Intro to Ethnic Studies Circulations of Diff

Lecture 06  Sovereignty o 3 Definitions of Sovereignty  1) POWER OVER someone, something someplace  Supremacist Sovereignty = everyone, everything, everywhere  2) POWER TO do whatever I want (aristocratic “freedom”)  3) POWER WITH / FROM  See quote on Wilkins, page 38 for good quote  USA and Native Americans o USA made Native Americans sign treaties  USA wanted to avoid conflict (Native Americans were strong fighters)  Native Americans wanted a form of protection  Comedy Skit o Blood Quantum : Was the threshold of what percent “Indian” you are to be considered Indian  Was used to essentially destroy Native Americans

ETHN | 2 | Intro to Ethnic Studies Circulations of Diff | lecture notes | Lecture 06  Sovereignty o 3 D

Lecture 23  Stuff to Put in Final Exam Answers o 1) Identify the source of the idea, event, or person o 2) Explain significance. How is the question related to larger course themes? o 3) If it is a concept, how does it help us understand our world? Apply the concept to an example o 4) If the question concerns a historical event, why is it important? What course concepts does the event exemplify? o 5) If the question is about a person, explain why the person is significant and how their life and work is related to key concepts in the course

ETHN | 2 | Intro to Ethnic Studies Circulations of Diff | lecture notes | Lecture 23  Stuff to Put in F

Lecture 22  Global Feminism and the “War on Terror” o Key Themes  Dominant discourses about the WOT have represented Muslim women as in need of “saving” and westerners as their potential saviors  Media portrayals of global “women’s issues” can create alibis for military intervention while advancing domestic nation-building projects  Western feminists promote war by helping construct third world women as oppressed and in need of saving  Historically, western feminism is both a liberatory and a formation with longstanding ties to colonialism, racism, and imperialism  Dominant Discourses About the War on Terror o Cultural explanations of economic and political relationships o Emphasis on need to learn about “Middle Eastern culture” rather than the political and economic histories of the region o Division of the world into “separate spheres” (east/west; civilized/uncivilized; Christian/Muslim) o Metonym : A part that represents the whole  Example: “The Crown” represents the king  Veils serve as a metonym of the Muslim woman’s oppression  Veiling as a Metonym o Marks the symbolic separation of women’s and men’s spheres o It is a practice that occurs within specific discursive fields with particular meanings o Has come to symbolize anti-imperialism in many contexts o Diverse veiling practices are not accounted for in popular anti-veiling western discourses o Cultural Racism : Instead of targeting someone’s genetic background as “inferior,” you deem their culture as “inferior”  Strange Bedfellows o Which issues become “women’s international issues” and which don’t? What about service/factory labor? o How do the promotion of these issues in the west become complicit in US nationalism/imperialism? o How do these issues stand in for (and in fact obscure) complex …..?  Conclusions o We must re-think simplistic binaries such as East/West; Islam/Christian o We must critically engage different models of freedom o We must think critically about discourses of “saving”

ETHN | 2 | Intro to Ethnic Studies Circulations of Diff | lecture notes | Lecture 22  Global Feminism a

Lecture 12  Transnationalism o Transnationalism  Dictionary Definition: Extending or operating across national boundaries  Scholarly Definition: A critical lens that focuses on aspects of human existence that exceed the limits of nations o “Transnational” is often used to describe companies o Universities are “transnational”  Organization of research  Global investments  Transnational faculty and students o Cybracero, the company in Rivera’s movie “Sleep Dealer”  Memo, the protagonist, is “literally” in two nations at once when hooked up to the Cybracero network thing

ETHN | 2 | Intro to Ethnic Studies Circulations of Diff | lecture notes | Lecture 12  Transnationalism 

Lecture  Key Themes for This Week o Globalization is a contemporary phenomenon with historical roots in colonial and capitalist expansion o The social costs of economic globalization are disproportionally felt by poor women, particularly poor women of color o Globalization is complex and multi-faceted, engendering both deleterious effects and new modes for social organizing  Tracking Shots and Globalization o Tracking Shot is also called Long Interrupted Shot  Often thought of as the director’s skill o “Touch of Evil”: US-Mexico Border o Globalization often goes along with Industrialization  Globalization is a large scale entity, so Tracking Shots are often used to portray this o Globalization : “A late 20 th century condition of economic, social, and political interdependence across cultures, societies, nations, and regions precipitated by unprecedented expansion of capitalism on global scale  “Globalization” is the study of a world where the theories and practices of neoliberalism are dominant o Caveat : While new in many ways, contemporary forms of globalization have origins in the past  To only focus on the present thus “obscures a much longer history of global contacts and connections” (e.g. Triangle Trade)  Early Modes of Globalization o The Telegraph (~1900)  Defining Globalization o Three Defining Conditions of Globalization  1) “Changes in world political structure after WWII that included the ascendancy of the US and the decolonization of the formerly colonized war”  2) “A shift from the concept of the modern nation state as bounded and independent toward a range of economic, social, and political links that articulate interdependencies across nations” (transnationalism)  3) “An acceleration in the scale, mode, and volume of exchange and interdependency in nearly all spheres of human activity” (Lowe, 120) o In other words, no matter where in the world you go, “it’s the same shit” (Marez) o That popular belief is incomplete because globalization leads to BOTH homogenization AND difference  On the one hand, globalization increases homogenization (in terms of consumption)  On the other hand, globalization increases differentiation (in terms of wealth) o Under globalization , culture “mediates” or expresses “the uneven spaces linked through geohistorical, political, economic, and social logics” (122)  Free Trade Zones and Denationalization o Free Trade Zone : “An area within which goods may be landed, handled, manufactured or reconfigured, and reexported without the intervention of the customs authorities”  Free Trade Zones are thus denationalized places o Foreign Trade Zone : A subset of Free Trade Zones: warehouse and distribute goods made elsewhere  Work like Free Trade Zones, but within the US  Almost 270 in the US

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