A feminist's work is never done

I took a brief hiatus from blogging to start the spring semester and turn in my tenure file. Hooray, hooray.

However, I also have been on a bit of a FB rampage for the last few days b/c it seems like every time I check in, there is a post about yet another example of how a feminist's work is never done:

In case you had decided to drop off FB for a while, the matter currently raging is the decision made by the board of Susan Komen for the Cure - an organization that has done such praiseworthy work raising awareness and funds for breast cancer research - to withdraws its support of cancer screening and prevention activities from Planned Parenthood.

See this pie chart from the Washington Post, which illustrates what services Planned Parenthood actually provides.

I think it is important to note that abortion services account for only 3 percent of PP's activities. However, I personally do not think that is worth crowing over. There are any number of PP clinics that offer no abortion services, period. Which means that there are too many women who do not have abortion services accessible and available to them. I get that it is likely smart in today's political climate to spin PP as 97 percent not abortion, but I also feel like we who are taking a stand with Planned Parenthood need to get away from being oh so apologetic about abortion. Its accessibility and availability are concerns of dignity and justice.

Here is a petition being made to the Komen foundation, and here is one in support of Planned Parenthood.

In other news:

* The New York Times published an opinion piece, "Pregnant, and Pushed out of a Job,".

* Kate Clancy posted this story on sexual harassment in academia.

* The Huffington Post reposted this from Denene Milner over at My Brown Baby - a painful piece on "Birthing While Black."

What a week. So, we all should get some rest b/c we clearly have a lot to do.

Keeping up with the Times

Just a quick comment on this piece on "The Dwindling Power of a College Degree," which appeared in the NYT Sunday Magazine for November 27:

Computers have hurt workers outside factories too. Picture the advertising agency in “Mad Men,” and think about the abundance of people who were hired to do jobs that are now handled electronically by small machines. Countless secretaries were replaced by word processing, voice mail, e-mail and scheduling software; accounting staff by Excel; people in the art department by desktop design programs. This is also true of trades like plumbing and carpentry, in which new technologies replaced a bunch of people who most likely stood around helping measure things and making sure everything worked correctly.

As a result, the people whose jobs remained valuable in that “Mad Men” office were then freed up to do more valuable things. A talented art director could produce more work more quickly with InDesign. A bright accountant could spend more time thinking of new ways to make and save money, rather than spending endless hours punching numbers into an adding machine. Global trade works much the same way. It’s horrible news for a textile factory worker in North Carolina, but it may be great for a fashion designer in New York.

Has it, in fact, been great for that art director and accountant and fashion designer? Or, in addition to producing more work quickly, thinking of new ways to make and save money, and so on, are these workers not also having to take on paperwork, maintain correspondences by voice and e-mail, and schedule meetings and what not via Outlook? The technologies do not do the work on their own - they still require people to run them. Except that those people are no longer dedicated staff that (in my opinion, more efficiently) manages the operations of a workplace.

In the workplace of higher ed, I recently heard from a colleague that how a few of her now-approaching-emeritus faculty member typically handled attendance (until quite recently) was that they circulated a sheet of paper asking students to sign in - then passed along the sheets to their full-time department secretary to keep track of student absences! So that the older faculty members could not understand how and why younger faculty members complained that they could not "count" attendance in their grading. Hint: Because it takes a lot of time to keep track of student attendance. Time that younger faculty members do not necessarily have b/c we have absorbed a lot of workplace operational work ourselves... (Not to mention whether or not it is even appropriate to ask department secretaries to do work like this...)

Here is what I found a bit frightening:

A general guideline these days is that people are rewarded when they can do things that take trained judgment and skill — things, in other words, that can’t be done by computers or lower-wage workers in other countries. Money now flows around the world so quickly, and technology changes so fast, that people who thought they were in high demand find themselves uprooted.

I think we tenure-track faculty members cannot take for granted that professors will always be needed. (We know that they are not always wanted...)

It is happening already, believe it or not, in K12 schooling. Read this piece, "How Online Learning Companies Bought America's Schools," from The Nation's November 16 issue.

The new normal sucks.

The demise of the Korean deli

A friend posted on Facebook this article on the demise of Korean grocers in New York City, noting that it seemed both not a bad thing, but also a bit sad.

I know what she means. Not a bad thing in that running a mom-and-pop store is not just a job, but a livelihood that involves entire families. I think the only time that my aunts and uncles closed their stores might have been for funerals in the family. When I was planning my wedding, my mother reminded me that it ought not interfere with store hours.

Like the people interviewed in the article, I think my aunts and uncles regarded their stores as the best opportunities available to them here in the United States, but they hoped for still better opportunities for their children.

So, it seems sad that - at least according to the NYT - the wane of the Korean grocery store is a result (and a sign) of "the same forces that threaten all sorts of mom-and-pop businesses: rising rents, increased competition from online and corporate rivals, and more scrutiny from city agencies that impose fines."

For me, this is not just about the closing of Korean grocery stores, but also the narrowing of possibilities.

B/c while my aunts and uncles did not necessarily aspire to running a store, I think they will agree that it indeed enabled them not only to make a living, but to make lives for themselves and their children. It permitted them a degree of independence: I think it makes a difference that when they interacted with other (non-Korean) Americans, they were store owners and managers interacting with customers, not employees or laborers interacting with employers or bosses.

I disagree with the blogger at New York Press: Korean Grocers Move on to Bigger and Better Things. I appreciated that the NYT offered a bit more nuance in its account than that.

Bigger-and-better seems to be the story that we all want to believe: The American dream. Especially in a place like New York City, which specializes in cheering for the underdog. We do not want the story to be that Korean mom-and-pop stores are closing b/c small business no longer presents the possibilities that it apparently did for earlier generations. We do not want the story to be that the underdog will not win.

Telling us what we think we already know

That is what I think undergraduate students think I do as a professor of anthropology.

I say that b/c of course it is that time again: In-class review and then exams suggest to me that for each student who genuinely seems to have grasped the concepts as presented to them in class, then absorbed them well enough to think through the ways in which they apply in various situations (including in his or her own life), there are others who walk in and out of class apparently immune to education.

Sigh.

This is a point that columnist Katha Pollitt makes in the May 16th issue of The Nation, as she discusses the rise and fall from grace of memoirist and erstwhile do-gooder Greg Mortenson:

As a string of much-praised fake memoirs can attest - to say nothing of Bernie Madoff's meteoric career - people don't look closely at stories that tell them what they want to hear. Americans love to be inspired by heroic lone individuals who provide simple solutions to complicated problems - especially when the individuals are American and famous, the solutions are cheap and the problems are far away.

I admit that as a cultural anthropologist, I both agree with Pollitt - and feel vaguely queasy b/c I suspect that what students learn in ANTH 100 Introduction to Cultural Anthropology is the story that they want to hear. That is, the truth that they think they already know. Note that I say "what students learn." Not "what I teach." Or at least try to teach.

I think students learn that "culture" is a simple solution and a complicated problem. As in, Our culture could teach Them Over There what to do in order to fix all of Their problems, which are rooted in Their culture. They need to learn from Us.

Exhibit A: Nicholas Kristof's column on female "circumcision" this week in the New York Times. (See a response at Living Anthropologically.)

Kristof ought to read Pollitt. In fact, I ought to assign this column for ANTH 100 next fall:

We've gotten used to a certain kind of NGO fairy tale, as depicted in the children's book Beatrice's Goat, much admired by Kristof: Heifer International gives a family a farm animal, and in a dozen years, the profits send a daughter to college.... Faced with the chance to transform a life, we forget that poor people rarely need just one small thing, that they are embedded in immensely complex and oppressive social worlds.

I am grateful to Pollitt for giving a name (NGO fairy tale) to the gripe that I have had with efforts like Clean the World, "which distributes recycled soap products, along with appropriate educational materials, to impoverished countries worldwide, and to domestic homeless shelters." (Along these lines, I had heard about a group called Underwear for Africa (and in the UK, Knickers for Africa.)

It is not just that we forget, but we want (and in a way, need) to believe that poor people need Just One Small Thing b/c that seems to be all we are willing to give toward justice.