Reverse Colonialism: Not a thing

Today in class we went over and discussed the four readings that we were assigned. One reading in particular “Globalisation” by Anthony Giddens, delved into the legitimacy of globalisation. He wrote that radicals view globalisation as something that is in fact legitimate and has taken a toll on developing countries. Skeptics, however,  argue that globalisation is all talk and that the government of each individual country still has all the actual control over their economy. Giddens later went on to argue that power is actually shifting towards the Global South, as opposed to the power having always been in the hands of the Global North. He described this as “reverse colonialism.” Which is something the class described ever so eloquently as “just stupid.” The reason being that the Global South is as we speak the weaker of the two in terms of power, economy, and outreach opportunities.

Shifting gears a little bit, when I first read the term “reverse colonialism” I immediately had a flashback to the extremely conservative, narrow-minded, uncultured area of Maryland in which I call home. While the area I live in does have some wonderful qualities and while I completely understand how blessed I am to have grown up in such a scenically beautiful and safe space, it took a lot to power through constantly being around people who possessed all the not so great character traits stated previously. What made me have the startling flashback is that where I am from, people believe in a term called “reverse racism.” Racism, as we all know, is defined as prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior. So, basically, there are people where I am from that are so racist, to them the ability of being racist can only be held by them and if that same ability were to be held by a person or group of another race, it would have to be deemed as “reverse.” When people would say this I would sit there in awe. How could they possibly not hear themselves? This was coming from grown men and women talking about encounters they had with non-white people and the situations they described were simply not even racist. Normal encounters that if anything, was negatively provoked by them.

 So in class today when I saw the reaction from all the students when the term “reverse colonialism” was brought up, I of course first reacted the same. But then I could not help but smile. All the years I had to go through dealing with some of the most close minded, ignorant individuals, I thought my beliefs and values were so uncommon and far-fetched to even speak on. When in reality I was just young and naive and did not realize that most of my beliefs and values are actually just considered common sense and humane.

Looking at women in the third world in regards to "Globalization"

Discussed in Chapter 24 of the assigned reading Global Women By Barbara Ehrenreich & Arlie Russell Hochschild for today was the process of globalization and how it applies to women in areas such as the global south. In the reading, it discusses some of the struggles faced by women who have to go out into the workforce due to the process of globalization and upon first thought, it would seem like a good idea for women to be able to find work and support their families. However, this idea should be challenged because often times, as outlined in the chapter these women from the global south are made to take jobs such as maids or nannies and even in some cases, are forced into sex work. Jobs women from first world countries will not take due to either the nature of the work and or pay. This not only forcing these women into low to no paying jobs but also causing family ties to be cut back home as was the case for Josephine who took a job as a nanny in a foreign country leaving her children with her sister causing one to fall into a suicidal depression and leaving another to be taken into an orphanage.

Research would argue that the current wave of globalization has greatly improved the lives of women worldwide, However, this is particularly the lives of those women in the developing world. Nevertheless, many women in the global south remain disadvantaged in many areas of life, including education, employment, health, and civil rights. According to the U.S. Agency for International Development and the World Bank, 57 percent of the 72 million primary school-aged children who do not attend school are females. Additionally, girls are four percent less likely than boys to complete primary school (Gender statistics, 2010). what this means is that giving jobs in foreign countries is not a viable solution for these women to live fulfilling lives because they often must give up large amounts of their past, family, and identity in order to take these position. it also puts a large burden on the children as well as their primary caregivers in these situations where it is an elderly relative or sibling.

In order to move forward, these women from the global south should be offered job opportunities in their home countries that allow them the same freedom that women from more developed countries have when it comes to raising and being there for their children. This will not only help both their mental health as well as the child's but it will also take a lot of stress of the community in terms of caring for the child and making sure the child's needs are met.

(2010). Gender statistics. United States Agency for International Development.

(2014) Globalization 101. Women and Globalization

The Instatement of an Act I Hope Changes the Lives of Young Girls and Women of India

The main topic I noticed in the book, playing with fire, was an issue of maltreatment of women and young girls. I cannot recall the mention of any men or young boys receiving any level of maltreatment. The book, Playing with Fire, does not paint a positive picture for the treatment of women and young girls in India. There are a few prominent images that come to mind, but one in particular stands out the most. One of the diary authors wrote about her grandmother having received such frequent beatings from her husband that she had turned permanently blue from the waist down – that is awful! Physical aggression towards woman in this culture is frequent and often women do not speak up for themselves in fear of risking their family’s honor.

Playing with Fire, turns that idea of risking their family’s honor on its head. In an act of advancement of women’s rights, seven women wrote a compilation of diary entries for Playing with Fire to speak out against the maltreatment and suppression of women rights. They often spoke of caste systems, and different degrees of purdah (seclusion or isolation from outside of the home) with the caste they were associated with. The women also spoke of how their parents wanted to marry them off young as possible for an exchange of dowry. Among these experiences, including physical violence not limited to sexual abuse, the authors also spoke about their husbands being frequent gamblers, alcoholics, jobless, or not wanting to provide for their sasural (woman’s parent in-laws home she lives in). 

As a student who is a psychology major, has an interest in studying culture, and is currently taking a social work class, I find many aspects of the culture represented in Playing with Fire problematic. I am more than certain for those of you that have read Playing with Fire do as well. However, I have the impression from reading Playing with Fire much of India has previously failed to see/acknowledge the maltreatment of the women and young girls of their society. 

I have a belief, because much of Indian culture is androcentric, male figures within families fear to lose their positions of power. To maintain their power, the idea of not damaging a family’s honor is in place. Much of the responsibility of keeping a family’s honor is in the female gender role, where it seems the male role has no responsibility to maintain the family’s honor. This gives freedom to men to do as they please.

In my social work class, we were recently discussing domestic violence and the means by which abusers use certain methods to maintain power over the abused individual in or outside a family dynamic. Our class was shown this picture which illustrates the different methods an abuser may use to maintain power and control over an individual(s). Here in the United States everything within the spokes of the wheel will not result in the abuser being prosecuted or being sent to jail. Though, physical violence and sexual assault which is outside the spokes can result in prosecution/jail sentence.

However, In India prior to to 2005 before the instatement of the, Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 (No. 43 of 2005),there were few protections for women who were victims of domestic violence or sexual assault. For example, previously under Penal Code 498A women would not have been protected from domestic violence or sexual assaults. Instead the act of domestic violence or sexual assault would likely have been written off as a case of maintenance of the house hold (Patherya, 2017). My hope is, with the instatement of Act No.43 of 2005, women and young girls of India will feel and be safer to live their lives as freely as they wish. I hope this recently instated act will help to deter the abuse of young girls and women of India, and that those who do, receive a proper prosecution/jail sentence.
Written by: 
Aria Newell-Sowash

https://www.thehotline.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2014/06/power-and-control-wheel-updated.png

https://web.archive.org/web/20130301005246/http://wcd.nic.in/wdvact.pdf

Patherya, K. (2017). "Domestic Violence and the Indian Women's Movement: A Short History." Inquiries Journal, 9(11). Retrieved from http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/a?id=1702

The Global South, Veiling, and Marjane Satrapi's "Persepolis"

            The first time I read about veiling, outside of hearing critiques of it from the news and adults around me, was probably when I read Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. This is a graphic memoir written by Satrapi, that follows her from the age of ten, the year after the Iranian Revolution, through her young adulthood. This was the first time I had actually read about veiling and its socio-political implications from a voice inside the context of it, rather than an extremely white-washed Western view. Reading this in 5th or 6th grade, I was about the same age as Satrapi in the beginning of the book and it was really powerful for me in gaining an understanding of a culture outside of my own.

            I am thinking a lot of the TED talk we listened to by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and her description of the stories she read as a child about Western kids eating apples and playing in snow. Growing up in the United States, so much of the reading I did as a child was only about kids like me, growing up in places and situations similar to me. This created a very single-story narrative in my understanding of the world. This is dangerous for a lot of reasons. Adichie says, "show people as one thing, as only one thing, and that is what they become," and that is true. When I was four years old, a plane crashed into the twin towers, and thus began a media frenzy. My entire childhood perspective of the Global South was skewed by this story we were told time and time again. We were taught to pity women who were forced into wearing veils.  In the article we read by Abu-Lughod she talks about the aftermath of 9/11 and the following pity that white women felt for women in Afghanistan. She quotes Laura Bush saying, "...women are no longer imprisoned in their homes. They can listen to music and teach their daughters without fear of punishment. The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women" (U.S. Government 2002).     

            When thinking about how this relates to Marjane Satrapi's experiences it's interesting to see how she shows a fuller perspective of the veil. When she speaks with women in her life about the veil a lot of them hold the view that the veil if a cultural norm, that they prefer to wear it even when they are, at one point, "liberated" from it. Satrapi discusses the veil in a way I had never seen it discussed. It is an aspect of every day life, it is not, as some of our readings have pointed out the Western view of it, "exotic." Satrapi talks about the feeling of conflict when she has a respect as child for religion and cultural values, but also feeling pulled to modernity. There are a couple images below from the book that depict the conflict and fuller range of emotions she shares on veiling. This shaped my view to allow me to question the things I am taught about veiling, rather than accept a one story perspective. As Adichie said "when we reject a single story, we regain a kind of paradise." Finally, I am including a link to a short excerpt of an interview with Marjane Satrapi in which she explains why she wanted to create this graphic novel. She talks about the view that she saw the world has of Iran, the way it was portrayed on news and TV, and how she wanted to give means to the "many different realities" that we don't see, that get left out in this one sided views we often see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iob0JIglcK0

Behind the Beautiful Forevers and Playing with Fire

As I was reading through the chapters of Playing With Fire, it reminded me of another book that I read in high school. This book is called Behind the Beautiful Forevers and it tells of the story of individuals and families living in Anawadi, a slum in Mumbai. This slum is situated on the grounds of Mumbai Airport. Surrounding them are tall and glamorous high rise buildings, home to the wealthy residents of the city.

I think it is important to note that the book was written and narrated by a woman named Katherine Boo who stayed in Anawadi for sometime, taking notes and closely following the lives of the families. She is an American journalist that investigates and documents poverty around the world.

When I thought of the book while reading Playing With Fire, I tried to make connections of how they were different and similar. They both narrate specific lives of poor communities in India. While Behidn the Beautiful Forevers focuses on familial lives and children, Playing With Fire centers on the lives and revelations of seven women. They both, however, display clearly the divide of the caste system in India. The biggest difference, to me, was the fact that one was written by an American and the latter written by a woman born in Lucknow, the largest city of Uttar Pradesh. I still haven't finished PlayingWith Fire, however I think that I can make some inferences about the two thus far.

Here is a video that briefly explains the dynamics in Behind the Beautiful Forevers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzanFEBnHhY

I wondered, as I compared the two, whether or not authors influenced the validity of the words and stories told. I even questioned the validity of Katherine Boo's book in high school because her stories came from viewing these events play out and hearing from the people she wrote about. Her book is really a second hand account of these families and children, unlike the first hand accounts of Playing With Fire. Playing With Fire, as we know, was composed of the diary entires of seven women's experiences through childhood, adolescence, and motherhood. However, how do these two ways of writing fiction affect the overall piece?

I believe that it won't begin to encompass the entire story. With Playing With Fire, we are exposed to the exact and meticulously put together accounts of these women, while Behind the Beautiful Forevers forgoes this type of involvement. What happens to the voices of these people? Of course I don't think that Katherine Boo had any bad intention with her piece, although she unfortuantely doesn't get the same effect that Playing With Fire has with her audience. Behind the Beautiful Forevers was a bestseller, sold as a story time book rather than non-fiction. I think that it is unfortunate that Playing with Fire is not at the same level of publicity because they both have similar themes--luck, violence against women, and motherhood.

Background also comes into play. How much do they differ when the authors come from completely different backgrounds? I believe the main compromise that Katherine Boo had to make for her book was the fact that she did not grow up in India, nor speak Hindi. Playing with Fire is full of Hindi words and expressions that help the reader to fully engage with book.

However, both of their descriptions of the caste system on the people of India are quite accurate and truthful. These two similarities are what make me believe that Katherine Boo tried her best to represent the people of Anawadi and bring attention to the inequalities of the caste system that the rest of the world might not have known about.

The Link Between a Single Story and Our Society

This past week, we discussed Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Ted Talk “The Danger of a Single Story”. Adichie discusses how impressionable children are, especially when it comes to their own, or other’s cultures. The books Adichie has read as a child always showed “foreign” people until she found writers from Africa who wrote about or wrote from the viewpoint of an African. Because of this exposure as a child, she was exposed to a single story of those individuals and groups in these “foreign” stories. Single stories show how people of different cultures are not equal, and is presented over and over again. They also point out the single stereotype that a group is known for and never strays away from that story. An example of the single story is that those of Mexican descent in America are often seen as the immigrant in situations.

In my Communication Among Cultures class this semester, we have been discussing the stereotypes that are relied on because we expect and assume particular things from a group or individual. We learn these stereotypes through the media, our family, peers, teachers, past experiences, and systematic historical, political, and social constructs.

As a society, we establish a social identity that contributes to this sense of a single story. As we socialize, we begin to group ourselves as we compare and contrast ourselves to others. Social identities mean we are not just someone, but we are something or someone in relation to others within our same grouping. This grouping provides for a dominant and non-dominant group. Those who are dominant are the privileged. This can be based on color, class, gender, education, etc. Those who have privilege are often contributing to the single story of the non-dominant group.

Another topic to bring up when discussing and thinking about the single story that gets created when stereotypes are spread and enforced is diversity. At what point do we become diverse enough to eliminate a single story? Or is diversity overused and sought after in the wrong way? A good article to take a look at is “Has ‘Diversity’ Lost Its Meaning?” https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/magazine/has-diversity-lost-its-meaning.html
This article discusses how the term diversity has a disconnect to the inclusion that it should stand for. To avoid the single story that has been made to represent a group, but the term diversity has lost its power in the current political/social stance of our society, how can these stereotypes be avoided?

Poverty and Circumstance in Modern India

As I was reading Uma Narayan's essay "Contesting Cultures: Westernization, Respect for Cultures, and Third World Feminists", one part struck me particularly. Narayan details how arranged marriages between barely teenage girls and older men were normal when her grandmother was growing up, but, in contrast, her mother was married at 21. However, it has again become common for some areas in India to arrange marriages for young girls to much older men. In the case Narayan mentions, it was a 63 year old man who had paid for this young girl to be his wife and was taking her back to his country (232). The incident, in many ways, reminds me of a podcast I listened to over the summer which detailed the surrogate mother industry overtaking many impoverished communities in India.

The podcast, produced by Radiolab, details the story of two gay Israeli men who, while looking for a surrogate, stumbled upon a company in India that promised a baby for them in 9 months at a rate much cheaper than they would find in Israel (it's also illegal for gay men to hire a surrogate in their country) or in the United States. However, they assumed the surrogate would be paid the amount that they were told she would be paid. This didn't happen, and an investigation discovered many disturbing issues with the surrogacy industry in India, including mistreatment, deception, and human trafficking. In cases of twins or triplets, the fate of the "extra" child[ren] is often unknown. Vice News also did a segment on commercial surrogacy in India, however, I don't have access to link it as Vice News is produced by HBO which requires a subscription. In the segment, one startling moment occurs in which the reporter, pretending to be an interested customer, meets with a representative of a surrogacy company at a restaurant in India. The representative brings along a young child to the dinner and offers to sell it to the reporter right there without questions or paperwork.

Much like the arranged marriages in which impoverished families are forced to sell their daughters to provide for themselves or their communities, the lucrative business of surrogacy preys on those living in nations in the Global South, while benefitting those with the means and privilege to not face such struggles in their own nations. There have been talks of banning commercial surrogacy in India in recent years.