United Colors of Benetton? Difference, Cultural Geography and Race

A Note About Cultural Geography

• In the past, Cultural Geography used to “map the extent of cultures” and show how they spread

– e.g. show how Germans migrated across the Old Northwest Territory by looking at barns

– About defining, describing, showing the limits of a culture

• Things have changed. Now emphasis on

– Showing how “cultures” blend, become hybrid

• Borderlands, World Cities (like Miami) where cultures meet become the focus

– Also, showing how “culture” comes to be important in creating differences, hierarchies, etc. that are not only cultural, but political and economic

• No longer just study “a culture,” study how ideas about a “culture” make a difference and get reproduced through institutions

• See slides on Eugenics and Orientalism to see what I mean

A starter note on Difference

• The idea of difference is central to geography

– Basis of geography is that things are in the wrong place, at the wrong time, in the wrong form

• This means people have to move things about across space, which requires it to be organized

• Despite the presence of a greater number of global flows, the Earth will never become “homogenous” – resources, climates, access will all still matter

• Important to recognize prejudices that often seeped into work on “difference” of earlier social scientists.

– Going back and exposing these was necessary to both improve the quality of future research and show respect for other lives

Today’s Difference: Race

• Only 6.3% of variation in human genome can be attributed to “racial” membership

– Thus even if one tribe in New Guinea survived a nuclear holocaust, almost all human diversity would be preserved

• Why and how come race matters?

– “How do globally dynamic interactions, organized according to liberal theories of sovereignty, protection, grievance and remedy, reconfigure but did not dismantle white supremacy in ownership.”

• Major Explanation: Europeans since Enlightenment live in a very occularcentric (vision centered) society

– Seeing is believing; evidence has to be eye-witnessed

– “What counts as difference to the eye transparently embodies explanation for other kinds of differences, which reinforces discourses of inequality”

• Skin color was an all too easy way to devise hierarchies

• Important Note 1: Ideas about race are dynamic and socially produced along with other forms of gender and class difference/inequality

– Allows the costs of current social organization to shift to a “visible” group of people

• Important Note 2: Whiteness is not neutral/natural, it is produced just like “Blackness” or “Oriental-ness” is.

• Just as masculinity is

How did we get here?

• Racial Superiority bound up with idea of nation state and imperialism

– Racism as an institution was thought of by intellectuals, including philosophers and “proven” by anthropologists and to a lesser extent geographers

• So its not just the “uneducated” who furthered racism

• German Romanticism and Idealism important in both theories of nation-state and racial superiority

– Comte de Gonieau, argued that civilizations remain strong so long as they are racial pure; Aryan race was number one for him

• Germans like Bismarck, Wagner, and Nietzsche liked the idea

– Strangest example: Birds can talk because they have a Nordic mouth

• Problem – These intellectuals saw race as an independent variable in inequality (ie something that causes inequality), not as something that is socially constructed. Thus inequality based on skin became “natural”

– Just because it is “socially constructed” does not mean its consequences (or attachments to it) are imaginary

Edward Said

• Palestinian author of Orientalism

– Critiqued the “imaginative geographies” of colonial administrators, researchers and travelers who went to the Middle East during 19^th and 20^th centuries who were known as Orientalists

• Basically killed the use of the word

– Showed how instead of having concern for writing about the conditions on the ground from a perspective locals would recognize, these writers were primarily concerned with drawing a boundary between “us” civilized Europeans and “them” passionate, opulent, violent “Orientals” who needed Europeans to rule them

• Showed how a discourse and institution of cultural domination contributed to economic and political domination

• Came to the forefront of Post-Colonial theory, which is an effort to reclaim the history of colonial times from a European perspective to one less dependent on binaries of us/them.

20^th Century Studies of Race and Intelligence

• Eugenics, popular in U.S. and Britain in early 20^th century, was the science “improving the stock” of humans

– Was a field of study at many universities; supported by Ford and Rockefeller foundations

• Badly Applied concepts of Darwinism to society

• Led to sterilization of mental patients; laws against race mixing some places; in Australia saw attempts to breed aborigines out of existence; led to immigration quotas; Nazi Germany

• In 1994 The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life shows these ideas are still around

– Argued that genetic-based intelligence, as measured by IQ test, determines success and that society would be better off spending less on people who score low on I.Q. tests (mostly African Americans) to allow intelligent class to rise to the top

• Discounts environment, privilege, possibility of multiple intelligence, cultural-specificity of IQ test, constantly rising African American scores

– Supported by those who disliked affirmative action, welfare in general

• Stephen G. Gould The Mis-Measure of Man is a history; critique of these “sciences”

Geography and “Intelligence”

• In early 20^th century, a small number of geographers argued that climate determined intelligence:

– From a high school text book, early 20^th century:

• Torrid zone – “dark colored, passionate, indolent”

• Frigid zone “dark colored, low in stature, ignorant, indolent”

• Temperate zone – “fair, robust, intelligent, industrious”

– Ellen Churchill Semple in 1911:

• “In general a close correspondence exists between climate and temperament. The northern peoples of Europe are energetic, provident, serious, thoughtful, rather than emotional; cautious rather than impulsive. The southerners of the sub-tropical Mediterranean basin are easy going, gay, emotional imaginative, all qualities which among the negroes of the equatorial belt degenerate into grave racial faults.

• This fed into wider discourse (originating outside of geography) of the “White Man’s Burden” to help the world’s people until they could take over for themselves (aka colonialism)

– AKA “We will rule because they cannot rule themselves”

Current Racialized Spaces: Prisons

• Point: Race can be mobilized for economic, political gain

• Gilmore –Profits declining by late 1960’s, corporations went into “tax revolt” by attacking the welfare state

– mobilized those w/ white supremacist tendency of those who associated welfare state with non-whites

• Ironically, middle class whites got much more out of the welfare state than poor people and non-whites.

• At the same time, factories closed, center cities were abandoned to the moderately educated, often minority population (so support ending when most needed)

• Social justice gets replaced by prison justice, under which:

– More behavior becomes criminal

– Minor crimes become major ones

– Sentences increased

• 70% of all convicts committed non-violent crime

• Most prisons are rural, often where a formerly large employer left

– Inmates are disproportionately African American and Hispanic; even more disproportionately poor. Thus racialized.

• Increasingly prisons are private; they are easier to profit from than social services

– They have almost no effect on the local economy (can’t spin off new enterprises, most workers are extra-local)

Recent developments

• 1960’s saw a lot of subversion of racialized identities – groups saying if you identify us this way, we will take that group identity and change it into something positive

• Geographer Jamie Winders has shown how white/black and associated binaries in the U.S. South change over time

– Most important has been Latino migration introducing a third racial category

• Racism occurs across many cultures

– Indigenous groups in Mexico seen as being “simple”; in Malaysia, prejudice against the Chinese for being sucessful

– Acceptance of music, food, sports often comes first, but doesn’t guarantee general acceptance

• In Europe, there is tremendous racism at soccer matches, between supporters and against players

– In India, there is affirmative action for lower caste individuals

– Migration in general breaks down old hierarchies

• Japanese, Chinese, Indians now increasingly amongst world’s wealthiest business leaders

– TNC’s no longer have a white face

Knowing Others through pop culture

• Globalized media can make people feel they “know” others who are spatially and temporally distant from them

– Of course, this “knowing” often occurs in the most limited of ways

• Because things that were once folk cultural practices are now consumed widely, those practices now conform as much to the expectation of outsiders as insiders

• In America, beginning in the 1920s, whites were considered (especially by Europeans) to have lost “all color and spontaneity, and became over-civilized, soft and detached from the harsh realities of their world”

– And so African Americans were looked to by people like the beat poets, not as human beings with their own agenda, but because they were “authentic” compared to “white” culture. This trend in popular culture continues to this day.

• Powerful idea that the Other exists only as so far as they can teach you something about yourself

– This is a common sentiment expressed after vacation: “they taught me so much about myself”

– Also called “Love and Theft” syndrome: ie just because you hold a positive view of some other group, does not mean it is not also a reductive view

Knowing Others through Pop Culture (cont.)

• In Italy (where the African Diasporic population is small, and African American population miniscule), blackness = graffiti, subway trains, fashion, sexuality, rebellion, power, emotion

– Again whatever African American culture may be (as if there was just one), more concern with how it can be used to make a statement about “Italy”

• So Italian youth appropriate their idea of “black culture” through “fashion” and rap

• As problematic as this is, most authors argue there is more to it than theft and mimicry

– Italian rap is hybrid between Italian and their view of African Americans (called “Spaghetti Funk”)

• Still has

– Dispossessed against dominant power narratives – Perhaps some of its power in areas of the world where anti-Americanism is strong

– Aggressive Masculinity

– Self-aggrandizement

Gender! Age!

So what is gender?

• Different than sex, which is biologically determined by genetic arrangement

– Two sexes generally (XX, XY), but regular, small percentage biologically both/in between

– There are some biological difference between large populations of men and women (mostly to do with strength (men), endurance and precise movement (women) , but there are individuals of both sexes who exceed averages:

• Never stopped women from farming, weaving, carrying water, gathering wood

• In today’s economy, these biological differences should matter very little

What is Gender (cont.)

• Gender – Is a culturally defined set of roles and behavior mapped onto biological difference

– These expectations vary over time and place, and often have much bigger impact than biological difference

– For example, societies can be:

• Matrilineal (where property, children part of woman’s family) prevalent in Southeast Asia, some parts of pre-colonial Americas, Pacific and Africa

– Groom often paid bride price, money to bride’s family for her lost labor or moved into the women’s family

• Patrilineal (in man’s family). Europe, Middle East, East & South Asia

– Brides family often paid dowry, money to groom for taking on responsibility of bride

• Guess which is a better deal for women

• Sexuality is practices and identities associated with sexual acts (duh)

– These, like gender, vary greatly over time and space

• Although with globalization and GLBT-focused NGO’s, you are seeing category convergence where categories “heterosexual, gay, lesbian, bisexual” which come from Western context are replacing the myriad of localized categories of sexual practice.

An Important Note

• There are gendered impacts to most phenomenon, as there are class, regional, etc impacts

– For example, green revolution took seed selection task out of women’s hands, put it in the hands of (male) experts; men more likely to get loans for machinery and fertilizer

– Already heard

• Population policies led to missing females

• Export processing zones use a mostly female workforce

• Women often receive less food resources in households

• Gender and sexuality, just like race, can’t be looked at in isolation

Patterns

• Women in recent centuries, in many (but not all) parts of the globe have become increasingly associated with

– Reproduction and maintenance of day to day labor

• In rural areas: Getting water, wood, fodder; taking care of animals, 50% + of agricultural work

– In some areas, women can spend 6 to 10 hours getting water and finding fuel daily

• In urban and rural: cooking, cleaning, taking care of children, listening

– Even more pressure when man migrates to city or mines for work

– Biological Reproduction

– Reproduction of Ideology

• The home, as much as school, socializes children into what society is like

Patterns (cont)

• Colonialism increased public/private divide between men and women

– Euros only dealt with men in trade, administration

• Not to say that some places, like North India and SW Asia, did not already have firm divides in place

– But also, places like Southern India/Southeast Asia did not have such strict divides.

– Tried to export culture of domesticity where women seen as incapable of anything but child-rearing

• Often moral sanctions against women who appear in public

• The divide is the luxury of the relatively wealthy

– Poor women everywhere in public by necessity

– Ironically, the divide is often more strict for people aspiring to wealth than the very wealthy who flaunt it.

Some stats…

• On average, women earn 30-40% less than men

– Occupational differences, glass ceilings

– Scandinavia is home to highest equality; amongst developing countries Barbados, Bahamas, Trinidad & Tobago

• 80% of part-time, per-piece and home-based work done by women

– In other words, work with non-regular contracts

• 90% of domestic violence victims are women

• In Africa and Asia, women work about 12 hours more a week than men

• More specifically, in Sub-Saharan Africa, women

– 99.9% of food preparation

– 99.9% of handicrafts

– 90% of water carrying

– 80% of firewood gathering

– 70% of agricultural labor

– 50% of livestock rearing

From WD…

• Nature and subsistence economy often close together (much subsistence comes from biomass)

– Women often currently associated with the subsistence economy

• Women often leaders in environmental movements, other NGO movements, because women are most closely connected to the effects of economic/environmental change

– Mentioned Chipko movement in India to save indigenous areas from flooding

– In Kenya, Wangari Maathai won Nobel Peace Prize for her grassroots reforestation efforts

From WD

• As market economy spread

– Increased dichotomy between public and private

• In former-socialist Eastern European countries, women were once more represented in government than they are today

– Increasing confining of women to household

• Argued for by missionaries, taught in schools as Victorian ideal

• This had an effect of women’s literacy not increasing as quickly as men

– Women’s illiteracy always exceeds that of men

– Lost control of means of production

• In Zambia, when national grain market was created, men monopolized sale and trade

– Women’s work undervalued

• Especially household work

• Women do participate heavily in work, often in family enterprises

Women and Globalization

• The most recent phase of globalization has been both good and bad for women

• Neo-liberal programs have disproportionally eliminated work recently done by women

– Taken away small supplemental income from farming as option in rural areas as agribusiness is encouraged.

– When jobs flee, women often lose jobs at higher rate

– Has increased inequality across the board, and women are often poorest of the poor

Women and Globalization (cont.)

• Also, women now work more often outside home

– Rarely decreases household work

• As more women everywhere work, more women have the double day

– Meaning women do a full day of work (public) and then the largest part of the domestic burden (private

• But as major income sources, increases power and options

• Most migrants were once men, now women migrating in large numbers as well (from all regions but Middle East/North Africa)

– Now women have access to better wages, university degrees abroad that men have been accessing for longer

– Some occupations (like nursing) provide great salaries for women migrants; but quite often, women who migrate end up with jobs they are overqualified for (child care, housekeeping, retail and restaurant work) with no promotion hope

– Worst is global sex trade, forcing of women into prostitution

• Things are improving: educational attainment on the rise, women’s work being recognized, income gaps closing

Women and Globalization (cont.)

• Television, especially soap operas, provide new standards and models for behavior

– Has increased spending on things like cosmetics, skin whiteners

– Expect more of themselves and spouses

• NGO’s and Internet provide more women-focused content and programs than government and media ever did

• All this provides more chances for women to organize and have common points of reference, call attention to common problems

Cindi Katz: Geographies of Childhood

• Well known geographer who does detailed ethnographic and comparative work.

• Argues that like gender, the category of what it means to be a “child” is socially constructed

– The child, as something other than a little person, and the romantic view of childhood as a time of play and protection, is a Victorian invention

– Also, that “the child” can symbolically be used to shame other groups

• Her research is done on comparing childhood experiences in New York and Sudan, looking at the way global processes effect them

– Almost no work on children in geography until Katz

Child Discourses

• Child worker

– Discourse, especially on campuses, that children should not be forced to work

• As Katz notes “if children did not work, the other option is not school”

• Better options include safer working conditions, better pay in factories for immediate impact; changes in society in general (included in our own)

• Child consumer

– Much less protested about, but children have become a niche market, exposed to all forms of advertising they can’t handle

• Toy stores, for example an important site for the creation of gender roles

– Critique of Disney’s “Princess” discourse as model for little girls

Globalization and Children in New York

– An earlier phase of “industrial capitalism” saw the creation of open spaces for children and workers

• Way to make it more bearable to live in cramped apartments; discipline people through participation in team sports; meet different people to build “American” identity out of different immigrant groups

– In the 1970’s, oil shocks devastated New York’s tax base, all sorts of budgets were slashed

• Staff reduced, maintenance put off, no more balls and equipment lent to those who couldn’t afford them

– Despite economic boom of the 1990’s, parks budgets never recovered

• Giuliani was against any type of spending on collective endeavors; TV and internet replaced small parks as keep-busy activities

• Parks had to start relying on private funding: Central Park and some others do well, others languish

– Thus a move from publicly creating citizen children through parks to encouraging children as individual consumers

Globalization and Children in Sudan

• Did her long term research among children whose village was the recipient of a development project to bring the village into the cash economy

– As parents moved towards cash economy, children had to spend more time foraging and gathering wood, and less in school

• Thus spent less time learning new cash economy knowledge, more time reproducing traditional knowledge

– However, traditional knowledge came in handy during the Civil War, when they grew up and used it to expand the range of land farmed, and thus allowed them to say in place

• Shows projects can have unintended consequences on children, but also that people are enormously adaptive

Geography of Aging

• For societies with low rates of population growth, those who are retired will make up increasingly large segments of the population

– This is even more true as people are living longer

• Why this matters: Most societies are (hopefully) organized to have a large working population supporting a small retired population

– Adjusting to this will require changing geographies of infrastructure, including more care facilities, more hospitals, more medical schools to train doctors, more accessibility accommodations (ramps, assisted hearing, etc)

– Some societies have very little formal social security at all, and depend on families to do it.

• Interesting issue will be the divide between the young-old and the old-old

– The young old (between 60 and 75) likely have retired from their first career, but remain dynamic

• Many interested in travel, but many also interested in pursuing a second career or doing social/charitable work

• They have the potential, if organized and supported, to provide tremendous service to their societies

– The old-old (85+) are less likely to live independently, require either quality institutional settings or support for them to live with children

• This is going to be a growth industry in the United States and Europe, including everything from pharmaceuticals

• Because of its one child policy, in a few decades China will have the largest generation of elderly in the history of civilization