People from all over the world can enjoy the same films, TV channels, fashions, and goods in current society. The apparent differences between nations are disappearing. To what extent do you think the disadvantages outweigh the advantages of this? Globalization offers conditions for widening international exchanges, strengthening mutual understanding between nations, expanding cultural, educational, and scientific cooperation between countries, enjoying the cultural achievements of people around the world which encourages the process of modernization and the enrichment of national culture.

However, these conditions also create the possible danger of diminishing the national culture with a negative impact on national identity. Through globalization and an open door policy, different concepts and a lowering of ethical standards, an individualistic lifestyle and exotic cultural products can easily be imported into the country. At present, modern information technology which in the main is controlled by US is hourly and intensively disseminating US ideology, way of life, culture and films across the world. Even US food is promoted so that some people consider globalization as global Americanization. In China, young people are used to wearing jeans, eating Mcdonald and watching movies from Hollywood. They are accepting American culture gradually, and sometimes they even know more about American customs than China’s. Here I come up with an example of the movie Mulan by Disney. The original theme of this Chinese traditional story is to praise Mulan’s filial piety to her father, however, in the movie the theme seems to become to tell how Mulan pursues her self-worth. This makes many Chinese teenagers confused, since the movie are representing different things from what they learn from textbook, and maybe after 20 years, Mulan’s traditional theme will be totally replace by the new one. Thus if there are more Chinese traditional subjects juggled, the true Chinese culture will disappear in the future.

During the process of economic globalization, inequality between developed and developing countries has been increasing and the gap between the rich and the poor has become wider, most of the result of globalization go to assist developed countries. Globalization does not pose equal interests and risks to all nations. Because of the rapid growth of global trade and global production system and continuous expansions of multinational corporations and their capital, the national economy of developing countries have to face more and more pressures and attacks, and the dependency to developed countries is aggrandizing. Developed countries are holding capital and advanced technologies and controlling the international economy system, so they can leave the developing countries far behind in the economic globalization process.

For these reasons, globalization is a fierce and complicated struggle in both cultural and ideological fields. We take the initiative in international economic integration but also have to take the initiative in fighting to keep our distinct culture resisting pro-foreign and cross-bred phenomena, and overcoming the psychology of preferring money over ethical values.

 by Xue Wang

Around the world, we can see lots of Social movements happening now including OCCUPY MOVEMENT. While some activists use excellent and other use not-so-good frame which let ordinal people think in certain way, as a matter of fact, a rapper did his social movement in 2004.

In general, rappers state ‘What’s going on in reality’ and critical view to the reality. Eminem, a Detroit rapper, launched ‘Do not vote Bush’ campaign in 2004 election through his song and its video. In this song ‘Mosh’, Eminem points out various important factors in America such as, 9/11, Iraq War, conspiracy of Al-Qaeda, racial profiling, KKK, single mother, tax policy and non-violence.

In the video, people experienced the problems like above and got to join Eminem’s Mosh Movement (march). What’s interesting here is that when people join the movement they all wear black cloth their hoodies up. This ‘hoodie’ is said to be a symbol of rebel in America. At the same time, it is a symbol of crime hence, in some areas, people are not supposed to wear hoodies or otherwise they may be arrested.

Anyway, story goes on in the video, and the gathering of mosh activists becomes bigger. He yells:

How could we allow something like this without pumping our fists?
Now this is our final hour
Let me be the voice in your strength and your choice

Finally, Mosh activists reached the Capitol-like building and Eminem leads them into the building. He takes off his hoodie and looks like responsible grown man. We can see documents saying Sign in to VOTE. Then Eminem signed his ‘voice’ and the others are lining behind him. After the scene, the message “VOTE TUESDAY NOVEMBER 2” was emphasized and the video ends there.

What I think is feasible is his way of adopting a frame in this social movement. He shows us lots of things and acts like “Please follow me if you agree with at least one thing in the song and video.” I think this point should be thought highly of.

Eminem sings with strong voice:

Mosh now or die
If I get sniped tonight you know why,
Cause I told you to fight.

I thought his movement would succeed, however “video screed against President Bush that has been racing around the Internet, may not have prompted a groundswell of youth voting” (David Carr).

We are now facing new social movement like OCCUPY MOVEMENT, which might mean that      – this is the time for everybody to Mosh again.

Mosh Video

references

“The Week Ahead”, By DAVID CARR (November 7, 2004), The New York Times

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00C11FC39580C748CDDA80994DC404482&scp=1&sq=mosh%20eminem&st=cse

by Yuki Atsusaka

A mere two months after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into effect Executive Order 9066, which authorized the relocating of all individuals of Japanese ancestry living in the western states to hastily constructed “civilian assembly centers” and “war relocation centers,” all for the sake of “national security.” Of the 120,000 ethnic Japanese who were interned in the horse-stalls and military-style barracks, 2/3 of them were Nisei and Sansei Japanese Americans.

Shortly after the end of WWII and the closing of the camps, efforts to redress injustices committed against the Japanese Americans (JA) by the federal government began to materialize. Known, as the redress movement, JA activists and leaders, with the support of community members, began lobbying for an official apology and reparations from the government.

Popular discourses surrounding the movement generally focus on the efforts of prominent individuals and legislative milestones achieved by the JA community as a whole, but too often neglect the impacts the movement had on the development of ethnic, racial, and self-identity amongst the members of the community.

In particular, Nisei and Sansei JA’s, the former suppressing their ethnic identity to repress memories associated with internment and the latter finding little basis to establish their ethnic identities in an assimilated American lifestyle, experienced an increased sense of what it meant to be a JA in America as the movement developed. The 1960s and 70s, the decades when the movement began to gain momentum, were rich in anti-discrimination activism, and this, matched with their improvement in economic status, the growing international status of Japan, and American cosmopolitanism gave JA’s the confidence needed to fight for their rights. This pride brought forth the resurgence of Japanese ethnic identity.

Additionally, the movement contributed to the emergence of a collective pan-Asian identity. Japanese Americans began to identify with other Asian ethnic groups in America who shared similar experiences, that of discrimination, and with the prevalence of values such as ethnic solidarity and group consciousness that were reflective of the ongoing Civil Rights Movement, effectively found their efforts to be part of a greater “Asian American movement” that protested racist hiring practices, ethnocentric school curricula that were biased against minorities, demeaning popular stereotypes, and gentrification of historically Asian American neighborhoods.

Finally, their participation in the movement also pressed the Americanization of Japanese Americans that lead to them reaffirming their consciousness as Americans. Fully aware of their unalienable rights as American citizens, the Nisei and Sansei JA’s utilized every constitutional means necessary to mobilize individuals and gather support. The fight to redress was not only a JA issue, but rather an issue for all Americans – Caucasian Americans, African Americans, Latino Americans, etc – who stood on the basic moral principles of freedom and justice.

August 10, 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, authorizing $1.25 billion in reparation payments to an estimated 70,000 survivors of the concentration camps. Each internee was to receive $20,000 and a formal letter of apology from the president of the United States; the redress movement prevailed.

As professor David S. Meyer writes in his article, “How Social Movements Matter,” “social movements change the people who participate in them, educating as well as mobilizing activists, and thereby promoting ongoing awareness and action that extends beyond the boundaries of one movement or campaign.” Indeed, Dr. Meyer, indeed.

 by Kenji Tran

References:

Le, C.N. 2011. “Assimilation & Ethnic Identity” Asian-Nation: The Landscape of Asian America. <http://www.asian-nation.org/assimilation.shtml&gt; (November 22, 2011).

Meyer, David S. 2003. How social movements matter. Contexts. 2(4): 30-35.

Takezawa, Yasuko I. 1995. Breaking the Silence: Redress and Japanese American Ethnicity. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

With the increasing borderlessness and the progress of globalization, international marriages have been increasing all over the world.  Many people tend to think that children raised in a family of internationally married couple naturally become bilingual, but it is a rough road to nurture two different languages (that of course contain proper balance) than one might imagine in a family where different cultures and values coexists.  Holding of two languages of a child is a serious problem, especially families residing abroad, and there are many cases that child only speak one language and become monolingual before one realizes it without nurturing two languages from a very young age in a planned manner.  In this blog post, I want to introduce a family of internationally married couple between an American and Japanese who live in America as an example of a family that has been adopting bilingual education policy to their children.  In addition, I also want to introduce their purpose and method of bilingual education towards their children.

Before they had children, both husband and wife agree to teach both Japanese and English so that they can create an ideal bilingual environment where children can nurture two languages.  As for the purpose of bilingual education, wife, who is Japanese, not only wants their children to speak Japanese but also share the Japanese culture and customs by learning Japanese.  Also, she wants her children to communicate with her relatives when they go back to Japan.  On the other hand, from the husband’s perspective, he understands that most of the second and third generation of immigrants lose their parents’ language and end up being able to speak only English.  Rather he wants their children to appreciate good and bad things of their mother’s culture through language, and also by being able to speak two languages he wants their children to be able to look at and interpret movies, literatures, music, etc from two perspectives.

As for the method of bilingual education, the wife has been speaking to her children since they were born to make it a custom so that children wouldn’t question why they are learning Japanese and children can develop the fundamental skill of Japanese.  In order to nurture the speaking and listening skills of her children, the wife tries to speak to Japanese almost all the times and also read books to her children.  Writing is the most challenging for her children.  Hiragana is relatively easier to learn, but learning Kanji (Chinese Characters) is really difficult for children and it’s a time-consuming process.  Therefore, she will take time and expect her children to get used to as many Kanji as possible.  However, they are aware that as the children grow, children will go to school in America and interact with other American kids. Eventually lives of their children will be based on English and there will be less opportunity to learn Japanese.  In this way, children will be proficient in English and their Japanese ability will grow stagnant.  Therefore, she expects her children to continue to learn Japanese so that children will be fluent in both languages so that they have more opportunities in the future.

In conclusion, in order to success in bilingual education, both husband and wife have to cooperate each other to make an ideal bilingual environment and also continuation (even though it is a time consuming process) is the most important part of bilingual education.

by Hirokazu Takeuchi

Unemployment among young adult segment and expansion of economic disparities are becoming the significant issues that rock the societies all over the world.  If you take a look at the economic condition in the U.S., according to the statistics of the Department of Commerce of the US, there are 46 million population of poverty, which means one in seven people live in poverty.  In a reaction to this, people conducted protests and demonstration in New York, and this demonstration spilled over from New York to Washington D.C. as well as Los Angeles within one week.  Moreover, people urged to demonstrate through the Internet all over the world, and demonstration occurred in major city in the world such as London, Vancouver, Seoul, Taipei, Melbourne and Tokyo.  These series of demonstrations were reportedly reflected by the increase in frustration towards economic stagnation including huge income gap and high unemployment rates.  However, this doesn’t answer the fundamental problem behind the economic disparity.  You have to bring in the Saskia Sassen’s argument of the Global City.

In her famous book “Global Cities,” Sassen objectively analyzed the impacts of globalization towards cities and regions.  In her analysis, she argued that legal services, accountings, publications and so on are placed where highly-specialized service industries and finance industries are located.  One hand these industries are agglomerated in a handful of megacities such as New York, London, Tokyo (what she called the “Global Cities”).  On the other hand, existing manufacturing industries decayed and this accelerates bipolarization of the societies into high income class and low income class (bipolar development).  Formation of global cities helps grow the service industry where relatively rich people work, but this formation is accompanies by creation of low income class who work in labor intensive industries (other than manufacturing industries), who are mostly minorities, immigrants, day employees, and contingent workers, that supports the works and lives of rich people working in service industries.  The most critical point of her argument is that formation of global cities naturally creates the social stratifications

Of course economic stagnation is significant factor that drive people to conduct demonstrations, but I think Saskia Sassen’s argument tries to answer structural problem of economic disparities.  She analyzed the process of development of cities through globalization (effects of the globalization to cities and how cities react to the globalization) in a dynamic way.  In my analysis of worldwide demonstration, this mechanism argued by Sassen that creates social stratifications is fundamental problem that directly contribute the creation economic disparities, and other factors of economic stagnation drove people to conduct demonstrations.

by Hirokazu Takeuchi

Notions of “globalization,” “multiculturalism,” and “cities as nodes of relationships” are best exemplified by the concept of “sister cities relations” that many communities have established with others abroad. Such relationships between cities are formed to promote mutual cultural understanding, build global cooperation, and encourage economic development.

According to Sister Cities International, a nonprofit citizen diplomacy network that creates and facilitates relations between the United States and communities abroad, there currently exists over 2,000 international partnerships in 136 countries on 6 continents. Among these partnerships, the number of sister city relations that exist between the United States and Japan is the greatest in the world. With over 400 sister cities, no other two countries in the world are interlocked as deeply as the U.S. and Japan.

The sister city relationship between my hometown of Chicago (U.S.) and my mother’s hometown of Osaka City, which has been continuing since 1973, has hosted and offered a myriad of events and connections that has brought and will continue to bring the citizens of both cities closer together. The Sister School Exchange program that was established in 2006 between Osaka City Senior H.S. and Chicago’s Walter Payton College Prep H.S. has provided opportunities each year to students of these schools to fly and visit their sister schools abroad; political, economic, and cultural ties are created between the two communities vis-à-vis the student exchanges. This past September, ten social service delegates from Chicago met with professionals in Osaka as part of the “Japan Social Service Exchange Program” to discuss matters of social welfare, encompassing topics ranging from the creation of a barrier-free (concerning both mental and physical-related disabilities) society to the development of policies that promote human potential and functioning, all the while overcoming cultural divisions. Just this year, the two cities newly created a “sister marathon relationship,” where the local Japanese community of Chicago supported Japanese runners in the 2011 Bank of America Chicago Marathon in the “Japan Cheering section” this past October. The frequent presentations and showcases about each city often organized by the partner city’s tourism organization or the consulate encourage tourism and the physical exchange of people and capita between the two sister cities.

By being exposed to America through a lens that is “Chicago,” Osaka first and foremost was able to establish a foundation of long-lasting relations with the city and country. Such foundations became essential in the creation of various gateways that Osaka utilizes to access new business markets, product lines, knowledge, and technology. Simply put, enhancing mutual cultural understanding and relations in the short term can promote commercial exchange in the long run.

With over 2,000 international partnerships (and counting.. Chicago has been forming new sister city relations at a rate of one every other year) directly connecting global cities together, the possibility of every single city, town, and village in the world sharing sister city ties with another community abroad may be unsurprisingly high in the foreseeable future. In 2005, Gilbert, Arkansas, a community with a population of 28, paired with Isle of Man (British Islands) as a sister city. A constantly expanding “global web” encompassing cities that catalyzes the exchange of ideas and commerce, paired with the ever-evolving potential of technology and the internet, may be “globalizing” our world faster than we think.

by Kenji Tran