British Museum

Blog #1

I’m sitting in the British Museum right now trying to find the excuse they can use to sugar coat their conquest. Looking through the information pamphlet they supply a decent reason. To advance the understanding of the cultures they represent. Yet, this isn’t just for the benefit of the British. Let’s look at what ever benefits there may be. Considering the vast amount of people who visit London, knowledge of those cultures are expanding despite their treasures not being allocated in their country. Also, London is a nexus among Europe so those cultures that are outside Britain have access to a safe and prominent location. Granted it is not fair and mainly to the betterment and notoriety of the British people, but I can discern something good from it. It is located in a place where people of all countries can congregate. To the left of me they are speaking Italian and to the right I would guess Polish. We are in a way breaking the boundaries that diversity has created by uniting us under one roof. Yes, it is wrong the way they collected these items but there is a silver lining to every cloud. Maybe they should just give it all back (yah right!) but then we would isolate ourselves behind our history and make it even more difficult to see such treasures, having to travel from place to place. Sometimes one must accept that they were once the dominated, and learn from it. So they know not to do it to others, to preserve their culture and those they might encounter.

Seggeling

British Museum

Blog #1

I’m sitting in the British Museum right now trying to find the excuse they can use to sugar coat their conquest. Looking through the information pamphlet they supply a decent reason. To advance the understanding of the cultures they represent. Yet, this isn’t just for the benefit of the British. Let’s look at what ever benefits there may be. Considering the vast amount of people who visit London, knowledge of those cultures are expanding despite their treasures not being allocated in their country. Also, London is a nexus among Europe so those cultures that are outside Britain have access to a safe and prominent location. Granted it is not fair and mainly to the betterment and notoriety of the British people, but I can discern something good from it. It is located in a place where people of all countries can congregate. To the left of me they are speaking Italian and to the right I would guess Polish. We are in a way breaking the boundaries that diversity has created by uniting us under one roof. Yes, it is wrong the way they collected these items but there is a silver lining to every cloud. Maybe they should just give it all back (yah right!) but then we would isolate ourselves behind our history and make it even more difficult to see such treasures, having to travel from place to place. Sometimes one must accept that they were once the dominated, and learn from it. So they know not to do it to others, to preserve their culture and those they might encounter.

Seggeling

Oxford Museum

BLOG 2

It has become obvious that technology is the key to power, especially when considering the modernization theory. I had the opportunity to visit the Oxford museum and a specific section caught my attention. There was a display concerning various weapons from other countries throughout Britain’s expansion, complemented by British weapons. The two groups of weapons were completely different, considerably those British compared to everything else. One of the weapons from Africa were for melee combat, spikes worn and held around ones hands to encompass the fist. Whereas the British had a gun with an axe head fixed upon the end so it could double its purpose (death). They also had an extravagantly designed long barrel rifle that was encrusted with carvings and gems. Whether brutality or fashion was important, I’m sure it still did well in getting the job done. Maybe this technology came from intelligence or innovation but what about conflict. British history is filled with it, the necessity to create such devastating devices lead to their power especially sooner than that of the colonized nations. One could consider the possibility that these nations that are being exploited modernized peaceful means to solving things before European nations. Look at Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart and how he was banished for a certain period of time to reflect on what has happened when he did ill. And now they must pay the reaper for rational thinking rather than abusive. From what I know until Europeans showed up in Africa they merely had sparse tribal warfare more on culturally based terms that complete destruction of a foe one loathes like the British and the French.

Seggeling

Party of Eight: Deal or No Deal for Africa?

The political leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States converged on Tōyako, located on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaidō, on July 7th to discuss, among other issues, African development. According to Patrick Wintour and Larry Elliott in their July 7th Guardian article G8 Summit: West told to fulfil its African aid pledge, the 2005 G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland pledged to increase aid to Africa by a figure of $25 billion dollars by 2010. The article reported that with only two years left, an independent body called the African Progress Panel showed “…the bloc of rich nations was only 14% of the way towards hitting its target”. Although broken promises have become sadly commonplace amidst the routine compromising of politics, these agreements seem indispensible in the face of increasing food prices and poverty. According to Wintour and Elliott’s piece, the World Bank estimated that approximately 30 million more people could drop below the poverty threshold as a result of climbing food prices while the cost of food in Liberia has climbed by 25% in January, raising the poverty rate from 64% to more than 70%. While I believe these figures reflect patterns of growing African problems, there is reason to be suspicious of the World Bank.

Designed to stabilize national economies and invest in developing countries, the World Bank also has an incentive to identify African problems. Publishing reports delineating increasing food prices and poverty rates serves to create a demand for loans to African countries who cannot ameliorate their domestic problems alone as a result of war, droughts, rapid population growth, foreign debt, governmental corruption, and massive expenditures on AIDS treatment, prevention, and education programs. Thus, the World Bank secures statistical evidence that impoverished African nations are declining in certain measures of the quality of life in order to increase the likelihood that these nations will agree to loans with them. Stemming from its official independence from any nation or group (and this is reflected in its cosmopolitan name), the assumed creditability of the World Bank enables it to publish studies in major media outlets where this conflict of interest is concealed beneath statistics and methodological disclosures. Although the World Bank has an interest in the troubling patterns emerging from these studies, these patterns are nonetheless likely.

While it is challenging to predict whether or not the wealthy G8 nations will meet their pledge of African aid, it is even more challenging to provide a structural solution to the interrelated African problems. Agreeing to more loans from the World Bank may sink African countries deeper into debt or gut their domestic social welfare programs like education and health care. Refusing loans, on the other hand, may lead to crime, violence, and starvation as families become desperate for nourishment. Protectionist policies rather than foreign loans may also lead to both economic and social sanctions. Embargoes may serve to inhibit industrial growth fueled by foreign capital while framing African leaders as nationalists, dictators, and communists in media propaganda campaigns may undermine their public image and the trust their populations have in them. Echoing Fernando Henrique Cardoso in his 1972 article Dependency and Development in Latin America, African countries may need to resort to simultaneous modernization and dependency in order to keep short term problems at bay while slowly chipping away at their dependency on the affluent nations. This could take shape as African countries emphasize sustainable development and modernization, ignited by foreign capital, but later sustained by indigenous investments. Although declining foreign aid would certainly cause a recession in African countries, microcredit loans from African banks and African entrepreneurship may be able to boost the economy out of a recession and free of its dependency on the wealthy nations.

American Independence Day with Your Host Karl Marx

Although I feel like I have little in common with the founding fathers of the United States, the emancipatory zeitgeist of the forth of July loomed large during our field trip to Karl Marx’s final resting place at London’s Highgate Cemetery. After riding a bus to London and the underground train system once in London, we trekked through a park and beneath an ominous stone gate to reach Highgate. Strolling among the tombstones of 19th century Brits, we followed a curved walkway to the towering monument erected to the pioneer of conflict theory. The rectangular base of the monument was etched in gold letters with the phrase “workers of all lands unite” while “the philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways – the point however is it change it” was etched out in gold near the bottom. Atop this stone base was a sculpture from the shoulders up, complete with full beard and deep eyes. Above his gold lettered name a shriveled flower lied on a stone ledge protruding from the surface. While I absorbed this imagery, I began to think of Marxist theory.
Despite considering Marx my favorite sociologist, I think the contemporary validity of some of his ideas deserves to be called into question. Touching on the possibilities of revolution after reading The Manifesto of the Communist Party for class, I wondered about what had changed in the 160 years since the manifesto. While technology has facilitated rapid communication and travel, it has also given birth to new modes of isolation. Portable audio and video devices like the iPod enable individuals to replace social interaction with songs, music videos, and movies. Although, admittedly, this does not necessarily dead end at Alienation Street, liberal cultures like the United States which value individual liberty are especially vulnerable to this type of alienation. Likewise, the post-Second World War explosion of suburbs and emergence of gated communities in the United States pose considerable obstacles to revolution. Although individuals may work side by side at their jobs, social change among the proletariat is continually undermined through the myriad divide and conquer strategies of race, ethnicity, sexuality, and sex. The variations in these attitudes, behaviors, and identities are emphasized in pop culture literature like Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, and television programs which racialize crime by documenting non-white gangs which often do not have the resources to conceal their activities (in contrast to white, organized, and wealthy gangs). Furthermore, contemporary discourses of immigration and terrorism serve to divide people and prevent the development of class consciousness. In sum, I think the pervasive social change of a revolution is a distant dream.

Great Experience!!!!

As I sit here in the dwindling time I have left on this trip I think about all of the new experiences that I have been through and how much I realized that one can grow in five weeks. I have been thinking about all the things that have opened my eyes over here in Europe. In my travels to Edinburgh, Scotland, Paris France, London England, Birmingham England and many more trips all over England I think about the responses that I received from people that I was an American. In some countries I was accepted as just another human being, however in others there was a stiff sense of dislike toward Americans. I reflect back to a story that Professor Goar told us in class about her trip to Turkey. To make a long story short she was at dinner and this dinner involved many people from many countries and the MC would go around and introduce all the countries and use various countries throughout the night to do different activities. However the MC seemed to pass over their table many times and throughout the night ended up never calling on their table once because of the American Flag representing their group. I tried to think of why this would have happened and could not come up with anything other then that this man must have not liked Americans. I cannot fully understand why this is. I know that we are not on the best terms with the world at this point however I just don’t see why this would happen. I mean we are all individuals and should be treated as individuals. In this vastly globalizing world I do not understand how stereotypes and racism and hate continue to grow. Everyday in the states we are reminded to accept everyone for who they are, how ever the rest of the world seems to continue to hate Americans. I do agree that there are some Americans that believe that every country should know the English Language and never attempt to learn even basic phrases to help them bridge the language gap and I do not agree with this. I think that if you are traveling to a foreign country that you should be obligated to learn the language in order to bridge that gap or at least some small phrases to get you by.
Along with Dr. Goar’s experiences I also ran into my own. While traveling in France I conducted a few small social experiments of my own. Since I knew a small amount of French I used that to initiate conversations, I also initiated conversation just speaking in English with my American Accent, and finally I used a horrible fake British accent to start conversations. I notice that I received the best response when I used my French to initiate and then the fake British accent and finally my American Accent. I could understand this because it seems a little more polite to know a countries language when initiating conversation. However I could not understand how my horrible British accent received a better reaction then being American.
I just feel that from this trip that I have learned a lot. I believe that when I return home I’m going to try my hardest to make people that I run in to in America that are visiting that I’m going to try and make them feel as comfortable as possible. It is just not right to feel the way I felt in France and we should all accept all people as the individual that they are and not any different because they come from a country that is not so appreciated on the global scale.

Brent