Learning at the Library » democracy http://gottesman.pressible.org Research tips, event recaps, how-to's and best kept secrets from TC's Gottesman Libraries. Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:57:00 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.5 Challenging Democracy http://gottesman.pressible.org/mmentor/challenging-democracy http://gottesman.pressible.org/mmentor/challenging-democracy#comments Tue, 19 Apr 2011 19:04:15 +0000 marcelle mentor http://gottesman.pressible.org/?p=8933 I was recently asked about my participation in student protests back in my home country of South Africa – very thought provoking.  It got me thinking about how we protest today – within in the medias we have to our availability.

South Africa has been a democratic country now for 16 years and in that time there have been three democratically elected presidents and the country has seen many changes – some good and some horrific. As a South African who has been outside the borders for the last 5 years, I am always anxious about what is happening inside the country as well as how it is perceived by the general populace and by the observers from outside. During Apartheid our media was controlled and the populace had no control over what was published and how it was disseminated. Though South African media has always had ways to speak to the people and represent the voice of the people – by underground reports, books, articles, pictures and other media sources. When the reporters or novelists or poets were White, more often than not their works were able to slip through the cracks – at least for periods of time before they were banned. I remember growing up in Apartheid South Africa and having my school teachers make sure that we were given access to the banned poetry and books – so that we had a bigger picture to consider with both our academic work, as well as our understanding of the world we lived in. My 8th grade English teacher had a particular fondness for satirist cartoons as he said it was a wonderful double-edged sword that some people “got” and others didn’t; and that he would make sure we always got the message intended and that we never read things at face value. Since then I have always been aware of the underlying messages and nurtured my love for cartoons as I watched them reflect South Africa’s transition from an Apartheid regime to a democratic society.

Zapiro is one such cartoonist. Zapiro’s work has run across a number of processes in political development in South Africa, and he has become a household name in his field of political cartooning. Zapiro’s work reflects the changing context, from the tensions of constraint and radicalism of the 1980’s to the euphoria of the transition, and the tempered optimism of the post-apartheid period. With the advent of democracy in South Africa, Zapiro has gone from the representation of Nelson Mandela as regal and benevolent, to shifting his position back to being a political voice and reclaiming his voice as a cartoonist taking the moral high ground. He explains this shift as it relates to the changing political context of South Africa within its short democratic period. Zapiro believes that his right and license to criticize political leaders in South Africa is largely due to his own struggle credentials, and his role in the liberation of South Africa- and I agree with him.

Political cartoons have always provided a space where humor can be used to challenge elites and hold governments to account. They provide us with thought-provoking, ideologically-framed sardonic insights and allow us to interpret events and contexts for ourselves as they unfold in society. Because of their irreverent and satirical nature, political cartoons provoke fervent responses by the media and by the general populace, and for this reason alone they are important and offer the key resource of a political geographer’s analyses, of people, places and events. They hold the elements of a nation’s zeitgeist that can be used to explore and navigate a wide range of inter-connected issues within complex contexts.

Because of his regular slots in the local newspapers and because of his publications, Zapiro has indeed been seen as a watchdog of the political process in South Africa -  and he is a legitimate watchdog –  a necessary one – as he keeps the demos aware of what is happening to the democracy of their making. And as we laugh and sigh at his satirical and humorous take on South Africa,  we are given food for thought.

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]]> http://gottesman.pressible.org/mmentor/challenging-democracy/feed 0 The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy http://gottesman.pressible.org/pamela/the-value-of-nothing-how-to-reshape-market-society-and-redefine-democracy http://gottesman.pressible.org/pamela/the-value-of-nothing-how-to-reshape-market-society-and-redefine-democracy#comments Thu, 10 Mar 2011 21:25:04 +0000 pamela http://gottesman.pressible.org/?p=7324 Title: The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy

Author: Raj Patel

Publisher: New York : Picador, 2010, c2009

Call Number: HB95 .P3185 2010

From the Publisher:

“Opening with Oscar Wilde’s observation that “nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing,” Patel shows how our faith in prices as a way of valuing the world is misplaced.  He reveals the hidden ecological and social costs of a hamburger (as much as $200), and asks how we came to have markets in the first place.  Both the corporate capture of government and our current financial crisis, Patel argues, are a result of our democratically bankrupt political system.

If part one asks how we can rebalance society and limit markets, part two answers by showing how social organizations, in America and around the globe, are finding new ways to describe the world’s worth.  If we don’t want the market to price every aspect of our lives, we need to learn how such organizations have discovered democratic ways in which people, and not simply governments, can play a crucial role in deciding how we might share our world and its resources in common.

This short, timely and inspiring book reveals that our current crisis is not simply the result of too much of the wrong kind of economics.  While we need to rethink our economic model, Patel argues that the larger failure beneath the food, climate and economic crises is a political one.  If economics is about choices, Patel writes, it isn’t often said who gets to make them.  The Value of Nothing offers a fresh and accessible way to think about economics and the choices we will all need to make in order to create a sustainable economy and society.”


About the Author:

“Raj Patel is an award-winning writer, activist and academic. He has degrees from the University of Oxford, the London School of Economics and Cornell University, has worked for the World Bank and WTO, and protested against them around the world. He’s currently a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley’s Center for African Studies, an Honorary Research Fellow at the School of Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and a fellow at The Institute for Food and Development Policy, also known as Food First. He has testified about the causes of the global food crisis to the US House Financial Services Committee and is an Advisor to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. In addition to numerous scholarly publications, he regularly writes for The Guardian, and has contributed to the LA Times, NYTimes.com, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Mail on Sunday, and The Observer. His first book was Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System and his latest, The Value of Nothing, is a New York Times best-seller.”

Around the Web:

Author’s Website

Reviews at Amazon

Review at the Portland Mercury

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]]> http://gottesman.pressible.org/pamela/the-value-of-nothing-how-to-reshape-market-society-and-redefine-democracy/feed 0 The Global Diffusion of Markets and Democracy http://gottesman.pressible.org/pamela/the-global-diffusion-of-markets-and-democracy http://gottesman.pressible.org/pamela/the-global-diffusion-of-markets-and-democracy#comments Wed, 02 Mar 2011 20:28:58 +0000 pamela http://gottesman.pressible.org/?p=7176 Title: The Global Diffusion of Markets and Democracy
Editors: Beth A. Simmons, Frank Dobbin, Geoffrey Garrett
Publisher: New York : Cambridge University Press, 2008
Call Number: HF1359 .G5685 2008

“The diffusion of markets and democracy around the world was a defining feature of the late twentieth century. Many social scientists view this economic and political liberalization as the product of independent choices by national governments. This book argues that policy and political changes were influenced heavily by prior actions of external actors: not just other governments, but international organizations and communities of experts. Drawing together insights from economics, sociology, political science and international relations, the contributors focus on four mechanisms by which markets and democracy have diffused through interdependent decision-making: coercion and the impact of powerful countries and international actors; economic competition for markets and investment; learning from experiences of other countries; and emulation among countries. These mechanisms are tested empirically using sophisticated quantitative techniques in areas as diverse as capital account and investment policy, human rights and democratization, and government downsizing, privatization and taxation.”
About the Editors:

Beth Simmons “is Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs and Director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. She received her PhD. from Harvard University in the Department of Government and has taught international relations, international law, and international political economy at Duke University, the University of California at Berkeley, and Harvard.”
Frank Dobbin “joined the Harvard sociology department in February of 2003, after spending fifteen years in the sociology department at Princeton. He received his B.A. from Oberlin College in 1980 and his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1987. [He] studies organizations, economic behavior, and public policy.

Geoffrey Garrett “is the former Vice Provost and Dean of the International Institute, Director of the Ronald W. Burkle Center for International Relations, and Professor of Political Science at UCLA… [his] undergraduate education was at the Australian National University (B.A. 1980), and he holds MA (1984) and Ph.D. (1990) degrees from Duke University. [He] has written widely on numerous aspects of the global political economy, including the causes and effects of free trade and capital mobility, economic growth and inequality around the world, the interactions between governments and trade unions, the politics of macroeconomic policy, privatization and the International Monetary Fund, the political structure of the European Union and European monetary integration.”

Around the Web:



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]]> http://gottesman.pressible.org/pamela/the-global-diffusion-of-markets-and-democracy/feed 0 “Trudging Towards Freedom” with William Ayers http://gottesman.pressible.org/govan/trudging-towards-freedom-with-william-ayers http://gottesman.pressible.org/govan/trudging-towards-freedom-with-william-ayers#comments Tue, 14 Dec 2010 23:16:02 +0000 Jennifer Govan http://gottesman.pressible.org/?p=5529

Schooling is never neutral. Schools are always contested spaces, sites of conflict and contradiction, hope and struggle. In the last half-century, social upheavals in South Africa, China, Europe, Chile, and the US were sometimes centered, often energized, and always echoed within the schools.

School people in societies as diverse as medieval Saudi Arabia, the Soviet Union, and fascist Italy all wanted their students to show up on time, learn the subject matters, do their homework, and stay away from drugs, just as we do. And schools in those places were often successful in their own terms.

But there must be some essential difference –at least theoretically— between education in an autocratic or authoritarian place, and education in and for democracy. That essential difference is the focus of the conversation.

William Ayers, a Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and alumna of Teachers College, cites here the United Nations’ Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and Mary Oliver’s “Instructions for Living a Life.” Dr. Ayers explores the essential qualities of a life in a democracy: initiative, courage, imagination, and creativity. He ponders the importance of hopes, dreams, skills, and knowledge among people, recommending that we continue to ask the next question, recognize our daily failures, and live in the spirit of hopefulness.

Referencing Our University Seminar on Innovation in Education: Trudging Toward Freedom: School Reform In and For Democracy, with William Ayers, Monday, 11/8

Video by Michelle DeLateur

The fully recorded talk, Trudging Toward Freedom: School Reform In and For Democracy, was captured by the Teachers College Office of the Web and may be watched on Meefedia.

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]]> http://gottesman.pressible.org/govan/trudging-towards-freedom-with-william-ayers/feed 0 Learning by Doing http://gottesman.pressible.org/yanagael/learning-by-doing http://gottesman.pressible.org/yanagael/learning-by-doing#comments Tue, 30 Nov 2010 15:29:58 +0000 Yana Kehrlein http://gottesman.pressible.org/?p=4913

Background

I know Jace Clayton through my wife, who is also a musician. Jace has been DJ-ing for over 20 years. When I interviewed him I thought it was really interesting that DJ-ing, for him, was both a personal and social activity. Jace learned how to DJ through one session with a friend and from there he practiced on his own, consistently. He developed his technique as he learned, and now he is better able to engage the social aspects of DJ-ing, like reading his crowds and adapting his sounds accordingly.

Teaching with the Video

Jace introduces the idea of “aggressive listening” in this video, and he thinks it is an essential skill for a DJ to have. What does Jace mean by this idea, and how can we incorporate it into the life of a classroom? How can a teacher be an aggressive listener, and how can she encourage her students to experiment with this practice? Also, what does Jace mean when he calls the computer the folk instrument of the current generation? Is technology making DJ-ing and music creation more accessible? How can students participate in the possibilities made available through technology?

Extended Interview

How did you learn to DJ?

DJ-ing is interesting, its like artisanal, so you learn from another DJ, you learn it by practicing. A friend of mine, who is a house DJ who spent one afternoon teaching the basics, and then after that I was on my own. It’s a lot of practicing. So much of DJ culture, especially back then, mid-nineties, late-nineties, was word of mouth. One person to another, always kinda secret. What exactly are the DJ’s doing, how are they blending these records. It wasn’t easy. Learning how. The basics of DJ-ing are quite simple, after that is practicing and getting records and all of that. For the first couple years I was a terrible DJ, technically speaking.

Can you tell me about your style?

A lot of what my particular style does, I take the aspect of overlapping sounds. I really like to push it. So instead of using two turntables I use a third turn table. I like to do things, like have a hip-hop beat on turntable and I can get an accapella from a different style of music and mix those in together at the same time. It sounds like the same song. On the third turn table I would add flutes or at a different beat. Or a beat that’s twice the speed, so it all kinda mixes together. The dj-ing can be quite lazy, it could be one song after the other, it could be an ipod on shuffle, then it can be extremely involved to someone who is constantly doing something, using different sound sources. Or real time collage – or the cut and paste approach. And that is the school that I am interested in. you can take all these different sound sources and tell a story with them. Its not necessarily using my own music but the way that I am layering things and transitioning makes it a very personal experience.

How important is practice?

Back in the day, practicing, I would record myself, doing a mix and trying to make sure the bled is okay and trying to figure out using equalization on records and but essentially at a very basic level a good DJ is going to be a good listener and aggressive listener who wants to hear things differently, a lot of practice. It involves having that objective distance from the thing that you are making and trying to figure out if it works.

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