Recently in Social Science Division Category

Appeared in print: Monday, Mar 15, 2010

With a twist to an old saying about Mohammed and the mountain, Bangladesh came to me right here in Eugene, in the form of Syeda Rizwana Hasan.

My meeting with Rizwana Hasan is a remarkable testament to the global interconnectedness that characterizes our contemporary lives. Hasan, who is associated with the Eugene-based Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide, was in town recently as an invited keynote speaker for the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference.

Rizwana Hasan has a lengthy track record as an activist environmental attorney in Bangladesh. In 2009, he was one of the recipients of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize.

Hasan focuses on the ship-breaking industry's impacts on humans and the environment. Ships are sent to the junkyard after two or three decades of useful service. It's similar to how we condemn used cars.

There is a lot to salvage and reuse from these retired ships -- from engines and compasses to furniture to cranes. And of course, there's steel and wood. Ship-breaking, as one can therefore imagine, is labor-intensive.

It also means that laborers often toil in dangerous, dirty conditions. The occupational and environmental problems related to ship-breaking arise because of the wide range of materials used to build a ship.

South Korea and Taiwan used to be the global leaders in ship-breaking. But then they developed and became rich, which sent the industry seeking other low-cost locations.

The practice's labor-intensive nature, along with potential for unfavorable impacts on workers and the natural environment, logically leads it to be situated at the docks of poor countries.

Alang, situated on India's western coast and relatively close to Mumbai, is home to one of the largest ship-­breaking operations where a bulk freighter is completely dismantled in about a month. Karachi is Pakistan's headquarters in this industry, and in Bangladesh it all happens at Chittagong.

It's a boom time for ship-breaking because the Great Recession has idled many ships, and a record number of the older ones are headed to these maritime graveyards. According to news reports, in 2009 scrappers "bought 1,014 ships with a combined carrying capacity of 31.5 million deadweight tons" -- double the 2008 numbers.

Rizwana Hasan is not opposed to the ship-breaking industry per se. But she wants the ships' owners and their countries of origin to take proper care of toxic materials before the vessels reach Bangladesh. Further, Rizwana Hasan worries--and she has enough evidence for this -- that while Bangladesh and other countries might have laws that address labor conditions and environmental impacts, rarely are such laws actually applied.

So starting in 2003, Rizwana Hasan has brought these issues to the attention of Bangladesh's Supreme Court, gaining victories for nature and the laborers. Last year, the court closed down 36 ship-breaking yards that were not in compliance with the environmental laws. A remarkable success, indeed, for Rizwana Hasan and her team.

During the few minutes I chatted with Rizwana Hasan, I asked her not about the ship-­breaking industry, but about the latest legal update from Bangladesh -- the death sentence for the assassins of the father of that nation, Mujibur Rahman.

Bangladesh came into existence in 1971; it had been East Pakistan since 1947, when the British Raj ended.

I told Rizwana Hasan about the comic books I had read as a kid that told the story of Mujib -- as he is popularly referred to -- and his fight for Bangladesh's freedom. In a horrific retelling of Julius Caesar's death, in 1975, Mujibur Rahman, along with most of his family, was assassinated by his associates. Two of his daughters survived only because they were away in Germany; one of them is the current prime minister of Bangladesh: Sheikh Hasina.

Rizwana Hasan noted that it took 35 years for the justice system even to try the assassins, and therefore it should not surprise anybody that environmental justice is not easy to pursue in Bangladesh. It is simply incredible that Rizwana Hasan continues to maintain a positive and constructive outlook despite such a bleak and realistic assessment of Bangladesh's politics and the courts.

And it is even more incredible that I met with Rizwana Hasan right here in Eugene.

Sriram Khé of Eugene is an associate professor and director of the honors program at Western Oregon University in Monmouth.

By John Rector, Special to CNN

John Rector says that unlike Haiti, Chile can rebuild on strong economy

But existing problems of low-wage jobs, unemployment now made worse, he says

Incoming president must modify globalization goals, focus on social problems, he says

Rector: Chile must provide social leadership, not just economic

Editor's note: John Rector is chairman of the Social Science Division at Western Oregon University and author of "The History of Chile."

Monmouth, Oregon (CNN) -- Images of destroyed homes, people sleeping in the streets and broken freeways reveal the recent tragedy of Chile. Who would think that after the horror of Port-au-Prince, restless geological plates would so quickly wreak havoc in another nation? The Earth seems at war with itself.

But, as many have observed, Chile is not Haiti. Chile's economy is one of the fastest-growing in Latin America. This earthquake will do little to slow down that down. In Santiago, dominated by industries, corporate offices and financial institutions, most people will return to work within a week.

But there is another side of Chile for which the picture cannot be as optimistic: the depressed areas that have never enjoyed the nation's economic boom. These are "callampas," or impoverished wards of major cities and small towns that have been bypassed by progress. Unfortunately, the earthquake has hit these areas the hardest. The question is now, how will the government address these people's need for housing and employment?

In stark contrast to the coast, inland from the quake's epicenter are some of the finest vineyards in the country. They were spared by the tsunami that destroyed some coastal towns, and although they sustained some damage from the quake, their grapes will soon be on our tables to join the avocados and berries that Chile shares with the Northern Hemisphere.

In recent decades, the country has also become a major exporter of forest products. Tree plantations and pulp factories are situated within a hundred-mile radius of the quake's epicenter; mills will return to production soon. Farm-raised fish are harvested farther south, and these exports will likewise continue.

And Chile's most important export continues to be copper and other minerals. The majority of these mines are in the northern desert, out of range of the quake's damage. When copper prices reached all-time highs earlier in the decade, Chile created a multibillion-dollar "rainy day" fund, which it will now draw on to rebuild the country.

But now the country's greatest challenge will probably not be economic recovery; rather, it will be social recovery. Why? The globalization model followed by Chile's University of Chicago-trained economists is largely responsible for the nation's affluence.

These economists began as university professors, but under Gen. Augusto Pinochet, they designed the key policies of trade, investment and employment. While this model promoted growth, it held down wages and benefits, which prevented many working-class people from benefiting from the country's bonanza.

The export-oriented economy did not create many higher-paid manufacturing jobs. Unskilled, low-paying jobs predominated. The people employed in these positions are the most affected by the quake. In Santiago, they occupy many of the older buildings in the hard-hit core of the city. On the coast near the epicenter, they live in the humble dwellings flooded or washed away by the tsunami.

Under Chile's globalization model, some inefficient coal mines in the Concepción area closed in the 1990s when they could no longer compete with higher-grade, cheaper coal from Colombia. The same occurred with the area's textile mills. As a result, unemployment is higher in the quake area than in the country as a whole, a situation that promises to worsen in the aftermath.

Since democracy returned to Chile in 1990, a coalition of center-left parties has governed the nation. Although it has addressed social issues and sharply reduced the nation's poverty rate, the booming economy, "which raises all boats," has yet to get theirs off the beach. For many, the tsunami sank their boat.

President-elect Sebastián Piñera, who takes office March 11, is the first moderate-conservative in two decades to govern Chile. Ideologically, he opposes an activist state, which addresses poverty as an issue separate from general economic prosperity.

His first public statement after the quake called for public order and an end to vandalism. He also urged repairing water and energy services. Once in office, he will need to rebuild freeways, bridges and public buildings as quickly as possible. This will create many jobs. But Piñera, an advocate of privatization, has spoken of no plans to modify globalization policies: a plan to lift those boats.

Chilean leaders have a mixed record in rebuilding after severe quakes; effected areas rarely recovered well. In 1906, the country's main port of Valparaiso suffered a devastating quake only four months after San Francisco was almost destroyed. The rebuilding was slow as the country's economic center definitively shifted from the port inland to Santiago.

When a severe quake hit in 1939, the Popular Front government created a new business-government economic model to address the crisis. In 1960, the largest quake in world history decimated the picturesque port of Valdivia. Buildings sank, and rural grazing land turned into lakes. The conservative government borrowed heavily abroad and tried a number of fiscal innovations to get the country on its feet.

Past governments rebuilt Valparaiso and Valdivia, but the cities never regained their former leadership roles. The recent Concepcion quake hit Chile's second-largest industrial city. As the government rebuilds it, and the city attempts to regain its prominence, Piñera must carefully weigh how his privatization model will help those most affected by this tragedy.

The people in depressed communities need jobs, housing and education. Chile will continue to provide economic leadership in the hemisphere, but in addressing this current tragedy, can the nation provide social leadership as well?

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of John Rector.

My name is (insert name here) and I am a visual learner -- and other reasons why comics is a relevant subject for the college curriculum.

I frequently use comics as part of the assigned reading in my courses. I use them primarily as a way of engaging students in discussions of class themes, but because geography is a strongly visual field of study, I also get some opportunity to talk about form, too.

I use comics in my classrooms because I take seriously the idea that people learn differently, and that there are people who are, particularly, visual learners. The declaration, "I'm a visual learner", is one that is subject to abuse by students, and dismissal by teachers and parents, all of whom read it as an excuse not to engage with material or to complete work. Nonetheless, it is undoubtedly true that there are people who learn better with images just as there people who learn well from listening, or reading prose, or by doing.

Of course, very few, if any of us, only learn one way. However, I know that some students are more visually-oriented not only from observing those who clearly do learn better when we can talk about images or pictures, but also from seeing individuals who can't track why I assign a comic in the first place, let alone learn better from the book than they do from other texts or class discussions and lectures.

The misunderstanding or misuse of, "I'm a visual learner", rests on the assumption that pictures are easy and words are hard. This is why my observation of students who get very little from the comics I assign is interesting. It suggests that for some, images are easy, but for others, they are not.

While comics communicate much of their ideas and information visually, they are not picture books. Comics are about words and images. Comics tell stories, or at least, construct complete thoughts not only with pictures, but also with words and from the relationships between different sets of words and images.

Whether someone is a 'visual learner', or not, should not be determinative of whether they get something of substance from a comic, or not. I don't assign comics simply as a means to promote learning among my more image-oriented students. My assumption is that there are people who will get more from a comic because of how they learn, while others may, in turn, get more from discussion or from prose texts, not that I have different books, or modalities, which are exclusive to different students.

Take, for example, this image from Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi, Pantheon, 2004), which I have referenced previously ("Capturing the abstract in the concrete", 18 December 2008).

Of course, someone who reads images with confidence and skill will understand how this panel fits into a class discussion of, say, nationalism, much more readily than will someone who doesn't.

At the same time, someone who can also track Satrapi's narrative will be better able to place the image in the context of the book as a whole, and someone who grasps class themes and concepts will be able to place it readily in relationship to other discussions. Hopefully, by the end of our discussion of the panel, everyone will have a better idea of whatever it is I have in mind when I assign the book and select the panel for closer consideration.

Ultimately, it's a student's depth of and long-term understanding and retention that I am thinking about when I choose materials, and different teaching methods, for my classes. Some students will promptly put the above panel in the back of their minds, while others will hold onto it in the fore, and it will play a prominent role in how they understand the course.

Traditionally, learning in American higher education is assumed to take place through listening, that is, lectures, and reading, that is, from prose. In many classrooms and at many colleges and universities this is still the main way learning happens. It is this presumptive model that makes some academics and parents (and students) skeptical of tools like comics; it goes against the grain of what college is supposed to be for many.

As undergraduate teaching has come to be understood as more than a simple of matter of bringing faculty expertise into the classroom for transmission to (empty-headed) students, this model has become less useful and prevalent, opening opportunities for classes that are more discussion and multi-media based, than they are, simply, read (prose), chalk, and talk (if you're the professor).

The fact that I have students who demonstrably benefit from having a comic to read and reference alongside other books and what we do in class and in assignments suggests to me not that I have students who are somehow 'dumber' than other students, but that I have students who are 'smart' in ways that others are not. And very few of my students are either/or learners; while many may learn more readily from certain methods, few learn exclusively by one means or another. Both I and my students benefit from efforts I can make to tap into what helps different people learn. Whatever it's merits, and however it's abused, the statement, "I'm a visual learner", does presuppose learning. Comics is one way to put that learning to the test.

Shaun Huston is an associate professor in Geography and Film Studies at Western Oregon University, where he primarily teaches courses in political and cultural geography. He is currently working on a documentary film about the community of comics creators in Portland, Oregon. You can learn more by visiting his faculty webpage.

"Maize is an important cultural food in our country," said the student in the front row in the English class that I visited at a rural high school when I was in Tanzania. I nodded my head, while picturing in my mind Tanzania's national dish, "ugali," which is made from corn and looks like mashed potatoes.

But I did not expect the question that followed.

After a pause, she asked me, "is it true that in America people don't eat maize, but use it only to feed cattle?"

The entire class of about 35 students stayed silent and looked at me, waiting for my response. I told the students that we eat a lot of corn in many forms, and added that we also use it to feed cattle. The student who asked me the question seemed to be pleased with that reply. Or maybe she was simply being courteous and respectful to the visiting college professor.

Later, I felt relieved and thankful that she did not ask me about the use of corn to manufacture ethanol. I would have had a tough time explaining how and why we use food as fuel for cars!

That student's question about their staple food is a reflection of the main concerns of an average Tanzanian -- food and poverty. Corn is a relatively inexpensive source of ample carbohydrates, and provides more than half the dietary calories of the Tanzanian population.

An interesting juxtaposition, indeed: a New World crop, with its origins perhaps in Costa Rica, being grown in plenty as the primary food crop in the ancestral Old World of Tanzania.

The basic need for food that might preoccupy the average Tanzanian is in sharp contrast to the fantastically plentiful lives that we lead here in the United States.

An overwhelming majority of us here in America have access to so much of food that under-nourishment is not our typical concern.

Our worries, on the other hand, are about problems at the other end of this spectrum -- overeating and obesity. Increasingly, we in America are also concerned about the links between the extensive use of high fructose corn syrup and obesity, an ironic and unfortunate contrast to the life-sustaining role that corn plays in Tanzania.

More than 95 percent of Tanzania's population subsists on less than $2 a day.

The United Nations Human Development Index, a composite measure of economic and social development, ranks Tanzania at 151 out of the 182 countries analyzed in the latest report.

The Tanzanian government defines abject poverty as an income of 641 Tanzanian shillings a day, per person, in Dar es Salaam, or about 469 shillings in the villages.

At an exchange rate of about 1,350 shillings to a U.S. dollar, a person living in rural Tanzania needs 35 cents per day to be above the official poverty line. Yet more than a third of the country's population is very poor -- perhaps beyond our wildest imaginations.

It is no surprise, therefore, that there is no McDonald's franchise in Tanzania. I do not recall spotting any of the other leading global fast food outlets either, even in Dar es Salaam.

It was a coincidence that the main academic activity in that English class in the high school was a discussion of a poem that was about food.

Titled "Eat More," the rather cynical and revolutionary poem was authored by Joe Corrie, a Scotsman with a lot of firsthand experience with the struggles of the working class in Britain's coal mines in the early decades of the 20th century.

With profound thanks to the teacher, Mr. Phillip, who offered a wonderful analysis of the poem, and his students -- especially to the female student who asked me about corn and cattle -- here is Corrie's poem, "Eat More":

"Eat more fruit!" the slogans say,

"More fish, more beef, more bread!"

But I'm on unemployment pay

My third year now, and wed.

And so I wonder when I'll see

The slogan when I pass,

The only one that would suit me --

"Eat More Bloody Grass!"

Sriram Khe of Eugene is an associate professor of geography at Western Oregon University in Monmouth.

By Sriram Khé
Register-Guard

The travel doctor gave me a tincture of iodine kit that I could use to disinfect water, if needed, when I was in Tanzania. I never had to use it, though, because bottled drinking water was available everywhere.

But that is also the source of one of Tanzania's environmental problems -- empty plastic bottles all over the place: by the highways, on beaches and in open drains.

One might hypothesize that collecting such recyclables would be a source of income to the hard-working poor, as is the case in India. But I suspect that Tanzania lacks a robust industrial base to offer the necessary economic incentives for the poor to turn all that plastic into cash.

The litter problem was, however, nothing compared to the more pressing problem of smoke pollution.

I spent most of my time in Tanzania in a village, Pommern, in the southern highlands. It was a two-hour drive from Pommern to the nearest town, Iringa, which itself is a little more than 300 miles from Dar es Salaam. Pommern is up in the hills, at an elevation of close to 6,500 feet.

With red soil on the rolling hills and fascinating flora that included "sausage trees," Pommern was absolutely picturesque. But it was hard to get away from smoke.

The smoke came from two primary sources. One was the rubbish that was burned practically everywhere in the village. The smoking piles included plants that were cleared away, and even plastic bottles and batteries.

But the smoke and the smell from trash incineration was secondary to the noxious clouds from wood and charcoal burning, which is how the village's energy needs are met.

In a country of 37 million people, barely 10 percent of the population has access to electricity -- and that is mostly in urban Dar es Salaam. More than 80 percent of Tanzania's people live in rural areas such as Pommern, where electricity is rare. And gas for cooking is rarer still, even in Dar es Salaam.

Thus, most of the population relies on charcoal and firewood for cooking. The World Bank recently estimated that about 1 million tons of charcoal are consumed every year in Tanzania. That amount is projected to increase, because electricity and gas are not available for the growing population.

Charcoal-making itself is an important economic activity. Charcoal, of course, comes from trees, and it is preferred over firewood because it is easy to store and transport, and it offers more energy than a comparable weight of firewood. It was quite common to see young men selling bags of charcoal in the rural and forest areas that dominate Tanzania's landscape outside Dar es Salaam.

Both charcoal and firewood often are used in remarkably inefficient settings that generate a lot more smoke than usable heat. Often, the "stove" is nothing but a traditional fireplace with three stones.

Women and children often are gathered around these smoking stoves. As one can imagine, such a constant inhalation of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and other gaseous chemicals -- along with tiny particles of soot -- can be devastating for health. Which is why acute respiratory infection, or ARI, is a leading public health problem in this beautiful mountainous setting, along with HIV and malaria.

This trend has not gone unrecognized. The Improved Charcoal Stove was introduced in Tanzania in 1988, and research continues in developed and developing countries alike on designing more efficient firewood and charcoal burning stoves.

It was thus with a gladdened heart and local pride that I read, after returning home, the essay in The New Yorker magazine, which also was referred to in a recent editorial in this newspaper. The article featured the Aprovecho Research Center, right here in Oregon, which has won international recognition for its efforts to design better stoves that also would be inexpensive.

My academic discussions with students about the more than 2.5 billion people who depend on wood and charcoal as the source of energy pale next to experiencing it every day amidst an otherwise gorgeous setting on this blue planet of ours.

I bet the people of Pommern, along with other billions, can't wait for the kitchen upgrade.

Go Aprovecho!

Sriram Khé of Eugene is an associate professor of geography at Western Oregon University in Monmouth.

By Sriram Khe
Associate professor of geography

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanznia - In 1498 a new connection was made between India and Africa when the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama rounded Africa's Cape of Good Hope, paused for a while in Mozambique and finally reached the land of pepper, which was the original "black gold." When he landed in Kozhikode in India's state of Kerala, da Gama one-upped Christopher Columbus, who had mistakenly claimed to have reached India.

The spices that drew the European explorers quickly transformed into political and military conquests. Thus, when da Gama undertook a second expedition in 1502, it was with cannons aboard a large fleet. What followed, as they say, was history. Five centuries later, "globalization," which has its origins in those European maritime explorations, has become a household world.

The economic and cultural interconnections between peoples and countries present themselves every day. In my trip to Tanzania, these connections were evident right from the start at Dar es Salaam airport, where I was picked up by a couple from India, who came to Tanzania four years ago because of professional banking opportunities. I suppose people of Indian origin are everywhere on this planet!

They joked that the celebrations outside the airport were in my honor, and quickly followed up with the explanation that I had landed on Tanzania's independence day. It is certainly an extraordinary achievement for Tanzania to have experienced 48 years of self-rule, without the ethnic strife that unfortunately characterizes many of its neighboring countries - Rwanda and the Congo, in particular.

Tanzania's connections to the global economy are all around, especially with Japanese cars on the roads, and people driving and walking around with Swedish- and Korean-made cell phones. It was quite mind-boggling to read the news item that "Kuwait-based Zain Group has awarded Nokia Siemens Networks a five-year outsourcing contract to manage and upgrade its mobile networks in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda." What fascinating complexities: A Kuwait-based corporation responsible for the mobile phone operations in Tanzania, awarding the contract for day-to-day management to a company whose global headquarters are in Finland!

As if such a web of global economic interconnections were not enough, it turns out that the CEO of Nokia Siemens is, you guessed it, from India!

But this is also where Tanzania's disconnect is obvious - the absence of Tanzania-made products. As students in my introductory course find out through their assignments, we consumers in the United States rarely come across products manufactured in Tanzania or any of the other African countries.

The Tanzanian government, not unlike other countries whose policies were heavily influenced by socialist ideals, is maneuvering in many ways to reverse the old policies and integrate the country into the global economy, and has done so with moderate success. Until the Great Recession hit, Tanzania had one of the best economic growth rates in all of sub-Saharan Africa.

However, Tanzania is also plugged into the economic world in a very different way - through foreign aid. According to the Development Partners Group, which comprises 16 bilateral aid groups and five international bodies including the United Nations, "Tanzania is one of the largest recipient countries of foreign aid in sub-Sahara Africa. Approximately 35 percent of government spending is dependent on foreign aid." Last year, official development assistance from the U.S. government alone was more than $360 million - roughly $1 million in U.S. aid per day.

A lot of the aid is theoretically aimed at reducing poverty and economic development, which is also what I hope to understand during this trip. I will be spending an overwhelming majority of my time in the southern highlands. As the commercial capital of Tanzania, Dar es Salaam projects an image that is not quite reflective of the country where more than a third of the country subsists at below poverty levels as defined by the Tanzanian government. Neither are the shiny new multistoried buildings in the city's center representative of the about 80 percent of the population that lives in rural areas.

But it is a long, long way to the highlands from the Mozambique shores where Vasco da Gama landed more than 500 years ago. If I will be able to get chicken tikka masala out in the villages in those highlands, I will need no further evidence of globalization!

Sriram Kh of Eugene is an associate professor of geography at Western Oregon University in Monmouth. He is currently traveling in Africa.

By Sriram Khe
Associate professor of geography, WOU

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania - When students asked me about my winter break plans, my favorite reply was a simple one-liner: "I am going home."

Their typical response was something along the lines of, "Oh, how long will you be in India?" That is all the opening I needed to engage them in a discussion of how Africa is the "home" for all humans. The "roots" of Alex Haley's Kunta Kinte are connected to our own collective narrative as well.

Tanzania offers a compelling argument for why it is home to humans - going back to hominids, who were human-like precursors to our kind. The evidence, in this case, includes the well-preserved footprints of hominids in northern Tanzania, estimated to be 3.75 million years old.

Further, with coffee having originated in Ethiopia, the stretch of Africa that includes Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia is an important ancestral home to this avid coffee drinking human.

Tanzania is merely one country in the African continent, and at almost a million square kilometers, Tanzania has about four times the area of Oregon. Yes, four times - that is how large the country is. Dar es Salaam, the capital city, and its neighboring region has a population roughly equal to that of the entire state of Oregon.

One can, therefore, easily imagine the challenge at the very early stages of planning the trip - how choose the parts of Tanzania to visit over the three weeks I will spend here. Of course, I am here to focus on a research question, but more on this later.

As I continued to work on my going-home travel plans, I brought in Africa and Tanzania as examples at the appropriate moments in my classroom during the recently concluded fall term.

For instance, during a discussion on global climate change, I used maps to point out that the electricity consumption in New York City alone was equal to the consumption in all of sub- Saharan Africa, with the exception of South Africa. Yes, it caught the students' attention.

Students' response has been the same over the years: They are excited to learn about the continent of Africa when provided with the chance, and utterly disappointed if there is nothing presented despite their genuine interest in learning more. I remember one African-American student in particular who was visibly disappointed that there was nothing about Africa in the schedule of social science classes.

Even if the rest of us are not like that student, who was innately driven to understand Africa, the post-Sept. 11 world in which we live requires us to give Africa the attention it deserves.

I hope that we have not forgotten the significant pre-Sept. 11 incidents in Africa.

First, in 1998, came the near- simultaneous bombings at the U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, Kenya, the work of al-Qaeda. Responding to these incidents, President Bill Clinton ordered missile strikes on precise locations in Sudan in an attempt to neutralize Osama bin Laden. Ten years later, al-Qaeda sympathizers have yet another safe haven in Somalia. Its capital, Mogadishu, has earned notoriety as the world's most dangerous place.

From an economic perspective, Tanzania and most of Africa seem to be falling behind the rest of the world. Globalization, which columnist Thomas Friedman popularly refers to as the world getting flatter, has delivered a double whammy to Africa. On the one hand, the trend of globalization has further pushed the heavily populated nations of China and India closer to the United States and Europe. On the other hand, most African countries rarely register a blip in our academic and journalistic radars. The economic playing field does not seem to have been leveled for Tanzania and most of the rest of Africa.

Yet we continue to marginalize Africa, even though doing so serves neither our academic interests nor the geopolitical interests that govern our realpolitik. I suppose the election of Barack Obama as president has given us a wonderful opportunity: Instead of arguing over where he was born, why not channel all that energy into understanding Africa?

Wouldn't we want to know more about our roots?

Sriram Kh of Eugene is an associate professor of geography at Western Oregon University in Monmouth.

By Sriram Khe,
Associate professor of geography, WOU

DUBAI - I am in Dubai, as I write this, on my way to Tanzania.

My last and only other visit to this city was in the summer of 2004, to spend a couple of days with my brother and his family. And boy, is it a different Dubai since I was here five years ago!

Those were the good times across the planet, and the signs were obvious everywhere in Dubai.

Construction cranes were active despite the intense desert heat and stifling humidity from the Persian Gulf, and flashy cars were competing with each other on the roadways. Shoppers casually were juggling bags full of expensive goods at Dubai's ritzy shopping malls, compared to which Eugene's Valley River Center was practically a convenience store.

As one commentator put it back then, "Dubai is like Singapore on steroids."

I remember feeling awfully poor while in Dubai - a strangely new feeling that, since gaining American citizenship, I was not used to while traveling in Asia. It was terribly humbling that my dollars were, well, not worth all that much.

My brother drove us to the gates of the Burj al Arab hotel-the only self- proclaimed "seven star" hotel in the world. There, a couple of months earlier and for a $1 million appearance fee, Tiger Woods famously cracked a tee shot from the helipad on the roof.

That day, however, no visitors were allowed past the gates due to some special event, which meant that I did not get to see the fabled architectural luxuries, including gold-plated columns.

It is a different Dubai now. Even the airport is much larger, thanks to the massive new terminal, which was constructed recently for the exclusive use of Emirates Airlines at a cost of more than $4.5 billion.

I am reminded of the taxi driver in Singapore, a few years ago when I was there on my way to India, who was worried that Singapore's government was not acting fast enough in order to compete with Dubai.

"Even our airport will soon be smaller," was his complaint. Almost!

But there is a feeling of emptiness even at Dubai's very spacious airport - as if the steroids are no longer working. It simply does not feel like the fastest growing airport that it has been for a few years now - this despite the fact that according to Dubai Airports, international passenger traffic registered a "growth of 11.7 per cent in October, marking the fifth consecutive month of double-digit growth."

Perhaps it is reflective of the very reason Dubai is in the news now; it appears that the economic excitement of Dubai was yet another bubble that started deflating along with the global recession, and that finally has burst.

When the world learned that Dubai World - the premier investment vehicle of the ruling al-Maktoum family - would delay payments on the more than $60 billion in debts owed, it was a financial earthquake felt across the global bourses.

Even New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has expressed his concern that we might be at the verge of sliding back into another recession - just as we were beginning to feel confident that the United States and the world were on the path to recovery.

The economic downturn will have immediate implications for the hundreds of thousands of foreign workers and their families. After all, "natives" account for barely a fifth of Dubai's population; the overwhelming majority are expatriates from all over the world, and the Indian Subcontinent in particular.

Thus, by extension, Dubai's misfortunes could affect significantly foreign exchange remittances sent to the respective "home" countries. India, for example, gets nearly a quarter of its total remittances from the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is a major component.

Personally, the huge difference between now and five years ago is a rather simple one; my brother and his family do not live in Dubai anymore. In hindsight, their decision to immigrate to Australia three years ago, even as Dubai continued on with its go-go-growth, seems immensely prescient. They timed the market well, indeed.

The curious academic in me wishes that I had more than the half a day that I spent in Dubai in order to try to understand the economic craziness. But to paraphrase Robert Frost, I have miles to go - about 2,500 miles more to Tanzania.

Sriram Kh of Eugene is an associate professor and director of the honors program at Western Oregon University in Monmouth.

By Shaun Huston
WOU associate professor of geography

Scott McCloud's text does not make any concessions to doubters. It gives people permission to start from the presumption that comics are 'real' art, as well as 'real' literature.
This column marks the beginning of Worlds in Panels second year. In looking at what I wrote in year one, it's hard for me not to notice that my own attempts to make sense of comics have relied heavily on the writing of Scott McCloud, particularly Understanding Comics (HarperPerennial, 1993). I directly reference this book in a quarter of the monthly columns published in the last year. Indirectly, his influence is likely immeasurable.

I'm hardly alone in this. There is virtually no recent work in comics theory and criticism, in English at least, that does not reference or owe a debt to McCloud's writing on the nature of the medium. No other work, not even his own, has yet to emerge as a successor or equal influence to Understanding Comics.

Understanding Comics The Invisible Art

(Harper; US Apr 1994)

The reach and appeal of McCloud's initial foray into comics theory is, I think, partly a result of its form Understanding Comics is a comic about comics. On one level, this is simply cool, but its significance is deeper than that.

The decision to make the book as a comic has the effect of making it inviting to a range of potential readers. I suspect that many people who think of themselves as being otherwise disinterested in matters of theory have picked up and read, or at least skimmed, Understanding Comics. For academics, the coolness of McCloud's text appeals because of its novelty, and the fact that few literary critics, humanities scholars, and semioticians have the skills or the professional support and encouragement to produce a similar work of their own.

The comic book form of Understanding Comics also means that McCloud does not simply articulate theory, he also performs it; the text itself becomes an example of what it analyzes and critiques. That it does so self-consciously at certain points further underscores the performative quality of the work. In reading Understanding Comics the reader is constantly being both shown and told about the medium.

McCloud's ecumenical approach to situating comics to other arts also helps to account for the appeal of his work. Comparable books, such as Will Eisner's Comics and Sequential Art (W.W. Norton & Company, 2008), are more inward-focused, if no less valuable for being so. McCloud's interest in other fields has become a two-way street, with his work now carrying weight for professionals in areas such as design and information science. Simply put, one no longer needs to have a native interest in comics to reference Understanding Comics.

The matter-of-fact placement of comics within wider traditions of visual and narrative art rhetorically functions to take the medium seriously, but without apologizing for doing so or genuflecting before other arts and artists. It asks readers to un-ironically see comics as art, and to therefore see it as a meriting 'serious' theory and criticism.

Equally important is that this straightforward treatment of comics as art is never expressed as a simple personal inclination. By comparison, one can easily read Douglas Wolk's Reading Comics (Da Capo Press, 2007) or Rocco Versaci's This Book Contains Graphic Language (Continuum, 2007) as idiosyncratic texts, or as personal statements about the literary or artistic value of comics. Wolk, in particular, is at pains to emphasize the importance of personal 'taste' in how comics are read.

No matter how important such acknowledgments are, they are also self-limiting in the sense that others are always free to disagree. This is, of course, true in any case, but McCloud's text does not make any concessions to doubters. It gives people permission to start from the presumption that comics are 'real' art, as well as 'real' literature. This has been invaluable in opening up a pathway for other authors, such as Wolk and Versaci.

While form and approach are important clues to the influence of Understanding Comics, the particular genius of the text, and I think the most significant reason why it looms so large in its field, is that McCloud chose to address his first book not to creators or would be creators, but to readers. The decision to lead with a book about the experience of reading comics, why and how they 'work', helped to move comics theory and criticism into a broader and richer vein covering not only 'how-tos' and fellow artists, but also the life of the finished product after release into the wild where readers are active agents, too.

Film scholar James Monaco, in How to Read a Film (3rd edition, Oxford University Press, 2000), describes this as a movement from theory and criticism concerned with prescription, or what a medium can or ought to be, to theory and criticism concerned with description, or what a medium is. The former often predominates early in the development of a new art, while the latter gains currency after some kind of normal practice takes shape and debates over how a form is to be made recede into the background.

This isn't a simple linear progression, of course, but for comics, Understanding Comics is the first major theoretical work that was primarily descriptive in nature. The significance of this is the manner in which the book starts from the presumption that comics is already full in form and ready for examination; there's no reason to begin with a treatise on what comics ought to be because they already are.

The address to readers is also important because that is a subject position occupied by engaged fans, literary critics, publishers, librarians, shop owners, and creators alike. Understanding Comics is a landmark in theory and criticism because it's a book about comics that is for everyone with an interest in the medium.

Jean Baudrillard wrote an essay titled "Forget Foucault" (The MIT Press, 1988) as a response to the 'perfection' of the other philosopher's work on sexuality. The implication of the title is that to move on with new theory requires dispensing with the apparently perfect theoretical apparatus already articulated by someone else. Maybe the further development of comics theory and criticism will require people to 'Forget McCloud', but despite my growing self-consciousness about how often I return to the pages of Understanding Comics, I don't think that would be any better advice than was Baudrillard's.

Shaun Huston is an associate professor in Geography and Film Studies at Western Oregon University, where he primarily teaches courses in political and cultural geography. He is currently working on a documentary film about the community of comics creators in Portland, Oregon. You can learn more by visiting his faculty webpage.

PopMatters

By Shaun Huston, Western Oregon University associate professor in geography and film studies

Supergirl's summer costume change -- which included concealing shorts under her skirt as she flew about, kicking butt -- reveals a lot about our changing superheroes.
Last summer artist Jamal Igle caused a stir by making an addendum to Supergirl's costume, adding compression, or bicycling, shorts underneath the traditional skirt. The debate over this choice has ranged from discussions of canon ("Have we ever actually seen Supergirl's panties?") to fashion (shorts and skirts are a faux pas) to the larger implications of the choice (namely, that the classic costume simply does not make sense for a teen-aged girl who flies).

The irony of this change, and how it draws attention to the problems with Supergirl's traditional outfit, highlights what we are ultimately talking about when we talk about the shorts, which is how different people understand what role exactly, female superheroes, and more broadly, female characters, play in mainstream comics.

On the one hand is a perspective that sees female superheroes, and women in comics more generally as being, first and foremost, sexy eye candy, with all questions of practicality tossed aside on the grounds that it's comics we're discussing after all. I mean, the girl can fly, right? Surely whether her clothing is 'realistic' is pretty pointless to question. However, as online discussions of Supergirl's recent costume update shows (see, for example, Kirk Warren, "Supergirl's Super Shorts", The Weekly Crisis, 1 July 2009), the other sides to this question are not actually that they're 'not sexy' so much as concerned with the issue of how sexy they are, and for whom.

Superheroes are fantasy objects. They embody wishes, dreams, and desires, both good and ill, or at least good and problematic, for creators and readers. However, that all superheroes are fantasy characters does not mean that they are all the same in the desires they represent. Historically, for the presumptively male and heterosexual reading audience, male characters have been made for aspiration and wish fulfillment, while female characters are made more as objects of desire and decoration.

Debates about whether Supergirl's panties have actually made an appearance in the pages of DC Comics notwithstanding (DC Comics Message Boards, DC Universe, Supergirl, "Thread NPR Weigh's in on Supergirl's Shorts", 6 July 2009), the mere idea of a teen girl who flies around in a skirt reads as a particularly adolescent male fantasy. Igle's reveal of a pair of compression shorts under the skirt bursts this bubble by suggesting that, essentially, even if you were to get a peek as she flew overhead, there wouldn't be much to see. From the perspective that perceives women characters in comics as primarily 'hot' window dressing, this message brings the end of fun.This even challenge Supergirl's very reason for appearing between the pages in the first place.

Scanning discussions of the costume change, one theme emerges, particularly on blogs and journals dedicated to feminist readings of comics there is no reason to set practical considerations for Supergirl's costume against her sexuality. Once you accept that she is actually a superhero, and not just a visual trifle, costuming choices should make sense for what she does and can do, that is, fight with her body, fly, etc. (An excellent example of this kind of analysis is this entry on Supergirl Maid of Might, "Why Supergirl's shorts aren't 'patriarchal' (I do not think that word means what you think it means)", 15 July 2009).

During Gail Simone's run on Birds of Prey, Black Canary was gradually moved into two types of costumes. The classic black leotard and fishnets were still in use, but primarily for effect. When she needed to enter serious battle, she would be attired in more functional, but still body hugging, workout or martial arts wear.

These changes are more than a nod to practicality; they also suggest that the hero is more important than her costume. After all, also during Simone's time as writer, Canary's fishnets were usually sensibly shredded by the end of a confrontation.

In a different context, Jennifer Guzman writes about the attraction of beautiful/sexy superheroes for many women

Now, what if, what if, as a woman, you could walk around, be sexually attractive and not have to feel threatened? What if all the rage you feel about women being victimized and brutalized could be channeled into pure, righteous ass-kicking? And, because you're a woman, you could possibly do that ass-kicking without being seen as a testosterone Steven-Seagal-esque meathead. Ass-kicking fantasies for men are more about proving and retaining power, I think. For women, they're about finding and asserting power when they're not expected to have any. ("I have the powwwwerrrr!", Unloveable, 3 February 2009)

One important point here is about characters being written as powerful based own their sexuality. While one can make a tortured argument about how Supergirl in a low-riding skirt, tiny, mid-riff baring shirt, and panties might reflect her own choices, and not someone else's design, it seems unlikely that a reasonably self-aware teen-aged girl with her powers and sense of responsibility would choose to dress herself for the purpose of titillating (hopefully) young boys. Igle's bicycle shorts, however imperfect, at least seem as if they might be worn by a girl who wants to wear a skirt while zipping around the skies of Metropolis or Gotham.

And to the extent that the costume change provoked a reaction from readers, it may be because it suggests that the traditional ensemble is ultimately outmoded in a world where there's a real constituency for female superheroes who look like they actually think about what it is they do before thinking about how they might dress in order to appeal to heterosexual male onlookers.

Even more than the changes applied to Black Canary, one of the best examples of a female hero who is effectively sexy while also being sensible is Marc Andreyko's Kate Spencer/Manhunter. Her suit allows artists to show off her body but without exposing hardly any skin or presenting logical challenges of physics for her turns in vigilante mode. It's also worth noting that Kate Spencer is an established professional and mother, who, as the title was brought to a close, was also allowed to age. Notably, she actually dresses like the professional she is when out of the Manhunter suit (something that, alas, is not easily said about too many other female characters in mainstream comics).

One thing that allows Andreyko and his collaborators to treat Spencer/Manhunter in such a straightforward fashion is that the power suit she wears is unisex in nature. It is adaptable to male or female forms in human-like species. This puts certain constraints on how it looks, and on what it does, or does not, reveal.

There is, or should be, room for a variety of female superheroes, of varying looks and body types, but one would hope that they all could be drawn with some sense of how these characters might dress and carry themselves as actual women (or girls) and not merely as objects of heterosexual male desire. Whether it's Supergirl in compression shorts, Black Canary shedding, or shredding, the fishnets, or Manhunter in a full length bodysuit - and these are not the only examples - there clearly are writers and artists who get this. More power to them.

Shaun Huston is an associate professor in Geography and Film Studies at Western Oregon University, where he primarily teaches courses in political and cultural geography. He is currently working on a documentary film about the community of comics creators in Portland, Oregon. You can learn more by visiting his faculty webpage.

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A groundbreaking verdict for accused Veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was decided in Canyon City, Oregon on October 19 when former soldier Jesse Bratcher, on trial for murder, was found guilty by reason of insanity. It was the first trial in the U.S. where a Veteran's PTSD was successfully considered to mitigate the circumstances of a crime (see also ).

Dr. William Brown and Dr. Robert Stanulis from The Bunker Project, who work on Veteran defense cases throughout Oregon and Washington, provided research and testimony for Bratcher's attorney who argued that his PTSD and the influence of the Military Total Institution shaped his actions in the killing of Jose Ceja Medina. Bratcher believed his girlfriend had been raped by the man he shot to death. Bratcher is VA rated as 100% disabled due to PTSD he developed while deployed in Iraq. Bratcher was a model citizen before joining the Army, with no criminal or juvenile history.

Bratcher strictly adhered to the rules of engagement in Iraq, twice refusing to fire on civilians. There, he witnessed the death of a friend from an IED explosion, which commanders reported drastically changed Bratcher's mental state.

Dr. Brown is a Vietnam Veteran and college professor who dedicates time to assisting defense cases of Veterans. He teaches Criminology at Western Oregon University.

"This is a significant decision, for Jesse and for Vets around the country, who were law abiding citizens before they went to war and who have been accused of crimes since returning home," said NVF President Shad Meshad, who consulted with Project Bunker on the case. "The military and the VA have not done enough to diagnose soldiers and Veterans with PTSD and provide them with needed counseling and support to ease their readjustment to civilian life."

Shad Meshad has been working with Veterans since 1970. He was a Medical Service Officer during the Vietnam War, where he counseled soldiers who suffered from psychological and emotional problems resulting from their experiences in combat, including what would later become known as PTSD. The NVF is a national nonprofit, non-governmental organization dedicated to bettering the lives of veterans and their families. For more information on the case, visit http://www.nvf.org/blog/item/50.