Peace Corps or Teach America?

For me, this one's easy. Teach America.
Maybe our generation really is the quiet generation and not be active in change, but I would prefer to do Teach America. While I undoubtedly admire those who do join the peace corps, I know it's something that I couldn't do. It is amazing that they go out there and are active in making a difference and helping people, I think it's a great program and wouldn't want our world to be without those people who want to make a difference. For me though, I would rather help from home. I think education is also a really important part of helping change the world we live in. If we can't fix up our problems at home, how can we help the rest of the world? If we have more educated people, then we have more people who can make a difference, because they will understand the problems we face, and not be apathetic and/or ignorant about them. Inequality in education just because of class standing is not fair and I think this is something that we need to address, and Teach America is doing exactly that. I would be happy to share what I've gotten out of my education with others who are less fortunate.

Globalization: The all powerful or fooling us all?

Here we are again at globalization. It seems we end up talking about globalization in every subject, because it's somehow relevant to everything. It is, that's the whole point of it. It's taking over and creating a standard for the world. After reading the four articles this week though, I don't think it's as far along as some would have us believe.

I felt a bit wary of the two reviews, as Thomas Friedman, the author they were reviewing worked for the New York Times, and the reviews were done by the NYT and the Washington Post. But in the end, both papers didn't love the book. It sounds like Friedman is very exciteable, but I do think he may be onto something, just not as evolved as he'd like to think.

"The world is spiky" by Richard Florida, made some interesting points. By showing the readers where on the map the most light use, etc are coming from, we can realize that not everywhere is at the same level and doing the same things. We already know that most people live in cities though, so there would be unbalance in that sense. There are many parts of the world that aren't very hospitable, but it doesn't explain the few obvious centers of activity.

I think globalization definitely is something that is happening, as witnessed by Electronic Colonialism Theory, but it's not all powerful yet.

It's hard to say what's worse: Countries with limited civil rights and media or Paris Hilton

McPhail says that Westerners receive limited news of other parts of the world, and that the Western Press say NWICO will worsen this situation. I think that's probably right. Restricting access to international news even further is not going to help. Licensing journalists will lead to less news, and possibly less objective news if those licensed feel pressured to print positive stories. I'm not even sure that plan will help LDCs. I don't understand how it could. I guess by limiting the bad press, countries can improve their reputations. but having said that, if bad things continue to happen, by stopping the rest of the world knowing, those countries would be free to things with no interference. That's like saying that just because we don't hear the story and see the pictures of Paris Hilton doing something skanky, that she's not doing it. We all know she's doing it, we just can't prove it, or stop it. Though I'm not sure anyone can stop the crime against nature that is Paris Hilton. The point if, how is limiting news flow going to help anyone? Especially when it's already limited due to financial and physical safety costs.

I'm not sure how to feel about developmental journalism. On the one hand, it is true that the LDCs don't have the 'infrastructure to support' a media system like the West's. And it is true that they are making initial steps in creating some sort of media that they can build up from. Even America's media had to start somewhere, and it started with publishers being thrown in jail for sedition, which is a big jump from where we are today. In that sense I think it's good that they are making a start and trying to help themselves. On the other hand, the fact that they must only print/broadcast government supportive media is a little scary. It's more scary when they go on to encourage the portrayal of the West as evil. It does not help matters to have the West or the LDCs having images of each other as the enemy.

I don't know where LDCs will go from here, but I wish them luck. I hope they manage to have a stable community and a free press somewhere down the track.

Would you like some culture with that?

Electronic Colonial Theory is definitely interesting, but before I talk about the theory, I have to get something off my chest that really annoyed me in the reading. Maori tribes are from New Zealand, and New Zealand only. Aboriginals are from Australia. There is a BIG difference between them, and I think it was a pretty big oversight to print that the Maori are from both Australia AND New Zealand. Apart from that I liked the reading. I thought it was interesting and had some merit to it. Western media is definitely the ruling media world wide. Especially media from the U.S. The Western culture is being shown around the world and is influencing other cultures in their thinking and behavior. Even in other western nations, American media influences language, clothes and thinking. Many people complain about the 'Americanization' that is happening. They're usually the older generations who aren't as interested in some of the newer media products, and who are therefore not watching/listening/reading them and not being influenced. But it is taking over. People like what they see, they are convinced that it's 'cool', and they're influenced. It's like advertising for culture.

It's emphasized by the world system theory. The core nations have the means to produce media products that the semi-peripheral and especially the peripheral nations don't. The two peripheral groups of nations are in those groups because they lack the economic and social power that the core nations have, and therefore cannot rival the core nations with their own media products. Even other core nations cannot rival the bigger nations. Australia has a media industry, and produces some really good stuff. I mean, is 'The Castle' not the most Australian film ever? And 'Getting Square'- so funny!




But who outside of Australia has seen these films? Even one of the most successful television shows, 'Kath and Kim', is being remade as an American version for U.S. audiences. To be honest, these shows show stereotypical Australian characters, which is why Australians think they're funny. But the 'bogan' culture is probably not the kind of culture we want to encourage in other nations. However, the amount of Australian content shown and played in Australia is nothing compared to that of American content. Financially, it is sometimes more cost effective for television channels to buy a show from America they know will be a hit, than to spend a fortune producing their own show when it may fail. For our relatively small industry, it's not always worth the risk. Even our movie stars are only movie stars because they've been successful in Hollywood. They help to finance the American film industry, because that's where the money and success is. There are just not as many opportunities in Australia in the media as there are here, and there won't be as long as American media is so successful. So we buy more American media and are influenced further by American culture. Though looking at 'Kath and Kim', maybe this isn't such a bad thing.

Photo 1: The Castle (and yes, that is Eric Bana).
Photo 2: Kath and Kim

We'll be starving and fighting, but we'll be able to vote

Kaplan and Zakaria. What to say? 'The Coming Anarchy' was depressing, but made a good point about the environment. I found that to be one of the points that really stood out to me, as it is such a big issue. We've long known that the environment was in trouble and going to cause problems in the future, but only now are people starting to do anything about it on the big scale. Coming from a country that's currently in a seven year drought, I can understand how important water is. Having said that, our country is fortunate enough to be no-where near the point of starvation or dying of thirst. But it is only in the past few months that our government has made big steps in joining other nations in trying to do something about our environment, and that was only after a major change in government. People need water and food to survive, and as it becomes limited, humans' nature to survive will come out and people will fight for what they can get. Which will result in lots of fighting and death.

Zakaria's 'The Raise of Illiberal Democracy' definitely woke me up to the fact that my ideas about democracy were totally off. I have to admit, I didn't really think about it and always just assumed that all democracies were liberal. It was just automatic to assume they went together, as it's what I've been brought up with. But obviously they don't. I thought his comment that liberal non-democracies are often better than illiberal democracies was interesting. It shows us that we shouldn't judge a country just by whether they have multi-party elections. There's more important things than just voting, especially when many democracies, like the U.S. don't even make voting compulsory. Sure, there will always be those who will vote by the colour of the flier, instead of by party beliefs, but if not everyone votes, then the government isn't a representation of what the people want. It's only a representation of what a small percentage of the people want. Anyway, that was off topic. It seems to me that having a liberal society, where the people have rights, is more important than just being able to vote, but having no rights. And how can we have an ideal democracy, when cultures are so different? No-one would be able to agree on anything because not everyone shares the same values. While it might be important for us in the west to have women's rights, it's not going to be up there for other nations, and it's unlikely that everyone would be able to agree on everything. While it would be great, it just seem like it's not possible to have an international standard for everyone to follow. Otherwise everywhere would be a liberal democracy already.