This past two years has been an interesting cultural experiment.  You see, I’m a girl from the North.  North as in New York.  New York as in Queens.  N-O-R-T-H.

And I live in the South – and I’m reminded of it every day. E-V-E-R-Y day.

When I have to slow down and be a better small talker.  (They are much less direct here in the South. Unless, of course, they really don’t like Northerners. Then, they can be direct is a way that is jarring!)

When I have to ask many questions about the menu at a restaurant. (They don’t have grits in the North.)

A restaurant menu in N. Carolina a good example of when Southern hospitality borders on not so hospitable. (I'm not misplaced - I live here!)

When I go to the voting booth to vote on an amendment that would change the state’s constitution to ensure that marriage is only permitted between a man and a woman. (That would NEVER be on a ballot in the North. N-E-V-E-R.)

When I had to ask what the difference is between y’all and all y’all.  (Language – it is tricky! For example:

“Are y’all going to the movies?” means that you are asking if movies are in the plans of the group. The person asking is not focusing on whether the whole group, or just some of them, are going.

“Are all y’all going to the movies?” In this case, the person asking specifically wants to know whether the whole group is going.)

When I see a Baptist church. (MANY!)

When I see signs that support and embrace tobacco production.  (When I lived in New York City  in the 1990s I recall ads in the subways that showed images of African Americans smoking and a tag line that said something like “First they made us pick it, now they make us smoke it.”)

When I have to ask for UNsweetened tea. (We offer sugar in the North.)

When I pass through NASCAR country. (We don’t race cars up North, unless you’re into street drag racing, which isn’t quite legal!)

Despite that horrific (in my not so humble opinion) amendment vote, there is much to love about the South.

Like the fresh air.

And the farmer’s markets.

And the hospitality, which is more often than not sincere.

And the small cities with buckets full of charm.

And the sense of community.

And the strong international education scene.

Will I stay in the South for long?  Only time will tell. But for now, I will continue to practice the fine art of crossing cultures.  As Tony has said to me before, without judgment intended, “living here sometimes feels like living on another planet.”

It sure does y’all.

And when I pause to think about his reflection, I gently smile and nod.  I understand.

It was the best visit to a public bathroom in my life!

You’ll understand why when you read the following words from the poster  (which you can purchase here.)

********************************************************************************************************************************************

“How to Build a Global Community”

 Think of no one as “them”

Don’t confuse your comfort with your safety

Talk to strangers

Imagine other cultures through their poetry and novels

Listen to music you don’t understand * Dance to it

Act locally

Notice the workings of power & privilege in your culture

Question consumption

Know how your lettuce and coffee are grown; wake up and smell the exploitation

Look for fair trade and union labels

Help build economies from the bottom up

Acquire few needs

Learn a second (or third) language

Visit people, place and cultures – not tourist attractions

Learn people’s history * Redefine progress

Know physical and political geography

Play games from other cultures * Watch films with subtitles

Know your heritage

Honor everyone’s holidays

Look at the moon and imagine someone else,

someone else, looking at it too

Read the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Understand the global economy in terms of people, land and water

Know where you bank banks

Never believe you have the right to anyone else’s resources

Refuse to wear corporate logos: defy corporate domination

Question military/corporate connections

Don’t confuse money with wealth, or time with money

Have a pen/email pal *Honor indigenous cultures

Judge governance by how well it meets all people’s needs

Be skeptical about what you read

Eat adventurously * Enjoy vegetables,

beans and grains in your diet

Choose curiosity over certainty

Know where your water comes from

and where your waste goes

Pledge allegiance to the earth: question nationalism

Think South, Central and North -

there are many Americans

Assume that many others share your dreams

Know that no one is slient though many are not heard

Work to change this

©2002 Text by Members SCW Community and Illustration by Melinda Levine

A few weeks ago, I googled “shit study abroad students say” after seeing the brilliant “Shit New Yorkers Say” video sensation.  I was hoping someone would do a version of this for study abroad – and today, in my inbox, it magically appeared!

(Side note: The students who made this video did call it “Stuff Study Abroad Students Say.” I am honoring the “Shit People Say” series by renaming this video with the appropriate “bad” word.)

Now watch this clever video! Laugh. Roll your eyes. Be sad. Smile.  Do whatever feels right for you.  Then read the rest of this post:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Did you enjoy that? Was it hard to watch? Did any of this sound familiar?

It sure did to me.  Four colleges under my belt and I cannot begin to tell you how many times I’ve heard these statements. They come from the young voices of (US) Americans from an incredibly ethnocentric country (see this previous Melibee post), one that is slapping together study abroad programs faster than many would like to admit.  Many are revenue driven and poorly designed, leading to students belting out statements like the ones in the video.  (Please don’t get me wrong – there are plenty of schools and 3rd party providers that put great care into study abroad program design and learning outcomes.  But many – let’s face it – don’t. )

The timing of this video really struck me. Yesterday I had the honor of facilitating an online workshop with Dr. Eric Hartman on Global Service Learning: Design/Reflection/Connection – and it couldn’t have been more timely.  Dr. Hartman spoke of the importance of partnership, culture, careful learning outcomes, mutual respect, addressing our ethnocentricity prior to departure., etc.  The gap between great global service learning program delivery and the “run of the mill” study abroad experience is clear.  These students, in my opinion, did a remarkable job of capturing that delta in this video.

This video will serve as a beautiful new resource for pre-departure, orientation, re-entry programs, classroom discussions and academic programs (international education administration/intercultural studies.)  It has so many applications!

What are your thoughts about this video?  How might you envision it being utilized? What did you appreciate about it? What frustrated you about it?  Let’s get some dialogue going about this subject.

Let me close by extending my heartfelt thanks to the Amizade students for creating not only this video, but the opportunity for all of us to reflect on how we contribute to the statements you have highlighted.  Once again, students are providing teaching opportunities.  Does it get any better than that?

Edward T. Hall

Edward T. Hall was simply the guru of culture.  This man’s life work is the foundation of many international education and intercultural programs today – and deservedly so.

“An Anthropology of an Every Day Life” was written by Hall to document the first fifty years of his remarkable life.  It is a fascinating read in that we get to observe an anthropologist in the making -  commenting, through his unique lens, about his own journey and why he turned out the way he did.

Facts about his life are revealed in the early chapters. Did you know that Hall was essentially abandoned by his parents at a very young age and sent off to be cared by others? Before most of us are old enough to leave home, Hall had lived in France, Germany New Mexico, Missouri and on Native American reservations in the southwest,  a part of the US that he loved deeply.

His work with the State Department under President Truman involved training Americans who were serving abroad in the foreign service. His life in Washington DC was full of interesting friends, including a psychologist who deeply influenced his work.  Interestingly, he writes about his own need for therapy as to better understand his depression that stemmed from being abandoned at boarding schools at an early age.

His research, focused on perceptions of time, space and relationships, was quite controversial at the time that it was published. Today, his writing is core to our work today and required reading for Peace Corps volunteers!

I cannot recommend this book enough – it is an easy read in that Hall simply shares stories of his life and his observations.  It gives us rare insight into the life and measured thinking processes of one of the most brilliant interculturalists of our time.

Anthropology of Everyday Life, An (Hardcover) By (author) Edward T. Hall List Price: $24.50 USD New From: $10.00 In Stock Used from: $0.01 In Stock Release date February 4, 1992.

Eric Hartman

Today’s guest post is by Eric Hartman, PhD.  I met Eric several years ago at a global service learning conference and have great respect for his work.  Eric and I are designing a webinar series that will launch in January 2012 – more information will be available soon.  Meanwhile, please enjoy Eric’s piece, which was his “spot on” response to our conversation about the need to do a lot more than journal once home.  

As educators, as students, or as travelers, when we return from experiences abroad everything around us suggests that it’s time to return to “normal living,” life as it is, and by extension life as it should be. The mismatch between these strong environmental pressures to return to normal and our own deeply felt changes can lead to varying degrees of reverse culture shock.

This process is experienced and felt viscerally. It is often gut- and heart-wrenching. My colleague Richard Kiely documented this thoroughly with his articulation of the chameleon complex. In the Michigan Journal of Community Service-Learning, Kiely describes how returning travelers look the same to their friends and family members, but very frequently feel so fundamentally changed that they are surprised that others cannot see their new identity. While returning travelers are typically not conscious of this contrast in such explicit terms, struggle with the process of returning is common.

Struggle is common, but thoughtful processes and resources to support that struggle are rare. Others have noticed the extraordinary potential in learning from this uncomfortable experience. In a Forum article on innovative international experiential education programs, Chip Peterson asserted international educators too frequently treat reverse culture shock “as a sort of temporary pathology that we must help students work through, rather than one of the most pregnant learning moments students” ever experience.

Indeed, what is frequently missed in dialogue about re-entry and reverse culture shock is that travelers (whether old or young) struggle because they have learned that the world as they understood it was incomplete at best, inaccurate at worst. In the global service-learning programs I have frequently worked with, these new insights have often come in the context of severe injustices.

Travelers return and desperately wish that their friends and loved ones would understand that they met wonderful and kind people in (for example) Tanzania. They wish others could know that many of those people work as hard and dream as beautifully as we do, and that – due to circumstances beyond their control – they nonetheless have far fewer options than we do. And they wish people knew that the situation can change with relatively small, carefully targeted, accountable investments in people’s lives.

Even in programs that do not have social justice at the center of the inquiry and experience, travelers commonly experience surprising growth and realize unpredicted insights. They change. And in all likelihood that change reflects a more complicated, complex, nuanced, and therefore accurate view of the world. When friends, family, and even educators suggest that returning travelers should get “back to normal” they’re asking budding lifelong learners to deny new insights. Several assignments and activities, however, can systematically target and support this important learning. Here are just a few suggestions.

Ideally these activities will come in the context of ongoing thoughtful, targeted reflective experiences before, during, and after intercultural immersion experiences. The key near the time of return, in any case, is to focus on communication capacity. Assignments that foster communication capabilities include:

1. The Elevator Speech: Ask travelers to prepare a 30 second response to the question, “How was your trip?” Prepare them for this important moment. Actually practice the speeches. This activity serves multiple purposes. It develops individuals’ communication capabilities and strengthens a skill necessary in the nonprofit and private sectors, while also supporting individuals in their efforts to reconnect upon return home. Crafting and sharing an elevator speech forces travelers to consider what was most important about their learning and what they most want to share with others. Ideally, the speech inspires listeners’ curiosity and leads to more conversation.
2. The Letter to a (Skeptical) Loved One: “Why are you going over there?” Almost everyone has at least one skeptic in their life: the person who does not understand why travel is appealing or (even more frequently) why someone would do volunteer service “with those people over there.” This letter does not need to be sent (and that should certainly not be a requirement), but a good exercise to foster and improve communication skills is asking travelers to craft a letter to the skeptic in their lives. They should be encouraged to consider the values they share in common with that person, the good and positive values that person holds, and how their travel or international service relates to those values. Then they should practice communicating in the context of those values. Almost everyone ultimately has a values basis that suggests common human dignity – the importance is often finding the right way to communicate about how international travel is in itself supporting and advancing an important process of peace by pieces.
3. The (Explicitly Public) Presentation: “What have you learned?” This is a question faculty members frequently want to ask students at the end of courses. And this is precisely the right question to ask after a study abroad immersion experience. Part of the assignment, however, should be to arrange a venue where the presentation will be shared with six or more people. This can be done by using online tools, developing a video, and posting it on Facebook or Twitter. Or it can be achieved by (still more common) organizing a group of six or more friends (on the dorm floor), family members, faith institution members, etc. Students thus have to engage in the civic act of organizing an audience as they develop an opportunity to share their learning with members of their community who are important to them. I have listed an example of what this assignment looks like in my syllabi.

These assignments are three among many opportunities for advancing individual learning and development before, during, and after international experiences. I am working with Missy Gluckmann at Melibee Global on some upcoming webinars that expand this conversation to:

• Global Service-Learning by Design
• Integrating Critical Reflection
• Advancing Common Human Dignity (aka Global Citizenship)

________________________________________________________________________________________

Sample Assignment:

Capstone Presentation: Prepare a presentation for a group in which you are involved. This could be a club or organization, a church, a class that you know you have access to or a media outlet you follow. If you’d prefer, make a YouTube video and get at least six of your friends and family members to watch it. Synthesize your own experiences and what you’ve learned in a format that is memorable and accessible and helps others see what opportunities may exist for them. The presentation should be at least 10 minutes long. You will do the presentation in the final class meeting, but you should prepare in light of the audience to whom you will eventually present it at home.

Presentation Grading Rubric

___/10             Presentation is at least 10 minutes long

___/10             Visual presentation is crisp, professional, engaging, and without error

___/10             Clearly identifies country, location, concise history, language(s)

___/30            Clearly addresses your individual experience, what you have learned, why it should be important to others, and what you and your audience can do about the social issues involved

___/30             Clearly provides the audience with next steps for addressing pressing social issues and/or learning about other cultures

___/10             Capably and professionally responds to questions

About the Author: Eric Hartman wonders about justice – and works to advance its realization. He has supported community-driven development projects around the world, ensuring the completion of classrooms in Bolivia, improving water access and women’s rights in Tanzania, and developing literacy and numeracy tutoring programs for refugees in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. All of his work came through university-community engagement and service-learning, where he continuously challenges students and faculty to act and reflect with a simultaneity that permits clear community outcomes and reflective consideration of how to work together to build a better world. He has served as Executive Director of Amizade Global Service-Learning, Lecturer in Global Studies at Arizona State University, and taught community-engaged courses in more than seven different departments at five universities. He is completing a book (with R. Kiely, J. Friedrichs, and C. Boettcher, Kumarian Press) titled “Building a Better World: The Pedagogy and Practice of Global Service-Learning.” He also contributes to popular blogs and media, including Melibee Global, Good Intentions are Not Enough, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, International Educator, and Transitions Abroad, as well as academic journals and texts, such as Community Works Journal, Public Administration Review, and several edited volumes on service-learning. He blogs regularly and is on twitter @emhartman.

While the book is enjoyable, playful, informative and engaging, there was one page that really resonated with me. That was page 113.

Page 113 spoke of the phenomenon of realizing, for the first time in your life, that you are a visible minority abroad. This page is a terrific discussion tool for pre-departure and re-entry.  Here is the quote from Ferguson who is attending a popular public event in Japan:

“I wended my way through and the crowds parted like the sea before Moses…Schoolchildren openly gawked, jaws gaping…Men watched my every move as if I might pull out a handgun and start shooting at any moment…

“A foreigner, look!” A flock of high-school girls burst past in a flurry of nervous laughter, and boys, brave after the fact, whispered “Harro!” to the back of my head. “Ah, we have a guest from American here today,” said the disembodied voice of the P.A. system, the voice of a decidedly tinny god. Maybe he will sing a song for us later.”

…That I, so very average and unexceptional, should cause a stir among these bright crowds of costumes gives a new perspective on the idea of exotic. I remember a trip to a Japanese zoo, and how the children turned their backs on the caged wildebeest and watched me instead. ‘More interesting than a wildebeest’ became my personal motto after that.  It was oppressive at times. What I wouldn’t give to be a Japanese-American, to be able to blend in without a ripple, to attend a spectacle without becoming one, to be able to relax.  When your face doesn’t fit the national dimensions you find yourself in an observer-affected universe; your presence alters actions, and the very act of observing changes that which is observed. You cannot slip by unnoticed.  You cannot forget the pigment that you present to the world. If nothing else, Japan has taught me what it is like to be a visible minority, and it is a hard lesson to learn.”

I read this and stopped in my tracks. I was immediately transported back to India, to a day that I had looked forward to for my entire life. I was in Agra, taking time off during a business trip, to see the Taj Mahal.  I started my day at the Red Fort, where I caught my first glimpse of the Taj Mahal.  It took my breath away. The light was so soft, the colors so perfect, it almost appeared to be floating.  I was in awe. Speechless.  Gazing.

And then it happened.

A group of school children approached me with cameras.  They were smiling and giggling.  They pointed.  I looked around, wondering what they were pointing at.  Was I missing something? Perhaps there was someone famous here – maybe a Bollywood star or politician? I glanced to my left, to my right.  I looked in the distance, wondering if something was going on at the Taj that I had missed?  And then I realized.

They were looking. At. me. The foreigner.  The lady who wasn’t with a group of children or her husband.  The lady with the light skin and a lavender backpack.

I suddenly became more interesting than the Red Fort or the Taj Mahal.  My presence altered actions.  I could not slip by unnoticed.  It felt strange, unsettling.  And as Ferguson said, it was a hard lesson to learn.

When one is preparing to go abroad to a place where they will stand out, simply because of their skin, hair or eye color, size or shape, how does one truly prepare?  And when one returns home, how does one take that hard lesson and relate it back to the home country? How does this lesson change the lens that one sees the world through?

I hope that this discussion takes place in both pre-departure and re-entry gatherings.  Being more interesting that a wildebeest or the Taj Mahal is a challenge, to say the least.  So today, I ask Melibee readers:  How are you making these visible minority experiences teachable moments? What did you learn when it happened to you the first time?

(If you have a visible minority lesson to share – please click on “comment.” You do not need to register to comment on the blog nor will you be added to a mailing list. But if you do sign up for the Melibee newsletter in the upper right hand column of the home page, you may win a book by one of the Melibee  speakers – Ibrahim Abdul-Matin!)

Here is a link to Will Ferguson’s book about his experience in Japan:

See larger image Hokkaido Highway Blues: Hitchhiking Japan (Hardcover) By (author) Will Ferguson List Price: $25.00 USD New From: $46.43 In Stock Used from: $4.69 In Stock Release date July 1, 2003.

Guest Blogger, Rinku Bhattacharya

Today’s guest posting is by Rinku Bhattacharya.  I met Rinku several years ago when I signed up for one of her Indian cooking classes.  We had a marvelous time and learned some terrific recipes, however the best gift from that class is that Rinku and I stayed in touch over the years and have had some very interesting conversations about culture.  I recently asked Rinku if she would write about how she teaches her 2 beautiful children about her Indian culture while living in New York.  (Be sure to scroll down to the bottom of this posting for one of her delicious recipes!)

Can your memories have a scent? Can your culture and childhood have a taste? It is a matter of perspective, if you are like me, where your world and memories are composed of a heritage of food, a heritage of tastes and flavors that link your past to your children’s flavors you would say – yes! Like me, you would remember childhood cures for a cold and your mother’s nurturing touch in a pot of simmering soup spiced with ginger and tomatoes, you would crave traditional rice pudding on your birthday and your Thanksgiving meal would need some cranberry chutney to complete the all day long feast before it made it to the table.

Two decades ago, I made the US my home. It really was a more evolved rather than consciously planned decision. There is a lot of truth to the saying “home is where the heart is!’ Actually in my case, “home is where the “hearth is.”  I also do think you can have more than one home, I do not feel out of place when I go back to India, but also feel very much at sync in New York. Like most people with a foot in two cultures, there is a need not to want lose the richness of heritage and identity. In some ways this becomes more an issue when you are raising children. Our household does not even have a common language outside of English, since my husband speaks Hindi and I Bengali, but we do share a love of food both Indian and Global.

This is not surprising since this is the most basic element of heritage. My earliest memories and my most vivid ones of my childhood are of chatting with my grandmother while she ground spices carefully, used the freshest of ingredients and carefully created simple delicacies that graced our table every time we visited. People often ask me whether I learned to cook from my mother or grandmother – this is a tricky question because while my memories of shadowing them and observing them in the kitchen are deep and very profound, I never actually cooked when they were around. I never needed to. It was only after I left home that I missed home cooking and my own culinary adventures began.

It is to keep this sense of creativity and wonder, I started Cooking With Rinku, a personalized set of cooking classes designed to teach the interested learner a true taste of Indian cooking, in a practical and personalized way. I have been offering classes for groups and couples. We use the freshest of ingredient and students learn how to grind spices and season and flavor food the way I remember it being done growing up. The kitchen is a place of solace, wonder and creation for me. When I cook with my students, it is a very personal connection, the classes are very home style and designed to replicate flavors of simple and pure home cooking.

My classes also help me meet people from so many different walks of life and also allows me to learn the many ways people relate to India. I have students who have visited and lived in the country as curious travelers, others who have embraced the nuances of eastern religion and surprise and teach me the depth of traditional Ayurvedic cooking and other fellow kindred spirits who learn to savor and smell India through my spice box. Indian cooking is so much more accessible today; it never ceases to amaze me how close the world really is.

This is also how my children learn about the richness of India – spice by spice. Their high chairs were in my kitchen and from very early on, their memories of interacting with me are watching me cook and work with spices. My five year son, today calls me “the best cooker!” It is amazing how some things never change, like my grandmother, it is very important for me to both cook and feed my friends and family in a very personal way.

My husband and I also have a deep love of nature and try to grow our own produce, especially in summer. This is why I also like to think that I often cook Indian food with a New York accent; my summer zucchini is seasoned with cumin and turmeric, cherry tomatoes get tossed into a yogurt based salad and my beet greens are tossed and seasoned with almost any imaginable combination of spice. My recipes and food experiences are also shared in by blog – Cooking In Westchester. Keeping the blog has allowed me to also track my life as it relates to food. It often brightens a mundane day to look back and realize the first time you cooked a recipe was when your daughter took her first steps. I also think it helps me provide a real life medium to a food legacy that was passed on as an heirloom by my grandmother.

Recipe:

This recipe is an adaptation of my mother’s tomato chutney recipe. It is from the eastern part of India and is tempered with the classic 5 spice seasoning called panch (5) phoron. This is a mixture of cumin seeds, mustard seeds, fenugreek seeds, nigella seeds and fennel seeds. Most India stores sell the blend pre-mixed, it is used in small amounts and is supposed to bring the entire complement of tastes to the recipe. This recipe is a great use of summer tomatoes that are so plentiful these days.

Bengali Tomato Chutney

Cook Time: 25 minutes
Makes 1 cup chutney

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon oil
1.5 teaspoons panch phoron
1 tablespoon diced ginger
1-2 dried red chili
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 small can diced tomato
1/3 cup raisins
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
Papads or pappadums for serving

Method of Preparations:

1. Heat the oil and add the panch phoron and wait till the mixture crackles.
2. Add in the ginger and the red chili and saute lightly.
3. Add in the salt and the canned tomato mixture.
4. Add in the raisins and the sugar and simmer on low heat for about 20 minutes, till the mixture is thick and fairly sticky.
5. While the chutney is cooking, cook the papads by microwaving on  for 1.5 minutes.
6. Cool the chutney slightly and serve with the papads.

About the Author: Rinku Bhattacharya was born in Kolkatta, India and has had a life that has taken her traveling extensively to most places in the world. Rinku has been passionate about food from a very early age and loves to talk and work with food and people. She started teaching Indian cooking in New York about 5 years back to share her love for food and cooking. Her classes can be found at Cooking With Rinku. Rinku shares her food and life experience at her blog at Cooking in Westchester. Rinku live in Westchester County, NY with her children Deepta and Aadi, husband Anshul and her cat Benji. Rinku is trained as a financial professional and specializes with non-profit organizations. She has masters degrees in areas of finance and non-profit management. She is currently working on a cookbook – The Contemporary Indian Table – to be published by the Bryant Park Press.

Dr. Vandana Shiva

Living near New York City (NYC) has its perks. I had the pleasure of attending the NYC Food & Climate Summit this past weekend.  My interest in doing so was to better understand the relationship between food and the climate, especially in light of the talks in Copenhagen this past week.

This summit introduced me to my new hero – Dr. Vandana Shiva.   Her bio,  according to the conference materials states:  ”Dr. Shiva has devoted her life to fighting for the rights of the ordinary people of India. Born in India in 1952, Dr. Shiva is a world-renowned environmental leader and thinker. Director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology, she is the author of many books, including Water Wars: Pollution, Profits and Privatization (2001)…”  I’d prefer to describe her as an activist who observed the negative impact of globalization on her local community and therefore stood up, said ENOUGH IS ENOUGH, and did something that empowered me to write this post today.

Dr. Shiva spoke via video and floored me with the statistics:

- the world is producing only 1/2 of the food/nutrition that it could be

- 40% of greenhouse gases come from HOW we make and deliver our food

- A Danish study (approximately 10 years old) verified that 1 kg of food that is produced equals 10 kgs of carbon dioxide being thrust into our atmosphere

- the US spends $400 billion on farm subsidies

- perhaps the most horrific metric of all:  400,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide, in areas where Monsanto has pushed the sale of seeds onto them.

I sat, frozen and helpless, hearing this last data bite.  Having seen the film “Food Inc”, I had heard about the patent on seeds, but did not realize that patent extended to developing countries.

Dr. Shiva emphatically claimed that the agri-business system is broken and that we must take back the power to fight for the world’s right to affordable and clean food. (I encourage you to watch this video interview of Dr. Shiva’s fight for Earth Democracy below.) Thankfully, Dr. Shiva has dedicated her life to fighting to protecting the seeds in India so that people there can be assured the human right of diversity in their food.

Her carefully prepared presentation left me pondering how we handle such information as educators? How are we teaching the impact of globalization to college students as they travel abroad?  Do our students understand the effects of globalization, particularly when they take courses in business abroad?  Do we require that they know the pros AND the cons of global branding, trade agreements and big business?

How are we addressing how globalization impacts culture?  Are we watering down individual national culture so much that when you travel abroad, you’re seeing the Starbucks and McDonald’s shops in all of the airports to the point that you cannot figure out WHICH country you’re in because all of the airports start to look the same? (Those of us that are old enough will remember the days when you got to an airport abroad and it felt like you were entering a different place – the shops gave us a hint of what was to come. Can we say the same today? I think not.) Worse yet, are we globalizing to the point that patents on seeds can push farmers in India to kill themselves rather than be faced with another year of horrible crops and loans that they cannot afford to pay? And doing so in a way that damages our precious earth, all in the name of revenue?

Today’s blog doesn’t have answers to these issues.  Today, I am still digesting (pun intended) the web of information that I learned at this incredible meeting on Saturday.  I’m also thinking about a comment that a friend made recently when we were discussing how some schools and some individual courses abroad still don’t have a required pre-departure orientation that attempts to prepare students for these realities.  My friend commented, “Well Missy, we require young people in this country to take a driver’s education course before they can obtain a license – why aren’t they required to sit through a lecture on the country they’re traveling to so that they understand what an ugly American is, or what happens when you get arrested abroad?”  Hmmmm, not a bad question.  And now, reflecting upon Dr. Shiva’s lecture, I wonder why we aren’t required to read something about the impact of globalization when we obtain our first passport? Or for that matter, when we mindlessly enter our local grocery store, grab a cart and pick up what appears to be a lush green avocado that was grown in Mexico and flown to the US.  Where did those seeds come from and who had to suffer for me, in the North, to have the luxury of eating that avocado in wintertime?

Click here to view the embedded video.