In today's conflicted world full of passionate NGO's and money hungry corporations it is all about the 'spin'. If a company like R&R Partners specializes in coal mining and is responsible for a commodity that some associate with "unsafe mines, mountaintop removal, acid rain, black lung, lung cancer, asthma, mercury
contamination, and, of course, global warming," (Conniff, 1) it is likely that they will have to spend quite a lot on a good slogan so they do not come off as the bad guys. There is one word that most people do not think of when they picture coal, however this one word has come in handy for R&R and that word is 'clean.' In the coal industry it is suggested that coal companies spend upwards of $60 million a year to promote the idea that coal is clean. (Conniff, 1) Companies like R&R argue that they can make coal clean by capturing CO2 emissions (which coal produces mass amounts of) and other pollutants before combustion. The problem with this is simple, not only would this require more money than most companies are willing to give. To date there are only two power plants in the U.S. using the technology it takes, and neither of these plants takes the next step of capturing the harmful pollutants.(Coniff, 3) The funny thing about this advertising is that even though it is almost completely false, its deception is often successful.
We also can see this type of propaganda advertising in another industry, the oil industry. Chevron Corporation has recently launches its “human energy” campaign, which “obscures from view the corporation’s more unsightly products, policies and practices.”(Sawyer, 1) This is exactly the purpose of these public relations campaigns, to cloud the public’s vision as to what is really going on. The “human energy” campaign is a multi-million dollar investment for Chevron, who in this campaign “presents itself as a caring entity striving to solve the world’s energy crises through the power of human creative forces.”(Sawyer, 2) While there have been several organized protests against Chevrons “human energy” campaign and these have been successful in some areas as with the stockholders but there is still a long way to go. The next time you see a public relations advertisement that says coal can be clean or oil companies can use less energy, stop and think twice because seeing is believing and if you don’t see the change those advertisements promise then how can you believe them to be true?
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Ethnography: Answers but not Solutions
There are several opportunities as well as limitations that ethnography can give to critically examining policy. Ethnography allows for the opportunity to look at a cultural phenomenon and be able to critically analyze that phenomenon in order to gain a wider understanding.
One such cultural phenomenon that is becoming very prevalent in the world today is the importance of water. The world’s water supplies are shrinking to the point that it is estimated 1.2 billion people will need to receive water from U.S. and European firms by 2015. (Goldman, 786) As a result of this need for water in the Global South, there is an overwhelming trend towards the privatization of water, which “reflects a major shift in the global development industry.”(Goldman, 787) This is an important cultural phenomenon that will effect this generation and many future generations. Out of the seeds of this shift there are movements against the privatization of water as well as continuing discussions by political leaders about what kind of policies should follow in the footsteps of this diminishing world water supply.
Of course the phenomenon is not just about water but it is about privatization and specifically the neo-liberalism of privatization. Neo-liberalism has had a dramatic effect on the world and its consequences are far reaching. Because of the recent ideology that is neo-liberal thought, privatization has allowed for “even the most essential public-sector services, such as education, electricity, transport, public health,
water and sanitation, [are] being put on the auction block.”(Goldman, 787) It seems that the only values in 21st century thought is ‘value.’ Nothing is sacred, everything can be bought and sold for profit, including a basic necessity for life, like water.
Ethnography allows us to ask the hard questions. Questions like, what causes a culture to become so entrenched in money? What causes us to allow trans-national corporations to buy and sell water to the highest bidder? When did we place a monetary value on human life? It gives us the opportunity to study and learn about things that can not necessarily be defined or narrowed down. The limitations to ethnography are simple, while it can help us to understand cultural phenomenon, it can not provide a cut and dry solution for the problems that the cultural phenomenon produces. It seems that there is never a right answer.
One such cultural phenomenon that is becoming very prevalent in the world today is the importance of water. The world’s water supplies are shrinking to the point that it is estimated 1.2 billion people will need to receive water from U.S. and European firms by 2015. (Goldman, 786) As a result of this need for water in the Global South, there is an overwhelming trend towards the privatization of water, which “reflects a major shift in the global development industry.”(Goldman, 787) This is an important cultural phenomenon that will effect this generation and many future generations. Out of the seeds of this shift there are movements against the privatization of water as well as continuing discussions by political leaders about what kind of policies should follow in the footsteps of this diminishing world water supply.
Of course the phenomenon is not just about water but it is about privatization and specifically the neo-liberalism of privatization. Neo-liberalism has had a dramatic effect on the world and its consequences are far reaching. Because of the recent ideology that is neo-liberal thought, privatization has allowed for “even the most essential public-sector services, such as education, electricity, transport, public health,
water and sanitation, [are] being put on the auction block.”(Goldman, 787) It seems that the only values in 21st century thought is ‘value.’ Nothing is sacred, everything can be bought and sold for profit, including a basic necessity for life, like water.
Ethnography allows us to ask the hard questions. Questions like, what causes a culture to become so entrenched in money? What causes us to allow trans-national corporations to buy and sell water to the highest bidder? When did we place a monetary value on human life? It gives us the opportunity to study and learn about things that can not necessarily be defined or narrowed down. The limitations to ethnography are simple, while it can help us to understand cultural phenomenon, it can not provide a cut and dry solution for the problems that the cultural phenomenon produces. It seems that there is never a right answer.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
"Our ever changing locally-global World"
Inda J, Rosaldo R (2007) "Tracking global flows," In Inda and Rosaldo, eds., The Anthropology of Globalization: A Reader, 2nd edition, New Jersey: Wiley Blackwell 3-46
Moore, Henrietta L. (2004) "Global Anxieties: Concept-metaphors and pre-theoretical commitments in anthropology," SAGE Publications, Vol.4, London: 71-88
Every day we become more and more involved in the process of globalization, its effects and implications. Many say that we no longer live in a world where ‘local’ impacts our everyday lives, instead we live in a world that is all about the ‘global.’ Globalization is not just a term with one definition, like a one-size-fits-all baseball hat, it is very much a fluid concept with multiple angles and multiple definitions. It is possible to use these multiple definitions and apply the concepts of Globalization to any method of study. In history we talk about the history of globalization from World War I to the fall of the Berlin Wall. In Political Science we talk about globalization and its impact on the now international political arena. Finally, Anthropologist use globalization and this new world order to link the old ‘local’ to the new ‘global’ culture.
One such anthropologist who hails from the London School of Economics and Political Science (UK), is Henrietta L. Moore. Through the lens of ‘concept-metaphors,’ “whose purpose is to maintain ambiguity and a productive tension between universal claims and specific historical contexts,” Moore defines the ‘global’ as being “a space of theoretical abstraction and processes, experiences and connections in the world, important not only to social scientists but now part of most people’s imagined and experienced worlds.”(“Global Anxieties,” 71) In this work Moore argues that globalization has yet to produce the ‘sameness’ that the local cultures tend to create. She in fact states that homogenization of culture through the increasingly globalized world is not possible because globalization needs cultural differences in order to be in existence. In point of fact the ‘global’ in the 21st century could not exist without local culture and local lives. The problem that the field of Anthropology comes across is not to admit the existence of a tie between global and local but rather to define this relationship and ‘operationalize’ it.
Where Moore explains that to answer this question of global-local you have to be able to ethnographically study the local and apply that to our conceptual understandings of the global, Inda and Rosaldo explain that globalization is not only a growing global interconnectedness from the local but it is also causing a “fundamental reordering of time and space.”(“Tracking Global Flows, 8) Essentially Moore is arguing that the global can not become homogeneous and Rosaldo/Inda are theorizing that the global is becoming increasingly homogenized.
Inda and Rosaldo use two main theories initially to support their own, that of David Harvey who argued a concept called “Time-Space Compression,” and that of Anthony Giddens who argued a concept call “Time-Space Distanciation.” Harvey on the one had argues that through globalization space on the map is shrinking and time is shortening and he argues that eruptions of time and space occur during periods of over-accumulation. He theorizes that this “Time-Space Compression” is due to the “general speed-up in the turnover time of capita [which] is rapidly shrinking the world.” (“Tracking Global Flows,” 9) Meanwhile, Giddens argues that “the intensification of worldwide social relations’ is causing the linking of ‘distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa.”(“Tracking Global Flows”, 11) So, essentially the global and the processes of globalization have a big impact on the local.
Both Henrietta L. Moore and Jonathan Xavier Inda / Renato Rosaldo bring and interesting perspective to globalization and while their theories differ slightly in practice both seem to want to tie the ‘global’ to the ‘local’ and use this relationship to create an anthropological refined definition of globalization and what its impact on our lives is. In both of these readings on the process of globalization it seems more than clear that we can no longer live in a world of purely the ‘local,’ nor can we live in a world which is solely based on the ‘global.’ Instead, we are forced to live in the world of increasing interconnectedness and a growing global culture.
Moore, Henrietta L. (2004) "Global Anxieties: Concept-metaphors and pre-theoretical commitments in anthropology," SAGE Publications, Vol.4, London: 71-88
Every day we become more and more involved in the process of globalization, its effects and implications. Many say that we no longer live in a world where ‘local’ impacts our everyday lives, instead we live in a world that is all about the ‘global.’ Globalization is not just a term with one definition, like a one-size-fits-all baseball hat, it is very much a fluid concept with multiple angles and multiple definitions. It is possible to use these multiple definitions and apply the concepts of Globalization to any method of study. In history we talk about the history of globalization from World War I to the fall of the Berlin Wall. In Political Science we talk about globalization and its impact on the now international political arena. Finally, Anthropologist use globalization and this new world order to link the old ‘local’ to the new ‘global’ culture.
One such anthropologist who hails from the London School of Economics and Political Science (UK), is Henrietta L. Moore. Through the lens of ‘concept-metaphors,’ “whose purpose is to maintain ambiguity and a productive tension between universal claims and specific historical contexts,” Moore defines the ‘global’ as being “a space of theoretical abstraction and processes, experiences and connections in the world, important not only to social scientists but now part of most people’s imagined and experienced worlds.”(“Global Anxieties,” 71) In this work Moore argues that globalization has yet to produce the ‘sameness’ that the local cultures tend to create. She in fact states that homogenization of culture through the increasingly globalized world is not possible because globalization needs cultural differences in order to be in existence. In point of fact the ‘global’ in the 21st century could not exist without local culture and local lives. The problem that the field of Anthropology comes across is not to admit the existence of a tie between global and local but rather to define this relationship and ‘operationalize’ it.
Where Moore explains that to answer this question of global-local you have to be able to ethnographically study the local and apply that to our conceptual understandings of the global, Inda and Rosaldo explain that globalization is not only a growing global interconnectedness from the local but it is also causing a “fundamental reordering of time and space.”(“Tracking Global Flows, 8) Essentially Moore is arguing that the global can not become homogeneous and Rosaldo/Inda are theorizing that the global is becoming increasingly homogenized.
Inda and Rosaldo use two main theories initially to support their own, that of David Harvey who argued a concept called “Time-Space Compression,” and that of Anthony Giddens who argued a concept call “Time-Space Distanciation.” Harvey on the one had argues that through globalization space on the map is shrinking and time is shortening and he argues that eruptions of time and space occur during periods of over-accumulation. He theorizes that this “Time-Space Compression” is due to the “general speed-up in the turnover time of capita [which] is rapidly shrinking the world.” (“Tracking Global Flows,” 9) Meanwhile, Giddens argues that “the intensification of worldwide social relations’ is causing the linking of ‘distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa.”(“Tracking Global Flows”, 11) So, essentially the global and the processes of globalization have a big impact on the local.
Both Henrietta L. Moore and Jonathan Xavier Inda / Renato Rosaldo bring and interesting perspective to globalization and while their theories differ slightly in practice both seem to want to tie the ‘global’ to the ‘local’ and use this relationship to create an anthropological refined definition of globalization and what its impact on our lives is. In both of these readings on the process of globalization it seems more than clear that we can no longer live in a world of purely the ‘local,’ nor can we live in a world which is solely based on the ‘global.’ Instead, we are forced to live in the world of increasing interconnectedness and a growing global culture.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Me
My name is Brittany Gibb and I am a student at the University of Colorado at Denver. I am currently finishing up my last semester at UCD as an undergraduate and will be moving to the UK upon graduating. Let's see...my favorite color is green and I have never had a blog before, so this should be fun!!
9/6 In Class Assignment
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| This picture is an image of a Monument dedicated to the 1941 massacre in Jedwabne, Poland. Photo courtesy Alisse Waterston. From http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2011/08/31/sacred-memory-and-the-secular-world-the-poland-narratives/. |
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