Growing Pains | The Wellesley Globalist

the Wellesley Globalist Volume II, Issue 2

Growing Pains

In the issue: The Price of Sugar: Investigating the epidemic of Chronic Kidney Failure in rural Nicaragua Televisions “Growing Pains” Buddhism’s Journey to America: A Story of War, Hate, and Perseverance

Table of Contents Politics Remembering WWI (1914-2014): Commemoration & Global Legacy

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By Victoria Yu

Ukraine in Crisis

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By Constance Gouelo

Growing Pains: Education and Development Television’s “Growing Pains”

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By Sarah Fechter

A Shrinking Sky

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By Anne Shen

Tuition Culture

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By Isabel Yu

Growing Pains: Culture Buddhism’s Journey to America: A Story of War, Hate, and Perseverance

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By Stephanie Kossman

Growing Pains: Environmental Sciences The Price of Sugar: Investigating the epidemic of Chronic Kidney Failure in rural Nicaragua

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By Eleanor Marshall

Plastic the New Buzz with Bees?

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By Michelle Namkoong

Growing Pains: Economics China’s Secret Success and the Informal Banking Sector

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By Rebecca George Photo by Sarah Berry

Dear Globalist Readers,

Editorial Staff Editor-in-Chief: Rebecca George ’15

The Wellesley Globalist staff is excited to release our fourth issue this semester, themed ‘Growing Pains.’ ‘Growing Pains’ can be imagined and interpreted on many different levels. Our writers have found unique ways to address our theme, from discussing challenges of childhood development to the impact of population growth and pollution has had on the global bee population to the complex spread of a religion amongst war and conflict. ‘Growing Pains’ can also be a way to understand many international issues that have arisen from rapid population growth such as food and water scarcity, global warming, pollution, and the spread of technology. As you read this issue, I encourage you all to think of growing pains in your own lives and fields of study. As you transition from Wellesley College to other endeavors, it is important to look back and think about the challenges you have overcome so far and those that are yet to come. Every stumble, every struggle can be an opportunity to learn and grow as you search for your path in the world.

Thank you so much for all of your support for the Wellesley Globalist. Every semester we receive creative and impactful contributions from writers, photographers, and designers. Two years ago, the Wellesley Globalist’s staff met for the first time as a new chapter of the Global 21 network. Since then, our staff has shown, time and again, their dedication to our organization and publication. I am so proud of what we have accomplished so far through determination and teamwork. I have learned a lot in my first semester as Editor-in-Chief and grown as a leader and student at Wellesley College. I would like to thank Wellesley professors, administrators, writers, and contributors without whom this publication would not be possible. Finally, I would like to thank our readers for your constant support and encouragement!

I hope you enjoy this issue and I encourage you to submit your own contributions to the Wellesley Globalist at our email address, globalist@wellesley.edu.

Best regards, Your Editor-in-Chief Rebecca George Class of 2015 International Relations-Political Science South Asia Studies

VP & Managing Editor: Stephanie Kossman ’15 Associate Editors: Andrea Aguilar ‘15 Siqi Gao ’15 Elisabetta Pellegrino ’15 Web Marketing Manager: Shan Lee ’16 Photography Editor: Sarah Berry ’16 Art and Design Editor: Annie Wang ’17 Production Editor: Rebecca George ’15 Layout Editors: Neha Doshi ’15 Tessa Kellner ’17 Wendy Ma ’17 Hanna Tenerowicz ’16 Gail Zhuang ’15 Business Director: Carrie Bandurska ’16 Treasurer: Rene Chan ’17 Events Coordinator: Tessa Kellner ’17 Publicity Chair: Michelle Namkoong ‘17 Global 21 Liaison: Victoria Yu ’16 Copy Editor: Shannon Lu ’16 Front Cover Photographer: Adele Clifford ’16 Back Cover Photographer: Shannon Lu ’16

Politics

Protestors in Kiev, Ukraine.

Photo by Sasha Maksymenko

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Remembering WWI (1914-2014): Commemoration & Global Legacy

By Victoria Yu Politics

Students stand together at Queen’s University in Canda on Remembrance Day, a memorial day observed on November 11

by Commonwealth countries to honor those that died in the line of duty during World War I. The poppy flower on each student’s jacket is a symbol of the day.

Photo by Queen’s University

From March 2014, most European countries will be celebrating the 100th anniversary of World War I, often known as “The Great War” or “The War to End All Wars.” Commemoration efforts are beginning to unfold in Europe as the date of the beginning of the war approaches.

In Britain, under an ambitious £50 million package, children from every state secondary school will travel to the First World War battlefields from Spring 2014 to March 2019. Candlelit vigils will be held across England to mark the centenary of the outbreak of WWI. The final candle will be extinguished at 11 p.m. in Westminster Abbey on August 4th, the moment Britain’s ultimatum on Germany passed. Streets may also be renamed after soldiers awarded the Victoria Cross for bravery.

At Glasgow Cathedral, a service for Commonwealth leaders will be held on the day after the closing ceremony for the Commonwealth Games. The service is meant to recognize the contribu-

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tion and sacrifices made by soldiers from across the former British Empire. On the same day, an event at the St. Symphorien Military Cemetery in Mons, Belgium will bring together British and German politicians and armed forces for a service of ‘reconciliation.’ Meanwhile, the media are doing their part to promote awareness of these celebrations. Websites such as 1914.org are being frequently updated and dedicated documentary series are being aired from March 2014. One of these, called I Was There: The Great War Interviews, will feature testimonials taken from the Imperial War Museum’s archives.

In Flanders, Belgium, two million visitors are expected in the next four years. Ypres is already a “must-see” location for WWI pilgrims, seeing an annual 350,000 flow mainly from Britain, Belgium, and The Netherland, and increasing numbers from the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. According to Flemish tourist chiefs, over €50 million has been allocated to the centenary

events with the help of the Belgian government. These generous funds have been issued with the aim of drawing more tourists to the region by renovating hotels and expanding museums. Even the Tyne Cot, the largest Commonwealth war cemetery in the world, is undergoing changes as many of the broken white Portland stone headstones are being replaced with marble to look perfect for the crowds.

Flemish Teachers Nick De Bodt and Rik Caubergs said the prospect of a tourism boom prompted them to launch Bike and Culture Flanders, a travel agency that combines WWI cycle tours with cultural activities such as chocolate making. "We think people get so much more out of visiting the graveyards and battlefields by bike," said Mr. De Bodt. "The terrain is flat, so you can cover many miles in a day, which means you can get some idea of what it was like for the soldiers involved."

However, WWI cycling tour guide Carl Ooghe said he feared not all attempts to lure in tourists were

as tasteful. "It makes me frown when I see souvenir shops selling poppy gin, poppy chocolates, poppy umbrellas and even chocolate helmets," he said. "It could offend some people and reflect negatively on the image of a town like Ypres.”

Belgium's centenary commissioner, Paul Breyne, said he hoped next year's commemorations would strike the right tone, and be accessible to all.

With all the money and planning going into the WWI centenary, Britain, France, and some German historians have criticized Germany’s decision to allocate only €4.5 million to WWI commemorations. The small budget makes Germany appear to be ignoring and brushing over these events. Merkel’s government says it wants to focus on reconciliation since they recognize that Germany is written in history as the main aggressor. "For us, everything is secondary to World War II and Nazi rule, which dominates people's memories," said Fritz Kirchmeier, spokesman for the German War Graves Commission. This year, Germany is also remembering the 75th year since WWII began and the 25th year since the Berlin Wall fell, hence the more solemn tones.

Although the country isn't gearing up for big public ceremonies of national remembrance, Berlin's Free University and the Bavarian State Library have launched the largest-ever international research project into the war, and the German Historical Museum in Berlin is planning a major exhibition next year.

The sentiment of many Allied countries about WWI can be summarized by the words of British Prime Minister, David Cameron. He said he hopes for a “truly national commemoration worthy of this historic centenary [which] says something about who we are as a people.”

While it may be difficult to find a balance between jubilant and somber commemorations, a European take on the war is problematic. By focusing on the European battlegrounds, especially on the Western Front, the centenary risks overlooking the important fact that many non-European countries were involved in the war, whether directly or indirectly, and that they were heavily impacted by it.

Many were not directly involved in fighting the war, but still made contributions. Some of the British colonies, for instance, made direct grants of money and supplied significant amounts of material goods. By 1917, Canada provided Britain with half its

shrapnel; 97% of Australia’s meat was consumed in Britain during the war; New Zealand supplied frozen meat, wool, dairy produce and minerals; India’s jute supply was turned into sandbags. Furthermore, volunteers were drawn from all parts of the former Britsh Empire. For example, one in five men from New Zealand fought at some point during the war. But the largest contribution to Britain’s war effort came from India, with some 1.4–1.5 million men, serving in France, East Africa, Iran and Egypt.

A total of 170,000 West Africans and nearly 300,000 North Africans served in the French army. South Africa also made an important contribution: 136,000 white South

Poppy flower petals fall from a building in Belgium on November 11 to commemorate the fallen soldiers of WWI. Photo by Jen Delgado

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Politics

Statue in a WWI cemetery in Brussels, Belgium.

Photo by Visit Flanders Politics

Africans went to war against German forces, first in Africa and later on the Western Front. In addition, more than 44,000 black South Africans were deployed as auxiliaries in non-combat duty.

While these contributions clearly show how the war reached beyond Europe, the global aspect of WWI – the aspect which really explains the first “W” of the title – is even more evident in the effects of the post-war agreements and negotiations. In a recent report titled Remember the World as well as the War, the British Council has shown how these post-war agreements are still relevant to contemporary international issues. For example, in 2012, senior figures in politics,

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As the continuing conflict between the Israeli and Palestinians makes clear, seemingly small events related to the war and post-war period have had deep, long-term effects on the politics of non-European countries.

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business, civil society and the arts from the UK and North Africa gathered in Hammamet, Tunisia to discuss challenges arising from the Arab Spring. Talking about the importance of building trust and understanding between the UK and Tunisia, a senior advisor to the Tunisian PM remembered events

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which date back to WWI. First, he mentioned the 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement, which affected the division of much of the Middle East into British and French spheres of influence. Secondly, he referred to the 1917 Balfour Declaration, a letter by the British Foreign Secretary, which paved the way for the creation of the state of Israel and the resulting ongoing conflict with the Palestinians.

According to a survey conducted by the British Council, the vast majority of people in Egypt had heard of the Balfour Declaration, while in the UK and France only 25% and 15% respectively knew about it. Similarly, 59% of Egyptian respondents had heard of the Sykes–Picot Agreement, compared to only 9% of respondents in the UK and 8% in France – the two countries that made the agreement. This means that two documents almost forgotten in the UK and France have had a memorable and important impact on the history of another country. As the continuing conflict between the Israeli and Palestinians makes clear, seemingly small events related to the war and post-war period have had deep, long-term effects on the politics of non-European countries.

The Asian region was equally, even if less notoriously, impacted by WWI. On average,

across the seven countries surveyed for the British Council, just 17% of people knew that Asia as a region was involved in the war. Japan entered the war on the side of the Allies. After a two-month siege involving 50,000 Japanese troops, the then German colony Tsingtao (modern-day Qingdao), on the Chinese mainland, was captured.

Japan then presented the “21 Demands” to the already politically troubled Chinese government, which forced them to acknowledge their weakness in the face of Japanese military strength. While there was little immediate military and political effect as far as WWI was concerned, these events sparked a pattern that was to be repeated during WWII. As a result of WWI, Japan’s growing power in China led to further skirmishes in the 1930s, such as the Manchuria Incident.

Rogue Japanese military personnel tried to stage an accident on the Japanese-owned South Manchuria railway as a pretext for a Japanese invasion. In 1932, Chinese and Japanese troops fought a battle known as the January 28 Incident.

This resulted in the demilitarization of Shanghai, which forbade the Chinese from deploying troops in their own city. Similar conflicts continued through the 1930s and reached a deciding point in 1937 when Chinese and Japanese troops

This is a new National World War I Museum housed in the 1929 Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, Kansas. Upon entering the museum, visitors cross a glass bridge above a field of 9,000 red poppies, representing 1,000 combatant deaths and honoring all veterans for the sacrifices they’ve made.

Photo by Bugsy. exchanged fire in the vicinity of the Lugou Bridge, a crucial access route to Beijing. This turned into a full-scale battle in which Beijing and its port city of Tianjin fell to Japanese forces. Most historians recognize the initial skirmishes at the bridge as the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War, a major part of the Pacific theater of WWII. The point which is important to stress here is that all these events – actual ‘foundations’ for future conflict in the WWII Asian-Pacific

arena – can be retraced to WWI, and more precisely, to the war’s effects on Japan.

A better-known example of the global consequences of WWI is the Rwanda Genocide. Of the events commonly mentioned amongst the causes of the genocide, one of the most crucial was the partition of the African continent based on colonial interests rather than on pre-existing nations and ethnic groups. Control of present-day Rwanda, which had

formed part of German East Africa, was given to Belgium. During the German colonial rule, a labelling of the local population as either Tutsis or Hutus had started, a process which the Belgian administration continued by issuing identity cards in the 1930s. Although not intended for this purpose, these ID cards helped to solidify these ethnic categories which were to become so significant in Rwanda’s genocide in 1994.

Although these are not events which many people in the Western world would automatically connect to WWI, it is precisely these that should receive particular attention in the course of WWI commemorations. Together with more usual subjects of remembrance – the futility of the war, its causes, its outcomes, and its effects on the daily lives of those involved – the truly “global,” trans-continental character of the war should become a topic of wider discussion.

A German governmental official was interviewed by Spiegel Online in light of the complaints about the little preparation Germany was doing for WWI commemoration. "Given the global and complex nature of the event a century ago, there is in each country a diversity of experiences and feelings," the official said; "Every nation has the right to its own approach.” It is true that there are diverse experiences and feelings. But, if people gained greater awareness of these different experiences, they would become able to share not only in personal and national narratives of WWI, but also in a global narrative that combines them all. In a time of globalization, WWI should be remembered from a global perspective. It is only by realizing how these events connect us all, and how they still influence contemporary politics and culture, that WWI commemorations can be fruitful.

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Politics

Politics

People protest in front of barricades at Independence Square in December 2013 in Kiev, Ukraine. Mass protest actions started after the president of Ukraine Victor Yanukovych refused the association agreement with the European Union.

Photo by Sasha Maksymenko.

Ukraine in Crisis

By Constance Gouelo February 20th marked the bloodiest day in the protests that have gripped Ukraine since November of last year after former president Viktor Yanukovych abandoned trade negotiations with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Russia. According to Oleh Musiy, head doctor for the opposition movement, more than 70 protesters died on February 20th when the police decided to deploy snipers and use live ammunition during a menacing escalation of violence. Since the violent clash, however, pro-Russian forces have not only seized Crimea, but on March 16, Crimea voted to join Russia in a secession referendum.

Although, the situation between Ukraine and Russia has recently

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escalated, their history has always been complicated.

Both countries trace their roots back to the first East Slavic state, which stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea from the 9th century to the mid-13th century, when it was devastated by Mongol invaders. Power then shifted north from what is now Kiev to Moscow. The territory was carved up between competing powers and remained divided until it was consolidated into the Soviet Union in 1919. During its unification under Soviet rule, Ukraine received the nickname “the breadbasket of Europe” as it produced 25% of agriculture output for the Soviet Union and was also recognized by other nations for its extensive fertile

farmlands. Even today, Ukraine remains the world’s third-largest grain exporter.

Ukraine has always longed for its independence. It briefly gained it in 1917 with the collapse of both the Russian and Aus-

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Despite its population starving, many Ukrainians refused to join collective farms, which were intended by soviet leadership to increase the food supply and raw materials for industry.

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tro-Hungarian Empires. This independence, however, was short lived and the new Bolshevik government

Ukrainian police forces face protestors in Kiev.

Photo by Sasha Maksymenko Politics

recaptured Ukraine in 1918. Nonetheless, Ukraine’s resolution did not wane. Despite its population starving, many Ukrainians refused to join collective farms, which were intended by soviet leadership to increase the food supply and raw materials for industry. Up to 10 million people died either from disease or under the orders of Joseph Stalin for opposing collectivization.

After this disaster, the Soviet Union relocated millions of Russians and other Soviet citizens to help repopulate the coaland iron-ore-rich east of Crimea, which explains why so many ethnic Russians currently live there.

It was only in 1991, with the fall of the Soviet Union, that Ukrainians,

Photo by Oxlaey.com

which counted for 20% of the Soviet Union’s total population at that time, were able to vote for their independence. More than 90% of the Ukrainian population wanted to

no longer be a satellite state of the Union, including 54% of Crimea’s population. But even the creation of an independent Ukrainian state has not stopped Russia from med-

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dling in Ukrainian affairs.

Russian forces have now seized Crimea. It is a region where more than 58.5% of its population is ethnic Russian. Unlike Western Ukraine, it has always had close ties to Russia, so much so that Crimea’s parliament voted to become a part of the Russian federation on March 6th with deputy parliamentary speaker, Sergei Tsekov stating: “This means we have reunited with our motherland which we have been a part of so long.”

The protests did not start with the issue of Crimea, but over the question of whether the Ukraine would ally itself with the European Union or Russia. Viktor Yanukovych, former President of Ukraine, insisted prior to his removal from office that he intended to sign a historic political and trade agreement with the EU, but suspended talks with the Union on November 21st.

One reason for Yanukovych’s decision to suspend talks with EU was that Russia had threatened Ukraine with trade sanctions and steep gas bills, which would adversely affect Ukraine’s economy as Ukraine was the main importer of Russian gas and the means by which Russia exported its gas to other nations.

Secondly, were Yanukovych to sign this treaty opening the way for Ukraine to integrate into the EU, Yanukovych would have had to release political opponent Yulia Tymoshenko from jail as part of the EU demands. Tymoshenko was jailed in 2011 after being found guilty by a Ukrainian court for abusing her office’s power in a gas deal with Russia in 2009, a sentence many, including the EU, believed was politically motivated.

Had Yanukovych gone through with the trade agreement, it would have allowed Ukraine to

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have economic and political support from the other members of the EU. Not only would this partnership have created closer political ties between Ukraine and western countries, but would also have generated economic growth for the Ukraine by opening borders to trade with the EU and setting the stage for modernization. Not surprisingly, the Ukrainian people were furious by Yanukovych’s decision to further increase ties with

Russia, as all they had tried to do for many years was to get away from the grasp of Russia.

One of the questions that remains is why Russia has decided to take the drastic step of violating Ukraine’s sovereignty by invading and annexing Crimea. One possible answer could be Ukraine’s geographical and economic position.

Not only is Ukraine one of Russia’s biggest markets for natural gas exports, but it also serves as a crucial

Ukraine’s police forces take to the streets to contain protestors.

Photo by Sasha Maksymenko

transit route to the rest of Europe.

Furthermore, Russia lacks natural borders such as rivers and mountains along its western frontier and Crimea could serve as a buffer zone between Russia and the West. Rus-

sia’s entrance into Crimea could also have been to obtain the greatest possible autonomy for the referendum that took place on March 20th, in which 97% of the Crimean people voted to separate from

Ukraine and join Russia.

Now all that is left is to see how the international community and the Ukrainian people will react to the referendum that has reunited Crimea and Russia.

References: Alpert, Lukas I., and Margaret Coker. "Ukraine's Crimea Raises Tension by Setting Secession Vote." The Wall Street Journal. N.p., 7 Mar. 2014. Web. Englund, Will, and Kathy Lally. "Ukraine, under Pressure from Russia, Puts Brakes on E.U. Deal." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 22 Nov. 2013. Web. 04 May 2014.

Herszenhorn, David M. "Crimea’s Bloody Past Is a Key to Its Present." The New York Times. The New York Times, 27 Feb. 2014. Web. 04 May 2014.

Herszenhorn, David. "Naming of Officials in Ukraine Reflects Homage to Power of the Street." The New York Times. The New York Times, 27 Feb. 2014. Web. 04 May 2014.

Hodgman, Charlotte. "Complex Crimea: The History behind the Relationship between Russia and Ukraine over Crimea." HistoryExtra.com. Immediate Media Company Limited, 17 Mar. 2014. Web. Modern World History: Patterns of Interaction. Evanston, IL: McDougal Littell, 1999. Print.

"Ukraine Ditches Plans for EU Deal, Turns to Russia." RIA Novosti. N.p., 21 Nov. 2013.

Politics

For more recent updates, go to http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-26248275.

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Left Page: Top Left: Houses in Breukelen, The Netherlands by Victoria Yu, Top Right: Houses in Shanghai China by Victoria Yu, Middle Left: Street in Thailand by Kelsey Burhans, Bottom Left: Causeway Bay, Hong Kong by Victoria Yu, Bottom Right: Wadi Rum, Jordan by Sarah Berry Right Page: Top Left: Petra, Jordan by Sarah Berry, Top Right: Man in Santiago Atitlรกn, Guatemala by Shannon Lu, Middle Left: Outside the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia by Shannon Lu, Middle Right: Woman holding child in Shanxi Province, China by Tina Xu, Bottom Left: Camel in Petra, Jordan by Sarah Berry, Bottom Right: Hanging Temple in Datong City, Shanxi Province, China by Tina Xu

A young girl in Guatemala.

Photo by Shannon Lu

Growing Pains: Education and Development

A small child lives with her grandmother in a leprosy colony in Northern India.

Photo by Heather Pearson

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Television’s “Growing Pains”

By Sarah Fechter

Growing Pains: Education and Development

Two young boys watch the popular children’s television cartoon Scooby-Doo. Photo by Jessica Lucia Over the last twenty-five years or so, children’s television has undergone a shift in how it approaches childhood, adolescence and the challenges of growing up.

From the impression I’ve gained watching current TV shows with my younger cousins and the kids I babysit, today’s programs for kids largely ignore all the universal trials of the young, which were depicted by shows my friends and I watched in middle school. Children’s television offered by companies like Disney and Nickelodeon are more focused on telling the stories of wizards and pop bands rather than continuing to be forums in which the actual life and its challenges, from acne to peer pressure,

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could be addressed.

The shows of the late eighties and early nineties followed trends of earlier programs like The Brady Bunch, Leave it to Beaver, and Diff ’rent Strokes, sitcoms that regarded the family as the prism through which life’s challenges could be viewed and managed.

Thus we had the Huxtables of The Cosby Show, which aired from 1984 until 1992, raising their kids and maintaining a tight bond as their family grows over the years.

The eldest Huxtable children continued to rely on familial support even after they lead their own independent lives. Another prime example of a family-centered sitcom is Full House. Danny Tanner,

his brother-in-law Jesse Katsopolis, and his friend Joey Gladstone teamed up to raise Danny’s daughters after his wife’s death. Throughout eight seasons from 1987 to 1995, Danny and the guys led the girls through the tough trials of growing up – everything from successfully helping DJ manage body image issues to guiding Stephanie through the perils of dating. The message of this era was that parents and siblings were always there to listen and advise; if you were a member of the Tanner family, you could expect soulful background music and hugs along with the wisdom!

The late nineties highlighted the bond of siblings with

shows like Sister, Sister. While parental units were present and ready to help, the emphasis was on the kids supporting each other as they learned and grew together.

While Ray and Lisa of Sister, Sister were by no means uninvolved in their daughters’ lives, twins Tia and Tamera tended to arrive at conclusions on their own and had each other’s backs. Though a later show premiering in 1999, Even Stevens used a similar sibling dynamic. Ren and Louis were polar opposites and bickered as brother and sister, but they ultimately loved one another and gained perspective on their own experiences through their relationship. Shows at the turn of the century expanded the sibling dynamic to include the peer group. In series like The Proud Family, Braceface and As Told By Ginger, the main character’s friend group was the first source of support in navigating the trials of adolescence while parental figures served as the final voice of

reason in particularly tough dilemmas. Lizzie McGuire was the paradigm of the early 2000s show and its peer-and-parent model; Lizzie relied on best buds Miranda and Gordo when facing social anxiety or figuring out a romantic crush, but her parents were never far away with counsel and comfort.

However, the new millennia also brought an abundance of shows not necessarily concerned with reality, but with providing an imaginative range of scenarios outside the generic problems of youth. Take the example of That’s So Raven, a series that chronicled the adventures of a psychic teen whose life is complicated in hilarious ways by her gift. There was also Kim Possible, a popular program that followed the adventures of “your basic average girl” who just happened to vanquish super villains after cheerleading practice.

And lest we forget, in The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, mundane issues like self-discovery and stress in

school were brushed aside in favor of Zack and Cody’s misadventures around the Hotel Tipton. Considering this was the era of American Dragon: Jake Long, it is evident that companies like Disney felt the need to offer something more imaginative and exciting than the same old dilemmas and situations in previous programs.

By far the most influential show, however, in determining the trajectory of trends in children’s TV was Hannah Montana. The plotline of a girl leading a double-life as a wildly successful pop star proved an enormous success and led to the development of other programs about talented young people pursuing their dreams. Now there are also programs like True Jackson VP, which features a teenage girl working as an executive officer of a fashion company. Nickelodeon offers Victorious, a very successful series following a group of gifted high schoolers attending a fictional high school called Hollywood

Photo by Chris Brown

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Growing Pains: Education and Development

Growing Pains: Education and Development

Arts. Such programs indicate a shift from television providing a space to confront real life issues to entertainment meant to inspire dreams and ambitions.

While there is nothing inherently wrong with showcasing the extraordinary and exciting, there are several concerns with such programs that should be considered.

The sensationalism of a show like Phil of the Future can skew perceptions of the norm for child audiences, presenting an escape to a more attractive world rather than a representation of life’s true highs and lows. Even more damaging is that this focus on talent and ambition has undermined support systems for children. Since parental figures are no longer needed to help kids cope with life’s perplexities, they become almost absurd comic relief as they join in on the hijinks. A prime example is Mr. and Mrs. Duncan of Good Luck, Charlie, who are often just as immature and irresponsible as their children. Though part of growing up is realizing adults are fallible,

Photo by Daily Invention

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putting them on the same level as kids undermines the authority real parental figures have as resources for their kids. The peer group also suffers in several ways. In shows like That’s So Raven, protagonists’ friends become poorly characterized, secondary figures dragged along on for the episode’s misadventure. Sibling characters are consistently made the butt of jokes for being less talented than the hero or heroine. Striving toward a common dream creates an often nasty

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Even more damaging is that this focus on talent and ambition has undermined support systems for children. Since parental figures are no longer needed to help kids cope with life’s perplexities, they become almost absurd comic relief as they join in on the hijinks.

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level of rivalry among friends in shows like Shake It Up, stressing competition rather than common ground among peers. All in all,

current children’s sitcoms provide sensationalism at the cost of substance.

To be sure, one need only recall a show like The Wild Thornberrys and its heroine blessed with the ability to talk to animals as she travels the world with her naturalist parents to remember that protagonists with extraordinary circumstances are not new. It is important to have series like Wizards of Waverly Place that awaken kids’ imaginations; A.N.T. Farm and its smart, gifted youngsters who celebrate talent and drive also provide a positive message. Yet there needs to be a balance between characters kids want to be and characters kids can actually see themselves and all their insecurities in. We don’t necessarily need to return to the days of Full House and its often heavy-handed moralizing, but it is important that the current emphasis on dreams and ambitions be accompanied by TV series that offer an outlet and model for dealing with the real problems kids will face while reaching for those goals.

Growing Pains: Education and Development

Photo by Midcentury Pictures

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Growing Pains: Education and Development

Chindren at the Village Gospel Mission Summer Camp in Taiwan.

Photo by Anne Shen

A Shrinking Sky My mother’s family lived in a rural Taiwanese village and years of visits made me no stranger to the countryside. Though familiar with the local dialects, the narrow streets, and the slower pace of life, I knew next to nothing of the circumstances in which my cousins lived. For over half of my life, my perception of the differences between my home city of Taipei, the cosmopolitan capital, and my grandparents’ village remained largely superficial: fewer skyscrapers, less public transportation, cheaper farm products, smaller

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By Anne Shen

crowds. As a child, my limited interactions with rural children outside of my family led me to believe that most of them lived and played the way I did, and I could not appreciate the stark contrast between city and country life until well into high school.

Several summers ago, my church sent a mission team to aid a Taiwanese Christian organization, Village Gospel Mission (VGM), and held week-long English summer camps in rural Taiwan. At each elementary or middle school, 20 Taiwanese college students would

work with six to ten foreign volunteers to run the program. Over the course of three years, I volunteered as a counselor in six VGM summer camps and caught a glimpse into the lives of my students—their broken families, their educational disadvantages, and the ever-growing gap between them and their urban counterparts.

Everything in the countryside seemed smaller: shorter buildings, narrower streets, less traffic, petite schools. My students enjoyed playing tag in the streets and climbing trees in the school courtyards,

and they seemed less concerned with the latest trends and toys, which tended to target children of wealthier families. I found their vivacity somewhat refreshing; too often, elementary school students in Taipei looked rather wilted due to heavy academic workloads and after-school tutoring. Rural children’s vigor made classroom activities a little more difficult to control, but our team enjoyed the students’ open expression of excitement, happiness, and anger. I expected such lively children to lead rather carefree lives, but the realities they described during camp activities shattered my naïve misconceptions of their lives.

During my first summer, I worked in Fenyuan, a village known for tobacco production, and my second grade students kept complaining about their lives. During the camp activities they repeated, “My life is so horrible.” I asked them to write on the chalkboard what they considered a “good life” and their answers were vastly different: “having lots of computer games,” “ more allowance,” “Mom and Dad coming home,” “ having a good relationship with family members,” “being loved by my parents.” Their answers rendered me speechless, and sadly, I received the same answers in almost every other school I visited. In fact, the counselors’ house visits only further revealed the students’ complicated home lives. The majority of parents appeared either nonexistent or unsupportive; over half the children grew up in their grandparents’ homes, left behind when their parents divorced. In several cases, either the father or mother was serving time in prison for drug abuse or gang activities.

Although I mainly taught lower grades, I knew that some of my students’ older siblings had already been involved in the same danger-

ous and frequently criminal activities as their parents. I could only hope with all my heart that my kids could escape the vicious cycle.

But the odds are stacked against them. According to studies conducted by BioMed Central, rural areas in Taiwan faced higher rates of unemployment, alcoholism, and tobacco use. While these factors appear more pertinent to adults, they also affect childhood development by creating problems in parents’ lives. While the well-educated Taiwanese tend to look for work in the cities, the rural population remains, overall, undereducated, and is more susceptible to unemployment. Furthermore, high financial strain often leads to divorce when spouses clash over the allocation of their limited income, contributing to high divorce rates in the countryside. When parents separate, many children end in the same situations as my students—raised by grandparents who may or may not have the en-

born to foreign mothers has risen from 5.12% in 1998 to 13.25% in 2014. Not only have these foreign mothers received little education themselves, but they also tend to be much younger than their husbands and easily become victims of domestic violence or other forms of abuse.

Unfortunately, such unstable homes provide poor relationship examples to children, and a large number of students in our camps with complicated backgrounds had difficulties getting along with their classmates. For example, I often had to take a girl, Angel, out of the classroom because she would slap the other kids when they touched her things. At first, I could not understand why Angel reacted so violently, but after our team of counselors talked with her, we realized that she didn’t know how to resolve conflicts nonviolently. Her family members had never taught her how, and this inability to verbally express her feel-

Growing Pains: Education and Development

“

While the well-educated Taiwanese tend to look for work in the cities, the rural population remains, overall, undereducated, and is more susceptible to unemployment. Furthermore, high financial strain often leads to divorce when spouses clash over the allocation of their limited income, contributing to high divorce rates in the countryside.

”

ergy, education, and economic resources to provide for several children. In addition, many village men cannot find Taiwanese wives due to their low incomes and patriarchal traditions that desire obedient wives, so they resort to international marriages with women from poorer Asian regions such as Vietnam, the Philippines, and rural China. Such international unions have increased in recent years, and according to a study conducted by the National Taiwan University, the number of infants

ings caused a rift between Angel and her classmates.

Instead of drawing people closer, the consequences of family events actually created greater distances between the children I encountered, and the resulting insecurity may carry over into their adult relationships. At every camp I attended, many students cried on the last day of camp. At first, this perplexed me: why were they so attached to people who were strangers just a week ago? Then I realized after hearing their stories: they

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Growing Pains: Education and Development

cried because the counselors gave them a week of desperately needed attention—attention they couldn’t find at home.

The children with more caring parents usually left happy.

I wonder if my girls would become like some of their mothers, going from one abusive relationship to another, searching for that elusive thing called love. I wonder if any of the children will have the chance to see beyond the walls

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around their cycle of poverty.

Their worlds seemed so confined, yet the society around them did little to widen their aspirations. In Taiwan, as in most countries, the opportunity of a better life depends on education; in fact, traditional Confucian culture values education to the point that almost every child in the cities attends after-school cram lessons.

However, small villages remain devoid of tutoring institutions, as

most students cannot afford supplementary lessons. In addition, country schools cannot offer as many resources to teachers compared to urban institutions, so some experience instructor shortages. In a world where primary school kids study for middle school entrance exams, middle school students cram for high school exams and high schoolers prepare for college exams, rural students easily fall further and further behind

with each step.

During my second summer with VGM, our camp focused on the theme of “dreams.” One day, after reviewing the English words for various occupations, I asked my students to form a circle and describe their dream jobs. Seven out of eleven children proudly declared, “When I grow up, I want to be a convenience store clerk.”

Confused, I inquired why.

“Because they wear nice uniforms and get to have air con-

ditioning all day.”

I really struggled to complete that day’s activities. Perhaps my students truly wanted a cashier job. Perhaps they chose it after careful consideration…perhaps. I believe this dream reflected some of the children’s unmet needs: the uniform for stability and order-the air conditioning for material comfort. But how tiny must the village sky be for this to shine most brightly! The students could not understand the hope, the potential,

and the vastness— of the world outside.

Although I encountered these children in the Taiwanese countryside, their problems are universal. As the economic and educational gap between the wealthy and poor increases, the same problems often appear and reinforce the division between haves and havenots. In the years to come, our decisions as citizens of this world--as humans--will determine the scope of many skies.

Growing Pains: Education and Development

Photo by Peter Kuo

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Growing Pains: Education and Development

Tuition Culture

By Isabel Yu

Students study and complete homework outside at the Pioneer Secondary School in Singapore. Now more than ever, students in Singapore feel pressure to take supplementary tutoring classes in order to keep up with other students.

Photo by Rosipaw.

What usually happens as school ends in the afternoon with a ring of the bell? Typically, in the United States, a range of extracurricular activities follows. Athletes and musicians head off to practice and then the rest of the day fills itself with homework. Where I grew up, however, the end of school would simply signal the beginning of more classes to come. If it was a weekday, weekend, day, or night there was no difference. Moreover, these classes would pile up higher and higher the older one got. In

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the lives of millions of Singaporean children, “tuition” is the center of their time spent outside of school.

The term "tuition," used to denote the fee for an educational institution here in the United States, refers to supplementary tutoring classes in Singapore. Tuition primarily comes in two forms, private and institutional. Whilst tutors face the students one-on-one in private tuition, institutional tuition functions like a school. Standing on the podium, the tutor begins by demonstrating exam techniques

whilst the students scribble away.

This kind of “shadow education” is fairly common in Asia. Whilst Singapore has tuition centers running these classes, South Korea has its ‘hakwons’ and Hong Kong its ‘tutorial schools.’ In these three countries, respectively 97%, 90% and 85% of students are enrolled in tuition classes. What is the source of such inordinate numbers? And what are the effects of this phenomenon?

In the past decade Singapore has consistently topped the charts of various international scholastic assessments such as the Trends in International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). However, this excellence has its costs.

Tuition is no longer an optional

aid for education, but a necessity.

The by-products of this phenomenon are not limited to sheer competition and excessive reliance on tutors for one’s academic results.

Rather, a more severe effect lies in the growing indifference towards the process of learning. So whilst tuition has the potential to develop into an opportunity for students to reinforce classroom knowledge in a personalized manner, this is not what it has become. Rather, it has taken away a generation’s ability to tackle problems and difficulties on their own.

the rankings in school. Teaching students how to outdo the other students thus became the imperative of tuition centers. As more parents found it necessary to have their children tutored, the number of tuition centers began to increase exponentially. Statistics show that there are 400 primary and secondary schools in the country, and yet there are more than 500 tuition centers. This number has multiplied five-fold in the past ten years.

In recent years, tuition has become a trend. Students feel out of place if they aren’t attending tuition

“

Tuition is no longer an optional aid for education, but a necessity. The by-products of this phenomenon are not limited to sheer competition and excessive reliance on tutors for one’s academic results. Rather, a more severe effect lies in the growing indifference towards the process of learning.

The commonality of tuition began with a group of students who needed help outside the classroom. They found it difficult to follow through with the curriculum and needed an external push to catch up with the majority of the students. In response, older students or acquaintances would offer their expertise and time to those in need. However, the meritocratic educational system passed down from Confucius philosophy evolved into an academically elitist society in Singapore as well as in the rest of Asia. Most students begun with tuition in one subject, and then moved on to another, and another and so on. With a spike in demand, tutoring began to develop into a profession. As a culture, excellence came as a package.

Like today, one could be a competent student only if he or she had topped the charts in every subject and every way. As a result of tuition, students began to perform better and better in exams. If one was to excel, being good simply was not enough: one had to top

”

classes, and parents feel as though their children are failing without tuition. As an example reported in “The Straits Times,” one of Singapore’s largest newspapers, 14-yearold Jasmine Thoi receives tuition in Chinese and Mathematics even though she is attaining As in both subjects. Her case is far from uncommon; students who are falling behind in class are tutored to avoid being held back, average students are tutored to be pushed to the top, and top students are tutored to maintain form. When such a movement becomes so widespread amongst both the wealthy and the less affluent, as well as both excelling and struggling students, it becomes unlikely, or rather, impossible for students to stand outside the trend. Peer and community pressure thus drives the tuition culture of the nation.

Another effect of this growing culture is the rising prices of tuition.

As a nation, households invest on average US$650 million a year on tuition fees. Amongst millions of families who invest ample time and

money in supplementary lessons for their children, the less wealthy often skimp on food, vacations and other forms of enjoyment in order to pay their children’s multiple tuition classes. Overly priced but famous tutors charge a range of US$100-US$150 per hour in my experience. Therefore, being paid much less than private tutors, many schoolteachers quit their jobs and resort to private tutoring.

As a result, the lack of competent teachers in public schools causes more students to rely on the much more competent tutors, thus perpetuating the cycle.

As more and more students depend on tuition for their education, tutors stop teaching students how to gain knowledge.

Rather, they teach them methods to obtain answers. I personally have experience in tutoring and being tutored. As I found myself in a room with 30 other students, I was handed a booklet filled with math exam questions. The tutor would go through the method of solving each set of questions step by step and all I would have to do was to repeat those steps. This routine would repeat itself each lesson and tuition class time would simply be a time dedicated to do practice questions. This proved very useful for examinations as the expertise of these tutors is to predict the questions that will appear on the exams.

However, the longer I stayed in the class, the more I realized that I wasn’t really learning mathematics.

All I was doing was asking the tutor to help me solve the problem, and all I would do was to memorize the methods which he or she had used to solve the problem. Thus, even after years of math tuition, I did not experience an improvement in my mathematical ability, but just a raise in my exam grades.

As I began to tutor both primary and secondary school stu-

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Growing Pains: Education and Development

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Growing Pains: Education and Development

Students at the Pioneer Secondary School in Singapore reciting the National Pledge of Allegiance.

Photo by Rosipaw

Photo by Jerry Wong

Growing Pains: Education and Development

dents in Chinese, I observed similar flaws in the existing system of teaching. Parents would pay me to write essays for their children and expect their children to memorize the essays that I wrote for their exams. The fundamental problem with this system wasn’t their desire to excel academically. The root of the problem consists in the fact that the learning process is valued only instrumentally, being reduced to a mere tool to score higher and higher in examinations. Students acquire and are exposed to this approach to education at a young age as a result of the societal emphasis on competitive performance. I personally witnessed the kindergarteners I taught undergo these pressures.

This situation should not reflect Singapore’s educational system, nor should it be a representation of what tutoring is. The function of shadow education should be enhancing the syllabus as well as assisting students in need. It should be neither a method sought out by

Photo by Adam Chamness

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Spring 2014

parents and students as a means of affirmation of the students’ grades nor a shortcut to higher grades.

Tuition, if targeted to each and every student’s personal learning styles, would enable a much more efficient process of learning. Even more, it could empower and cultivate the academic interests of generations of students. The Singaporean tuition culture isn’t necessarily detrimental, but it is progressing in the wrong direction. Thus, whilst there is no quick solution to this problem, trying to change the fo-

cus of education from mere performance to substantive learning would certainly set change into motion. Students, parents and tutors, ask yourselves this question, “Are you satisfied with regurgitating what belongs to others? Or do you want knowledge to be a part of who you are?”

Growing Pains: Culture

A Thai Buddhist Flag Photo by Lee Phelps Photography

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Photo by Jean-Francois Scmitz

Growing Pains: Culture

Buddhism’s Journey to America: A Story of War, Hate, and Perseverance By Stephanie Kossman Elements of Buddhism are becoming increasingly popular in the United States. Meditation, for example, is now a more than common practice. Let’s also not forget that one of the most popular bands in the 1990s was named Nirvana.

Whether it is easily recognizable or not, aspects of Buddhist culture

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are extremely appealing to many Americans and the number of Buddhists converts is increasing by the day. Though many Americans have come to love Buddhism, the journey it took to reach this point required perseverance through a constant struggle of war and hatred.

The journey of Buddhism’s presence in America begins in the mid-1800s. Specifically, one of the first historic marks of Buddhism in America was in the year 1844 when Henry David Thoreau translated the Lotus Sutra in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s literary journal called The Dial. The acceptance of Bud-

Growing Pains: Culture

Modern Americans practicing Buddhist meditation near Hollywood, CA. Photo by Kevin Labianco dhism by these highly acclaimed writers was a crucial impetus for the embracing of Buddhism by the rest of the nation. Without the support of worshipped literary masters, Buddhism may never have been accepted as it was.

By the end of the 19th century, the work of Thoreau and Emerson had made Buddhism a common household name. However, the spread of Buddhism in early America should be mostly attributed to early immigrants.

The arrival of Chinese and Japanese immigrants helped immerse Buddhist culture into America, making it a real presence in the nation rather than just a name. Unfortunately, Buddhism still never became a widely accepted religion in early America, mostly due to the fact that it was only embraced as a philosophy, rather than a religion.

For the most part, the Buddhist presence in America remained quiet until the 20th century.

American Buddhists were neither persecuted nor widely successful.

Their presence remained known but unbothered by non-Buddhist

American citizens until the attack on Pearl Harbor. Buddhism, a primarily eastern religion, became infamously associated with Japan, the nation that was responsible for one of the most devastating attacks on America at the time. This hatred and dissent remained, leaving an unfortunate stigma for the Buddhist people during the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War was one of the most opposed wars in American history. Though sometimes overlooked by American schools today, the involvement of Buddhism in the war played a major role. Not only did Buddhism play a central role in the development of the war itself, but the Vietnam War was responsible for the total reconstruction of the American outlook on Buddhism.

The history of Buddhism in the Vietnam War begins in 1963 with the Buddhist crisis. The term “Buddhist Crisis” refers to a six month long period in 1963 during which the South Vietnamese government extensively repressed the local Buddhists, even though they

made up around 70 percent of the population. The event that first caught the attention of the West occurred on May 8th. At the city of Hue, the capital of Northern Province in South Vietnam, the local Buddhists were celebrating the Buddha’s birthday. The government had banned the flying of the Buddhist flag and, in protest, the Buddhists raised their flag anyway. The government proceeded to shoot nine unarmed Buddhist civilians, eight of whom were children. It was this series of events that first brought widespread interest to what was happening in Vietnam.

American authorities, to no surprise, made no attempt to stop the persecution of the Buddhists. Not only was the United States in a close relationship with Diem, the ruling authority in South Vietnam, but the unnecessary hatred of Buddhists remained from the attack on Pearl Harbor. In fact, the American authorities claimed the Buddhists as their enemy, even though they posed no threat to the United States; the Buddhists were

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On June 11, 1963, Thich Quang Duc, a 73 year-old Buddhist monk immolated himself on a popular street of Saigon. Photographer Malcom Browne captured the only photo of the event.

Growing Pains: Culture

Photo by Malcom Browne

simply an innocent religious group who happened to live in a war zone. Clearly, there was an enormous amount of ignorance still present at this time.

For these reasons, Buddhists did not turn to American officials for help. Instead, they sought help from the few young American reporters who were placed in Vietnam. In their writings, they portrayed the Buddhists as innocents and the U.S. government as ignorant and stubborn. The stories they published throughout the Buddhist crisis shed a new light on what exactly was happening in Vietnam and they sparked American citizens’ opposition to the Vietnam War. The most influential piece of news, however, was soon to be written by a young man named

“

Thich Quang Duc’s protest brought the entire world’s attention to the crisis and war in Vietnam. For the first time, Americans were forced to take notice of a culture in a far off country.

”

David Halberstam, a reporter for the New York Times who was the only full-time reporter (from any news source) who covered the Buddhist crisis. Despite all of the

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events of the crisis, 1963 was still an early point in the war and there had not been much news coverage of it yet. Luckily, David Halberstam was there to capture one of the most iconic moments in history.

On June 11, 1963, Thich Quang Duc, a 73 year-old Buddhist monk immolated himself on a popular street of Saigon. Malcom Browne, an associate of Halberstam, captured the only photo of the event.

In his book, The Making of a Quagmire, Halberstam remembers, “Flames were coming from a human being; his body was slowly withering and shriveling up, his head blackening and charring. In the air was the smell of burning flesh. ...Behind me I could hear the sobbing of the Vietnamese who were now gathering. I was too shocked to cry, too confused to take notes or ask questions, too bewildered to even think.” Halberstam was certainly not the only westerner who was shocked. Thich Quang Duc’s protest brought the entire world’s attention to the crisis and war in Vietnam. For the first time, Americans were forced to take notice of a culture in a far off country.

After Thich Quang Duc’s self-immolation, four more monks and a nun all set themselves on fire to protest Diem’s rule. And the immolations continued. As many

as 13 monks in just a single week set themselves on fire in protest of the conflict in Vietnam. Politically speaking, Thich Quang Duc’s self-immolation played a major role in that it led to the assassination of Diem and his powerful brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu. It also, however, played a far greater role in the understanding of Buddhism.

Two years later, in a letter to Martin Luther King Jr., Thich Nhat Hanh explained: “The Press spoke then of suicide, but in the essence, it is not. [...]To prove oneself by fire is to prove that what one is saying is of the utmost important. There is nothing more painful than burning oneself. To say something while experiencing this kind of pain is to say it with the utmost courage, frankness, determination and sincerity. [...] The importance is not to take one’s life, but to burn. What he really aims at is the expression of his will and determination, not death. In the Buddhist belief, life is not confined to a period of 60 or 80 or 100 years: life is eternal. Life is not confined to this body: life is universal.”

This message was well-received by many Americans and, for the first time since Pearl Harbor, Buddhism became admired in the United States.

The 1960s then became a time of rising youth power and opposition to the war. Shunryu Suzuki, a Japanese Zen-Buddhist Monk who newly arrived to America at this time, witnessed the powerful role of the youth himself. Eventually in 1970 he would write his extremely popular book, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, a work which brought about the possibility for anyone interested in learning about Zen Buddhism. This work was inspired by the youth he witnessed, seeing the openness of the “beginner’s mind” and the potential it offered for the spread of Buddhism in America.

Though the embrace of Buddhism by the youth was a monumental point in Buddhist history in America, it was not entirely productive. Zen, at first, had become a fad and something fashionable, rather than a religious practice.

Furthermore, drug culture was also encompassing the youth and it became associated with Buddhism.

The 1960s was a time of rebellion, drugs, and mysticality; Buddhism became associated with all of this.

Though Buddhism would have to break through yet another stereotype, the American drug culture was not entirely detrimental to the spread of Buddhism. Some Buddhists suggest that it was LSD and other psychedelics that opened the youth up to new experiences, including Buddhism. While many Buddhists neglect to talk about drug experiences because of the stigma they have left on Buddhism, some regard drug experiences in the 1960s as what inspired people

“

Engaged Buddhists seek to apply the teachings of the Buddha and meditative practices to current social, political, and environmental issues. In this way, Buddhism has remained in close ties with general activism, which is what truly brought America’s attention to the religion in the first place.

”

to seek meditation experiences, especially ones of enlightenment. Of course, these experiences are only minutely significant compared to

In the Buddhist Tradition, the growth of the lotus flower from muddy waters to sunlight is a symbol of triumph and purification.

Photo byMyrna Vick

those of Buddhist meditation.

The final peak of the American youth’s interest in Buddhism and dissent for the Vietnam War occurred in 1970 when the country discovered that President Richard Nixon bombed Cambodia with no announcement to the rest of the nation. Within the next few years, there was the fall of Saigon.

Nixon had promised the nation a victory with honor for the Vietnam War but 1975 was a year of failure and dishonor. In response to the dissent of their government, American citizens became united in their opposition to the Vietnam War and their acceptance for Buddhism.

Between the end of the Vietnam War and today, Buddhism has been becoming an ever-present part of American culture. America now shares a much greater amount of understanding and acceptance of the religion, though it still faces challenges of differentiating itself from philosophy and fashion.

Still, many Americans are converting to Buddhism today. Though all forms of Buddhism exist in the United States, Engaged Buddhism is becoming the most prominent.

Engaged Buddhists seek to apply the teachings of the Buddha and meditative practices to current social, political, and environmental issues. In this way, Buddhism has remained in close ties with general activism, which is what truly brought America’s attention to the religion in the first place.

The story of Buddhism’s journey to America is a story of many struggles. Buddhism, a religion of mindfulness and understanding, faced hateful stigmas, persecution, and war. But the story of Buddhism is also one of perseverance. Through perseverance, Buddhism not only shaped an entire war through nonviolent means, but also made its way into a nation that once was unaccepting.

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Top Left: Woman in Kyoto Japan by Victoria Yu, Top Right: Children in Bangkok, Thailand by Kelsey Burhans, Middle Right: Figurines in the Hanging Temple in Datong City, Shanxi Province, China by Tina Xu, Bottom Left: Tsunami warning sign in Thailand by Kelsey Burhans, Bottom Right: Women in Guatemala by Shannon Lu.

Growing Pains: Environmental Sciences

Mushrooms growing in a rotting tree trunk.

Photo by Alison Savage

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The Price of Sugar Growing Pains: Environmental Sciences

Investigating the epidemic of Chronic Kidney Failure in rural Nicaragua

By Eleanor Marshall Previously printed in Issue II of the Yale Globalist You can’t find a good restaurant in Chichigalpa, Nicaragua, but you can take your pick of coffins.

New casket shops have cropped up, and the cemetery has expanded. The business of burials is one of the only industries booming in this rural community where the annual death toll from Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) has doubled in the last two years, from 445 in 2010 to 1,092 in 2012.

A study from La Isla Foundation, a non-profit that works in Chichigalpa, reports that 75 percent of deaths in men ages 35-55 and 46 percent of all male deaths are directly attributable to CKD. The community’s full name is not simply “La Isla” but “La Isla de las Viudas,” or “Island of the Widows,” and is encircled by an expanding sea of sugar cane.

In those waving rows of cane lies the epicenter of the CKD epidemic plaguing the rural populations of Nicaragua.

Official records show that 20,000 men have died prematurely from CKD, thought to be caused by factors including dehydration and heat exposure. Although Ilana Weiss, Director of Policy and Public Health for La Isla Foundation, predicted the true toll is much higher. She explained that many cases go unreported as workers lack access to medical care, or can’t afford it. In agricultural areas of Nicaragua and Costa Rica, kid-

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ney failure occurs at five times the national rate. In El Salvador, it was the second highest cause of death in 2009. Not contained to Central America, CKD has been observed in equatorial regions of Sri Lanka, India, and the Philippines among various agriculture-based communities.

Weiss remembers meeting one 20-year-old worker last year who had just finished his first season in the sugar cane, and was about to start his second. She was with him for his first blood test mandated by the San Antonio Sugar Mill, the largest employer in La Isla. Exams showing high levels of creatinine, a chemical metabolized by working kidneys, result in immediate dismissal of workers to avoid company liability for the illness. As the health of workers deteriorates, they are almost always denied pensions or compensation by the company and social security benefits by the government.

“We’re on the way to the testing center and I ask him if he’s nervous,” she remembered. “He looks at me with this huge smile on his face and is like, ‘No. We were born to die in the cane fields.’”

The spread of sugar Though the unforgiving labor of sugar cane cultivation around the equator is centuries old, the kidney failure epidemic has only become rampant in the

last few decades, and serious work on producing a body of reliable research began in the late 2000s.

According to Jean Silk, Program Manager of the Yale Council for Latin and Iberian Studies, CKD appears to have spread with major expansions of large-scale sugar cane operations in the last ten years. The rising global demand for sugar, expected to increase 25 percent by 2020 to feed expanding appetites for processed foods and the burgeoning ethanol industry, has brought in international loans for major corporations to expand cane production.

On October 25, 2006, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a World Bank group, approved a $55 million loan to Nicaragua Sugar Estates Limited, the umbrella corporation that owns San Antonio Sugar Mills and oversees production of 24,000 hectares of cane cultivation in the region encompassing La Isla. The loan was intended to increase production across an additional 2,482 hectares of land, increase mechanization, and fund the construction and operation of a new ethanol plant.

According to Olivia Kaplan FES ’08, San Antonio had expanded to the rural village of Goyena, New Haven’s sister city, in 2003, a few years before she arrived. When she began work there in 2005, farmers had already initiated complaints through the local courts that pesticide run-off from

neighboring cane fields was contaminating the water and that aerial sprays were causing crop failure and sickness.

She returned in 2006 to conduct interviews in Chichigalpa, and found households emptied of their patriarchs. According to Kaplan, the community of 10,000 lost 2,500 people to CKD within a five-year period as diagnosed by San Antonio’s own exams. In fact, the corporation had planted palm trees to line the promenade at its entrance, and would frequently carry lines of coffins to the gates in what resembled traditional funeral processions.

“I came back and walked around shell-shocked because of what I had seen in Nicaragua. It was lots of deteriorating bodies,” she said. “Unconsciously, out of my mouth, I promised the sugar cane workers in Chichigalpa that I would try to do something that would get them justice.”

Behind the collapse

again without recovery time. Rehydration would require drinking an estimated 19 liters of water per day – more than the body can absorb, she explained.

The effects of dehydration make it difficult for the kidney to process environmental toxins or digest large quantities of sugar.

Unfortunately, sugar cane laborers are exposed to both. Daily, workers apply pesticides or are exposed to aerial sprays without protection.

And Maddy Sharp ’13 explains that, ironically, the harms of sugar follow workers out of the field, as sugary beverages are pervasive in Nicaraguan culture while fresh fruits and vegetables, or even potable water, are often unavailable or unaffordable.

After writing her senior thesis on CKD, Sharp arrived in Leon, Nicaragua, on September 24 to conduct a yearlong project focused on preventative measures – targeting young children and their parents and teachers to provide access to healthy food and education on better nutrition and hydration – habits that can slow the progression of CKD in its early stages.

“When I heard about this illness, I assumed that it was predominantly men in the sugar cane industry, but we’re finding more and more that it has also spread to women and children. Yesterday, I was talking to the town leader of Goyena and she was saying that her son has CKD. There are children in Goyena that have CKD,” Sharp said. “It’s becoming like the common cold, it’s not shocking anymore.”

While the effects of CKD are ubiquitous in the coffin stores and fatherless households of Chichigalpa, pinning down the cause of the disease still proves the largest barrier to solving it.

Currently, the strongest hypothesis is that such high incidence of the disease comes from repeated exposure to intense heat – often hovering near 100°F and increasing with the effects of climate change – combined with dehydration resulting from strenuous labor without adequate breaks or access to water. Weiss explained that sugar cane workers lose over five Born to die in the cane fields pounds of water per day – the average amount runners lose during Juan Salgado started work a marathon, except over and over in the sugar cane in 1975, before

CKD became a household presence. He hails from Candelaria, a village neighboring La Isla where San Antonio began involuntarily resettling workers living on its property in 1998. He regularly worked from 6 a.m. to 6, or even 8 p.m.

“You can’t rest. The only time you rest is if you can’t work and have to go to the hospital,” he said, explaining that workers do not even take breaks to hydrate.

“Drinking water wastes time.”

After cutting sugar cane for 36 years, Salgado fell ill with CKD in 2001. Suffering from vomiting, fevers, and intense fatigue, he was forced to retire. The father of five, Salgado’s sons now support the family, but he said many of his neighbors have no one left healthy enough to work.

It is consensus among researchers, according to Silk, that workers start to fall ill after just two or three seasons swinging a machete in the sugar cane. Progressing rapidly through the five stages of kidney failure, they die shortly thereafter.

Although Salgado remembered watching fellow workers lose kidney function as early as the late 1980s, and sensed growing alarm in Candelaria over the disease by the early 2000s, just ten years ago, CKD was unheard of outside the isolated communities it impacts.

Because the vast majority of the population across the Nicaraguan countryside is made up of an unskilled, unemployed workforce, Weiss explained that companies like San Antonio have historically treated laborers as easily replaceable. She believes that NSEL is just now being confronted with international pressure to address its labor standards, but is worried

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Growing Pains: Environmental Sciences

about the liability that comes with taking responsibility for occupational illness in its workers.

Y-Vonne Hutchinson, Director of Law and Human Rights at La Isla, said that while CKD has become an eventuality for sugar cane workers, they continue to go to work in the fields because companies like San Antonio offer one of the only forms of steady employment to isolated rural communities. Desperate to provide for their families, Hutchinson explains that men suffering from CKD often use false identification to continue working in the fields as sub-contracted labor.

Sugar cane workers are paid on commission, about $0.90 USD for every ton of cane they cut. According to a report by La Isla, workers make, on average, $7 USD per day, working as hard as they can through the six month season that lasts from November through May, hoping this income will make ends meet until the next year. While prices have soared in

Nicaragua over the past decades, wages have stagnated.

An occupational hazard Searching for scientific evidence of the harms of cane cultivation, Kaplan began a study into Goyena’s water quality conducted through the Yale School of Forestry in 2007. When it came back without traceable levels, she began searching for other mechanisms to stop the disease’s spread. She was doing research late one night when she happened upon the IFC’s Office of the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman, through which the populations impacted by the IFC’s projects – like the $55 million loan to sugar companies including San Antonio – can file grievances, outlining the impacts on their communities.

“I literally fell of my chair and was like ‘those sons of bitches.’

Then I knew that something major was going to happen because [the community impacts] listed under

the loan were untrue,” she said, leaving ample grounds for grievances.

Kaplan returned to Nicaragua several times over the next few years, meeting with affected populations and partnering with ASOCHIVIDA, an association of former cane workers, to help them build a case.

They successfully submitted a formal grievance to the IFC on March 31, 2008.

The report asked Nicaragua Sugar Estates Limited (NSEL) , most basically, to comply with IFC and domestic labor laws through practices such as providing breaks and job rotation for its workers and ensuring potable water in all surrounding communities. San Antonio was required to provide food aid to sick workers for two and a half years after their dismissal and fund construction of a kidney dialysis clinic in Chichigalpa. But the biggest benefits, Kaplan argued, were in the dialogue itself.

“In 2006, the attitude was, ‘We’re dying and the world doesn’t

Sugar cane workers are paid on commission, about $0.90 USD for every ton of cane they cut.

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care. Can you please go and tell our story?’” she said. In 2008, IFC investigations brought San Antonio to the negotiating table for the first time, and resulted in a mandated two-year study into the cause of CKD. Published in December 2011, the investigation led by Dan Brooks of Boston University was inconclusive, but corroborates the current theories of dehydration and has paved the way for further international attention.

according to Weiss, they are often right. As recently as a few months ago, the majority of dialysis patients were dying from infection during treatment.

Even encouraging people to drink more water can be complicated, explains Connor Bell MPH ’15, who worked on a team with Dan Brooks to conduct research on dehydration in Nicaragua last summer. Many rural communi-

and advocates access to information on working conditions. For Hutchinson, the plight of sugar cane workers is rare in the realm of human rights crises in one important way: it’s solvable.

“We’re not talking about changing an entire government.

We’re not talking about eliminating some deeply seated ethnic conflict. We’re not talking about changing cultural perceptions of

Growing Pains: Environmental Sciences

“ But even without a causal link, Bell said, corporations like San

Antonio and Montelimar are notorious for mistreating their workers, even suppressing dissent and political demonstrations with violence, and denying researchers and advocates access to information on working conditions. For Hutchinson, the plight of sugar cane workers is rare in the realm of human rights crises in one important way: it’s solvable.

”

The cost of living CKD is treatable through kidney transplants or dialysis, a process that simulates kidney function by removing waste from the bloodstream. However, treatment options are costly and there is no cure. Peritonial dialysis, the cheapest choice, can be administered in a patient’s home, but requires a sterile environment and ample medical supplies, and is extremely painful.

Further, one round of peritoneal dialysis costs $100, and treatment requires three rounds per week. It would take almost two months of wages for a sugar cane worker to afford a full week of treatment.

Salgado, like many who suffer from CKD, has refused treatment even when it was available.

He explained that in his community, it is the prevailing belief that attempting dialysis will only cause a patient to die more quickly. And,

ties lack potable water, and believe their wells to be contaminated.

In fact, according to Bell, there is an inexplicably high prevalence of kidney disease among the general population – not just those exposed to the sugar cane – and that there isn’t enough evidence to call CKD an occupational illness.

Citing this lack of a direct connection between the sugar industry and CKD, the IFC approved a $15 million loan invested on October 29 to Nicaraguan sugar cane producer Montelimar Mill to more than double production. This was the first international loan to a sugar cane company since the IFC’s investigation into CKD began.

But even without a causal link, Bell said, corporations like San Antonio and Montelimar are notorious for mistreating their workers, even suppressing dissent and political demonstrations with violence, and denying researchers

women. We’re talking about getting a few companies to obey laws on the books and getting a state to protect its workforce. It’s actually quite simple,” she said. “There is a finish line.”

But the prevalence throughout the general population is perhaps more deeply rooted – in lack of access to clean water and nutritious food, and the cultural prevalence of sugary beverages and alcohol. Even getting occupational grievances recognized by companies like San Antonio has required years of constant pressure for slow and small improvement.

“If there was a clear path, I would have gone down it,” Kaplan said.

Eleanor Marshall ’16 is in Saybrook College.

She can be reached at eleanor.marshall@yale.edu.

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Growing Pains: Environmental Sciences

Human population growth threatens the life of bees. Now, bees have begun colonizing in plastic waste left behind by humans.

Photo by Sean Winters

Plastic the New Buzz with Bees? By Michelle Namkoong Bees have lived on our planet for over 120 million years.

Around the world, though, bee populations have been dwindling rapidly due to widespread use of herbicides, pesticides, and crop monoculture. Crop monoculture is the farming of a large area of land with one type of crop and it contributes to the decline of plants and trees. Over 25,000 bee species exist in the world and many of them are under threat, in part because of humans.

Specifically, bees are threatened by human population

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growth, as it demands more land, which we obtain by eliminating such plants and trees. The rise of the human also means more waste.

“Plastic waste pervades the global landscape,” explains Scott MacIvor, a doctoral student from York University, in the journal Ecosphere. Although humans’ harmful effect on the environment is well circulated, “there are few observations of behavioral flexibility and adaptation in species, especially insects, to plastic-rich environments.”

Birds are among the few

known species to use plastic waste purposefully. Bowerbirds, for example, gather brightly colored bottle caps, paper clips, and a variety of other waste objects to decorate their nests to attract mates. Aside from such rare cases, though, the majority of animals, and especially insects, have yet to adapt to the vast amount of human-created waste.

Canadian bees, however, are beating other insects in recycling. MacIvor and his team of researchers from the University of Guelph recently found evidence of local wild bee populations in-

corporating bits of plastic in their nests. The study’s implications mainly concern questions as to whether or not their actions can be categorized as adaption.

Two bee species, the Megachile campanulae and the Megachile rotundata, were found using plastic in the place of typical nest building materials such as mud and leaves, which, according to MacIvor, “suggests innovative use of common urban materials.”

The genus Megachile describes solitary bees, often called leafcutter bees. Megachile bees do not form colonies or produce honey like honeybees, but they are one of the largest genera of bees, with about 1500 species.

MacIvor and his team oversaw more than 200 artificial nest boxes as part of ecology-based research on urban bees and wasps, which included the Megachile campanulae and the Megachile rotundata.

The University of Guelph's Andrew Moore, supervisor of analytical microscopy at Laboratory Services, analyzed the “grey goo” MacIvor found in the nests of the

Megachile campanulae bee. At first, MacIvor mistook the goo for chewing gum, since the M. campanulae normally makes its nests with plant resins. Moore concluded the substance was polyurethane through x-ray microanalysis and infrared microscopy.

Upon closer inspection, they realized that the bees were using polyurethane-based building sealant, like caulking, in its brood cells, where larvae are raised. The bees replaced about a quarter of the leaves ordinarily used for the cells with the plastic bits.

The researchers came across the Megachile rotundata (an alfalfa leafcutter bee) that was also using plastic bag pieces to build its brood cells. M. rotundata is the only Megachile species to pollinate, and they’re especially effective in pollinating vegetables like alfalfa and carrots.

MacIvor and his team considered the possibility that the bees’ use of plastic may have been incidental, but also the result of a lack of leaves. However, the scientists studied the markings on the plastic and found that the bees chewed it

differently, showing that the bees had not mistakenly gathered the substance. Furthermore, leaves were abundant in the area and bees returned to gathering leaves after using the plastic, implying the bees had sought and intentionally used the plastic.

“The plastic materials had been gathered by the bees, and then worked - chewed up and spit out like gum - to form something new that they could use,” explained

Growing Pains: Environmental Sciences

“

The study’s implications mainly concern whether or not their actions can be categorized as adaptation.

”

Moore. The plastic the bees used, in both cases, was structurally similar to their natural nesting materials, which indicates the structure of the materials used is more important than its origins.

Both species’ larvae matured successfully in the hybrid plastic-leaves nests. Researchers were startled to find that the larvae were all parasite-free, suggesting polyurethane may actually impede parasites. This factor implies that if

Photo by John Hayes

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Growing Pains: Environmental Sciences

Photo by Arnold Lane the bees were purposefully using the plastic as a means to produce healthier generations, they may, in fact, be actively adapting to the environment.

The M. campanulae and M. rotundata are native to Ontario, Canada, and are the only documented cases of bees using polyurethane and polyethylene in their nests. The significant amount of the plastic in the nests validates the research as possible proof of bees’ ability to adapt. However, the polyurethane material does not act the same way as the leaves. The plastic is not as breathable and inhibits diffusion of moisture, which leads to mold and lost brood. While all the larvae in this study survived to adulthood, other examples exist of plastic inhibiting other insects’ and animals’ breathing, mobility, and foraging. The plastic, therefore, might be harmful for other bee species, and a higher percentage built into the nests could be detrimental for the bees.

More research is needed to properly determine whether

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the polyurethane is wholly beneficial for the nests. It is an important finding, nonetheless, as their behavior “could reflect the ecologically adaptive traits necessary for survival in an increasingly human-dominated environment,” explained MacIvor.

Wellesley College Biology Assistant Professor Heather Mattila, who received her Ph.D from the University of Guelph, commented, “We are a long way from knowing whether or not this behavior is adaptive. It will take careful observation over several generations to determine whether incorporating plastic into a nest is an unhelpful accidental or whether it truly helps them to survive and reproduce more than their counterparts who don't use plastic. Either way, this work shows clearly that our garbage footprint affects bees greatly, and in ways that we have a difficult time predicting.”

Roughly 80% of the food lining our grocery shelves is there because bees have pollinated crops, so we would essentially starve

without bees. As a result, MacIvor’s research is also “alarming,” as Professor Mattila puts it, “considering that we rely on these pollinators to produce a substantial amount of the food that we eat everyday.”

This scientific evidence ultimately shines an optimistic light on the future development of bees.

If other bee species followed suit, bee populations may steadily increase or become stronger in the more threatening environment.

Broader implications include possibilities for other insects to also reuse human waste. Ants might begin using cardboard. The question is no longer whether it is possible, but whether it is sustainable. “Bees are often referred to as declining around human development, but it’s increasingly clear there are urban winners and losers,” commented MacIvor. “Some species do well or better around humans than without them.” The study affirms that bees are one of the most resourceful creatures on the Earth and that they will not go down without a fight.

Growing Pains: Economics

A marketplace in Beijing, China.

Photo by McCay Savage

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China’s Secret Success and the Informal Banking Sector By Rebecca George Growing Pains: Economics

Photo by epSos .de

In recent years, the continued development of informal markets throughout China directly correlates with China’s unprecedented economic growth for a developing country. This contradicts the commonly held belief that curb markets hinder growth and development in a state. So far, China has been the exception to the rule.

With no developed system to enforce and protect property rights and a state bank loaning system based on political precedent rather than on credit or accountability, China should not have such a large and growing informal finance sector. This growth is mainly due to a combination of non-economic factors exhibited in China in the last few decades such as local political corruption, specialized economic policies to localities, and local norms of reciprocity and trust.

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Now, in order to grapple with these new realities of China’s success, policy makers must look to the future and look inward at state functions and institutions.

Many of the factors that led to China’s vibrant informal market were due to corruption or lack of accountability within the government. It also relies heavily on local communities’ norms of trust and mutual respect rather than reliance on state-protected enterprises.

China’s unique combination of political, social, economic and historical circumstances as a country and a people has allowed a vibrant informal banking sector to grow and maintain an important part of the Chinese economy during the last two decades. Even as it undermines the party-state, the informal finance system has allowed the private sector in China

to grow dramatically, contributing heavily to the country’s recent economic growth and calling the theories of economists and policy makers about economic growth in developing countries into question.

The informal market in China has had a huge impact on its current private sector which remains the fastest growing part of China’s economy since the 1978 economic reforms. In the past two decades, more than 30 million private businesses have been established, many of which have been funded through the informal market. The reason for this is simple.

Just as economists would expect, because the supply of credit in China is less than the market demand for credit, other sources of finance such as curb markets had to be established.

There has also been a history of informal finance practices in Chinese localities such as the hui and other family-oriented loan systems. The largest change since the 1978 reforms has been that the party no longer holds the mo-

is not contributing to the private sector as it should, corruption among local governments tends to increase in order to grow their economies.

Some local governments are quicker to accept informal

not informal banking or a stateled collectivized economy would be better for their locality and often times, themselves. It also gives local entrepreneurs more political power as they can offer incentives to their local economic regulators to allow them to exist. In this way, This growth is mainly due to a combination of non-economic more power is being brought to the factors exhibited in China in the last few decades such as local people rather than state leaders.

Informal banking in Chipolitical corruption, specialized economic policies to localities, and na was also brought about by a local norms of reciprocity and trust. history of investment in different localities for geostrategic or othnopoly on the supply of capital in markets in their localities than oth- er political reasons. While some the Chinese economy. The infor- ers, showing the different values areas were heavily collectivized, mal market persists in localities and norms accepted by Chinese others were not given investment in which the “Wenzhou Model” officials from region to region. capital on purpose. Two modis most prominent. In this model, With so many provincial, regional, els were gradually formed out of due to a lack of institutionalized and localized governmental policy this governmental treatment, the collectivization or investment, pri- makers, different interpretations Wenzhou Model, discussed earlivate forms of industrialization are of central mandates differ at the er, and the Sunan Model. Unlike subnational level. This allows lo- the Wenzhou Model, the Chinese funded at the local level.

Statistics about family en- cal leaders to decide whether or government had invested in colterprises and other informal market financed businesses within this Photo by Sarah Joy Wenzhou Model shows their benefits to China’s economy. In Wenzhou in 1985, family enterprises had a 1-billion yuan output which totaled about half of the rural industrial output at the time. From 1983 to 1987, township enterprises in the area nearly doubled. And, from 1978 to 2004, Wenzhou’s per capital gross domestic product grew 18.3% every year, 10% higher than China’s average growth rate.

The strength and prominence of the informal market within Wenzhou shows that this model works.

Political corruption and favoritism towards state owned enterprises both maintain the informal economy and encourage it. State banks tend to worry more about their standing within the government instead of worrying about their own efficiency, profitability, and professionalism and therefore favor giving direct bank credit toward strategic industries.

Because the Chinese government

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Growing Pains: Economics

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Growing Pains: Economics

This shows the stark contrast between the modern city of Wenzhou, China to the right and one of the villages that surrounds it.

Photo by Ken Larmon

lective forms of corporatization in specific regions. Because of the strong state involvement in these areas, they were much less likely to develop informal private forms of finance and, because of this, their private sectors tended to suffer.

Meanwhile, Wenzhou is known for its growing commercial sector and its textile goods manufacturing. So, even though in the past the Wenzhou-esque localities were not given much governmental support,

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they were able to use this as an advantage to grow their informal markets without the government’s help or protection.

The Chinese informal market has also been able to grow and continue today because of the formation of non-economic factors such as localized social pressure, good-will, trust, and the mobility and flexibility of communities. There has been a deep history of non-government sanc-

tioned cooperative loan societies in China going as far back as the institutionalized she in Buddhist monasteries during the Tang Dynasty. Even during the Qing and Republican Era the hui was used regularly, which was a system similar to a modern-day rotating saving and credit association. These practices were almost always used for ceremonial needs rather than being profit-driven loan systems.

Even so, they set a histori-

Growing Pains: Economics

cally-rooted precedent in the common trust within local communities of friends and family. In these collective loaning systems, the people involved did not need the state to enforce the protection of their property but rather trusted that the community would treat them fairly and eventually they would receive all of their money back when it was needed. This also showed the ingrained mobility and flexibility of local community members. This is

important to the Wenzhou Model which resembles more of a laissez-faire economic system.

Though there are many benefits to informal markets, there are very obvious harms such as political instability and loss in confidence in the state, among many others. Possibly the most harmful repercussion of the informal, underground economy is its instability. When efforts are made by the party-state to crack down on

any illegal financial systems, social unrest escalates due to financial crises, which often leads to large scale demonstrations against the government. Furthermore, local crises show the destabilizing effect of informal finance as private financial transactions could potentially undermine the legitimacy of the regime and disrupt state management of inflation.

A loss of faith in the entire economic system of the communist

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Growing Pains: Economics

regime, including the state banks, can also occur when financial entrepreneurs feel threatened by government intervention. In addition, because the Wenzhou government had more laissez-faire policies, it was not as favorably received in negotiations by the state as the Sunan government and therefore was less able to support their Township Village Enterprises with state help.

In order to contend with the success of China’s informal market, policy makers must first analyze the trajectory of China’s political, economic, and social systems. They must decide whether this informal market growth is a

characteristic of China’s transitional economy or if it will continue after the state has left this stage in their economic development. Also, policy makers will need to have policies ready for when the current growth and development in the state begins to slow down. In general however, policy makers should learn from China’s economic system and methods of growth.

Policy makers need to understand that there are clearly a diverse number of paths a state or economy can follow for a good transition and for high development. They should recognize that there is not one answer to econom-

ic growth. China’s informal market growth is completely contradictory to the theories of most scholars about the need for a protected system of property rights and the harms of a biased system of loans by state banks. Instead of fitting each country into one theory or box, policy makers should look for a “feasible path.” Through this theory, policy makers should assure necessary initial conditions but should not worry about finding the most ideal path as it is not possible.

A more practical approach is finding a pathway to economic growth and development by a “feasible” method, just as China is doing.

References Chen, Sheying. 2002. “Economic Reform and Social Change in China: Past, Present, and Future of the Economic State.” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 15.4: 569-589.

Leff, Nathaniel. 1964. “Economic Development through Bureaucratic Corruption.” American Behavioral Scientist 8.3: 8-14.

Qian, Yingyi. 2003. “How Reform Worked in China.” Quoted in Dani Rodrik, In Search of Prosperity: Analytical Narratives on Economic Growth (Princeton University Press, (2003), 297-333.

Tsai, Kellee S. 2002. Back-Alley Banking: Private Entrepreneurs in China. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

Tsai, Kellee S. 2006. “Adaptive Informal Institutions and Endogenous Institutional Change in China.” World Politics 69.1: 116-141.

Webber, Michael. 2008. “The Places of Primitive Accumulation in Rural China.” Economic Geography 84.4: 395.

Wei, Yehui Dennis, Wangming Li, and Chunbin Wang. 2007. “Restructuring Industrial Districts, Scaling up Regional Development: A Study of the Wenzhou Model, China.” Economic Geography 83.4: 421-444.

A street in Wenzhou, China.

Photo by Jakob Monstrasio

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In Case You Missed It: The “Growing Pains” Lecture Panel Will the Last Person to Leave Uranium City Please Turn out the Lights? & Losing Touch with Reality at the Edge of the World

Professor Justin Armstrong Visiting Lecturer in the Writing Program and Department of Anthropology at Wellesley College.

His research focuses on ethnographic methods, globalization, depopulation of the North American High Plains, islands and ghost towns.

In his lecture, Professor Justin Armstrong discussed his personal “growing pains” through his experience studying Muli, an abandoned town in the Faroe Islands, and the “growing pains” of the almost entirely abandoned Uranium City in Saskatchewan, Canada.

First, he explained his growth as an individual and an anthropologist in his time spent on the Faroe Islands. Muli was recently abandoned after finally getting electricity in the 1970s and road access in the 1990s. Living in such an isolated and empty town, Professor Armstrong explained the difficulties he faced and the ways he overcame them. These included the overwhelming quiet that he experienced and his method of finding an “anchor” to remind himself of the world outside of Muli.

Second, Professor Armstrong discussed his time spent in Uranium City.

This town was founded in the 1950s after uranium was discovered nearby but, after the mines were shut down in 1982, the city was abandoned and only around 100 people have remained. This rapid expansion followed by a rapid contraction in population has left the city with very little infrastructure or system of governance.

The population, however, continues to strive through this growing pain.

Coffeelands: Hungry Farmers and the Pressure to Intensify

Professor Katie Goodall Botany Fellow at Wellesley College Her research focuses on biodiversity conservation, landscape ecology, and farmer livelihoods within agroecosystems, mostly in Latin America.

In her lecture, Professor Goodall discussed the growing pressure on farmers to “feed the world” and the growing population. Professor Goodall’s research focuses on the over 70% of coffee farmers that are smallholders. The term smallholder refers to farmers that produce food on 10 hectares of land or . These coffee smallholders tend to support biodiversity which in turn benefits the surrounding ecosystems.

Unfortunately, there is a fundamental problem and paradox in the food production of small farmers: about 50% of those facing food insecurity today are small scale farmers. While these farmers attempt to intensify their agricultural systems to increase their yield (which usually means less biodiversity), their subsistence crops and coffee income dry up, on average, three months short of the end of the year. Because they cut down on biodiversity to increase yield immediately, they actually lose money in the long-term as erosion and nutrient leaching occur.

Professor Goodall suggests four ways that these risks can be mitigated: farmer cooperatives, farmer-to-farmer organizations, encouraging direct trade with smallholder farmers, and increasing awareness at international policy meetings. Still, these “growing pains” remain for the majority of coffee farmer smallholders throughout the world and a lot of work needs to be done to solve the “hungry farmer paradox.”

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Assumption Cathedral in Yaroslavl, Russia.

Photo by Shannon Lu

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