Author Archives: Blanche Shao

The Academic and Political Perspectives on the State and Torture

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This Wednesday’s Rose Cafe about the state and torture is probably the most thought-provoking as well as rewarding talk I have attended this academic year. The combination of human rights activist, Ms. Pornpen Khongkachonkiet, and scholar, Dr. Nick Cheesman, is very interesting; as I was able to understand torture both from academic and political perspectives.

Dr. Cheesman shared some of his academic researches on torture. He suggested that the debate of whether torture is an effective way to extract information and whether its gains outweigh the harms the victims bear, is like the famous trolley problem. There is no absolutely right decision as whether to push down the person on the bridge or let the five people lying on the rail die. Likewise, one should not expect a definitive answer in regards to the dilemma of torture. Furthermore, Dr. Cheesman stated that this kind of debate prevents people from looking at the bigger picture–torture is not simply a tool for information extraction, but a part of state ideology that has symbolic meanings. Moreover, I really appreciate Dr. Cheesman’s candor, when he acknowledged that even though he is a scholar, he is not neutral on his research subject–torture.

While Dr. Cheesman’s research has more emphasis on Myanmar, Ms. Pornpen Khongkachonkiet is a human rights activist in Thailand. I have admiration for activists, for they have little financial incentives for their works, and are often times under threat, both from the state and private parties. In other words, activism is kind of work that requires both courage and expertise. Although Ms. Khongkachonkiet’s did not discuss her live as an activist in the talk, her presence was very inspiring in the sense that it encouraged me to do similar works in the near future.

This talk is the last Rose Scholar event of the semester, and I am so glad it ended on such a high note.

Tai Chi and Cultural Intergration

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This Friday’s film was a documentary about a man from Taiwan went to New York City to teach people Tai Chi. What I find impressive is that the scenes are set in the 1960s, an era that is characterized with violence and conflicts within the country and across the globe: Martin Luther King Jr. was giving speeches at marches, and U.S. soldiers were being sent to Vietnam despite oppositions from its citizens. Thus, I am surprised and impressed to see that in the documentary, so many people, with different gender, race, and ethnicity, go to learn Tai Chi together. Moreover, not only the movements, such as pushing hands, are taught, but Chinese culture is spread as well; as the students vividly articulate the philosophy behind Tai Chi–Taoism in the documentary.

My only experience with Tai Chi was from the Yoga class I took last year. I thought I would feel the power of Chi when pushing hands, like when one tries to push water in a swimming pool. Nevertheless, I felt nothing–there was no energy flowing between my palms or whatsoever. I did feel peace, like meditating while still doing exercise of some sort. However,  Tai Chi remains to be a powerful but mysterious thing for me. I have heard myths, like people who master Tai Chi can jump really high, or they have really long life expectancy. The documentary confirmed some of the myths. As the Professor, with relatively small body build, manages to ‘defeat’ (push away) all his students. It sends a inspiring message: one does not have to look strong/tough to be powerful.

My final observation is about communication. In the documentary, a translator interprets the Professor’s instructions into English so that the students could understand. Yet language barrier does not keep the students and the Professor from forming a deep bond between each other, as the documentary captures several moments that the class are laughing together. This reminds me of a friend, who once told me that she joined karate because it was easier for her to communicate with others in non-verbal ways; and she made lots of good friends from karate. I suppose that there are some universal expressions in the movements (of Tai Chi, karate, etc.) that enables people to communicate and understand each other.

In short, it was an interesting comparison to the Hollywood films we usually watch in Rose House.

Sports and Cultural Differences

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This Wednesday I was able to participate the talk given by the Honorary Secretary of the Achilles Club, Mr. Paul Willcox. To be honest, I do not have much knowledge about sports. I was pleasantly surprised to learn about the history of transatlantic series, which started two years before the Olympics Games.

Every year, athletes in the U.S. go to England to compete as well as experience their cultures; and athletes from Oxford and Cambridge come to U.S. colleges to do the same. As a matter of fact, the athletes are in Cornell right now.

There are two things that Mr. Willcox mentioned that I find very interesting. First of all, the athletes coming from England to compete are also under the pressure of studying for their finals, which will take place right after they go back to England. While the U.S. athletes will go to England in June, they will be more relaxed, since they have already finished their finals. But athletes in England might be in a disadvantageous situation because they will be out of school for a while, which means they will not be in training for sometime. I have always wonder how do athletes balance their academics and training. For me, I do not join too many clubs or extracurricular activities simply because homework takes up too much of my time. I cannot imagine how much pressure athletes have from both school work and sports. Second of all, Mr. Willcox mentioned that the funding provided for athletes to come to the U.S. is rather limited. While in the U.S., the culture of giving is very prevalent and alumni make big donations, in England, donation is quite difficult. Mr. Willcox explained that this is due to cultural differences. In England, people are more low key about their lives and tend to hide their wealth; whereas in the U.S., success is more acknowledged and celebrated, which justify the act of donating. This difference is also discernible from daily conversations. When being asked ‘how’s it going’, in England, people tend to reply with ‘could be worse’, whereas people in t he U.S. tend to reply with ‘I’m good’. It is very interesting to see that even though we speak the same language, cultural differences have a profound impact on the institutions and systems of particular regions.

In short, this talk was very insightful as it went beyond the history of sports and touched the social and cultural aspects beneath it.

Thoughts on Brazil

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Last Wednesday I participated in Rose Cafe with Andre Simores on the topic of Brazil. Simores touched topics range from geography, culture, to governance. It was interesting to me when he mentioned some of the differences between the U.S. and Brazil. In Brazil, although the universities are free, one needs to have good grades to get into those universities; and public high schools are not good enough. In other words, in order to get college education, one needs to have the financial resources to enroll in a private high school. This is very different, as in the U.S., to some extend, one needs to have financial resources to get quality education in both high school and universities. It was also interesting that for Brazilians, the most important meal of the day is lunch, when they will have rice with bean, and steak; whereas here, we have more food options at dinner. In addition, Simores also discussed the political environment in Brazil and it seems like Brazil is on the path to become more democratic country.

To be honest, I did not have much knowledge about Brazil other than key words like rain forests, soccer, Rio de Janeiro, and the Olympic Game. I wonder why my knowledge about the country, which has the fifth largest population, is so limited; meanwhile I know a lot more about developed countries, even those I have never visited. I tried to recall the textbooks I read and I don’t remember learning about Brazil in world history. The only detailed discussion on Brazil I encountered before was in the Global Cities class I took last year here in Cornell, when I had a reading talking about the aftermath of the 2016 Olympics.  I realized that there are only selected countries with significant political and economic impacts being featured in textbooks; and Brazil with the fifth largest population in the world, is not included. Therefore, it is the power dynamics behind the decision to include certain countries into the discussion of world history and to ignore others that results in my limited knowledge. And all I could do now is to make up the missing knowledge through other sources.

Thoughts on the Talk by Professor Sam Beck

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This Wednesday’s Rose Cafe was conducted by Professor Sam Beck, a social and cultural anthropologist from the College of Human Ecology, who discussed about the urban semester program.

To be honest, this Rose House Cafe was quite different from what I had anticipated. I thought that as an anthropologist,Professor Beck would be more focused on the academic aspects of the Urban Semester program and perhaps cover some of his own researches as a scholar. Instead, this talk was more about the conversation between the speaker and the audience; as each of us got a chance to talk about our interests and career goals. On the one hand, I benefited from the career advice Professor Beck gave me. As a city and regional planning major, I always want to travel around the world to pick up planning projects to do. Professor Beck suggested that I should consider taking positions in the United Nations and maybe learn more languages. On the other hand, I also learned a lot from listening to other people’s interests and goals, which exhibited a very diverse range of choices and options, ranging from medicine to arts. I think the biggest takeaway is that no matter what subject(s) one chooses to study, there will always be career options; and it is always possible to combine one’s passions with academic pursuits.

Another topic I found useful was about how to utilize one’s academic advisor. Personally, I have never been to my advisor’s office hour. Partly because my advisor has never replied to my emails for meeting with him. Professor suggested that in order to get advisor’s attention, we should first pay attention to them, such as searching your advisor online and look at their research interests. The idea is that once your advisor feels like you are interested in their stuff, they will take interest in you as well. I think this is an important strategy and I will try to write more effective emails (i.e. contain what I know about my advisor’s academic interests) and see if I could finally get to meet him.

Beyond the Nutritional Effects of Fats

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I participated in this week’s Rose Cafe in a discussion about fats with Professor Robins. Before this talk, I would not think about fat in ways other than weight gains and how I struggle to reduce fat consumption every day. However, Professor Robins not only informs us about the nutritional effects of fat but also makes us think about the politics that go beyond the fat production chains.

While I learned a lot about the health benefits of different chemicals in different types of fats (e.g. unsaturated fats are typically in liquid forms and saturated fats are in solid forms in low temperature), what interests me the most is how interdependent fat is as a commodity. On the one hand, the production of fat concerns with environmental issues, such as soil degradation. Professor Robins mentioned that there is no ecologically good or bad fat: while plant-based fat decreases the use of animal produced fat, vegetable oils increase deforestation. Specifically, there is a debate about substituting soybean oil produced in Brazil, which decreases the diversity of plantation in the Amazons, with palm tree oil produced in Malaysia, which supposedly leads to less deforestation. On the other hand, government plays a big role in the international fat market so as to regulate the price of different types of fat, rather than using economic approaches to regulate the health issues related to fat consumption. Professor Robins talked about that the U.S. government encourages domestically produced fats while disincentivizes imported fats. The intention of this policy is to help domestic fats producers. Professor Robins might not discuss too much about this, but from what I learned in my International Trade and Finance class, the consequences of such policy is complicated and far-reaching. For one, decreasing fat import undermines the competitiveness of the international fat market and reduces consumer choices through increasing the price of foreign fat products, thereby decreasing consumer welfares. Secondly, while fat producers at home are protected, the net welfare of the country as a whole might decrease as a result of retaliation by other countries that export fat to the U.S.–by decreasing U.S. imports in other industries. Moreover, increasing production of plant-based fat at home might speed up the process of deforestation, decreasing social welfare of the whole country. In short, there is no clear right or wrong in such trade policy but demonstrates the dynamics of politics behind various price tags and brands of fats.

This talk has really made me think about fat beyond the realm of body weight and see how much ecological and political debates have taken place before consuming the fat on my plate.

The Talk about Law and Ethics

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This Wednesday I was able to attend the talk by Honorable Judge Miller, who is very humorous and easygoing. I have to confess that I watch a lot of law and order dramas and I am really interested in this topic.

During the talk, Judge Miller discussed about some dilemmas he has faced as a judge and previously as a defense attorney. One of the most interesting topics was defending clients that are inconsistent with his beliefs. I learned that as a defense attorney, you still have to do your job and protect your client, even though there is substantial evidence against your client or your client confides to you that they are guilty. When questioned that if he would feel bad if the confided client ends up without a guilty verdict, Judge Miller made three points. Firstly, there is a distinction between moral guilt and legal guilt–knowing someone is morally guilty does not make that person legally guilty. Second of all, convicting innocent people keeps him up at night more than letting go of possible criminals; as Thomas Jefferson once said, “It is better for one hundred guilty men to go free than one innocent man to go to jail”. Finally, the rule of thumb–people are innocent until proven guilty–suggests that the legal system in the U.S. is designed to convict fewer suspects.

We also engaged in the discussion of drug use and safe injection sites. I learned that the ban on drugs only results in more illegal activities and health issues . Safe injection sites, in particular, provide medical help to drug users and promote rehabilitation programs. Yet as a judge, Miller cannot support those sites. Personally, I agree with the idea behind safe injection sites and I believe that when prohibition is not effective in protecting lives, it is important to try from another perspective. Moreover, I know that while drugs have lots of negative impacts on one’s health, medical cannabis can be used to treat veterans with PTSD and people with epilepsy. I think that more researches should be conducted on the subject of cannabis in order to better regulate its uses.

In short, I have benefited a lot from this talk. I hope I could attend more talks by Judge Miller in the future Rose Cafe series.

Secularism and Religion–Review of They Call Me Muslim

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This Friday we watched the documentary They Call Me Muslim. The film included two Muslim women, Samah, living in France, and K, living in Iran, with opposite government policies and different opinions on hijab. On the one hand, the French administration banned hijab-wearing in public schools on the ground of promoting secularism; and Samah genuinely believes the teachings of Quran and decides for herself to wear hijab. Samah questions whether the government could associate freedom with veiling. On the other hand, the Iranian government requires every female to wear traditional hijab. K does not like the idea of wearing hijab, resisting the policy by wearing hijab in alternative ways that do not fully cover her hair. K questions the idea that women tempt men and should cover themselves with hijab; instead, K thinks it is not a women problem but rather men’s.

This film has provoked lots of questions: what is freedom? what counts as a religion? Is someone considered to be free only if they are not bound by any religious doctrines? Personally, I do not think hijab itself is a symbol of oppression but rather a cultural and religious expression. As Lila Abu-Lughod suggests that for Muslim believers, wearing hijab is an expression of modesty and demonstrates higher social status for women. Moreover, as Samah’s mother mentions in the documentary, hijab could just be a fashion statement (and I do think the silky and colorful veils Samah wears in the film look very nice). In this sense, hijab is no different than high heels or chokers–they are items that one wears to perform their identity as a woman. Thus, I think that the French administration should not police the meaning of hijab for its citizens. In my opinion, if some girls feel pressured to wear hijab because their classmates question their identity as Muslims, it is better to address anti-bullying policies in general rather than specifically targeting at a certain ethnicity. Furthermore, I question government’s ideology which authoritatively associated individual freedom with secularism. As many ethnographic studies have pointed out, science is the characteristic of modern/western society rather than a universal trait. In other words, while our society is organized around the belief of science, other societies are organized around their own beliefs. Moreover, Clifford Geertz points out that religion serves to maintain social solidarity and offers means for humans to make sense of the world. Thus, while we view beliefs other than science as religion, others view our belief in secularism as religion. Consequently, the idea of secularism is essentially separating one religious belief (in this case, Islam) from another (in this case, science), rather than preventing region from intervening non-religious affairs.

I believe sometimes power creates binaries to establish modes of hierarchy; and in this case, the religious and the secular are coined by power dynamics to legitimatize prioritizing secular ideologies over religious ones. If we blur the boundary between the secular and the religious, our lives might be more free and more livable.

 

References:

Abu-Lughod, Lila. “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others.” American Anthropologist 104.3 (2002): 783-90. Print.

Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic, 2000. Print.

Behind Violence and Vulgarity–Review of Fight Club

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The Fight Club is definitely one of the most thoughtful films I have ever seen. It has adopted many theories into producing the seemingly violent and ‘twisted’ scenes, such as Herbert Marcuse’s critique to consumerism, Sigmund Freud’s idea about projection and displacement, and Judith Butler’s idea about the performativity of identity.

First of all, the film intends to criticize commodity fetish. At the beginning of the film, the protagonist owns a condo, desires to buy everything in IKEA catalog, and wears designer brands; he points out that everything is single served, even passengers/friends met on the flight. His life, just as any other white-collar workers, is supposed to be perfect–perfectly boring and numb–“The things you used to own, now they own you”. It was until he starts the fight club, where people fight and relocate their emotional instabilities and senses of imperfection. I find these scenes corresponds to Marcuse’ idea about commodity fetish, which criticizes capitalism that makes people think they can find  happiness in commodities. Yet the happiness created by products is not real, as the the fight club members enjoy their violent and vandalizing behavior immensely.

The idea about consumerism is linked to the performative nature of identity. When the protagonist wonders “what type of dining set defines me (him) as a person”, the director not only implies that commodity fetish is so great that it has becomes part of people’s identity, but also alludes to the idea that identity is performative. In the film, the protagonist that follows all the rules of the society until he meets Tyler Durden, who has almost the opposite characteristics. Tyler lives in a dilapidated house–owns a few items, breaks rules, hates goods, and starts the fight club. It was until the very end of the film that it reveals that Tyler and the narrator are the same person acting differently. This has two meanings. On the one hand, what we perceive as one’s identity depends on how one acts–the narrator could be described as an ordinary and obedient white-collar worker while Tyler is a handsome and masculine (starred by Brad Pitt!) vandalizer, rebel, and even leader. On the other hand, there is no essence in one’s identity, as the narrator and Tyler are one person–what he acts decides what we see as well as define his personality/identity. While some might find the plot twisted, I think it is a brilliant adoption of Freudian idea about displacement that makes the performativity of identity clear. In other words, the narrator displaces his discontent (towards commodities and ordinary life) in his subconsciousness onto an imaginary other that he sometimes hates and other times idolizes. Now thinking back, I found many scenes hinting the idea that Tyler is an imaginary self of the narrator. For instance, when they two first meet on the flight, they have the same briefcase; and when he goes to the doctor to fix his face or challenges his boss at the office, he said the exact words Tyler says.

In short, it is a well-crafted film with brilliant ideas. My suggestion to people who want to watch it is that do not get too caught up in the fight scenes but see how the director uses techniques to tell his ideas; just as Tyler tells us not to get too caught up in commodities but see effects of advertising behind them.