In Michèle Lamont’s review, of Saskia Sassen’s “Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy,” She explains the issues and concepts that makes her arguments flawed and ultimately not as strong to reach her intended audience. Before analyzing Lamont’s contribution, we should look at her scholarly background and disciplinary field. Lamont is a professor of sociology/African and African American studies/ Robert I. Goldman professor of European studies at Harvard University. In addition, she has received the 2017 Erasmus prize for her advancement in the social sciences in Europe and other Global Countries. She mainly studies the inequalities, social change, and societies of these developing countries. The main review of this piece …show more content…
Her arguments were lacking in conceptual connection and didn’t provide a lot of context for her “new” contributions. ‘Predatory formations’ was one of the examples that was brought up but wasn’t explained in detail; similarly to the term of ‘expulsion’. She first brings it up, “…predatory “formations,” a mix of elites and systemic capacities with finance a key enabler, that push toward acute concentration.” (Sassen, 13). It wasn’t made clear with her examples, until she fully explains what makes up the predatory formations. She writes, “It is this type of predatory logic embedded in an assemblage of diverse elements, each only a bit a larger formal institutional domain, that marks much of our current period.” (Sassen, 78). In which, all elements she describes (land acquisitions, accumulation by capital, and dangers to biospheres) is truly when she is able to define these predatory formations. Sassen does provide all of strong evidence for scholarly discussion in inequality, accumulated capital, and exploitation but lacks to expand the concepts of them further. One example of a strong example is the shadow market and the process of financialization. She explains, “…shadow banking accounted for 70 percent of banking at the time that the crisis exploded.” (Sassen, 142). Her analysis of shadow banking and financialization bought the concept of dispossession by accumulation, which by far was her strongest argument in the book. Overall, I felt like Sassen did bring new concepts to the scholarly discussion but didn’t further or provide solutions to solve these problems. As lamont points out, it would be an important contribution, if it reaches the large audience but only time will
“Exterminate All the Brutes” by Sven Lindqvist is a searching examination of European’s dark history in Africa and origins of genocide. The author is describing his own journey while crossing the Sahara on buses, and at the same time, journeying through the history of extermination. Analyzing the different resources such as books, articles, social events he tries to connect historical events that led to the extermination of different populations. The purpose of his book is to expose the roots of the genocide, and reveal the truth of European colonialism.
Caliendo and Mcllwain (2011) have suggested that the historical claims of white supremacy within nations such as the UK and South Africa, has created racial conflicts and segregation between ethnic communities. Relating back to Weber’s example of the caste system, the “authentically white” (Caliendo and Mcllwain, 2011:22) communities are dominant and control the minority communities. Caliendo and Mcllwain (2011) argue that the “authentically white” have increased wealth and status, which they use to create boundaries and exclude the ethnic groups within the community. An example of this would be the issue of Apartheid in South Africa throughout the late nineteenth and twentieth century. Apartheid can be defined by the New Oxford English Dictionary (1998) as “a policy or system of segregation or discrimination on the grounds of race” (Guelke, 2005:61). Throughout the period Guelke (2005) discussed the fact that the minority white communities within South Africa ruled over the black majority, living “a lifestyle with a standard of living matching the very richest countries in the world” (Guelke, 2001:1-2), whilst the black communities lived in extreme poverty. Linking back to the system of monopolistic social closure, the white population viewed themselves as the elite members of society, and via legislation such as the native policy, used their power to justify the exploitation and segregation of the black South African
Unfortunately, Rachel Price’s narrow-minded attitude remains stagnant into late adulthood. The Equatorial where Rachel’s “proudest achievement[s]” lie alludes to the imaginary line that divides up the world, establishing how Rachel’s accomplishments lie on a unjust foundation (462). Fittingly, her “own little world” (462) is upheld by her “standards of white supremacy” (28).The word “world” suggests to the reader the illustration of a European explorer charting the globe for unknown lands to redeem as his own. It frames the painting of colonialism and segregation to the reader, as Rachel “can run [her world] exactly however [she] please”, further alluding to the image of a white colonist dictating and exploiting the lives of “local boys” and “punish [them] with a firm hand” (462). Rachel’s self-appointed responsibility of policing her African staff with violence only gives more weight to her internalized ignorance, prolonged by her stay in the Congo and unwavered by the years. Unlike her siblings’ change of heart over the years, Rachel’s exposure to Africa only reiterates her initial belief of how “these people here can’t decide anything for themselves” (480), suggesting how she sees them as lesser than her, as a docile child who remains incapable of assertion. All in all, Rachel’s unfazed ignorance
“A Marxist-radical variant of this model is that racial and ethnic divisions are merely smoke screens, forms of false consciousness kept alive by the elites to mask their economic and political power and to divide the forces of resistance. The true interests of the working class are in fighting the owners of the means of production, but false consciousness along ethnic or religious lines hinders it from doing so (Wetherell and Potter 1992, chap. 1; Stavenhagen 1990, 16)...the general notion that below ethnic conflict lies economic and political inequality remains more or less the same” (p.
When Idi Amin’s policies are forcing Asians to leave Uganda, Mina’s father Jay asks his lifelong native Ugandan friend Okelo, “Where should I go? Where should I go? This is my home” (Nair). Okelo replies, “Not any more, Jay. Africa is for Africans—black Africans” (Nair). Although the pain of being forced to leave Uganda so that its indigenous people can regain control of the economy is massive for Jay, it is this remark by his closest friend that devastates him, because what it tells him is that he does not belong in Uganda. He is not wanted, not accepted—not even by his best friend.
In her book, Lose Your Mother, Saidiya Hartman challenges Jerry Rawlings’ notion of freedom by responding with “Had Rawlings asked, “‘Are we yet free?’ most Ghanaians would have answered with a resounding, ‘No.’ This ‘no’ resonated on both sides of the Atlantic”(pg 126). The capitalistic spirit that possessed the Europeans enabled them to disrupt the untouched country of Africa and capture its children to satiate their wealth aspirations. In the meantime, the Europeans took the land from the Native Americans through genocidal practices and claimed it as their gift from God. Although some claim that the capitalist ventures of the Europeans during the colonial period and the 19th century were beneficial for all and rooted in innocence, it ultimately caused the physical and cultural death of the Native Americans and African-origin peoples and has led to the day to day suffering of their descendants.
Wealth is often accumulated through inheritance; thus the origins of this widening divide may be traced back many generations. The Civil Rights movement dismantled American apartheid (de jure segregation--but certainly not de facto segregation as a tour through any of America's chocolate inner cities and vanilla suburbs will reveal), qualitatively transforming the landscape of civil liberties, access and opportunities for African Americans. Yet the dismantling of the social and political aspects of American apartheid has not led to African American community empowerment or development, just as the dismantling of the social and political aspects of Zimbabwean and South African apartheid has not led to national reconstruction in those societies, because in all three cases, the economic resources (including the land and the mineral wealth--all ill-gotten gains) remained concentrated in the hands of whites.
Having been a somewhat of an outsider in his life, physically and mentally, Aldous Huxley used what others thought as his oddities to create complex works. His large stature and creative individuality is expressed in the characters of his novel, Brave New World. In crafting such characters as Lenina, John, Linda, Bernard, and Helmholtz, not to mention the entire world he created in the text itself, Huxley incorporated some of his humanities into those of his characters. Contrastly, he removed the same humanities from the society as a whole to seem perfect. This, the essence and value of being human, is the great meaning of Brave New World. The presence and lack of human nature in the novel exemplifies the words of literary theorist Edward Said: “Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted.” Huxley’s characters reflect the “rift” in their jarred reaction to new environments and lifestyles, as well as the remnant of individuality various characters maintain in a brave new world.
Europeans feared and discriminate Africans but that didn’t stop them from selling them and making them work in plantation for a certain period of time. In addition, white blames the African for things they did not do – ““the living image of primitive aggressions which they said was the Negro but was really their own” (50). This statement proved that white colonizers get away with things by blaming the blacks, insisting that blacks are going to gore the life of them and denying the fact, blacks to be their own.
"We realized that we were the victims of a broken promise" (King 1). Blacks in America witnessed and endured police brutality and segregation mainly in the south. There is a need for acceptance, change, and mankind for non-white citizens. The purpose of his letter is to support his strategy of non-violent
From 1991 over one-sixth of Bhutan’s people flee their country and take a shelter in Nepal, India and other countries around the world. The large populations of Bhutanese refugee are called lhotshamps, an ethnic group, who were forced to leave their country in the early 1990s. Among 105,000 Bhutanese I’m one of them. I was born in a hut made of bamboo, food rations, and dirt roads. We are hostile, unsettled, unsure of who we are and what future held for us. I often think can we ever able to get rid out of the tag called “refugee” would my life ever changed, while ongoing tussled between mind and outside world finally in 2008 United States open a door for us to settled in the United States a “promised land” with full of struggle in 2009 we came here at Grand Forks. As I was growing up in the refugee camp I have seen a countless number of violence, crimes, injuries, and rebuff that words can’t be described. Most importantly death of people from a disease that can be a cure if, we have enough facilities such as, advanced medical training and hospitals. Although during my early childhood I have seen so much of maltreatment and practices, I always thought of having a career in health-related profession because I wanted to invest and improve the lives of individuals so that their children don't have to orphans, forced to work when their parent died, nor they have to beg for food. When I was 10 years old, my friend and I were trying to climb up the mango tree and I step in
Across time and varying ethnic groups, the same basic tenants have justified socioeconomic stratification, white fearmongering and dominance, and violence against bodies of color, reified every few generations to continually conceal and perpetuate the capital interests of the state: adherence to traditional, cisheteropatriarchal family values; personal responsibility as performed through economic self-sufficiency; the subtle positioning of one disenfranchised group against another, to the whitewashing and subjugation of the both. These processes are cyclical, recurring, and predictable, enacted by and through bodies both invested and impacted.
Many of the contemporary issues in South Africa can easily be associated with the apartheid laws which devastated the country. The people of South Africa struggle day by day to reverse “the most cruel, yet well-crafted,” horrific tactic “of social engineering.” The concept behind apartheid emerged in 1948 when the nationalist party took over government, and the all-white government enforced “racial segregation under a system of legislation” . The central issues stem from 50 years of apartheid include poverty, income inequality, land ownership rates and many other long term affects that still plague the brunt of the South African population while the small white minority still enjoy much of the wealth, most of the land and opportunities
Today I will be constructing an analysis along the bases of migration, exploring the film “Last Grave of Dimbaza,” which occurs during the Apartheid era and comparing it to the book “Living, Loving, and Lying awake at Night by Sindiwe Magona,” which explores the idea of forced migration from the woman's point of view. Both the film and the book exhibit the differences amongst the Whites and Blacks within South Africa. In compare and contrast, the film establishes a ground of separating the urban life in comparison to the rural life within South Africa and showing the different ways that migration has changed both parties' lives. In the reading by Magona, she shares the experience amongst the women in South Africa and how migration within
Extractive and Inclusive institution was the major theme of this book and analyzing why inequality is still so apparent in most of the world.