Archive for december, 2009
Desi girls documentary coming up 2010
I have been granted a scholarship to complete my documentary on the Desi Girls who figures in my thesis. The material has been residing in my drawer for almost exactly one year when I, earlier this week, received the letter of scholarship. I will spend the beginning of 2010 working on my documentary and I will share thoughts and ideas regarding it on my blog.
Happy holidays to you. And I am deeply grateful to my early Christmas gift Desi girl documentary will be presented in 2010.
Eat Pray Love
Posted by Johanna in Popular culture on december 16th, 2009
I am reading this lovely book, a New York Times Bestseller by Elizabeth Gilbert. The book is called “Eat Pray Love and its is a self-lived story about a woman’s spiritual journey. The book is divided into three parts, geographically: Elizabeth travels to Italy, India and Indonesia. This is a section when she just arrive to India, that I would like to share with you:
From pp. 119:
“When I was growing up, my family kept chickens. We always had about a dozen of them at any given time and whenever one of them died off – taken away by a hawk or fox or by some obscure chicken illness – my father would replace the lost hen. He’d drive to a nearby poultry farm and return with a new chicken in a sack. The thing is, you must be very careful when introducing a new chicken to the general flock. You can’t just toss it in there with the old chickens, or they will see it as an invader. What you must do instead is to slip the new bird into the chicken coop in the middle of the night while the others are asleep. Place her on a roost beside the flock and tiptoe away. In the morning, when the chickens wake up, they don’t notice the newcomer, thinking only “She must have been here all the time since I didn’t see her arrive”. The clincher of it is, awaking within this flock, the newcomer herself doesn’t even remember that she’s a newcomer, thinking only “I must have been here the whole time….”.
This is excactly how I arrive in India.”
Denim Diplomacy?
Posted by Johanna in Anthropology on december 10th, 2009
There has been a denim debate in Sweden recently as well as internationally. The debate is regarding new Swedish designers who produces their jeans in a north Korean factory. According to NoKo jeans website their interest and curiosity in North Korea, a nation closed off from the rest of the world for 60 years made them want to invest and make business with the people of North Korea. This business cooperation is called Denim Diplomacy in The Guardian.
The jeans were produced after 2 years of “diplomacy” negotiations between NoKo jeans and North Korea. But only days before the jeans were premiering at department store PUB in central Stockholm, the store management refused the opening of NoKo jeans museum due to the dichtator origin of the denims. Hence the jeans became a hype, apparently people feel bad for these poor designer who cant sell their jeans at PUB, and maybe feel that NoKo are brave young people who managed to settle relations with one of the closed countries in the world. And apparently the NoKo jeans people think that it is beneficiary for North Korea that they, a small Swedish company are doing business over there.
I disagree I see this “Denim diplomacy” as highly problematic. And as far as politics go, I think that trade loyalty is important. I would never ever buy a product that I know was produced in North Korea. That is my consumer power. I believe that the people of North Korea are deprived of many basic human rights, as the right to vote, and freedom of speech.
According to the Swedish Goverment’s Human Rights report Quote: “The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has a collectivist social order in which respect for Human Rights (HR) are exposed to serious, comprehensive and systematic violations. North Korea has one of the world’s most repressive political regimes.”
Denim Diplomacy, maybe if there was a friendship between NoKo and North Korea, yeah. but I think you should think again before producing product in a country which violates human rights. I will not support it.
The friendly spirit of New York
Posted by Johanna in Anthropology, Global on december 8th, 2009
I have been to the states, and hence afk for a couple of weeks now. It was was my first visit and it was something like a cultural shock for me actually. I am European and I did not really expect a cultural shock when visiting the states. I will give you examples in a comparative anthropological perspective during December in my blog. Today I will tell you about the friendly and welcoming spirit that hits the New York visitor.
I landed at night-time and just went to the hotel to get some sleep. The first morning and my first impression in New York was when I headed down to Starbucks to get my morning coffee. The staff was overwhelmingly polite and cheerful at the early morning hour. Very friendly and when I had placed my order, and paid for my Soja latte, the barista asked for my name. A couple of minutes later another staff member calls out “Soja latte for Johanna is ready” and a Starbucks cup with my name written on it is placed in my hand.
This was such a nice gesture, I thought of all the stressed people in this million dollar city who rush off to work with a paper cup in hand, with a homely spirited handwritten name on their cups. I was just amazed. I think this is a rally neat and polite gesture to treat your costumers and name their cups. To bring a familiality to the multinational coffee shop is just very clever technique to serve the costumers. I kept returning to Starbucks during my stay in US, never an unfriendly face there. And actually, everyone, everywhere was really friendly and talkative, quite the opposite to my hometown where the “mind your own business” ethos is imbuing the Stockholm city culture. The service people in Stockholm are never overly friendly and I do not expect them to be either. My impression is that the Stockholm general spirit is VERY different from New York.
Bhopal disaster 25 years ago today
The picture of today is a reminder of the people whose lives were lost in Bhopal today 25 years ago. I borrowed the the picture from SASNET webb.
