Wasteland

I enjoyed Wasteland. It was nice to see what art can do to really change people's lives. I thought the movie touched on a few key points that play a large role in practicing social work: starting local but keeping in mind global impact, personal involvement from the social worker/facilitator, and ownership by participation of clients.

Thinking Local
I think for social workers this is an important concept because to be successful on a larger scale, one must first start local and cater to the different nuances of different communities and then hope to influence on a greater scale later on. Latin American scholar Gustavo Esteva and Indian scholar Madh Suri Prakash claim that even in the present era of globalization, "'global thinking' is at its best only an illusion, and at its worst, the grounds for the kinds of destructive and dangerous actions perpetrated by global 'think tanks'" (22). The best example they give of a grassroots movement that has been successful on a local level but has greater implications is Community Supported Agriculture. Community Supported Agriculture teaches urban people how to support local farmers. By supporting this movement, pepole invest in their own economy and community and also help to take down that big  agribusiness corporations, who exploit farmers. In Wasteland, it was good to see how the artist's vision never got ahead of itself and that he embraced the particular community around him, witnessed by using the trash in the pieces of art. The artist not only raised awareness of the tough living and working conditions of these workers but also helped empower them on a local scale (having some of the earnings going towards helping the trash-workers union). The raising awareness aspect of the project never outweighed the artist's commitment to the people he employed.

Personal Involvement
One of the more interesting parts of the movie was when the artists wife debated with him if he should take Tiao to London for the auction. Ultimately her thinking was wrong when she thought that taking Tiao out of his environment would make him bitter upon return because he saw a greater way of life in London, but she did bring up the idea of how much personal involvement is too much? For social workers, it is important to set boundaries between a personal and professional life. In community projects, I think the boundaries can be more flexible because the social worker's commitment to the project automatically makes them have a stake in the outcome like everyone else. But what is too much personal involvement? If a social worker was facilitating the art project in Wasteland, would a professional boundary be crossed if he or she took Tiao to London? Because it was the artist taking facilitating the project, I think he had different professional boundaries and it was the right decision to make by bringing Tiao with him to London. If it was a social worker though, I am not so sure what to think.

Ownership
The most important aspect of the project, and the reason why it was so successful was the artist letting his subjects take ownership in the project. A community project can only work if the community is involved. As I mentioned before, the artists commitment to the people and the community outweighed any other motives he had in the project, which helped facilitate the empowerment of his subjects. By investing in them and including them in the project, the subjects ultimately saw that they could in fact, "free themselves in the same voluntary ways they entered [working for the trash companies]" (25). Valuing a person's independence and self-determination is a key part of social work practice, and by letting them take ownership in the project and not letting the project become anything other than what it was supposed to be, the artist did well to help these people and help the community around them.

Esteva, G & Prakash M.S. (1998). Grassroots post-modernism: Remaking the soil of cultures. New York, New York: Zed Books.

I empathize with feminism. With its different matrices and dimensions, it is the most inclusive philosophy there is. According the Black Feminist scholar Patricia Hill Collins, "paradigms of race, class, and gender [are] interlocking systems of oppression" (1), which become "one overarching structure of domination" (2). This is very similar to the systems/ecological framework where there are different levels, which act in conjunction, and cause cycles that can lead to oppression. These philosophies match up with how I see the world, but I face a certain type of dissonance everyday.

Comedy is my favorite outlet, but it clashes with feminism and the systems/ecological framework constantly. Here is one of my favorite comedians Patrice O'Neal:

This set is incredibly misogynistic, yet I love it. Anything he really says makes me laugh, but does it come at price? If I believe in feminism, am I hypocrite for liking this? Am I allowed to separate comedy from real life, or does comedy add to the patriarchal oppression of women?

Patrice is just one comic and does not represent comedy as a whole, but comedy itself has problems dealing with women. There really are not enough women comics, and when a women starts off in comedy I believe they are already at a disadvantage because there are already set roles of what type of comic they should be in order to be successful. To be successful, I think they have to be somewhat good-looking, they have to play up their sexuality, and they have to be somewhat shocking (If you try to refute that idea of success, ask yourself if there are women versions of Zach Galifinakis or Brian Posehn). A good example of an up-and-coming women comic who plays right into these limitations is Amy Schumer:

If you can get through that clip of her on the admittedly obnoxious Opie and Anthony radio show, you can see that she adheres to a type of comedy that men would want (in the clip before this one Opie and Anthony talk about how they usually do not like women comics). For a comic, that show is a big deal, and for her to get on there, her act needed to hit those three points that I mentioned before. The gatekeepers that help launch comics like Opie and Anthony, Howard Stern, and all the other late night talk show hosts are all men, which makes comedy ultimately patriarchal. Yet I happen to like Amy Schumer better than other woman comedians who do more low-key and cerebrally funny material like Maria Bamford or Tig Notaro. Is my being aware of these facts enough to excuse myself from falling in line with sexists, or am I implicitly contributing to sexism?

Hopefully newer woman comics like Amy Schumer can become the gatekeepers themselves and provide recognition to other woman comics. This would create competition amongst all stand-up comedians and maybe lead to more of an opportunity for woman to explore and take more risks in the stand-up world.

Source:

Hill Collins, Patricia. "Black Feminist Thought in the Matrix of Domination." Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. 1990.

Multiculturalism and Deep Ecology

In class, Dr. Gerstenblatt showed us with her example of Mart that people can put aside their differences (racial, religious) when there is a common goal in which everyone has something to gain. Social capital is exchanged and people's frameworks become altered. There's something organic about it because it's a tangible process full of interactions. 

It is necessary for academics to do qualitative research and publish research about the problems people have in society. There should be literature to challenge people and make people from the hegemonic position feel uncomfortable. I knew there was discrimination against Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs, but I did not think it resonated until after 9/11. I did not know there were the Jersey City Dot Busters in the 1980's or the problems with the California Livingstone School District or city council issues because of the Indo-American festival of Navaratri in the mid-90's.

So the problems have been identified by these essays, and I think that is their end goal, but what about solutions? My complaint about these essays are that they rarely look to solutions. They provide context but seldom provide ideas to how we can take this context and forge new ideas that make radical changes. I suggest that community building like the project in Mart and focusing on the natural environment around us might be a first step to getting rid of some the prejudice and institutional oppression throughout society.

The philosophy of deep ecology-beginning in the 1970's- is one where us as humans are on a level playing field with nature where "'there is no bifurcation [or division] in reality between the human and the nonhuman realms'" (Devall; Sessions; 2). Our common denominator as humans are that we are part of the Earth. Every single person has something to gain by ensuring for ourselves that the Earth regulates itself properly. It is an intrinsic value. 

Devall and Sessions point out that:

                 For thousands of years, Western culture has become increasingly obsessed with the idea of dominance:

                       with dominance of humans over nonhuman Nature, masculine over the feminine, the wealthy and

                       powerful over the poor, with the dominance of the West over the non-Western cultures. 

                      (Devall; Sessions; 1)

If we shift our frameworks to where nature comes first and we as humans second, then the idea of dominance slowly goes away. Some of the ways we can apply that to our society today is by reenergizing poor and dilapidated neighborhoods, by creating more public spaces and upholding high standards for public transportation, and by doing more projects similar to the ones in Mart. If we treat our land and our environment around us accordingly, then a balanced multicultural world becomes much easier to achieve. 

Devall; Sessions. "Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered."Gibbs M Smith Inc. Salt Lake City, UT. 1985.

http://www.earthandspiritcenter.org/Course%20pdfs/Class%204_Principles%20of%20Deep%20Ecology_Bill%20Devail.pdf

Mental Illness in Somalia

http://blogs.aljazeera.net/africa/2011/10/07/mental-illness-rampant-somalia?utm_content=blogs&utm_campaign=Trial4&utm_source=twitter&utm_term=socialflow&utm_medium=tweet

I haven't really thought about mental illness in third world countries. It seems like we forget that most citizens of war torn countries not only experience "collateral damage" but also experience a lot of trauma. If so many people in these countries are mentally ill and not being treated, it contributes to the lack of social infrastructure/stasis and the loss of social capital.