MayJune04

Archive: May-June 2004

Globality.org

Exploring the globalization of everyday life

June 23, 2004

The murder of Kim Sun-il in Iraq is local news, so to speak, in Los Angeles. A paper that serves the city's ethnic Korean population put out a special edition, and a city councilman who represents the Koreatown area spoke at a vigil for Kim, AP reports in the San Jose Mercury News. This is what UC Berkeley anthropologist Michel Laguerre calls "the implosion of the global in the local." There are about 500,000 ethnic Koreans in LA, the largest Korean population outside the Korean Peninsula. A big ethnic neigborhood like Koreatown has local politics, newspapers and gatherings like any city. But it's global, too, both because of all its links to Korea and because of Korea's links to it, meaning its weight as one of the world's biggest communities of Koreans. In this case, the local and the global are in harmony through their shared grief.

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June 22, 2004

It's interesting how most liberal people in the United States associate freedom of expression with cultural diversity and consider it a good thing, while at the same time decrying the pervasiveness of American culture in other parts of the world. Many countries restrict cultural imports by law specifically to counteract the feared flooding out of their local culture. Take South Korea, for example. In the midst of an internationally recognized flowering of local film artistry, that country is considering cutting back on a law that requires theater operators to devote at least 40 percent of screen time to local productions, reports The Korea Times, which unfortunately reports very sad news about one overseas worker on its front page.

Everybody wants to beat wheel, but only few actually start doing that.

June 20, 2004

Something tells me that if Cuba were over in Southeast Asia, it'd be a major U.S. trading partner now. But lying 100 miles south of Florida, instead it's a big vacation destination for Canadians, Japanese and just about everyone except Americans. That, my friends, is what diasporic politics does. It's a battle between the people who stayed and the ones who left or were forced out, nearly 50 years ago. That battle was inserted into U.S. domestic politics, which is why some people in Key West think a new crackdown on pleasure boating to Cuba is just an election-year stunt, according to The Miami Herald.

June 19, 2004

Struggles over China's leadership and direction – even over the meaning of "China" – have spilled over into other parts of the world for more than a century. They're not over yet, judging from an argument involving a Fourth of July parade in Fremont, California, the San Jose Mercury News reports. (Free registration required.)

June 17, 2004

English is supposed to be the glue that binds America, but there are a lot of other languages spoken here too, and they help to keep ethnic American communities together even though they may be spread across the whole country. The great middle isn't just English and Spanish, either. We can vouch for that, having just driven to Wyoming and back, finding Chinese immigrants operating restaurants all along the way. The Modern Language Association can show you this, too, with their new, ultra-cool language map based on 2000 census data.

June 16, 2004

Teachers in Ghana are leaving for China to take advantage of higher salaries there, according to AllAfrica.com. Supposedly this is intended to address a low literacy rate in China. The article doesn't say whether they'll be teaching English or Chinese. It sounds like quite a scandal for Ghana.

June 15, 2004

I used to read a magazine called Mangajin, which had translations of Japanese manga, which are like comic books but covering a much wider range of subjects and styles. I wished there were more translations of manga, because at the time very few were available in English. But that was before the Internet really got going. Now there's a huge online community scanning, translating and reading these things, helping to drive a huge American market for manga, according to SFGate. It's a great example of cross-cultural education and collaboration fueled by sheer entertainment.

May 8, 2004

A New York Times article (free registration required) about how young Iranians are inventing their own culture and fashion, little by little, led to a Google search and this blog about an overland journey from Greece to India. An American had to be pretty brave to start that trip in October 2003 and go across Turkey, Iran and Pakistan, but this woman did. Bet she'd have to be even more brave now. Thanks, George! She's headed in the right direction, though: Taiwan, baby!

May 7, 2004

Shifting opinion about California Governor Arnold Schwarznegger in his homeland of Austria, as reported by SFGate, says a lot about both how small the world is now and how big.

May 7, 2004

On a musical note, Goh Nakamura's first album is now available by mail order and will soon come out on CDBaby. I got it last weekend at his Club Lamia show. Neither that performance nor the lo-fi tracks I downloaded from his Website prepared me for what a mature, cohesive, well-produced album this is. Beatles meets Elvis Costello meets Matthew Ryan. Great stuff.

May 1, 2004

An Indian company that sells "offshore" programming services to U.S. companies also brings employees in from India to work in the United States on H-1B skilled immigrant visas, according to the San Jose Mercury News (free registration required). They aren't salespeople, they do actual programming here. The company says some work needs to be done in the U.S. and it needs a workforce that's willing and able to move from one country to another depending on the job to be done. "Local" hires aren't willing to do that, they say. But the whole situation seems to blur the line between "local" and "international" hiring, not to mention the concerns it raises for unemployed American programmers. Basically, they seem to be saying, you need to be a global migrant to do some of this work.