ThickCulture

Globalization is one of those words we hear on an almost daily basis.  The world today is interconnected in ways that would have been unimaginable even twenty years ago.   It seems as if everyone knows what globalization is, but what does it really consist of, and does it even really exist? Is the world really all that different? In Sociology of Globalization: Globalizing Cultures, Economies and Politics (Westview Press, 2012), Keri E. Iyall Smith gathers the writing of a variety of scholars, journalists and researchers and their views on this complex phenomenon.   Each chapter contains resources for further research and study, and  in each of the three sections – Culture, Economy and Politics – Smith also shares her own thoughts and research into globalization, covering both positive and negative aspects of our new world order.

Dylan Matthews on Ezra Klein’s blog offers up this great visual from his Washington Post on changes in tax rates in the US over the last century and leads us into a fascinating discussion on what “optimal” tax rates should be (I suggest you read it for the details).

What these wild shifts in tax policy suggest is that our determination of how much we should tax our wealthiest is not based on any pragmatic assessment of what would result in the best policy outcome, but is rather guided by foundational assumptions about what is fair. If you begin with premise that one has an ethical claim to their “property” if earned legally, then a lower rate seems appropriate. If instead you see taxation as a mechanism for calibrating the distribution of “property” in a way that is optimal for society as a whole, then you can argue, as these economists do, for a much higher rate. These economists disagree.  It reflects how ideas matter in policy making.  The drift in the last three decades towards neo-liberal assumptions has guided a lower rate, not any inherent sense that our current rate is “better” or “worse” in any tangible sense than it was in the 1950′s.

What do you think is a fair number for the top income bracket? 31%? 39? 73%?

A couple of weeks ago, I made my first ever visit to China and I wanted to share some sociological observations with you about what I saw and experienced while I was there. My trip was under the auspices of my university’s International Programs Office (IPO) that’s in charge of all the study abroad programs on campus. From time to time, the IPO visits various study abroad sites around the world to make sure that they are high-quality programs for our students. Normally, the different staff at the IPO conducts these visits, but this time around, they asked me if I wanted to go to Beijing to check out the Council on International Educational Exchange’s (CIEE) programs in Beijing. It was an offer I could not pass up, so I jumped at the opportunity.

Specifically, the CIEE programs that I visited were based at Minzu University and Peking University. As the CIEE staff described to me, Minzu University was established in 1951 to basically assimilate members of China’s 56 ethnic minority groups (such as Tibetans, Uyghurs, Zhuang, Manchus, Hui, Miao, Yi, Mongols, etc.) into the majority Han culture. However, through the years, its focus and curriculum have evolved to become more tolerant and now promotes the retention of many aspects of culture and tradition among such ethnic minorities. Peking University is frequently called the “Harvard of China” and is considered to be the crown jewel of China’s university system. In its 2011-2012 ranking of universities around the world, the Times Higher Education listed Peking University as number 49 overall and as the top university in China.

Although I do not have anything to which I can compare these study abroad programs since this was my first such site visit, overall I found the CIEE programs at both universities to be comprehensive and impressive. There was a wide variety of academic and field opportunities for U.S. students at both schools to learn about Chinese language and culture inside and outside of the classroom. I found the staff there to be very friendly, professional, well-skilled, and enthusiastic about their programs. I also talked to a number of U.S. students currently studying abroad in these two CIEE programs and they all raved about the positive experiences they’ve had there. From what I saw during my site visit, I would certainly recommend these programs to my students.

Below are a few pictures from my visit to China. You can view a more detailed photostream at my Flickr page.

China at a Crossroads

While I was in China and in my conversations with the CIEE staff and with both Chinese and U.S. students, a recurring theme was that China seems to be at a crossroads in its history and that there are two important issues within which China is struggling to find its balance in terms of where it wants to position itself politically, economically, and culturally within the global community. Each of these issues that I’ll discuss in more detail below represent a paradox or set of interesting contradictions that are playing themselves out within modern Chinese society.

I am certainly not the first observer, analyst, or scholar to discuss these issues, nor can I claim to have comprehensive expertise on such issues. Nonetheless, I would like to share my observations as a sociologist who wants to apply my academic interest in how Asians (and China specifically) fit into the contemporary global community in the 21st century and how Asian Americans fit into these international dynamics as well.

The first paradoxical issue concerns the growing sense of nationalism in China. This nationalism was most recently manifested in angry and sometimes violent protests against Japan over some small islands that lie between China (Diaoyu in Chinese) and Japan (Senkaku in Japanese) and are claimed by both countries. More generally, nationalism directed against foreigners has been evident in China for a while and from time to time, flares up and can turn ugly.

In my conversations with different people in China, they mentioned that a famous Chinese philosopher named Lu Xun observed about a hundred years ago that China frequently see themselves as either superior or inferior in relation to foreign powers, but never equal to them — it’s either a feeling of superiority or inferiority. With this in mind, nationalist feelings of superiority or inferiority need points of comparison. In modern times, China has two main international points of comparison — in Asia, it’s Japan and in the western world, it’s the U.S.

My contacts also observed that in most cases, the average Chinese citizen will rarely express such nationalist feelings directly to a foreigner, there was one instance in which this nationalism was directly visible to me and other site visitors in this trip. Specifically, a group of us (all from the U.S. involved in the CIEE site visit) was walking through Peking University when a Chinese male in his mid-40s came up to us and started speaking Chinese to us. Unfortunately none of us spoke Chinese, but even after we said that to him in English, he still kept speaking. We then pulled a Chinese American study abroad student (let’s call him ‘Keith’) who was accompanying us while we were at Peking University into the conversation. The Chinese man then turned his attention to Keith and as Keith relayed to us later, went into a tirade against the presence of foreigners in China. Although this man was not shouting, he was obviously very assertive in expressing himself. Considering the recent protests against Japan, this was probably a relatively mild form of nationalism that we experienced.

The contradiction here is that China very much wants to attain a position of respect and status within the international community and wants to continue attracting international investment and promoting global trade. In other words, it needs to engage with the international community. But on the other hand, a large part of the national discourse within China emphasizes China’s superiority over foreign powers and in fact, advocates limiting or even eliminating the presence of foreigners inside China.

An interesting component to this emerging nationalism in China is that much of it was initiated and encouraged by the Chinese government, at least in the beginning. As other analysts have pointed out, when it comes to particular issues such as the disputes with Japan, Chinese government officials have tried to maintain a sense of diplomacy in public while behind the scenes, frequently allowed or even facilitated nationalist rhetoric and citizen protests to serve their political interests. The problem however, is that the Chinese government may be losing control over this nationalist monster that they’ve created. As one of my contacts noted, when you keep feeding the citizens ‘wolves’ milk,’ eventually they’ll grow up to be wolves.

I have written about this kind of “cultural schizophrenia” in China before. On the institutional and national level, this sense of fluctuating between two extremes while trying to find your identity is actually similar to what many Asian Americans face on the individual level as they try to balance the ‘Asian’ and ‘American’ sides of their identity. In China’s case, as it tries to solidify its position in the international community, it’s likely that such internal struggles will continue to take place and it remains to be seen how the emerging contradictions between the government’s ‘Dr. Jekyll’ and the nationalists’ ‘Mr. Hyde’ will play themselves out.

Where Do Chinese Americans Fit Into China?

The second sociological dynamic that I observed while in China relates to where Chinese Americans fit into modern Chinese society. Like a number of other Asian American scholars, I have a growing interest in looking at how Asian Americans fit into Asian societies and how they use both their Asian and American identities to potentially bridge the political and cultural gaps between the U.S. and Asian countries. As such, I was very interested in hearing from Chinese American students and their experiences studying abroad in China.

In addition to ‘Keith’ (mentioned above), I also spoke at length to another Chinese American student; let’s call her ‘Kathy.’ They both described similar experiences of feeling caught in a “cultural limbo” while in China. That is, on the one hand, their physical appearance is Asian and more specifically, Chinese. But on the other hand, their nationality is American. This frequently means that upon first contact, most Chinese nationals assume that they are Chinese. But once they start talking, they are quickly seen as American, even though they speak Chinese pretty well.

Both Keith and Kathy noted to me that once this happens, more often than not, Chinese nationals lose interest in speaking to them. I asked them why and they said that Chinese tend to be more interested in talking to ‘regular’ Americans — i.e., White Americans. In other words, even within China, while they are treated generally as Americans (rather than as Chinese), Chinese Americans are generally not seen as representing the ‘normal’ image or perception of what Chinese think of as ‘American’ — i.e. they are not White.

Nonetheless, Kathy and Keith told me that once they got used to this cultural dynamic, they were eventually able to create and embrace their own “Chinese American” identity that is neither completely Chinese nor completely American, but a fluid combination of both. Upon doing this, they said that they felt more comfortable using this identity to begin bridging the cultural gaps between China and the U.S. in small ways during their stay in China.

This process of creating an ‘Asian American’ identity that combines and bridges two sets of cultures is what Americans of Asian ancestry have been doing for centuries. It is with this understanding in mind that I think Asian Americans are positioned to take make tangible contributions toward applying their globalized and transnational characteristics and experiences to bridging the political and cultural gaps between the U.S. and Asian countries. In fact, scholars are beginning to examine and describe examples of Asian Americans in different social settings acting as ‘cultural ambassadors‘ in Asian societies.

Therefore, if countries such as China continue to pursue a position of respect within the wider international community while still retaining elements of their national identity, they can learn from Chinese Americans who have have years of experience and expertise in doing exactly that — integrating themselves into mainstream U.S. society while keeping elements their Chinese culture intact. This is not to say that it has been a seamless or smooth process and in fact, Chinese- and Asian Americans have been and continue to face suspicions and challenges regarding their ‘real’ identity.

Nonetheless, institutional changes taking place, such as the ongoing effects of globalization, greater transnationalism, and increased multiculturalism, have transformed the racial, ethnic, and cultural landscape of both U.S. society and the world in general. Within this new social environment, there are new opportunities for minority groups such as Asian Americans to assert an identity that legitimately incorporates elements of, and for the benefit of, different societies and cultures.

There is an old Chinese saying that goes, “May you live in interesting times.” From a sociological point of view, this is indeed a very interesting time for China and there are a number of interesting ways that Chinese Americans (and Asian Americans as a whole) can participate in forging a more inclusive path forward into the 21st century.

Racism is a process by which people are segregated and discriminated against based on their race, and race is defined as a set of physical characteristics which certain groups share. Or is it?  In Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life (Verso Books, 2012), Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields argue that racism does not come from race. In fact, racism is the very act of creating race, by transforming it from something an aggressor does, into something the target is. So-called physical characteristics are red herrings in the discourse, conveniently there to justify certain kinds of racism, but certainly not necessary for them (anti-Semitism being an example). In this highly original book, the Fields’ draw a fascinating parallel between our everyday concept of race and the outdated notion of witchcraft, two beliefs firmly held by the societies which birthed them, reproduced and recreated in daily life  by what was, in their time, “evidence,”  and both which are, quite plainly, false. This is a fascinating book about the power that racecraft and other delusions have on all of us, and more importantly, how to defeat them. In this interview, we talk with Karen E. Fields about this important new book.

Interview Audio Below

Hey y’all.  While you’re waiting for the election results to come in, check out this podcast I recorded with Thick Culture Guru Professor Jose Marichal immediately after the third debate (sorry, it’s dated but I just figured this technology out)

Times Square, NYC, 31 October 2012-Romney & Obama electoral prediction—Kenneth M. Kambara

Greetings from NYC, post Sandy, but pre-election. I have been really busy this election season, so I haven’t had the time to cover this election or do as much reading as I would like. I have C-SPAN on now watching the last minute speeches by Romney, Obama, Ryan, and Biden and seeing a bit on punditry. I didn’t compile predictions like I did for 2008, but this time I’ll go into some detail on my swing state picks. Here’s a compilation I saw on my Twitter feed.

Here’s the electoral map that I started with. The 146 electorals in the swing states are beige, while Romney’s states are red and Obama’s are blue. The breakdown is 201 [Obama], 191 [Romney], 146 in play, and with 270 needed to win.

Florida [29] The polls show the momentum shifting towards Romney in the state. I think the post-mortems will find that the I-4 corridor decided the election and the Democratic hopes of winning the state hinge upon keeping it close here. I don’t know the “house effects” for Mason-Dixon, but their poll of the area for the Tampa Bay Times has Romney leading.

North Carolina [15] I don’t think North Carolina is in play. Obama wasn’t appearing there himself and while Bill Clinton was pitching for the cause with the likes of Mariah Carey, I think his campaign has conceded it to Romney. Romney’s campaign has signalled its confidence since mid-October. Unemployment is high in the state and it was a narrow Obama victory in 2008 which tends to vote Republican in Presidential races.

Pennsylvania [20] Romney made a recent push in Pennsylvania, including a $12M adspend, which may have raised some eyebrows. I think it’s “too big to ignore” and his people felt it was worth the stretch. Michael Barone of The National Review went out on a limb with Pennsylvania, citing Romney’s appeal specifically in the western part of the Keystone state and the Philadelphia suburbs. It could be close, as this article on Philly.com notes.

Michigan [16] Another bellwether and a must-win for Obama was a beneficiary of the 2009 auto bailouts. Democrats are expecting Debbie Stabenow to hold her US Senate seat and are hoping to pick up some House seats, including MI-1 in the upper peninsula (Bart Stupak’s [D] old seat). The tea party candidate, Dan Benishek, is facing a tough race in a district that benefits greatly from federal monies. I see blue as trending in the state.

Nevada [6] I don’t see Nevada as being in play, despite the sky high unemployment of 11.8%. Obama has focused on courting Hispanics and the union vote, while Romney has worked a ground game strategy in the Las Vegas suburbs.

Colorado [9] NBC has this at a dead heat and early voting is trending for Romney. Colorado tends to vote Republican and didn’t go for Clinton in 1996. I see the closeness of the race at this time being bad news for Obama’s fortunes in the state.

Iowa [6] I think Obama’s rhetoric in Iowa might be a tipoff. Unlike in Ohio, where he characterized Romney as “not one of us”, his messaging in Iowa was more hope & change. The northwest has Evangelical Christians who aren’t too excited about Mitt Romney so turnout is key there. Obama will need to do well in the cities along I-80 to pull off Iowa.

Wisconsin [10] I see Wisconsin as a schizophrenic state. The trend has been towards Democrats in the presidency, but Republicans are a force at the state level and one of the US Senate seats and 5 of 8 House seats. The polls have Obama in the lead and my take is that despite Ryan on the ticket, this will hold.

This brings us to a 259 to 244 tally with Obama leading Romney with 35 electorals in play.

I see the following states as the swingingest of the swing states. These are varying shades of “purple” in my book (between red & blue) and as of 2:18AM EST, I think they will go Obama. I don’t feel very solid about this and I think there’s a good chance that if Virginia and Ohio don’t show clear trends early, it’s going to be a long election night.

I don’t like not having a definitive prediction, so I’ll go on the record with a 294-244 Obama win. The caveat being that much of this is based on polling data.

Ohio [18] Bellwether Ohio has been trending towards Obama, buoyed by a recovery and relatively low unemployment. The populist vote indebted to the auto bailout. The rural vote may make things close for Mitt Romney if turnout in Cleveland and the urban manufacturing centers falters.

New Hampshire [4] I think New Hampshire might be really close, but I think it’s leaning Obama. Romney was making headway in October, but it looks like his momentum has stalled. My concerns after following Canadian politics is the polls being off, particularly in constituencies with a rural composition. I wouldn’t be surprised if Romney pulls this out.

Virginia [13] I think this is a true toss-up. I think the fate of the Commonwealth electorals resides in three northern swing counties. I think Romney’s protectionist stance on China might hurt him with selected educated suburbanites. I think if turnout is high in northern Virginia, Obama gets a slight edge, but I think it will be very close.

At the risk of sounding like I’m hedging, I see the opposite as a definite possibility, i.e., Romney sweeping these three. Although the data might support my above prediction, there is the danger that the polls are off. While Nate Silver correctly predicted 49 of 50 states in 2008, he missed Indiana. I called Indiana for Obama based on Karl Rove’s observation that Barack was doing well in the northwestern corner of the state near Hammond & Gary. That’s why I’m thinking the following 279-259 Romney win could happen. It would be something, but not likely, if there was a 269-269 tie. This could happen with Obama getting Colorado and an electoral in Nebraska, while losing New Hampshire, Virginia, and Ohio. The likely result of a tie: President Mitt with Joe as Veep.

Romney winning Virginia, New Hampshire, & Ohio.

269-all tie with Obama getting Colorado and Nebraska’s 2nd. District.

Note: Thanks to Fred Strauss for pointing me to this National Review post and several other sources that informed my opinion.

Great piece in the New York Review of Books by Kwame Appiah reviewing two books on the Obama administration, the latter of which Michael Grunwald’s The New New Deal makes a spirited defense of the Obama stimulus bill. Here’s a passage where Grunwald lays out how the simiulus bill delivered on Obama’s promise to invest in a wide range of necessary and far reaching infrastructure projects.

the bill laid the groundwork for many important programs that made good on the “new foundation for growth” promised in the president’s inaugural address:

We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its costs. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.

As Grunwald points out, every item on this list appeared in the Recovery Act:

roads and bridges (Title XII), transmission lines (Secs. 301, 401, 1705), and broadband lines (Titles I, II), scientific research (Titles II, III, IV, VIII), electronic medical records (Title XIII), solar and wind power (over a dozen provisions), biofuel refineries (Title IV), electric cars (Sec. 1141), green manufacturing (Sec. 1302), and education reform (Sec. 14005).

As someone sympathetic to the president’s politics, I’m puzzled by his inability to cogently defend what he’s done in office. Malik says it better than I could when he compares Obama’s to Romney’s alleged tendency to “run away from his record”:

But something similar could be said of Obama, whose opponents have made the Recovery Act, as well as the Affordable Care Act, into a political tar baby. When Mitt Romney scoffed in the first debate that half of the green energy companies supported by the federal government had failed, anyone who had read The New New Deal would have wondered where the governor was getting his facts from. They might have been less surprised that the president did not rise to the program’s defense. Something in the president’s personality may be getting in the way of his persuading the people, inside and outside Washington, whom it’s his job to persuade. That, at least, is one reading of the inkblots.

My suspicion is that the campaign has field tested these messages and not liked what they have heard. Fair enough. But when you opponent is pummeling you at least have to hit back with something. it would seem that the campaign has decided that rather than try to defend a “long game” investment approach to economic stimulus, they’ll wait out the clock and run against their opponent. That might work. Conceivably, it is better to keep a necessarily pork-laden stimulus out of the public discussion in the hopes that the opposition won’t nit pick it to death. But if the Romney-surge, to the extent it exists, is based on a view that the president has “done nothing” in office, the president should have had a better “elevator pitch” for why his has been a very productive four years (at least as far as progressives are concerned). If he loses, I think it will be because he didn’t/couldn’t do this. Maybe Appiah is right that the president has a quirk in his personality wherein he eschews back-slapping. If so, he may be looking for a different line of work soon.

It is easy to dismiss juveniles in prison as “bad seeds”, as people with which we have nothing in common, and of which we want only distance.  David Chura, however, did not maintain his distance, and has been working with at-risk kids for other 40 years.  His new book, I Don’t Wish Nobody to Have a Life Like Mine: Tales of Kids in Adult Lockup (Beacon Press, 2010), is a collection of stories from the time he taught kids in a New York County jail.  These narratives paint a picture of children who have been abused, neglected, and chronically disappointed by those in their lives and in the justice and foster system.  Chura exposes a number of issues in the justice system and in society at large  which contribute greatly to the outcome of these kids’ lives, and seeks to inform us that far from simply being “bad”, the gulf between these children and ours are mainly due to circumstances, not to personality or inborn traits.   Chura shares stories that we rarely hear, of a world we barely know, in order to give a voice to those who are often silenced.

In a previous post, I lament the abject laziness of the pundit class this election cycle. As ThickCulture contributor Ken Kambara noted in a comment to my post “I think there’s an irony in our culture that sports get better analyses than the Presidential debates.”

He’s absolutely right! Any football fan is accustomed to serious, detailed analysis of personnel decisions, lineups, formations, etc. Ron Jaworrski’s detailing of how the Saints played a “cover-two” defense against the Rams is standard parlance for an NFL football fan. If a quarterback gets sacked 15 times in a game, pundits don’t blame the quarterback along for the failings of the offensive line. Good football analysts, of which there are many, don’t only talk about the in-the-moment game but they talk about the broader context that informs what is driving performance on the field.

Which brings me to the shameful flabbiness of modern political punditry (elite media included). The choices that the parties and branches are making today is based upon years of tactical maneuvering on the part of both sides that should be make clear to those watching and listening to political shows. If the president isn’t defending his stimulus bill, analysis as to why should be provided.

The Democrats and Republicans are engaged in a longstanding game of chess. Republicans confident that they have the party discipline in the Senate embarked upon an unprecedented, clever and seemingly very effective Congressional obstructionism strategy. This is a longstanding tactic in American politics and as Megan McCardle writes in the Atlantic, a tactic Democrats were able to use to block Herbert Hoover’s agenda.

Obstructionism seldom works as a tactic however because parties are seldom disciplined enough to enforce a complete “blockage” strategy. Individual members are pulled by the dynamics within their own districts to peel-away from their party. In addition, Senators have had a long standing reverence for the institution and its norms. But when you have institutions as polarized as those we currently have (these McCarty, Poole and Rosenthal chart illustrates this well), you can hold a 40+ member coalition together to block any and all efforts at legislation.

With no ideological overlap between Republicans and Democrats, the possibility of getting anything done is remote.

This chart highlights the almost complete uniformity among Republicans in both actual votes and percieved ideology. This is what has allowed this Republican Congress to take the historically sporadic use of the filibuster and make it a permanent practice.

If you read no other article this year before the election, make sure you check out this Romano and Klaidman piece in the Daily Beast. They detail the tactical maneuvering between the Congress and the Executive that set the context for the current election. On one hand, the Republicans have implemented their effective “bunker-strategy.” To wit:

In the last three sessions of Congress, Republicans have threatened to filibuster on 385 separate occasions—equaling, in five short years, the total number of filibuster threats to seize the Senate during the seven decades from the start of World War I until the end of Reagan administration. A recent study showed that post-2007, with Republicans in the minority, threatened or actual filibusters have affected 70 percent of major legislation. In the 1980s, that number was 27 percent. In the 1960s, it was 8 percent. “This level of obstruction is extremely unusual,” says Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “And the core of the problem is the GOP.”

In response, the President made a tactical shift in 2011 after the decline of the apparent debt negotiation deal between he and Speaker Boehner. From 2011 forward, the President decided to engage on a unilateral domestic strategy that has stretched the role of the executive. On issues like the Dream Act, the Defense of Marriage Act, and Greenhouse Gas Emissions, the President has moved forward using the executive’s administrative rule make and enforcement powers to implement a progressive agenda. This passage notes the President’s shift in strategy:

By Oct. 24, Obama was standing beneath a “We Can’t Wait” banner outside the Bonilla family’s home in Las Vegas—the president’s spontaneous remark had become the White House’s new slogan—and announcing a new, unilateral program designed to help homeowners refinance their underwater mortgages. Two days later, the president was flying to Denver and unveiling a multipart plan to ease terms on student loans. Over the next few months, the president became even bolder, issuing the controversial welfare waivers and making a handful of recess appointments while the Senate was still technically in session. In truth, Obama had been bypassing Congress, on occasion, ever since Republicans took over the House in January. But these isolated gambits—which included the president’s decision to take military action in Libya without congressional authorization—now seemed united under the umbrella of his new governing (and messaging) strategy: if a legislative proposal fails, find an executive order or administrative directive to replace it.

This is the lens through which the President should be evaluated. Either he is an impatient ideologue engaged in an executive power grab or he is a shrewd, tactical politician who responded to unprecedented obstructionism with an unprecedented expansion of executive power. But the media who can’t be bothered to care about actual governing is much more content with having the campaigns spoon feed them messages and are more comfortable talking about dumb affect issues “why was the president asleep”? “Mitt Romney looked presidential”!

This is the biggest disservice to the nation. Politicians are going to seek access to power. That is what they do. It is up to the press and the citizenry to deconstruct what they are doing. So kudos to Romano and Klaidman for letting me know that there are at least a few folks out there who are actually doing their jobs!