemployment Wages plus profit sharing

Low differentials for increased group solidarity and cohesiveness High security to promote identification with enterpise Paid by firm as long-term human capital investment

Works better with and contributes to fewer and smaller recessions by avoiding layoffs

Long-term relation based on commitment, trust, and loyalty Customized to buyer or seller

Voice, commitment, and trust

CAPITAL MARKET Relationship Time perspective

Arm’s-lengh, market-oriented finance

Long-term relational finance

Debt/equity ratios

Need low D/E ratio to provide flexibility in face of unforgiving market

Can have higher D/E ratios with patient relationhp to financial sources and with involved, more flexible workers

Low costs of equity

Short-term since hard-to-monitor; human capital investments downplayed

Long-term and patient to reap returns to human capital investments

Low costs since no sharing of income or control Lower costs for internal equity since workers rights with workers already share some income & control rights

Source: Stiglitz, Joseph E. “Democratic Development as the Fruits of Labor.” Keynote Address, Industrial Relations Research Association (IRRA), Boston: January 2000

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Appendix | Petersson | JGA Appendix 2: Philosophical Underpinnings of PM The argument that Amartya Sen makes for successful development, claiming that there is more to it than simple economic growth (although this growth is by all means a part of the equation), can be shrunken down to the level of the corporation.50 When we ask ourselves “what is a successful business or corporation?” the automatic answer is “one that sustains economic growth.” With this deeply entrenched assumption, suddenly it becomes very radical to argue that there is more to success than money. Even worse, when one references this argument, proponents of the economic gains argument (both on the global development and on the individual business level) automatically shoot it down, as if one were arguing to compromise financial gain for some other metric of success. This is not the case, nor is it a complete impossibility. Happiness and having a voice are some qualities that have been valued by humans for longer than money has even existed, and although they cannot be measured as money can, there are ways of beginning to take them into account. What is radical about thinking of these? As it turns out, when brought into the model of a business, they have been shown to complement efforts at economic growth, either by maintaining the same level that would have otherwise been or by promoting higher growth. If financial growth is not at stake, it seems the only thing that is at stake is the hierarchical power structure in which those at the top gain considerably more than those at the bottom. Restructuring this model and spreading power more equally is certainly the greatest obstacle in switching to a more pleasing model for all employees. As I understand it, the question of worker-participation in corporations is like a micro version of the question of whether to choose democracy or some more authoritarian form of government. Of course, when it comes to entire societies and nations, much more is at stake, but the universal practicality of including the voices of all those involved in and benefiting from their society or job still holds. Thinking about the way power is organized, it seems almost impossible that those on top would ever cede any of their wealth, and arguments have certainly been made that these higher paid higher-ups have no moral obligation to do so. However, examples in life (outlined in this paper) have shown systems in which the economy is successful and the power of those on top is greatly diminished. This brings me to an argument made by G.A. Cohen, in his recent philosophy book Rescuing Justice and Equality, in response to Rawls’ argument for differential incentives: In 1988 the ratio of top executive salaries to production worker wages was 6.5 to 1 in West Germany and 17.5 to 1 in the United States. Since it is not plausible to think that Germany’s lesser inequality was a disincentive to productivity, since it is plausible to think that an ethos that was relatively friendly to equality protected Germany productivity in the face of relatively modest material incentives, we can conclude that the said ethos caused the worst paid to be better paid than they would have been under a different culture of reward.51 When thinking of participative management in terms of economics, at least theoretically, it is arguably a better way of fully realizing capitalism than the prevailing capitalist structure in most of the world. This is because more equally distributed wages and more worker involvement in the actual production process leads to a free market-driven system, since the market, instead of the employer, determines wages. Even the most classical free-market economists have argued against monopolies, and in many ways, hierarchical businesses with huge wage differentials can be interpreted as micro-monopolies, in which employers are controlling labor for personal gain. An economy run by the ‘social market,’ which has been touted in Germany, is still very much a capitalist one, even though it appears strange to see a capitalist society with low levels of inequality and low wage differentials. In many ways, this looks like a different, anti-capitalist model (especially when we compare it to other instances of high worker-involvement, such as in Argentina, which were treated by the press as anti-capitalist). However, as a 2009 BBC article stated, “[o]fcourse there is a big difference between the social market and socialism.”52 This is certainly quite a stretch from our current understanding of capitalism, yet when conceptualizing the German goal of ‘social capitalism,’ it is important to remember that this is indeed a model of capitalism, not some other economic system. We see this in the mentioned quote by a worker from a prominent Argentine ERT: “we are going to fight with everything to maintain the levels of production.”53 A whole book could be written on the philosophic underpinnings of a high worker-involvement structure, but what is most important to note here is that the Participative Management High Road model is both theoretically desirable and theoretically (and realistically) plausible.

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Ekphrasis Drew McKenzie

France presents itself to the artist and always has. Amidst the vast canon of the Louvre’s permanent collection, I caught a glimpse out the window, where the cityscape contextualized its importance in art history. Overlooking the Tuileries gardens (created in 1564 by Catherine de Medici) in Paris’ 1st District, the Louvre is a beacon of art’s past and inspiration for its future. On this warm summer day, the monumental architecture of Paris blends together seamlessly into a greater representation of the city as a whole. Having felt the creative atmosphere in Paris, I caught a train to the South of France to seek out iconic artistic inspiration. I explored the small town of Aix en Provence, the home and primary influence of painter Paul Cézanne (1839-1906). His most famous series of landscapes are of Mount Saint Victoire, pictured here. Everyday, Cézanne carried paints, canvas and rations to the mountainside. He died from pneumonia, caused from ceaseless ventures to the mountain. I hiked from a bus stop for an afternoon of solitude, wine, cheese and cigarette in hand, where I spent the day drawing under a tree in a vineyard.



JGA | Chaos and Cosmos

Chaos and Cosmos: Madidi Park, Bolivia William Roberts

Don Bruno, as the locals call him, has spoken to every plant in his garden. His old, wiry body can be seen, covered by nothing but a loincloth, roaming through tall sugar cane stalks spun with poroto vines as he furiously picks weeds. He smells the leaves of a palm and pauses while his gray eyes twitch back and forth. Spinning through the mental Rolodex of his extensive seed bank, he announces the legume that will provide the nitrogen that the plant has just requested. His farm sits on a 10-hectare plot at the edge of Madidi National Park, one of the world’s most diverse ecosystems. It is filled with over seventy nutritious, foodbearing trees including coffee, citrus (for wine), cacao, mangoes, sugar, eight varieties of banana, beans, grains and corn. His collection of medicinal plants provides remedies for such ailments as rheumatism and swollen prostate and can be used to disinfect wounds and reduce fevers. A bright orange fruit that hangs from a purple flower helps children who have trouble learning to speak. He even once used the thick vines of the Uña de Gato that stands stoically in the middle of the garden to cure his friend of cancer. Bruno is an outstanding community organizer. He knows the nutritive needs of every plant that he lives with and takes pleasure in matching them with their suited counterparts. In return, the grateful plants take care of Bruno with bountiful harvests year round that fill his wooden dinner bowl without outside supplement. And, when I set up my tent in his garden and picked the first weed from the foot of a lone corn stalk, I too became part of this ecosystem, invited to share all of its secrets. I first saw Bruno arguing in French-accented Spanish with a bus driver over whether there was room for all of his construction supplies on top of the bus. His eyes turn silver when he is mad. Despite his accomplishments in innovative horticulture (he has written three published books on permaculture), Bruno has a pale emptiness inside of him, which often surfaces in his interactions with people. He has isolated himself in the jungle for nearly thirty years, living in solitude with the plants in an environment where his mind can function like his garden. He calls it “Chaos and Cosmos”: a functional, disorganized mania of harmonious balance. I think that it bothers him that the rest of the world

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sees the two ideas as incompatible. His inspiration comes from the delicate reciprocity of the plants and bugs in his garden, all living interspersed and interconnected. The banana trees shade the coffee and tea. Yucca, pineapples and corn fill empty space, with peanuts and other legumes covering the soil, offering nitrogen and crowding out weeds. The system is bountiful and completely selfsustaining. As a farmer, he must do little more than harvest the ingredients that he needs for each meal. Agriculture is more than a profession; it is his worldview, his way of being. He lives intimately with the flora, waking every morning to the shadows of mangoes and oranges on his canvas tent. The diverse ecosystem supports both him and the crops. All distinction is lost between the interests of the plants and his self-interest. The wisdom of being in the presence of the trees brings the blue out from behind the clouds in his eyes. He is a modern day Dionysus, as his only income is from his delicious citrus wine and heirloom seeds. We took an “all terrain” bus early in the morning, over the flat Antiplano and onto steep valley roads crossed with deep rivers, to the entrance of Madidi Park. There, we loaded our gear and Bruno’s equipment onto the back of a hired pickup truck and sat on top, holding on through deep potholes and more river crossings. There was a new moon that I would see wax every night until it was a full disk. Our path was lit by brilliant stars. Orion and Pleiades sparkle even in the Southern Hemisphere. It was nice to see old friends. Adjusting to life on the farm took some patience. Insect bites all over my body, back pain from long days in the field and lack of bathrooms made me question my decision to come. On my second night, a furious windstorm sent me rolling in my tent, snapping a pole and smashing some instruments. I was humbled by the force of the elements and suddenly unconcerned by the scorpions and tarantulas that crept in the night. I was reminded that beginning something new is always difficult. Like starting a fire: sometimes you must suffer through smoke in your eyes in order to enjoy a warm dinner. The days at Bruno’s proved to be tranquil and constructive. Tasks varied from weeding to planting,


Roberts | JGA construction to cooking. I preferred working in the field where I could acquaint myself with the plants by name and get my hands dirty. Some days I would fill seed bags with saplings, others I would spend hacking dead leaves off of banana palms with a machete. Work would end every day when the sun was at its highest, after which we would jump into the deep river to wash ourselves. When we dried off, lunch would be waiting on the table outside. Meals were delicious, simple concoctions of the variety of grains, vegetables and roots from the garden. We reserved eating meat for our Sundays off, as cooking a chicken entailed finding one, decapitating it, removing its feathers and roasting it all day over hot coals. The process of cooking and working the land was our closest relation to our community. Old recipes and agricultural wisdom, passed down through the generations from the Bolivian and other cultures represented by the international community on the farm, were shared as a testament to our heritage. The food system, on this small communal scale, was an integral aspect of our identity, our connection with the land and our ancestors. As the days went on I became more familiar with life on the farm. I began to recognize the fruit of each tree, the call of each bird and even the bites of each bug. I got to know the other workers as well, and what a wild bunch they were. There was Mike, a fiery kid from Utah with a bushy red beard that matched his spirit. He wrote songs about his bike trips across North America, and was thumbing his way back to the States with 150 bucks in his pocket. There was Will, the singing sailor from Holland who woke up every morning with a beer can in his hand and never once left the construction site to enter the garden: “I prefer to touch trees after they’re dead, thank you very much,” he would explain. And his French girlfriend, who had a warrior soul and arms like tree branches. There was Raul, the dreadlocked intellectual from Spain. Noah the Goof was taking time off from studying abroad in Chile. Andrew showed up wearing

a Greenpeace Klearcut T-shirt; he had worked on the same campaign as me on the other side of the country. The young French couple, who claimed to be anarchists and were certainly in love, were so impressed by the valley that they decided on their second day to buy some land and raise their own crops. I woke up early the morning I was leaving and took one last swim in the river with Bruno before walking around camp with a guitar, waking everyone with a rendition of “Leaving on a Jet Plane.” We said sentimental goodbyes over a big pot of thick, black coffee and traded gifts and words of appreciation. Bruno sent me off with a two-liter bottle of orange wine and a big kiss right on the lips. “You’ll come back, right?” he insisted. “Many times,” I assured him. “Bueno, and make sure you bring some cute California girls with you when you do!” And with a grand promise to see each other again, in this life or the next, I strapped my possessions to my back and began my long walk back to civilization. The dirt road climbed over the surrounding hillsides, offering a bleak contrast to the flourishing life that I was leaving on the farm. Years of relentless logging have left the peripheries of the park infertile and barren as far as the roads will carry the trucks. The low grass can hardly cover the dry brown of the dirt hills, the timber companies having usurped the green from Eden. Despite Bruno’s most valiant efforts at conserving and reforesting the area, he will have little influence once the mining and drilling companies catch wind of the abundant gold and oil deposits in the park. Their representatives will arrive in fancy cars, promising schools and hospitals that will never be delivered. The mosquito hums a pretty song in flight. The farm, however, will survive. I will sleep more soundly for the rest of my nights knowing that a slice of paradise is being well guarded. If the world should flood again, perhaps Bruno’s garden will be our ark.

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JGA | Eleuthera

Eleuthera Emma Young

The site of memory: a place. The Pink House. Where lives converge, where time moves faster than the current and stands as still as a breezeless hot summer night. Here I left one part of my life and pickled another, an intermediate phase, that fermented and grew new life within itself. We bottled it like guava jelly, stored it in the sand and set it adrift at sea, a sealed map of memory. The cliffs, where we saw the bull sharks circling below us, 20 feet down. Up there on the limestone, with our parents, Cade and I were safe. The setting sun and crashing waves sent mystery through the air as the twelve foot sharks shoved their fins and noses out of the water towards us. Our parents held our hands as we all stood silent up there, watching this wild force below us churn up the dark Atlantic blue. The cliffs of Eleuthera Island are stunning. The backbone of a skeletal island, they have been beaten clean for years by hurricanes and astonishing waves, leaving them jagged and gnarly and lunar. Standing out on these brave cliffs against the Atlantic, I have often tried to connect with the incredible force I feel beneath my feet as water trickles through the limestone and circles again back into the ocean, turning white and cerulean. The ritual of absorbing the power of Whale Point. Out on those cliffs, facing the horizon, the wild seeps into every part of life. Naked power, a kind that has traveled from Africa and surges from the depths to move boulders across dry land, to send a wall of seawater fifty feet into the air with no explanation and no apology on any given day. To build a house on the end of a tiny, jutting peninsula is to align with a vector of energy. Once, my father was flying in on a small prop-engine airplane that makes the trip down from Florida, when visibility became poor due to a Caribbean thunderstorm. Shaking in the air, the plane circled blindly as the pilot tried to coordinate the location of the island’s tiny airport. Lightning was striking all around. As the plane dropped and jumped back up, the door to the cockpit swung open wide, and my father says that the ladies aboard took out rosaries and crossed themselves. Some made use of the vomit bags in front of them. He kept his

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eyes out the window. Then, he says, a pointed roof appeared out of the gray. “My house!” he shouted. “That’s my house! It’s at the end of Whale Point. The airport is due west!” And so he was able to direct the pilot to a safe landing. That is the kind of story that can happen on an island like Eleuthera. The island itself is shaped like a mystery, its skinny, knobby points trickling down in a backwards-c shape, cupping the turquoise Carribean Sea directly across the half-mile-long sliver of mainland rock, on the other side of the deep and brooding Atlantic. This gentle water seems to reach no more than ten feet deep for miles and miles as it stretches towards Florida. It is as calm as glass, and you can see straight through the water, especially on calm days. Oftentimes when I am flying into North Eleuthera airport, I look for sharks or giant manta rays in the bay. My cousin claims to have seen an entire shipwreck from the air. The American painter Winslow Homer spent a good deal of his career depicting the Bahamian islands, and his works of Eleuthera are, not surprisingly, my favorites. He, too, seems to have been captivated by Glass Windows Bridge, a natural arch made of rock that stretches thirty feet and allows its passengers to essentially straddle these sister seas. To the north, the deep, midnight-colored Atlantic; southwards, the gemlike Caribbean. Humans did not create Glass Windows, though slaves from the pineapple plantations used to cross it from Gregory Town to the East in order to get fresh water in Upper Bogue, westward. What must they have thought about this striking example of balance in nature, of a more civilized wilderness? As with the rest of the Caribbean and Latin America, the Spanish and then the English colonized the Bahama islands as centers of export, bringing slaves from Africa and establishing large plantations. Eleuthera, in particular, was used for pineapple production from the early 18th century, with its peak in the mid-19th. The Dole Company’s attention later shifted to Hawaii with its establishment as a state in the U.S. With the massive growth of the tourism industry and Bahamian independence in 1973, agriculture ceased to be the main economic feature of the Bahamas. Today, Eleuthera is lined with rolling fields of arable land,


Young | JGA empty silos now grown to their tops with weeds and vines. ! It has been years since my family went to Whale Point together. The past few times I have been, very frequently in the last two years, were all college trips with friends, my partner and my father. But, being there, I feel the passage of time and its beautiful malevolence tear at me as I go through every room of the house. Cade’s little, tiny hats. She had always had a big head, but how could these be so small? Sunglasses our parents had given us for Christmas. The driftwood curtain rods we had made the first summer after we built the house; their same, thin white curtains hazily swaying in the breeze from the ceiling fan. Looking through the few pieces of clothing that my mom left in her armoire upstairs in the pink house, I felt as if I was sorting through memories, or the clothes of somebody who no longer exists. I caught myself saying, “This was my mom’s,” though, of course, it still is my mom’s; I called her to ask if she wanted me to bring these things back to Florida. The orange skirt with small Hawaiian figures surfing across the fabric, a plain gray tee-shirt to wear on the boat – I can picture it now, the full ensemble, her white baseball cap shining over sporty black sunglasses and her beautiful painted toenails in blue flip flops. A blue paisley spaghettistrap dress, a red floral spaghetti-strap dress; a summer wardrobe. I wore her clothes, the last time I was there. We slept

in their bed, Thomaz and I, and that first night alone felt like we had become my parents. Upstairs in that huge room, surrounded by water on all sides, with every window open and the sound of waves crashing around us. It is an intense experience to live on Whale Point. Memory: a feeling of intense joy and sadness at once, of knowing that this had been our home, that we had made it together. I know its nuances (no glass in the upstairs shower window), its secrets (two roofs) and its smell (the most comforting hint of salt spray and mildew). This house was never finished completely, and, like many projects of my parents’, perhaps never will be. But it is the absence of the glass in the window, that smell of mildew that I love; of knowing, this is a place where time is present, where nature comes in, like the ants seething into the Buendía family’s home in One Hundred Years of Solitude. So much significance in a gray tee-shirt. So much depending on those clothes resting within that cabinet, waiting for Mom to return and wear them again. Waiting for my childhood to commence again, to run on the pink sand beaches with my parents and make bonfires at night. How I long for my mother wearing those simple sundresses on Bahamian afternoons. ! Whale Point. Whales. Cetaceans. Distant, imaginary Leviathans swimming off of those ragged cliffs. Their migration has stopped. Long ago, they were overfished.

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Suffering as always from insomnia, when I was young, crawling into my mother’s side of the bed. Soothing me, she would say, imagine whales. A mother whale and a baby whale, swimming together in the comfort and safety of the deep. Singing to each other. I would, and still do, imagine their songs before drifting off to that other place of memory, where the subconscious pulls apart memories in order to remember them, to put them back together. But those imaginary whales, both of my dreams and my waking life, have a large presence and great meaning for my family. Leviathan Light, my father named his lighthouse – a large, cylindrical, shell-shaped studio he built overlooking the great cliffs and natural pool they have formed on the Atlantic side, up where we saw the sharks. The lighthouse, a crazy, beautiful project interrupted. Unlike his paintings, this site of creation is perpetually a work in progress. One

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day, he says, he’ll put a light in there. A beacon for the lost whales, calling them back to their migratory home. Those imaginary whales, soft, delicate, and so spiritual, so strong. Like so much of the Caribbean, they were taken for the use of others. But like my memories of childhood, they swim swiftly through the temperate waters. What must it have been like to immigrate to a tiny island? My great great grandmother came from Israel with her sister and her mother, who abandoned her when she fell in love with a black man. You’d never know, looking at me, that my grandfather was the descendent of Africans, and of Lucayan Indians, who came to the Caribbean after being chased through South America by the Caribs, an indigenous group now known for their supposed cannibalism. You might know, looking at me, that my grandmother’s distant ancestors were Irish. Only recently did I learn of an incredible family story: that my grandmother’s ancestors, sixteen generations back, were on the voyage of the Eleutherian Adventurers, an extremely well-known story in the Bahamas. Though I had believed my family first went to Abaco, as history would have it, they first shipwrecked off of Spanish Wells, in North Eleuthera, at Preacher’s Cave. Their plaque, dated 1648, is still amazingly there, telling of their survival until they were rescued by a search team of sailors from Harvard University in Boston. I had no idea. It is a staggering revelation. “This is our DESTINY!” my father writes me in an e-mail when I wrote to him, excitedly, nearly out of breath, that this was my family’s history, that my family named the island Eleuthera, for freedom. So fitting it is, that my father would end up painting the black figure. His watercolors, so vibrant, an unmatched realism with the medium, reflect our larger family in their forms. Through my mother, he has claimed the Bahamas as his own, noting that my mother’s ancestors shipwrecking in Eleuthera is part of “our” destiny – one he cannot be separated from. His own family, coming from the United States South, traveling through states of racism – from Georgia to Alabama, Texas, Hawaii, where my dad was the outsider, the unwanted, and back to Florida – faced a reality we study in college today. In painting the black figure, my father paints this history; one that is larger than any of us, and yet contains pieces of him, of my mother, of me and my sister. We come from many places, and even Cade and I are only half-Bahamians. But this place, this site of memory,


Young | JGA holds a convergence of our lives. Here we spent summers, spent time off from school in Florida, but my parents kept us there every day; my dad in his paintings, mum in her accent and knowledge of the most nourishing type of cooking – the meals that connect you to a place that is part of you. Entering the Pink House through the kitchen screen door: the familiar smell of a musty, painted house. Eleuthera ages as it is reborn. This little yellow kitchen, such a welcoming entrance to my youth – the past – and yet a place of active creation. Most of my favorite Bahamian memories involve food. Spending the day on the boat, pulling a conch right out of the water on a sandy beach, dicing it up, adding limes, sour orange, raw onions and tomatoes and eating the freshest conch salad in the world while the sun sets; the smell of my mother’s Johnny Cake as it came out of the oven, getting us girls up for a day of exploration; waking up the morning after my cousin’s wedding a few years ago and enjoying boiled fish n’ grits with my whole family. Johnny Cake, a simple Afro-Caribbean bread - 2 cups flour - 1 tablespoon baking powder - Salt - 4 tablespoons sugar - 1/2 stick of butter + 4 tablespoons oil - Water Combine the dry ingredients, press the butter into the flour until it looks like peas, then stir in the oil. Add enough water until it gets the consistency of cake batter, but not quite as wet. Bake at 425 until brown (about 20-25 minutes).

Mum’s accent. My dad called it cute when they met, and she said, “Fuck off.” A Bahamian girl who came to the States at sixteen to attend college; living in New York for a year and then coming back south, to study printing at Ringling School of Art before heading back to work for her father’s printing press in Freeport. That night, at some party, when my parents met, something changed for my dad, who met his muse. The next week, they saw each other in the laundry room, and my mum ended up doing dad’s laundry because he didn’t know how. My parents, so young to marry, so beautiful in their art and ambitions, in their love of the Bahamas. They waited eight years to have children, both of us conceived beneath my father’s painting table. One of their biggest projects, followed by constructing our house in Jupiter, Florida, in the State Park, where we were brought up in nature, then continued by the Pink House. The Pink House, where we haven’t gone back to visit together in nearly seven years, is different from our beautiful, comfortable home in Florida. The Pink House holds danger, holds adventure, holds a mysterious and deep type of art and nourishment. It is a house of celebration, of change – the place where I first got my period, where learning to drive, I ran over a dog with a car – and yet it is a place that remains unchanged – where Cade and I were best friends, before we returned to Florida to grow apart. The feeling is palpable, in the air of Cade’s bedroom, and our living room, out on the dock and along the swimming path to our favorite reef, that we are sisters and are forever connected to each other. Family takes work. It is not just a given; the way we have naturalized the idea of “family” and the nuclear unit. But my family is all of me. The Pink House, the cliffs, the sister seas, Preacher’s Cave; Eleuthera. A home that stands strong through hurricanes and offers protection from the sharks, but a connection to whales. A place we all loved together.

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JGA | Environmental Refugees

Environmental Refugee Status: International Reception of Climate Displacement Jacqueline Hall

In the past few decades, the world has become increasingly aware of anthropogenic harm to the environment that may significantly alter and deteriorate our quality of life and necessitate serious remedial efforts. Environmental issues, including man-made and natural disasters, have driven people away from their communities throughout history. The projected effects of climate change have the potential to aggravate these kinds of disasters as well as raise a whole host of new problems that will force unprecedented numbers of people to leave their homes and seek new lives internally or internationally. These problems will disproportionately affect the developing world which necessitating multilateral agreements to guarantee protection for those who can no longer sustain their lives in their current locations. Unfortunately, there is no legal protection for persons fleeing their homes for environmental reasons. The international community of developed nations has put up a hostile front to extending refugee status to those affected by climate change. This reaction does not morally stand up to agreed upon values of human rights and rejects responsibility for transnational environmental damage. “Environmental refugees” is not an official term, but it is widely used and can be defined as, “people who have been forced to leave their traditional habitat, temporarily or permanently, because of marked environmental disruption (natural and/or triggered by people) that jeopardized their existence and/or seriously affected their quality of life.”1 Temporary or reversible environmental damage could include natural disasters or industrial incidents, and longterm or irreversible change could include anything from dam construction to sea level rise. Another category of migrants unmentioned in the definition includes those who migrate to seek a better quality of life because their resource base has been depleted by causes like soil salination or deforestation. As stated, causes for migrations include flooding, drought, soil erosion, deforestation, earthquakes and toxic spills. The poster child consequence of climate change, however, is sea level rise. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecasts nearly as much as a two feet rise in sea level in the next century due to the melting of glaciers and ice sheets and thermal expansion caused by rising

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temperatures. Half of the world’s population is crowded into coastal zones and about 10 million of those people are at constant risk of flooding. A one meter rise in sea level would uproot 20 million people in Bangladesh alone.2 A rising sea level presents a very real threat, as it has the potential to destroy entire nations. “In the Pacific, the Northern Group islands of the Cook Islands, and the many islands of Kiribati, Tokelau, Tuvalu, the Federated States of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands are set to disappear before the end of this century, and will become uninhabitable long before that.”3 These nations will become uninhabitable because rising sea levels salinate the soil and destroy its capacity to grow food. Tuvalu has already experienced damaging floods and is seen as the nation most likely to sink due to sea level rise because, at its highest, it is only two meters above sea level.4 Although there are only 11,000 Tuvaluans, their populations combined with the rest of the vulnerable small island nations represent a sizable group of people who will be forced to move because of climate change. Though the most publicized, sea level rise is only one of the problems caused by environmental damage and climate change. A United Nations survey predicts that a third of the world’s land is becoming infertile, and other studies foresee that 100 million of 135 million people living in areas of desertification will be displaced in the next 20 years. In Kazakhstan, the receding of the Aral Sea caused a 30-fold increase in disease amongst locals. Estimates vary, but the most commonly cited study, published in 1993 by Dr. Norman Myers, predicts that there will be 150 million environmental refugees by the middle of this century. In this estimate, he predicts 30 million refugees each from China and India, 15 million from Bangladesh, 14 million from Egypt, 10 million from other Delta areas, and one million from island states. In 2005, he updated this study to 200 million climate refugees by 2050. Bangladesh is amongst the especially high risk countries because it is so vulnerable to increasingly intense storms and floods, sea level rise causing salinization and river erosion. Additionally, it is one of the most densely populated nations in the world.5 Another sizable demographic feeling pressure to migrate for environmental reasons is the rural poor, who are


Hall | JGA reliant on agriculture or other resource-based livelihoods for both income and subsistence. Internal migration in the developing world means many people will move to already resource-strained megacities, making them no less vulnerable than the refugees forced to leave their countries. When moving to cities, environmental refugees often end up in shantytowns and slums, where it is not only unhealthy and dangerous, but also difficult to find employment. Slums are characterized by lack of social services and opportunity, and often violence related to the scarcity of resources. Over 90 percent of the residents of Korail, one of Dhaka’s biggest slums, never leave because they cannot afford to.6 Internal migrants to cities face hardships in similar ways as those migrating across borders. “There are resource constraints, challenges to social cohesion, and limited infrastructure, which lead to increases in urban slums.”7 The political discussion regarding environmental refugees revolves most commonly around their lack of legal status. They do not fit within the UN’s definition of a refugee, so there is “no international or national legislation that explicitly recognizes or defines climate or environmental refugees and there is no governing body with a mandate to offer them protections.”8 A refugee is defined in the UN 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees as a person who, “as a result of events occurring before 1 January 1951, and owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country: or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable, or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.”9 The Protocol to the Refugee Convention in 1967 adapted this definition to remove the pre-1951 condition. Environmental refugees do not fit into this definition. First, they are often still within their country of residence, but not necessarily by choice. Secondly, they do not usually fall under the category of those fearing persecution for reasons of race, nationality, religion, or membership of a particular social group or political opinion. It can be argued, though, that environmental degradation is a kind of persecution, as Andrew Simms explains in a letter to a member of the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). Simms writes, “being forced to live in worsening poverty on land that without warning could flood or turn into dust [...] Whether deliberately or due to sins of omission, these consequences are the result of economic and political decisions.”10 However valid this argument, it is unlikely environmental refugees would be accepted under this rationale, and so they are categorically excluded from UN protection. Karen McNamara traces the origins of UN inaction through interviews with ambassadors and senior diplomats.

Overall, there seems to be no lack of research on the topic and she finds that the term is certainly not unfamiliar. There is, however, a distinct lack of any policy or potential to establish policy for the protection of environmental refugees. McNamara finds that a common view amongst interviewees is a negative reaction to the terminology. “Environmental refugee” is a contested term because it is seen as impossible to extract as an isolated condition. The term ‘environmental’ does not adequately describe reasons for migration (more frequently cited reason are war or family connections), which is why this description receives little attention from UN or like-minded organizations that address refugee status and displacement. Environmental refugees are almost always moving for a combination of reasons, including social and political, but ecological and environmental research is suggesting that environmental triggers most significantly influence their migration decisions. This ambiguity does not justify dismissing the importance of environmental factors on these decisions.11 Another response found in McNamara’s interviews was, “You do not take in people because they can’t make a living somewhere.”12 This is indicative of the contemporary discussion surrounding immigration, which focuses on migrants’ potential economic utility or harm. National policies have revised immigration laws to this discussion, disadvantaging the lower skilled migrants, which happens to correlate with the type of people who are most vulnerable to climate related displacement. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) had done some research on environmental refugees (they actually coined the term in 1985) but has shifted its focus to the impact of refugees and preventative strategies to protect the environment from refugee movements. The attitude of the UNEP has shifted because refugee protection is too sensitive a political issue to be included in their responsibilities. The UNCHR stands strictly by its mandate to protect refugees as defined by the Convention, and does not see environmental migrants as legal or legitimate refugees.13 The language of the UNHCR further excludes certain people by describing such migration as being inherently voluntary. One likely reason for the UNHCR’s strict stance is its lack of donor support and a tight budget, which forces it to prioritize. McNamara concludes that some of the hostility to the idea of protecting environmental refugees has emerged because of this prioritization; the United Nations has other, more demanding and higher publicized, issues to deal with, such as the Iraq war and sub-Saharan poverty. Additionally, McNamara notes a growing hostility towards current Convention-defined refugees. Refugee status in the post-war period was once highly respected, but over the years countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Germany have moved towards a position

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JGA | Environmental Refugees where they claim they are being inundated by illegitimate refugees. In this climate, a sympathetic approach from UN member states on extending refugee status to other displaced persons is unlikely.14 McNamara explains this shift, stating, “changes in attitude towards multilateralism are likely to be a consequence of fear and the increasingly xenophobic nature of domestic policies in the West. Fear from images of escalating numbers of environmental refugees has led governments to be convinced of the need to protect their state borders.”15 Another growing sentiment amongst many Western states is a move away from accepting responsibility for transnational environmental pollution, though some individual nations have taken action to protect climate refugees. Australia and New Zealand are two examples, in part because of their adjacency to vulnerable small island nations. In Australia, the Labour Party recognized some responsibility for environmental refugees by offering aid to those affected by sea level rise. The government has also established an international coalition to accept climate change refugees when a country becomes uninhabitable and provide assistance to preserve the cultural heritage of those who are evacuated. In response to the Tuvaluan government’s request for help, New Zealand created the Pacific Access Category, allowing 75 residents from Tuvalu and Kiribati as well as 250 residents from Tonga to migrate to New Zealand each year. However, applicants must be between the ages of 18 and 45, have an ‘acceptable’ offer

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of employment and meet a minimum English language requirement.16 In Africa, refugee agreements were also reached that include climate migrants. The Accord of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) recognizes as grounds for asylum, “external aggression, occupation, foreign domination, or events seriously disturbing public order.” Environmentally displaced persons for reasons such as drought or other natural disasters were not intended to be included by the Accord but because “the scope of this expanded definition is habitually applied to those for whom economic protection by the state is not forthcoming, a restrictive interpretation excluding victims of ecological and man-made disaster is by no means precluded.”17 Though these policies are a start, they are scattered and not inclusive enough. Even specific instances of natural disasters are not addressed in any international agreement that obligates the international community to provide relief. Overall, people in humanitarian need for environmental reasons are not well protected. National policies cannot be counted on because they are not cohesive enough and, as in the New Zealand agreement, can exclude migrants deemed to be undesirable, regardless of need. National policies are also subject to change with electoral patterns. The discussion of environmental refugees is largely aimed at the UN because it remains the only institution capable of multilaterally establishing human rights standards. Simms argues that if there is a lack of an official UN status for environmental refugees, “they will be condemned by


Hall | JGA a global problem to a national economic and geographic lottery and to the patchwork availability of resources and the application of immigration policies.”18 Advocates argue that the definition of a refugee is grounded in human rights, which include the right to an adequate standard of living and access to food. The kind of suffering associated with environmental degradation is clearly a violation of these rights. It can also be argued that because climate change is caused by humans, the state is obligated to protect its citizens from them. In the case that a state cannot protect its citizens, victims qualify for the international assistance given to refugees.19 Although the future impact of climate change is foggy and speculative, it is clear that the world is facing an unprecedented prospect of seeing the land of several nations wiped out. This daunting fate cannot be faced with unclear policy regarding those affected by it. A lack of multilateral action could potentially dissolve faith in the UN entirely. David Corlett astutely sums up the questions the world faces as we head into this hazy situation: “Does the possibility of hundreds of millions of people on the move in search of protection, some crossing international borders, force a reconceptualisation of the state as a territorially defined political entity related to a distinct nation? How can national belonging remain meaningful while there is the potential for some states to disappear off the face of the earth?”20 The UN’s desire for a clear-cut definition of refugee is excluding a large group of highly vulnerable people. This

term ought to be analyzed for effectiveness and adapted, as conditions and reasons for migration are too expansive to be confined to a narrow definition invented as a prescription for specific circumstances. It remains a right of states to exert power over those who inhabit their space, but climate change clearly indicates that states have the power to degrade and even destroy the geography of others. In this case, the responsibilities usually held by states to protect their citizens become international. “The international community’s ability to protect and assist environmental refugees is heavily reliant on a state’s willingness to recognize them as both a political and a human problem.”21 The excuse that “environmental” is an ambiguous term by no means undermines the fact that people who migrate have powerful motivations that are heavily associated with environmental conditions. Additionally, internal migration should not be belittled; in terms of the urgency of aid needed, those migrating to cities and elsewhere within their countries face equal hardship breaking into established communities, seeking employment and obtaining increasingly scarce resources. Although it may be a more immediately effective strategy for vulnerable nations to form partnerships with potential host nations early, a UN agreement is the only chance at an effective solution. If the developed world cannot shake its disinclination towards accepting responsibility for environmental damage, the developing world will be further condemned to hardships far beyond the economic challenges they are already facing.

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Notes Gender Inequality Spanning Cultures through Triabalization Tribal Afghanistan & Tribal American Mormons R pg 8-13 1 John L. Esposito & Dalia Mogahed. (2008). What do Muslim Women Want? An excerpt from the book Who Speaks for Islam? Gallup. Retrieved from http://www.gallup.com/poll/105214/What-Muslim-Women-Want.aspx 2 Jared Diamond. (1999) Guns, Germs and Steel. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company. 3 Frederic Engels. (2010). The origin of the family, private property and the state. General Books LLC. (Original work published 1876). 4 Eisla Sebastian. (2005). An anthropological view of bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states. Associated Content. Retrieved fromhttp://www. associatedcontent.com/article/12144/an_anthropological_view_of_bands_tribes.html?cat=37 5 John H. Bodley. Anthropology and contemporary human problems. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=WuqTqq9xk7gC&pg=P A15&lpg=PA15&dq=ancient++tribal+societies&source=bl&ots=PBy2OWvOQ&sig=FHHZuZNaPd8j4bgw8Xlbpt91Fq4&hl=en&ei=rk3gS4C8IsGqlAfS2pnCCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CDAQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=ancient%20%20tribal%20societies&f=false 6 Thomas Hobbes. Leviathan. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=Q4nPYeps6MC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Leviathan+hobbes&source=bl&ots=_vXu2DrF03&si g=KA3XxhQ_j6y2YsD3sdblaqFZsaU&hl=en&ei=RojkS4bXNoO88gb0hZxp&sa=X&oi=book _result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false 7 Abigail Adams, John Adams) (2003). The letters of John and Abigail Adams. New York , NY Penguin Classics (original work published 1776). 8 National Women’s Law Center. (2008). Falling short in every state: The wage gap and harsh economic realities for women persist. Retrieved from http://www.nwlc.org/fairpay/statefacts.html 9 R. Brian Ferguson & Neil L. Whitehead. (1993) War in the tribal zone: Expanding states and indigenous warfare. (1st ed.). Oxford: School of American Research. 10 Anthony Hyman. (2002) Nationalism in Afghanistan. Int. J. Middle East Studies. Retrieved from http://journals.cambridge.org/download.phpfile=/ MES/MES34_02/S0020743802002088a.pdf&code=f53e306f64597cdce6bbfbf916a408e1 11 Tajfel, H. (1982). Social psychology of intergroup relations. Annual Review of Psychology., 33. Retrieved from http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.ps.33.020182.000245?cookieSet=1 12 Donald M. Tayloy & Frances E. Aboud. (1973). Ethnic stereotypes:Is the concept necessary? Can. Psychol (14), 330-38) 13 14 Michael A. Hogg and Dominic Abrams. (2001) Intergroup relations: Essential readings. Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press 15 Myron Rothbart, Solomon Fulero, Christine Jensen, John Howard, Pamela Birrell. (1978) From individual to group Impressions: Availability heuristics in stereotype formation. J. Exp. Soc. Psychol, 14. (237-55) 16 United States Census Bureau. (2000) Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/ 17 Jon Krakauer. (2003). Under the banner of heaven: A story of violent faith. New York, NY: Random House Inc. 18 Captain H. Christian Breede. (2008) A socioeconomic profile of Afghanistan. Canadian Army Journal. Retrieved from http://www.army.forces.gc.ca/caj/documents/vol_11/iss_3/CAJ_Vol11.3_full_e.pdf#pag e=55 19 Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. (2009). AIHRC annual report. Retrieved from http://www.aihrc.org.af/English/Eng_pages/ Reports_eng/Annual_Rep/2009/Final%20AIHRC%20Annual%20Report%202009.pdf 20 UNICEF. (2009) UNICEF Afghanistan Statistics 2009. Retrieved from http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/afghanistan_statistics.html#70 21 The Association of Religion Data Archives (n.d.) Retrieved from http://www.thearda.com/ 22 Louis Dupree. (1974) Afghanistan: Problems of a peasant-tribal society. New York: Praeger. 23 Peter R. Blood. (2001) Afghanistan: A country study. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress. 24 Environics Research Group. (2007) 2007 survey of Afghans: Summary report. Retrieved from https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www. afghanconflictmonitor.org/Environics_2007_Survey_of_Afghans.pdf 25 Barnett Rubin. (2004). Crafting a constitution for Afghanistan. Journal of Democracy, 15. (3), 5-19.

From Dirt to a Dream R pg 14-15 Source Material: Model T Car: http://static.lfgss.com/attachments/4451d1231429571-model-t.gif Number of Cars in the US: http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/MarinaStasenko.shtml American History: http://kclibrary.lonestar.edu/decade00.html 1940 Car: http://www.idcow.net/idcow/products/jd2050.jpg Crossly Regis: http://www.crossley-motors.org.uk/history/1930/regis/Regis.html U.S. Depatrtment of Transportation/ Motor Vehicle Registration: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/hs00/mv1.htm Interstate System: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/programadmin/interstate.cfm Society in the 1950s: http://www.shmoop.com/1950s/society.html Department pf Transportation Official Site: http://www.dot.gov/ A Historical Perspective on American Roads: http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blcar3.htm American History: http://www.sparknotes.com/history/american/depression/section2.rhtml US Industrilization: http://www.puhsd.k12.ca.us/chana/staffpages/eichman/adult_school/us/fall/industrialization/1/us_industrialization.htm Ford Sierra RS Cosworth: http://artofwheels.wordpress.com/2010/06/15/

Essays on Consumerism in Asia R pg 16-19 1 Xun Zhou, “Eat, Drink and Sing, and Be Modern and Global: Food, Karaoke and ‘Middle Class’ Consumers in China,” in Christophe Jaffrelot and Peter van der Veer, eds., The Patterns of Middle Class Consumption in India and China (New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 2008), 170-185.

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2 Douglas B. Holt, “Does Cultural Capital Structure American Consumption?â€? in Juliet B. Schor and Douglas B. Holt, eds., The Consumer Society Reader (The New Press, 2000), 212-252. 3 “That luxury item may be ‘Made in China,’â€? American Public Media, February 2, 2009, http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/02/02/ pm_made_in_china/ 4 Allison Pugh, Longing and Belonging (University of California Press, 2009). 5 Zhou, 172. 6 Zhou, 174. 7 “That luxury item may be ‘Made in China,’â€? http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/02/02/pm_made_in_china/ 8 Holt, 220. 9 Holt, 221. 10 A term used by Alison Pugh in her work, Longing and Belonging, to distinguish between two types of consumerist behaviors that parents use with their children. 11 William Mazzarella, Shoveling Smoke (Duke University Press, 2003). 12 Mazzarella, 5. 13 Mazzarella, 89. 14 James Watson, ed., Golden Arches East: McDonald’s in East Asia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006). 15 James Watson, “Introduction: Transnationalism, Localization, and Fast Foods in East Asia,â€? in James Watson, ed., Golden Arches East: McDonald’s in East Asia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 4. 16 Watson, 27. 17 David Y.H. Wu, “McDonald’s in Taipei: Hamburgers, Betel Nuts, and National Identity,â€? in James Watson, ed., Golden Arches East: McDonald’s in East Asia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 110-135. 18 Wu, 115. 19 Wu, 120. 20 Stephanie Kaza, “Penetrating the Tangle,â€? in Stephanie Kaza, ed., Hooked!: Buddhist Writings on Greed, Desire, and the Urge to Consume (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2005), 139-151. 21 Thubten ChĂśdrĂśn, “Marketing the Dharma,â€? in Stephanie Kaza, ed., Hooked!: Buddhist Writings on Greed, Desire, and the Urge to Consume (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2005), 63-75. 22 ChĂśdrĂśn, 66. 23 ChĂśdrĂśn, 67. 24 Bill McKibben, Deep Economy (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2007). 25 Tim Kasser, The High Price of Materialism (MIT Press, 2003). Both McKibben and Kasser discuss the effects of materialism on happiness, suggesting that an increased desire for material goods has a negative effect on people’s lives.

Religion, National Identity and Education in the Islamic World: 5 ))%5 .5." 5 / .#)( &5 3-. '-5) 5 !3*.65 /,% 35 ( 5 / #5 , # 5R5*!5hg7hk5 1 Cook, Bradley James. “Egypt’s National Education Debate.â€? Comparative Education 36.4 (2000): 477-90. JSTOR. Web. 13 Dec. 2010. p477. 2 Fandy, Mamoun. “Enriched Islam: The Muslim Crisis of Education.â€? Survival 49.2 (2007): 77-98. Informaworld. Routledge. Web. 10 Dec. 2010. p79 3 Fandy, p79. 4 Education in Saudi Arabia. Washington, D.C.: Saudi Arabian Cultural Mission in the United States of America, 1991. Print. p2-3 5 Fandy, p82-83. 6 Cochran, Judith. Educational Roots of Political Crisis in Egypt. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2008. Print. p96 See also Arab Republic of Egypt Education Sector Review: Progress and Priorities for the Future (In Two Volumes) Volume I: Main Report. Rep. no. 24905EGT. Human Development Group Middle East and North Africa Region The World Bank, October 2002. Web. 16 Dec. 2010. p8 7 “ED.gov.â€? U.S. Department of Education. Web. 16 Dec. 2010. <http://www2.ed.gov/offices/OUS/PES/int_egypt.html>. See also Neill, Charlotte M. “Islam in Egyptian Education: Grades K–12.â€? Religious Education 101.4 (Fall 2006): 481-503. ProQuest International Academic Research Library. Web. 10 Dec. 2010. 8 Yildiran, Guzver. “An Overlook at the Turkish Educational System.â€? Recent Perspectives on Turkish Education. Bloomington: Indiana University Turkish Studies Publications, 1997. 1-12. Print. p3 9 Nohl, Arnd-Michael, Arzu Akkoyunlu-Wigley, and Simon Wigley. Education in Turkey. MĂźnster: Waxmann, 2008. Print. p43. 10 Bosbait, Mohammed, and Rodney Wilson. “Education, School to Work Transitions and Unemployment in Saudi Arabia.â€? Middle Eastern Studies 41.4 (2005): 533-46. Informaworld. Web. 13 Dec. 2010. p533. Also See Figure 1, “Indicators | Data.â€? Data | The World Bank. Web. 16 Dec. 2010. <http://data.worldbank.org/indicator>. 11 Fandy, p77. 12 Cochran, Judith. Educational Roots of Political Crisis in Egypt. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2008. Print. p67-69, 73. 13 Cochran, p76. 14 Cochran, p91. 15 Neill, Charlotte M. “Islam in Egyptian Education: Grades K–12.â€? Religious Education 101.4 (Fall 2006): 481-503. ProQuest International Academic Research Library. Web. 10 Dec. 2010. 16 Fandy, Mamoun. “Enriched Islam: The Muslim Crisis of Education.â€? Survival 49.2 (2007): 77-98. Informaworld. Routledge. Web. 10 Dec. 2010. p81. 17 Fandy, p84. 18 Fandy, p83. 19 Cook, Bradley James. “Egypt’s National Education Debate.â€? Comparative Education 36.4 (2000): 477-90. JSTOR. Web. 13 Dec. 2010. p482. 20 Cook, p482. 21 Pink, Johanna. ÂŤNationalism, Religion and The Muslim-Christian Relationship: Teaching Ethics and Values in Egyptian Schools Egypt.Âť CESNUR - Centro Studi Sulle Nuove Religioni - Center for Studies in New Religions. Web. 16 Dec. 2010. <http://www.cesnur.org/2003/vil2003_pink.htm>. 22 Kaplan, Sam. The Pedagogical State: Education and the Politics of National Culture in Post-1980 Turkey. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2006. Print. p73-89. 23 Frey, James S. Turkey: a Study of the Educational System of Turkey and a Guide to the Academic Placement of Students from Turkey in United States

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Educational Institutions, 1972. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms International, 1979. Print. p10-12. 24 Frey, p12-13. 25 Kaplan, Sam. The Pedagogical State: Education and the Politics of National Culture in Post-1980 Turkey. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2006. Print. p76-77 26 Kaplan, p78-89. 27 Tavernise, Sabrina. “Youthful Voice Stirs Challenge to Secular Turks.� The New York TImes. 14 Oct. 2008. Web. 10 Dec. 2010. 28 Education in Saudi Arabia. Washington, D.C.: Saudi Arabian Cultural Mission in the United States of America, 1991. Print. p6 29 Education in Saudi Arabia, p4. 30 Oliver, E. Eugene. Saudi Arabia: a Study of the Educational System of Saudi Arabia and a Guide to the Academic Placement of Students in Educational Institutions of the United States. Washington, D.C.: American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, 1987. Print. p4. 31 Bosbait, Mohammed, and Rodney Wilson. “Education, School to Work Transitions and Unemployment in Saudi Arabia.� Middle Eastern Studies 41.4 (2005): 533-46. Informaworld. Web. 13 Dec. 2010. p533. 32 Education in Saudi Arabia, p4. 33 Bosbait and Wilson, p533. 34 Education in Saudi Arabia, p6-7. 35 Fandy, p85. 36 Fandy., p86. 37 Fandy, p85. 38 See Figure 1. 39 Bosbait and Wilson, p533-46. 40 Bosbait, p534. 41 Fandy, p86. 42 Education in Saudi Arabia, p6-7.

Contextualizing Genocide: (5 2 '#( .#)(5) 5 )'*& 2#.# -5 (5 ' ) # 5 ( 5 / . ' & 5R5*!5hn7ih5 1. Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism and the Genocide in Rwanda, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001, 7. 2. Mamdani. 3. Greg Grandin, The Blood of Guatemala: A History of Race and Nation, Duke University Press, 2000. 4. Luis Cardoza and Aragon, La RevoluciĂłn Guatemalteca, Guatemala: Editorial del Pensativo, 1994, 52. 5. Grandin, 199. 6. Grandin, 56. 7. Grandin, 233. 8. Shawn Crispin and Seth Meixner, “Boiling Mad,â€? Far Eastern Economic Review V.166 No. 6 (February 13, 2003) P.18, 166.6 (2003): 18. 9. William J. Duiker, Ho Chi Minh: A Life, New York: Hyperion, 2000, 439. 10. Henry Kamm, Cambodia: Report from a Stricken Land, New York: Arcade publishing, Inc., 1998, 75. 11. Kamm, 75. 12. Kenton Clymer, “Cambodge,â€? The Historian V. 70 No. 4 (Winter 2008) P. 813-14, 70.4 (2008): 813-14. 13. Kamm, 3. 14. Mahdev Mohan, “Reconstituting the ‘Un-Person’: The Khmer Krom and the Khmer Rouge Tribunal,â€? Singapore Year Book of International Law and Contibutors, 2010, 47. 15. Panh, Rithy. “S21: The Khmer Rouge Death Killing Machineâ€? 2003. Film. 16. Dinah PoKempner, “Cambodia at War,â€? 68. 17. Grandin, 8. 18. Grandin, 140. 19. Daniel Wilkinson, Silence on the Mountain: Stories of Terror, Betrayal, and Forgetting in Guatemala, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002, 169. 20. Wilkinson, 169. 21. Wilkinson, 198. 22. PoKempner, 78. 22. Greg Grandin, 78. 23. Guatemala: Historical Memory, Genocide, and the Culture of Peace,â€? 77. 24. Greg Grandin, 219. 25. Elizabeth Oglesby, “Educating Citizens in Postwar 26. Mahdev Mohan, 44. 27. Rigoberta Menchu, I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala, Ed. Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, Trans. Ann Wright, London: Verso, 1987. 28. Rigoberta Menchu, 14. 29. Rigoberta Menchu, 164. 30. Rigoberta Menchu, 209. 31. Momostengango, “Holistic Healing: A Better Approach to Civil-War Recovery,â€? The Economist October 14, 2004.

/!)5 "ĂĄ0 465 " 0#-')5 ( 5 ."#(%#(!5 .#(5 ' ,# (5 )*/&#-'5R5*!5ik7in5 1 2 3 4 5 6

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Kirk Hawkins, “Populism in Venezuela: The Rise of Chavismo,� Third World Quarterly 24.6 (Dec. 2003): 1137-160, JSTOR, Web, 18 Apr, 2010, 1145. Hawkins, 1138. Hawkins, 1138. Carlos De La Torre, Populist Seduction in Latin America: the Ecuadorian Experience. Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 2000, 4. Hawkins, 1139. Hawkins, 1139.


7 De La Torre, 10. 8 Bart Jones, ¥Hugo! Hanover, New Hampshire: Steerforth, 2007, Print, 22. 9 Jones, 21. 10 Jones, 24-25. 11 Moises NaĂ­m, Paper Tigers and Minotaurs: The Politics of Venezuela’s Economic Reforms, New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1993, Print, 101. 12 Christian Parenti, “Hugo ChĂĄvez and Petro Populism,â€? The Nation, No. 14, 11 March 2005, 280. 13 Jon Lee Anderson, “Fidel’s Heir: The Influence of Hugo ChĂĄvez,â€? The New Yorker, 23 June 2008, Print, 4. 14 Hawkins, 1151. 15 Hawkins, 1150. 16 Hawkins, 1150. 17 Hawkins, 1142. 18 Anderson, 4. 19 Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom, New York: H. Holt, 1994, Print, 1. 20 Hawkins, 1138.

Somalia and the Mixed Blessings of ( , "35R5*!5jj7jl5 1 Thomas R. Yager, “The Mineral Industry of Somalia,â€? in US Geological Survey Minerals Yearbook (2004). 2 Jamil A. Mubarak, From Bad Policy to Chaos in Somalia (Westport: Praeger, 1996). 3 “Consolidationâ€? in A Country Study: Somalia, Library of Congress, 27 July 2010 <http://memory.loc.gov/frd/cs/sotoc.html>. 4 Jamil A. Mubarak, “The ‘Hidden Hand’ behind the Resilience of the Stateless Economy of Somalia,â€? in World Development 25:12 (1997): 2028. 5 “The ‘Hidden Hand,’â€? 50. 6 “Somalia’s Difficult Decade,â€? in A Country Study: Somalia, Library of Congress, 27 July 2010 <http://memory.loc.gov/frd/cs/sotoc.html>. 7 “Bad Policy,â€? 103. 8 “The ‘Hidden Hand,’â€? 2028. 9 Andre Le Sage, “Stateless Justice in Somalia Formal and Informal Rule of Law Initiativesâ€? (Center for Humanitarian Dialogue, 2005): 20. 10 “Foreign Relations,â€? in A Country Study: Somalia, Library of Congress, 27 July 2010 <http://memory.loc.gov/frd/cs/sotoc.html>. 11 Le Sage, 19. 12 “Somalia during WWII,â€? in A Country Study: Somalia, Library of Congress, 27 July 2010 <http://memory.loc.gov/frd/cs/sotoc.html>. 13 P. Leeson, “Better off Stateless: Somalia before and after Government Collapse,â€? in Journal of Comparative Economics 35:4 (2007): 5-8. 14 “Scientific Socialism to IMF-ism,â€? in A Country Study: Somalia, Library of Congress, 27 July 2010 <http://memory.loc.gov/frd/cs/sotoc.html>. 15 Tom Hewitt, “Half a Century of Development,â€? in Alan Thomas, Tim Allen, eds., Poverty and Development into the 21st Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000): 303. 16 Ken Menkhaus and Lou Ortmayer, “Somalia: Misread Crises and Missed Opportunities,â€? in Bruce W. Jentleson, ed., Preventative Diplomacy in the Post-Cold War World: Opportunities Missed, Opportunities Seized, and Lessons to be Learned (Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999). 17 Leeson, 9. 18 “Foreign Military Assistance,â€? in A Country Study: Somalia, Library of Congress, 27 July 2010 <http://memory.loc.gov/frd/cs/sotoc.html>. 19 Le Sage, 21. 20 “Bad Policy,â€? 15. 21 Hassan Barise, “BBC News | AFRICA | Somalis Cheer Black Hawk Down,â€? in BBC News - Home (22 January 2002) <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ africa/1777435.stm>. 22 “Bad Policy,â€? 17. 23 Kenneth J. Menkhaus, “Political Order in a Stateless Society.â€? Current History 97 (1998): 220-24. 24 “The ‘Hidden Hand,’â€? 2035-2038. 25 Leeson, 10. 26 “The ‘Hidden Hand,’â€? 2027. 27 Le Sage, 23-24. 28 Andrew Cockburn, “Somalia, A Failed State?â€? in National Geographic Magazine <http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0207/feature3/index. html>. 29 “BBC NEWS | Africa | Living in Somalia’s Anarchy,â€? in BBC News - Home <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4017147.stm>. 30 Peter Little, Somalia: Economy without State (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003). 31 Leeson; 2, 10-16. 32 Kenneth J. Menkhaus, Somalia: State Collapse and the Threat of Terrorism (Oxford: Oxford UP for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2004). 33 Leeson; 2, 10-16. 34 Kenneth J. Menkhaus, “State Collapse in Somalia: Second Thoughts,â€? in Review of African Political Economy 30:97 (2003): 4. 35 Menkhaus, “State Collapse.â€? 36 Leeson, 10. 37 Leeson, 29-30. 38 Le Sage; 24-25, 30-31. 39 David Herbert, “Who’s Afraid of Somali Pirates,â€? in National Journal (16 May 2009): 52-53 <http://www.peterleeson.com/NationalJournal.pdf>. 40 Peter Little, qtd. in Leeson, 10. 41 “The ‘Hidden Hand,’â€? 2038. 42 Menkhaus, “State Collapse,â€? 8-9. 43 Le Sage 32-38. 44 Tristan McConnell, “Foreigners Are the Real Pirates, Says Former Somali Fisherman - Times Online,â€? in The Times | UK News, World News and Opinion (12 June 2009) <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article6481875.ece>. 45 Herbert.Thomas R. Yager, “The Mineral Industry of Somalia,â€? in US Geological Survey Minerals Yearbook (2004).

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Under the Influence: .. ,(-5) 5 * ( ( 35#(5 .#(5 ' ,# (5 0 &)*' (.5R5*!5jm7jo 1 Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletti, Dependency and Development in Latin America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979). 2 Ibid., 25. 3 John Charles Chasteen, Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America (2nd ed., New York: W.W. Norton, 2006), 182. 4 Ibid., 182. 5 Juan Bautista Alberdi, “Immigration as a Means of Progress,� in Gabriella Nouzeilles and Graciela Montaldo, eds., The Argentina Reader (Durham: Duke Press, 2002). 6 Ibid., 95. 7 Ibid., 95. 8 Ibid., 96. 9 Chasteen, 182. 10 Albert O. Hirschman, “The Political Economy of Import-Substituting Industrialization,� in Quarterly Review of Economics (1968). 11 Ibid., 7-8. 12 Cardoso and Faletti, 23. 13 Hirschman, 13. 14 Ibid., 12. 15 Ibid., 32. 16 Cardoso and Faletti, 12. 17 John Williamson, “What Washington Means by Policy Reform,� in Latin American Adjustment: How Much Has Happened? (Washington: Institute for International Economics, 1990), par. 4. 18 Ibid., par. 6. 19 Ibid., par. 31. 20 Alberdi, 100. 21 David Harris and Diego Azzi, “ALBA: Venezuela’s answer to ‘free trade’: The Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas,� in Occassional Paper no. 3 (Bangkok: Focus on the Global South, 2006), 3.

Protecting Rights and Promoting Development:

--)(-5 ,)'5 ,' (35 ( 5 ,! (.#( 5#(5 ,.# #* .#0 5 ( ! ' (.5R5*!5kh7ko 1 Casey Ichniowski et al. “What Works at Work: Overview and Assessment,â€? (original article published in 1996) in C. Ichniowski et al. The American Workplace: Skills, Compensation and Employee Involvement, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000 and Paul Osterman; Thomas Kochan. The mutual gains enterprise: forging a winning partnership among labor, management and government, Cambridge: Harvard Business School Press, 2006. 2 David McCaffrey, Sue Faerman and David Hart. “The Appeal and Difficulties of Participative Systems,â€? Organization Science, 6:6 (November 1995): 603-627. 3 Joseph E. Stiglitz. “Democratic Development as the Fruits of Labor.â€? Keynote Address, Industrial Relations Research Association (IRRA), Boston: January 2000. 4 Tyson, David and Levine, D’Andrea . “Participation, Productivity, and the Firm’s Environment,â€? 1990, quoted in Stiglitz, “Democratic Development,â€? 12. 5 One such study is: Soonhee Kim, “Participative Management and Job Satisfaction: Lessons for Management Leadership.â€? Public Administration Review, 62:2 (March 2002): 231-241. 6 Kim. 7 Kim. 8 McCaffrey et. al, “The Appeal and Difficulties of Participative Systems.â€? This argument fits in the framework of G.A. Cohen’s philosophical arguments against differential incentives, outlined in detail in Appendix 2. 9 Rebecca Page. “Codetermination in Germany: A Beginner’s Guide,â€? Arbeitspapier 33 (Germany: Hans-BĂśckler Stiftung Foundation, 2006), <http:// www.boeckler.de/show_product_hbs.html?productfile=HBS-004494.xml> (accessed April 24, 2010). 10 Weimar Republic Constitution, in Page, “Codetermination: A Beginner’s Guide,â€? 6. 11 Weimar Republic Constitution. 12 Page, 6. 13 Hans Joachim-Mertens; Erich Schanze. “The German Codetermination Act of 1976.â€? Journal of Comparative Corporate Law and Securities Regulation, 2, (1979): 75. 14 Mertens and Schanze. 15 Page, 7. 16 Nathan Reich. “Codetermination in Practice,â€? Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 9:3 (April 1956):468. 17 William H. McPherson. “Codetermination: Germany’s Move toward a New Economy,â€? Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 5:1 (October 1951): 20-32. 18 Otto Jacobi. “Renewal of the Collective Bargaining System?,â€? in eds. Walther MĂźller-Jentsch, HansjĂśrg Weitbrecht. The changing contours of German industrial relations. (Munich: Rainer Hampp Verlag, 2003): 15. 19 Jacobi. 20 MA Huselid and JT Delaney. “The impact of human resource management practices on perceptions of organizational performance,â€? Academy of Management, 39:4 (1996): 949. 21 Dr. Norbert Kluge, Head of the SEEUROPE Project “Codetermination in Europeâ€? European Trade Union Institute for Research, Education, Health and Safety, Brussels published in Page, Codetermination in Germany: A Beginner’s Guide. 22 John Monks (General Secretary of European Trade Union Confederation), “John Monk’s speech on 30th anniversary of the German

76


‘Mittbestimmungsgesetz.’â€? Hans-BĂśckler Stiftung Foundation. Berlin: August 30, 2006. <http://www.boeckler.de/181.html> (accessed April 24, 2010)]. 23 Peter Ranis. “Factories without Bosses: Argentina’s Experience with Worker-Run Enterprises.â€? Labor Studies in Working-Class Histories of the Americas, 3:1 (2002):14. 24 “Capital Humano,â€? La NaciĂłn, 30 June 2002. <http://www.lanacion.com.ar/nota.asp?nota_id=221907> (accessed April 15, 2010). 25 “Un modelo viable para recuperar el empleo,â€? La NaciĂłn, 15 January 2003. <http://www.lanacion.com.ar/nota.asp?nota_id=466209> (accessed April 15, 2010). 26 Julian RebĂłn; Ignacio Saavedra. Empresas Recuperadas. (Buenos Aires: Capital Intelectual, 2006). 27 Laura Vales. “FĂĄbricas recuperadas que aprendieron caminas solas,â€? Pagina/12 20 January 2010. <http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/ elpais/1-118569-2009-01-20.html> (accessed April 16, 2010). 28 Ranis, “Factories without Bosses,â€? 17. 29 JosĂŠ Luis Coraggio. “A path to the social economy in Argentina: worker takeovers of bankrupt companiesâ€? in ed. Ash Amin. The Social Economy. London/New York: Zed Books, 2009), 145. 30 this is just another term used for ERTs, “autogestionâ€? best translating to mean “self-management.â€? 31 La NaciĂłn, 30 June 2002. 32 Ranis, “Factories without Bossesâ€?]. 33 see Coraggio, 2009, RebĂłn, 2006 and Ranis, 2002. 34 Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis. “Argentina: Where Jobless Run Factories,â€? The Nation, 16 July 2007. <http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070730/klein_ lewis> (accessed April 27, 2010)]. 35 see in bibliography, authors: Ranis, Klein and Lewis, Coraggio. 36 Karl Polanyi. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, (Boston: Beacon Press, originally published 1944, reprinted 2001). 37 Hall; Jones. “Why Do Some Countries Produce So Much More Output Per Worker Than Others?â€? 38 Richard Locke; Monica Romis. “Improving Work Conditions in a Global Supply Chain,â€? MIT Sloan Management Review, 48:2 (Winter 2007): 54-62. 39 Osterman, Paul; Kochan, Thomas. The mutual gains enterprise: forging a winning partnership among labor, management and government, (Cambridge: Harvard Business School Press, 2006). 40 ÂŤvamos a pelear con todo para mantener los niveles de producciĂłnâ€? quoted in Laura Vales. “FĂĄbricas recuperadas que aprendieron caminas solasâ€? 41 Ichniowski et al., 2 42 Steve Rosenberg. “Germany’s orderly ‘social market,’â€? BBC News, Berlin 19 January 2009. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_ correspondent/7837266.stm> (accessed April 30, 2010) 43 Sen, Amartya. Development as Freedom, New York: Anchor Books, 1995. 44 Mishel & Frankel, The State of Working Class America, 1988 quoted in G.A. Cohen Rescuing Justice and Equality: 143 45 Steve Rosenberg “Germany’s orderly ‘social market’â€? BBC News, Berlin January 19, 2009 <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_ correspondent/7837266.stm>]. 46 vamos a pelear con todo para mantener los niveles de producciĂłnâ€? quoted in Laura Vales. “FĂĄbricas recuperadas que aprendieron caminas solas.â€?

Environmental Refugee Status: (. ,( .#)( &5 *.#)(5) 5 &#' . 5 #-*& ' (.5R5*!5ln7mg 1 Richard Black, Geography and Refugees: Patterns and Processes of Change ( John Wiley and Sons Ltd., 1993). 2 Mark Townsend, “Environmental Refugees� in The Ecologist 32 (2002) 22-25. 3 Emma Brindal, “Justice for Climate Refugees� in Alternative Law Journal 32 (2007) 240-241. 4 David Corlett, Stormy Weather: The Challenge of Climate Change and Displacement (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2008). 5 Joanna Kakissis, “Environmental Refugees Unable to Return Home� in The New York Times 4 January 2010, <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/ world/asia/04migrants.html?scp=1&sq=environmental%20refugees%20unable%20to%20return%20home&st=cse>. 6 Kakissis, 1-3. 7 Mey Akashah, “The Fight and Flight of Environmental Change� in Environment Magazine 52 (2010) 6-7. 8 Brindal, 240-241. 9 Karen Elizabeth McNamara, “Conceptualizing Discourses on Environmental Refugees at the United Nations� in Population and Environment 29 (2007) 12-24. 10 Andrew Simms & Aziz Ahamed. “Should the UN Actively Embrace the Concept of Environmental Refugees� in The Ecologist 32 (2002) 18-21. 11 Akashah, 6-7. 12 Akashah, 6-7. 13 Akashah, 6-7. 14 Akashah, 6-7. 15 Akashah, 6-7. 16 Brindal, 240-241. 17 Black 18 Simms & Ahamed, 18-21. 19 Black 20 Corlett 21 Akashah, 6-7.

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International

WITH A CONCENTRATION IN

MN AND WILL GRADUATE IN January 2013 FROM NYU Gallatin WITH A CONCENTRATION IN Public Policy and International Development

Colleen Veldt

IS FROM Jenison, MI AND HOPES TO GRADUATE IN May 2014 FROM NYU Gallatin WITH A CONCENTRATION IN Violence in Religion, Public Policy and Creative Non-Fiction Writing AND FROM NYU Wagner WITH A Masters of Public Administration

Emma Young

IS FROM Jupiter, FL AND WILL GRADUATE IN May 2012 FROM NYU Gallatin WITH A CONCENTRATION IN Food Anthropology

and Writing Sarah Zapiler

Denver, CO AND WILL GRADUATE philosophy, art and love of Language

IS FROM

IN

May 2011

FROM

NYU Gallatin

WITH A CONCENTRATION IN

The science,

NOTE The articles that appear in the NYU Gallatin Journal of Global Affairs ( JGA) represent the views of a wideranging group of students and scholars. They in no way reflect the views of NYU, the Gallatin School of Individualized Study or the JGA. While all reasonable precautions have been taken by the authors and editors to ensure the quality of work, the JGA makes no representations or warranties as to the accuracy or completeness of material within. While we may not agree with all of the observations and diagnoses of our writers, we support their pursuit of serious university-level academic research and the fruits it yields. We hope that the thoughts and arguments found in this journal serve as a stimulus for further debate and discussion.

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Journal of Global Affairs

NYU GALLATIN SCHOOL OF INDIVIDUALIZED STUDY │ Volume 6 │ 2010 - 2011


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