hahaha yes Mitu and Michael told me people like Mitu and I are called FOB - fresh off boats...
my dear friend Mitu just wrote an update on how disgraceful and closed minded some of her American are to other culture and her painful experience with them at a conference.
just adding in my 2 cents ramble...Mitu's post provoked the thought of how people react to the deterritorialization of culture, ideologies and politics.
It is kind of funny and ironic that my experience is the other side of the coin. I am coordinating a Women's Centre in Canada this year ,going to the most left-wing university in Canada,doing developments studies which happen to habour a lot of social conscious and liberal minded fellows... Therefore, all the retreats and conferences that i went to this year was all vegetarian catering!:-P ...i remember how my international students friend often make joke about it and how they are "discredit" vegetarian food . My Arab friends "love" meat and disgusted by a all vegetarian dinner while the Canadian people eat them just fine!
It makes me think of how the politics of globalization really play out vividly in our everyday life... these cultural preferences, values and norms which shape the way we interact no longer be bounded by the territorial states or nations...to me it really starts to come down to individual attitude and transformation depending on how much and which ways they are influenced in a globally interactive world. Food and cultural preferences are also no longer just about the taste but also the statement of one's politcal values,reaction to more opening world. In my school for example , it is common that Canadian people who are regular guests at international potlucks and who are vegetarian are also left-wings, more liberal, more of those development or cultural studies majors, who travels somewhere other than their countries or have friends of other ethno-groups rather than their middle class white - apart from those vegetarian because of religions. Of course i dont want to generalizae... just an observation...Now i do not think Canadian is so much different from American. In many ways there must be some truth in the joke that Canada is the Junior America, not wanting to offend any Canadian here...there are Canadian here who living on fast food and soon going to heaven with diabets just like in the States... but the fact that there is also a large proportion of young people who increasingly become vegetarians and more cultural accepting to new choices means more than just the need for some new exotic tastes, but also the extent to which food has become politicized and reflect an every day effort on an individual level to change the world.
globalization and borderless community bring different choices but i think to see those choices as positive or negative depends not on personal attitude but also psychology... For some people being offered something is a bless, for others is an invasion that make them feel threatened... thus the issue is how to promote a kind of cross-cultural learning that make people feel save and inclusive rather than being divided,contested and fragmented in an open space.
Being able to sit together and eat together is really so much more than just about being courageous to try the food you never had before ; it is about being willing to share your politics/valuesand listen to that of others; its about crossing the line of your race, gender, priviledge and identity of fate, to form your own community,social circle and individual identity. I never underestimate how much i have grow and evolved through the endless blasting and yummy potlucks since i came to canada.
While yummy potlucks and food politics have been something that cheer up and question my life in canada the last two years, red tapes have been a pain in the ass.
any paper work here cost $$...And the fact that i am international student from a developing country gives me have through more bureaucratic experiences. Like now i am planning to go study abroad with a canadian institution. I happen to be the only international student in the group and i cant find an insurance company because vietnamese insurance is not qualified internationally, whereas canadian insurance does not suport travel plan for non-canadian. There comes my nick: nationless gypsy woman.
like many international students here, i have a hard time finding fulltime jobs in the summer or apply for internship on the academic fields of interests... there are hundreds of development internship out there and the only and always reason i am disqualified is because i am on a study permit visa. Many international students end up doing underpaid illegal jobs in restaurants, whereas more intellectual and career benificial jobs are reserved for canadian citizens. For those fundamentalists who resist globalisation and migration with the argument of job flight, they should not be that freaked out because there is the parallel process of institutionalized legality that preserve the privilegde of certain national groups.In Canada this has been changing over the years with the recent rule allowing international students to work in Quebec and Montreal.But elsewhere the conditions on international citizens are still very enforcing. What ironic is the same kind of restriction does not apply for citizens of developed countries when they come to the socalled third world. For better or worse, nationalism is the very dominant pivotal drive no matter how globalising and opening a country may boast itself to be. While people are continueing expanding their mind beyond their countries borders, their priviledges are very proportional to the position in the ranking of work citizenships which are determined by their countries of origins.
I took a great develoment studies course on social movements and did some readings on how citizenship was used as a tool of creating racial line in history from Aparthied in South Africa to British immigration law in the 50s. Even in the time of rapid globalisation and regional integration, the notion of class of citizenships still seem to persist that requires radical institutional changes.
at the end of the year when u rush to sell ur books and throw theories into brain trash, the common thing that is left with you is the recognition of symbiosis relations of individuals and institutions, and the illusion of the conflation of the two. It made me think of how often we attacked or challenged individual thoughts,habits and lifestyles, we turn friends and beloved into strangers and the hostiles. Our individual relationships being broken down not by the stubborn different choices of food but the very different institutionalized ideologies that are internalized and embedded in us...
but in short, all of this just means that we can never stop being awared of how our everyday events represent the very spectrum of our values and politics, while at the same time being politicized and depoliticized by larger structure and processes that we are unconscious of. There is no bad, narrowed or stupid people; there are only unconscious,unawared and fearful individuals blinded by imperfect,chaotic and ideological centered rather than human centered institutions.
If you happen to go study abroad or live in another country like Mitu and I, you may be required to go through all the orientation and the common cross-cultural building and cultural shocks workshop... but no matter how cultural rich and aware , no matter how open minded and adaptive you are, you will at some points recognize,feel and react very strongly and emotionally to this mentality of "we" and "they" that are imposed on you ; you will be reminded you are a guest, you are "the other"... and you will at some point, like me, feel frustrated because no matter how hard you try you are not part of the circle, you feel excluded....sometimes it is sad, other times it is a inspiring experience for your personal growth... but you always have the power the change as long as you have the will, at least i believe so.
i like to hear comments!you agree, disagree or my thought process has rocketed out of the loop at 5 am with 2 exams to go and dark circles under my eyes tired of looking for jobs hehe.
p.s if u havent been to a potluck really you are missing out so much!
