Amartya Sen

The Nobel-prize winning economist says that the present economic crisis will end America's dominance as a world leader.

[Autobiography at nobelprize.org]

[Encyclopedia Britannica]

Joseph E. Stiglitz

[Stiglitz's autobiography at nobelprize.org]
[His homepage at Columbia University]
[Wikipedia entry]

[2006 interview]

In this 2002 interview he criticizes the policies of the IMF and World Bank.

Unit 6--Globalization: Two Sides of the Same Coin

An earlier post had a link to a short encyclopedia article on globalization. Unit 6 is a difficult read, but you will find many of the same arguments discussed in the book are repeated in this longer encyclopedia article --and a Japanese version is available. The introduction of Wayne C. McWilliams and Harry Piotrowski's popular textbook, The World Since 1945, is available as a pdf at the publisher's website. An excerpt:

Meanwhile, both superpowers began rearming, and a relentless arms race was soon under way. Each claimed that security—both national and global—lay in military strength, but that the other’s armaments threatened world peace. Thus they justified the building of massive arsenals containing thousands of nuclear weapons far more powerful than the ones used against Japan in 1945. Their arsenals have long since been large enough to destroy each other many times over and possibly extinguish human life on this planet, and yet year after year they continued piling up more weapons, spending at a rate of millions of dollars per day. When they decided to scale back their nuclear arsenals, they found out that the genie was already out of the bottle, that even poor Third World nations had the capability to build and launch them.

The military standoff between the nuclear powers brought about a precarious truce between them, but the rest of the world was not free of war. On the contrary, there have been more than one hundred wars since World War II, and many of these lesser wars, though contained geographically and limited to conventional weapons, carried the potential of igniting a larger conflagration. Indeed, the combatants were all too often clients of the major powers and were armed by them.

Equally dangerous to the safety and well-being of humanity was the growing gulf between the world’s rich and poor, between the industrially advanced nations of the North and the underdeveloped nations of the South. In the South, often referred to as the Third World, one finds the world’s lowest standards of living, lowest economic growth rates, lowest levels of education, lowest rates of life expectancy, and the highest population growth rates and infant mortality rates. Thus, millions of the inhabitants of the Third World are dreadfully impoverished, malnourished, disease-ridden, and unable to live productively and in dignity. Governments of Third World nations struggled, usually ineptly, to lift their countries from such impoverishment, and while some have made marginal progress, many others were merely marking time or slipping even further behind. Many of these countries contracted enormous foreign debts they were unable to pay, and their indebtedness threatened the financial stability of the wealthier nations of the North. Economic failure made the Third World more volatile politically and more vulnerable to intervention and militarization by the superpowers. Nearly every war fought since World War II was fought in Third World countries, and all were fought with weapons supplied by industrialized nations.

You should know a little about the IMF (International Monetary Fund), The World Bank (Wikipedia) The Washington Consensus, The 1997 Asian Currency Crisis, anti-globalization movements, and the main criticisms of globalization. Note that globalization of a sort has been going on for thousands of years (e.g. the Silk Road), and that periods of globalization has alternated with periods of deglobalization, periods when the international flow of people, goods, and money has slowed down.

In the current financial and economic crisis, the largest since the 1930s, our understanding and attitudes toward the financial institutions which caused the crisis, the Washington Consensus, the IMF, and the World Bank may be changing. Some observers have called this the collapse of American capitalism, comparable to the collapse of communism. Time will tell. Others have pointed out that the official response to the crisis in the United States is quite different--even opposite--to the economic austerity that the IMF imposed on the Asian countries in the 1997 currency crisis. Is it hypocrisy or is the US economy so different that it requires different measures to recover?

Whaling (Unit 5)

The original source for the whaling article was the New York Times. Find the original unedited, longer article here or here.

LNKGYfN (Long-Necked Karen Girls Yearn for Normality)

This news story appeared in the Brunei Times on April 30, 2007, with the byline of "Shino Yuasa". A slightly different version --with no byline-- appeared in the Sawf news on May 1. This version has many pictures of Muko, Amy, Mari, and the village where they live, taken by AFP photographer Pornchai Kittiwongsakul. Both versions are longer than the edited version in our textbook. The story continues…

Amy complains the rings bring her constant, and unwanted, attention.

"When I ventured out to a nearby Thai city with my friends, people pointed their fingers at us, saying 'here come the long necks'," recalls Amy.

"I kept quiet, but was very angry at them. I got hissed at by total strangers only because of my neck rings," she says.

Karen long-necked teenagers Muko(L) and Amy
© AFP/File Pornchai Kittiwongsakul

But Muko and Amy explain that the rings are coiled around their necks so tightly that they cannot remove them on their own.

The younger girls said they were told when the first rings were placed around their necks that they would make them look more beautiful and help them attract good husbands -- not unlike the justification for Chinese footbinding, a crippling practice that endured for 1,000 years until the communist revolution of 1949.

The rings cause the girls constant pain and discomfort, including headaches, stiff shoulders and muscles.

While the rings effectively make the neck look longer, in fact their weight pushes the shoulders and collarbones down by several centimetres. According to tradition the girls are never permitted to remove the rings, which force them to look straight ahead as they cannot move their heads.

To take them off, the girls have to see a specialist who charges 500 baht for the service. After some time, their shoulders and collarbones usually return to normal.

"I am secretly saving money for the ring removal," Amy confides. Muko, sitting next to Amy, says she plans to remove her rings when she finishes middle school next year.

"My mother does not know my plan. It's my secret," Muko says.

For 22-year-old Mari Muri, who wears 16 rings, the pressure to keep the rings died with her mother three years ago.

"My mother used to say neck rings would make me beautiful. But I've never believed in that," says Mari Muri, who sells colourful textiles, postcards and long-necked dolls, and has had the rings since she was five.

"I am supposed to add to my neck rings, but I've stopped doing that since my mother passed away," she said.

She said her 19-year-old sister Mu Ba removed her rings as soon as their mother died and moved to another refugee camp, says Mari Muri, who has no family name, adding that she is ready to take hers off "any time".

For Mayao, the 52-year-old, girls like Muko, Amy and Mari Muri are a disgrace to the Karen tradition.

"More and more girls are removing their rings. They don't appreciate our culture, which has been passed down through generations," says the petite woman, who proudly shows off her 25 brass rings.

"I'm worried our Karen tradition will disappear," says Mayao.

Amy, for different reasons, also expects the tradition to end.

"It's enough for me. I will not put neck rings on my daughter," she says.

More Links:

"Peoples of the World" - a short description of the Karen
http://www.peoplesoftheworld.org/text?people=Karen

Photography of Ban Nai Soi village
http://www.panasia.net/photo/thailand/bannaisoi/

Tourist-oriented website in Northern Thailand introducing the Karen
http://www.chiangmai-chiangrai.com/longneck_karen.html

Picture and Thai tour info
http://www.chiangdao.com/chiangmai/karenlongneck.htm

More Turban News!

Here is the original New York Times article by Amelia Gentleman which was reprinted in our textbook (Young Sikh Men Get Haircuts, Annoying Their Elders).

At SikhiWiki you can read about the latest "International Turban Day" - in English or Japanese (GoogleTranslate).

If you wondered what Punjabi pop star Pammi Bai looked like, you may have looked up his web site. It has pictures, videos, and music. I will embed his turban-boosting song "Pagg Patiala" here. It seems to be Bhangra -- a rhythmic type of music which is also somewhat popular in London.

Unit 4 -- Society and Culture: Old Ways, New Ways

Topics: Newspaper English, Sihk Haircuts, Karen Girls

Here you can read a little background information about turbans. It's actually very long. Also, did you know that the Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh, is a member of the Sihk religion?

The Karen of Thailand, Burma, and nearby areas are also known as Kayan. In order to see some pictures of Kayan, please visit Flickr photos from Mae Hong Son, Thailand tagged with Kayan.

The grammar of newspaper headlines is not like ordinary English grammar. You can read more about it here or here.

Unit 1--Globalization: Leaving Babel Behind

Here are some interesting links related to Unit 1--Globalization: Leaving Babel Behind.

Where is English spoken?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population

What do you know about the history of English? Why is it a "world language"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language

What is meant by "International English"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_English

What is globalization?
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globalization