Settle Your Sources

In Which the Hartley Household visits Kolkata and relates Tales to Amaze and Astound the Easily Amused

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Location: Mount Holyoke College

Twitter: @JHeartsEcon

Monday, September 18, 2006

A Feminist Primer [Jim]

Convention (that stern Master) would seem to Dictate that a blog entry should commence with some observation of Universal Interest, thereby Setting the Stage for the Anecdotes which comprise the Substance (for Lack of a Better Word) of the Remaining Essay. You May Consider the Preceding Sentence as Fulfilling the Mandates of Convention. Should the Reader Find Said Observation to be Lacking in Particular Interest, Said Reader is Well-Advised to Consider that It is Undoubtedly the Passage in the Present Essay of Most Interest. You Have Been Warned (assuming that You, the Reader, Have Bothered to Parse the Preceding).

1. In my Western Civ class last week, we reached Locke. On of the questions raised by Locke is what rights the government has over the people. When I reach this point with my American Students, I invariably ask them the following: “Suppose you were in the English government and stationed as a governor in Colonial India. In your province, the practice of widow-burning is taking place. Would you stop the practice? Would you stop a young widow from throwing herself on her husband’s funeral pyre?” This question is inevitably a very difficult question for American students. On the one hand, their education has taught them that widow burning is rather hard on women and they have been taught to defend the rights of women. On the other hand, widow burning is a cultural practice of Another Culture, and they have all been taught that they should never judge, let alone condemn, Another Culture’s practices. So, how to solve this puzzle?

Teaching in India, asking such a question would obviously be terribly Inconsiderate and Lacking in a Proper Amount of Cultural Sensitivity. So, of course, I asked it. (I know this comes as a surprise to nobody.) The reaction was amazing. If I had walked into the room and asked, “Is the world round?” I would have received exactly the same reaction. It was obvious, and I mean obvious to everyone in the room that the hypothetical English commander should have done everything possible to stop widow burning. Indeed, the students were amazed that American students would have any difficulty answering the question at all.

2. Last week, I went to a question and answer session with Prakash Karat, the General Secretary of the Communist Part of India (Marxist). [The term in the parentheses is necessary to distinguish the Party from the Communist Part of India (Marxist-Leninist) and the Communist Party of India (Maoist). Some things never change.] It was quite an amusing show. He was as slick a politician as I have ever seen. The organizers of the affair stuck me in the front row and told me to ask a question. The way he completely evaded the question was truly an impressive work of art—I mean that quite seriously; I was truly impressed. The Communist Part of India (Marxist), by the way, is still stuck in the 19th century—the topic of the talk was strategies for inclusive growth, and his recommendations were: 1) more public spending on agriculture; 2) more unionization, 3) more affirmative action in education and 4) ending female infanticide. Determining how the last item relates to economic growth is left as an exercise for the reader—I have no idea.

The number of members of the press at this talk was incredible—especially since he didn’t say anything. There must have been 8 television cameras and who knows how many print reporters. One of the newspaper reporters came over to chat with me during lunch. He asked me if the Communist Party of India (Marxist) was really jus the same as the Democrats in America. You will be happy and perhaps a bit surprised to note that I did the Noble Thing and defended the Democrats by saying that, no, in fact the Democrats in American had joined the 21st century and didn’t seem so stuck in the 19th century. He kept pressing for the differences. I did note that I didn’t think the Democrats would be as opposed to female infanticide as the Communist Party of India (Marxist) given the importance of the Abortion Lobby in the Democratic Party—as long as the females weren’t born yet, I thought the Democratic Party wouldn’t have much trouble with it. When I told the Long Suffering Wife about this Remark, she was horrified, telling me that my sarcasm was undoubtedly lost in an intercultural exchange. Hmmm. Well, at least my remarks were off the record….I think. If anyone sees press accounts of how the Democrats are in favor of female infanticide, please don’t tell the Long-Suffering Wife of Your Humble Narrator.

3. I was at a panel discussion recently on the Indo-American Energy Accords, with particular attention to the Nuclear Energy portions of the Accord. Much to my surprise, it turns out there is extensive criticism of these agreements in India—it seems that many Indians don’t trust America, and thus they figure there must be something bad in it for India. It also turns out that Indians by and large do not understand American politics, and so cannot figure out why the Senate is debating the Treaty. [By the way, lest I be accused of Cultural Insensitivity (shudder) for that last observation, it is not mine but that of the Indian speaker to be mentioned in the next sentence.] One of the two Indians on the panel was Lalit Mansigh, former Indian Ambassador to the United States. He was there from 2000-2004 (if I recall correctly) and I recognized him from his constant appearances on TV in the wake of 9/11. An interesting speaker—well, after the first part of his talk, he was interesting. The first part of his talk was a history of Indo-American relations; it seems that the lack of a cozy relationship between India and America prior to the Clinton and Bush Administrations was all the fault of, you guessed it, America. One would have never known from the history lesson we received about things like Indo-Soviet cooperation during that time. But, that’s in the past. Bush gets very high marks from the former Ambassador for his astuteness is realizing the benefits of dealing with India.

The American Consular General for Kolkata was also on the panel. A nice guy. My father-in-law would have gone nuts listening to him though—he said Nuke-you-ler endlessly. Come to think of it, I guess it drove me nuts too. And, come to think of it, I don’t think anything would actually drive my Father-in-Law nuts; he is a very model of imperturbability.

4. When does the 2007 football season start?

5. In Fantasy Baseball, I won the week, and am now in the Championship Game. My opponent is Craig, who as long-time Readers will now, came in First Place during the Regular Season (curses). This is the third year in a row I have met Craig in the Playoffs, though it is the First time we have met in the Championship Game. Three years of meeting in the playoffs makes this Officially a Rivalry.

6. And Finally, we now Present our Regularly Scheduled Book Reports:

a) Hammett, Red Harvest
The Dain Curse
This completes the Hammett novels. Both of these have the same detective and it shows; they felt the same. On the whole, Hammett is worth reading if you like the genre, but I am not sure anything he wrote rose above the genre. I think I liked Red Harvest the best; the Tin Man is the best conventional detective story, and the Maltese Falcon has the best detective.

b) Edmonds and Eidenow, Wittgenstein’s Poker
An interesting portrait of 20th century philosophy. A bit too much biographical psychoanalysis for my taste, but the overall portraits and discussions of the differences between Wittgenstein and Popper was well done.

c) Shakespeare, A Comedy of Errors
The Taming of the Shrew
Early comedies and it shows. They both still have that Shakespearian Charm, but don’t rise to the level of his Great Comedies.

d) Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Emma is reading this for Home School this week, so I figured I might as well reread it since it has been years since I read it the first time. It’s a bit ham-handed, and the ending needs work, but a nice morality tale nonetheless. The afterward in the edition I read had a piece by Bradbury about the stage adaptation in which there is an extra scene between our Hero and the Fire Chief at the Fire Chief’s house—a very interesting scene and it adds more depth to the book.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sorry about the Raiders. Hey, maybe you could switch teams! (Hehe.)

I was going to thank you for defending the Democrats (and by extension many of your loyal students) until I got to the female infanticide part. Way to go, H-dawg. WAY TO GO.

Also congrats on the cultural insensitivity. We expect nothing less. I'll email you soon about my adventures with a certain English professor.

6:18 PM PDT  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I share Janet's concern. To paraphrase Calvin Coolidge, the first thing a visiting professor has to learn is that everything he says weighs a ton. I thought about Silent Cal's wisdom recently in relation to the Pope, so I've been looking for an appropriate occasion to lay it on someone a little closer to home.
--Unperturbed.

7:52 PM PDT  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi, Jim, It was really good to read what you've been up to whilst I was on my grand journey to Italy and Greece. Glad to hear you're meeting and greeting all those "important" people over there. Give my love to the whole family.

10:58 AM PDT  

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