I've trying to figure out how I feel this story about the girl who asked Senator Clinton the final "diamonds versus pearls" question in the CNN debate. The girl, Maria Luisa, later explained that this question had been the fluffiest of the bunch she submitted, and CNN told her to ask it instead of a vetted question about Yucca Mountain.
The biggest problem, of course, is that CNN was vetting questions for the debate and then telling participants which of their questions to ask. This reduces the value added by audience participation and questioning to mere entertainment and raises questions about how much of the entire debate was scripted.
Perhaps because I have known a few 20 year old Truman finalists (and was one myself for several weeks) -- and don't know any network news executives-- I find myself most frustrated with my peer. Although she argues CNN forced her to ask the question, hypothetically she could have refused to ask at all, or asked her earlier question. Rocking the boat is really hard, and I can imagine it might be hard to think that quickly on her feet surrounded by cameras and mere feet from presidential candidates.
I made what I retrospectively think was an ill-advised and sleep deprived decision to let PBS's Gwen Ifill broadcast election coverage from our post-election party at Swarthmore in 2006. In some ways it was great-- free publicity for Swat, free food for election-watchers, and I found out one of my best friends is a natural on TV-- but the scripted nature of everything put me forever on guard. Between assembling the students they wanted for the "diverse non-partisan" panel (a struggle at a school that'll break green before it'll break red) and trying to keep an audience of exhausted and amazing volunteers "silent but enthusiastic looking" so we could make a nice backdrop for Gwen, it felt a bit like an ongoing and dishonest mess. We broke out the Andre the second the camera crews left. I got cold feet about the broadcasting as soon as they tried to make me promise to get the audience to cheer in a nonpartisan manner (not within my powers, sorry) but because it was a major news network, I was swept up enough to keep my mouth shut. It was no scripted debate, but it also wasn't the party I wanted to throw volunteers-- and I guess that eperience allows me to feel some sympathy for Maria Luisa.
Gettting swept up in the big moment aside, I don't understand why she submitted the question about diamonds versus pearls. She mentions that they were asked to submit several light-hearted questions. To be fair, this is kind of a hard category of questions for a presidential candidate (The best I can do on the spot: "how many times have you had to sit through The War Room?"-- definitely necessary to refrain from asking if George Stephanopoulos was that cute in real life...) because it shouldn't exist and is a waste of everyone's time, but I think although anything would have been better than writing "a question that quizzed the first credible female Presidential candidate on her taste in jewelry." Really expensive jewelry. ("Don't you know there's a war on?' say the tradesmen with a grin.") If she writes questions that bad, that's her fault.
Also, not going to fault Clinton for a short and funny response to a dumb question-- and this is neither the time or place for this issue-- but I do wish there was more of a progressive consensus that diamond engagement rings are not that cool.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Ends, Means, and Iraq
One of my favorite professors at Swarthmore just posted an interesting commentary on people who kind of sort of supported the Iraq war but now say they didn't. (Specificially, people like Ignatieff who made arguments to the effect of "good war, bad administration, bad plan"-- I think this is very different than saying "good cause, bad war...")
Burke argues that you can't build a liberal society through war and military occupation, and then examines the pyschological process through which the idea of doing just this has been so appealing. People look to strengthen the liberal secular modern state through military action even though that is antithetical to its liberal foundation.
I'm no utilitarian but I have a weakness for ends-justify-means style arguments. People often say that acting in an ends-justify-means paradime means that the means cheapen or ruin the ends. Other than the obvious (a mother shouting at her child to be quiet, bombing campaigns to stop violence), I've never been able to dig into this argument. It always seemed to boil down to afterschool special lessons "The cookie won't taste good if you lie to get it" or the undeniable and unavoidable "Winning World War II without killing anyone would have resulted in a much less bittersweet victory." I think this post made me appreciate how the wrong means can entirely invalidate the ends.
Burke's post is about the United States attempting to create liberal societies through military action, but it also made me think about the way a country could become iliberal through an effort to domestically impose liberalism or secularism. I struggle a lot with the relationship between church and state in the United States but I think ultimately our premise allows for more individual freedom (and also more room for error) than laicism as practiced by France and Turkey and most of Europe. Enforcing secularism through headscarf bans is decidedly iliberal.
Burke argues that you can't build a liberal society through war and military occupation, and then examines the pyschological process through which the idea of doing just this has been so appealing. People look to strengthen the liberal secular modern state through military action even though that is antithetical to its liberal foundation.
I'm no utilitarian but I have a weakness for ends-justify-means style arguments. People often say that acting in an ends-justify-means paradime means that the means cheapen or ruin the ends. Other than the obvious (a mother shouting at her child to be quiet, bombing campaigns to stop violence), I've never been able to dig into this argument. It always seemed to boil down to afterschool special lessons "The cookie won't taste good if you lie to get it" or the undeniable and unavoidable "Winning World War II without killing anyone would have resulted in a much less bittersweet victory." I think this post made me appreciate how the wrong means can entirely invalidate the ends.
Burke's post is about the United States attempting to create liberal societies through military action, but it also made me think about the way a country could become iliberal through an effort to domestically impose liberalism or secularism. I struggle a lot with the relationship between church and state in the United States but I think ultimately our premise allows for more individual freedom (and also more room for error) than laicism as practiced by France and Turkey and most of Europe. Enforcing secularism through headscarf bans is decidedly iliberal.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
It's Christmastime in the City
After dealing with computer-mayhem on Sunday, I spent the rest of the afternoon exploring Tokyo. Tokyo may have the longest Christmas season in the world. Festive trees and lights were everywhere, and there were lots of 5th Avenue style church displays. Contemporary American Christmas decorations were mixed in with red and crème paper lanterns running along the sidewalks. I’m a little overwhelmed by the consistent sensory overload but it also makes every block feel exciting. Fast food vendors were out, selling hot dumpings and okonomiyaki and yakitori. It smelled amazing. It put me in a festive mood. I'm excited to have the Motoguchis (the family who gave me the haishi) over for Thanksgiving.
I wandered around for awhile. I’m not really sure exactly where I went although I’ve tried to retrace my steps online. Two older men in business suits separately stopped me during crowded street crossings to tell me I was beautiful, that they made a lot of money, and would like an hour of my time to get coffee. On the one hand, I can imagine that this sort of thing would happen to Scarlett Johansen in Lost in Translation (which I still haven’t seen) which is flattering, on the other hand, I was surprised and somewhat offended. I can’t really figure out how much leniency to give because it’s really hard to flirt in a second language but there’s also a lot of hype about ”compensated dating” in Japan. I don’t know how much credibility this has or how common it ever was, but maybe there’s more blurring of the line between dating and prostitution.
I wound up near the Harajuku temple just at sundown. It was surrounded by a park that was very much like a more groomed version of the park I ran through the other day. Again, I was surprised by the contrast between the frenetic climate of the street and the elegant calm of the park just 20 meters away. I didn’t go in the temple because it looked as though something important involving dressed up people was going on but I’d like to go in a temple sometime soon.
On my way back, I got nervous the train was headed the wrong way, and asked my neighbors if we were going to Kikuna. They were very sweet, and from then on, they told me at every stop, “This is not Kikuna. There are seven more stops” etc. At one point, I buttoned up my coat and I think they were worried the ganji girl had misunderstood or was impatient, so they affirmed that it was not Kikuna. I get lost a lot, but have never gotten that much directional support before
I wandered around for awhile. I’m not really sure exactly where I went although I’ve tried to retrace my steps online. Two older men in business suits separately stopped me during crowded street crossings to tell me I was beautiful, that they made a lot of money, and would like an hour of my time to get coffee. On the one hand, I can imagine that this sort of thing would happen to Scarlett Johansen in Lost in Translation (which I still haven’t seen) which is flattering, on the other hand, I was surprised and somewhat offended. I can’t really figure out how much leniency to give because it’s really hard to flirt in a second language but there’s also a lot of hype about ”compensated dating” in Japan. I don’t know how much credibility this has or how common it ever was, but maybe there’s more blurring of the line between dating and prostitution.
I wound up near the Harajuku temple just at sundown. It was surrounded by a park that was very much like a more groomed version of the park I ran through the other day. Again, I was surprised by the contrast between the frenetic climate of the street and the elegant calm of the park just 20 meters away. I didn’t go in the temple because it looked as though something important involving dressed up people was going on but I’d like to go in a temple sometime soon.
On my way back, I got nervous the train was headed the wrong way, and asked my neighbors if we were going to Kikuna. They were very sweet, and from then on, they told me at every stop, “This is not Kikuna. There are seven more stops” etc. At one point, I buttoned up my coat and I think they were worried the ganji girl had misunderstood or was impatient, so they affirmed that it was not Kikuna. I get lost a lot, but have never gotten that much directional support before
Coming through a little fuzzy
I had a conversation a few weeks ago with a friend who had also recently graduated in which she commented that we didn’t have any hobbies . I thought about it and was forced to agree. Everything I can chalk up as a hobby falls into the banal (running, reading, travel, friends), sub-catogories in my major (domestic politics, international politics, comparative politics), “likes” (dresses, cheese, colorful shoes, spicy food), or deliberately quirky and obscure (haploid maps of the world, looking for cheap flights, bad makeup videos on youtube, improbable currency unions). I don’t think any of that ultimately says much about me.
There was a time when I had proper, concrete hobbies but I think since early adolescence I’ve defined myself in a community-based way. I am what I mean to people. I am the composite of these social roles and relationships. Every interaction with a friend reflects us back at ourselves.
It’s not the same as being 13 and having angsty conversations with yourself about who you are. There’s no tense internal struggle. It’s also not about trying to find my place in the world. It’s more like looking at my hand underwater or feeling like I could melt into a fog or disappear in a Tokyo crowd. It isn’t a bad feeling, it’s sort of vague and pleasant, but it still leaves me with the impression that I am redrawing the line between who I am and who I’m not with every statement I make, including the ridiculous (“I was really obsessed with the Basques in middle school French”) and mundane (“I always eat breakfast.”). Each post I write is a piece of a definition. Maybe it’s just that this level of introspection is really new to me.
The closest parallel I can think of is this: if you ever had a point in your life where you thought something you do now was a big deal, or something you’d never do, think back to that. Then think of the first time you did it. Maybe it was waking up hung over the second weekend in September your freshman year of college, and thinking, “oh, I am someone who gets drunk.” Or “I am someone who can drive.” “I am someone who is married.” “I am someone who has an apartment.” And then that just becomes part of everyday life and you stop thinking about it, but there was a moment when you had to reconceptualize yourself to fit in the new bit of who you are.
Maybe adults do this all the time, or maybe they define themselves by what they do or who they love. Or maybe people don’t have the time or energy for this degree of introspection.
There was a time when I had proper, concrete hobbies but I think since early adolescence I’ve defined myself in a community-based way. I am what I mean to people. I am the composite of these social roles and relationships. Every interaction with a friend reflects us back at ourselves.
It’s not the same as being 13 and having angsty conversations with yourself about who you are. There’s no tense internal struggle. It’s also not about trying to find my place in the world. It’s more like looking at my hand underwater or feeling like I could melt into a fog or disappear in a Tokyo crowd. It isn’t a bad feeling, it’s sort of vague and pleasant, but it still leaves me with the impression that I am redrawing the line between who I am and who I’m not with every statement I make, including the ridiculous (“I was really obsessed with the Basques in middle school French”) and mundane (“I always eat breakfast.”). Each post I write is a piece of a definition. Maybe it’s just that this level of introspection is really new to me.
The closest parallel I can think of is this: if you ever had a point in your life where you thought something you do now was a big deal, or something you’d never do, think back to that. Then think of the first time you did it. Maybe it was waking up hung over the second weekend in September your freshman year of college, and thinking, “oh, I am someone who gets drunk.” Or “I am someone who can drive.” “I am someone who is married.” “I am someone who has an apartment.” And then that just becomes part of everyday life and you stop thinking about it, but there was a moment when you had to reconceptualize yourself to fit in the new bit of who you are.
Maybe adults do this all the time, or maybe they define themselves by what they do or who they love. Or maybe people don’t have the time or energy for this degree of introspection.
Cellphone as Wallet: Forget the iPhone
I've been a bit hard on technology lately because of all the problems with my computer, so I decided to take a break from that and discuss all the cool things that Japanese phones can do that my American cell phone can't.
I got a phone a few weeks ago and picked out the absolute cheapest kind, the kind that came free with my plan. It's a shiny red razor-style phone that I'm still trying to figure out, but it was free! (My first 'free' American cell phone looked kind of like a metallic brick. When it broke, someone on my hall wanted to start a riot by throwing it through a window.)
-My phone has about 30 different alarm sounds, including my favorite, "tequila" which sounds like a bunch of happy people interupting a vaguely South African song.
-You can insert over 500 pictures and images into text messages and emails.
-People check the internet routinely through their cell phone and even have special separate email accounts attached to their phone.
-Ads/billboards have an embedded code so if you point your phone at them and press a button, your phone opens up the website affiliated with that product so you can learn more/buy it.
-Video conferencing is a standard feature on free phones.
-Free streaming of weather reports, news headlines and sports statistics (This was the case in the UAE too).
-MP3 capabilities
-Instant Messager
-Ability to watch TV or movies for a fee
-You can pay your bills through your phone.
-Phone as ID
-A prepaid rechargeable train pass embedded in your phone so you can swipe your phone where others would insert a ticket.
-The ability to use a phone like a credit card, swiping it in restaurants, grocery stores, and bars.
I think the e-commerce (i commerce? cell commerce?) function impresses me the most. I held off on getting a cell phone until January of 2005 when a friend convinced me I was inconviencing others. I think I should avoid sharing this, lest I seem like a technology-barbarian.
I still have a little bit of a love-hate relationship with the cell phone. I like to be with the people I'm with and not feel obligated to answer a ring. I usually keep my phone on vibrate. One thing that impresses me in Japan is that people very rarely talk on phones on the train or in restaurants. I guess there are enough other things to do with your phone here.
I don't understand why the US is so far behind in terms of affordable cell phone technology. It's not just the phone-- my reception was more consistent in the Serengeti than it is fifty miles out of Burlington.
I got a phone a few weeks ago and picked out the absolute cheapest kind, the kind that came free with my plan. It's a shiny red razor-style phone that I'm still trying to figure out, but it was free! (My first 'free' American cell phone looked kind of like a metallic brick. When it broke, someone on my hall wanted to start a riot by throwing it through a window.)
-My phone has about 30 different alarm sounds, including my favorite, "tequila" which sounds like a bunch of happy people interupting a vaguely South African song.
-You can insert over 500 pictures and images into text messages and emails.
-People check the internet routinely through their cell phone and even have special separate email accounts attached to their phone.
-Ads/billboards have an embedded code so if you point your phone at them and press a button, your phone opens up the website affiliated with that product so you can learn more/buy it.
-Video conferencing is a standard feature on free phones.
-Free streaming of weather reports, news headlines and sports statistics (This was the case in the UAE too).
-MP3 capabilities
-Instant Messager
-Ability to watch TV or movies for a fee
-You can pay your bills through your phone.
-Phone as ID
-A prepaid rechargeable train pass embedded in your phone so you can swipe your phone where others would insert a ticket.
-The ability to use a phone like a credit card, swiping it in restaurants, grocery stores, and bars.
I think the e-commerce (i commerce? cell commerce?) function impresses me the most. I held off on getting a cell phone until January of 2005 when a friend convinced me I was inconviencing others. I think I should avoid sharing this, lest I seem like a technology-barbarian.
I still have a little bit of a love-hate relationship with the cell phone. I like to be with the people I'm with and not feel obligated to answer a ring. I usually keep my phone on vibrate. One thing that impresses me in Japan is that people very rarely talk on phones on the train or in restaurants. I guess there are enough other things to do with your phone here.
I don't understand why the US is so far behind in terms of affordable cell phone technology. It's not just the phone-- my reception was more consistent in the Serengeti than it is fifty miles out of Burlington.
Monday, November 12, 2007
And then Pinochet got mad
I used to think that jobs weren't stressful. (I also have this illusion that 25 is a stress-free age because you have figured life out, but I'm not letting go of that yet.) I imagined that some jobs could be stressful-- for instance, being in charge of something, or having your pay based on sales commission or working in a dangerous enviroment-- but somehow, despite all evidence to the contrary, I thought the majority of jobs were pretty stress-free.
One of my friends who works for a certain government agency happily confirmed this. She said she left her work at the door every day at five and didn't think about it again until she came back. She told me this during a particularly stressful part of senior year, and I think it was supposed to make me feel better. It weirded me out. I still can't really get my head around it.
It's crunch week at Swarthmore (isn't it always?) and I can report that so far, my job commands fewer all nighters and much less racing to meet deadlines than college. However, I think there's a different kind of stress. Although extracirrcular and interpersonal duties may impact other people, a major part of stress-in-college is about stuff that only affects yourself. It won't impact anyone else's semester much if your paper is in late (except in seminar, but that's a seperate tangent) With most (all?) jobs, anything you do poorly then impacts other people, which is a different kind of pressure.
I started thinking about this because last night I had my first work-related nightmare. It started when I dream-woke-up to discover I had twenty more endnotes to write in an afternoon that we'd somehow forgotten about. In real life, I'd substantially changed an endnote about Pinochet because I felt that in trying to be neutral, we had wound up sounding too sympathetic. In my dream, Pinochet was very angry with the changes I had made. How dare I change "modernize the economy" to "liberalize the economy!" Only "some" critics accuse him of human rights abuses, not "many!" He refused to ever be interviewed by us, and was starting a law suit. I tried to remember what I had learned about public figures and libel but I wasn't sure whether we'd be tried in Japan, the US, the UK or Chile. In the meantime, my list of endnotes had grown, spanning several pages, and all the while, Pinochet was marshalling his evidence. (In my dream, he definitely didn't have Operation CONDOR at his disposal. That would have made it a much worse nightmate.) It was all my fault!
I woke up, hugging my knees, to remember that Pinochet had died on December 3rd, 2006, four days before Jeane Kirkpatrick, UN ambassador and Reagan advisor who advocated US support for authoritarian governments so long as they were anticommunist. My Latin American politics class may have been briefly inspired to hum "ding dong the witch is dead" upon discussing the 91 year old Chilean dictator's death, but I promise that didn't make it anywhere into the endnote. Back to sleep.
One of my friends who works for a certain government agency happily confirmed this. She said she left her work at the door every day at five and didn't think about it again until she came back. She told me this during a particularly stressful part of senior year, and I think it was supposed to make me feel better. It weirded me out. I still can't really get my head around it.
It's crunch week at Swarthmore (isn't it always?) and I can report that so far, my job commands fewer all nighters and much less racing to meet deadlines than college. However, I think there's a different kind of stress. Although extracirrcular and interpersonal duties may impact other people, a major part of stress-in-college is about stuff that only affects yourself. It won't impact anyone else's semester much if your paper is in late (except in seminar, but that's a seperate tangent) With most (all?) jobs, anything you do poorly then impacts other people, which is a different kind of pressure.
I started thinking about this because last night I had my first work-related nightmare. It started when I dream-woke-up to discover I had twenty more endnotes to write in an afternoon that we'd somehow forgotten about. In real life, I'd substantially changed an endnote about Pinochet because I felt that in trying to be neutral, we had wound up sounding too sympathetic. In my dream, Pinochet was very angry with the changes I had made. How dare I change "modernize the economy" to "liberalize the economy!" Only "some" critics accuse him of human rights abuses, not "many!" He refused to ever be interviewed by us, and was starting a law suit. I tried to remember what I had learned about public figures and libel but I wasn't sure whether we'd be tried in Japan, the US, the UK or Chile. In the meantime, my list of endnotes had grown, spanning several pages, and all the while, Pinochet was marshalling his evidence. (In my dream, he definitely didn't have Operation CONDOR at his disposal. That would have made it a much worse nightmate.) It was all my fault!
I woke up, hugging my knees, to remember that Pinochet had died on December 3rd, 2006, four days before Jeane Kirkpatrick, UN ambassador and Reagan advisor who advocated US support for authoritarian governments so long as they were anticommunist. My Latin American politics class may have been briefly inspired to hum "ding dong the witch is dead" upon discussing the 91 year old Chilean dictator's death, but I promise that didn't make it anywhere into the endnote. Back to sleep.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Misbehaving Computers, Perfect Parks, and Korean BBQ
I've been in an on-going (although I suspect resolveable) battle with my computer (I'm on Rachel's backup computer now). It has a acute neurological condition that impedes its ability to recieve sensory imput (from me). It starts with the left mouse button and then spreads until it ignores all my input whatsoever. My father suggested I take the battery out and then put it back in, and this helps it for about twevle hours, but then the neurological disease wins again! Tomorrow I'm going to take it to the Acer center in Saitama, a suburb on the other side of Tokyo. (If anything exciting happens, I'll be sure to post about it, but I don't get a "bloggable" vibe from computer repair.) I feel bad, because the people at the computer store don't speak English, which means Brett has to come with me. He's being very nice about it, but I hate to be a burden when they are already hosting me.
My frustration prompted me to go for what turned out to be my favorite run yet in Japan. Brett had mentioned a park a few miles a way, and I decided to try to find it. Japan is full of pretty parks, but this one takes the cake. The base of the park was built around a large pond with waterlilies and other flowers. A dark, wooden boardwalk crossed over the pond. Apparently, it's so picturesque that it was part of the set for a popular TV show. It was raining just a little bit, and I could hear frogs croaking in the pond.
Behind the park was a nature preserve stretched up a hill, and I could run along a number of ridges overlooking the park. (Yokohama is a bit like one big stadium run; it's hard to run for more than a third of a mile without running up a steep hill or several flights of stairs. While this makes it hard to fight an easy run, it also means it's hard to have a run without some amazing views. I always find myself on top of some hilltop, looking over rooftops in a valley I hadn't known existed.) I got up to the ridge by running up through the neighborhood alongside the park, but I zigg-zagged down flat paths bookended by flights of stairs.
It reminded me a little bit of running on Roosevelt island in DC-- to get to Roosevelt island, you run past the Kennedy center and the Watergate hotel, over this long highway of a bridge. Then you reach the island, and there's this thick canopy and it's humid and lush and primordial and it feels like you could see dinosaurs around the corner. This park had the same moist otherworldly quality. It was a quarter mile from downtown Myorengi, with its neon signs and 7/11s and nearly constant train traffic. Running through Myorengi is an exercise in lateral movement.
Tonight for dinner, we went to a Korean barbeque downtown. I'd never had Korean barbeque before, and really enjoyed it. There's a grill in the center of each table, and you order thinly sliced meat, mushrooms, and vegetables, and grill them. There's a special brush you can use to dust the mushrooms with soy sauce once they are on the grill. It was delicious, and flipping the slices over was excellent Haishi practice. I even tried tongue, which was surprisingly good (although a little chewy. Ok, full disclosure, I put a LOT of lemon on it but apparently that's normal). I may be the world's worst former vegetarian. My only defense is that I only eat meat when I eat out.
I think food that is inherently communal--fondue, shabu shabu, Ethiopian food, Korean barbeque--is the most fun to eat. One of my friends used to joke about opening a restaurant that served a different communal dish every night of the week, and if she ever goes through with it, I'm glad to have an insider connection. I also think it's interesting that, while we eat soy sauce in the US, it's usually not mixed with other sauces, while in Japan, it's often mixed with hot sauce, lemon, or wasabi-- and the better for it. (My sister and I used to put lemon juice and soy sauce on our popcorn when we were growing up.)
My frustration prompted me to go for what turned out to be my favorite run yet in Japan. Brett had mentioned a park a few miles a way, and I decided to try to find it. Japan is full of pretty parks, but this one takes the cake. The base of the park was built around a large pond with waterlilies and other flowers. A dark, wooden boardwalk crossed over the pond. Apparently, it's so picturesque that it was part of the set for a popular TV show. It was raining just a little bit, and I could hear frogs croaking in the pond.
Behind the park was a nature preserve stretched up a hill, and I could run along a number of ridges overlooking the park. (Yokohama is a bit like one big stadium run; it's hard to run for more than a third of a mile without running up a steep hill or several flights of stairs. While this makes it hard to fight an easy run, it also means it's hard to have a run without some amazing views. I always find myself on top of some hilltop, looking over rooftops in a valley I hadn't known existed.) I got up to the ridge by running up through the neighborhood alongside the park, but I zigg-zagged down flat paths bookended by flights of stairs.
It reminded me a little bit of running on Roosevelt island in DC-- to get to Roosevelt island, you run past the Kennedy center and the Watergate hotel, over this long highway of a bridge. Then you reach the island, and there's this thick canopy and it's humid and lush and primordial and it feels like you could see dinosaurs around the corner. This park had the same moist otherworldly quality. It was a quarter mile from downtown Myorengi, with its neon signs and 7/11s and nearly constant train traffic. Running through Myorengi is an exercise in lateral movement.
Tonight for dinner, we went to a Korean barbeque downtown. I'd never had Korean barbeque before, and really enjoyed it. There's a grill in the center of each table, and you order thinly sliced meat, mushrooms, and vegetables, and grill them. There's a special brush you can use to dust the mushrooms with soy sauce once they are on the grill. It was delicious, and flipping the slices over was excellent Haishi practice. I even tried tongue, which was surprisingly good (although a little chewy. Ok, full disclosure, I put a LOT of lemon on it but apparently that's normal). I may be the world's worst former vegetarian. My only defense is that I only eat meat when I eat out.
I think food that is inherently communal--fondue, shabu shabu, Ethiopian food, Korean barbeque--is the most fun to eat. One of my friends used to joke about opening a restaurant that served a different communal dish every night of the week, and if she ever goes through with it, I'm glad to have an insider connection. I also think it's interesting that, while we eat soy sauce in the US, it's usually not mixed with other sauces, while in Japan, it's often mixed with hot sauce, lemon, or wasabi-- and the better for it. (My sister and I used to put lemon juice and soy sauce on our popcorn when we were growing up.)
Thursday, November 8, 2007
On Being Flapped
I was talking to my friend Eleuthera, of Dumbledore theory renown, about culture shock the other night. Before this fall, I thought I was fairly immune to culture shock（The term I used was unflappable, but I might have spelled it unflaapable.） This may seem like a naïve thing to think, but I had a few fairly hard-core travel experiences in Tanzania, including washing myself in a bucket of water heated over a fire and hiding in the trunk of an armed car as we drove near the Burundian border because there had been reports of Congolese bandit activity. In Tanzania, I was never confronted by my difference so much as my privilege. I ended every day heart-broken by how hard the lives of the people I met were, how optimistic about the future they were, and how little I could do for them. My time in Tanzania was a period of emotional growth but it didn’t force me to reevaluate the way I saw the world in the same way.
I’m learning a (obvious) lesson— differences between cultures aren’t about different foods or different languages or holidays so much as about different ideas. I knew this in principle, but it feels a little different than criticizing the oversimplification of multiculturalism in practice. On the one hand, I feel like I’m getting to learn what my country does well (public radio!) and what it fails at (public transit!) better. On the other hand, I think I sometimes wind up being more judgmental than I mean to be.
I'm not sure how to capture this, so I'm going to focus on two areas: one is gender and sex, and the other is civic engagement. Both really deserve more attention than I’m about to give them, but I want to hold off till the end of this trip.
I posted a little bit about this before, but I feel like at this point, I’ve gotten a handle on the things I like and don’t like about the way we handle gender and sexuality in the United States and I feel ready to dish out judgments. I struggle with the things that are unfamiliar in other places—from homosexuality and flirting being illegal in the UAE to twelve year old porn stars in Japan. Are those laws enforced? Is the U15 idols just a special case? Do the extremes say something about society as a whole or are they just extremes?
One thing I’m coming to believe is that one thing that is very special about the United States (I can’t say unique, because I think I might observe the same thing in parts of Europe or India or Latin America, and I won’t say immature, but it’s what I grew up with and I love it) is our belief in fairness and our capacity for outrage. I know we’re apparently in a quarter-century long civic engagement slump, but I do think we live in a country where people get angry when bad things happen to them—or to others-- and want to act on those things. It’s not about actually rioting, protesting, writing a letter to the paper, walking out, or running for office, but even contemplating taking those actions in a fit of anger. In the UAE, people can’t do that because they are afraid, and in Japan, harmony is assigned the highest value. The acceptance that you can’t change your world is a challenge for me to swallow, and I never know where to take the conversation next.
I understand why my trips to Europe didn’t force me to reassess my views in the same ways as being in the UAE or Japan has. Views about smoking in public places aside, liberal Democrats make great Europeans. I can’t really figure out why being in Tanzania didn’t challenge me in the same way, though.
In some ways, Tanzania was much more ‘western” than either Japan or the UAE—they may have been occupied and drilled for oil, respectively, but they never were anyone’s colony. Another factor was probably being there with three friends, and being able to experience and talk over the differences with them as we all encountered them. A third variable may be that I had studied Africa—especially Tanzania—for years, and obsessively read travel accounts and Peace Corps memoirs—so was prepared for the things that had surprised others. Although Japan and the Middle East are both pretty popular obsessions—and pretty amazing places-- I never caught that bug and went to both places armed with just what I could cram.
I think the biggest difference may be that I saw the differences in Tanzania as “differences in level of development” rather than “alternative choices.” In a way, I think this is an accurate lens, but I also wonder if it reflects my own bias. Was I unwilling to see Tanzania as deliberately different?
That’s a dangerous type of jingoism. ‘Everyone would be like us if only they could afford to be.”
Overall, I’m really enjoying this feeling of being flapped. There was a moment in 10th grade history when we learned about Locke’s treatises on government and the social contract and it felt like my whole head was exploding. I thought I suddenly understood the foundation for revolution and rebellion and legitimate government. In a great college class, you can count on a moment like that every two weeks. Now, I feel like I get a moment like that almost every day.
I’m learning a (obvious) lesson— differences between cultures aren’t about different foods or different languages or holidays so much as about different ideas. I knew this in principle, but it feels a little different than criticizing the oversimplification of multiculturalism in practice. On the one hand, I feel like I’m getting to learn what my country does well (public radio!) and what it fails at (public transit!) better. On the other hand, I think I sometimes wind up being more judgmental than I mean to be.
I'm not sure how to capture this, so I'm going to focus on two areas: one is gender and sex, and the other is civic engagement. Both really deserve more attention than I’m about to give them, but I want to hold off till the end of this trip.
I posted a little bit about this before, but I feel like at this point, I’ve gotten a handle on the things I like and don’t like about the way we handle gender and sexuality in the United States and I feel ready to dish out judgments. I struggle with the things that are unfamiliar in other places—from homosexuality and flirting being illegal in the UAE to twelve year old porn stars in Japan. Are those laws enforced? Is the U15 idols just a special case? Do the extremes say something about society as a whole or are they just extremes?
One thing I’m coming to believe is that one thing that is very special about the United States (I can’t say unique, because I think I might observe the same thing in parts of Europe or India or Latin America, and I won’t say immature, but it’s what I grew up with and I love it) is our belief in fairness and our capacity for outrage. I know we’re apparently in a quarter-century long civic engagement slump, but I do think we live in a country where people get angry when bad things happen to them—or to others-- and want to act on those things. It’s not about actually rioting, protesting, writing a letter to the paper, walking out, or running for office, but even contemplating taking those actions in a fit of anger. In the UAE, people can’t do that because they are afraid, and in Japan, harmony is assigned the highest value. The acceptance that you can’t change your world is a challenge for me to swallow, and I never know where to take the conversation next.
I understand why my trips to Europe didn’t force me to reassess my views in the same ways as being in the UAE or Japan has. Views about smoking in public places aside, liberal Democrats make great Europeans. I can’t really figure out why being in Tanzania didn’t challenge me in the same way, though.
In some ways, Tanzania was much more ‘western” than either Japan or the UAE—they may have been occupied and drilled for oil, respectively, but they never were anyone’s colony. Another factor was probably being there with three friends, and being able to experience and talk over the differences with them as we all encountered them. A third variable may be that I had studied Africa—especially Tanzania—for years, and obsessively read travel accounts and Peace Corps memoirs—so was prepared for the things that had surprised others. Although Japan and the Middle East are both pretty popular obsessions—and pretty amazing places-- I never caught that bug and went to both places armed with just what I could cram.
I think the biggest difference may be that I saw the differences in Tanzania as “differences in level of development” rather than “alternative choices.” In a way, I think this is an accurate lens, but I also wonder if it reflects my own bias. Was I unwilling to see Tanzania as deliberately different?
That’s a dangerous type of jingoism. ‘Everyone would be like us if only they could afford to be.”
Overall, I’m really enjoying this feeling of being flapped. There was a moment in 10th grade history when we learned about Locke’s treatises on government and the social contract and it felt like my whole head was exploding. I thought I suddenly understood the foundation for revolution and rebellion and legitimate government. In a great college class, you can count on a moment like that every two weeks. Now, I feel like I get a moment like that almost every day.
When it comes to fashion, Paris has nothing on Japan
Someone asked me to write more about Japanese fashion based on a comment I made in an earlier post, and I take requests.
In general, there’s a strong visual orientation in Japan. The food in the grocery store—especially the fruits and vegetables—looks almost too pretty to eat. (I keep imagining orange farmers in California going ‘This orange is perfect. I’ll send it to Japan. This orange…a little brown…they’ll never accept it in Tokyo. To the East Coast it goes!”) I’ve heard some Japanese importers are gaining interest in production in India because Chinese manufacturers are more interested in targeting quality for price than refining small details.
Given this visual orientation, it’s unsurprising Japan is a very chic country. Both men and women dress creatively and elegantly. I don’t know much about high fashion, but I’m really impressed with everyday style here. The basic ‘uniform’ among women consists of a neutral colored top, usually black, a colorful skirt, rounded out with a pair of carefully coordinated knee high boots or pumps with black knee-highs. (A daily dilemma: do I try to blend in by wearing heels because almost all Japanese women seem to, and look ridiculously out of place and tall, or do I wear less chic shoes?) In general, tops are modest and shins are covered, so the focal point of most outfits is the leg, from the knee to the mid/upper thigh, which is almost invariably bare. Now it’s getting colder, the ensemble is topped off by blazers or trench coats. Women wear jeans, but much less frequently than in the States or Europe.
Variations on the schoolgirl outfit are also popular—pleated skirts, white blouses with navy sweaters, knee socks. At first I was confused and thought maybe college women wore uniforms in Japan, and then I realized that women far older than myself were dressed this way. (I’m trying so hard not to have an opinion yet on what this means. See my above post.) School kids usually wear uniforms—the younger boys wear navy shorts and knee socks. They have two different colors of cap, one which they wear when walking to school, and one which they wear coming back. Apparently, this is so members of the community know which way the child is supposed to be going, and can look out for them (or maybe prevent them from skipping class?).
Among men, the two dominant styles I’ve seen are punk rock or business wear. Suit jackets have three buttons rather than two, and Japanese men typically wear all buttons closed. I’ve heard that this style of suit jacket’s become popular among the Late Night Shots crowd in the states, but I imagine Japanese men pull off the slim cut a little bit better. The punk rock style involves skinny jeans, graphic tees, often white belts, and a mane of orange hair.
I’ve attempted to go clothing shopping twice in Japan, and both times made me feel like I was going through puberty all over again. (It’s sort of like a special Franksteinian abnormal puberty though, with out the accompanying booklets about growing up.) The largest size of jeans is a 28—which’ll fit but then be way too short. Tops are just an out-and-out disaster. If I wore them out, I’d definitely be an embarrassment to myself. It’s too undignifying to go into, but I’ll leave it at I’m glad I don’t need to go bra shopping. I’m a pretty easy fit in the states, so it’s an odd feeling to be in a place where I’m built so differently from the average person that all clothing looks so wrong. I think it was one of the times I’ve been the most conscious of being a minority here. All in all, I’m glad I shop for the sake of recreation and not necessity.
In general, there’s a strong visual orientation in Japan. The food in the grocery store—especially the fruits and vegetables—looks almost too pretty to eat. (I keep imagining orange farmers in California going ‘This orange is perfect. I’ll send it to Japan. This orange…a little brown…they’ll never accept it in Tokyo. To the East Coast it goes!”) I’ve heard some Japanese importers are gaining interest in production in India because Chinese manufacturers are more interested in targeting quality for price than refining small details.
Given this visual orientation, it’s unsurprising Japan is a very chic country. Both men and women dress creatively and elegantly. I don’t know much about high fashion, but I’m really impressed with everyday style here. The basic ‘uniform’ among women consists of a neutral colored top, usually black, a colorful skirt, rounded out with a pair of carefully coordinated knee high boots or pumps with black knee-highs. (A daily dilemma: do I try to blend in by wearing heels because almost all Japanese women seem to, and look ridiculously out of place and tall, or do I wear less chic shoes?) In general, tops are modest and shins are covered, so the focal point of most outfits is the leg, from the knee to the mid/upper thigh, which is almost invariably bare. Now it’s getting colder, the ensemble is topped off by blazers or trench coats. Women wear jeans, but much less frequently than in the States or Europe.
Variations on the schoolgirl outfit are also popular—pleated skirts, white blouses with navy sweaters, knee socks. At first I was confused and thought maybe college women wore uniforms in Japan, and then I realized that women far older than myself were dressed this way. (I’m trying so hard not to have an opinion yet on what this means. See my above post.) School kids usually wear uniforms—the younger boys wear navy shorts and knee socks. They have two different colors of cap, one which they wear when walking to school, and one which they wear coming back. Apparently, this is so members of the community know which way the child is supposed to be going, and can look out for them (or maybe prevent them from skipping class?).
Among men, the two dominant styles I’ve seen are punk rock or business wear. Suit jackets have three buttons rather than two, and Japanese men typically wear all buttons closed. I’ve heard that this style of suit jacket’s become popular among the Late Night Shots crowd in the states, but I imagine Japanese men pull off the slim cut a little bit better. The punk rock style involves skinny jeans, graphic tees, often white belts, and a mane of orange hair.
I’ve attempted to go clothing shopping twice in Japan, and both times made me feel like I was going through puberty all over again. (It’s sort of like a special Franksteinian abnormal puberty though, with out the accompanying booklets about growing up.) The largest size of jeans is a 28—which’ll fit but then be way too short. Tops are just an out-and-out disaster. If I wore them out, I’d definitely be an embarrassment to myself. It’s too undignifying to go into, but I’ll leave it at I’m glad I don’t need to go bra shopping. I’m a pretty easy fit in the states, so it’s an odd feeling to be in a place where I’m built so differently from the average person that all clothing looks so wrong. I think it was one of the times I’ve been the most conscious of being a minority here. All in all, I’m glad I shop for the sake of recreation and not necessity.
Google Analytics, narcissism enabler
I have this google tracking program that lets me look at how many unique hits I get each day and where they come from. I’m completely addicted. I think this is a further sign of my dependence on social feedback.
Currently, I get the most total (but not unique) hits from Vermont (I think my parents might miss me) and PA and NY are in an ongoing dead heat for second place. Most non-US hits are from Japan or Europe.
Dear reader from Reykjavik: I bet you are an American friend of mine who briefly stopped in Iceland on route to Europe, but I like pretending you randomly stumbled across the blog. In either case, it was super exciting when Iceland was colored in on my tracking map.
Currently, I get the most total (but not unique) hits from Vermont (I think my parents might miss me) and PA and NY are in an ongoing dead heat for second place. Most non-US hits are from Japan or Europe.
Dear reader from Reykjavik: I bet you are an American friend of mine who briefly stopped in Iceland on route to Europe, but I like pretending you randomly stumbled across the blog. In either case, it was super exciting when Iceland was colored in on my tracking map.
Imagination (Part I)
I powered through our final proofs today, and re-read a lot of the transcripts about the US’s role in the world back in the late nineties and early 21st century. It was interesting how different the conversation was pre-9/11 or even pre-Iraq-invasion. One ‘rhyming chorus’ I did find was that people argued that the United States was involved in the 1998 Kosovo bombing campaign to establish strategic military control in the region.
One theme that jumped out to me in several pieces was world leaders—Clinton, Peres, and a few others—who all called for more imagination in shaping the future. I usually think of imagination as being the province of inventors, writers, and children, but I really think there’s something there. I know we can’t have better policy without better analysis and a deeper understanding of history. I buy that a critical mistake in the execution and the conception of the Iraq war was the lack of discussion of Iraq’s history. I spent a lot of college trying to learn modern world history and only got more aware of how little I understood. I also came to realize that “understanding” history could be misconstructed to create bad policy—the emphasis on age old tribalism in early journalism about Rwanda and Kaplan’s book, Balkan Ghosts—particularly when it makes the present seem inevitable rather than logical.
But as crucial as history is in understanding the world today, I’m starting to feel like imagination is what’s crucial in moving forward, and one big thing that’s missing. Whenever I hear American leaders talk about foreign policy, it’s in this very narrow frame of pull out/stay in Iraq, engage with Iran or North Korea or don’t engage, trade with Cuba or don’t, ignore Sudan or promise to act at some future date. Maybe it’s a lack of vision or a lack of knowledge, but I think it’s also a lack of imagination.
The Marshall Plan always strikes me as really radically imaginative foreign policy. I don’t know if it was in its time—maybe it just seemed inevitable then—but it was so different than the way that every other victor had ever treated every other loser in world history. Other nominees for imaginative policy: the creation of the UN, the Berlin airlift. I also think the idea of “smart sanctions” or “luxury sanctions” is innovative. My understanding is that when accompanied by a very narrowly targeted bombing campaign, they were fairly successful against Milosevic.
One theme that jumped out to me in several pieces was world leaders—Clinton, Peres, and a few others—who all called for more imagination in shaping the future. I usually think of imagination as being the province of inventors, writers, and children, but I really think there’s something there. I know we can’t have better policy without better analysis and a deeper understanding of history. I buy that a critical mistake in the execution and the conception of the Iraq war was the lack of discussion of Iraq’s history. I spent a lot of college trying to learn modern world history and only got more aware of how little I understood. I also came to realize that “understanding” history could be misconstructed to create bad policy—the emphasis on age old tribalism in early journalism about Rwanda and Kaplan’s book, Balkan Ghosts—particularly when it makes the present seem inevitable rather than logical.
But as crucial as history is in understanding the world today, I’m starting to feel like imagination is what’s crucial in moving forward, and one big thing that’s missing. Whenever I hear American leaders talk about foreign policy, it’s in this very narrow frame of pull out/stay in Iraq, engage with Iran or North Korea or don’t engage, trade with Cuba or don’t, ignore Sudan or promise to act at some future date. Maybe it’s a lack of vision or a lack of knowledge, but I think it’s also a lack of imagination.
The Marshall Plan always strikes me as really radically imaginative foreign policy. I don’t know if it was in its time—maybe it just seemed inevitable then—but it was so different than the way that every other victor had ever treated every other loser in world history. Other nominees for imaginative policy: the creation of the UN, the Berlin airlift. I also think the idea of “smart sanctions” or “luxury sanctions” is innovative. My understanding is that when accompanied by a very narrowly targeted bombing campaign, they were fairly successful against Milosevic.
And Democratization (Part II)
(Punctuation Pun: Democratizing our foreign policy, not democratization: our foreign policy.)
Another thing I’ve been thinking about is how elite-dominated foreign policy formation tends to be. In international politics, we addressed this a little bit. We talked about the “democracy defecit” and the EU (as well as other international institutions). While the EU has representatives from member countries who get to vote and debate, these representatives aren’t elected, which could serve to make people feel detached from the body or unable to exercise control over its policies. There’s also, of course, “democratic peace theory,” the idea that two democracies never go to war with each other. (You have to define democracy very carefully to make this work, and one of my friends pointed out in study group that a “communist peace theory” worked equally well.) One tenant of this theory is that democracies are less likely to go to war, period, because the leaders who send a country into an unpopular war will be held accountable.
Despite this, it seems like there’s not that much discussion of the fact that fewer and fewer people make foreign policy decisions. This is worsened now that the decision to go to war is the sole purview of the president and doesn’t go through Congress, but I think it’s very applicable to the non-headline-news decisions too. Although international service trips and cultural exchanges remain popular, ‘diplomacy” remains very much in the hands of the elite. I think one reason for this is that there are fewer organized constituencies for foreign policy than domestic policy. The ones that exist (the Israel lobby, forces for and against free trade) get more playing time because there isn’t a market place of ideas.
I’m trying to figure out why this is:
-We’re a big country and so we don’t need to care as much because the international sphere affects us less.
To some extent, this makes sense. It’s frustrating how a lot of people in other countries know more about American politics than most Americans know about the entire rest of the world, but it makes sense because American politics may ultimately have the potential to have a greater impact on their life than domestic politics in their home country. It also can explain the presence of a security-forced constituency—‘we’ll care when it affects us.’
-We’re a nation of immigrants, and thus we should be full of people who have opinions and ties to the rest of the world.
Maybe it’s just that recent immigrants have too hard a time gaining political power or just getting by. It could also be that people don’t want to look like they have contradicting loyalties.
-Compared to foreign media, our own is myopic.
This is sort of a chicken-egg problem.
-It’s hard and complicated and requires too much education.
To me, the best refutation of this is the degree of passion around issues like social security privatization or tax policy. I’ve taken a minor-sized bit of econ and I feel like I can still only grasp the corners of these issues, but people are able to understand enough and develop opinions that shape their vote.
One thing I wonder is whether most foreign policy constitutencies would always vote in self-interest, resulting often in increased isolationism, because money and time spent abroad means less money and time domestically. However, a broad cross-section of Americans don’t vote in favor of their self-interest as is. There’s the whole “What’s the Matter with Kansas” thing and then there are wealthy people who vote in favor of economic justice and equality. I don’t know how value-based constituencies get shaped but it seems possible.
I should probably organize rambles like this one better before I post them. I’m just used to talking about these little thoughts walking back from the dining hall with a friend, or in the hallway outside my room when procrastinating on a problem set.
Another thing I’ve been thinking about is how elite-dominated foreign policy formation tends to be. In international politics, we addressed this a little bit. We talked about the “democracy defecit” and the EU (as well as other international institutions). While the EU has representatives from member countries who get to vote and debate, these representatives aren’t elected, which could serve to make people feel detached from the body or unable to exercise control over its policies. There’s also, of course, “democratic peace theory,” the idea that two democracies never go to war with each other. (You have to define democracy very carefully to make this work, and one of my friends pointed out in study group that a “communist peace theory” worked equally well.) One tenant of this theory is that democracies are less likely to go to war, period, because the leaders who send a country into an unpopular war will be held accountable.
Despite this, it seems like there’s not that much discussion of the fact that fewer and fewer people make foreign policy decisions. This is worsened now that the decision to go to war is the sole purview of the president and doesn’t go through Congress, but I think it’s very applicable to the non-headline-news decisions too. Although international service trips and cultural exchanges remain popular, ‘diplomacy” remains very much in the hands of the elite. I think one reason for this is that there are fewer organized constituencies for foreign policy than domestic policy. The ones that exist (the Israel lobby, forces for and against free trade) get more playing time because there isn’t a market place of ideas.
I’m trying to figure out why this is:
-We’re a big country and so we don’t need to care as much because the international sphere affects us less.
To some extent, this makes sense. It’s frustrating how a lot of people in other countries know more about American politics than most Americans know about the entire rest of the world, but it makes sense because American politics may ultimately have the potential to have a greater impact on their life than domestic politics in their home country. It also can explain the presence of a security-forced constituency—‘we’ll care when it affects us.’
-We’re a nation of immigrants, and thus we should be full of people who have opinions and ties to the rest of the world.
Maybe it’s just that recent immigrants have too hard a time gaining political power or just getting by. It could also be that people don’t want to look like they have contradicting loyalties.
-Compared to foreign media, our own is myopic.
This is sort of a chicken-egg problem.
-It’s hard and complicated and requires too much education.
To me, the best refutation of this is the degree of passion around issues like social security privatization or tax policy. I’ve taken a minor-sized bit of econ and I feel like I can still only grasp the corners of these issues, but people are able to understand enough and develop opinions that shape their vote.
One thing I wonder is whether most foreign policy constitutencies would always vote in self-interest, resulting often in increased isolationism, because money and time spent abroad means less money and time domestically. However, a broad cross-section of Americans don’t vote in favor of their self-interest as is. There’s the whole “What’s the Matter with Kansas” thing and then there are wealthy people who vote in favor of economic justice and equality. I don’t know how value-based constituencies get shaped but it seems possible.
I should probably organize rambles like this one better before I post them. I’m just used to talking about these little thoughts walking back from the dining hall with a friend, or in the hallway outside my room when procrastinating on a problem set.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
No more horror stories
Today I came across an essay by Matthew Yglesias on advocating for future progressive foreign policy. His basic premise is that progressive ideas need to be presented in a progressive way, and that it's remarkable how few leading Democrats are willing to make statements like "'starting a war with Iran would be a strategic disaster for the United States,'...'Harry Truman and Franklin Roosevelt founded the UN because a strong UN is good for the US,' 'getting other countries to follow non-proliferation agreements is going to require us to follow them too,' or 'reviving the Arab-Israeli peace process would make it easier for us to find Muslim allies.'" (The actual essay is only about 4 paragraphs so it's a quick read.)
Here's the thing: Over the past three years, I've been guilty of, when backed into a corner, making arguments along the lines of: "It's important to pay attention to Africa because our experiences with terrorism in the 90s (see East Africa Embassy bombings) show that failed states, war, and extreme poverty create a power vacuum in which it's easier for terrorism to flourish. {see Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan]" I don't think this is total BS, but my belief that we need a comprehensive approach to foreign policy in the developing world isn't really based on concerns about short-term security threats. Tanzania may be poor, but it's certainly no power vacuum. There may be war in the DRC, but they aren't attending American flight schools.
Yglesias argues that people need to make the point that "good things can happen in foreign policy and will happen with smart leadership, it's not just a realm in which scary people try to do scary things and we try to stop them." My earlier argument does sound a little bit like "Look, not only the Middle East can be scary! Africa can be scary too! Love it!" Competitive horror stories should be reserved for Halloween and camping trips.
However, it's almost impossible to have a conversation about seemingly distant wars and inequities without someone asking "Why should we care?"
The response I want to give is the impassioned and emotional one, citing moral obligation, chilling statistic, and heart-breaking anecdote. At bottom, I think we should care because it's just plain wrong to turn our backs on suffering. This is the sort of answer that's hard to give without eliciting sneers from would-be hardened realists, though. On the other hand, in order for progressive arguments to gain traction, we have to drop "the assumption that liberal ideas won't fly politically and need to be kept hidden under layers of macho posturing, and, instead, actually try to build progressive messaging around progressive ideas."
Another tactic is the "because we are responsible" tactic. I think this is usually more polarizing than persuasive, and it also relies on heavy-handed use of the counterfactual. Has the CIA done great wrong in assisting dictators like Saddam Hussein or Mobutu? Yes. But I'm uncomfortable tracing all current problems in the DRC back to the moment of US interception.
I think there's a bigger, better argument I should be making about restructuring the world and non-locking regimes and chaos theory and soft power, but I'm too tired.
Happy Election Day, USA!
Here's the thing: Over the past three years, I've been guilty of, when backed into a corner, making arguments along the lines of: "It's important to pay attention to Africa because our experiences with terrorism in the 90s (see East Africa Embassy bombings) show that failed states, war, and extreme poverty create a power vacuum in which it's easier for terrorism to flourish. {see Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan]" I don't think this is total BS, but my belief that we need a comprehensive approach to foreign policy in the developing world isn't really based on concerns about short-term security threats. Tanzania may be poor, but it's certainly no power vacuum. There may be war in the DRC, but they aren't attending American flight schools.
Yglesias argues that people need to make the point that "good things can happen in foreign policy and will happen with smart leadership, it's not just a realm in which scary people try to do scary things and we try to stop them." My earlier argument does sound a little bit like "Look, not only the Middle East can be scary! Africa can be scary too! Love it!" Competitive horror stories should be reserved for Halloween and camping trips.
However, it's almost impossible to have a conversation about seemingly distant wars and inequities without someone asking "Why should we care?"
The response I want to give is the impassioned and emotional one, citing moral obligation, chilling statistic, and heart-breaking anecdote. At bottom, I think we should care because it's just plain wrong to turn our backs on suffering. This is the sort of answer that's hard to give without eliciting sneers from would-be hardened realists, though. On the other hand, in order for progressive arguments to gain traction, we have to drop "the assumption that liberal ideas won't fly politically and need to be kept hidden under layers of macho posturing, and, instead, actually try to build progressive messaging around progressive ideas."
Another tactic is the "because we are responsible" tactic. I think this is usually more polarizing than persuasive, and it also relies on heavy-handed use of the counterfactual. Has the CIA done great wrong in assisting dictators like Saddam Hussein or Mobutu? Yes. But I'm uncomfortable tracing all current problems in the DRC back to the moment of US interception.
I think there's a bigger, better argument I should be making about restructuring the world and non-locking regimes and chaos theory and soft power, but I'm too tired.
Happy Election Day, USA!
Monday, November 5, 2007
Harajuku
There's an urban legend that if everyone in Tokyo came down from their apartment or office at the same time, there wouldn't be enough room on the streets for everyone to fit. I believe it. The only experience I've had that even comes close to approximating Saturday afternoon Tokyo pedestrian traffic is walking back from the Mall after the 4th of July fireworks in DC. At the train stations on the Tokyu line and along pedestrian throughfares, there are posters that show how a lit cigarette in an arm extended down is at just the right height to burn a child's face. I was a bit skeptical of the likelihood of this event, but am starting to wonder if there out to be signs demonstrating that a studded belt is at just the right height to take a child's eye out.
I spent last Saturday afternoon exploring Harajuku, a Tokyo neighborhood about twenty minutes from Shibuya. It had a lot of fun pedestrian side streets, with well-edited second hand clothing stores, vendors selling international treats like kebabs and hot dogs, and a lot of orange-haired people with facial piercings. Some of the pedestrian streets were striped down the middle by fenced-in playgrounds that stretched on for several blocks. I saw a couple of girls sporting the Gothic Lolita style. I continue to be surprised by the youthfulness of Japanese mainstreet fashion, so I think the girls-dressed-like-dolls were less surprising than the woman-dressed-as-schoolgirls.
The main street through Harajuku is called Omote-sando and is comparable to Paris' Champs Elysee (Nell, if you're reading this, you know which song to cue up). It had the regular major designers, but the buildings they were in were more note worthy than the window displays themselves. (I'm much more prone to noticing clothes than architecture at this point in my life, so these buildings were really special.) One store offered a modern twist on a Japanese castle, with a large rock base and then narrower upper-stories made entirely out of reflective glass. Another had an almost blinding window display with what looked like eight foot neon glow sticks in an array of colors dangling down from the ceiling. Another clear-glass building had glass turrets and a tall, slender, tapered tower ending in a point. It looked like an ice castle. Along the sidewalk, there was a shallow stream with a concrete bed about six inches below the sidewalk. The sidewalk extended over it at the entryways to shops and restaurants. I can't tell if it was modern art, or a pretty drainage system, or both.
Some of the shops themselves were intriguing. At one, I was handed a "how to shop" guide, written in both English and Japanese with detailed pictures, at the door. The store was minimalist, with a row of t-shirts hanging on a rack straight down the middle, and a lot of LED displays above what appeared to be shelves of tennis balls on all the walls. My "how to shop" guide told me (least I be an embarrassment to myself) that customers were to browse through the t-shirts in the middle and when they found one they liked, take note of its id number. The LED displays I'd seen were the t-shirt ID numbers around the wall. Customers found the t-shirt they wanted, went to its section, and bought the canned t-shirt labeled with the right size and color. I didn't like the shirts much, but I was impressed by the concept.
Most benches in Tokyo aren't like American benches at all. They are like a double-decker railing angled slightly on its side. I wouldn't have known it was a bench if people weren't sitting on it, but it was surprisingly comfortable. (I had to try.)
I spent last Saturday afternoon exploring Harajuku, a Tokyo neighborhood about twenty minutes from Shibuya. It had a lot of fun pedestrian side streets, with well-edited second hand clothing stores, vendors selling international treats like kebabs and hot dogs, and a lot of orange-haired people with facial piercings. Some of the pedestrian streets were striped down the middle by fenced-in playgrounds that stretched on for several blocks. I saw a couple of girls sporting the Gothic Lolita style. I continue to be surprised by the youthfulness of Japanese mainstreet fashion, so I think the girls-dressed-like-dolls were less surprising than the woman-dressed-as-schoolgirls.
The main street through Harajuku is called Omote-sando and is comparable to Paris' Champs Elysee (Nell, if you're reading this, you know which song to cue up). It had the regular major designers, but the buildings they were in were more note worthy than the window displays themselves. (I'm much more prone to noticing clothes than architecture at this point in my life, so these buildings were really special.) One store offered a modern twist on a Japanese castle, with a large rock base and then narrower upper-stories made entirely out of reflective glass. Another had an almost blinding window display with what looked like eight foot neon glow sticks in an array of colors dangling down from the ceiling. Another clear-glass building had glass turrets and a tall, slender, tapered tower ending in a point. It looked like an ice castle. Along the sidewalk, there was a shallow stream with a concrete bed about six inches below the sidewalk. The sidewalk extended over it at the entryways to shops and restaurants. I can't tell if it was modern art, or a pretty drainage system, or both.
Some of the shops themselves were intriguing. At one, I was handed a "how to shop" guide, written in both English and Japanese with detailed pictures, at the door. The store was minimalist, with a row of t-shirts hanging on a rack straight down the middle, and a lot of LED displays above what appeared to be shelves of tennis balls on all the walls. My "how to shop" guide told me (least I be an embarrassment to myself) that customers were to browse through the t-shirts in the middle and when they found one they liked, take note of its id number. The LED displays I'd seen were the t-shirt ID numbers around the wall. Customers found the t-shirt they wanted, went to its section, and bought the canned t-shirt labeled with the right size and color. I didn't like the shirts much, but I was impressed by the concept.
Most benches in Tokyo aren't like American benches at all. They are like a double-decker railing angled slightly on its side. I wouldn't have known it was a bench if people weren't sitting on it, but it was surprisingly comfortable. (I had to try.)
Overly Intelligent Design
Tonight's a bit colder than the last few nights have been, and I bought some tea at the conveni. I don't have a tea kettle, so I figured I'd make it the same way I made chai before I had a tea kettle in college-- by pouring in very hot water from the sink. (This is probably a crime against tea.) My Japanese sink has a cool-- and deceptively simple-- control panel that allows me to pick exactly how hot I want my water. Pleased with myself, I filled my cup up and set my tea to steep and settled down to write another blog post about my weekend.
Then I heard water running in the bathroom.
I went in and didn't see water coming from the sink or from the bathtub. I slid my under both faucets just to be sure, and felt nothing. I was about to conclude it was all in my head, or just water rushing through the pipes, when I noticed water going down the drain in the bottom of the tub.
I guess I accidentally pushed some panel when I was heating up the water in the sink that causes the tub to fill. (And, interestingly, apparently the tub can fill from bottom up.) I know I said I'd have the whole bathroom figured out by the end of October. I do, I promise-- everything but the kitchen sink. I didn't know that was part of the picture.
I'm just going to pretend my apartment is like the castle in Beauty and the Beast. My applicances noticed I was heating up water for tea, discussed it among themselves, and decided I probably was going to want a warm bath. Why thank you, appliances. That's an excellent suggestion.
Then I heard water running in the bathroom.
I went in and didn't see water coming from the sink or from the bathtub. I slid my under both faucets just to be sure, and felt nothing. I was about to conclude it was all in my head, or just water rushing through the pipes, when I noticed water going down the drain in the bottom of the tub.
I guess I accidentally pushed some panel when I was heating up the water in the sink that causes the tub to fill. (And, interestingly, apparently the tub can fill from bottom up.) I know I said I'd have the whole bathroom figured out by the end of October. I do, I promise-- everything but the kitchen sink. I didn't know that was part of the picture.
I'm just going to pretend my apartment is like the castle in Beauty and the Beast. My applicances noticed I was heating up water for tea, discussed it among themselves, and decided I probably was going to want a warm bath. Why thank you, appliances. That's an excellent suggestion.
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Puritanism, Sashimi and Karaoke
Friday night, I met up with Brett and three of his colleagues at a restaurant in Naguro in Tokyo. The set-up was really nice-- each booth was curtained off by a hanging bamboo panel with a space at either side for the waiter to put the food in and clear dishes. The tables each had a bell you rang for service. It had a much more private feel than the typical restaurant, sort of like eating in someone's home.
Brett's colleagues ranged in age from about 23 to 28, and they all spoke English very well, which was nice for me. We ordered the way people seem to do everywhere but the US--lots of small dishes that everyone shared and that came out bit by bit. (I'm completely sold on this, but our Greek friend Theo complains he prefers eating the American way. "I want a big steak that I know is mine and that no one else can touch.) Highlights included bamboo shoots in chili powder, fish intestines in chili powder (ok, this wasn't a highlight, but I wanted to mention it for bragging rights), chicken meatballs rolled in raw egg, yakitori, okonomiyaki, and sashimi. I've been a little bit scared of sashimi throughout my trip-- fish is a newly acquired taste in and of itself, and raw fish just seems wrong--but last night I discovered how good it was when dipped in soy sauce mixed with ginger and wasabi.
It was also the first time I'd tried sake (believe it or not, I never drank ouzo in Greece), which tasted a bit like white wine and was very good. We also had something that everyone wanted me to believe was tea, but Brett eventually told me (much to his colleagues' dismay) that it was Japanese whiskey mixed with tea.
We talked a bit about places I ought to visit in Japan, and then they asked me about the front-runners for the 2008 election. I asked them what they thought of the new Prime Minister, Abe, but it was generally agreed that Japanese politics was too boring to warrant discussion. Two of Brett's colleagues, Taku and Nobu, had lived in the United States, and we discussed the unfairness of the fact that American men like Japanese women, but American women are usually uninterested in Asian men. Nobu said that he was extremely sick of American women patting his head and calling him cute. Yeah, ouch. I asked what they thought of American women, and they said that we dressed terribly but had nice proportions and long legs.
Nobu said he believed American society was inherently contradictory because of the tension between liberal democratic values and Puritanism. I think we discuss this a lot in the States, but it was interesting to hear a foreigner express this, because I've wondered what side of America comes across more. In the UAE, where I was so careful not to show too much leg or arm, I felt like American was loose and wanton in contrast. Still, in some ways, we seemed like an early-to-bed country, with speed limits and smoking bans.
I sometimes feel like young American women walk a tightrope between seeming like nice girls and like sexually comfortable women. (Is this a self-imposed dichotomy rather than a reflection of other people's views? Yes, to some extent.) Social success is about getting the balance just right. I think the only way to erase this dichotomy is to act like it doesn't exist, but, honestly, I can't let go of wanting to come across as a nice girl. In Japan-- and in a lot of Europe-- I get the impression these two things aren't in tension at all.
I was going to tell Nobu that I saw a similar tension in Japanese society-- the culture of shame, the six day work week, the extreme politeness and formality as opposed to the binge drinking and sexual liberation. So many Japanese businessmen pass out on benches on weekends that you can buy ties and boxers at almost every train station. Sex is openly part of public life and provides another venue for commercialization. However, I realized that it was a reflection of my own lens that I saw these two elements as dichotomous.
I think Japan has a great social formula-- people are judged on how they treat others and how hard they work, not their personal decisions. If allowed to pick and choose, I think I'd import Japanese attitudes about sex but leave the binge drinking. However, I'm finding it much more of a challenge to my self-conception of myself as personally socially progressive than Swarthmore ever was. It does everyone a disservice to label sex as "bad," but I think there is a lot of value in classifying it as "serious." Are the two inseperable as a social message?
I'm curious what I'll think about all this in a month. I've read some people accuse Japan of having sexual liberation without sexual equality (fodder for Catherine McKinnon), but I haven't talked to enough people to even comment on this.
Anyway, after dinner, we all went out to a karaoke place. I imagined an American-style karaoke bar with a stage where one person got up at a time and everyone else watched. My ability to sing is, well, on par with my ability to use hashi, dance, drive, and write in cursive. I tried to see it as an essential rite of passage.
The karaoke place we went to had small rooms that each party went into. The rooms had a table facing a screen, and a circular booth around the table. Someone picked a song and then we all sang, passing around the two cordless microphones. The singing was more like shouting, except for Brett, who was pretty good--or practiced. Favorites included "Complicated," "Hips Don't Lie," "It's My Life," "American Pie," and a Japanese song with an English chorus that went "You're got to be lucky and you've got to be strong." Eventually, we all started dancing. It was really fun.
It's been a really good weekend, and Rachel just got back from her trip to Ottawa, so the week ahead will be less lonely than this one. Tomorrow, I'll try to write about Harajuku, a funky So-ho-like shopping area in Tokyo, bizarre store concepts and terrific buildings. It made me feel like there's just more imagination in Japan than anywhere else I've ever been.
Brett's colleagues ranged in age from about 23 to 28, and they all spoke English very well, which was nice for me. We ordered the way people seem to do everywhere but the US--lots of small dishes that everyone shared and that came out bit by bit. (I'm completely sold on this, but our Greek friend Theo complains he prefers eating the American way. "I want a big steak that I know is mine and that no one else can touch.) Highlights included bamboo shoots in chili powder, fish intestines in chili powder (ok, this wasn't a highlight, but I wanted to mention it for bragging rights), chicken meatballs rolled in raw egg, yakitori, okonomiyaki, and sashimi. I've been a little bit scared of sashimi throughout my trip-- fish is a newly acquired taste in and of itself, and raw fish just seems wrong--but last night I discovered how good it was when dipped in soy sauce mixed with ginger and wasabi.
It was also the first time I'd tried sake (believe it or not, I never drank ouzo in Greece), which tasted a bit like white wine and was very good. We also had something that everyone wanted me to believe was tea, but Brett eventually told me (much to his colleagues' dismay) that it was Japanese whiskey mixed with tea.
We talked a bit about places I ought to visit in Japan, and then they asked me about the front-runners for the 2008 election. I asked them what they thought of the new Prime Minister, Abe, but it was generally agreed that Japanese politics was too boring to warrant discussion. Two of Brett's colleagues, Taku and Nobu, had lived in the United States, and we discussed the unfairness of the fact that American men like Japanese women, but American women are usually uninterested in Asian men. Nobu said that he was extremely sick of American women patting his head and calling him cute. Yeah, ouch. I asked what they thought of American women, and they said that we dressed terribly but had nice proportions and long legs.
Nobu said he believed American society was inherently contradictory because of the tension between liberal democratic values and Puritanism. I think we discuss this a lot in the States, but it was interesting to hear a foreigner express this, because I've wondered what side of America comes across more. In the UAE, where I was so careful not to show too much leg or arm, I felt like American was loose and wanton in contrast. Still, in some ways, we seemed like an early-to-bed country, with speed limits and smoking bans.
I sometimes feel like young American women walk a tightrope between seeming like nice girls and like sexually comfortable women. (Is this a self-imposed dichotomy rather than a reflection of other people's views? Yes, to some extent.) Social success is about getting the balance just right. I think the only way to erase this dichotomy is to act like it doesn't exist, but, honestly, I can't let go of wanting to come across as a nice girl. In Japan-- and in a lot of Europe-- I get the impression these two things aren't in tension at all.
I was going to tell Nobu that I saw a similar tension in Japanese society-- the culture of shame, the six day work week, the extreme politeness and formality as opposed to the binge drinking and sexual liberation. So many Japanese businessmen pass out on benches on weekends that you can buy ties and boxers at almost every train station. Sex is openly part of public life and provides another venue for commercialization. However, I realized that it was a reflection of my own lens that I saw these two elements as dichotomous.
I think Japan has a great social formula-- people are judged on how they treat others and how hard they work, not their personal decisions. If allowed to pick and choose, I think I'd import Japanese attitudes about sex but leave the binge drinking. However, I'm finding it much more of a challenge to my self-conception of myself as personally socially progressive than Swarthmore ever was. It does everyone a disservice to label sex as "bad," but I think there is a lot of value in classifying it as "serious." Are the two inseperable as a social message?
I'm curious what I'll think about all this in a month. I've read some people accuse Japan of having sexual liberation without sexual equality (fodder for Catherine McKinnon), but I haven't talked to enough people to even comment on this.
Anyway, after dinner, we all went out to a karaoke place. I imagined an American-style karaoke bar with a stage where one person got up at a time and everyone else watched. My ability to sing is, well, on par with my ability to use hashi, dance, drive, and write in cursive. I tried to see it as an essential rite of passage.
The karaoke place we went to had small rooms that each party went into. The rooms had a table facing a screen, and a circular booth around the table. Someone picked a song and then we all sang, passing around the two cordless microphones. The singing was more like shouting, except for Brett, who was pretty good--or practiced. Favorites included "Complicated," "Hips Don't Lie," "It's My Life," "American Pie," and a Japanese song with an English chorus that went "You're got to be lucky and you've got to be strong." Eventually, we all started dancing. It was really fun.
It's been a really good weekend, and Rachel just got back from her trip to Ottawa, so the week ahead will be less lonely than this one. Tomorrow, I'll try to write about Harajuku, a funky So-ho-like shopping area in Tokyo, bizarre store concepts and terrific buildings. It made me feel like there's just more imagination in Japan than anywhere else I've ever been.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Halloween in Japan
A couple of people have asked me what Halloween in Japan is like, so I thought I'd give it a shot. It's a very new holiday, and one of my friends told me it started at Tokyo Disneyland and then spread out from there. It's an ideal holiday for Japan-- cute, kid friendly, commercial, neighborhood-oriented, with the potential to make it sexier.
Houses aren't decorated like houses in the states yet, although I saw a few pumpkins and shopfronts were very festive. I also saw tons of Halloween merchandise in stores the past few weeks. I imagine there will be pretty fantastic sales tomorrow-- I think the merchants may have over-anticipated the demand for plastic pumpkins and ghost doormats. I'd consider going with an orange/black graveyard style decor for my apartment, except I really hate orange. The costumes I saw were very elaborate and adorable. My favorite was a felt crab costume that looked as though it had taken some parent the better part of the summer to construct.
There's a holiday in February that reminds me a little bit of Halloween in its seemingly pagan roots. On setsubun, the father puts on a demon mask and the children of the house attempt to drive him out by through dried beans at him, chanting, "let the evil out, let the good come in." It's celebrated in February 4th, and marks the changing of seasons-- I guess it's a bit like Groundhog Day. It also reminds me of the "Sing Back the Sun" spirit of solstice mummers festivals. I think the tale of St George slaying the dragon was supposed to suggest the defeat of winter and the return of the sun.
I used to start planning out my Halloween costume in June. It's funny how when you're little, the passage of time is marked by all these special days. I remember in elementary school, even St. Patrick's day was a big deal. I would wear all green, and build villages for lepruchans with the other kids in the neighborhood in the "meadow" across the street. Over the years, those days stop mattering as much. Valentine's Day? Drink wine in the dining hall. St Patrick's Day? Green earrings so your friend stops pinching you. Now, the landmarks are due dates for assignments and departure itineraries and visits from faraway friends. I don't think any of my favorite days in the last year have been holidays (except, possibly, Thanksgiving and a holiday a friend and I made up because we needed it). I agree that the commercialization of holidays-- and I don't really want more stuff or more candy or more decorations-- but I'm very pro-things-to-get-excited about. I guess this is the time in life to begin creating my own traditions.
Houses aren't decorated like houses in the states yet, although I saw a few pumpkins and shopfronts were very festive. I also saw tons of Halloween merchandise in stores the past few weeks. I imagine there will be pretty fantastic sales tomorrow-- I think the merchants may have over-anticipated the demand for plastic pumpkins and ghost doormats. I'd consider going with an orange/black graveyard style decor for my apartment, except I really hate orange. The costumes I saw were very elaborate and adorable. My favorite was a felt crab costume that looked as though it had taken some parent the better part of the summer to construct.
There's a holiday in February that reminds me a little bit of Halloween in its seemingly pagan roots. On setsubun, the father puts on a demon mask and the children of the house attempt to drive him out by through dried beans at him, chanting, "let the evil out, let the good come in." It's celebrated in February 4th, and marks the changing of seasons-- I guess it's a bit like Groundhog Day. It also reminds me of the "Sing Back the Sun" spirit of solstice mummers festivals. I think the tale of St George slaying the dragon was supposed to suggest the defeat of winter and the return of the sun.
I used to start planning out my Halloween costume in June. It's funny how when you're little, the passage of time is marked by all these special days. I remember in elementary school, even St. Patrick's day was a big deal. I would wear all green, and build villages for lepruchans with the other kids in the neighborhood in the "meadow" across the street. Over the years, those days stop mattering as much. Valentine's Day? Drink wine in the dining hall. St Patrick's Day? Green earrings so your friend stops pinching you. Now, the landmarks are due dates for assignments and departure itineraries and visits from faraway friends. I don't think any of my favorite days in the last year have been holidays (except, possibly, Thanksgiving and a holiday a friend and I made up because we needed it). I agree that the commercialization of holidays-- and I don't really want more stuff or more candy or more decorations-- but I'm very pro-things-to-get-excited about. I guess this is the time in life to begin creating my own traditions.
I hear she's a woman.
Sometimes I think I struggle to warm to the idea of a Clinton candidacy just because I'm already so sick of stories like this: "They really went from 'Let's talk about what I believe' to 'Let me try to do a gotcha against Hillary Clinton' said one Clinton advisor, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "Ultimately, it was six guys against her and she came off as one strong woman."
To be fair, this isn't Clinton's fault, but if that's how the campaign is trying to package it, I'm annoyed. Quotes like that make it seem as though the other candidates are ganging up on Clinton because she's female rather than because she's the front-runner. And "guys?" Do we have to call senators and governors "guys?" I feel like my inner seventh-grader is supposed to think "Oh yeah, I remember when the guys ganged up on me in social studies because they were intimidated too. Girl power!"
On the one hand, I'm thrilled we're finally in a progressive enough place to have a serious female presidential candidate. Particularly because this is such a seminal moment in American politics, it would be inappropriate (and probably impossible)to ignore Clinton's gender. I imagine both her campaign and the opposition and the media is struggling to figure out the most appropriate way to negotiate this. I just wish the discussion was taking place in more progressive terms and felt a bit less like a cheap effort to secure a empathy vote from the female electorate.
In other news, I accidentally tuned into a TV show that could basically be summed up as "Transvestites Dressed for Vegas Preparing Giant Seafood." I think I was missing part of the premise.
To be fair, this isn't Clinton's fault, but if that's how the campaign is trying to package it, I'm annoyed. Quotes like that make it seem as though the other candidates are ganging up on Clinton because she's female rather than because she's the front-runner. And "guys?" Do we have to call senators and governors "guys?" I feel like my inner seventh-grader is supposed to think "Oh yeah, I remember when the guys ganged up on me in social studies because they were intimidated too. Girl power!"
On the one hand, I'm thrilled we're finally in a progressive enough place to have a serious female presidential candidate. Particularly because this is such a seminal moment in American politics, it would be inappropriate (and probably impossible)to ignore Clinton's gender. I imagine both her campaign and the opposition and the media is struggling to figure out the most appropriate way to negotiate this. I just wish the discussion was taking place in more progressive terms and felt a bit less like a cheap effort to secure a empathy vote from the female electorate.
In other news, I accidentally tuned into a TV show that could basically be summed up as "Transvestites Dressed for Vegas Preparing Giant Seafood." I think I was missing part of the premise.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Culture and Development: three cheers for the all-ready wealthy
Robert J. Samuelson has a piece in the Washington Post today reviewing a new book by Gregory Clark, "A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World."
"Clark suggests that much of the world's remaining poverty is semi-permanent. Modern technology and management are widely available, but many societies can't take advantage because their values and social organization are antagonistic. Prescribing economically sensible policies (open markets, secure property rights, sound money)can't overcome this bedrock resistance....It's culture that nourishes productive behavior." Part of his thesis is that the Industrial Revolution accelerated the creation of the proper environment for capitalist growth because more successful men had more surviving children, who had learned attributes of success from their parents.
I have a strong negative knee-jerk reaction to pieces about the role 'culture' plays in economic development. So often, arguments about how cohesive families or forward-looking societies are necessary to fostering growth seem like a self-congratulatory excuse. The most pernicious forms of this argument are:
1) The lazy native argument (people in warm places don't work as hard because their lives are easier) mixed in with an abuse of Weber's Protestant work ethic (Protestantism places a value on hard work in and of itself that has been the key to Europe's success. The current state of the Irish economy compared to the rest of Europe pokes a major hole in this frame...)
2) The "loose families" argument used to explain the East Asian miracle. It goes something like: family structure is stronger in East Asia, therefore parents saved and invested money for their children's future and worked hard. In Africa, they have loose families so their economies suck AND they have AIDS. (I find this argument so upsetting I struggle to engage it productively. I do believe in looking at cultural variables, but this seems more like racism to me.)
To me, the central false premise is the idea that culture is immutable and behaviors are unchanging. This places culture on a glass-encased pedestal, one of my problems with cultural relativism too. Behaviors, especially economic decision-making, are as much the product of circumstance as anything else. I think family structure and 'morality' is a good way to look at this. In desperate times, poor women who can't feed their children sleep with men for money or food. It's an old story, and it was just as true during occupation and war in family-oriented East Asian tigers Korea and Japan as it is now in less-developed countries like Uganda.
I do believe a place can develop a "culture of corruption" that drives way investment, making economic growth nearly impossible. I have no clue how to lessen this, and I might be about to write myself into a chicken-and-egg trap. However, it seems to me that corruption is often a product of a lack of other opportunities or channels for entrepenerial activity. In both the UAE and Japan, it's very bad form to accept tips because it's considered a form of corruption. Decades ago, transaction gifts, whether cash or material, were common in both places. I think corruption inevitably lessens with broad-based development (an increase in opportunities, an increase in the educated population who can point out the corruption of officials) but this development won't take place without an increase in transparency. (Oh dear, I'm asking for the Big Push.)
Anyway, I think transparency comes from the strengthening of civil society and the birth of stronger institutions, not because successful parents passed on non-corrupt attitudes for generations. Lamarck is dead.
I don't have any big answers to the question the article begins with and tries to answer: Why are some countries rich and some countries poor? I do think US and EU agricultural subsidies remain a major obstacle to African growth. I do think unsuccessful Cold War policies set back many developing countries. However, it's also important to challenge the way local governments have attempted to take on poverty or lessen corruption and the (in)efficacy of international aid.
Before I went to Tanzania, I wrote an international economics paper on its prospects for growth. I was in love. I was wildly optimistic. It was, after all, a very stable democracy English-speaking democracy with a newly booming mineral and tourism sectors. The Gini index was low! Its neighbors had stopped fighting! Inflation was down and GDP was growing! Everyone should totally invest! My professor was a bit less Pollyannic. After spending a summer in Tanzania, I could better understand some of his skepticism. Corruption was endemic, and it was hard for even the bravest, most honest individuals to escape it because they were too desperate. However, I do believe that if we slashed agricultural subsidies, we'd be eating a lot more Tanzanian fruit-- and they'd be eating more, period.
I think there is some truth in the lead sentence in the article. Most of the world's remaining poverty probably is semi-permanent, due to shortage of resources if nothing else. However, blaming this inequity on intractible cultural variables is a convenient way to both get out of looking for solutions within our own society and a way to let developing-world leaders off the hook for corrupt practices. Don't mind Mobutu. It's just his culture.
"Clark suggests that much of the world's remaining poverty is semi-permanent. Modern technology and management are widely available, but many societies can't take advantage because their values and social organization are antagonistic. Prescribing economically sensible policies (open markets, secure property rights, sound money)can't overcome this bedrock resistance....It's culture that nourishes productive behavior." Part of his thesis is that the Industrial Revolution accelerated the creation of the proper environment for capitalist growth because more successful men had more surviving children, who had learned attributes of success from their parents.
I have a strong negative knee-jerk reaction to pieces about the role 'culture' plays in economic development. So often, arguments about how cohesive families or forward-looking societies are necessary to fostering growth seem like a self-congratulatory excuse. The most pernicious forms of this argument are:
1) The lazy native argument (people in warm places don't work as hard because their lives are easier) mixed in with an abuse of Weber's Protestant work ethic (Protestantism places a value on hard work in and of itself that has been the key to Europe's success. The current state of the Irish economy compared to the rest of Europe pokes a major hole in this frame...)
2) The "loose families" argument used to explain the East Asian miracle. It goes something like: family structure is stronger in East Asia, therefore parents saved and invested money for their children's future and worked hard. In Africa, they have loose families so their economies suck AND they have AIDS. (I find this argument so upsetting I struggle to engage it productively. I do believe in looking at cultural variables, but this seems more like racism to me.)
To me, the central false premise is the idea that culture is immutable and behaviors are unchanging. This places culture on a glass-encased pedestal, one of my problems with cultural relativism too. Behaviors, especially economic decision-making, are as much the product of circumstance as anything else. I think family structure and 'morality' is a good way to look at this. In desperate times, poor women who can't feed their children sleep with men for money or food. It's an old story, and it was just as true during occupation and war in family-oriented East Asian tigers Korea and Japan as it is now in less-developed countries like Uganda.
I do believe a place can develop a "culture of corruption" that drives way investment, making economic growth nearly impossible. I have no clue how to lessen this, and I might be about to write myself into a chicken-and-egg trap. However, it seems to me that corruption is often a product of a lack of other opportunities or channels for entrepenerial activity. In both the UAE and Japan, it's very bad form to accept tips because it's considered a form of corruption. Decades ago, transaction gifts, whether cash or material, were common in both places. I think corruption inevitably lessens with broad-based development (an increase in opportunities, an increase in the educated population who can point out the corruption of officials) but this development won't take place without an increase in transparency. (Oh dear, I'm asking for the Big Push.)
Anyway, I think transparency comes from the strengthening of civil society and the birth of stronger institutions, not because successful parents passed on non-corrupt attitudes for generations. Lamarck is dead.
I don't have any big answers to the question the article begins with and tries to answer: Why are some countries rich and some countries poor? I do think US and EU agricultural subsidies remain a major obstacle to African growth. I do think unsuccessful Cold War policies set back many developing countries. However, it's also important to challenge the way local governments have attempted to take on poverty or lessen corruption and the (in)efficacy of international aid.
Before I went to Tanzania, I wrote an international economics paper on its prospects for growth. I was in love. I was wildly optimistic. It was, after all, a very stable democracy English-speaking democracy with a newly booming mineral and tourism sectors. The Gini index was low! Its neighbors had stopped fighting! Inflation was down and GDP was growing! Everyone should totally invest! My professor was a bit less Pollyannic. After spending a summer in Tanzania, I could better understand some of his skepticism. Corruption was endemic, and it was hard for even the bravest, most honest individuals to escape it because they were too desperate. However, I do believe that if we slashed agricultural subsidies, we'd be eating a lot more Tanzanian fruit-- and they'd be eating more, period.
I think there is some truth in the lead sentence in the article. Most of the world's remaining poverty probably is semi-permanent, due to shortage of resources if nothing else. However, blaming this inequity on intractible cultural variables is a convenient way to both get out of looking for solutions within our own society and a way to let developing-world leaders off the hook for corrupt practices. Don't mind Mobutu. It's just his culture.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
The Ramen Museum
After the rain stopped this weekend, I went to the Ramen museum in Shin Yokohama with Rachel and Brett and the Motoguchis, a Japanese family they are friends with. Before going, I had some misconceptions about both the ramen and the museum concepts and I thought we were just going there because there wasn't much to do in Shin Yokohama. I stand corrected.
Ramen in Japan means far more than the crunchy instant noodle packages we have in the United States. It's a thick soup with noodles and other accoutrements, and each region has its own speciality. It's an extremely popular dish (the museum was packed with adults who were locals at 7 pm on Sunday) and has become a cultural phenomenon. A friend told me there's a Japanese western about a ramen shop, and it seems there are dozens of blogs just about ramen.
Museum also isn't quite the right word-- upstairs there was a gift shop and exhibits featuring iconic moments in the history of ramen development (the invention of microwaveable instant ramen, a replica of the first-ever ramen dish eaten by a samurai in the 17th century), but downstairs was a historical noodle extravaganza.
Below the conventional museum was a two-story replica of a bustling Japanese town from around 1958. The dimly lit streets were packed with museum-goers and alongside there were pubs and even a 'love hotel' patrons could step into. Police, with thickly drawn-on eyebrows, stood ready to answer questions. As we stayed in the museum, the sky overhead grew darker. It was a little like MainStreet or Epcot, but with an attention to real life detail Disneyland lacks. I could hear the sounds of stray cats mewing and war planes-- taking troops south to Vietnam?-- overhead. It was so convincing that when I got "lost" in a dark ally I felt nervous momentarily (this was all inside the building.)
There were old fashion booths with shooting games, palinko, and this game where everyone was given a small, brittle piece square with a shape etched in it. The goal was to cut your shape out of the material using a needle while leaving both the inside and outside intact. If you were really good, you then tried to write your name on the surface of that cut-out. None of us got that far. The kids all played a game to win a prize where they went to each booth and played "rock paper scissors" with the booth attendants. If they won, they got a sticker on their card. If they lost, the attendant punched a heart-shaped hole out of their card. To win, they needed to get six stickers before losing three hearts. The Motoguchi kids were good at rock paper scissors, but the odds were against them. The attendants were unyielding, even in the face of five-year old Su-chan's tears. We later found out the prize was a lollipop with a bowl of ramen on it. Should have figured.
Eventually, we went to the town square, around which were ramen shops run by chefs from 8 of the best regional ramen shops in Japan. Part of the premise of the museum is that visitors can try all the types of ramen in Japan without leaving Shin Yokohama. I had a 'floor guide' with multilingual descriptions of all the varieties. The English translations are very cute, so I have to share some of the best excerpts:
-Id Shoten: "Pork bones boiled at high heat let out melting gelatin, emulsifying the fat in the soup, which gives the soy sauce base a mellow sensation."
-Keyaki: "Amber soup contrasts nicely with a pure white bowl. Fine stripes of cibol, chopped green cabbage, orange carrots and black Jew's ears make a colorful pile in the middle of your bowl. Having your stomach excited by the aroma of miso, you can't wait to sip the soup. First, you may feel the richness of the soup, and then the mildness in the far back of your tongue. You will also feel juicy of grounded meat and hot pepper in it, and you will not want to stop your spoon."
-Hachiya: "Hachiya has succeeded in making ramen of a powerful taste by adding grilled lard to the noodles and broth. The lard masking the surface of the broth will be a shock to those who visit Hachiya for the first time." Yum, lard and fat-emulsifying gelatin.
-Harukiya: "The bowl looks simple, but when you sip at the soup, you feel multiple levels of complex flavor and richness combined with fish aroma excite your brain. You will not come to yourself until you finish the whole bowl."
Our brains excited, we got Komurasaki (pork, chicken broth, seaweed, garlic) ramen first. It was delicious. You order from a vending machine, diner style, and choose between king size, regular, and sample size. Unlike Japanese convenience store food, even the sample sizes were huge, so we pretty much came to ourselves and were able to stop our spoons after two samples, despite the excitedness of our brains.
The Motoguchi family was politely encouraging of my efforts to use hashi throughout the meal. Su-Chan was justifiably amused by my chopstick-as-fork technique when I wound noodles around the sticks spaghetti-style, and I think they were embarrassed she'd brought attention to the fact I was an embarrassment to myself. On the way out, they gave me my very own pair of hashi they had bought from the museum gift shop. They are beautiful, and it was so sweet of them! Even though I have silverware in my apartment, I'm going to try to practice eating everything with them.
Ramen in Japan means far more than the crunchy instant noodle packages we have in the United States. It's a thick soup with noodles and other accoutrements, and each region has its own speciality. It's an extremely popular dish (the museum was packed with adults who were locals at 7 pm on Sunday) and has become a cultural phenomenon. A friend told me there's a Japanese western about a ramen shop, and it seems there are dozens of blogs just about ramen.
Museum also isn't quite the right word-- upstairs there was a gift shop and exhibits featuring iconic moments in the history of ramen development (the invention of microwaveable instant ramen, a replica of the first-ever ramen dish eaten by a samurai in the 17th century), but downstairs was a historical noodle extravaganza.
Below the conventional museum was a two-story replica of a bustling Japanese town from around 1958. The dimly lit streets were packed with museum-goers and alongside there were pubs and even a 'love hotel' patrons could step into. Police, with thickly drawn-on eyebrows, stood ready to answer questions. As we stayed in the museum, the sky overhead grew darker. It was a little like MainStreet or Epcot, but with an attention to real life detail Disneyland lacks. I could hear the sounds of stray cats mewing and war planes-- taking troops south to Vietnam?-- overhead. It was so convincing that when I got "lost" in a dark ally I felt nervous momentarily (this was all inside the building.)
There were old fashion booths with shooting games, palinko, and this game where everyone was given a small, brittle piece square with a shape etched in it. The goal was to cut your shape out of the material using a needle while leaving both the inside and outside intact. If you were really good, you then tried to write your name on the surface of that cut-out. None of us got that far. The kids all played a game to win a prize where they went to each booth and played "rock paper scissors" with the booth attendants. If they won, they got a sticker on their card. If they lost, the attendant punched a heart-shaped hole out of their card. To win, they needed to get six stickers before losing three hearts. The Motoguchi kids were good at rock paper scissors, but the odds were against them. The attendants were unyielding, even in the face of five-year old Su-chan's tears. We later found out the prize was a lollipop with a bowl of ramen on it. Should have figured.
Eventually, we went to the town square, around which were ramen shops run by chefs from 8 of the best regional ramen shops in Japan. Part of the premise of the museum is that visitors can try all the types of ramen in Japan without leaving Shin Yokohama. I had a 'floor guide' with multilingual descriptions of all the varieties. The English translations are very cute, so I have to share some of the best excerpts:
-Id Shoten: "Pork bones boiled at high heat let out melting gelatin, emulsifying the fat in the soup, which gives the soy sauce base a mellow sensation."
-Keyaki: "Amber soup contrasts nicely with a pure white bowl. Fine stripes of cibol, chopped green cabbage, orange carrots and black Jew's ears make a colorful pile in the middle of your bowl. Having your stomach excited by the aroma of miso, you can't wait to sip the soup. First, you may feel the richness of the soup, and then the mildness in the far back of your tongue. You will also feel juicy of grounded meat and hot pepper in it, and you will not want to stop your spoon."
-Hachiya: "Hachiya has succeeded in making ramen of a powerful taste by adding grilled lard to the noodles and broth. The lard masking the surface of the broth will be a shock to those who visit Hachiya for the first time." Yum, lard and fat-emulsifying gelatin.
-Harukiya: "The bowl looks simple, but when you sip at the soup, you feel multiple levels of complex flavor and richness combined with fish aroma excite your brain. You will not come to yourself until you finish the whole bowl."
Our brains excited, we got Komurasaki (pork, chicken broth, seaweed, garlic) ramen first. It was delicious. You order from a vending machine, diner style, and choose between king size, regular, and sample size. Unlike Japanese convenience store food, even the sample sizes were huge, so we pretty much came to ourselves and were able to stop our spoons after two samples, despite the excitedness of our brains.
The Motoguchi family was politely encouraging of my efforts to use hashi throughout the meal. Su-Chan was justifiably amused by my chopstick-as-fork technique when I wound noodles around the sticks spaghetti-style, and I think they were embarrassed she'd brought attention to the fact I was an embarrassment to myself. On the way out, they gave me my very own pair of hashi they had bought from the museum gift shop. They are beautiful, and it was so sweet of them! Even though I have silverware in my apartment, I'm going to try to practice eating everything with them.
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