Wow, World Politics with PTJ has come and gone. What an experience! Honestly, this was my favorite class of the semester. I feel like I learned the most and was the most genuinely engaged in this class than any of the others I was taking. I love the activities and the sense of community that this class brought to our cohort. I'm genuinely going to miss the class and PTJ as a professor.
The final paper is coming up quickly and I'm almost positive that I know what I'm going to tackle in answering the prompt. I'm not excited to write it because it is a final and I am pretty exhausted at this point, but I am looking forward to the experience that it will bring because I will be able to craft an essay about something I care for and feel passion for. Also, can't wait for the last game of Diplomatic Risk and donuts!! One last Global Scholars World Politics get together. <3 Thanks for a great class and semester, all of you.
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On p. 245 of the novel Horizons, Ahni Huang declares: "The only way to keep them safe is to be separate. A nation with the power to protect its own." Do you agree with her?
Upon reading this quote, I thought of Israel. The establishment of Israel as an independent Jewish state in 1948 was a way for the Jewish community to feel as though they had a safe haven following the second world war. Although controversial, Israel has served as a safe haven for millions of Jews, housing them in a country that allows for freedom of their religion and cultural tradition. The sanctity of Israel helped the Jewish people recover from the trauma and persecution their people faced through out the majority of human history. Jewish people are constantly at risk of anti-semitism and attack, so having a state like Israel was deemed necessary for their community to survive and thrive. However, Israel has not put an end to anti-semitism in the slightest. The idea of separation for security is something that has been thought of various times in history. Communities crave security and homogeneity; they want to be safe and amongst their own people. Israel has, for the most part, granted that to its people. They have the means to protect their own and maintain and unified community of Jews. Israel is obviously pretty different from the situation in Horizons, but I thought it was relevant enough to draw a comparison between the two. In Horizons, the Upsiders and Downsiders maintain an “us” versus “them” mentality throughout the entirety of the book, and that mentality is also applied to the “evolutionized” people, like Koi. At one point in Horizons, Dane even states that the Upsiders will get used to people like Koi, but the Downsiders never will. Since this mentality is maintained in the novel (and in real life!) it seems like keeping different people separate from one another to guarantee safety is a good idea, but in my opinion, it only leads to further conflict. This further conflict would arise because separation allows the idea of difference and segregation to manifest, leading to people believing the differences are wrong and bad and reason enough for complete division. If people think in such a way this could lead to radical reactions if the separation that was put in place to protect them was ever disturbed. So, with that, I both agree and disagree. I agree because it is true that in being separated, safety will ensue. However, I disagree because it adds another level of foreignness to the difference between people and could later lead to extremely unsafe conditions for those who are different and need to be separated for safety. HAPPY CHANUKAH Y'ALL!!!
Reflection 14 is here!!! And so is our second to last class! That's crazy. Last class was the first half of our final simulations. Last simulation, I represented the environmental grass roots organization The Sierra Club. However, this simulation I represented Shell Oil. Although I was not particularly elated about representing an oil company, I was happy to change my view so drastically and prove to the class and PTJ that I can accurately report and present many types of information, even opposing viewpoints and topics that go against my personal bias. I thought that my presentation went extremely well and I am very confident that my group performed well. I thought that this simulation was a lot more organized and that everyone felt more prepared and generally more confident about their presentations. My group last time worked well together, but this time especially, my group collaborated very efficiently together. I wish I had had the opportunity to work with everyone in the class on a level like this. It really brings you closer to your peers and allows you to better understand them on a personal and academic level. Outside of world politics reflection, I formatted and designed the entirety of the FIRST EVER Her Campus print magazine by myself!! It was tiring, but rewarding. It will be printed this weekend and be premiered at the media release party in SIS Founders on Saturday. In return for my hard work, the Her Campus E-Board has awarded me an E-Board position and I am now the Design Director for the print team! Exciting!!! In light of thanksgiving, family gatherings, and general conflict, I'd like to share with you all one of my favorite quotes:
"There are three things I've learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin." - Linus (Peanuts) I love this quote. It's even my current Instagram bio! I think it's a great quote and something that is great to live by when it comes to celebrating Thanksgiving. I have such a wide array of religions, races, and opinions within my family. I have Mexican cousins, Jehovah's Witnesses, Jews, republicans, democrats, you name it. In order to avoid conflict on a day that is meant to be happy and focused on your thankfulness, I avoid speaking about religion and politics. Religion is pretty easy to avoid at the table. Religion is varying in my family, so it's more convenient for everyone to just avoid it entirely. God isn't dinner table talk in my family. Politics, however, are a little bit more difficult to avoid. It's become increasingly difficult to avoid politics since my major is International Studies, I live in the nation's capital, and attend university at the country's most politically active college. So, with that, I went into Thanksgiving prepared for the worst. Much to my surprise, things were not the worst. The focus of the conversation settled on Trump, and to my surprise, Trump brought my family together! Not in the sense that we were all like, "Woo! We all love that guy!", but more like, "Woo! We all hate that guy!". Even my dad, the token Republican, had some pretty nasty things to say about dear Mr. President. It was pretty nice, being one big, enraged by the president and current state of politics, family. Happy Thanksgiving everybody! Also, I wanted to add that Thanksgiving is a holiday that attempts to hide the cruelties of colonialism and the savage murders of Native American nations. Many Native communities observe Thanksgiving day as a day of mourning and that's something we should all consider and respect. I could go into a lot more detail, but for now I'm not going to. I hope you all had a relaxing break and enjoyed your time at home or wherever you were. This week we focused on Todorov's Conquest of America. I enjoyed it and I thought it was interesting, but I didn't really feel like I gained any new information from this book. I feel like I've been learning about colonialism and the conquest of America since I was in elementary school, so it didn't really feel like I was gaining a lot of additional information from Todorov. He had a lot of interesting perspective's, but I didn't think it was anything revolutionary... (I feel pretty rude right now, tbh). Even though it was a good book, I didn't love it and I probably wouldn't choose to read it again.
I know that historical context is really important when analyzing current politics, but I feel like most of us have the context of colonialism and conquest in mind already. With that being said, I would've liked it if we spent more time learning about a current world politics issue, like the refugee crisis or nuclear relations or something like that. I'm not trying to critique PTJ in the slightest because I think that this class has been very informative and helpful, I just feel like we are a little behind in terms of current events. I do think the simulations have been very helpful in this regard, so yay for those! On pg. 62, Todorov asks: "Did the Spaniards defeat the Indians by means of signs?" Well, did they?
When it comes to defeat against the indigenous peoples, it was something that Spaniards seemed to have perfected and held pride in. With their historical accounts of their conquests they very clearly and proudly boasted of their triumphs, hardly shying away from topics such as rape, torture, and erasure of culture in said accounts. They possessed means of destruction that the natives hadn't even imagined yet and were far from developing. Using their advanced weapons, "Christian" ideologies, and diseases, they wreaked havoc on their "newly discovered" civilizations. They left nothing for salvation and had intention to do so if it didn't directly benefit them (embedded liberalism, maybe?). As listed and stated, the Spaniards had many means in which they defeated the Native people of these regions, but the one I am going to primarily focus on in this post is the means of "signs". To me, signs is their means of communicating with the natives. They used sabotage, misinformation, manipulation, aggression, and intimidation in their sabotage to bend the natives to their will. They capitalized on their "superiority" to bring down those they deemed as less intelligent than themselves. In the first chapter, Todorov mentions that Columbus feigned knowledge of the native language, acting as though he could understand what they were saying, when he really, really couldn't. This is an example of the sabotage and manipulation that was utilized during the times of colonization. I believe that in the end, the Spaniards utilized many modes of destruction to defeat the natives, and although the signs aided them greatly, it was not the only means in which they did so. Like Olivia, I wanted to mention Todorov's point that history is written by winners. Olivia made great points in her post about the array of "victories" for the Spaniards: the defeat of the indigenous people and the erasure of their culture and voice and that this is proof that defeat goes far beyond a physical overpowering, but can be seen socially and systematically. I think this was a very important thing to touch upon because too often we only think of the physical repercussions of countries and people touched by the impacts of war. In my first year seminar class we focus a lot on the psychological and culturally damaging aspects of war/conflict and prior to this year, it wasn't something I had considered too much. I was more caught up in logistics and historical accuracy, but I now see how detrimental war is to the identities of those impacted by it. This week, we discussed embedded liberalism and whether or not it is still utilized in world politics today. I had a little bit of difficulty understanding exactly what embedded liberalism was and how it has been applied to international politics in the past, but after some additional reading and true contemplation, I think I've got it!
With that, I do not think that embedded liberalism is still utilized in international politics in the modern age. I think that aspects of it are still applied to global political theory, but embedded liberalism as a singular strategy isn't totally relevant these days. However, I think it is referred to and has helped to model some things that we do today when participating in and analyzing world politics. I really like learning about stuff like this because it exemplifies the changes that occur in politics, especially international politics. The political realm and its climate is constantly changing and evolving, which requires the same type of change for the strategies and ideas applied to it. I hope we learn more past and current political theory this semester. Continuing our "continuity and change" topic from last week, but this time in the sphere of political economy. The question is: have recent changes in the organization of the global political economy meant the end of the postwar "embedded liberal" order, or are they an example of "norm-governed change"?
Embedded liberalism is something that I hadn't really considered prior to our class discussion. Sure, I had heard the term and briefly learned about it in my eleventh grade AP United States History, but I really didn't understand it. Now, I think I might. I think that embedded liberalism is basically the process in which governments increase social spending in order to appease those who may be 'iffy' on the stance of globalization. In order to keep all groups in contentment, the gains of such embedded liberalism must be shared. With that (hopefully correct) context in place, let's get into the ACTUAL blog question! I think that embedded liberalism is a little bit outdated now a days, as in it isn't really used. When I think of embedded liberalism, I think of things like The Marshall Plan. The Marshall Plan was enacted in the years following the second world war. America provided twelve million dollars to countries in Western Europe and claimed it was to help the recover from the economic and social repercussions of war fatalities. However, it was largely done so that America could maintain control of European countries and keep them in the form of democratic states (capitalist) to keep them away from communism (lack of free trade). Like previously stated, embedded liberalism must 'benefit' all groups involved. However, I believe that there is a large amount of political ongoings that we are largely unaware of. Even though we think of acts and actions from 1945-1985 (these are the years that the era of embedded liberalism is primarily referred to as) I believe that there is a large chance that things are happening under the surface of public politics that could be referred to as embedded liberalism, but is done through the means of other services other than mere financial aid. Unfortunately, when I went looking for modern day examples of embedded liberalism I couldn't find them. But then it made me wonder, could I not find them because they weren't there, or because the term embedded liberalism IS outdated and occurrences are no longer sorted under this category? So, I kind of think that I can't truly answer this blog post. But, right now, I think that embedded liberalism is an outdated term and currently underused term for something that still occurs today in a more discrete way. Maybe norm-governed change is just a new term that is being used in place of embedded liberalism? Week 10! Wow, how crazy is that? 10 weeks of college and World Politics under my belt!
As amazing and thought provoking as things have been in school and in this class, the thing I'm focused on the most this week is the election. Tomorrow, November 6th, is the 2018 midterm election and there's a lot at stake. The current administration is reckless and frankly, an embarrassment. Their poor actions and lack on thought for future generations and the marginalized could seriously harm us if we don't act to stop them now. There's a lot of history that could be made tomorrow. The first Native American woman could be elected to congress, the first LGBTQ+ Native American could be elected to congress, numerous LGBTQ+ individuals could be elected to various governmental positions, we could see the first ever election of a Muslim woman in congress, and the first time election of many racial minorities. All of these will be inspiring historical feats and I hope to see them come to life tomorrow. Voting has really been emphasized this midterm election and the usage of social media to encourage it has been insane. I have never, ever seen so many celebrities, activists, and normal people utilize social media to relentlessly to inspire social change. As much critique as there may be on social media and the youth of today's "obsession" with social media and technology, it's really helping all of us out and making understanding the process a lot easier. Here's to hoping that democrats get back control!!! Go vote!!!! Please! |
Hey there! I'm Halle Jaymes and I'm a first year SIS student from Southern California. I'm hoping to focus on Europe as my region of study and hone in on sustainable fashion and general fashion in International Relations. Archives
December 2018
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