The Political Propaganda with Tibetan Beauty Pageants

The article about how China twists a Tibetan beauty pageant into a political ordeal is very interesting. The fact that the Chinese government wanted to call the pageant the "Miss Fashion Parade Evaluation" is even more interesting. The most beautiful women in work units were required to participate in this pageant. There were more judges than participants. The first place prize, a trip to Hong Kong, was vetoed by the CCP. Was this because the CCP were afraid that the first prize winner was going to flee China if she went to Hong Kong? Or possibly it could have been because Hong Kong is also a sovereign territory and the CCP didn't want the winner to get any ideas from visiting the city.

The occupation of Tibet by the Chinese began in the 1950s and has forced Tibet to become Chinese in many ways. Many Tibetans have been killed or imprisoned for protesting against the CCP. Many others fled to Nepal only to be sent back by the government.Certain aspects of minority culture seems to be fine with the government but other aspects are viewed as a threat. Journalists were even only allowed to take certain pictures at the pageant which was promptly ignored when a power failure occurred.  The pageant that took place was not one of Tibetan values but of Chinese and Western values forced unto the Tibetans. The pageant was a political struggle between how the Chinese and the Westerns felt Tibet should be viewed.

((I can't help but add that the author writes out the whole name of an article she quoted from. This would have annoyed my professor. Also starting that last sentence with "this" would have annoyed him as well))

The number of beauty pageants increased dramatically during the 90s in China. Every pageant had apolitical names yet were run by the government. Yet the westerns were able to push away the name "Miss Fashion Parade Evaluation" for "Miss Tibet". The cultures of minorities in China are seen as primitive to the Han. Only the women, who are seen as beautiful and "liberal". are admired. In this, the cultures are turned into visual representations of themselves. Allowing the pageant to be called "Miss Tibet" could suggest that Tibet is, in fact, a sovereign state.

The conclusion of the article states that the Chinese government tried to change the pageant from a political show to a cultural show. In order to keep the Tibetans from protesting against the CCP. Yet this whole situation was very political. Through the pageant "Miss Tibet" Chinese and Western ideas of Tibet are being forced on the Tibetans. They are being told what their identities are by outside sources.

McGanahan, Carole
          Miss Tibet or Tibet Misrepresented

Archaeological Praxis

I just received an email from my professor explaining that the SAA (Society for American Anthropology) is going to re-evaluate the principles of archaeological ethics this year. The principles of archaeological praxis my public archaeology class put together last semester is going to be used and consulted by the committee in order to re-assess the society's statement on ethics. This is really cool! This also shows that something that is put together by a class of under-grads and grad students can be beneficial. I cannot wait to see how the SAA's principles of archaeological ethics change.

Teach For America

I applied for Teach For America this last month. I was really looking forward to being apart of this program. I really wanted to help children in poverty and was especially interested in helping in Native American reservations. This program was what I really wanted to do once I graduated this May. But this is not going to happen. I was turned down at the application stage. Why? I'm not sure. They only stated that I was not what they were looking for. I believe it's the lake of leadership positions in extracurricular activities. Or the lack of volunteering opportunities. Which does upset me a bit because not everyone has the time to volunteer or wants to be in a leadership position. My problem is that I have a part-time job at a dog daycare and am a full-time student. While I do extracurricular activities at the university with my professors by helping them in the lab or preparing for a conference. I don't have any real extra time to volunteer in other non-profits. Although I would love to volunteer more often if I had the time.

I am also not the type of person to pursue a leadership position. I like to do team work and work with others. I don't like being in charge and telling others what to do. It's also nice to have someone above me in case I have questions. It's not a lack of interest that I don't lead but it's my personality. I can lead if I need to but I'd prefer if we could all just work together as a big group and collaborate. And unfortunately because of these situations, I am not the type of person TFA is looking for.

But that's ok! Because I am in the process of looking into other Americorps programs that would interest me. And hopefully through one of them I will be able to help a community. Even if it's just by helping one person. In the mean time, here was the letter of intent I wrote for TFA.

As a child I had a very difficult school life. My teachers constantly had meetings with my parents to discuss my learning disabilities. They claimed I was too difficult to teach because I either had ADD and was unable to pay attention or that I had some sort of speech impediment that made me incapable of learning the materials they were teaching. I never had a learning disability. In fact, my parents would sit down with me every night to teach me the things my teachers would not. My parents enrolled me in different schools almost yearly hoping to find a teacher that actually cared for me and would take the time to help me. Yet I always had teachers who asked my parents to put me on Ritalin so that they could place me in the back of their classes and forget about me. I was constantly two or three years behind my other classmates in grammar and math because my teachers never took the time to sit down and help me. By the time I reached high school I had given up on school. I passed my classes but I never tried. I always felt that since no one cared about my education then why should I. 

After spending two years learning how to speak Mandarin Chinese fluently and working as a translator for the Navy I realized that my troubles in school were not because I had a learning disability but because the teachers did not want to take the extra time to make sure I understood the material. This happens to children every day in classrooms. I want to help the children who are pushed to the back of the classes and ignored because they are seen as too difficult to teach. I would spend extra time with the child and find different ways to explain the material to help make it more understandable. By doing these things I hope to show children that their struggles are not their faults. Education is worth the battle and I hope to show this to them by helping them in ways my teachers never did. 

I would feel like I have accomplished this goal even if I reached only one child. That is one child more that will continue with his/her education with a positive attitude. Children can have a more positive outlook on life through having a role model to look up to. This attitude can help create better opportunities through working harder and making better grades. This can create scholarships to schools and could even lead to job opportunities that the child may not have originally had access to. Giving these opportunities to just one child would mean the world to me. I would like to be that role model that helps overlooked children realize that they are as capable as they think they are.

Dance Lest We All Fall Down Review

Dance lest we all fall down is a very intriguing story about a woman's change from an ethnographer and anthropology teacher to the co-founder of a ngo. This book is not an ethnography or a memoir. Possibly an auto-biography of sorts but the point of this book is not to tell a section of this woman's life. Instead it is unraveling the structure of an ngo and showing that the ngo is based on cooperation and lots of patience. This is not a story of the noble American going into a shanty town and giving the community something the American thinks they need.

I was intrigued by this book. It read like a story and was very colorful. The conversations were insightful and thought provoking. While some did not like this book because it is very unlikely that the author could remember her conversations in such detail, I read the conversations as a way she was talking out an idea in her head. Sometimes talking out an idea in conversation form can help one come to conclusions one would not normally come to; even if these conversations are in one's head. Yet I do believe she had most of the conversations that are in the book.

There were many situations in the book that forced me to think about things I never would have thought about. Like the concept of foreigner. Or how Americans and Brazilians view inequality in different concepts: Americans through the idea of race and Brazilians through the idea of class.

There were also many great quotes I loved in this book.

• “The city and companies invest a great deal in all these Christmas lights and decorations. They think then we poor people won’t notice the rotted walls they cloak, the decaying infrastructure. Personally, I think the money might be better spent on education and feeding people.”
• Constantly they urged me to buy, something. I refused and grew increasingly uncomfortable acutely aware that my ability to buy these goods underscored and reinforced the economic, class, and racial differences between them and me.
• In a society where he had control of nothing else, capoeira angola gave him the possibility of internal control and self-respect.
• the dance of Carnival held more meaning than that. It also embodied poverty, death, and annihilation.
• Time and time again, I was reminded how credibility has less to do with knowledge or information given, but instead with the class and power of the person making the statement.

Overall I think this is a book worth reading especially if you are going through an anthropology program. 

The GSU Collective

In the Archaeology class today, we were asked to make up our own list of ethics we think archaeologists should follow when conducting fieldwork. Here's what we came up with:

1. Maintain a reflexive research protocol.

2. Foster collaboration, multi-vocality, and partnerships with local communities.

3. Consider the consequences, including unintended consequences, of practicing and publishing research.

4. Promote integrity by maintaining responsible and honest research practices, including obtaining consent from all affected parties (i.e., community members, local governments, etc.).

5. Make results available to local communities.

6. Understand the contemporary relevance and historical context of archaeological research for living communities.

7. Foster educational outreach locally and extra-locally.

8. Avoid the commercialization of research.

Why do Archaeology?

Why do we do archaeology? To preserve the past? To find some new meaning to the present? To learn about diet and disease in an area? Or is it just our curiosity getting to the best of us. I love archaeology but this class, Archaeological Practice and Public, has got me thinking. If the indigenous people don't like what we're doing, then why do it? I've thought about this a bit and I just can't come up with a good answer. Maybe because there isn't one. We are curious. We want to know what happened and why. What did they eat? Where did they sleep? What did daily life look like? We have to know! But I don't want to do it if the natives don't want me to. I want to respect what they think and feel.

This really got me thinking when we had to read two articles by Traci Ardren and Timoteo Rodriguez. These  articles were about the Kochol community in Mexico and the archaeological site in their farm lands. Traci had suggested a museum to be built at the site so that the locals could earn income from tourism and promote their past. This doesn't sound like a bad idea but how Traci wrote about the time and how Timoteo wrote about the time are completely different. In Traci's article the locals were eager to learn about their history and to start the museum. Timoteo writes that there were many who didn't even identify with the history the archaeologists were teaching and they were afraid the museum would be a way for the gringos to take over their land. These articles are completely different yet what ultimately made me side with Rodriguez's article was when Ardren suggested the museum to be a living museum. I actually gasped at the thought of that. No! Really? You think it's a good idea to have people dress up and farm "like their ancestors" for tourists to watch? It's like a zoo! I would be furious if someone suggested something like that to me.

Another part of the articles that interested me was about the papaya tree. In Ardren's article she claims that the locals suggested planting papaya trees in the museum since they were grown by their ancestors. Rodriguez, on the other hand, says that the locals planted papaya trees in spite of the archaeologists because of how destructive trees can be to sites. That the papaya tree was a symbol of what the locals wanted. Their land to farm on. He also suggested that the museum was a symbol of what the archaeologist wanted. A validation of their work and of the place.

Whether I would have still sided with Rodriguez's view if there had been a more neutral tone to the articles, I'm not sure. But I do know that if I ever do archaeology with a native population, I will be aware of their cultural identity and their feelings of the land and artifacts before I make assumptions of what they want.

Cute Conversations with my Boyfriend that makes me laugh Pt.1

Sometimes the conversations with my boyfriend makes me smile. Ok, not just sometimes but a lot.

‎"Who sings this song?"
"Me."
"No, I'm serious. I like this song."
"You'll never know."
"It's ok. I'll just search for "hola mi amor."

"You still won't find it because that's not what they're saying."
"Oh right. They're saying "oye mi amor"
"No!!!!!!!!"

Oye Mi Amor - Mana