conspicuous consumption

It may turn out that the life of idiotic ostentation makes humanity quite as despicable as the life of a drunkard, and that the image of God is less defaced in a saloon of the Bowery than in those jeweled birthday parties for dogs with which the New York Four Hundred disgust all civilized mankind. That much of this is, in the face of the world's needs, an enormity for which all defense is mere shamelessness no conscientious person will deny... Take the advertisement of a present-day 'millionaire's hotel,' with the assurance it gives of 'the very last word in sumptuousness.' Is this not one of the features of our time upon which we all trust that a wiser age will look back, not only with condemnation, but with a sense of nausea?

~1918 article in the American Journal of Sociology by Herbert Stewart, professor at Dalhousie University in Novia Scotia

If we allowed ourselves to see what we're doing every day, we might find it too nauseating. I mean, the way we treat other people-- I mean, you know, every day, several times a day, I walk into my apartment building. The doorman calls me Mr. Gregory, and I call him Jimmy... Now already, what is the difference between that the Southern plantation owner who's got slaves? You see, I think that an act of murder is committed at that moment, when I walk into my building. Because here is a dignified, intelligent man, a man of my own age, and when I call him Jimmy, then he becomes a child, and I'm an adult. Because I can by my way into that building.

~ Andre Gregory in 1981 Film My Dinner with Andre

~

It appears that I'm back. That may have been a record length hiatus. Sometimes real life takes over. In any case, I thought I'd ease back into blogging by posting these two quotations found in Rachel Sherman's Class Acts: Service and Inequality in Luxury Hotels, an excellent book for the record (which also reminds me, I'm about a year behind on book reviews). Blogger's Amazon Associates Integration ads has also reminded me that I should stop patronizing Amazon. If you click through the book link above, it'll take you to a social enterprise firm, Better World Books, a B Corporation... but I feel like a hypocrite because I just made an order of books off Amazon...

*Note: For professional reasons, I'd like to keep my blog anonymous. I'd appreciate it if you refrain from mentioning my name or identifying characteristics in the comments. Thanks! I am also contemplating getting rid of all my labels. They don't make any sense!

sharing time

A glimpse into my soul: this is a fitting representation of my computer desktop. Women’s fashion and lifestyle magazines always recommend that if you haven’t worn a piece of clothing for over a year you should throw it out. I am beginning to wonder if the same rule should be applied to half-written blog entries and articles on my computer desktop.

But seriously:

“the religious right was not good for religion”

“when scientists are silenced by colleagues, administrators, editors and funders who think that simply asking certain questions is inappropriate, the process begins to resemble religion rather than science”

“marriage actually works best as a formative institution, not an institution you enter once you think you're fully formed”

“laws aren’t supposed to be enforced only when convenient”

And not so seriously (or perhaps, more seriously):

interactive knitting

obamanomics

the recession is great!

the course I would someday like to teach

the sociology of scrabble letters

is it uncool to hate on American Apparel?

food is the new sex

and sex still sells. especially in france.

the inverse kingdom

Traditionally, creditors wielded more power than debtors. Creditors charged exorbitant interest, resorted to intimidation and violence, and seized land and possessions of their debtors.

Strangely enough, today in America, if you’re willing to take a loose definition of creditor and debtor, the debtors often wield more power than the creditors. This idea was suggested in Jacques Ellul’s Money and Power in application to the modern corporation: … the ancient reality of the superiority of the creditor. Obviously in our society, the debtor is often much more powerful than the creditor. The corporation cannot be compared with the hundreds of shareholders who compose it.

To further complicate matters, the corporation is not an individual and a corporation does not just consist of its shareholders or its board of directors or its employees. It takes on a life and a spirit of its own. And then we find ourselves faced with an unwieldly monster whose actions and decisions can have enormous impact on our lives.

The injustice of the debtors’ superiority is what angers us so much about the AIG bonuses as billions of taxpayer dollars trickle into the banking system.* I feel sympathy for Edward Liddy and those who received bonuses who were not directly responsible for credit default swap transactions that were the downfall of AIG.** Yet I am also outraged at the debtor’s entitlement—but it’s not Edward Liddy nor the bonus recipients who are the actual debtors to America, it’s AIG the corporation. And how do we understand how AIG’s employees are both part of and yet distinct from the corporation? And as a result, though they may have no personal wrongdoing related to the credit default swaps, they may have to uphold the moral responsibility of a powerful debtor before less powerful creditors.

So for better or for worse, the 90% tax may get passed and we may feel a little bit better.*** But the larger problems still remain unsolved…



* Compared to the total amount lent to AIG, the bonuses were a drop in a bucket. Dealing with large amounts of money can have two contrary psychological impacts—either you start penny pinching and counting every little cent or you figure since the debt is so large, little savings won’t make a big difference in the long run. Clearly in this case, the American public as the creditor feels the former. No creditor would like to see a debtor living the good life if there is no evidence of repayment.
** I’m sympathetic to the fact that many of them are the wrong target of the angry mob. That being said, I personally find large bonuses rather distasteful wherever, but that stems from a larger critique of American capitalism and compensation.
*** Has it been passed already? I don’t think I’ve been paying that close attention to the news in the last few days.

the humble social activist and the humble civil servant

Social activists annoy us because they can be so full of it. They tote around their Adbusters magazines, walk in their Blackspot sneakers, wearing thrift store rags like some halo of righteousness. (Sort of like the guy who won’t stop talking about how he doesn’t own a television set)

Unfortunately, the profession naturally lends itself to pride. Being a social activist generally entails that you think you’re right and the rest of the world is not.

So how do we practice humble activism? How do we go about believing that what we stand for is true, while still acknowledge the limitations of our knowledge? How do we go on acting on issues that we care about deeply, while still being open to the possibility that we might be wrong? What would that look like? Would we be so seized with uncertainty that we could not do anything at all? Or, would a more humble spirit emerge? (One that is less concerned with being right and more concerned about loving others)

~

I wonder what happens to people as they climb up the ranks of prestige, power and wealth. In the Senate Banking Committee, it was testified that the treasury may have overpaid by $78 billion for troubled assets in its first round of investments of the TARP Program. How do you mess up $78 billion dollars? I may have overpaid for a shirt from a consignment shop, but that was $10 too much, not $78 billion. But perhaps at those amounts, the numbers cease to be real, especially when you’re sheltered within the comfort of prestige and power.

How does it feel to manage $800 billion? Do you feel confident and smart because only the best and the brightest could ever climb so high in the ranks of government? Or do you move forward with fear and trembling and much prayer?



* I use the word “we”, which seems to imply that I consider myself a social activist. However, I don’t really identify myself as a social activist because my accompanying action seems lacking. All talk, no action. However, Kalle Lasne would argue that words do matter—so perhaps I am just uncomfortable with my hypocrisy.

subjecthood vs. objecthood

towards an ethic of integrity
(unfinished*)

I’ve ranted for quite some time about the need for integrity in our professional lives, which has become more evident with the recent economic crisis. Our society has functioned by obeying the letter of the law, with no regard for its spirit. We do what is legal, not what is right.

Martin Buber, a Jewish theologian, provides a principle that may be used to establish a framework of integrity. He describes two modes of relating with word pairs in his book I and Thou. The word pair “I-You” “establishes the world of relation”, which involves encountering the other as a subject, whereas the word pair “I-It” treats the other as an object, a thing to be experienced. This can apply to any sort of relationship, including between human and nature, and between human and God. In Buber's words:

The Life of human beings is not passed in the sphere of transitive verbs alone. It does not exist in virtue of activities alone which have some thing for their object.
I perceive something. I am sensible of something. I imagine something. I will something. I feel something. I think something. The life of human beings does not consist of all this and the like alone.
This and the like together establish the realm of It.
But the realm of Thou has a different basis.
When Thou is spoken, the speaker has no thing for his object. For where there is a thing there is another thing. Every It is bounded by others; It exists only through being bounded by others. But when Thou is spoken, there is no thing. Thou has no bounds.
When Thou is spoken, the speaker has no thing; he has indeed nothing. But he takes his stand in relation.

Buber’s "I-Thou" relation suggests Jesus’ bold command to “Love your neighbour as yourself.” To love another as ourselves, we must first behold another as ourselves, not just another thing to serve us. (And Buber later suggests that the “I” in the “I-It’ relationship is not as fully “I” as the “I” in the “I-Thou” relationship. To be fully “I”, we must fully behold “Thou”)

Our modern life is ordered to maximize the “I-It’ relationships and to avoid the discomfort of “I-Thou”. We buy from anonymous employees of large multi-national corporations, sit in front of the plasma screen to receive our daily dose of information and entertainment and travel by enclosed climate-controlled vehicles. Commodification is the theme of our generation and perhaps its most insidious impact is not obscuring people with things, but turning people into things. And as such, we have lost integrity in the professional world and failed to nurture authenticity in life.

How would this past year differ if we had aimed to treat others as subjects, instead of objects in our professional life? "I-Thou" instead of "I-It". The recognition of a common humanity, of the image of God.

Yet the implementation of “I-Thou” does not merely entail treating people we encounter extra nicely, it goes deeper. To fully redeem relations between people, social institutions that structure the relationships between people also require reform. “I-Thou” relationships cannot be created by some elusive ideal social institution, they ultimately require personal transformations. But institutions can be structured to enable “I-Thou” relationships to be more easily established and realized. Could slave-owners, even the really nice ones, truly have been in an “I-Thou” relationship with one of their slaves? Could a CEO making millions of dollars a year truly treat a minimum wage worker in his company as a “Thou”? Could I ever treat a homeless man on the street as a “Thou” rather than an “It”? We do not meet each other in a vacuum—an entire societal structure props up our encounters.

Whether we are traditionals who don’t want to throw out the baby with the bath water, or revolutionaries who’d like to burn everything, or reformers who value gradual change, we should seek to reshape society, its culture and its institutions, so that “I-Thou” can flourish, and integrity and virtue can be recovered.


* I keep a Word document on my computer named dl_MONTH with unfinished blog entries. “DL” stands for “delete later,” suggesting that I will finish using the notes and delete the document. Scrolling through my unwieldy 24-page document, I find this prospect unlikely and am contemplating a less misleading name for the document. In any case, I am attempting to polish up and post some of these unfinished blog entries and atleast reduce the number of pages in the file. Funny enough, I recall having tried this once before without much success—the more reliable alternative is to save the unfinished “DL” file as BlogIdeas_2008 and start a new file called DL. Rinse and repeat!

I posted this excerpt from Walter Wink's Engaging the Powers a few weeks ago as a response to a comment on my entry on afflicting the comfortable. With Obama's inauguration coming up, it's been on my mind:

God did not create capitalism or socialism, but there must be some kind of economic system. The simultaneity of creation, fall and redemption means that God at one and the same time upholds a given political or economic system, since some such system is required to support human life; condemns that system insofar as it is destructive of full human actualization; and presses for its transformation into a more humane order. Conservatives stress the first, revolutionaries the second, reformers the third. The Christian is expected to hold together all three.

two roads diverged in a wood

I know you must all be annoyed with my endless sweatshop rants,* but I was surprised to find out yesterday that Judy Wicks, the founder of White Dog Café, co-founded Free People (which later became Urban Outfitters/Anthropologie clothing chain) with her then husband Richard Hayne.

It’s amazing how far apart these two business people’s paths have diverged since then:

Richard Hayne is currently the president of Urban Outfitters, the company that now operates the stores, Free People, Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie. He has a net worth of $1.8 billion, ranking the 262 richest person in the United States, atleast at the time in which this article was written.

His stores have stirred up quite a bit of controversy, both for politically incorrect t-shirts and allegedly ripping-off of independent designers. While people who shop at these stores tend to be liberal leaning, Richard Hayne is actually a die-hard Republican (not that that is necessarily a bad thing). Urban Outfitters evokes an aura of rebellion and independence while Anthropologie gives off a sense of vintage old world sophistication, but both are extremely corporate brands. Commodify your dissent all the way. Coolness and authenticity can now be purchased.

Furthermore, Hayne’s stance on sweatshops reflects the easy reasoning that sweatshops offer a better alternative to abject poverty (The Onion actually did an interesting video parody on sweatshops yesterday). I’ll let you be the judge:

"Years ago I visited one of the factories we work with in India, and there was 500 people standing in a line three people deep stretching around the building," he recalls. "I said to the foreman, 'What's going on?' He told me they were all applicants for the four positions they had open. I toured that facility and it was reasonably clean--for India. And it was reasonably well-lit--again, for India. And yes, it was mostly young women working there. But it is my understanding that the only other option those women had to feed their families was selling their bodies. So I don't want to hear people from the suburbs with their fat American stomachs telling people in other countries how to run their societies."

Meanwhile, Judy Wicks is not quite as wealthy as her former husband, but is by no means poor. (Let’s be honest- what would you really do with more than a billion dollars?) She is the founder of the restaurant White Dog Café, located near Penn campus. White Dog Café has become a renowned model for Triple Bottom Line business practices, with regard for profit, people and the environment. In addition to paying its restaurant workers living wages, White Dog Café also became one of the first restaurants to source local organic food long before Michael Pollan became trendy reading. She’s a vocal advocate for local sustainable economies and has written some interesting and inspiring articles on the subject.

Two very different versions of how to run a business in today's society. Richard Hayne was ingenious in creating the compelling pull of his brands**, managing to convince alot of us silly consumers into buying into image without substance, but Judy Wicks gives real hope. Her dissent has not been commodified.


* Though, is it not sad that nobody really cares passionately about anything anymore? And isn't it sad that we tend to think that those who care passionately about anything are a little loopy and crazy. Everything in moderation n’est ce pas?
** I have to guiltily admit that I love anthropologie clothing, but atleast in the last three years, I have been able to resist buying anything from the store despite the fact that it is located very close to my office. (It helps that it is really expensive) It's interesting though to read the customer target of anthropologie as described on Urban Outfitters corporate website:
... Over the past decade, we have traveled the globe, broken new ground with our catalog and web design, and most significantly of all, found customers who are our soulmates on this journey. Our core customer is 30 to 45, educated, fashionable, creative, and youthful. She values family and friends and loves shopping in the vibrant environments we create for her. Our unique and eclectic product assortment is carefully designed and selected with an eye for craftsmanship and detail...
Here's the Urban Outfitters description:
Our goal at Urban Outfitters is to be the brand of choice for well-educated, urban-minded young adults. We accomplish our objective by creating a differential shopping experience, which creates an emotional bond with the 18 to 30 year old target customer we serve. Currently, we operate more than 129 stores in the US, Canada, and Europe. Our stores offer a unique and eclectic mix of fashion merchandise in a lifestyle sensitive store environment. Products range from women's & men's apparel, accessories and footwear to items for the apartment, as well as gifts and novelties.

is this still an exercise in hope and cynicism?

Just yesterday, I rediscovered this passage from Thomas Merton tucked in between some of my old papers. A man I respected very much gave paper copies to me and two others while we were volunteering at the Woodstock Family Center in the summer of 2006. (Tim also posted it on his blog early January of this year.)

Somehow the weight and the wisdom of the passage did not quite register for me in the past, but when I read this yesterday, Merton's words were such a gentle yet truthful reminder of the futility of my half-hearted efforts and the hope that is to be had in my God.

Letter to a Young Activist

Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. And there too a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.

You are fed up with words, and I don't blame you. I am nauseated by them sometimes. I am also, to tell the truth nauseated by ideals and with causes. This sounds like heresy, but I think you will understand what I mean. It is so easy to get engrossed with ideas and slogans and myths that in the end one is left holding the bag, empty, with no trace of meaning left in it. And then the temptation is to yell louder than ever in order to make the meaning be there again by magic. Going through this kind of reaction helps you to guard against this. Your system is complaining of too much verbalizing, and it is right.

...[T]he big results are not in your hands or mine, but they suddenly happen, and we can share in them; but there is no point in building our lives on this personal satisfaction which may be denied us and which after all is not that important.

The next step in the process is for you to see that your own thinking about what you are doing is crucially important. You are probably striving to build yourself an identity in your work, out of your work and your witness. You are using it, so to speak, to protect yourself against nothingness, annihilation. That is not the right use of your work. All the good that you will do will come not from you but from the fact that you have allowed yourself, in the obedience of faith, to be used by God's love. Think of this more and gradually you will be free from the need to prove yourself, and you can be more open to the power that will work through you without your knowing it.

The great thing after all is to live, not to pour our your life in the service of a myth: and we turn the best things into myths. If you can get free from the domination of causes and just serve Christ's truth, you will be able to do more and will be less crushed by the inevitable disappointments...

The real hope, then, is not in something we think we can do, but in God who is making something good out of it in some way we cannot see. If we can do His will, we will be helping in this process. But we will not necessarily know all about it beforehand...

Enough of this...it is at least a gesture...I will keep you in my prayers.

All the best in Christ,
Tom

afflicting the comfortable (challenging the system)

Gramsci compared the Marxist notion of domination, by which was meant direct physical coercion by police, army, and law to political society, with that of hegemony, or ideological control though consent in civil society (unions, schools, churches, families etc.). Civil institutions, Gramsci thought, inculcated an entire system of values, beliefs and morality supportive of the established order and its dominating classes: hegemony was a worldview diffused through socialization into every area of daily life which, when internalized, became part of "common sense" (115)

~ from Theories of Development by Richard Peet with Elaine Hartwick

It’s always easy to believe in the system.* Sure, we might be critical of certain aspects of it, but overall we don’t think that much about it, because we live and function in it. We are not even aware of what the system is and how it informs the way we think and live.

But that’s to be expected, because those who are in power (and that includes those who are in power of knowledge), will work to justify their own authority. And while physical force and the threat of violence may sometimes be effective, why bother if you can compel obedience through “common sense”?

Unless we’re willing to be critical and aware of the system we inhabit—the authority structures, the institutions in place, the implicit “common sense” that we believe, we’ll just buy into the system. It just goes to show that they’ve gotten to us.

Remember that in Romans, Paul called for a renewing of the mind—that renewal must require a critical re-thinking of all our current assumptions and beliefs, even the ones that seem so deeply ingrained in us that they must just be “true” as opposed to socially constructed. We may not be able to “work outside the system” in most instances, but at the very least, we should be aware of its presence.

~

Examples:

A slaveowner over 200 years ago could feel like a ethical, upstanding human being because he treated his slaves well and did not beat or rape them.

A rich man (made rich off predatory mortgage lending) feels good about himself because he tutors once a week in a lower income community and leaves large tips at restaurants.

Wal-Mart corporate believes that they are offering a valuable service to Americans by selling stuff at low, affordable prices. Meanwhile, they are depressing wages everywhere because they pay their own “associates” so poorly.

The most celebrated way to leave poverty is to receive a good education and get a higher paying job. What about the millions of others who still must sweep the streets, clean restaurants, take care of our parents in nursing homes and sell stuff? Will they always be left out of the equation? Is our pitiful minimum wage the best we can do?

We are told the poor will always be amongst us. Are we to complacently resign to that fact and continue to bandage wounds instead of addressing the causes of their poverty? And the cause of their poverty may not just be lack of education or skills, but it may be in the actual economic system of the country they live in.

~

Working within the system is not altogether impossible but requires a high degree of integrity. You must be willing to risk losing all the benefits you may have gained in the eyes of the world. (Daniel, Esther).

~

Perhaps to change the world, one must be willing to work with a set of compromises. Is compromise bad if it is necessary to create enough cooperation to effect real change?

~

Sometimes, it may be a matter of creating alternatives or complementary systems so that others can see that another world (i.e. another system) is possible.

~

Recently, our system has been failing. Are we going to bandage up the current system and assume it is still inherently okay or do we try to build something new?

~

If it is the task of the prophet to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable and I consider myself among the comfortable, then do I need to be afflicted?



* By “the system”, I mean the set of various sub-systems or ways in which we organize and structure our life—from our companies, our government, our nonprofits, our businesses, our workplaces, our schools, our churches, our families, our property, our currency etc…

shopping season

Now that election season is over, it’s holiday (a.k.a shopping) season.

Our political voting may be over for the year, but we still vote with our money. As I mentioned in my last post, we implicitly support the way that businesses are run when we buy from them and give them revenue.

While it’s near impossible to ensure that everything you buy is produced justly and sustainably, please consider making atleast a few purchases (if not all) from businesses that pursue ethical labour and good environmental practices this holiday season. As you will see in the list below, there are lots of options.

I thought I’d list a few stores and brands that I like. They usually have some combination of local, ethical labour or sustainable environmental practices, though few of them are 100% perfect in any of those categories. Below my list, I’ve also included a list compiled by Co-Op America in this brochure. It’s an even more comprehensive list of different businesses. I haven’t browsed most of these stores but some of them sound like great places to find gifts for others or for yourself. It's also possible to look up retailers on Responsible Shopper. I've also blogged extensively about labour practices in the past (1, 2, 3, 4)

If you know of other brands or stores that you particularly like, please feel free to leave them in the comment section. Or if you find out that any of these stores or brands are not quite what they're made out to be, please let me know as well. I’ll update this page as I hear about more stores and brands.

Please feel free to forward this link or this list to others. Spread the word! If you’re going to consume, you might as well support good business practices while you’re at it.

Food
Equal Exchange - Fair trade coffee, tea and chocolate. Yummy!
Your Local Farmer’s Market – To find one near you and if you’re in PA, try Buy Local PA or Local Food Philly


Clothing and accessories (Online ordering available for all of the below)
Fair Indigo – Fair trade clothing online retailer that sells Ann Taylor Loft-like clothing. They are sleek and corporate-looking, which immediately arouses some suspicion, but for the most part, I believe that they are genuine. Proceed with caution.
Wiksten – Handmade clothing sewn by a woman who resides in Kansas City; A bit on the pricey end and a small collection but I appreciate people who start their own craft business working out of their houses.
Passenger Pigeon Clothing – Eco-friendly clothing and bags made in Canada. Also pricey so I’ve never bought anything from them, but they have some really gorgeous designs
Anti-Factory - Hand-made "urban" clothing made from recycled materials. Really nice, colourful casual styles.
ReLoad – Handmade custom messenger bags, backpacks and other accessories. Orders can take up to a month to process as they are all hand-made and based on customized colours. They also do custom graphics and machine appliqué on their bags. They are headquartered in Philadelphia.
VicPickle – Purchase your own customized handbag (i.e. you get to pick out the fabrics, style etc…) which will then be made by hand in Philadelphia. They’re headquartered in Philadelphia as well.
Mooshoes – Vegan and cruelty-free shoes and bags. Store is in NY.
WarmLegWear – A family business operating out of Maine (I think?). It sells lots of tights and socks, most of which are made in Canada.
Sockdreams – Similar to the above, but with a wider selection, including organics. Not sure where most of their socks/tights are manufactured though.
Adbusters BlackSpot Shoes - Union made canvas sneakers ($79) and boots ($120)
Planet Bike - Bike lights and other accessories
Camper – is a Spanish shoe company with long history of environmental and labor responsibility. They’re also pricey but the shoes are very stylish—they’re famous for the “Twin” shoes where two shoes have different but coordinating designs.
The Green Guide also has a good list for ethically-made and environmentally-friendly shoes (including Timberland and Birkenstocks)

Miscellaneous
Etsy – Online retailer of vintage and handmade items. It’s Ebay meets an arts and crafts fair.
Ten Thousand Villages – A fair trade nonprofit organization. It sells jewelry, home décor (including beautiful wicker baskets), cards, notebooks, china and other gift items.
LUSH – Organic bath and body products made in Canada with minimal packaging. They’re pricey but the store smells good.
Paperbackswap – Not really a source for gifts but a good website to post and swap books with other members.

Local Stores specific to Philadelphia
I’ve tried my best to list the intersections but if you do plan to visit any of these stores, please google the addresses to be sure.
Thrift stores and consignment stores – There are plenty in the Philadelphia area. To list a few: The Second Mile at 45th and Locust, Goodwill at 22nd and Market (across from Trader Joe’s), a place at 50th and Baltimore, Buffalo Exchange at 17th and Chestnut, Sophisticated Seconds at 21st and Sansom, Immortal Uncommon Resale at 18th and Sansom, Greene Street (or something like that) on South Street etc…
Smak Parlour – A boutique located on Market Street between 2nd and 3rd Street in Philadelphia. It has great (somewhat flashy) clothing mainly for parties and nightclubs. Most of the clothing is designed by the owners and sewn in Chinatown. I almost got the bridesmaid dresses for my wedding from this store, but they unfortunately would not be ready on time.
Vix Emporium – VIX Emporium is a handcraft store located at 50th and Baltimore. They have quite a bit of fun jewelry, t-shirts, cards, soaps, bags and other
Black Cat – Another gift shop located 3424 Sansom Street Philadelphia. Straight from the website: “We strive to be a socially responsible business by focusing on merchandise that contributes to the good of the planet as a whole. These "Whole World Products" include pieces made from recycled materials, the work of local artists and craftspeople, fairly traded international handicrafts, and products sold in support of disabled or disadvantaged people.” It’s the counterpart to the famous White Dog Café.
Firehouse Bikes - Worker-owned used bike store and repair shop; Bikes range from about $100-$600; Great service (though sometimes slow), good prices, really friendly owners! I purchased my own bike there June of 2007.
Used/local book stores – The city also has plenty of used or locally-owned bookstores Book Trader (2nd and Market), A House of Our Own (39th and Spruce), The Last Word (40th and Locust), Big Jar Books (2nd and Arch)
Some of the above stores in the other lists are also headquartered in Philadelphia or have stores in Philly, including Ten Thousand Villages (13th and Locust), LUSH (15th and Walnut), VicPickle and ReLoad.
Fabric stores – Fabric Row has a whole bunch of fabric and notions stores located near 4th and Bainbridge; Spool Sewing at 19th and South; Cloth & Bobbin in Narberth
Yarn Stores – Rosie’s Yarn Cellar at 20th and Locust, Loop at 19th and South, Ewe and I in Narberth; Look specifically for Manos del Uruguay and Shokay yarn purchased from cooperatives in China and Uruguay.

Co-Op America List

A Greater Gift
www.agreatergift.org
Fairly traded home decor, jewelry, and more from artisans and farmers around the world.

Autonomie Project, Inc.
www.autonomieproject.com
Fair Trade, sweatshop-free footwear and clothing made by worker-owned cooperatives in the developing world.

Bamboosa
www.bamboosa.com
Makes bamboo fiber clothing and baby products that are sweatshop-free and American-made.

BaaBaa Zuzu
www.baabaazuzu.com
Jackets, mittens, hats, scarves and bags: one-of-a-kind and made in the USA from reclaimed woolens.

BTC Elements
www.btcelements.com
Offers earth-friendly and socially conscious apparel, accessories, beauty, and baby clothes.

Chapter One Organics
www.chapteroneorganics.com
Uses organic fabrics sewn in the US to make stylish, fun, and practical baby and toddler clothing.

Certified Jean Co.
www.certifiedjean.com
Jeans for men and women, made from organic cotton: grown, milled, and made in the USA.

Cottonfield
www.cottonfieldusa.com
Organic cotton and hemp clothing including sweaters and underwear for men and women.

Decent Exposures
www.decentexposures.com
Shirts, leggings, skirts, bathing suits, and over 200 sizes of organic cotton bras made in the USA.

Dreams on Looms
www.dreamsonlooms.com
Collection of apparel and accessories handwoven by tribal women from northeast India.

Earth Creations
www.earthcreations.net
Clothing in organic cotton, hemp, tencel, and bamboo blends; dyed with natural clay dyes.

Ecolution
www.ecolution.com
Direct Romanian sweat-free manufacturer of hemp products: hats, bags, apparel, fabric, and more.

Ecoganik
www.ecoganik.com
Private label sweat-free organic fashion for men, women, and kids: career and casual wear and more.

Esperanza Threads
www.esperanzathreads.com
Organic fiber clothing made under fair conditions in Cleveland, Ohio.

Equita
www.shopequita.com
Fair Trade, organic and green essentials including: apparel, jewelry, handbags, and baby
clothing.

Fair Industry
www.fairindustry.com
Fairly traded women’s clothing and jewelry; modern design combined with traditional skills.

Fair Trade Sports
www.fairtradesports.com
Fairly traded eco-certifi ed sports balls for soccer, football, basketball, rugby, and more.

Far East Handicrafts
www.fareasthandicrafts.com
Direct importer from indigenous craftspeople, specializing in handmade paper, singing bowls, chimes, bells, silver and wood carving, and more.

Global Exchange
www.store.gxonlinestore.org
Not-for-profit, non-exploitative online store supporting artisan cooperatives in 40 countries.

Global Mamas
www.globalmamas.org
Clothing and jewelry handmade by women’s cooperatives in Africa.

Greater Goods
www.greatergoodsonline.com
Fair Trade hats, natural fiber clothing, jewelry, gifts and more.

Justice Clothing
www.justiceclothing.com
Men’s and women’s union-made-in-the-USA clothing, coats, underwear, socks, ties, and more.

Kusikuy
www.kusikuy.com
Fair Trade llama and alpaca blend knits. Ponchos, sweaters, hats, mittens, and scarves.

Maggie’s Organics
www.organicclothes.com
Sweat-free clothing including T-shirts, camisoles, tops, socks, and tights made with organic cotton.

Marigold Fair Trade
www.marigoldfairtradeclothing.com
Fair Trade clothing and household items from a women’s cooperative in India.

Natural Beginnings
www.naturalbeginnings.biz
Organic and natural sweat-free products for babies and their moms.

No Sweat Apparel
www.nosweatapparel.com
Union-made, sweatshop-free sneakers and clothing for men, women, and children.

North Star Toys
www.northstartoys.com
Creative, nontoxic, nonviolent wooden toys made by a family business.

Parnassus Investments
www.parnassus.com
Offers seven socially responsible mutual funds, all of which consider both financial and social factors when making investment decisions.

Rugmark
www.rugmark.org
Working to end child labor in the rug industry, and offer education to former child weavers.

Splaff
www.splaff.com
Sandals, bags, and belts handcrafted from used tires, hemp, and recycled materials.

Traditions Fair Trade
www.traditionsfairtrade.com
Promotes Fair Trade relationships with artisans around the world; offers sweat-free sneakers.

T.S. Designs
www.tsdesigns.com
Full-service apparel domestic manufacturing and screenprinting company based in North Carolina.

Under the Nile
www.underthenile.com
Children’s apparel, diapers, bedding, blankets, and more, made fairly in Egypt.

World of Good
www.worldogood.com
Fair Trade apparel, scarves, jewelry, housewares, and gifts from around the world.

exercises in cynicism and hope (3)

Today is Tuesday October 14th. The era of the large investment banks and excessive trading and easy credit is coming to an end. Our banks are getting partially nationalized. Senator Obama is ahead in the polls.*

Just as the Great Depression marked the acceptance of Keynesian economics and the economic stagflation of the 70s ushered in several decades of deregulation and trickle-down economics, this year’s economic crisis will shift the prevailing economic and social policies of this country.

By no means do I want nationalization of major industries** or excessive redistribution of income, but I do hope for a new era of politics that does not confer disproportionate power to large corporations, but rather encourages appropriate government regulation, and more equitable and socially responsible economic growth.

Today, I’m feeling a bit more hopeful.
(Oh, and the Phillies are one win away from being in the World Series.)


* Sorry, Palin sealed the deal. My respect for McCain has only gone down since then.
** Though I do want universal health care coverage. (I'm still Canadian!)

exercises in cynicism and hope (2)

sometimes I wonder whether deep down at the core of my being, I am just cynical -- that I superficially espouse all these nice sounding platitudes about how all these all these great organizations and groups are doing all this great world in the world in order to cope with the fact that I actually believe that all these institutions are corrupt at the core and no true change will ever come of them. (we are just in survival mode. the least common denominator).

or whether I really do believe that good is possible and that hope is real and that we can create a more whole, in the sense of shalom, way of living in this world, and that anyone can be an agent of this change.

we are the system

The downfall of Wall Street this week has been ringing loudly in my thoughts, but Wall Street itself has been fairly quiet. No apology. (Part of me is brimming with anger: Have they not any shame for telling the government to fuck off when they were making millions, and then going back to the tax payers for a bail out when they had dug themselves in deep shit? Has this experience humbled them at all? Or are they hidden away, gloating because they got away with a lot of money?)

But maybe I need to apologize too? I was part of that system and part of that myth. I may not have worked directly in investment banking, but I was part of the post-graduate herd of sheep that run towards New York City and fill the lower ranks of investment banks and consulting firms, without necessarily questioning the bigger picture or the assumptions of what we were doing. I may not have made the huge bonuses, but I did wine and dine a little too heartily on money that had to come from somewhere. I was fortunate that I was never asked to work directly in predatory mortgage lending, but I did work in mortgage product design that had the potential to be damaging without proper regulation. I may not have advocated for the risky leverage ratios held by investment banks, but I did do some capital regulation calculations that I barely understood. And so I was/am part of the system. And somehow, I am also responsible for what is happening.

But how do you feel sorry for something that you didn’t do directly but somehow benefited from?

In Terra Nullius: A Journey Through No One's Land (a beautifully written book by the way), Sven Lindqvist reflects on feeling contrition concerning the murder of and the theft of land from the aborigines in Australia.

According to my Religious Education teacher in at secondary school, ‘contrition’ is at the core of all religions. It’s easy to make mistakes. Anybody can make mistakes, even commit crimes. The important thing is knowing how to feel contrition afterwards. That was why he began every lesson with the same question: ‘What constitutes contrition?’ To this day, I can still rattle off the answer in my sleep:
I realize I have done wrong.
I regret what I have done.
I promise never to do it again.
Today I tend to think these three criteria for contrition are far too introverted. ‘Realize’, ‘regret’ and ‘promise’ can all be done internally, in complete secrecy, without betraying any outward sign of realization of promise. Such an internal contrition process is precious little comfort the victim of the wrong I committed. And the promise is easily forgotten if nobody knows it was made. So the criteria should demand a more public process of contrition. Perhaps like this:
I freely admit that I have done wrong.
I ask forgiveness of those I have wronged.
I promise to do my best to make amends to them.
Here, the third criterion promises not only that I will not repeat the crime, but also that I will make efforts to put things right to the best of my ability. For the victims, redress is the most tangible result of my contrition and a measure of sincerity.
Can we feel contrition for other people’s crimes? Can we feel contrition for crimes we have not committed personally, but have subsequently profited from? How can we formulate the criteria for contrition to make them applicable to collective responsibility for historical crimes? Perhaps like this:
We freely admit that our predecessors have done wrong and that we are profiting from it.
We ask forgiveness of those who were wronged and of their descendants.
We promise to do our best to make amends to those who were wronged for the effects that still remain.
The larger the collective, the more diluted the personal responsibility. The less intimate the contrition, the greater the risk that it will just be hollow ceremony. A representative steps forward on our behalf, admits the wrong committed, apologizes, pays what it takes and appoints a committee to ‘monitor our practices’.

But Wall Street hasn’t even done that.*

And there are plenty of other systemic sins that we are part of—that we are responsible—but whose web of guilt is so diffuse that it’s easy to shift the blame. But the systems are composed of individuals, and as individuals, we all contribute our small, unsuspecting part in the greater injustices.

As American consumers, we are purchasers of products produced in unethical and inhumane circumstances. As Americans, we live on land that was seized from its original inhabitants. And though most of us are fortunate enough to have never been in such situations, we are certainly capable of inflicting direct bodily harm upon others.

Stanley Milgram, in conclusion to his famous experiments where test subjects delivered what they believed to be crippling electric shocks to a fellow human being (while they could hear that person screaming for it to stop), as long as the authority figure said it was okay, writes:

Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with the fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.

This is not to say that we are incapable of good, or that we do no good at all, but to emphasize that our brokenness infects nearly every action or decision that we are in, every relationship that we are in, and every system or institutional structure that we are part of. At the end of the day, we all must throw ourselves at the mercy of God.



* Terra Nullius ends the above quoted section with “Australia isn’t even doing that”. I switched it for Wall Street, but I need to give the original author credit.
** This entry draws inspiration and direct quotes from a talk on sin that my husband gave earlier this week.

end of a season*

This NY Times Op-ed by Roger Cohen eloquently touches upon the death of the myth that I wrote about in my last entry:

The leverage party’s over for the masters of the universe. Shed a tear. When you trade pieces of paper for other pieces of paper instead of trading them for real things, one day someone wakes up and realizes the paper’s worth nothing. And Lehman Brothers, after 158 years, has gone poof in the night.

We’re witnessing the passing of more than a venerable firm. We’re seeing the death of a culture.
…

So that’s what “financial killing” really means. No better illustration exists of a culture where private gain has eclipsed the public good, public service, even public decency, and where the cult of the individual has caused the commonwealth to wither.

That’s the culture we’ve lived with. It’s over now. Some new American beginning is needed.

…

When I taught a journalism course at Princeton a couple of years ago, I was captivated by the bright, curious minds in my class. But when I asked students what they wanted to do, the overwhelming answer was: “Oh, I guess I’ll end up in i-banking.”

It was not that they loved investment banking, or thought their purring brains would be best deployed on Wall Street poring over a balance sheet, it was the money and the fact everyone else was doing it.
…
But why do freshmen bursting to change the world morph into investment bankers?

“I guess the bottom line is the money. You could be going to grad school and paying for it, or earning six figures. And knowing nothing about money, you get to move hundreds of millions around! No wonder we’re in this mess: turns out the best and the brightest make the biggest and the worst.”

According to the Harvard Crimson, 39 percent of work-force-bound Harvard seniors this year are heading for consulting firms and financial sector companies (or were in June). That’s down from 47 percent — almost half the job-bound class — in 2007.

These numbers mirror a skewed culture. The best and the brightest should think again. Barack Obama put the issue this way at Wesleyan University in May: beware of the “poverty of ambition” in a culture of “the big house and the nice suits.”

I hope this humbling of Wall Street will make room for something more substantive to be built in its place.

*This is the second installment. The first one occurred about a year and a half ago.

when giants come tumbling down

another mad rant

It’s a strange, eerie feeling, reading about the demise of two Wall Street giants, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, following soon after the federal takeover of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and the earlier demise of Bear Stearns.

Perhaps what’s so striking about the recent failure of these large financial services firms is that they signal a death of a myth that I and so many other prestigious university graduates bought into.

Two or three years ago, all of us impressionable college graduates would have lusted after offers from Lehman Brothers or Merrill Lynch. A job at one of these firms would most likely guarantee entry into the country’s best law schools and business schools. A year ago, my former consulting firm, Oliver Wyman Financial Services, was still aggressively recruiting a larger incoming class for projected growth in consulting services for financial services industry. What did we really believe in? A bunch of managerial jargon about entrepreneurship, meritocracy, innovation, prestige and intelligence.

I do feel sorry for all of those analysts and associates who are now without a job, because I did tread that path for awhile. Perhaps now we can better know the price of being an “organization kid”, a lowly member in the network of the technocratic-managerial-financial elites – where more often than not, success is fleeting and power can quickly become powerlessness. Perhaps we will now know better than to trust in financial markets and lucrative job offers. And perhaps we will realize that we are ultimately responsible for our actions and decisions whether or not we are fully cognizant of their impact.

There is obviously a role for financial markets in today’s economy, and banking services are necessary to provide the liquidity needed to make today’s economy work. But I didn’t quite gain a sense from these Wall Street executives that they were trying to provide a valuable service to companies and individuals – that somehow got lost in the jumble of future trades, credit swaps, mortgage-backed securities and debt derivatives—which are somehow all subsumed under the interest of short-term profits.

I don’t particularly feel sorry for the top executives of these firms. In fact, I feel angry that though many may not have received any compensation packages, they still made their millions with timely stock sales and savings.

Who bears the true cost of these poor and risky decisions? The many who were lured into mortgages they cannot afford, those who are now watching their neighbourhoods deteriorate because of the growing number of foreclosures, and the working class who faces even more dismal job prospects. Many will feel the hurt of these far and distant decisions made in fancy boardrooms a lot harder than those who made the decisions.

(Do you feel powerless? Of late, I have been feeling that way. Powerlessness coupled with hope results in humility. Powerlessness without hope results in pragmatism.)

simulating integrity

a mad rant about professionalism

This was the first thing Mark had been asked to do which he himself, before he did it, clearly knew to be criminal. But the moment of his consent almost escaped his notice; certainly, there was no struggle, no sense of turning a corner. There may have been a time in the world’s history when such moments fully revealed their gravity, with witches prophesying on a blasted heath or visible Rubicons to be crossed. But for him, it all slipped past in a chatter of laughter, of that intimate laughter between fellow professionals, which of all earthly powers is strongest to make men do very bad things before they are yet, individually, very bad men.

This was an excerpt from C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength, referring to the moment in which Mark was asked to write false articles for widely-circulated newspapers. I wonder if it felt just as uneventful, just as banal for those insider traders in the 1980s, the Wal-Mart store managers who denied workers overtime pay, and the Enron accountants of Arthur Anderson. I wonder what it feels like to do things that are not necessarily illegal per se, but unethical—the blind complicit eye in the use of underpaid workers, hospital managers who turn down Medicaid patients, the predatory mortgage lenders, the more recent irresponsible portfolio decisions of the Lehman Brothers executives and the income tax accountants who obscure the truth of the cost and nature of their services to lower-income (or shall I say low-wealth?) families. But I do know what that feels like, because I would have to lie to say I haven’t done legal but unethical things in my past—and that little sigh of guilt lies somewhere buried between “everyone else is doing it too” and “I’m just doing my job and providing a service or product to the economy.”*

I recently heard the story of a very intelligent Christian, who engineered a key product for his company, and was invited to apply to become the head manager of an entire region. He was denied the position and later discovered the two reasons for it: 1. That in his interview, he mentioned that he talked to God everyday and so management suspected that he must have delusions of grandeur, and 2. that one of his guiding principles was to never lie, and the hiring consultant found himself slipping and saying “how can you trust someone who will always tell the truth….”

And perhaps that in a nutshell captures what governs the boardrooms and skyscrapers where the makers and shakers of the world concoct their plans. While governments will never disappear, many will argue that it is now economics, not politics, that drives the modern world, and that the major players are not sovereign states but multinational and global corporations. And what prevails in these corporations is a code of professionalism that prioritizes profits (and mainly short-term profits) above everything else.

Every year, prestigious universities send hundreds upon hundreds of recently minted and impressionable graduates into the halls of prestigious investment banks and consulting firms. Many climbed the ranks in these institutions, perhaps with a brief boost from an MBA program. They surely have behaved up to par with the code of professionalism. Professionalism expects the employee to wear the fancy suits, talk the small-talk and the fancy jargon and know the numbers behind the pretty graphs. But we’ve ended up with-- or perhaps that’s better worded as, we’ve ended up without-- Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. Let's not forget that alongside their graves, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are in critical condition supported by the ICU of taxpayers.

Professionalism evades the question of responsibility. It shifts the blame to the institution, without acknowledging that an institution is composed of individuals. With professionalism, everyone acts according to what is expected of him in his occupational role, without question to the morality of his actions.

It is integrity that forces an employee to consider the consequences of his actions on others (rather than just trying to win the approval of salary-determining, bonus-awarding superiors). Integrity involves asking whether something that someone is asked to do for his job is right or wrong, not just profit-making, and having the courage to say no when something is wrong.

How different could the world be if people actually acted with integrity at their jobs, instead of abiding by the codes that prevailed in their work environments? Would low-wage earners be able to make a decent living (as many homeless actually have full-time jobs)? Would there be less people trapped in crippling debt?

A friend mentioned a book written by the founder of DC Central Kitchen, who argued that it’s not nonprofits that need to run more like business, but businesses that need to run more like nonprofits. I have yet to read the book but I suspect he meant that we need to abandon the code of corporate professionalism, and opt instead for one of genuine integrity, one that takes into consideration the situation of the less privileged or the less powerful.

I have questioned whether it is possible to change the system from the inside. So far, the outcomes have not been too promising.** Though if you have some examples or evidence to the contrary, perhaps they will give me some hope concerning the current trajectory of the world.


*Hannah Arendt, the Milgram Experiments and the Stanford Prison Experiment may confirm my suspicion.
** I supposed being in the system requires some degree of complicity with the system...

unequal measures of inequality

My most recent blog entry related to how the manner in which knowledge is produced within the university system is subject to a set of assumptions and methodologies. This became quite evident in this example drawn from my first class in Professor Lamas’ Community Economic Development.*

In looking at these statistics relating to income, taken from the U.S. Census Bureau, what would you conclude about equality in America?

Income of Households 2002

Race/Ethnicity	Income
White alone or in combination	$45,350
White alone	$45,390
White alone, not Hispanic	$47,194
Black alone or in combination	$30,032
Black alone	$29,982

Now take a look at these statistics concerning wealth in America, now what would you conclude?
Median Value of Assets for Households 2000

Race	Net Worth
White	$58,716
White Not of Hispanic Origin	$67,000
Black	$6,166

Percent Distribution of Household Net Worth 2000

Race	Net Worth
	Zero or Negative	$500,000 and Over
White	12.7%	9.3%
White Not of Hispanic Origin	11.3%	10.0%
Black	29.1%	0.6%

In the first case, inequality America is significant but is not of an outrageous proportion. However, looking at wealth, this picture is dramatically different. The median wealth of a white American household is over 10 times that of a black household. Furthermore, three times as many blacks than whites have zero or negative net worth.

The poverty debate both in America and around the world has been framed around the question of income (what one earns) rather than wealth (what one owns less what one owes). Two professors can both earn the same amount each year, but their lives may look very different depending on the inheritance they may or may not have received from their parents.

Because the poverty problem is framed in terms of income, the policy solutions suggested are also directed towards raising income. Our grand solutions to poverty in America seemed centered around raising minimum wages and providing better education (so that people can receive higher paying jobs). But if we were to think of the problem differently, how would our solutions change?

Interestingly enough, the major wealth-based solution to poverty has not been particularly successful. Home ownership has often been promoted as a way of increasing wealth and gaining economic success. However, this has played out into the context of income segregated neighbourhoods, disparate quality of education in public schools, and foreclosures. Home ownership has not created additional wealth especially in cases of stagnant or declining real estate prices or growing costs of maintaining a home.

I'm sure there will be more to follow on this subject.


*In fact, this entire entry is drawn from the discussion in today’s class. I guess you know it’s a good class if I come home and immediately write a blog entry.

imagining china

If cities have gods, then so must nations. With the 24 hour NBC coverage of the Olympic Games, I can’t help but think what mythical being presides over the vast land of China? What is the spirit that guides this imagined community?*

Let me caveat all this by saying that I make this sketch of China from my very biased and limited viewpoint, amalgamated from my own impressions of the country, conversations with upper middle-class Chinese family and friends and perhaps a few taxi drivers and shop owners, and my reading of American media, which seems quick to pounce on China's weaknesses. Nevertheless, this is my opinion of China, a country for which I still feel a strange affinity for, perhaps indicated by my slightly inability to fully cheer for the American nearly all blond women’s gymnastics team.** The faces of the Chinese women’s gymnastics teams strike me both as familiar and foreign, reminding me of my elusive birthplace that I have only visited as a tourist.

On the surface, China’s deity stands proud. It has come a long way since the devastating mass famines of the 1950s or the social upheavals (the closing down of schools, the relocation to the countryside) of the Cultural Revolution. My parents left China in the mid-eighties. At that time, few families possessed any common household appliances that marked America’s successful 50s: microwave, refrigerator, television set, washing machine etc… However, when my parents returned in 1993 and 1994, they were amazed to find that nearly all their relatives owned them. They remarked that there was little they had that the Chinese did not (aside from having two children!). In little more than a decade or so, many, my extended family included, have risen out of poverty and have decent middle class lives, no longer living cramped six people to a room with no running water.

And visually, China’s cities reflect this economic success-- the impressive glowing skylines, the rapidly expanding network of highways, the sleek shopping centers and lively nightlife. As a result of both this and the continued nationalistic propaganda (if I’m not mistaken, elementary school textbooks still include numerous flattering portraits of Mao ZeDong and other key revolutionary heroes), many feel proud of what China has been able to accomplish from so little.

But China’s pride may also prove to be its downfall. Pursuing some unrealistic vision of modernization, China has been demolishing historic slum-like inner city neighborhoods and replacing them with sleek high rises and shopping malls. While America tries to lower automobile usage, China promotes it, restricting bicycle usage on certain streets. Its rapid industrialization has also filled the skies up with smog. Some may have profited from the economic development, but many remain left behind, supplying the labor for the sweatshop factories and filling in the informal economy.

Its nationalistic pride also suggests hidden insecurity. Though China lavishly demonstrates to the world its success and power, it also seems to yearn for praise and acceptance. Its previous attempts at manufacturing and coordinating a utopian society have failed. Communism in China was a disaster that killed millions. Previous state-down attempts at controlling the population with the one-child policy have created a new set of problems, with the increased pressure on only children to support their parents, and the outnumbering of males to females.

Perhaps China is so quick to curb criticism and repress free speech because it needs to continue to sustain its own myth. Exiled Chinese author Ma Jian, as cited in this article, comments that in China, there is "inflated pride; the fusion of years of nationalistic propaganda, with the economic powerhouse China has become, has created a feeling that it's now the centre of the world, and that foreigners come to them with begging hands." However, "the root of this desire to put on a great show stems from the authorities' own loss of faith in themselves. And they also realize that, despite the great rise in nationalism, the people don't believe in this empty ideology either."

And so China’s shiny, proud exterior façade (like the recently erected walls designed to hide Beijing slums) conceals an interior disillusionment and insecurity. While Chinese Olympic athletes who win gold take home glory and wealth, what happens to the 249,550 (with injured bodies and insufficient education) who do not?*** What other bodies are lost in the spectacle of those chiseled, carved and engineered Olympic bodies?

The state already disappointed the people with the collapse of the communist dream. Along with that, many promises, including health care, state pensions, welfare, jobs, justice, and equality, have been broken. Individual well-being is always curtailed for some purported collective good and elusive nationalistic glory. (Service and sacrifice for the nation is always enforced, rarely voluntary). While China celebrates hosting the Olympic games, factory owners are forced to close up shop, slum-dwellers suddenly find walls surrounding their neighborhoods, and students are told to stay away from Beijing during this time. When China was awarded the privilege (not the right) of hosting the Olympic games, it was partly for the hope of improving the human rights situation in the country. But many have commented that the situation has only worsened.

The Chinese people may rhetorically display plenty of nationalist pride in their imagined community, but their actions suggest otherwise. A spirit of practicality dominates the real China. From my aunt who questioned me on why I did not take a job with a higher salary, to a Chinese Chinatown bus companion who kept insisting that I must do business with China because I spoke both Chinese and English and could become very wealthy, it all comes down to money and security for oneself, and one’s family.

Students spend their childhoods and adolescence confined to classrooms and study halls, preparing for their college entrance exams. Other families make huge personal sacrifices in order to send their children abroad. Factory workers choose to work long, grueling hours in order to provide better for their families. Individuals rarely make true financial sacrifices for the sake of their nation. Over one billion people scramble to try to make ends meet, and improve their standard of living, perhaps without any thought as to whether or not they are serving or bettering their country.

And so perhaps China really is just an imagined community—a story , a fable, a myth, a distant deity to whom one pays homage, but certainly not a god who will come to one’s rescue, no matter how desperate the prayer.****



* The term “imagined communities” comes from Benedict Anderson’s definition of nations. He describes nations as imagined "is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion".
** Okay, I wrote that before the gymnastics all-around. I’ll admit it-- by the end, I was cheering for Nastia Liukins. After all I am a newly minted U.S. citizen! And if I don’t cheer for the US, what country can I cheer for? I can’t quite cheer for China, and Canada’s performance at this Olympics has been rather disappointing. “You have to be ambitious to win the Olympics,” says my mother, “The Canadians! They’re too laid-back!”. I also asked my mother which country she was cheering for more—US or China? She said it was tough, but the US more.
*** I’m averse to China’s state training of athletes where children as young as 3 can be taken from their families. But then I wonder about how sports often work in America—Children aren’t forced to train by the state, and yet only those who can afford the classes, the practice and the coaching make it to the top. I could spin it and say that atleast China gives children and families who have never had an opportunity a chance for Olympic Success. But once again, I must wonder about all those athletes who didn’t quite make it to the top but still had to subject themselves to the years of grueling training, injuries and separation from family. The New York Times article also suggests that even former medalists don’t always fare too well after the Olympics and the glory has faded.
**** I am cognizant of China’s demonstration (both government and individual) of care and compassion after the SiChuan earthquake, so I’m not saying that the government will not assist people at all. Once again, I am speaking of in general terms, so naturally exceptions exist.

how to identify a hipster*

that is if you care…

In the movie Adaptation (starring Nicolas Cage and Meryl Streep), New Yorker magazine writer Susan Orlean ends up in an affair with John LaRoche, an unlikely match given that he lacked the sophistication and cosmopolitanism of her usual circle of friends, who seemed rather concerned about hosting interesting dinner parties and mocking others. Perhaps what drew Susan to John was precisely what her group of worldly and successful friends did not possess—a passion for something. Susan notes in the movie: I suppose I do have one unembarrassed passion. I want to know what it feels like to care about something passionately.

If I were to find a distinguishing characteristic that would separate a hipster from someone who is not, that is what it would be. Someone who cares passionately, genuinely and sincerely about something other than themselves is not part of this death movement of Western civilization.

And sometimes I find myself precariously on the edge of that distinction—as noted in my profile, I have many “hip” interests, amongst which are riding bikes, buying thrift shop clothing, listening to independent music, knitting and sewing. In addition, I live in a trendy neighborhood and work for a nonprofit. I don’t think I am cool, but no hipster ever admits to being one.**

But what troubles me most is how hard it can be for me to care passionately about something. There are definitely people/themes/ideas that spark my care—urban poverty, labor injustice, food economics, sex trafficking and immigration. However, it’s been hard to turn those moments of thought and emotion into more concrete and consistent action, especially in a society that writes off those who care passionately about something as obsessive and extreme (perhaps we do this so that we don’t need to confront how meaningless our lives actually are). Our society preaches moderation, balancing passions with security so that we can live in guilt-free comfort.

But I know that Jesus called his disciples to abandon their fishing nets (their livelihood), and rely upon him, without the security around which they had built their former lives. And in knowing this, in my comfortable post-college life, I find myself craving something to care about passionately.

So I hope this time of unrealized good intentions will be an incubating period for a more defined passion. Of the many things that I could be (the existential crisis afforded to me by my privilege and education), I would like to be something other than hip. I want to commit myself passionately to something, so that I can live for more than just myself, or rather, so that I can be part of something that is greater than myself. And I guess therein lies the answer, I can start by caring passionately (once again) about God, and maybe everything else will fall into place.



* You might also try the book Field Guide to the Urban Hipster (a little outdated now though as the book's usage of the category hipster is more broad)
** Consider for instance this conversation, from the Adbusters article:
Standing outside an art-party next to a neat row of locked-up fixed-gear bikes, I come across a couple girls who exemplify hipster homogeneity. I ask one of the girls if her being at an art party and wearing fake eyeglasses, leggings and a flannel shirt makes her a hipster.
“I’m not comfortable with that term,” she replies.
Her friend adds, with just a flicker of menace in her eyes, “Yeah, I don’t know, you shouldn’t use that word, it’s just…”
“Offensive?”
“No… it’s just, well… if you don’t know why then you just shouldn’t even use it.”
“Ok, so what are you girls doing tonight after this party?”
“Ummm… We’re going to the after-party.”

garbage dump

I’ve just returned from vacation in cool California and am returning to the humid weather of Philadelphia and my overflowing “Word Document” where I amass all the articles and quotes for this blog. So I thought I would clean my plate as I did previously before posting again (currently in the pipeline are some scribblings on the birth, adolescence and middle age of Philadelphia, crafting and consumerism, and rather reluctantly, on the topic of being Asian American, since I am technically now an American. I suppose I could consider taking topic suggestions as well).

First of all, this cartoon is incredible, though I can’t seem to remember where it is from:


A similar graph from this White Courtesy Telephone blog post also suggests the inanity of much research.


Also, on an academic note, it’s been all over the news that Peter Enns has resigned from Westminster Theological Seminary (WTS) in what appears to be a theological difference. In my completely amateur opinion, it marks WTS’ move away from academic scholarship and more as a denominational training ground. Institutions, like cities, have personality and character. They are born, they change, they age, and eventually they also will die.

There’s been more talk about the students who are receiving elite educations. An adjunct faculty writes about the spirit of entitlement that dominates Harvard University. The article has been hotly contested and debated, so if you’re interested, run some searches on it or check the additional links on aldaily.com.

So given the state of today’s academic environment, the recent passing of Russian writer Alexander Solzhentisyn should merit attention. Solzhentisyn was a bold writer who openly criticized and denounced the Russian communist regime, in particular writing about the horrors of the gulags. Articles from the Inquirer and the Economist.

It was also refreshing to see an SFMOMA exhibit on China “Half Life of a Dream”. The artwork seemed meaningful because it actually seemed to have something relevant to say – perhaps because China has more of a contradictory national narrative, than the postmodern fragmentation of the American narrative in recent years. The Philadelphia Inquirer has featured three stories spanning two decades about a Chinese woman who has now become a corporate executive. 2008, 1999, 1987.

Speaking of China, the Olympic Games are coming up. I’ve never been super into watching these competitions—and part of me is always devastated by the amount of havoc it can wreak upon a city—economically and ecologically. For the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games, the city plans to bulldoze through a rare forest. There’s more coverage of China’s Olympic Games and the corresponding environmental and societal issues at the same site.

On the environmental note, as gas prices hike, bicycling has also finally been gaining the spotlight. There’s a useful Philadelphia Inquirer article with practical tips about bike commuting, as well as an Economist article on bicycling and its implications on street planning and safety.

My few words of advice from my on year of experiencing the indignities of commuting by bike: it is okay to wear skirts that are longer than skirt length, changing after you get to work is highly advisable, and it’s better to be slow and safe. Be respectful of motorists (e.g. don’t run red lights when they are trying to get through the intersection) but remember that you have a right to be on the road. However, if your safety is threatened (e.g. angry, aggressive driver), you may need to slow down and get off the road.

Meanwhile, I am reminded of Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities with a recent Mercedes hit and run accident in the Philadelphia area. Hit and run accidents make me very angry. However, the murder of a four year old this week strikes an entirely different level of emotion, something akin to numbness.

Despite the violence in this area, Philadelphia still remains a great city to live in. Surprisingly, it is a lot safer than what one might imagine. Props to this recent college graduate who wrote for the Inquirer why he has decided to stay in Philadelphia and contribute to my continued ambivalence about the gentrification of this city.

Speaking of Philadelphia, I have been fairly satisfied with Nutter as our mayor, but that did not prevent me from feeling saddened about reading about the death of Jesus White, a homeless man who ran in the mayor primaries last year.

It’s especially striking that Jesus White worked a regular job, but still had no home. It saddens me that when the economy does well, it takes years for the minute benefits to “trickle down” to the poor. Yet when the economy suffers, the impact is felt immediately and most severely by the poor.

Speaking of policies, Barack Obama’s recent support of faith-based programs has also been on the minds of many. This Opinion article Why Obama seized the faith-based mantle by Amy Sullivan from USA Today traces the history of faith-based initiatives, something that surprisingly despite being one of Bush’s signature policies, stemmed from the Democratic party.

This other opinion article from the Baltimore Sun makes a argument against more funding for faith-based programs, but instead advocates more collaboration between religious congregations and secular nonprofit organizations. The writer’s argument is solution-oriented and forward-looking, which I appreciate, but he also assumes the necessity to professionalize care, something that I am not entirely comfortable with. While professional help may be valuable and important, we run the risk of evading responsibility ourselves, and pushing it off to a third party, outsourcing compassion if you will. While Bush’s ‘compassionate conservatism’ has not been successful, I am pretty sure that putting the burden of caring for the poor entirely on the shoulder of the government will also fail. Institutionalized compassion will not bring about transformation. (Does institutionalized care even qualify as true compassion?)

All this talk about politics makes me remember once again that I am now a U.S. citizen and will be voting in the upcoming election! Perhaps more significantly, I have almost been married to this man for 6 months.

On a lighter note, Wordle.net is quite amusing. I ended up with this for this blog:

I'm also tired.