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Volume 20, No. 9, Week of July 18, 2004

Summer Re-Organization of Site in Progress
Please use the California State University, Dominguez Hills Mirror Site for the next few weeks.
Updating Indices, including Topic Index and Site Index
Organizing new material to fit into visual sociology and visual criminology context.
jeanne, Web Technicienne, June 11, 2004; still reorganizing. July 16, 2004

Poverty

After Francine Orr's Los Angeles Times photo.
After Francine Orr's Photograph

When the Push for Survival Is a Full-Time Job

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California State University, Dominguez Hills
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Created: July 11, 2004
Latest Update: July 16, 2004
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Topic of the Week:

It's All Relative in My Metanarrative

Workers transporting heavy sacks on wooden chukudu.

In Its Different Guises
Photo by Francine Orr, Los Angeles Times
From the Front Page of the Los Angeles Times, July 11, 2004

July 11, 2004

Poverty is relative, for poverty is relative deprivation. That means "compared to what?" (Jazz musician, Les McCann) Perhaps this is one way to remember the 20th century debate of postmodernists against metanarrative. No story, no perspective tells it all. I was profoundly touched by the photograph of this rough hewn chukudu, a hand made wooden scooter for shoving heavy loads back and forth. This is how some in Goma earn a few cents a day for survival.

" It is never enough. In Goma, near the heart of Africa, an average family of seven spends about $63 a month, two-thirds of it on food. With every dollar, they make a choice among competing needs — food, rent, clothes, school and medicine."

We are no longer complaining of a lack of safety nets just in this country. The photograph of the chukudu was on the front page of the Los Angeles Times. I' m either concerned or living in a fairlyland where all is good in the best of all possible worlds, or unconscious. Refusing to listen and see in good faith, in a world that brings the information right to my doorstep makes me complicit. OK, so I'm not starving these people. But I am living on the benefits of the resources stolen by people like me, countenanced by my government, and now many starve for we see fit not to compensate them in our limited view of social justice.

Charities are not the answer, although Tzedekheit is good, for this is not an issue of throwing money after exploitation. The exploitation has done major harm; an infrastructure in which these people can survive cannot be built by the random goodness of people who care. It must be built with forethought (Vörsorge) or fore-worry, with a knowledgeable view to the long-term consequences to the people we have harmed and the earth they and we live on.

Honoring the Forgotten Casualties By Gillian Tindall. New York Times. Published: July 11, 2004. Backup


Anne Watkins

. . .

"This is all very nice, you may say, and a carefully managed forest with memorial plaques will be a lovely thing if you're in the area, but what makes it worth a trip now? Shouldn't the avenues and copses of beech, horse chestnut, larch, lime and willow, the wildflower meadow and the water-bird lake be given a few years to mature?

The answer is that it already contains one monument that is unique and is perhaps a peculiarly British piece of fairness and respect-given-where-due.

"It is the Shot at Dawn Memorial, unveiled in June 2001. It does not commemorate heroes, or those such as prisoners of war and unlucky civilians on whom a terrible heroism was sometimes thrust. It was erected in memory, and as long overdue amends, to the 300-odd British soldiers of World War I who were judged by their fellows to have failed in their duty and, by the summary justice of those terrible killing fields, were executed for desertion in the face of the enemy.

"The fate of these men became a secret in the decades that followed, first kept by their shamed families and then, as law and social opinions changed, by the military authorities themselves. Had they really hustled to a dawn meeting with death these men who were already psychological casualties of constant bombardment, groggy with memory loss, shaking with what was even then recognized as shell shock, what we would call acute traumatic stress? It was not until the beginning of the 1980's that a judge was given privileged access to the men's files to write an account and not until 1992 that they were opened to the public.

"Some excerpts are now available at the visitors' center, and they make poignant reading. Many of the men were boys still in their teens, and it is clear that some of them had joined up by giving a false age and should not have been at the front at all. Some were not very bright and had little understanding of where wandering off the battlefield might lead them. Some had deserted in an attempt to sort out troubles at home, some had recently had news of the death of brothers in other parts of the line. The majority were not conscripts but had volunteered at the beginning of the war. Described as "good soldiers," many had already been wounded and then had returned to the front."

From Honoring the Forgotten Casualties By Gillian Tindall.New York Times. Published: July 11, 2004. Backup

More resources and discussion questions.

NEWS and Announcements:

  • Conference in New Orleans in September: Naked Space Exhibit

  • Populist Book Rails Against Monologic Non-Answerability in Hierarchical Hegemony:

  • Held Over Tilting at Windbags: A Crusade Against Rank By Julie Salamon. NY Times. Published: July 10, 2004. Backup.


    Stephen F. Hayes
    Cover illustration of "Somebodies and Nobodies" by Robert W. Fuller.

    Fuller's book is called populist theory, meaning that it doesn't have the sanction of the academy. Notice particularly the last paragraph of the article:

    "When he spoke at Mount Holyoke College last September, Andrea Ayvazian, dean of religious life, was surprised to see how mixed the audience was: students, faculty members, administrators, staff members and campus workers. "Bob's analysis freed people who considered themselves low in the hierarchy to tell their stories," said Dr. Ayvazian, who was a student of Mr. Fuller's 30 years earlier. "I saw this had struck a chord in unpredictable circles."

  • Visual Sociology: Poverty

  • Child Photographers Show Lives of Hardship and Hope By Julie Salamon. NY Times. Published: July 10, 2004. Backup

    • . . .

    The picture on the left was taken by Nguyen Chau Thuy Trang/Street Vision, for PhotoVoice. The picture on the right is on the Denise Bibro Fine Art site for the exhibit of Photovoice: Photography Subjects Speak Out Jun 10 - Jul 17, 2004.

  • PhotoVoice Home Source of many of the photos.

  • Living on Pennies The Los Angeles Times Series on poverty, from which the inspiration for this week's digital painting came. Excellent series. Try sharing it.

    • Debriefing the Naked Space Exhibit

    Summer 2004 Project


    This IS A Hypertext Project Map
    For The Naked Space Exhibit "Freeing the Feminine Other" in May 2004
    Link on Section Titles for Hypertext Poem and Contents.

    Academic Support

  • SquiggleFinding Internet Resources

  • SquiggleEvaluating Internet Resources

    • Evaluating Hoax Email with samples, including an old one about charging for email that's going around again. Link updated March 29, 2004.
    • Evaluating Internet Resources Library Site at University of North Carolina. Don't forget to question. This is a good detailed source. Link checked March 29, 2004.

    • Using Academic Language and Visuals Effectively

    Merriam-Webster Dictionary Search:

    Today's Word: From the Word.A.Day Site

    Dictionary of Critical Sociology
    Maintained by Robert E. Mazur, Associate Professor, Iowa State University, Sociology.

    Words of Art: Front Page
    Wonderful Fine Arts dictionary at Okanagan University College in Canada.
    Will cover many of the terms social theory shares with literary theory.

    Citation Styles Citing Internet Sources for Social Science Papers: A Quick Note.

    APA Style Style sheet for Psychology. Good reference for proper rules of citation.

    Twenty-five Easy Steps Toward a Correctly-Formatted Paper or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love MLA by Keith O'Neill. Style sheet for humanities.

    Internet Mission Photography Archive

    and Careers

    • Job Potential:

    • Resumes:

    • Letters of Recommendation:

      • Letters of Recommendation: How to get me to respond to your request. Many of you need letters. If you will follow this format, I can do them quickly and make them good.
      • Dog Letters If you do not give me adequate information, but do manage to get my attention, you may end up with a dog letter. That is a letter that says that you work well with people, that you are enthusiastic, that you persist at getting things done, and that everyone likes you. Of course, my dog gets along well with people, brings his ball to them, is enthusiastic, and persists at getting them to take his ball. Everyone likes my dog. That's a dog letter. It's so general it could be about my dog. jeanne

    • Reports and Studies on Employment and the Job Market

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