AFLO quote of the day:
U.C.L.A. – University of Caucasians Lost in Asia
(commenting to my pointing out of the difference in perceptions between what “public” and “private” in higher ed imply outside and inside the U.S., citing UCLA as the prime example of what a “good” college in the U.S. is for koreans in Chile (given that it is a public university)
Medical Anthropology class,
this is the coverage on the study of high school romantic and sexual networks that I mentioned today in class. This is the link to the paper:
Chains of Affection: The Structure of Adolescent Romantic and Sexual Networks
Peter S. Bearman, Columbia University
James Moody, Ohio State University
Katherine Stovel, University of Washington
www.sociology.ohio-state.edu/jwm/chains.pdf
Ohio State University has a press release summarizing the findings:
RESEARCHERS MAP THE SEXUAL NETWORK OF AN ENTIRE HIGH SCHOOL
researchnews.osu.edu/archive/chains.htm
as I explained in class, the paper studies sexual behavior of jefferson high school students and how they form a network of sorts, that sprawls fairly uniformly compared to adult sexual behavior. They do so via a number of confidential surveys conducted in 1995. Researchers concluded that
unlike many adult networks, there was no core group of very sexually active people at the high school. There were not many students who had many partners and who provided links to the rest of the community. (Grabmeier citing Moody’s conclusion, in the press release above)
I saw this paper mentioned in zamzzi.com, a south corean blog loosely linked to an online sex toys/supplies store maintained by the same person. The posting, in turn, was referring to a news article in NaverNews [네이버뉴스] and originally developed by Chosun.com [조선일보].
This is how it was intially portrayed in the south corean press:
Caption: Sexual Relationship Strucutre of Jefferson High Students. Blue=male students, Red=female students. “2건” stands for “2 cases”. “63쌍” stands for “63 couples”.
Source: 윤희영, chosun.com 25/01/05. 288명이 性관계로 연결: 미국고교생 실태 표본조사 832명중 126명만 ‘1대1’
[Heeyung, Yoon. 288 people were sexualy networked: only 126 out of 832 high school students were in a “1 on 1 relationship” in a U.S. high school students sample research.]
article: www.chosun.com/international/news/200501/200501250338.html
same artice: news.naver.com/news/read.php?mode=LSD&office_id=023&article_id=0000109820
It is of interest how this chart was initially pictured in the paper:
From the American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 100, No. 1. “Chains of affection: The structure of adolescent romantic and sexual networks,” Bearman PS, Moody J, Stovel K.
south corean blog entry commenting on the story: zzamzi.com/tt/index.php?pl=195
another blog entry: Roland Piquepaille. The Sexual Network of a High School primidi.com/2005/01/27.html
It struck me how several reactions to the coverage at naver.com (which caters to a young readership, mostly in their late 20’s) were expressing “disappointment” (huh?) at how far “sexually perverted” the U.S. society was from what they had imagined it to be. There was abundant attack on the existence of homosexuals and “cheap girls” as portrayed by the chart. In part, I think, this has to do with how the study was portrayed (the subtitle was emphasizing how “only” 13% of the population was in a single relationship) The more conservative chosun.com did not receive any readership reaction.
zamzzi.com’s article gave it a more positive spin, focusing on the fact that the research suggested a honest solution to the realities of high schools in the u.s. Readership reaction were on a similar tone as well.
anyway, I wanted to point out that the professor’s observation that “when you engage in sexual intercourse with a person, STD-wise this implies engaging in sexual intercourse with every single person that that person has had an intercourse with, and in turn with every person that those people have had an intercourse with, and so forth” was portrayed in a dramatically more graphic fashion with the blue dots/red dots chart. Ah, this has nothing to do with the elections (I think)
From: Jeanne Morales
To: annouce list
Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2005 9:18 AM
Subject: A message from President Rosenberg
To all members of the Macalester community:
At their meeting on January 7, 2005, the Macalester Board of Trustees approved unanimously the following resolution regarding financial aid policies at the college:
Financial aid policies shall be maintained to meet the full financial need of all admitted students.
The College shall establish a specific budget for financial aid. This budget shall be used to maintain an economically diverse student body while supporting Macalester’s mission of academic excellence with special emphasis on multiculturalism, internationalism, and service to society.
Periodic reports shall be made by the College administration to the Board of Trustees to ensure that the College is meeting the aforementioned goals.
Given the many discussions of financial aid that have taken place on and off campus during the past several months, it seems critical that I underscore again the reasons behind the passage of this motion, what the action means, andof equal importancewhat it does not mean for Macalester’s commitment to access.
I should begin by addressing the concerns of those who question why the Board made this decision in January, when many students have been arguing for a delay until March or May or beyond. Rest assured that those arguments were communicated to the Trustees, who heard at their meeting from the President of MCSG and from other students opposed to a change in policy. I could provide you with any number of reasons for the decision to act now: the fact that our Admissions and Financial Aid offices will need time to plan for a thoughtful implementation of a new policy by the fall of 2006; that we need to be able to describe our policies accurately and openly to current high school juniors, who between now and May will begin looking at Macalester; that even with a decision now, it will not be until 2010 until the new policy is fully implemented. All this is true. More important, however, may be the observation that individuals simply reach a point when they are convinced that an action is right and necessary, that the members of the Board reached that point some time ago, and that to delay acting under those circumstances would be both ineffectual and dishonest. Ultimately the Trustees did not want to pretend to a hesitation that did not in fact exist.
To those who have been following this discussion, I would guess, much of what I have to say will be old news. For a variety of reasons, Macalester derives less revenue from tuition that do virtually all colleges of similar kind and quality: our comprehensive fee, however high it might appear, is actually among the lowest in our peer group; because about 75 percent of our students receive financial aid grantsmost of them need-basedonly one in four pay that fee; both the number of students on aid and the discount rate, or the percentage of tuition that students do not pay, have been rising at a rate faster than that at other colleges. The discount rate for first-year students in 2004-2005 has reached 47.4 percent, the highest in the college’s history, dramatically higher than the rate at virtually all need-blind colleges, and nearly double what it was at Macalester only 20 years ago.
Some have contended that what is happening at peer institutions is irrelevant; that the fact that we can spend many fewer dollars per student than other colleges is simply a tribute to our efficiency and ingenuity; and that we should define our goals and expectations wholly in reference to a set of internal standards. I believe this position to be incorrectthat is, I believe that any enterprise must avoid isolationism and benchmark itself against its peers and that, moreover, comparing colleges is precisely and appropriately what prospective students do when making one of the most consequential decisions of their lives. Even if we ignore other colleges altogether, however, we have plenty of internal indicators that signal a persistent budgeting problem, including our almost uniquely low staffing levels, our inability to increase budgets in the library and academic programs even to keep pace with inflation, and our inability to add programs and services widely acknowledged to be desirable for our students.
Some have argued, too, that this extraordinary commitment to financial aid should be cause for celebration rather than concern and, in truth, it is something of which Macalester can be deeply proud. But a commitment to aid is not and cannot be our only commitment, given our fundamental mission. We pledge as well to meet the educational needs of those students who do enroll in the college, and our increasing emphasis on aid has meant a proportionately decreasing emphasis on all other priorities at Macalester. We are fast approaching the point at which those students who do pay full tuition at the college will actually be paying more than we are spending on their educationwill actually, in other words, be getting less than they are paying for. To reach that point, it seems to me, would be to break faith with a commitment of no little importance.
For anyone charged with the stewardship of Macalester to ignore these circumstances would be irresponsibility of the highest order. Such ignorance would certainly be possible: as many have pointed out, Macalester faces no imminent fiscal crisis, is not in danger of closing its doors, and continues to find ways to pay its bills and serve its students. But we would be purchasing our current peace at the expense of future students, faculty, and staff, who would someday and inevitably be confronted by a problem even more acute and more difficult to solve than the one we face today. It would be easier to ignore this challengethis I know better than anyonebut it would be wrong to do so.
The trustees’ action declares simply that our commitment to financial aid shall and must be part of the same challenging and careful deliberations as are our other fundamental commitments: to providing first-rate academic programs, to creating a diverse and supportive community, to compensating our employees fairly and competitively, to preserving the campus for future generations. No one would argue, I think, that Macalester considers any of these unimportant because we engage each year in intense discussions that attempt to balance our desires and our resources; no one should assume that financial aid will suddenly become unimportant as we make it part of those discussions.
What precisely does the decision by the Board of Trustees not mean? It does not mean that we will end our commitment to meeting the full demonstrated need of every entering student: every student we admit will continue to be provided with an aid package that enables her or him to attend Macalester. It does not mean that we will admit all domestic students on a need-aware basis or that the most needy students will be affected the most: the vast majority of domestic applicants will continue to be admitted on a need-blind basis. In practice we expect that well over 90 percent of our admissions decisions for domestic students will continue to be made precisely as they are today and that by any conceivable measurediscount rate, percentage of students on aid, average aid awardMacalester will remain among the most accessible and economically diverse liberal arts colleges in the country.
There are those, finally, who would contend that by failing to include strict and specific guidelines in their motion, the trustees have placed too much trust in the staff and administration of the college. Only time can provide a definitive response to such arguments. I believe, however, that the trustees have very deliberately taken the position that the Macalester community needs to be trusted in this area, as in others, to act in ways consistent with the mission and purpose of the college and that to micro-manage the process would be to declare a lack of confidence in its willingness and ability to do so. The truth is that we already have a demonstration of how the college behaves absent the guidelines of a need-blind admissions policy. We have never been need-blind for international students, and yetunlike the vast majority of our peerswe consistently admit a diverse, gifted, and high-need group of students from around the world whose average discount rate is actually higher than that for domestic students. We could make other choices; the fact that we do not, and that we use the resources of the college so clearly to support its mission, is the best evidence I can imagine to suggest how we will behave now and in the future. History has taught us pretty clearly that those who cannot be trusted to adhere to principle without imposed rules generally cannot be trusted to adhere to principle with them.
Thank you all for your passionate engagement in this discussion and for your many thoughtful questions and ideas. Particular thanks are due to the students who worked with great energy and care on the “Defend Need Blind Admissions at Macalester” report. Though I differ with some of the assumptions and conclusions in the report, I admire its quality and larger goals. More important in the end than the authors’ disagreement with the Board or dissatisfaction with my leadership will, I hope, be their enhanced understanding of the challenges we face and their deep and abiding allegiance to our great college.
Brian Rosenberg
blog.godpeople.com
blogger.com/profile/5832619
from AndreSW:
andrewsw.com/pages/BlogFate?p=907
Create your feed of my blog by choosing which categories of my blog you are interested in having in your own custom feed, and which categories you would rather not see at all.
if only RSS could be delivered through mailing lists! *laugh* we could revolutionize content delivery for low-tech Adelante!’s members who don’t have their own computers. (e.g. there wouldn’t be a need for a separate CMS and mailing list server)
he’s also working on a “feed comments to my own comments” so that conversations over the web can flow more.. continuously. conceptually similar to mediamob.co.kr ‘s “replies board” [리플게시판] feature, but more to the core of the idea of following conversations.
damn.
Sent to: Ricardo Levins Morales, Mellon group
Yup, that’s the shortcut to perdition. [blog entry translation]
by Jungtae Roh mediamob.co.kr/rasugjuriha
original entry in korean at mediamob.co.kr/rasugjuriha/Post/PostView.aspx?RowCount=&PKId=22621
As my friend FunnyHat appropriately pointed out , getting your calculators out and making all sorts of predictions out of the U.S. presidential elections is quite meaningless and may even be bad for your health. What we really need to talk about at this point is about [south korean] national politics, which will influence us and to which we can exert influence. I can’t hold myself from saying this: just look at them – that’s the shortcut to perdition. A “critical support” [A] or “lesser evil” strategy is nothing but a shortcut to eternal damnation.
IC, CP,
This section discusses the current human rights debate between a number of East Asian states intent on economic development and Western states’ views of basic human rights and universalism.
A first perspective comes from Bilhari Kausikan. In his comment, Kausikan argues that human rights touch upon delicate matters of culture and values. In Kausikan’s view, realities and interests must be taken into account when promoting or speaking about human rights. Kausikan states that although abuses and inconsistencies continue to exist in Asia, the human rights situation has greatly improved in the last 20 years. Kausikan believes that Western states’ self-interest and pressure on Asian countries, which are often insufficient and condescendingly ethnocentric, deny the improvements that the region has made.
Next, Kausikan comments that the diversity of cultural traditions, political structures, and levels of development, is difficult and almost impossible for a universal view to apply in regards to the human rights regime in Asia. Whereas the West has an individualistic ethos approach, the East and South-East Asia have a communitarian approach. As a result, Kausikan states that there is “a general discontent throughout the region with a purely Western interpretation of human rights” (540). In order to find a balance between a pretentious and unrealistic universalism and a paralyzing cultural relativism, Kausikan writes that a genuine and fruitful dialogue will need to take place in order to expand and deepen consensus between Western and Asian states on the issues of human rights. According to Kausikan, “the West will have to accept that no universal consensus may be possible and that states can legitimately agree to disagree without being guilty of sinister designs of bad faith… it will require the West to make complex political distinctions, perhaps refraining from taking a position on some human rights issues, irrespective of their merits, in order to press others where the prospects for consensus are better” (543). By allowing cultural leeway in interpretation human rights, are we undermining the essence of the rights themselves? Where should we draw the line?
The White Paper provides us with the government of China’s view on human rights issues. According to China, “as history develops, the concept and connotation of human rights also develop constantly… the most urgent human rights are still the right to subsistence and the right to economic, social, and cultural development; therefore, attention should first be given to the right of development” (547). In addition, the paper argues that human rights are essentially a matter of domestic jurisdiction. For China, “international human rights activities should be carried on in the spirit of seeking common ground while reserving differences, mutual respect, and the promotion of understanding and cooperation” (548).
A second perspective comes from Yash Ghai. Ghai criticizes the Asian approach that because human rights are propounded in the West on individuals, they have no relevance to Asia, which is based on the primacy of community. Ghai argues that perceptions of human rights in Asia are reflective of economic, political, and social conditions; therefore, they vary from country to country and cannot be summarized into one “Asian” view. In addition, Ghai states that some Asian governments use communitarian arguments to support their proposition that rights are culture specific. According to Ghai though, this argument is flawed because it is also used to deny the claims and assertions of communities in the name of ‘national unity’ and ‘stability.’ In addition, Ghai argues that Asian governments’ view of the State is not synonymous with community. Ghai writes that the State is an imposition on society. Some Asian governments use the justification of ‘in the name of development’ to justify the denial of and violation of human rights. As Ghai states, “the contemporary State intolerance of opposition is inconsistent with traditional communal values and processes” (552). In what ways can communitarianism foster an individual understanding of human rights that does not undermine the community at large? Is it possible?
A third perspective comes from Jack Donnelly. Donnelly invites us to consider the contemporary arguments against universal human rights standards on the basis of cultural relativism. Donnelly states that, “we must be alert to cynical manipulations of a dying, lost, or even mythical cultural past” (553). According to Donnelly, cultural relativist arguments are the economic and political elites’ tools to justify their corruptions and maintain their power.
A fourth perspective comes from Soek-Fang Sim. Sim explores the logic of the one-party rule in Singapore and how the meaning of Asian Values is instrumental to sustain this logic. According to Sim, within the Asian Values discourse, “nation [is placed] above self.” Capitalism and authoritarianism are therefore reinforcing. In addition, Sim refers to Asian Values as “a strong normative centre” that plays the role of the social gaze. As she argues, “Asian Values makes for the subordination rather than the incorporation of dissent.” Is dissent possible under an authoritarian regime?
Group 8: AT, AW, Yongho Kim
Response to The Notion of “Rights”: Origins and Relations to Duties. Monday, September 22nd.
Chapter 5 provides a close-up of the notion of rights and their historical evolution. The notion of rights emerged as a refining of the concept of ‘natural law’ coined in the 17th and 18th centuries by the Enlightment philosophers (Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau). In an era of Revolution (England’s Revolution, French Revolution and the Independence of the US) and exaltation of humanity, the natural rights were seen in absolutist terms as ‘inalienable’ ‘unalterable and eternal’ as self-evident truths that required recognition. That view was strongly criticized in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when scholars viewed the natural rights as an “unreal and metaphysical phenomena.” (Steiner, 326) The idea of human rights fully emerged after the fall of Nazi Germany. Do we see a pattern in the historical evolution of the notion of rights? What would that pattern indicate for the future?
Three contemporary comments on the human rights follow this brief overview.
1. David Sidorsky emphasizes the two main functions of the human rights: universality (1) based solely (2) on the virtue of being human. He distinguishes that unlike the natural rights, human rights function more on an international arena and points toward six elements that mark the ideological continuum between natural rights and human rights. He makes the comment that exercising the human rights was by protecting the individual sphere from coercive actions rather than fostering the future means for protecting the individual sphere. Are HR more preventive in nature than natural rights?
2. Kamenka distinguishes the rights from different types of claims. He describes rights as claims that have achieved endorsement by “widespread sentiment or an international order’ (Steiner, 329) The key words in his argument are importance, urgency, universality, endorsement, conflict. The conflict seems to arise from the lack of authoritative voices, but rights are to transcend any authority. What is the supreme authority? Do we need one? Are we trying to create one?
3. Kennedy brings the Spotlight on the US. He describes the rights as universal and factoid ‘mediators’ (330) between value judgments and factual judgments. His piece puts the relationship between rules and rights into perspective. Chicken or egg? – Rights or rules? Can they coexist? Can they exist independently? Is the US a ‘rights country’? Do rights turn into rules when legally adopted? Should we tend towards an incorporation of the rights into the legislature? What about duties?
The next section analyzed the common charges towards human rights. The first charge addressed the rigidity of rights, their absolutist character. Many people think that the complex issues of our day should not be solved by the simple formulas inherent in many rights, but by what should be a longer and more detailed political discussion. The next charge concerned the indeterminacy of rights. Due to the vague nature of rights, they are often just the beginning of discussions and need to be specified in order to have any solid meaning. Rights are also criticized for being too individualistic and for dismissing important moral and social dimensions of many current issues. Because of the abstractness found in many rights, people think they have been used to protect prior practices from change, in a very anti-democratic manner. The last charge focused on the lack of responsibility individuals have when they depend too heavily on rights, which stops them from doing what is right and from doing things for themselves.
Stemming from the six different groups of charges against rights, two issues in particular emerged as especially interesting and controversial. All individuals have the ‘right to free speech,’ but what should be done when men and women use this right in controversial ways and create violent pornography, hate speech and advertisements for cigarettes (338)? Since everyone has the right to free speech are these kind of actions acceptable? Or because this right is so general and vaguely worded, can it even be applied to these cases until it is specified? Or should it not be specified?
The abstractness and open-endedness of many rights give them a wide range of meanings. Concepts about one’s rights begin to mean different things to different people and take on inconsistent meanings. For example, the right to privacy grants all individuals the right to be left undisturbed by the government with regards to certain personal issues. Many people consider then that women have the right to choice about abortion and reproduction issues. Since what you do during pregnancy is a personal affair between you and your doctor, not a political issue, should it not then be classified under your right to privacy? What do you think about what George Bush and many congress people are doing today in relation to the issue? Do you think the anti-choice legislation that is being passed is going against a woman’s right to privacy? The government approves stepping in and meddling with a woman’s private decision to choice, so why do they not step in more actively and intervene or punish individuals when a woman is being assaulted by domestic violence? Why should the government be able to intervene on certain issues and not others? And who decides which issues are the government’s business? Or because of the right to privacy, should they stay out of all personal matters completely?
Often the East and the West are stereotypically polarized in the argument that the former is intuitionistic and family-centered, while the latter is rational and law-centered. A reading of two “eastern” frameworks –Jewish and Gikuyu- and a comparison between the ICCPR and the African Charter, throws more details into the issue. Cover explains that the term “mitzvoth” or obligation, which dominates the Jewish legal language, is a main force that held the Jewish community through centuries of hardship (343). He goes on to argue that an ideology of rights, such as that represented by the US (and European) tradition, counters the state from accruing and abusing power, while an ideology of obligations or mitzvoth counters the external forces that endanger the unity of the Jewish community. Is Cover correct in his identifying the western rights discourse, or is he merely forcing an opposite to the Jewish system?
Another duty-centered society is the Kenyan Gikuyu society. Kenyatta describes the strong social ties binding individuals in many activities – a restriction touching on authoritarianism – and defends the tradition because it keeps social mechanisms critical for its survival. Not everybody likes a narrowly tied-down system, and dissenters find an alternative in the European individualism. Kenyans are said to cry out: “the white man had spoiled and disgraced our country”. Do you think this feeling belongs to an outdated generation who only looks to settle old traditions? How does this relate back to the CEDAW; for instance, if the circumcision of women in the muslim tradition (as practiced in Somalia) were a part of the Kenyan tradition, how would popular rhetoric justify such practice? Reading Kenyatta, it seems as though “western” values were diametric to those among the Gikuyu. But, is family really not a focal point in US societies? For instance, what is the Financial Aid Office implying when it states that family should be the main resource in affording college tuition? Why is Thanksgiving a national holiday? Where does a major portion of college social interaction occur, in institutionalized settings, such as “dorm lounge”, “interest club” or “Friday party”, or in isolated one-to-one encounters?
The African Charter on Human Rights and People’s Rights raises controversy. Freedom of association and immigration are granted with reservations when pertaining to national security (Art. 11 and 12); Art. 29 (2-5) specifies individual duties that remind of the National-Sozialistisch party when pertaining to “national solidarity” or “subversive or terrorist activities” (23.a,b). Liberation from direct colonial rule and postcolonial economic exploitation, “resorting to any means” is also emphasized. (20.2,3, 21.5). Finally, it promotes family relations such as the rearing and education of children, and the protection for the elderly and sustaining of parents (18.4, 29.1). Do you think that all three of these forms of particularities that stand out in the African Charter could be lumped together as the single category of “culture”? How do some of these duties infringe the UDHR? Makau argues that these unexpected rights correspond to pre-colonial times. (358) While he concedes that much has changed in Africa after colonial rule, he highlights the values set forth by the Charter as “ideals in pre-colonial African philosophy”. Makau acknowledges that the Charter may be abused by political elites, but at the same time argues that such a generous Charter also opens doors for grass-roots democracy and fraternal governance, “as in the days of the old where chiefs were held accountable” (360). Steiner is particularly critical of Makau’s viewpoint, framing his own questions as “Does his argument persuade you?” or “Is his view helpful?” instead of “Do you agree?”. Can the fact that Steiner is a Harvard law professor in the United States be an influence in his position towards Makau? What other variables should be taken into account when contextualizing the African Charter, for example, that pre-colonial societies bore no written law, or that European rulers further fostered inter-tribal animosity to facilitate colonial domination?
