There are two upcoming films in the Geography Department’s Real-to-Reel series. Both films will be shown in the Allen Auditorium.
Monday May 7th, 2:30pm-4:20pm: The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. This witty and original film is about the open spaces of cities and why some of them work for people while others don’t. Beginning at New York’s Seagram Plaza, one of the most used open areas in the city, the film proceeds to analyze why this space is so popular and how other urban oases, both in New York and elsewhere, measure up. Based on direct observation of what people actually do, the film presents a remarkably engaging and informative tour of the urban landscape and looks at how it can be made more hospitable to those who live in it.
Monday May 21st, 2:30pm-4:20pm: The Garden. The fourteen-acre community garden at 41st and Alameda in South Central Los Angeles is the largest of its kind in the United States. Started as a form of healing after the devastating L.A. riots in 1992, the South Central Farmers have since created a miracle in one of the country’s most blighted neighborhoods. Growing their own food. Feeding their families. Creating a community.
But now, bulldozers are poised to level their 14-acre oasis.
The Garden follows the plight of the farmers, from the tilled soil of this urban farm to the polished marble of City Hall. Mostly immigrants from Latin America, from countries where they feared for their lives if they were to speak out, we watch them organize, fight back, and demand answers:
Why was the land sold to a wealthy developer for millions less than fair-market value? Why was the transaction done in a closed-door session of the LA City Council? Why has it never been made public?
And the powers-that-be have the same response: “The garden is wonderful, but there is nothing more we can do.”
If everyone told you nothing more could be done, would you give up?
The Garden has the pulse of verité with the narrative pull of fiction, telling the story of the country’s largest urban farm, backroom deals, land developers, green politics, money, poverty, power, and racial discord. The film explores and exposes the fault lines in American society and raises crucial and challenging questions about liberty, equality, and justice for the poorest and most vulnerable among us.
Geography Professor Kam Wing Chan’s work on internal Chinese migration is prominently cited in this week’s Economist article, “The Impact of Chinese Migrati0n: We Like to Move It Move It”.
IF YOU purchased one of the 1.8 billion mobile phones shipped around the world last year, there is a 50% chance it was put together in the Chinese province of Guangdong. There is also a good chance it was not assembled by a native Guangdonger, but by one of the millions of migrants who have left their homes and travelled to the coast to find work. Grinding poverty has long been a cause of migration and was the impetus again after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. The story of migration since then is the story of modern China, as migrant workers have transformed China’s economy.
Kam Wing Chan of the University of Washington has compiled statistics which show that from 1990 to 2005—the most recent period for which reliable statistics are available—there was an overall gross migration across provinces of about 80m migrants (see map). An increasing number also migrate within their own province. All told, some 230m Chinese spend most of the year away from their home town or village. This is almost a third of all people globally estimated by the UN to be migrating within the borders of their own country. Most migrants move in search of work. The number of rural Chinese working away from home is now almost 160m, or 12% of the country’s population. The Chinese government’s population-planning commission forecasts another 100m rural residents could move to cities by 2020. As migration patterns change, though (see article), expect to see rapid social and economic change across inland China
The article also features an animated “videographic” illustrating migration flows.
In addition to Chan’s migration work, his work on the effects of this migration on Chinese economic development has also recently been featured in The Atlantic (Why China’s Migration Isn’t Creating A Middle Class”), and the UW News & Information website UW Today (“China’s Urbanization Unlikely to Lead to Fast growth of Middle Class”).
The Washington Global Health Alliance and the City of Seattle’s Office of Economic Development has published a new report describing our region’s growing global health industry. Called the 2011 Global Health Strategic Mapping and Economic Opportunity Portfolio, the report identifies local organizations working in global health, the number of jobs, types of projects overseas and business opportunities. Some key findings:
- Respondent’s organizations have 2,503 projects and initiatives in 156 countries.
- In Washington, 2,979 people work in global health. Outside of the state, these 59 organizations support an additional 17,275 employees.
- Washington has particular expertise in infectious & chronic disease and developing technologies & devices.
- Washington global health organizations surveyed collaborate with 1,574 partners, located in 111 countries across the world.
UW Geography Professor Matt Sparke has received recent press and blogosphere attention with his essay on how Seattle’s reincarnation as a global health epicenter relates to its previous reputation as a center for the global justice movement after the anti-WTO protests of 1999:
Many people at the time thought the 1999 WTO protests marked a significant turning point, against the neo-liberal agenda in globalization. The ‘Spirit of Seattle’ became the rallying cry for those who opposed the market fundamentalism mindset of the time.
But, today, another global Seattle being built, says Sparke. Neither the promoters of market competition nor the collaborative proponents of global justice have gone away, but in the aftermath of their now-famous standoff, a third and arguably “curative” rethinking of the city is taking shape: a re-visioning of Seattle as a world center of global health philanthropy and other private-sector treatments for the mismatch between global markets and global justice.
As cited in the influential global health blog Humanosphere, Sparke argues that “The Gates Foundation is basically addressing the same global challenges that the protesters were. But they are doing it in a way that’s much more comfortable with and friendly to the traditional neo-liberal market-based approach.” In his chapter on “Global Geographies” in the department’s recent publication, Seattle Geographies, Sparke also warns of the “commodified” and “corporatized” vision of global health, “taking us back to the age-old competitive concern about promoting Seattle as a global health market leader”:
The co-optation of global health for selling the city in the old game of global boosterism will seem for many a bitter pill to swallow. But if the historical geography of Seattle’s ongoing remaking as a global city tells us anything, it is that the definition of civic citizenship is always in flux, always being contested, and always, therefore, up for grabs….Global soul is not always for sale, and this city reminds us that there is going to be a battle for it–an ongoing Battle of Seattle over the meaning of world class.
How the ‘Battle in Seattle’ led to a global health epicenter | Humanosphere.
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Posthegemony and Affect
Friday, Oct 14, 2011 – 1:00 PM Communications 202
Beasley Murray is author of Posthegemony: Political Theory and Latin America (2010). |
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Indigenous Peoples and the Idea of Reconciliation
 Thursday, Oct 20, 2011 – 4:00 PM  Communications 12
In this presentation, Dale Turner, author of This is not a peace pipe: Towards a Critical Indigenous Philosophy (2006), will discuss the evolving idea of Indigenous reconciliation in the context of the recently ratified United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Love Live Shame! The Good Side of Nations and Nationalism
Tuesday, Nov 8, 2011 – 6:30 PM Kane 120
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Benedict Anderson (Emeritus, International and Government Studies, Cornell University).
This talk by the author of the landmark book Imagined Communities, addresses the origins of political shame and the value that should be attached to it. What creates the visceral attachment people feel for their country? Before which spectators is the emotion aroused? What understanding of “nation” is necessary? Can political shame is progressive and emancipating?
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Friday, October 14
Welcome to the Simpson Center | Simpson Center for the Humanities.
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