I'm repeating myself.

The Dude will continue to abide again when finals are over. The Dude Abides.

I'm repeating myself.

The Dude will continue to abide again when finals are over. The Dude Abides.

Final Week

I don't know if we are supposed to post this week? I was only able to skim over various aspects of The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Societies by Pierre Bourdieu and it definitely looks like a book that I will go back to and read for myself. AllI can give is a brief synonpsis of the book. It is a series of interviews from people in various life situations and different backgrounds to see what there life is like in the midst of intercultural diffusion

To understand what happens in places like "projects" or "housing developments" as well as in certain kinds of schools, places which bring together people who have nothing in common and force them to live together, either in mutual ignorance and incomprehension or else in latent or open conflict - with all the suffering this entails - it is not enough to explain each point of view separately. (3)

What we, who are privelaged, are given to think about these projects is extrememly one-sided. We must begin to look at these places as complex and intricate, whose problems are unique to there environment. The same problems cannot be plastered on to all low-income housing projects.

But using material proverty as the sole measure of all suffering keeps us from seeing and understanding a whole side of the suffering characteristic of a social order which, although it has undoubtedly reduced poverty overall (thoug less than oftern claimed) has also multiplied the social spaces (specialized fields and subfields) and set up the conditions for an unprecedented development of all kinds of ordinary suffering. (4)

I think this is the goal of this book. Again I was only able to glance it over, but it seemed like the interviews were amongst a relatively wide spectrum of French people. The stories seemed really good and range from informative, to funny, to sad. Hope all is well in the last week of the quarter. Blessings

Week 8 Analysis

I really enjoyed reading this book, Inventing Popular Culture. I thought it was very insightful and eye opening. In the chapter 6, Storey explains the shift away from Identity as a fixed idea of the self to something that is constantly becoming, never complete. As we begin to look at ourselves in this new light, it is vital that we acknowledge the role that structures and powers play.

"Although we may be inventors of ourselves, identities are made in conditions and circumstances which are rarely of our own making. Therefore, although identities are a sign of agency, identities are always made within structures and discourses, which both enable and constrain the making of identity". (80)

Knowing our identities are not fixed and are in constant need of reinvention and interpretation, it becomes necessary for our sanity to accept this fluid motion of the growing Self. If the various structures have similarities to this Self, which I think they do, it is wise to begin to think of powers as everchanging and in need of constant reinterpretation. The most important question we can then begin to ask is how we begin and then continue this process. What does reinterpretation look like? Well, if we are going to keep with this spirit of reinterpretation then what it might look like will inevitably change as well. A good start for Westerner's is understanding our dominance and need for power. We all know and hear that U.S. exports are hurting the rest of the world because They are becoming Us. We are pushing our Western values and lifestyle on others who dont need them. However what this view entails is still a view of dominance because we believe other cultures are not smart enough to make these things there own. We believe that they are easily influenced by our ways and that they themselves cannot make It their own. As we read in Globalization and Culture, the world is changing through global eyes and we ourselves are influenced by these other countries even in the exports that we send out. If you think about it we do not always send overseas or across borders that which is strictly American. It is American with Puerto Rican/Irish/Hispanic/etc. connotations. To say this is not letting the Power hungry corporations off the hook, but it is looking at it with different eyes. In the last chapter on these very ideas titled Global Culture, the author Storey makes some important insights.

"It may be the case that certain commodities are used, made meaningful, and valued in ways which promote capitalism as a way of life, but this is not something which can be established by simply assuming that market penetration is the same as ideological penetration. Such a claim depends on an argument which maintains that commodities have inherent values and meanings which are imposed on the passive consumers."

That commodities have inherent values is not the case. It is a very arrogant stance to assume that just because they drink Coke and wear Jeans that they will inevitably become Americanized. We drive Japanese cars and eat Mexican food and yet do not become them, do we? This is not denying the Powers involved in globalization, but it is reimagining them. What we fail to realize is the impact of the micro-levels of culture, the local culture. The macro-levels are the ones we see from the outside, but where people are really influenced is the local. I dont know if I agree with the conclusion that the author brings to the table, it seems a bit utopian. But what I do see is in my analysis of War/Militarism/Terrorism is a way to see the Powers and a need to constantly re-evaluate our responses and approach to Pacifism/Just Peace in an ever changing world. If we are looking for definite answers we are looking for the wrong answer. As we have seen in our study of War, an absolute is near impossible. I think?

Week 7 Analysis

Analysis comes from ch. 5 of Global Transformations , and Globalization and Culture by Nederveen Pieterse. In reading the book "Globalization and Culture" I am really starting to understand the synonymous language in the words capitalism and modernity. Like the Black Crows song, "I am seeing things for the first time...of my liiife!" A lot of the growing disatisfaction of my generation has to do with capitalism. However, capitalism (singular) is an advent of a modern conception of man and nature. As we begin to unravel the terms and face them undeniably with globalization we see a fracturing of our current power structures. The so-called problems that Globalization has started is in fact a backlash of the dialectic of modernity. Globalization is not just a time -space compression but a more paradoxical way of looking at the world as in Pieterse' definition of Globalization:

Globalization is an objective, emperical process of increasing economic and political connectivity, a subjective process unfolding in consciousness as the collective awareness of global interconnectedness, and a host of specific globalizing projects that seek to shape gloabl conditions. (Pieterse 16-17)

What we must come to terms with is the circumstances that nowadays we are all "Moroccan girls doing Thai boxing in Amsterdam", that is we are all mixing cultural elements and traces across places and identities (Pieterse 109)

The common experience now is that we are all experiencing, in one way or another, this mixing or hybridity of borders. One thing that we must keep in mind is that while globalization is all around us, it can, and often does, come with polarizing effects that highten inequality and underdevelopment on a GLOBAL scale. The nation-state that has, for so long, been creating larger gaps between the haves and have nots is being overpowered by the evolution of international, regionalized movements.

All this does not mean that boundaries fade or vanish; they never will because boundaries are a function of power and social life. (Pieterse 110)

We can therefore begin to map out other possible structures that will soon arise to take the fallen national/govenmental borders, these being boundaries of religion, ethnicity, or consumerism. My question with the text comes in the practical aspects of reimagining this hybridization of culture. What does it mean to acknowledge rather than suppress it? What good does this do? This is the question that keeps arising with my emersion into the faults of the Post-Modern. Where do we go from here? Is mere acknowledgement enough? What can be acknowldged is that there will continually be boundaries set up by the powerful, whether that be a state, or Global National Corporation. We, as Christians must deconstruct out alignment with powerful structures and refocus our attention to a Theology of Weakness. Especially in times of fruition people will become aligned with the powerful to preserve themselves. In light of our topic on War, we must pay extra careful attention that we are not setting up another power that takes hold of these borders, because domination will be creeping in the shadows. I want to conclude this section with the conclusion that the book gives in all its post-structuralist glory:

It is by virtue of cultural understandings of nationhood (or ethnicity, religion, identity, national security, national interests) that boundaries end up where they do. Powerful interests are invested in boundaries and borders, affecting the fates of classes, ethnic groups, elites; while borders and boundaries are a function of differentials of power, they are social constructions that are embedded and encoded in cultural claims. The distinction, then, does not run between conflict and culture, for conflict is a cultural exercise. Domestic politics is conducted through politics of cultural differences and so is international politics. This is what is at stake in discussions of culture. Since culture is a battleground, hybridity is a matter of mapping no-man's land. Hybridity does not preclude struggle but yields a multifocus view on struggle and by showing multiple identity on both sides, TRANCENDS THE "US VERSUS THEM" DUALISM THAT PREVAILS IN CULTURAL AND POLITICAL ARENAS. (Pieterse 117)

Ch. 5 of Global Tranformations was interesting because it explained the fluidity of Multi-National Corporations. I am used to thinking of Corporations as strictly U.S., but they are not longer seen as being bound to a particular nation. They act within the best interest of the company so when they are pressured by a local government for their business practices they can pick up and relocate to the area that best fits their needs. They are not American, Japanese, English but rather Sony, Adidas, and Levi's. They also exhibit an almost hopeful push towards unification of peoples, where ideas are shared and challenged in a mutually benificial way, not because of prejudiced allegiance but superior innovation. There are a lot of concerns with this approach but, again, I see a hope as well. Corporations are beyond my comprehension right now though, because I have only looked into their negative aspects. But that does little in light of transformation, because they are not going to be toppled in the near future. So again, we must reimagine what ways we can transform them to move into a more positive existence.

Week 6 Analysis (Global Transformations-Held)

Understanding trade and global financial institutions is a great resource for those of us who want to understand War/Terrorism/Militarism. So often, what is at stake is financial/monetary. So, it was important to get a small taste of happenings of global finance, both its history and its future, as Ch. 3, 4 of Global Transformations deal with. All countries are now involved in international trade, some to a greater extent than others, but all do it. Trade has shaped and impacted this very world we live in. Certain fruits, for instance, never go out of season here in the U.S. because we can import them from around the globe, now we can have Watermelons year round. “Trade globalization involves more than simply the exchange of goods and services between separate economies since it suggests the emergence of worldwide markets for traded goods and services… it assumes the existence of a trading system in which trade activity between any two countries may affect trade relations between the rest” (149-50). Like Ch. 1, 2 suggested, we are now so interconnected within this global framework that the decisions or unforeseen circumstances within a certain region have a large impact on another. It will be interesting to see what the effects of all the recent natural disasters will do to the global trade market, not including the subtraction of billions of dollars in government aid. Today the world trading system is defined both by an intensive network of trading relations embracing virtually all economies and by evolving global markets for many goods and some services. The shift towards global markets has been facilitated by the existence of worldwide transport and communication infrastructures, the promotion of global trade liberalization through the institutionalization of a world trade system, and the internationalization of production. (176) The areas that draw concern for me are the possible and maybe inevitable shift away from a welfare politic. “Since trade in principle produces a net welfare gain for a country, the gainers could compensate the losers and still be better off. In this light it is not a surprising that more open economies generally have more extensive welfare states. Nevertheless, the growth of trade and changes in the structure have placed increasing strains in the welfare role of SAICS. Although there is no systematic evidence that welfare provision harms trade performance, employers, in the tradable industries in particular, resist increases in their social security contributions, pressing for REDUCTIONS on grounds of GLOBAL CONPETITIVENESS…Thus Global trade has had contradictory impacts in so far as it has increased the demand on the welfare state while undermining the political basis for finding it. JUST WHEN WORKING PEOPLE MOST NEED THE NATION STATE AS A BUFFER FROM THE WORLD ECONOMY, IT IS ABANDONING THEM.(183-4) “Global financial markets are conceived as central to inducing a convergence of political and social agendas among governments of varies ideological persuasions to ‘market friendly’ policies: a general commitment to price stability; low public debts and indeed expenditure, especially on social goods; low direct taxation; privatization and labour market deregulation. These developments argued to be unfavorable to organized labor, public sector employees, welfare state beneficiaries, and other traditional interest groups of the left”(232). I guess when I read this, it seems to me to be pure capitalist. When the market decides that a certain sector is obsolete it diffuses it and moves forward. These people who lose their jobs due to exporting labor and manufacturing will have to become more specialized into something else, thereby moving the structure of the market forward. It seems to be the ideal Regan Trickle Down Theory, so when the rich get richer, the poor get more too. This seems inherently wrong, but maybe there is a great theorist who can foresee this working out for those marginalized by this structure. When I have discussed the effects of War/Militarism/Terrorism it has been in view that in order to change the macro structures of our society we must look at the microstructures. In readily embracing everything Global we might in turn be overlooking the welfare of the people. This can ead to civil unrest, like we see in France right now.

Here in Pasadena

In an article I recently read in the Los Angeles Times, All Saints Episcopal Church is coming under fire by the IRS for violating tax exempt status. They are in violation because they supposedly promoted a political candidate. However, All Saints was just asking their Congregation to vote based on values, such as Social Justice, not to endorse a politcal candidate.

Week 5 Analysis

I guess when you think about it, meaning the globalization of the world, it seems scary. The case has been made, and just within the first two chapters, that the world is beginning to look drastically different. How we discuss global issues can no longer be just lateral, but bi-lateral, or even multi-lateral (which was the word thrown around a lot). The emotion of fear, however, seemingly begins to fade the more I think about this gradual change, or might I say, paradigm shift. It is modernity turned upside down, with all the blood instantly rushing into its head. Look at the language that is being represented here on pg. 85… “The contemporary world order is best understood as a highly complex, contested and interconnected world order in which the interstate system is increasingly embedded within evolving regional and global political networks. The latter are the basis in and through which political authority and mechanisms of governance are being articulated and rearticulated. To refer to the contemporary world order as a complex, contested, interconnected order is to acknowledge the ‘messy appearances’ which define global politics at the end of the new millennium”. Further on, on the same page, its says that “All these developments illuminate a shift away from a purely state-centric politics to a new more complex form of multilayered governance.” In light of our conversations involving powers, it is detrimental to our view of War/Militarism/Terrorism to make connections with this type of thinking. The decisions that are made within the U.S. are going to have significant impacts on the rest of the world. There are no simple decisions based on War anymore. When we chose to wage war the effects are similar to the Matt Damon speech in Good Will Hunting, on whether or not he will work for military intelligence. He equated working with this particular company to directly contributing to his best friend losing his job while having shrapnel in his buttocks. The actions and choices we make as a country effect those around us. The rallying cry of many pro war patriots seem merely to be for the security and welfare of our good nation. I see hope in light of the reading and the discussion which might succeed it. The conversation is moving rapidly towards a global outlook, not merely a nationalistic pursuit of welfare. “Military power has been fundamental to the evolution and institutional form of the modern sovereign, territorial nation-state. The independent capacity to defend national territorial space by military means is at the heart of the modern conception of the institution of sovereign statehood. But, as discussed here, contemporary military globalization poses quite profound questions about the meaning and practice of state sovereignty and autonomy. For in the contemporary age, the traditionally presumed correspondence between the special organization of military power and the territorial nation-state appears to be changing.” (143) The move towards a more inclusive global worldview is one that we should start to embrace. It is a way out of the nationalism that has plagued the church over the last century or so in the U.S. I am also beginning to recognize the move of the U.S. towards the global police outlook because it comes with the evolution of a changing global society. Where they could control various facets with strategic locations throughout the world, now they are morphing into transnational security. Yet with the apparent rise of these transnational peace movements and world affairs sanctions by groups like the U.N. maybe it needs to begin by strengthening these various organizations instead of trying to become one in itself. It is also important to note, that this book was made in 1999, before 9/11, the war on terror, and the war in Iraq. I think that these principles are beginning to come to the head of the discussion in light of these happenings. It seems that nation-states right now are really questioning the move towards disarmament and demilitarization because of the constant threat of nuclear war. I feel that is the jobs of those committed to peace to begin to look at ways of combating this growing dissatisfaction. The alternatives to our contemporary condition must be at the forefront of our call to peace. We must begin to look at these situations with new eyes, eyes that are technologically pertinent, globally inclusive, and peacefully innovative.

Off Subject-Post Modern Theology

I came across a terrific paper dealing with the predicament of Post-modern theology. I am merely reminding myself to go back and critically read it. Cambridge Companion to Post-Modern Theology. This Picture is from Leon Ferrari, an Argentinian, he explores the contradiction of Christianity and Politics/Culture.