Dec 21, 2013

playing with space and time to foster solidarity

“It’s not happening here. But it is happening now.” is the title of this ad campaign Amnesty International put up in Switzerland that has been getting reposted around the web (I saw it here). Below are only 10 of the 200 posters in the campaign. I have seen many attempts over the years to bring a conflict 'into' a more peaceful space as a way to inspire solidarity, for example giving numbers of how many dead it would translate into if the war were in your town, or overlaying a map of where bombs have fallen in Baghdad to San Francisco, but this is a whole new take on these moves to help people 'bring it home' and imagine what it would be like to live it 'here', as a way to inspire action to end war over 'there'.

via acidcow.

Dec 13, 2013

empathy vs. sympathy

I have been trying, literally for twenty years, to sort out how people understand and commonly use the words empathy and sympathy. I started thinking about the two and how they might be related to solidarity for my Swarthmore college thesis. Since then when they come up in conversation I have regularly asked people what they understand the words to mean, and what they see the difference as. I have become convinced that people use them in widely different ways - so if you hear people use them don't assume you know what they mean by these terms! Here are Brene Brown's definitions, beautifully animated by the RSA.

Dec 6, 2013

whose shoes?

I have blogged a fair bit about the dangers, but also sometimes potential, of 'walking in her shoes' if we want to foster more meaningful, respectful, and powerful solidarity.

I have no reservations, however, in saying that 'giving her a pair of my shoes' smells more like charity to me. I have blogged before about my qualms with the TOMS shoe give away campaign, and in particular their 'one day without shoes' simulation empathy/awareness exercise (and the counter campaign of a 'day without dignity').

Well, I'm certainly not the only one who has criticized them, and in response, they have pledged by 2015 to make one third of their shoes in the places where the shoes are distributed. I am still dubious that this does much to change the relationship between the buyer and those who receive the shoes, or change, or educate about, the structural violence that leaves some people with less access to shoes.

"Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, you'll be a
mile from them, and you'll have their shoes." - Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts (via my friend Christy)

Dec 1, 2013

poorism gone mad

I have blogged many times before about simulations, where people actually try to 'walk in another person's shoes' (and in so doing may well step on the person whose shoes they try to walk in). There is a real danger of these experiments inspiring appropriative or false empathy where you think you really know what it's like to be me after 'playing me' for a day. But here's a bizarre simulation that is so fake it doesn't seem like those playing it could possibly think they were getting a taste of this reality - or could they? Full article reposted here from gizmodo because it's so mind boggling.

A Fake Slum for Luxury Tourists Who Don't Want to See Real Poverty

It's estimated that one in eight people worldwide live in so-called slums, which, in some cities, makes visiting these informally maintained neighborhoods unavoidable. Although controversial, the practice of "slum tourism" has become a popular way for tourists to engage with poverty on a personal level. But why go visit an actual slum when you can simply stay at a luxury resort that looks like a slum?

The Emoya Luxury Hotel and Spa near Bloemfontein, South Africa offers Shanty Town, a dozen shacks made from scrap wood and corrugated metal that it thinks is the perfect setting for your next corporate retreat or wedding anniversary. The resort has gone to great lengths to recreate the joys of slum living without the nuisances of crime, disease, or poor sanitation: "Now you can experience staying in a Shanty within the safe environment of a private game reserve. This is the only Shanty Town in the world equipped with under-floor heating and wireless internet access!"

For those of you worried that the presence of heating and wi-fi might not make for an authentic slum experience, don't worry! Shanty Town has made it more realistic for you by installing a "famous 'long-drop' outside toilet" and encouraging guests to heat water in outdoor fires. By burning toxic, life expectancy-lowering trash, I hope!

The rooms will set you back about $82 a night, which some have noted is a half month's salary for the average South African.

Reviews on Trip Advisor were mixed. While one guest praised it as a "real experience," and even enjoyed a barbecue under the stars at their shack, another cautioned that slums do not offer good value: "Do not even consider staying in the Shanty Town. For the price you can stay in a luxury bed and breakfast establishment. An average caravan park with chalets will have the same experience." [This Is Africa via Urbanphoto]

Nov 18, 2013

accompaniment stories

Apologies for the long blog silence, I've been in the midst of transitioning back to Bogotá. I'm thrilled to report that the fabulous accompaniment team of the Fellowship of Reconciliation has a new blog over at the fabulous NACLA mag site. Here is their great first entry:

A Hunka Hunka Burning Blog

Luke Finn

Red Hot Burning Peace

November 8, 2013

Photo Credit: Chris Courtheyn, Upside Down World

As anyone who has eaten a hamburger in Colombia will know, simply adding good things, one on top of the other, often results in a whole that is somehow less than the sum of its parts. The standard combination of lettuce, and tomato, and onions, and peppers, and bacon, and/or tiny bits of chicharron, and cheese, and mustard, and ketchup, and mayonnaise, and pineapple jelly, and pink sauce (itself a combination of ketchup and mayonnaise), not to mention the surrealist ornamentation of a hard-boiled quail egg on a toothpick, produces a dense gluey block, wholly impractical, the meat is lost, the tensile strength of the bun overwhelmed. Being English, I recognize this magpie approach to food—the ever-expanding English Breakfast, the Roast dinner “with all the trimmings,” are the defining pillars of our cuisine. However, more often than not, the urge to augment, layer, and combine endlessly finally results in the initial aim of the undertaking lost, drowned in condiments, ultimately ineffective.

Tart ketchup cutting through sharp onions, lettuce moistening dry bread, mustard highlighting savory beef, and done. Quality is better achieved through simplicity, foresight, and considered combinations. As with much in life, the work of human rights organizations can be directly related through a strained metaphor to the preparation of hamburgers.

I work for an NGO called Fellowship for Reconciliation Peace Presence (FORPP). We provide accompaniment to human rights activists here in Colombia. “Human Rights Accompaniment” is an attempt to use non-violent means to provide some sort of safety to people who live in violent situations. It is also sometimes known as “International Protective Accompaniment,” which may give you a better idea of what it means in a more practical sense.

The theory, which has been used and developed in practice since the 1980s in Latin America, is that were a union organizer, political activist, human rights lawyer, or any of the people who stand up for their rights, to come up against forces both reactionary and well-armed, the presence of an international observer, both symbolically and actually embodying “international opinion,” may provide additional security.

Just being there, physically accompanying somebody, will make aggressors think twice (although there are no guarantees they will change their minds) about attacking, detaining, threatening, or any other sort of –ing. So we make sure we are in a position to be “there” when the worst may happen.
To reinforce this deterrent, FORPP will carry out political dissuasion, utilizing the widely recognized first law of professional physics (the one about problems rolling downhill). Whether this is talking regularly to international embassies, UN, or state agencies in Bogotá, or Army and Police Colonels here where I am based with the Comunidad de Paz de San José de Apartadó, Urabá, we focus on the specific points of power that affect the chains of command that lead to human rights abuses, raising the political costs of allowing human rights abuses to continue. Maintaining pressure where decisions are made, and making life uncomfortable for those with power, constantly reminding them that there is international headache in the area, provides the political structure that supports the physical work we do as accompaniers.

Like burger preparation then, human rights work is a fundamentally proactive and practical endeavor. It is engendered by activists with a work plan, and works best when that work plan is focused and mindful of the resources and objectives at hand. Limited resources necessitate the careful selection of strategy, a clear-eyed analysis of structures of oppression and the identification of weak spots where pressure can be best applied and change effected. Choices must be made—ketchup, or mayonnaise, or pink sauce—‘all of the above’ is not an option.

As such, the work of NGOs offers an entry point into understanding the issues and power structures that result in oppression, in human suffering, and the slow shredding of human dignity. These structures are multifarious, myriad, and muddy. Oppression is layered, more often than not a side-effect of some other process, unconcerned with the wider ramifications for other people, culture, history, or the environment. The banality of evil has long been recognized, and the intentions that result in the removal of freedoms and the destruction of lives are generally utterly, utterly mundane. The making of money, access to natural resources, the retention or achievement of power—these are the objectives that result in oppression. It is rarely an objective in and of itself.

Effective NGO’s zero-in and carefully select how best to induce change in a system, rather than allow the diverse and overlapping systems of domination overwhelm and render their efforts null. They focus on and analyze cruelty until the strands separate in order to identify weak spots and formulate an action plan.

Like binoculars suddenly coming into focus, looking at the strategies of NGOs and human rights groups highlights the fundamental organization of processes of oppression, and throws complex structures into sharp relief. This blog will attempt to do just that, using the numerous Colombian human rights activists FORPP works with as a lens through which large and interrelated systems of oppression can be studied and dissected. The strands thus separated and specific structures recognized, our anger can be more effectively directed. The tomato slung aside, the quail egg dropped.

Luke Finn is a writer and international accompanier with Fellowship of Reconciliation Peace Presence in Colombia. He graduated from the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, University of Manchester.

Oct 27, 2013

suprise surprise, it's harder for the rich to empathize - but chains can help

I posted a few months ago about studies that show that racism makes it harder to feel the pain of black people - even if the person whose empathy is being studied is themselves black!

Well a recent article in the NYT reviewed what it calls 'a growing body of literature' showing that those with social power not only empathize less with those who have less power, they don't even get to the first stage of paying attention to them! The author, Daniel Goleman, argues that to reduce the economic gap we have to also work on this empathy gap.

One of the ways to bridge that 'empathy gap' is bit by bit, via people who those with social power do pay more attention to. I understand much of international solidarity activism to work this way, and I find useful Galtung's description of this move as mobilizing a 'great chain of nonviolence.' He argues that nonviolence

“works better the shorter the social distance. More particularly, when the other party has been totally dehumanized in the mind of the oppressor, civil disobedience may be seen only as one more instance of queer, strange behaviour, uncivilized rather than civil in its disobedience … It is when one’s own people, the Other inside the Self, or the Self in the Other, start reacting the same way, non-violently, sending a forceful signal that “we are not tolerating this any longer,” that chords of responsiveness are being touched. Doubts about legitimacy are generated.”[1]

He recognizes that

“The long-term approach would be struggle against the sources of dehumanization, bridging all gaps within and between societies. But the short-term approach would be to mobilize the in-between groups, have them act out their political conscience and consciousness on behalf of those too far down and away to have an effective voice. And then build social and human ties to solidify that political cooperation, in both directions, with the oppressors and with the oppressed.”[2]

Writing this in 1989 he ends with,

“Whose task was it to stay Washington’s ruthless aggression in Nicaragua, using the contras in that great chain of violence built from above? Above all, the task of the US people, in massive demonstrations … students, for instance, particularly from elite universities.”[3]

Martin and Varney argue that although Galtung presents this as a psychological chain, it can also be seen as a communication chain, where intermediaries can communicate more directly be that because of language, meaning systems, or other reasons.[4] As they see it, “The chain gets around power inequalities by utilizing a series of links, each of which is closer to power equality than the direct connection between resisters and their opponents.”[5] They surmise that Galtung uses the adjective 'great' in reference to the Christian concept of the ‘Great Chain of Being’ where all beings exist in a hierarchical order, from rocks up to God[6] - which is rather different than the idea of Christian solidarity based on brotherhood and equality before God that those accompaniment groups that are Christian tend to reference.

As Clark puts it “when an oppressed community cannot directly influence power-holders in a situation, they begin link-by-link to construct a chain of nonviolence by approaching those people they can reach, planning that each link will in turn connect with others until the chain extends to people closer to the power structures and even to decision-makers themselves.”[7] Clark cites Summy’s argument that this is useful when a power holder is not directly dependent on the cooperation of the subject population, and so the chain connects with those on whom the power-holder does depend.[8]

[1] Johan Galtung, “Principles of Nonviolent Action: The Great Chain of Nonviolence Hypothesis,” in Nonviolence and Israel/Palestine (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Institute for Peace, 1989), 19–20.

[2] Ibid., 32.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Brian Martin and Wendy Varney, “Nonviolence and Communication,” Journal of Peace Research 40, no. 2 (March 1, 2003): 220.

[5] Ibid., 229.

[6] Ibid., 219.

[7] Howard Clark, People Power: Unarmed Resistance and Global Solidarity (London: Pluto Press, 2009), 215.

[8] Ibid., 216.

Oct 19, 2013

how not to appropriate Malala and her story

Much has been said online in the past two weeks about Malala and her story. I have been fascinated because I spend much of my time these days thinking about how those of us that do not live in war zones can listen more powerfully to stories told by those working for peace from inside those zones, and how those stories can help up build more respectful solidarity that can help us all work more powerfully together for peace.
Malala Yousafzai is the toast of the day. There was a strong campaign to have her receive the Nobel Peace Prize this year, she has been featured on Jon Stewart, and had a private audience with President Obama . The White House tabbed this meeting to mark their “photo of the day.”

Malala meeting at the White House with President Obama and family.

At the same time, there are also many who are writing pieces critical of her, or concerned about the way in which she can be appropriated by the West. A New York Times article asked the question many are asking: “Is Malala Yousafzai a heroine or Western stooge?”
In light of these competing projects, we need some careful analysis.
Let us begin by admitting that the very anxiety over what Malala is doing and should or should not be doing smacks of a patriarchal nature.   This is a bold and courageous young woman who has stood up to misogynist bullies, been the victim of an assassination plot by getting shot in the face, and again risen above that to continue with her calling to promote the cause of girls’ education. No amount of analysis or concern—even righteous concern—should take away her agency, her will, and her resistance.   To negate her agency, even by would be allies, is yet another attempt to negate her humanity. I write my own words mindful of the above.

Here are five points to help us keep a healthy perspective on Malala the person and Malala the phenomenon.

1)    Malala is indeed remarkable.
It is all but impossible not to come away with a deep sense of awe of the grace, dignity, intelligence, and composure of this young woman who has been in the public spotlight since she was 11 years old.   And lest we forget: she was shot in the face by the Taliban simply because she insisted on the right of girls to receive education.
If we have a few critiques, let us be clear that they are not of her, but rather of the way she might be used by Western powers to advance their colonial agendas.
Malala’s interview with Jon Stewart gave a beautiful indication of the strength of her conviction.    Her comments about how she wanted to respond to those who would come to kill her is a great testimony to her courage, and profound commitment to nonviolence in a way that is actually quite reminiscent of Martin Luther King’s teachings:

I started thinking about that, and I used to think that the Talib would come, and he would just kill me. But then I said, ‘If he comes, what would you do Malala?’ then I would reply to myself, ‘Malala, just take a shoe and hit him.’ But then I said, ‘If you hit a Talib with your shoe, then there would be no difference between you and the Talib. You must not treat others with cruelty and that much harshly, you must fight others but through peace and through dialogue and through education.’ Then I said I will tell him how important education is and that ‘I even want education for your children as well.’ And I will tell him, ‘That’s what I want to tell you, now do what you want.’

2)    Malala is remarkable. She is not, however, exceptional.
Malala is remarkable, but we must resist the urge to make her exceptional. There is a long legacy to the exceptionalizing narrative when it comes to Muslims, and it works like this:   “The majority of folks ‘over there’ are either monsters or victims.   Every now and then, there is an isolated solitary hero that stands against that.   That hero supports ‘our’ values.” That tendency to view the lone solitary hero(ine) of the Muslim masses, the need to have the solitary exceptional Muslim is part of the “good Muslim/bad Muslim” game. And we are done playing these games.
Those of us who have spent years of our life living in and studying Muslim majority societies know that no one has a monopoly on goodness, truth, and beauty, or ugliness, evil, and cruelty.    These are human tendencies that percolate inside each and every single one of us. And Muslim societies, like all societies, are filled with courageous people and communities who stand for what is just and beautiful.   Malala is a remarkable young woman, but she is neither an exception nor (in that sense) exceptional.   She is simply a beautiful personification of that courage and compassion. But there are thousands of other courageous women and men in these societies who are going about living the poetry of their day-to-day lives, resisting evil, and striving for good.

3)    Malala’s inspiration is based on her own society.
It is well-known that Malala is struggling against the pathetic misogyny of the Taliban. It should be well-known that the Taliban’s patriarchy actually violates the very teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, who stated unambiguously that the quest for knowledge was a responsibility for every man and every woman.    Malala is struggling against the patriarchal and misogynist tendencies of Muslim societies, that much is true.    But it also important to point out that her courage, her compassion, her conviction also arises out of the same society.   In short, it is her family, her community, and her faith that give rise her remarkable (though not exceptional) strength and beauty of character.

4)    Malala is not “ours” to adopt.
It is not often that I disagree with Jon Stewart.   He is quite possibly my favorite cultural critic, and my favorite comedian. That he can do both and weave them together is a testimony to his genius.
But I have to confess a profound discomfort with Stewart’s somewhat adorable comment to Malala “I want to adopt you.” Yes, we understand the urge, and I don’t think Stewart’s comments were in any way malicious or intended as anything other than a spur of the moment adoration.   However, and this is an important point, Malala does not need to be adopted. Nor is she available for adoption.   Her comments came right after she talked about how it has been the love and adoration of her own father that has given her wings to accomplish what she has.   She already has a father, she has a family. And that family is as much a story of Pakistan, a story of Muslim societies, as the stories of the Taliban.
Malala is already rooted in a community, even as she is struggling to reform that community.    One can only adopt someone who is an orphan, without family, without communtiy.   None of these are true for Malala.   The extent to which she will be able to transform her own society will remain linked to the extent to which she remains grounded in her own community (while perhaps networking with international voices of resistance, human rights, etc.)

5)    Malala has to stand against both the violence of the Muslim extremists like Taliban and the violence of the American Empire.
Malala reported that she had the following comments to President Obama about the American policy of drones:

“I thanked President Obama for the United States’ work in supporting education in Pakistan and Afghanistan and for Syrian refugees. I also expressed my concerns that drone attacks are fueling terrorism. Innocent victims are killed in these acts, and they lead to resentment among the Pakistani people. If we refocus efforts on education it will make a big impact.”

Words like authenticity are overused. Yet if one is going to be a genuine Muslim reformer, and not one manufactured by or promoted by Western powers, it is vital to have and maintain a holistic sense of justice in which one speaks simultaneously against both abuses of Muslim extremists and Western colonial powers. As for Malala, it means simultaneously to speak against the misogynist policies of the Taliban AND the violence inflicted on the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan by American drones. It takes a bold person to speak that type of truth to power, especially when the power is the charismatic power of the Office of the President of the United States.
Yes, the Taliban are vile, misogynist, and violent group that has practiced gender apartheid in Afghanistan and has killed thousands of people who disagree with their bigoted ideology.
And yes, it is easier for us to focus on the evil of the Taliban than to confront the evil of “our” own policies. We have to speak against the evil of the Taliban, and we have to recognize that we too—as in the United States of America—are responsible for a great evil over there. We too have used drones to kill thousands of civilians in these countries, including hundreds and hundreds of children.
Here are the numbers from the U.K.-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism about the cost of drone attacks in Malala’s own Pakistan:

Total reported killed: 2,548 – 3,549
Civilians reported killed: 411 – 890
Children reported killed: 168 – 197

These are the hundreds of civilian casualties that we as Americans have killed in Pakistan alone . To these, we have to add the dead in Afghanistan, in Yemen, in Somalia, in Iraq, the dead from sanctions in Iran, and elsewhere.

At that level, it is worth asking the tough question: if Malala had been killed or injured by an American drone, would she be celebrated? If she been injured by an American drone, would she be meeting with President Obama and featured on Jon Stewart? If the answer to that question is a no—and let us be honest about the fact that we do not feature victims of American violence—then we have to confront the betrayal of our own silence.

In short, all of us, including the millions of people inspired by the example of Malala, have to move forward by insisting on a holistic sense of justice where we speak simultaneously against injustice here and injustice there, connecting the sanctity of life here to sanctity of life there.
The way for Malala is the same way for all of us: to stand against brutality anywhere and everywhere, whether it is state-sponsored violence or terrorism violence. A better future for all of us depends on this stance for a holistic sense of justice.

Oct 9, 2013

is it useful to think in terms of allies and privilege?

A few weeks ago I posted about the hashtag #solidarityisforwhitewomen, a powerful twitter conversation which was sparked in part by the public breakdown of public white male feminist ally Hugo Schwyzer.

Well now there is another interesting conversation happening online about anti-racist ally work, again sparked by a public breakdown of yet another public white male ally, this time Tim Wise, probably the best known white anti-racist speaker and writer in the US. Again, I'm not interested in focusing on what Hugo or Tim did, but I'm appreciating the conversations that emerged.

Black Girl Dangerous has a blog post entitled No More "Allies" in which she writes:

"henceforth, I will no longer use the term “ally” to describe anyone. Instead, I’ll use the phrase “currently operating in solidarity with.” Or something. I mean, yeah, it’s clunky as hell. But it gets at something that the label of “ally” just doesn’t. And that’s this: actions count; labels don’t.

“Currently operating in solidarity with” is undeniably an action. It describes what a person is doing in the moment. It does not give credit for past acts of solidarity without regard for current behavior. It does not assume future acts of solidarity. It speaks only to the actions of the present. Some other options:

showing support for…
operating with intentionality around…
using my privilege to help by…
demonstrating my commitment to ending [insert oppressive system] by…
showing up for [insert marginalized group] in the following ways…

These are all better ways of talking about–and thinking about–allyship because they are active, and because they require examples. This is key. Why? Because, as I and countless others have said many, many times, allyship is an every day practice. The work of an ally is never ceasing. As long as the isms are functioning–and they are functioning at full capacity every hour of every day–then the action of allyship must function just as perpetually, just as fully, just as tirelessly.

“Ally” cannot be a label that someone stamps onto you–or, god forbid, that you stamp on to yourself—so you can then go around claiming it as some kind of identity. It’s not an identity. It’s a practice. It’s an active thing that must be done over and over again, in the largest and smallest ways, every day."

I have never felt comfortable with the term ally or used it for myself, so I appreciate these arguments.

I also appreciated the article in Aljazeera by Tanya Golash-Boza entitled "The problems with white allies and white privilege" though I disagree that the concept of "white privilege" is based only on an individualist-based notion of how racism works and keeps us from seeing racist structures. In my own work I certainly look at how the structures of racism play out in the day to to day use of privilege, as well as how those privileges might be used to wear down those same structures.

There has also been a lot of reposting lately of the article "The problem with privilege" by Andrea Smith. It's pretty harsh and I think falls into facile stereotypes of this sort of work, though there is certainly some truth to them. I certainly agree that "individual transformation must occur concurrently with social and political transformation." Ideally our work on each informs and strengthens our work on the other. But again, I just don't think that talking about privilege always, or even usually, means that we are only talking about an individual self or individual privilege disconnected from structures.

Sep 26, 2013

fabulous description of conquering fears together with international accompaniment

My doctoral research was on international protective accompaniment, in Colombia and beyond (a chapter with some of those arguments is just out in a new edited book on Geographies of Peace, a copy of it is up here - all of my work is available on my academia.edu page).

For my postdoctoral research I am looking at the stories told by international accompaniers, and how they work to build alternative securities through solidarity. I have spent a lot of time reading blog posts and newsletters from the various accompaniment groups, and recently Sophia, an accompanier from Peace Brigades, posted one of the most compelling I've read, which also gives a great sense of what the work is like. I'm reposting it below in its entirety:

Conquering fears with the campesino community of Pitalito

I like going to terrain, and I knew that it would mean camping for the entire week.
I’m back in Barrancabermeja after a couple of month break for my second year with PBI. The big news is Pitalito. The team have already been accompanying the community for almost a month by the time I head off with my fellow volunteer Yoris, and so far it certainly hasn’t been boring! When two of my colleagues accompanied the Committee in Solidarity with Political Prisoners (FCSPP) on the community’s initial return to Pitalito they had a rather sleepless week: keeping guard at night; surprise visits from the military at dawn to see Pitalito´s return for themselves; and visits to and from the municipal capital (by boat) to accompany the lawyers on legal business. However, after the first week things had calmed down a bit, but we still felt that maintaining an international presence was important to ensure the safety of the community in case people tried to forcibly displace them, as they had in 2010.

I´ll be honest, I was a little nervous. I like going to terrain, and I knew that it would mean camping for the entire week. I also knew that it would mean bathing in the river which is always fun, and eating a lot of yucca, sometimes three times a day, which well… it’s that or go hungry. I was scared of two things: one, snakes (bring wellies!), and two… the lack of toilet. On their own these things are manageable, but when there is a serious risk of getting your bum bitten by a snake, you tend to avoid toilet breaks. However, I put these things to the back of my mind. This was going to be an adventure!

I´d seen photos of the previous accompaniments, and when the community had first arrived it had been nothing but a clearing in some trees. When we arrived I was struck by how much things had changed. I´d seen photos of the previous accompaniments, and when the community had first arrived it had been nothing but a clearing in some trees. However, since then, the makeshift shelters had become large solid tents, the cooking area had a roof, and there was running water for a kitchen sink and a shower. Tomato and yucca cultivating had begun and the community had got into a daily work routine that finished every night with a meeting. Everything was done collectively which was also quite exciting since it really gave it the feel of a project that everyone was building together, keeping everyone motivated. It was really quite special. These different families had been displaced just three years ago, and here they were, back on their land, united, determined to stay and were actually stronger for it!

My first day was excellent, I got to meet everyone, everyone was lovely (always a plus!) and they asked by name after all the volunteers that had passed through before. One of the days we went down to the local town with Rommel, the lawyer from the FCSPP, so he could get hold of some documents pertaining to the case they are bringing against the man accused of displacing the community in 2010. While we were down there we took the opportunity to download the videos and articles that had appeared in the international press about the Pitalito case; the community had not seen them because there is no mainline electricity, much less internet or computers…

And what a night it was! I think until that point people felt that we were the only thing between them and a forced eviction. When they saw the amount of support they had for their project beyond the borders of Pitalito, their motivation and the belief if their project grew. No one was going to be displacing them illegally anytime soon- they could start to think beyond the next few days and start planning long-term. International support showed them that the comunidad campesina de Pitalito project wasn´t an ambition anymore, it was a reality.

At night we would take it in turns to guard the entry into the community for an hour or two, whistle at hand to wake up the community if necessary. Some nights it was just be me and Yoris debating the ethics of international accompaniment , other nights Rommel would be there entertaining us with stories of court cases he´d worked on (you have to hear it to believe it!), and sometimes some of the Pitalito inhabitants would be there. One particular night I remember one of the young men telling us about the Madre Monte, a legendary figure that lives in the hills surrounding Pitalito who would force men to marry her if they were badly behaved. And this was no joke, it had happened to some brothers who lived in the next valley along. It was an absurd conversation, but it also highlighted how far Pitalito´s situation has come. If the Pitalito community´s most immediate worry for the time being is the Madre Monte, and mine are the snakes, then we´ve come a long way. That´s not to say the threat of being displaced has disappeared, but it´s not as imminent as it was when the community returned in May.

I´ve been back to the community twice now. I´ve seen two and a half snakes (one was dead, killed by one of the kids) and survived them all. The Madre Monte is still out there but so far hasn´t made an appearance. My colleagues who have been back since tell me the community has now got fully grown tomatoes and a working toilet, so I´m excited to go back this month and see them for myself. Things really are going from strength to strength.

Sophia

Sophia Kerridge has been working with PBI in the field since January 2012 both in Bogotá and Barrancabermeja. She is from the United Kingdom.

Sep 20, 2013

Misunderstanding, militarized

As a follow-up to my last post, I am reposting this entry with more on the new Bowman expeditions, by my friend and fellow geographer Joel Wainwright:

"[Jerry] Dobson, a professor of geography at Kansas University [KU], is the lead researcher on one of 14 projects to win grants this year from the Minerva Research Initiative , a U.S. Department of Defense effort to learn more about other parts of the world through social-science research. He and other researchers will receive about $1.8 million over three years to study indigenous communities throughout Central America, with a possibility to apply for renewal and receive a total of $3 million over five years. […] “There are too many instances where misunderstanding of other areas has cost us,” Dobson said. From Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan, he says, the United States may have fared better in many of its conflicts over the past half-century with more knowledge about the culture and politics of other parts of the world." - Matt Erickson, LJWorld

Source: Public Political Ecology Lab

Yes, the Bowman expeditions are back, rebooted by a Department of Defense Minerva grant, and soon to arrive in all seven Central American countries. To study which indigenous peoples, exactly? Usually in academia such things are not secret, but this project involves the US military.After reading Erickson’s story I wrote Professor Dobson to ask for a copy of his research proposal. In reply to my request, he sent me a link to one of his peevish essays . I thanked him for the piece and asked for the proposal again; he replied by asking if I had read his essay—which, I gather, he sees as a scathing rebuke of critical scholars like me, hence an answer in itself. That’s the thing about collaborating with the military: it makes you more cloistered and secretive. The fraternal romance of power creeps in. Pretty soon you don’t share basic information about your research with other scholars, even when the work is funded from the public and motivated, ostensibly, by a need to create an “informed public.”
In fairness to Professor Dobson, he has reason to be defensive. His work has come under sharp criticism (see Joe Bryan’s essay , e.g., and its links). I recently published a book, Geopiracy: Oaxaca, militant empiricism, and geographic thought , that examines how Dr. Dobson and other geographers from the University of Kansas went to Mexico to map indigenous lands with funds from the US military and, according to the communities they studied, failed to mention the source of their funds and their ties to the US military. I won’t recapitulate the whole story (you can read Jeremy Crampton’s review here ), but it’s worth remembering that the controversy started when indigenous communities in Oaxaca discovered the ties between the Bowman expeditions and the US military. They rebelled, publishing a trio of public denunciations of the project, such as this 2009 letter from the community of San Miguel Tiltepec, Oaxaca:

[The geographers] never informed us that the data they collected in our community would be given to the Foreign Military Study Office (FMSO) of the Army of the United States, nor did they inform us that this institution was one of the sources of financing for the project. Because of this, we consider that our General Assembly was tricked by the researchers, in order to draw out the information the[y] wanted. The community did not request the research[;] it was the researchers who convinced the community to carry it out. Thus, the research was not carried out due to the community’s need, it was the researchers […] who designed the research method in order to collect the type of information that truly interested them. […] [W]e wish to express to the public […] our complete disagreement with the research carried out in our community, since we were not properly informed of the true goals of the research, the use of the information obtained, and the sources of financing [for the entire statement, see Zoltan Grossman’s website ].

The ‘Oaxaca controversy’ shocked many by revealing US military collaboration with academic geographers. With his NSF/Minerva grant, Professor Dobson is again spearheading the military front within the discipline. Although to read the coverage of his work in LJWorld, it seems the sole motivation is cultural understanding.
Thanks to the Public Records Office at the University of Kansas, I was able to obtain a copy of the proposal that won Dr. Dobson the $3 million. As a scholarly proposal it is not worth serious discussion. The text is comprised mainly of recycled bits of Bowman Expedition doggerel; superficially it resembles an NSF proposal, but the analytical architecture is just shoddy. For instance, their research hypothesis is: “certain land tenure and land use practices will mean significant level of cultural resilience, with associated benefits, such as environmental conservation and tourism development…” (p 4). Yet these “certain” practices are never defined and the brief theoretical discussion on land tenure relies mainly on a handful of US military sources. Their methodology is to vacuum up as much material about indigenous communities as they can obtain and repackage everything into one giant “ArcGIS database of digital maps, data, and statistics” (p 5).
Nevertheless, the proposal contains these useful hints about the project. Their fieldwork is based out of the Department of Anthropology at the National Autonomous University of Honduras (or UNAH ) where they are collaborating with anthropologist Dr. Silva Gonzalez (p 5). They aim to study all the municipalities in Central America where at least 30% of the population is indigenous as classified by language (p 7). Presumably this means that they will conduct considerable fieldwork in Guatemala – home to the largest percentage of indigenous people in Central American – although, curiously, Honduras is the only country singled out for fieldwork in the proposal.
Less ambiguous are their promises about the project’s usefulness to the US military. The proposal’s one-page ‘abstract’ includes this statement:

Impact on DoD Capabilities and Broader Implications for National Defense: The proposed research addresses recognized deficiencies in U. S. foreign policy, military strategy, and foreign intelligence. DoD will gain new capabilities to conduct human geographic research, similar to but more advanced than those employed extensively in World Wars I and II. DoD will benefit directly and abundantly from the openly-reported research and the geographic information disseminated and from a greatly improved pool of regional experts, an improved labor pool, and a better informed public in times of future political debates and conflict [my italics].

Never mind a weak analytical argument; this is the stuff that wins Minerva grants.
The Minerva program emerged out of the DoD circa 2007, i.e. the same era as the Bowman expeditions. Through Minerva the DoD seeks to derive ideas and data about potential targets from US-based social scientists. To do so, the Pentagon has teamed up with NSF (which engages the scholars and handles the money). The funding isn’t enormous – a few million dollars per grant – but these are times when money is scarce and even research proposals rated as ‘excellent’ are not necessarily funded by NSF. Ironically, the competitiveness of normal NSF (scientific) funding increases the prestige value of the Minerva (military) grants. And the NSF helps some Minerva applicants assuage their fears that they are not actually conducting military research. But make no mistake; it is the DoD’s money and they shape the agenda. They will also certainly get the ArcGIS database being built by the Kansas geographers.
Geographers have not been at the forefront of the Minerva program; Dr. Dobson’s was, I believe, the only geography proposal funded in this year’s batch. Among geographers there is practically nothing written on Minerva, but perhaps Dobson’s grant will change that (the Social Science Research Council has posted a useful overview on Minerva with some good essays, such as this one by Priya Satia at Stanford). To grasp something of the psychology of those geographers working with the US military today, we are best served by studying the recent pair of extraordinary papers published by Trevor Barnes on Walter Christaller’s work for the Nazi regime (including this one, coauthored with Claudio Minca, in Annals of the AAG 103(3). And in times of Bowman redux, we should reread the late Neil Smith’s outstanding biography of Isaiah Bowman, American Empire :

[C]iting the ‘growing influence of geography among military men,’ [Bowman] even urged the War Department [today’s Department of Defense] to send some officers to the AGS [sponsor of today’s Bowman expeditions] to advance their studies in ‘the field of geography as applied to military operations’. He hedged about whether Latin American governments should be informed. What became of these plans tendering geography for the purpose of government spying is not clear. There have always been social scientists who have collaborated with government intelligence organizations, and from the time of the Roman geographer Strabo to the current CIA [headed by Petraeus], geography as a scholarly pursuit has traditionally operated as a handmaiden to the state. But the great majority of scholars have traditionally frowned on collusion with military intelligence operations, and scholarly associations often carry explicit prohibitions against spying. […] What is remarkable about Bowman’s injudicious peddling of geography and the services of the AGS is the lack of any sense that his eager cooperation with Military Intelligence, the government’s premier spy agency of this period, in any way compromises his scientific integrity or endangers scientists (pp. 89-90).

The Bowman Expeditions represent only one side-project for the US state/military and a small one at that. Thanks to Edward Snowden, the NSA’s spying has been exposed and we’ve learned how hundreds of thousands of people in the US have been subject to government surveillance . The situation is much worse when we consider US state surveillance of the rest of the world. The task of systematically collecting geospatial data and conducting routine surveillance around the world for the US state/military falls to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA ), an organization that has not received the scrutiny given to the NSA. (On the NSA revelations and the NGA, see Jeremy Crampton’s excellent essay at the Society and Space website.) No less worrying are the myriad military programs to improve how the US armed forces – particularly the Army – ‘uses’ human geography as a weapon. As I have discussed elsewhere , these are geographical projects of much greater significance than the Bowman expeditions and led by people who are more dangerous than Professor Dobson.
We are witnessing an unprecedented attempt by one state to collect data – much of it geocoded – from multiple sources (data mining, satellites, outright spying, and much more), reaching into the most intimate spaces of our lives and saturating our very means of communication. The US government has constructed an unparalleled platform for geospatial data collection and analyses, capable of mapping people’s movements and communications across the entire planet. All of this has potential military ‘applications’, meaning the potential to harm people, including US citizens (since we can have little faith that these tools cannot be used on civilians through police, FBI, or other agencies). The capacity of the US state/military to locate, follow, track, and kill people is without precedent and without equal, and that is the point. Given the extraordinary record of violence carried out by the US government over the past century – from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan – one would have to have an almost religious faith in the infallibility of US leadership and the rightness of their ideology not to look at the government’s military/intelligence capacities and feel enraged at the injustices already committed—and the many more to come.
What are we to do? One way to answer this question, as Professor Dobson reminds us, is to ask how we can “reduce international misunderstandings.” His approach is to militarize those misunderstandings by providing maps and data to the Pentagon. There is another way, one elaborated beautifully by Edward Said in a 1991 interview. Allow me to quote at length:

There’s only one way to anchor oneself [as an intellectual], and that is by affiliation with a cause, a political movement. There has to be identification not with the secretary of state or the leading philosopher of the time but with matters involving justice, principle, truth, conviction. Those don’t occur in a laboratory or a library. For the American intellectual, that means, at bottom, that the relationship between the United States and the rest of the world, now based upon profit and power, has to be altered to one of coexistence among human communities that can make and remake their own histories and environments together. … [Unfortunately, even] inside the university, the prevalence of norms based upon domination and coercion is so strong because the idea of authority is so strong, whether it’s derived from the nation-state, from religion, from the ethnos, from tradition.… Part of intellectual work is understanding how authority is formed. Authority is not God-given. It’s secular. And if you can understand that, then your work is conducted in such a way as to be able to provide alternatives to the authoritative and coercive norms that dominate so much of our intellectual life, our national and political life, and our international life above all.

If we are going to criticize the formation of authority and provide alternatives to the norms that dominate intellectual life, we have no choice: we must confront the US military.