Online journal by Olha Vasyliv PDF

Preview

Summary

Online journal on sociology...

Description

Online journal IS 201: PERSPECTIVES ON MODERN GLOBAL SOCIETIES By Olha Vasyliv

Feb 9 Narrative of positionality

Completing the social identity map was a challenging task, although it didn’t seem to be like that before I started. The challenges varied from lack of vocabulary for the description of my thoughts to a weak understanding of how certain social aspects of my life impact my personality traits. To begin with the vocabulary issue, I want to stress that on multiple occasions I was eager to use the same words for different purposes. To me, it means that multiple facets of my personality contribute to certain emotions and enhance particular abilities and characteristics of mine. I have discovered that socioeconomic class, age, and ability intertwine to give me the freedom of choice in different ways. I was mainly focused on my ongoing career path, so I realized how this mobility and granted access allow me to test prospective scenarios of my future. This, in turn, ended up giving me an array of experiences, which replenish my career perspectives. Speaking of more progressive concepts in the sociological discourse, my straightness and whiteness allow me to

smoothly blend in with the traditional model of the socially accepted role of a college student: I rarely stand out due to my race and orientation, unlike because of my position towards these issues. I’ve noticed that depression and inclusive spaces trigger anger and anxiety inside of me, pushing me to fight against protesters. In addition to that, negative emotions arise once I encounter stereotypical expectations about my gender role or have to compete in the male environment. It is important to note that the lack of racial context in place that I prefer to call home shaped my lack of bias and openness to discuss moral values behind socioeconomic inequalities. As a result, I can tell that my geographical and economic backgrounds give me a lot of freedom and power, as well as the desire to create inclusivity awareness. To move on with challenges that occurred while mapping out my narrative, it is critical that some components such as being cis-gendered and coming from Ukraine made me clueless about what I write down. As I analyze my completed map, I can definitely tell that everything I wrote down concerns social opinion about me belonging to different categories, not my own perception of them. For instance, uniqueness in the American context that is given to me based on my citizenship is definitely something others count as an advantage, while I see it from the challenging point of view. Being Ukrainian indeed gives me a profile that stands out on top of the “outsider perspective”, but I perceive these as potential cultural barriers and translate them to fear of being an unaccepted alien. In conclusion, this exercise gave me an understanding of where I am in society: how do I position myself and how others see me. I also realized that there is a lot of analysis to be done to attain the highest level of self-comprehension to become a selfsustaining personality.

Feb 11 “A Small Place” by Jamaica Kincaid “A Small Place” by Jamaica Kincaid is a non-fiction descriptive essay of her motherland. To me, it has a very strong message that transforms from an idea of the ugliness of tourism into a perspective on global injustice. Jamaica goes beyond the description of the breathtaking landscape and demonstrates how knowing a place in great detail can shape your perception of what is going on there. The lesson I took away from this piece made me realize the significance of historical background for a specific location. Not only is overwhelming but it is also guiding me to honor the spaces I am traveling to. The book is structured to capture the best landscapes of Antigua in the form of images to further develop a narrative behind each of the difficulties local citizens face every day. The main themes focus on corruption, bureaucracy, human trading, beauty versus complexity, the ugliness of tourism, and moral degradation.

Feb 15 James Baldwin "Stranger in the Village" Both James Baldwin and Jamaica Kincaid discuss race, language, history, colonization, slavery, and being human in their works. Are there any similarities in their discussions of these topics, despite the obvious differences in style and subject matter?

James Baldwin and Jamaica Kincaid talk about race and heritage in quite a similar way. However, it seems to me that there are different outcomes these discussions end up with. Kincaid was mainly describing the sense of belonging she experiences every time she sees the beauty of “old Antigua”, a place she calls home. Baldwin, on the other hand, depicts the world as a space to which he feels no affiliation. Despite the fact that most of the time he compares America and Swiss village Leukerbad, where he doesn’t belong based on his feelings, the narrative doesn’t showcase positive enlightenment of welcoming and heartwarming parts of the world for him. To me, Baldwin is more about the global catastrophe and colonization crisis that triggered the irreversible relationship establishment between Europeans and nonEuropeans, white and black, progress and stagnation. If we take a glance at Kincaid’s ideology of portraying Antigua and slow transformation to colonialism discourse, we can definitely notice gradual description of economic goods and their historical background. In Baldwin’s narrative, this transition to grand ideas has a starting point in people. I consider this approach to be more effective in regard to the power of impact it had on me: it’s people who begin the attitude formation, and it’s also them who manage to keep it the way they want. From my point of view, Interracial relations were the aimed topic of Baldwin’s autobiographical essay, while “A Small Place” by Kincaid gave me more history about specific location and her pain in regard to what colonisation led it to. Both pieces made a tremendous impact on my understanding of traveling: there is not enough you can know about your destination, as well as there is not enough respect you can have to other’s heritage and battle against injustice.

Feb 21 “Globalization signifies the interlinkages of diverse societies across large geographical areas. These interlinkages are technological, economic, insti- tutional, cultural, and geopolitical. They include interactions of societ- ies across the world through trade, finance, enterprise, migration, culture, empire, and war”. ● Paleolithic Age (70,000 BCE to 10,000 BCE) migrating groups of Homo Sapiens ● Neolithic (“new stone”) Age (10,000 BCE to 3000 BCE) agriculture and farming ● Equestrian Age (3000 BCE to 1000 BCE) domestication of horse with rapid transportation used for military+power, copper and bronze ● Classical Age (1000 BCE to 1500 CE) competition between large land empires ● Ocean Age (1500 to 1800) transoceanic empires, first global wars, beginning of colonization across climatic zones ● Industrial Age (1800 to 2000) rapid technological advancement and scientific progress paired with fossil fuel utilization, global hegemony race ● Digital Age (2000 to present) global transmission of data, ubiquitous flow of information

-

Population growth (medicine, resource access)

-

Urbanization (consolidated population, high density)

-

Global output per person (financial inequality)

“There is a basic idea in economics that a larger market leads to higher incomes and more rapid growth. With a larger market, there can be more specialization in job tasks, leading to greater skills and proficiency of the workforce in each line of economic activity

(farming, construction, manu- facturing, transport, healthcare, and so forth), and falling costs of production”.

Geography, technology, and institutions have shaped economic globalization through travelers, scholars, migrants, diplomats, and even spies....