Author: The Essayist (Page 2 of 3)

Zygmunt Bauman

January 27, 2015 / The Essayist

Bauman, Zygmunt (1972): “Culture, Values and Science of Society”. University of Leeds Review, 15 (2):185-203.

Bauman, Zygmunt (1976a): Socialism: The Active Utopia. London: Hutchinson.

Bauman, Zygmunt (1976b): Towards a Critical Sociology – An Essay on Common Sense and Emancipation. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Bauman, Zygmunt (1987): Legislators and Interpreters – On Modernity, Post-Modernity and Intellectuals. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Bauman, Zygmunt (1991a): Modernity and Ambivalence. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Bauman, Zygmunt (1991b): “Critical Theory”, in Henry Etzkowitz & Ronald Glassman (eds.): The Renascence of Critical Theory. Ithaca: F. E. Peacock Publishers, pp. 277-303.

Bauman, Zygmunt (1992): Intimations of Postmodernity. London: Routledge.

Bauman, Zygmunt (1993): Postmodern Ethics. Oxford: Blackwell.

Bauman, Zygmunt (1998a): Work, Consumerism and the New Poor. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Bauman, Zygmunt (1998b): Globalization – The Human Consequences. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Bauman, Zygmunt (1998c): “Sociological Enlightenment – For Whom, About What?”. Dansk Sociologi (Special Issue), 9:43-54.

Bauman, Zygmunt (1999a): In Search of Politics. Cambridge: Polity.

Bauman, Zygmunt (1999b): “Critique – Privatized and Disarmed”. Zeitschrift für Kritische Theorie, 9:121-131.

Bauman, Zygmunt (2000): Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Bauman, Zygmunt (2001a): Community – Seeking Safety in an Insecure World. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Bauman, Zygmunt (2001b): The Individualized Society. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Bauman, Zygmunt (2002a): Society Under Siege. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Bauman, Zygmunt (2002b): “Pierre Bourdieu; Or the Dialectics of Vita Contemplativa and Vita Activa”. Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 2 (220):179-193.

Bauman, Zygmunt (2003): Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Bauman, Zygmunt (2006): Liquid Fear. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Bauman, Zygmunt (2007a): Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Bauman, Zygmunt (2007b): Consuming Life. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Bauman, Zygmunt (2011): Collateral Damage – Social Inequalities in a Global Age. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Bauman, Zygmunt & Tim May (2001): Thinking Sociologically, 2nd Edition. Oxford: Blackwell.

Bauman, Zygmunt & Keith Tester (2001): Conversations with Zygmunt Bauman. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Bauman, Zygmunt & David Lyon (2012): Liquid Surveillance – A Conversation. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Bauman, Zygmunt, Michael Hviid Jacobsen & Keith Tester (2013): What Use Is Sociology? Cambridge: Polity Press.

Eriksen, Thomas Hylland (2001): The Tyranny of the Moment. London: Pluto Press.

Giddens, Anthony (1991): Modernity and Self-Identity – Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Habermas, Jürgen (1989): The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the Historians’ Debate. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Jacobsen, Michael Hviid (2004): “From Solid Modern Utopia to Liquid Modern Anti-Utopia: Tracing the Utopian Strand in the Sociology of Zygmunt Bauman”. Utopian Studies, 15 (1):63-87.

Jacobsen, Michael Hviid (2014): “All that is Solid Melts into Liquid – Zygmunt Bauman on the Liquid-Modern Challenges to Critique”, in Anders Blok & Peter Gundelach (eds.): The Elementary Forms of Sociological Knowledge: Essays in Honor of Margareta Bertilsson. Copenhagen: Sociologisk Institut, pp. 175-195.

Jacobsen, Michael Hviid (2015): “Flydende kritik – Zygmunt Bauman om kritikkens forfald i den flydende moderne konsumverden”, in Michael Hviid Jacobsen & Anders Petersen (eds.): Kritik – klassiske og kontemporære sociologiske perspektiver. Copenhagen: Hans Reitzels Forlag (in press).

Jacobsen, Michael Hviid & Keith Tester (2013): “Talking Sociology: An Interview with Zygmunt Bauman on Sociology, Celebrity and Critique”. Thesis Eleven, 114 (1):103-113.

Jacobsen, Michael Hviid, Sophia Marshman & Keith Tester (2007): Bauman Beyond Postmodernity – Critical Appraisals, Conversations and Annotated Bibliography 1989-2005. Aalborg: Aalborg University Press.

Jacoby, Russell (1999): The End of Utopia: Politics and Culture in an Age of Apathy. New York: Basic Books.

Kim, Kwang-Ki (2003): Order and Agency in Modernity: Talcott Parsons, Erving Goffman, and Harold Garfinkel. New York: State University of New York Press.

Korpi, Walter (1990): “Om undran inför sociologerna”. Sociologisk Forskning, 3:2-10.

Mazlish, Bruce (2003): “A Tale of Two Enclosures: Self and Society as Settings for Utopia”. Theory, Culture & Society, 20 (1):43-60.

Merton, Robert K. (1976): Sociological Ambivalence and Other Essays. New York: Free Press.

Mills, Charles Wright (1959): The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press.

Musil, Robert (1953/1996): The Man Without Qualities, Volume I: 1930-1942. London: Minerva.

Nijhoff, Pieter (1998): “The Right to Inconsistency”. Theory, Culture & Society, 15 (1):87-112.

Polanyi, Karl (1944): The Great Transformation. New York: Rinehart.

Přibáñ, Jiřì (2007): “Introduction: Theorizing Liquid Modernity and Its Legal Context”, in Jiřì Přibáñ (ed.): Liquid Society and Its Law. Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 1-14.

Rosa, Hartmut & William E. Scheuerman (eds.) (2008): High-Speed Society – Social Acceleration, Power and Modernity. Philadelphia: Penn State University Press.

Willig, Rasmus (2013): Kritikkens u-vending – en diagnose af forvandlingen fra samfundskritik til selvkritik. Copenhagen: Hans Reitzels Forlag.

Žižek, Slavoj (2011): Living in the End Times. London: Verso.

How to improve LEARNING in the education system? Applying research in classrooms

October 4, 2014 / The Essayist

Communicating research on learning allows teachers to make reasoned and informed decisions about classroom practices and how best to support children’s learning. Dr.Sarah McGeown, Lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Edinburgh, says that evidence generated through rigorous research is a tool that allows teachers to make effective decisions about what is likely to work best for their students. Sarah McGeown shared her ideas on how to improve learning outcomes in schools and in the education system with The Essayist.

Sarah McGeown photo

SM = Sarah McGeown; TE = The Essayist

TE: Could you tell us about your work in the area of learning and education?

SM: Most of my research has focused on children’s reading development – I am specifically interested in identifying the most effective ways to support and develop children’s reading skills. Reading is a crucial skill; one that is important for educational success but is also necessary in a literate society. As most school based subjects rely on children’s ability to read and understand what they have read, my research focuses on reading, in the hope that it will support children’s learning across the whole school curriculum.

My other research interest concerns children’s motivation and engagement at school. Within the UK, particularly in reading research, there is a strong focus on supporting and developing aspects of children’s cognition. However, fostering positive attitudes towards learning and motivation to learn is crucial. This is an area where I hope to carry out more research in the future.

TE: So has the education system or school system adopted the lessons you have learned through your research?

SM: Within the UK, research by my former PhD supervisor and now collaborator had a significant impact on the teaching of reading in schools: the UK Government recommended an approach to reading known as synthetic phonics, on the basis, primarily, of this research. This government recommendation has had a considerable impact for all children learning to read in England.

TE: Do you find that the use of research to inform and improve school education is widely practiced?

SM: I have genuinely been surprised by the emphasis on ideology over research evidence to guide educational policy and curriculum based decisions. I have been attending a number of education/education policy conferences recently and am struck by lack of engagement with research to guide decision making processes.

To me, the use of research to inform and improve school education should be widely appealing. However, there is clearly a debate within education regarding the value of research to inform educational policy and practice. This debate perhaps reflects the obstacles and challenges in place which prevent research from being used optimally within education. Alternatively, it may also reflect the belief, among some, that research serves no purpose in improving children’s educational outcomes. Of course, teachers are often champions of using research evidence themselves and so I am optimistic that there is support for it.

TE: So what are some of the obstacles and challenges involved in using research within education?

SM: I would say that there are, at present, poor structures to initiate and support communication between researchers and those with responsibility and power to change educational policy and practice (e.g., teachers, policy makers). Indeed, systems or structures aimed at accruing research evidence on topics of importance to teachers and policy makers are lacking. For example, most applications for research grant funding in education originate from researchers, often with little or no communication with teachers or policy makers from the outset. Therefore there is very little truly collaborative research work among researchers, teachers and policy makers. By involving all parties from the beginning, researchers will be in a better position to study topics that matter most to teachers and policy makers.

TE: Do you think researchers have a responsibility to ensure their work is understood by teachers?

SM: Absolutely. It is our responsibility, as researchers, to ensure that research evidence is shared in an unbiased, informative and accessible manner to those who wish to use it. Researchers certainly need to identify ways to better communicate good quality research to those working in education. However there are a number of obstacles in place that need to be overcome to do this.

First, there is an overwhelming volume of research that exists already. Collating that, improving teacher’s access to it and providing them with the time and support necessary to identify research that is directly relevant to their needs is crucial. Lack of time is an issue consistently cited by teachers, who may be keen to use evidence to inform their practices, but do not have the time to spend navigating and studying the literature. In addition, access is problematic – academic research papers published in journals are not available to all, although notably there is a move towards more open access. John Hattie has done an incredible job of collating research evidence on children’s learning and presenting it in a useful and accessible manner (I’d recommend his book called Visible Learning).

Access issues aside however, there is still a skill or capability issue. We need to train teachers to be able to identify relevant research suited to their needs and context, and appreciate difference in research quality. I think Universities have a responsibility within their initial teacher education programmes to support and develop this skill among new teachers.

In addition, as researchers, we need to consider how best to communicate the educational implications of our research. Research papers are typically written for academic peers and are not written in the most accessible manner for teachers. We need to consider a broader audience when writing for academic journals and also start considering alternative routes to share our research. Social media provides an excellent platform to do this, a platform which has not been available until relatively recently, but which can provide more immediate and up-to-date information for teachers.

In terms of my own research, I have recently written a minibook for teachers, which was designed to share the results from ~60 peer reviewed papers on the area of children’s motivation to read. I wrote this to be informative and useful to teachers, rich in research content but easily accessible to those working in the classroom. I’ve also recently started a Blog (entitled ‘Using Research in Education’) where I plan to share academic research and have also created Summaries for Teachers (1 page posters designed to summarise my academic papers).

TE: Is there any resistance from the teacher in the classroom – the end user of the research?

SM: There can be. I know that some teachers believe that research removes their autonomy and/or professional judgement. However, I think this is symptomatic of the way that research is often presented to teachers. Research shouldn’t be perceived this way; teachers with greater knowledge and understanding of research evidence in a specific area should be more able, and confident, to exercise their professional judgement.

Communicating research well allows teachers to make reasoned and informed decisions about their practices and how best to support children’s learning. Therefore it is not a prescriptive approach to education that is promoted; instead it is the use of research evidence to allow teachers to make effective decisions about what is likely to work best for their students.

TE: Thank you for your time. We look forward to more discussions with you in the future on the topic of education and learning.

Dr. Sarah McGeown is a Lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Edinburgh. For more information, see: http://www.ed.ac.uk/education/sarah-mcgeown

Please see her academia page for access to Summaries for Teachers (1 page documents for each research paper): https://edinburgh.academia.edu/SarahMcGeown/Summaries-for-teachers. Her blog is available here: http://www.drsarahmcgeown.blogspot.co.uk/

Gandhi versus Gandhi

April 23, 2014 / The Essayist

Imagine a young college graduate who has volunteered as a teacher in an extremely poor school in urban Mumbai. She is trying to inspire precocious 10-year olds with stories of leaders from their country’s great history. She decides to teach lessons on Gandhi – the non-violent Mahatma.

The children had just come out of their hell-hole houses in the underbelly of Mumbai. They are all malnourished and have various skin ailments because in addition to lack of nutrition they are also deprived of proper sanitation. They live in an area that is better known for its illicit spirit – moonshine or hooch – rather than the so-called undying spirit of Mumbai. In fact the hooch-producers sell the excess liquor to the children every morning. So many of them are drunk on bad quality alcohol when they walk into their classrooms. Don’t be shocked or surprised!

Selling addictive substances to children is standard operating procedure for drug peddlers all over the world. And why drug peddlers, all sorts on unhealthy food, junk food, drinks, and games are sold to children by legitimate blue chip companies and marketing managers with degrees form Ivy-League universities. Drug peddlers are only following the management textbooks – do not waste, run efficient waste management systems while creating new customers – be it the northern border of Mexico or a slum in Mumbai; countries along the Andes or the Afghan-Pakistan border – or be it cocaine, moonshine, tobacco, junk food, fast food or games.

Children are the best customers. They are easy to intoxicate and drug; they pester their parents for more; and they have many more years of consumption left in them. The products make them feel cool and adult-like. Furthermore, they are young, so they can find work and pay for their addiction. In the worst cases, the children, who cannot pay directly, can help run the illegal organization and pay through their labour if not cash. Doesn’t it seem like the drug peddlers have trained in the best management colleges? They are effective and efficient like the managers at the best run private companies and yet practice equitable (public) distribution of their goods. These drug-peddlers reach the poor and the last mile while our governments and corporations cannot.

Many of these boys from that urban slum in Mumbai attended school in an intoxicated state. One of them was once caught saying that it was the only state in which he could tolerate the teachers and the textbooks.

Now imagine again – a young teacher-volunteer on a sunny morning caught in the crossfires of poverty, addiction, anomie, hopelessness and a managerially efficient drug-peddling system talking about Gandhi to a congested classroom half-full of intoxicated ten-year old boys.

Putting aside the smell of liquor and filth, disregarding the fact that many of the children were sleeping, and the air was dank, hot and humid, the young teacher raves on about Gandhi. She explains his non-violent exploits and his greatness; his Ahimsa and Satyagraha (struggle for and with truth), his law school education in England; his fight against apartheid in Africa and then the return to the homeland – India. How Gandhi was so moved by the poverty he saw that he gave up his western clothes and dressed like the poor in homespun khadi. The young teacher went on about Gandhi’s steadfastness to the principles of non-violence and truth and how for perhaps the only time in the history of the world a non-violent struggle led to the freedom of an entire nation; and how this example inspired Dr. Martin Luther King in the United States. The teacher knew her Gandhi and she could have sung his stories for much more time but the school bell rang to announce the end of the session. The teacher was perspiring at the brows but she looked happy. She seemed to be congratulating herself in her own mind. The boys has been quiet.

But being young she did not know when to stop. She did not want to leave the lecture at just that. She wanted her students to continue thinking about Gandhi. So she announced that each of them would write an essay on Gandhi and submit it the next day. She wrote it out on the board: A 500-word essay on Gandhi to be submitted tomorrow.

A lone hand went up. The teacher smiled, she thought she had inspired at least one of them. The malnourished boy stood up and asked: “Ma’am, which Gandhi do you want us to write about?”

The young teacher was perplexed. Her spirit sank (maybe she could have benefited from a shot of moonshine herself) and she replied: “But, didn’t you hear a word of what I said in the class?” Theatrically, the teacher opened the history textbook and showed a picture of Gandhi from the book.

The young boy was not one to give up so easily. He pulled out a crumpled five hundred-rupee (currency) note from his pocket, kept it in the desk and pressed it flat with his hands. He then raised the currency note dramatically and a picture of Gandhi stared at everyone.

The boy said:

“Teacher, there are two Gandhis in my world. The Gandhi whose picture you showed in the history book and this Gandhi who is on the currency note. This Gandhi on the currency note elicits very different behaviours from the Gandhi in the book. The Gandhi in the book is all that you said. The 500-rupee note Gandhi brings out the worst in people – the opposite: people are mean, cruel, uncaring, punishing and extremely violent in their quest to get more of the 500-rupees.”

And pointing to the note again continued:

“People kill their own mothers for this one. And this is the Gandhi we see and learn from every day – this one on the currency note.

So which Gandhi do you want me to write about?”

The other boys, oblivious to the dialogue between teacher and student, had started talking and throwing paper missiles at each other.

Before our young, idealistic, volunteer-teacher could ay anything the head-master walked into the classroom and started thrashing some of the boys for disturbing the peace in the school.

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Absurd, isn’t it?

Patrick Geddes

April 14, 2014 / The Essayist

Reading List for Patrick Geddes

MacDiarmid, H (1966). The company I’ve kept. London: Hutchinson.
Munshi, I (2000). Patrick Geddes: Sociologist, Environmentalist and Town Planner. Economic and Political Weekly, 35, p. 485—91.
Pullman, J (2011). A Man of Our Times: The Living Legacy of Patrick Geddes. Documentary Film commissioned by the Scottish education Department. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiz5xYN39Cw
National Library of Scotland (2014). Patrick Geddes. Available at: http://www.nls.uk/learning-zone/politics-and-society/patrick-geddes
Ballater Geddes Project (2004). SIR PATRICK GEDDES: 1854 – 1932. Available at: http://metagraphies.org/Sir-Patrick-Geddes/university-militant/geddesexhib04web.pdf
Mairet, P (1957). Pioneer of Sociology: The Life and Letters of Patrick Geddes. London: Lund Humphries.
Abrams, P (1968). The Origins of British Sociology: 1834-1914. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Urquhart, G (2003). Patrick Geddes and the Edinburgh Social Union: Planning, poverty, philanthropy. Available at: http://hodgers.com/mike/patrickgeddes/feature_six.html
Tyrwhitt, J (1947). Patrick Geddes in India. London: Lund Humphries, London.
Patrick Geddes Trust (2000). Patrick Geddes Heritage Trail, Edinburgh. Available at: http://www.patrickgeddestrust.co.uk/pghtedinburgh.htm
Camera Obscura (2014). History of the Outlook Tower. Available at: http://camera-obscura.co.uk/camera_obscura/camera_history_attraction.asp
MacDonald, M (2009). Sir Patrick Geddes and the Scottish Generalist Tradition. Sir Patrick Geddes Commemorative Lecture, Royal Town Planning Institute and Saltire Society, Scotland. Available at: http://www.kosmoid.net/planning/geddeslectures.
Branford, V and Geddes, P (1919). Our Social Inheritance: The Making of the Future Series. London: Williams and Norgate.
Leonard, S (2007). Patrick Geddes’ and the network of gardens in the Old Town of Edinburgh. Available at: http://www.patrickgeddestrust.co.uk/articlespapers.htm.
Khan, N (2011). Geddes in India: town planning, plant sentience, and cooperative evolution. Environmental and Planning: Society and Space, 29, p. 840—56.
Momin, A (1996). Sociology at the University of Bombay. International Institute for Asian Studies, 60. Available at: http://iias.asia/iiasn/10/Regional/10CBCC06.html
Ferreira, J.V. and Jha, S (1976). The Outlook Tower Essays on Urbanisation in Memory of Patrick Geddes. Mumbai: Popular Prakashan.
Geddes, P (1906). ‘Civics: as Concrete and Applied Sociology’, Sociological Papers, 2: 58-119. Reprinted in H. E. Meller, ed., The Ideal City. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 123-183.
Meller, Helen (1990). Patrick Geddes Social Evolutionist and City Planner. London: Routledge.
Banerjee, B (2010). The Scientist and the Poet: Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose and Rabindranath Tagore. Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 2, p. 471—480.
Fraser, B (2005). A meeting of two minds: Geddes-Tagore Letters. Edinburgh: Word Power Books.
Visvanathan, S (2013). The Dreams of Reason: Rabindranath Tagore and the Invention of Science in India. Economic and Political Weekly, 47, p. 43—49.
Welter VM, (2009). The 1925 Master Plan for Tel-Aviv by Patrick Geddes. Israel Studies, 14, p. 94—119.
Clout, H and Stephenson, I (2005). The Collège des Ecossais in Montpellier: A postscript. Scottish Geographical Journal, 121, p. 119—20.
Geddes, P and Thompson, J (1889). The Evolution of Sex. London: Walter Scott.
National Library of Scotland (2009). A Man of All Reason. Available at: http://www.nls.uk/about-us/publications/discover-nls/2009/patrick-geddes
The Scotsman (2005). Sir Patrick Geddes. Available at: http://www.scotsman.com/news/sir-patrick-geddes-1-465991
United Nations (2011). World Urbanization Prospects, the 2011 Revision. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Available at: http://esa.un.org/unup/CD-ROM/Urban-Rural-Population.htm

The Lion with a Refrigerator and the Deer with Life Insurance

April 11, 2014 / The Essayist

Einstein and Tagore continue imagining a better world with their continued conversations on life, human nature and human culture.

Einstein Image and Tagore image

(E = Albert Einstein and T = Rabindranath Tagore; Dated: Between the years 1922 and 1931)

E: You are an enthusiastic global citizen and believe in the true alliance between nations.

T: Not an alliance to wage wars, rather an alliance of the hearts and minds.

E: Obviously you do you believe what one author has said about the East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet…

T: In response to that comment of the west and east never being able to meet, I had written to many fellow thinkers in the West. I believe in the true meeting of the East and the West.

E: An alliance of civilizations. Not the clash of civilizations.

T: Absolutely! I think nationalism poses a danger for all of us. At the same time globalization can also be equally dangerous if one does not think it through and does not pay attention to the needs of people. Nothing would give me greater happiness than to see the people of the West and the East march in a common crusade against all that which robs the human spirit of its significance.

E: You believe there is something common underlying the western and eastern: the human spirit. What about human nature? There is this world that man has created – the world in which we have technology, art and music and all of this comes under the umbrella of culture. But there is also this part of the human that Nature has created or that which comes under the mechanisms of nature?

T: By plucking the petals of a flower, one does not gather the flower’s beauty or smell. The methods that Man uses to understand the world is one of analysis – Man breaks things into parts; looks at the parts and then thinks he understands everything.

E: Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. Man has created an idea of the world based on his senses and sensibilities. These senses may be limited and have inherent limitations.

T: And man may be getting a very limited view of the world.

E: Compare just one Man’s senses such as his eyes and his ability to see colour compared to other animals which see their world in black and white or grey. So what are the true colours of the world?

T: I am also amazed by Man’s taste buds and his indulgence of those taste buds. Man cooks the food he finds and also adds spices. I do not think any other animal cooks food or adds spices to food.

E: Much of eastern food has have taken spices to another level. To me the eastern kitchen is like the palette of a painter. The way perhaps an eastern cook mixes spices is almost the same way a painter mixes colours. The taste of the food item often changes completely because of the spices.

T: If one has to characterize the east, especially India, one need only look at its kitchens and the jars of spices. With the use of spices the eastern kitchen challenges what Nature has given us. It takes a bland food item and makes it palatable to the senses.

E: However, it is these very spices that also led to our downfall. The entire colonization of the East started with the quest for spices because there was such a huge demand for spices and it is said that in the 1600s traders made profits of more than 400 to 4000 percent on spice sales. Spicing food was an expensive act. Talking of wealth, it is said that the paces and wealth of Genoa and Venice were made on the spice trade. So was the grandeur of Lisbon and Amsterdam. And their wealth inspired other kingdoms and countries to follow in that same economic activity of sending ships and armies to conquer and plunder.

T: That’s interesting.

E: In fact it is also noted by some historians that at one point in time the cost of the spice exceeded that of the food on which it was being used.

T: I did not know that. You mean to say that if I were putting spices on lamb or fish, the cost of the spice that I used was much higher than that of the actual fish or lamb.

E: Exactly. And especially pepper, they say, was in demand. The European sea-traders faced a lot of dangers in getting the spices form the east to Europe – pirates, plunderers, bad weather, storms, damage to the commodity and so on.

T: What Man will do (or will not do) for that little bit of taste in food? For the taste buds on his tongue?

E: And also the destruction that this indulgence in taste wrought upon this world. It was also about money of course. These traders were also ruthless in the way they went about acquiring these spices from the eastern countries. Slaves harvested and often rowed the boats that carried the spice cargo. People were cheated of their lands. The entire thing was essentially about economic greed.

T: Man is attached to his senses and these senses dictate Man’s view of the world. Man indulges the sense as this brings him closer to pleasure. The world of Man is created on man’s indulgence of his senses. The satisfaction of these senses then shapes man’s values.

E: In that case the world of Nature is based on nature’s values?

T: What are nature’s values? That is what Man has to understand. Man may impose some great values on Nature but these are again Man’s values. I think poets like me do that. We often impose our values on nature and other objects.

E: Mr Darwin gives us some insights into the values of Nature when he talks about the struggle for existence as being a hallmark of nature in his book The Origin of the Species. However, Mr. Darwin says that despite this struggle for existence there is a complex set of checks and relations of all plants and animals to each other. He cites the example of a barren heath and a similar heath with plantation of the Scotch fir tree. The plantation shows multiple varieties of plants which lead to an increase in the variety of insects and this leads to an increase in varieties of birds that feed on these insects; each one balancing the other.

T: From what little we know – we can say that Nature’s world is created on BALANCE and man’s world created on “imbalance.” Indulging in senses and wanting more pleasure or gratification leads to this imbalance. Man gets something, likes it or makes profit from it and then he wants more. Nature tries to curtail that inherent greed with checks and balances.

E: Nature has created her world based on her sensibilities which are obviously based on checks and balances. Mr Darwin goes on to talk about predators – animals from another species that are dangerous and life-threatening to one species.

T: In the case of man there do not seem to be predators? Man seems to have killed all possible predators such as lions or tigers or bears or driven them far inside the forests and woods.

E: Except of course tiny germs and viruses that seem to be plaguing Man. Remember the 1917 flu pandemic that killed millions across the world.

E: Mr. Darwin also talks of competitors or rivals who are animals or plants from the same species. Mr. Darwin observes that the struggle for life can be most severe among individuals or varieties of the same species.

T: Of course. However, based on Mr. Darwin’s categorization of predators and competitors or rivals, Man seems to have more rivals.

E: Why not see the entire human species as categorized into some predators and some rivals. Maybe man has become a predator towards other men?

T: This is what has happened with colonization. Some countries have dominated and subjected others to severe oppression – taking their lands and farms and mines and utilizing it for the gain of the west.

E: The entire west or a select few. I daresay that a select few in the west have benefited from this oppression.

T: I agree. The poor everywhere are in chains. However, further to the observation you made about our predators and competitors being amongst us humans, we may have fallen into the trap that has been laid for us by those who compare human social life to nature’s biological realities.

E: How do you mean?

T: Well if we argue for a second that human society is about a struggle for existence just like the natural world, then we are saying that it is okay for some of us to eat up the others because some us are lions and the other are gazelle or deer.

E: I see where you are going with that argument. You are saying that human social life is supposed to be human. And the HUMAN is different from that picture of nature’s struggle for existence that is drawn by many scientists. Furthermore, men routinely destroy other men by waging wars against them – sometimes the wars are economic wars. But when have we seen a group of lions waging wars against other loons or oppressing them economically?

T: Yes. I think nature’s struggle for existence just cannot be applied to human social life. There are checks and balances in nature but Man does not respect any checks and balances. Man over-rides the checks and balances by using power and brute force.

E: I have heard many such people who compare human social life to their idea of the harsh realities of nature. They stand in board rooms of companies and classrooms and colleges and show pictures of the lions and deer in Africa. They say we are the deer and every morning we wake up we have to run faster than the lion so that we are not eaten up in this fierce competition of modern life.

T: Do you think people actually believe them?

E: Well the books and lecture halls are full. And then nowadays some of these gurus have gone one step ahead. They say you do not have to outrun the lion; you just have to outrun the other deer. Let the other deer be sacrificed so you can yourself and not only survive but thrive. What use of creating institutions of modern life if we cannot protect our own?

T: But I do not buy this analogy at all?

E: Why?

T: Well, show me one lion who owns a refrigerator. And one deer that has purchased life insurance or pays regular premiums for medical insurance. And if you can show me that, I will buy this argument that we have to outrun each other to save ourselves. The whole idea of the human being is to protect each other – care for each other.

E (laughs): So, it is about Man’s greed then as I argued earlier that has led to the downfall of man. Man’s indulgence in his senses that has led to this current state of the world. If lion’s were to buy refrigerators, I wonder what would happen to all the animals on the Savannah. And if the deer were to buy life insurance then…(laughs)…I can barely imagine…

T: The lion or the deer respect Nature’s laws and values and live by it.

E: Man does not. He tries to get anything he wants and then after he gets some of it, Man tries to hoard and get more of it. Man wants to control everything. And if Man does not get what he wants through straightforward means he uses all types of power – brute force, lying, cheating, deception – to get what he wants. Man overrides and disrespects all checks and relations that Mr Darwin points out as existing in Nature.

T: It seems that Nature’s world and Man’s world is very different indeed.

E (laughs): Never the twain shall meet…

T: I had indeed disagreed with Mr. Kipling’s statement (never the east and west shall meet) and said he represents the group that wants to keep man away from man. But that was about man and man. This is about nature and man. I do want nature and man to meet – that is the essence of my poetry but I am disheartened by what I see around me.

E: Can Nature and Man ever meet and find common ground. Or will Man always fight against Nature?

T: Man can try to be like nature. Can a part behave like the whole of which it is a part? It should, right?

E: In this case the part has broken away from the whole? Man seems to have contradicted his own Nature.

T: Man does not behave like he is a part of the whole. Man behaves as if he is independent of the whole. Therein lies the problem.

References

Darwin Charles. Natural Selection from The Origin of the Species. 1859.

Dutta, Krishna, and Andrew Robinson. Rabindranath Tagore: An Anthology. New York: St. Martin’s, 1997.

Image references

Einstein playing violin from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Albert_Einstein_violin.jpg

Tagore Writing 1

http://www.oldindianphotos.in/2013/07/two-photographs-of-rabindranath-tagore.html

Red Yellow, Green and Biscuit (Cookie): Odd One Out

January 28, 2014 / The Essayist

Albert Camus once remarked:

“The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning. This is a truth nearly all great minds have taken as their starting point. It is not this discovery that is interesting, but consequences and rules of action drawn from it.”

A previous issue of The Essayist presented the Absurd-ism school of thought in sociology, literature, drama, architecture and triggered a column called The Absurdist.

Children Say the Absurd-est Things…

Children, probably more than adults, intuitively recognize the absurdity of life although they may not be able to articulate it. However, just because one cannot articulate something does not mean one does not understand it.

Writers and analysts of children’s books have discussed what makes children laugh: falling down, tumbling down, pretending to be something else, misnaming things, playing with sound of words, calling things opposite of what they are, using nonsense words, distorting features of objects, the grotesque , funny voices, making funny faces, and almost everything absurd.

What must strike them as most absurd or absurd-est of all are the frantic attempts by adults to make sense of an inherently absurd world and then pretend to have control over it. Instead of seeing the humour in an uncontrollable life, adults perceive obstacles, feel frustration and fight enemies that perhaps cannot be fought,and can be only embraced with some grace.

In this issue we present scenes from schools that show how children see life and also see through the absurdity of life.

The Setting:

Imagine a Grade 1 classroom in a low-income school in Mumbai crammed with children between the ages of 5 and 7 years. Now imagine them going through the loud motions of a special English language learning session where they repeat every word and phrase they hear. Now imagine their context and life situation…

These children live in the over-crowded slums of Mumbai where people live on top of each other. The so-called shanties have more than 2 floors piled up on top of each other with asbestos roofing covered with a layer of blue plastic sheet to prevent the rainwater from seeping in and some are concrete with no windows or skylights. The dimensions of each room are 10 feet by 10 feet with height of each floor not more than 8 feet. Because there is no more space in the city to expand sideways, even the slum-dwellers are reaching upwards for space. Everyone in Mumbai aspires to reach and touch the skies. The residents of slums and shanties make up more than 60% of Mumbai’s population. Many academics and social workers think using the word slum is degrading. They most probably have not lived in one.

The parents of these children work as maids and drivers for upper-level executives who have benefited from India’s connection with the neoliberal, global economy. Maids and drivers in India have jobs but can barely afford a balanced, nutritious meal. Studies have shown that the amount of money spent on food per day per person in Mumbai’s urban slums is actually half of the amount required to buy nutritious balanced meals for each day from a local food-store. Food is available on the shelves of its many stories, but the majority of the people in Mumbai cannot purchase it. As Amartya Sen’s thesis on the Bengal famine of 1943 pointed out – starvation can be an entitlement issue. Each person has an economic “entitlement” – a range of different goods that can be acquired with an individual’s resources. According to Sen, people starve when their entitlement is not enough to procure the food required to survive.

Most families in Mumbai’s slums persevere and work for 12 to 13 hours a day doing more than one job or working more than one shift in the hope that if they work hard enough, they will get to buy the food and various attractive items they can visibly see on the shelves. In fact a politician in India has been (unofficially) quoted: “As long as there are packaged foods and other food items on the shelves of shops in India there will be no revolution because people will always blame themselves for not being able to afford it. They see others around them acquire these things; then they look at each other and blame themselves for not working hard enough or not making it into the gravy train of consumerism. This has become the best mechanism of social control. No police or military required; just stock the shelves and keep them filled with goodies.”

Although these poor families have not benefited financially from the first round of globalization, their aspirations and dreams are of global proportions. They want their children to get out of poverty and their solution is to teach their children English. It seems that the language that was resisted during the period of forced colonization by the British has in this era of globalization become the language of liberation (from poverty).

This was one such classroom in one school in a slum of Mumbai.

High aspirations, unhygienic conditions, and forty little humans crammed into a classroom that can barely hold ten.That actually is a snapshot of the city of Mumbai …

The Scene:

The teacher, a young, recent college graduate, has volunteered as an English language instructor in one such school serving children from low-income families in urban Mumbai. Her reasons for volunteering are many: maybe she wants to get work-experience and community-based organizations have no criteria for screening volunteers (they will take anyone and everyone as a volunteer as if anyone and everyone can help the poor – especially in education) OR maybe this young woman who is obviously from the upper-class sees the high inequality in her country and wants to exorcise her demons before she joins a multinational corporation, gets a high-flying job and employs one of these parents as a maid and the other as her driver.

She is trying to teach 5- and 6-year old children to classify words and things in the English language. Now classification of things is culturally determined and Michel Foucault reminds us in the preface to his 1970 book The Order of Things (see quote at bottom of article). However, every generation also has its own culture. Thus within the same country and society it is almost like every generation creates its own new culture in some ways.

The young teacher uses a game called“odd-man out” to teach children how to classify words, things, adjectives and so on. She presents a set of 4 words and obviously one does not quite fit into the category of the other three.

Example 1: Lion, Tiger, Dog, Car. Which is the odd one out?

Some children are confused. The teacher shows pictures of these animals; the children are still quiet or maybe confused. So the teacher explains: The car. Why? Because all the other three are animals and the car is a machine. Animals are living things and machines are not.

One child asks: What is living (in the local language)?

The young English teacher is lost for words. She somehow manages to escape this difficult question by saying that animals can walk. They can make noises – lions and tigers roar. One child says: Dogs bark, Bow Bow.

The teacher smiles at that child: Very Good! Animals make sounds but the car cannot. Very Good! The child is beaming because he has just heard the magic words twice from the same teacher.

Another child says: “But cars make sounds too. They honk.” By now the young teacher is very uncomfortable and is sweating around the forehead.

One child seems to have woken up just now and answers loudly: Teacher, the car is the odd one out. The teacher asks: Why? The child says: Because the car is not an animal.

The teacher is pleased. The slower one has helped her out of her dilemma.

Without addressing the issue that cars make noises too or answering the meaning of: What is living? our modern day, college graduated, non-Socratic teacher moves on to the next set of items in the game of Odd-One Out.

Example 2: Red, Yellow, Green and Biscuit (cookies are also called biscuits in India). Which is the odd one out?

She repeats the set of words; this time emphasizing the word “biscuit” and enunciating it slower than the other words.

The answer is obviously Cookie or Biscuit because the rest of the three are colors. The teacher looks around expectantly hoping that one of the children has caught on to her verbal clue.

But a little child at the end of the classroom stands up and says: Red, Yellow and Biscuit (Cookie).

The teacher is aghast. Obviously her attempts at teaching order and classification or categorization in English is NOT working with these kids. A thousand doubts cross the mind of the neophyte teacher. Is it me? Is my teaching that bad? Or are these kids just not smart enough? Maybe it is their families and the manner in which they are raised; do their parents ever teach them anything?

The teacher is about to give the correct answer to the errant child when the supervisor who has been observing the “volunteer” interjects: Let us ask the child, why he chose these three in a category?

The child mentions the name of a popular brand of biscuit (cookie) whose packet is colored red and yellow and green. That is how this little child identifies it on the shelves of stores; and every time he opens the colorful packet, he finds his favorite cookie inside.

The stocked shelves of the stores have taught this kid a different order of things.

Absurd, right?

parleG

Order of Things (Preface)

“This book first arose out of a passage in [Jorge Luis] Borges, out of the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought—our thought that bears the stamp of our age and our geography—breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things, and continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse our age-old distinction between the Same and the Other. This passage quotes a ‘certain Chinese encyclopaedia’ in which it is written that ‘animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies’. In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that.”

Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (New York: Pantheon, 1970) xv.

References:

Albert Camus Quote: Review of Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea, published in the newspaperAlgerRépublicain (20 October 1938), p. 5; as quoted in Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd (2002) by AviSagi, p. 43. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Camus

Entitlement: From Famine at http://www.diet.com/g/famine

Images Reference

Parle G Biscuit: http://defence.pk/threads/parle-g-worlds-no-1-selling-biscuit-nielsen.96214/

Patco Glucose: http://www.patcofood.co.in/confectionery-biscuits.html

Biscuit Brands: http://www.bakerybazar.com/2009_08_01_archive.html

A Sentence and a Story (Death-Sentence and Life-Story)

January 17, 2014 / The Essayist

tagore einstein jan issue

Einstein:You are a Nobel-prize winning poet. They say a poet wakes up everyday and believes as if it is a new day – a brand new start.

Tagore:I wake up everyday with the realization: I am born to die.

Einstein:Death is disappointing. It often makes people sad – and so we refuse to contemplate it.

Tagore:Death is the only certainty, said a wise woman.

Einstein: And taxes of course (Einstein laughs). (Tagore does not)

Einstein (continues):Humans crave certainty; yet cringe from the only certainty in life – called death.

Tagore: Everything has an end including life.

Einstein:But does our birth give us nothing else but a death sentence?

Tagore:Is it not that we are also born into a life?

While death may be sentence; every life is a story.

Einstein: So what you are saying is that while we have no choice in the matter that we are all born with a sentence –a death-sentence, we have also acquired this amazing chance to create a story – a life story.

Tagore: And what is a story? Nothing but an intricate web of words,feelings,and thoughts – all strung together in a coherent and sometimes poetic way.

Einstein: A story is what the protagonist (the hero) makes out of it. According to most western traditions and dramatic canons, a story is the hero’s journey.

Tagore:The big question for each one of us is: Who will write my story?

Einstein (is quiet and pensive and then adds):What will be my story? I prefer that.

Tagore:A story has words and every story is told with words. So I ask myself: What are the words that will make my story? After all I may not have a choice about death but I do have a choice as I construct this life-story.

Einstein: You are also getting into the issue of choice here. Do I get to choose the words in my story? Brave, courageous, valiant, kind, wise,daring, bold OR fearful, desperate, angry,anxious,apprehensive,wretched, distraught…

Tagore: One can choose between nouns, adjectives and verbs.

Einstein: I prefer verbs. They are more action-oriented.

Tagore:You are a scientist. You act upon the world. Poets perhaps prefer adjectives because they want to make the world appear beautiful and wonderful or sad and wretched depending upon their frame of mind.

Einstein: However, most people choose nouns. They want things, objects. We like to acquire and hoard things. It tells the world who we are.

Tagore: More dangerously, it often tells us who we are…

Einstein: But there is more to a story than words. There are those punctuation marks – those little symbols that can create or destroy the meanings of words that are strung together.

Tagore:We often encounter a “full-stop” (period) when reading a story. That happens in life too. Doors close; roads end. But a “full-stop” (or period) only heralds the beginning of a new sentence.

Einstein: That was the poet speaking just now. Of course there is the “comma”- my favorite because a comma signifies a pause –and a pause is much needed in our culture of speed.

Tagore: What about the “question mark”? I ask and someone responds. If humans do not respond to my asking, then nature always does. I just have to learn to listen.

Einstein:The “exclamation mark” – which is very child-like. I wonder, I am surprised, I am amazed. I use it when I look at the world but I am not stuck in it.

Tagore: Everything is new for a child and a child also often gets surprised at the same old things or is amazed by how the world works.

Einstein:The “colon”: very military like – the mark of efficiency. It lists – all sorts of lists. I wake up every morning and the things to do today sort themselves inside my head; a to-do list; grocery list; work-tasks list; shopping list; friends list; party list; list of phone numbers; books to read list; people to meet list; list of every other list to make in life.

Tagore: And the “quotation marks”. You mark and remember the not-so-good things that other people said, and conveniently forget the good about them.

Einstein:So I have the choice of words and punctuation.

Tagore: But I have a bigger dilemma and I ask you this as a physicist and the expert on this topic: Can words become real? I have been using words as my trade for too long. I am a writer, poet, and teacher. I can no longer tell whether words are just in our minds, exist as fictitious ideas or whether they can become real.

Einstein:Yes, to the extent that I get to choose the words that will make my story; but, does that mean the reality of my life will turn out exactly the way I script it?Maybe not; mostly not. In fact reality turns out to be quite the opposite often making me wish that I was born dead. Perhaps we are “born dead” (from an energy perspective) in a way.

Tagore: The physics you have been working with tells us that reality is far beyond human perception and intuition. Are our rational minds and common sense capable of understanding the true nature of reality?

Einstein: In recent years many of us scientists have introduced some new ideas about physical properties of the universe. Newton’s physics was about the absolute-ness of time and space. But this new group, including myself, we think time and space are unified and relative. There is one absolute and that is the speed of light. Light forms a sort of bounded-ness or boundary around all we know and can know. I am working on finding that unified field theory which will tie together the workings of the physical world in one theory.

Tagore: A theory of everything?

Einstein: Sort of – you can call it that. It is tough because to us scientists there can be no contradiction built into nature, it must be in our minds.

Tagore: Does it mean that the more involved we become in writing our story, the more real it becomes. What I mean is that by becoming involved we become convinced and thereby remove the contradictions in our mind and between what we think and what we do.

Einstein:However, one can act as if the words one wrote for one’s life were real. As if they were real and act accordingly. Put up an act and sometimes the act does become fact. No, I do not mean that we will get the material things we desire. However, if I act as if I am courageous, I may end up becoming courageous. If I act as if I have integrity, maybe I will develop integrity. If I act as if I am noble, I may indeed become known as noble because my acts are noble. This has been borne out so many times by men especially during battle.

Tagore:You have inspired me. Yes, I am serving a death sentence, but how I choose to serve it is in my head and heart. I talk to myself using the words I have been taught from childhood as well as those acquired along my journey.

Einstein:How I choose to serve my sentence? That is the question that comes right along with Who will write my story? This is like the time space continuum – they are not absolute or separate – they merge into each other. They are unified and so imminent death becomes the inspiration for the good life.

Tagore: I may not be able to get the (death) sentence overturned.

Einstein:However, I will not leave any opportunity to escape. I am not willing to live trapped in a prison of fear. If I am going to endure a death sentence, I am going to do it with style (not fashion) and with dignity (not desperation).I may not escape the death sentence – but I want people to say that he tried until he died.

Tagore:I want my words (in my kind) to be my weapons in this fight and my heart to fuel the passion for the words to flow effortlessly. When I go, I want to go down fighting to escape any prison or box you force me into…Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high… I have to write those words somewhere…Ahh! Now you are turning me into a poet once again.

Einstein: But, don’t you think there seems to be too much of the “I” in our discussion? Would this matter in cultures of communality?

Tagore: What else is there other than the “I”? We may not be born alone – our mother is there sharing our pain or maybe I have a twin but I am always alone at the moment I die. I die alone. And since I have this death sentence to serve when I am born, then I alone am responsible for my life-story.

Tagore dies

Einstein dead at 76 wikipedia

Image references

Einstein 1921 from http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Einstein_1921_portrait2.jpg/</a>

Tagore in Russia from

http://indrus.in/arts/2012/10/24/tagore_loved_russia_till_his_dying_day_12676.html

Tagore in America 1931

http://www.oldindianphotos.in/2010/05/rabindranath-tagore-in-america-1931.html

Tagore with grand-daughter and grand-nephew in Santiniketan 1934

http://www.oldindianphotos.in/2013/07/rabindranath-tagore-with-his.html

Tagore profile 1 – http://southasiajournal.net/2013/01/western-composers-love-for-tagore/

Tagore profile 2: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/hay-festival/8774468/Hay-Festival-Segovia-Tagores-message-to-the-Arab-Spring-revolutionaries.html

Tagore Writing 1

http://www.oldindianphotos.in/2013/07/two-photographs-of-rabindranath-tagore.html

Tagore reading 1

http://www.oldindianphotos.in/2013/07/two-photographs-of-rabindranath-tagore.html

Dr Eisntein dead at 76 Image – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein

Tagore dies: http://www.ebay.com/itm/RABINDRANATH-TAGORE-Bengali-Polymath-Indian-Poet-Writer-DEATH-1941-Old-Newspaper-/390562644176

Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Niels_Bohr_Albert_Einstein_by_Ehrenfest.jpg

C. Wright Mills

January 14, 2014 / The Essayist

Provided by Michael Jacobsen from his monograph: The Prodigious Provocateur! An Inevitable Invitation to the Sociology of C. Wright Mills. SociologiskArbejdspapir, No.7, 2000. Sociologisk Laboratorium, Aalborg University.

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Readings for Erving Goffman

October 28, 2013 / The Essayist

Bibliography for the article titled ‘The Gift of Erving Goffman: The Micro-Drama of Everyday Life’

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Number One Killer of Women in the World: Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs)

October 11, 2013 / The Essayist

Non-communicable diseases or NCDs are the world’s number one killer, causing 60% of all deaths globally or nearly 35 million deaths every year.

NCD definition image

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs), also sometimes commonly referred to as chronic diseases, include cardiovascular disease (heart disease, hypertension and stroke), diabetes, lung diseases, cancer, and mental illnesses.

Previously thought of as diseases of the rich and elderly; 80% of NCD-related deaths now occur in low- and middle-income countries, and half of those who die of non-communicable diseases are young and in the prime of their productive, working years.

Collectively, NCDs are the leading cause of death for women worldwide causing 65% of all female deaths. Various WHO (World Health Organization) reports point out that chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and strokes are affecting women in much greater numbers.

Globally, cardiovascular disease, often thought to be a “male” problem – or the disease of middle-aged, stressed out men – is the number one killer of women. Breast cancer is the leading cancer killer among women aged 20–59 years worldwide.

NCDs are a significant cause of female death during childbearing years as well; and are now increasingly affecting women in developing countries in their most productive years; and women with young families.

Women are excellent care-givers for other members of the family; but rarely take care of themselves. Speak with women themselves (in fact speak today with any woman you know) and you will find that most of them perceive that (except breast cancer) these non-communicable diseases are the domain of men. Even in the case of breast cancer, talk to five women around you and assess how many of them have recently undergone any screening for it.

global_status_report

Women seem to have a mis-perception of what diseases affect them and do not seem to take the appropriate health actions. Although, go to any hospital or doctor’s clinic and you will find that the person accompanying the sick person is a woman.

What is the burden of NCDs among women and what is it about women that make them neglect their own health?

In order to find out more about this problem, The Essayist recently interviewed Dr. Nalini Saligram: The founder of a non-profit called Arogya-World (http://arogyaworld.org/) which works in the area of advocacy and prevention of non-communicable disease globally.

nalini Image 1

Nalini Saligram recently presented her m-Diabetes program to the Clinton Global Initiative meeting (http://www.arogyaworld.org/our-work-in-india/mdiabetes/). The m-Diabetes program has reached a million people with diabetes prevention, treatment and lifestyle change messages in partnership with companies such as Nokia and Emory University in addition to others. She has a doctorate in biochemistry, extensive experience in public relations and marketing for pharmaceutical companies and is now working exclusively in the area of public health. Nalini has been actively involved in advocacy efforts with United Nations (UN) for making the world a healthier place for women.

Nalini is currently based in Chicago. The Essayist met her in Bangalore on one of her visits to review and monitor the m-Diabetes program.

NS = Nalini Saligram; TE = The Essayist

TE: Thank you for speaking with The Essayist. Tell us something about your work in the area of health?

NS: Our focus in recent years has been on creating advocacy and prevention of non-communicable diseases, especially for protecting women. As a team, we initiated the Women for a Healthy Future movement to mobilize women around the world to demand action for better health. This initiative is aligned in spirit with Ban Ki-moon’s “Every Woman, Every Child initiative,” which has the objective of improving the health of hundreds of millions of women and children around the world.

(Team members: Arogya World, Global Health Council, NCD Child, Women Deliver, NCD Action, Public Health Institute, The Max Foundation, Disruptive Women in Health Care, Hriday, NCD Alliance, World YWCA, Beyond Sport)

It is sad that we still have to fight for a very basic human right of good health for women and children. Despite so many commitments and calls to action to improve the health of the world’s women such as the Beijing Platform for Action, Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and many other regional and national commitments, the truth is that the health of women globally is still under threat. It is not just deaths due to the risks associated with pregnancy or childbirth but due to non-communicable diseases.

Unfortunately this has happened on our watch. Therefore, we must do something about it. This is our responsibility.

In the month of September 2011, many world leaders gathered at the United Nations (UN) for a historic summit on NCDs. (See: http://www.hrc.govt.nz/news-and-media/news/un-summit-discusses-death-toll-non-communicable-disease and http://www.unmultimedia.org/radio/english/2011/09/non-communicable-diseases-a-slow-motion-disaster-who/)

The decisions they make impact the lives of millions and determine whether women and children have healthy todays and healthy futures. We signed and submitted a petition to them to show these leaders how much we care.

We asked governments to invest in educating women about the importance of having normal birth weight babies because low birth weight could predispose the baby to cardiovascular disease and diabetes later in life. We asked businesses, as important stakeholders in the NCD dialogue, to dramatically reduce the marketing of tobacco products, junk foods and alcohol to children and young people.

But just asking policy-makers and leaders to address NCDs in women is not enough. We can all do something about NCDs. We all know at least one woman in our lives. We can take responsibility for that one woman in our lives – mother, daughter, sister, neighbour, colleague, friend, aunt, cousin. We can inform her and educate her about the risk of NCD to her life. We can help her make the necessary changes in behaviour and lifestyle.

We can make this woman feel that her health is important and also educate her family.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said, “Success will come when we focus our attention and resources on people, not their illnesses; on health, not disease.” We believe that if we focus our attention on women and children–as people, as valuable contributors to society, as future leaders of the world–success will come indeed.

TE: Why the focus on non-communicable diseases?

NS: Non-communicable diseases or NCDs are also sometimes referred as chronic diseases include cardiovascular disease, diabetes, lung disease, cancer, and one cannot forget – mental illnesses. We differentiate non-communicable diseases from what was very common before – the communicable diseases. Most people used to die of infections. However, as the developed nations improved their water quality, sanitation and hygiene, communicable diseases or infections were better controlled. Furthermore, better antibiotics were developed that helped to further control mortality from infections. And slowly non-communicable diseases or NCDs came into the spotlight as major causes of diseases. NCDs are a major cause of disease, disability, death and household medical expenses globally. These chronic diseases drive many families into debt.

Most factors that cause NCDs or the risk factors of NCDs are preventable in most cases.

TE: Why non-communicable disease and women?

NS: Though all people the world over are susceptible to the threat of these diseases, it is important to know that they impact girls and women differently. Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) have both a direct and indirect effect on women’s health and lives.

The direct impact of NCDs on women’s health

Many of us have seen the statistics that every two (2) minutes a woman dies from complications of pregnancy and childbirth. In fact maternal and child health is often the focus of most women’s health programs.

However, not many of us know that NCDs are the Number 1 killer of women worldwide.

Every single day, 50,000 women lose their lives to NCDs (including cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and chronic respiratory illness). More than 1,000 women die from cardiovascular disease, one of the four main NCDs, every hour.

Women comprise 60% of the world’s poor, and poverty worsens chances of survival from NCDs.

Women are uniquely affected by NCDs. When it comes to coronary heart disease, smoking is 25% more dangerous for women. Research published in The Lancet (Aug 2011) shows that for women, especially pregnant women, the harmful effects of smoking are even higher than for men.

The unnecessary suffering that women undergo is unacceptable in the 21st century. Women’s everyday lives are putting them at risk of these NCDs.

TE: You said women’s everyday lives put them at risk. Can you please explain that further?

NS: Take the example of cooking. Did you know that cooking kills a lot of women? Most women around the world (especially the poor) cook almost every day. This very basic everyday act can be extremely hazardous to women’s (and their child’s) health.

Three billion people — nearly half the world’s people — eat meals every day that are cooked over unclean stoves. And 1.9 million — mostly women and children in developing countries — die each year because of that. Globally, pneumonia is the single most significant cause of under-five childhood mortality. Exposure to cooking smoke doubles a child’s risk for pneumonia, leading to more than 900,000 deaths in young children under five.

In high-income countries, tobacco smoke is the biggest risk factor for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), a chronic lung disease. But in lower- and middle-income countries it is indoor air pollution from the use of solid fuels for cooking and heating. As many as 3 million people die from COPD every year, and a huge portion, 1.8 million, are from India and the surrounding South East Asia region. In India, in some regions, COPD is the number one cause of death, higher even than heart disease.

In many parts of the world, women spend three to seven hours a day preparing food, often in front of an open fire and they do this indoor in closed, dingy, small, cramped spaces. Harsh economic realities force them to rely on cheaper fuels like firewood, coal and even dried cow dung. Their babies are sometimes strapped to their backs or are sitting or sleeping nearby. Young children in such cases spend many hours breathing the indoor smoke from cooking during the first year of life.

Dr. Sundeep Salvi, from Chest Research Foundation in Pune, India, showed that in a study comparing the health outcomes for women using solid fuels for cooking in villages in India and Thailand, 11.9 percent of the women in India got COPD as compared to 1.5 percent of the women in Thailand. During his talk, Dr. Salvi, commenting on the lower COPD rates in Thailand, remarked that though the data were unpublished, they had observed that women in Thailand cooked in homes on average with one more window than did the women in India.

The Global Alliance for Clean Cook Stoves (http://www.cleancookstoves.org/) a public-private partnership led by the UN Foundation is tackling this problem head-on and is committed to provide clean cook-stoves to 100 million homes by 2020.

How about a “One More Window Campaign? Can we create a public health campaign such that women in rural areas can cook in homes with one more window in the kitchen area? Can we make serious efforts to provide them with that one more window in their home? Of course it is an imperfect solution, and does replace indoor air pollution with outdoor air pollution, but may just help to reduce the burden of NCDs faster.

TE: Using terms and acronyms such as NCD’s – does that not make it difficult for people to understand the problem?

NS: What about AIDS? That was just an acronym a couple of decades ago. However, now most people know what the term “AIDS” stands for and many are taking steps to prevent it. Countries have instituted national programs solely to control and prevent AIDS. The same has to be done with NCDs. We have to make it a commonly used term. NCDs responsible collectively for 2/3 of all deaths worldwide are one of the greatest health and development challenges of this century. Countries have to create special divisions and agencies to control and prevent NCDs.

TE: You mentioned the indirect impact of NCD on women?

NS: Yes, women are indirectly connected to NCD too. Women are also the caregivers in most households across the world. The increasing burden of NCD in the world also implies that women’s work as caregivers is impacted.

NCDs impact women as caregivers

Women and girls play a critical role in caregiving. Around the world, we have seen that when someone at home falls sick and needs extensive care (as is usually the case with chronic NCDs); it is the women who stay home to provide care. These women fall behind in school, miss work, or are forced to accept lower paying jobs because they need the flexibility to provide home care for a sick family member. Even if a woman doesn’t suffer personally from an NCD, she is often drastically affected if anyone in the family has a NCD.

Women are so focused on caring for others they often fail to take care of themselves.

TE: Most women’s health programs focus on maternal health, pregnancies? What about NCDs and maternal health?

NS: NCDs are an integral part of maternal and child health. There is increasing evidence that a child who has low weight at birth (also called low birth weight) often ends up with diabetes and heart disease later on in life. So governments and donor agencies can make an important investment in educating women about having healthy pregnancies and avoiding low birth weight babies. This will not only save women’s lives during childbirth but also help set their children up for a healthy future, with less risk for chronic disease.

Since low birth weight predisposes a baby to get diabetes and cardiovascular disease later in life, it is imperative that we educate pregnant women about good nutrition during pregnancy. In fact, some researchers believe the key to the entire NCD crisis lies in ensuring good health for adolescent girls, before they become pregnant, so that they can have safe and healthy pregnancies and give birth to healthy babies of normal birth weight.

Nalini Saligram Image2

TE: Won’t educating women about NCDs help address the problem and reduce the burden of NCDs around the world?

NS: The world has too much to lose when we allow women to die from almost entirely preventable causes. However, often education campaigns focus on creating awareness, giving out messages and expect the individual to follow up with the appropriate change in behaviours.

It is also important for all of us to be aware that messages may not be enough; women are disadvantaged with respect to practising prevention.

While 80% of cardiovascular disease and diabetes and 40% of cancer are preventable through stopping tobacco use, increasing physical activity and improving diet, often these prevention efforts are not accessible to women. When women make up 2/3 of illiterate adults, they are at a great disadvantage to even learn about prevention.

NCD what is diagran

Moreover, social and cultural taboos sometimes restrict a woman’s engagement in physical activity, because sport is considered ‘unfeminine.’ We believe that access to sports and physical exercise is not only a right in itself, but also a catalyst for development, leading to the empowerment of women and girls. In fact, there is some lack of awareness of women’s health risks even among researchers and policy-makers. Most people (including the above figure) attribute lung disease only to tobacco; they do not connect the risk of indoor air pollution from cooking as a risk factor for respiratory disease in women.

Therefore, addressing social norms and cultural beliefs as well as creating women-friendly policies are a must. We have to educate women and also everyone around them.

However, I also see women as a crucial part of the solution to this crisis.

TE: So what do you see as the best handle or lever for addressing NCDs?

NS: The solution to curbing NCDs and maternal mortality ultimately rests in improving women’s access to strong and capable health systems. We know that in too many countries, women get the least access to healthcare. Governments and policy makers must address women’s health needs through integrated approaches that include reducing maternal mortality, improving access to family planning, tackling infectious diseases, and addressing NCDs.

Health systems must be equipped to prevent, diagnose and treat through an integrated approach, particularly given that NCDs increasingly threaten the same women that have been the targets of reproductive health and maternal health efforts over the past decades. We need health systems to keep pace with all women’s health needs, from childhood through old age.

Countries must also get serious about NCDs and maternal mortality. Governments can only truly understand the magnitude of the problem when they have sufficient and reliable data on how women in their country prepare for pregnancy and childbirth and deal with traditional women’s health issues and also with emerging women’s health issues like NCDs. Women count, and their lives must be counted.

TE: What do you think will MOVE governments and families to take action?

NS: The fact that NCDs impact the next generation.

While women are rightly concerned about the health of other women, they are fiercely concerned about the health and futures of their children. Children have a right to health. They deserve a dynamic future full of hope and happiness, a future where they can live their dreams and become productive world citizens. Aggressive marketing of tobacco products, junk foods and sugary drinks, and alcohol to children and young people is threatening that future. When the future of our children is at stake, women must take action.

This is another reason why it is smart to educate women about their health and reducing NCDs: They will ensure that the next generation is cared for. Empowered women will ask world leaders to reduce the marketing of calorie-dense junk foods, tobacco and alcohol to children and adolescents. They will demand that tobacco products are taxed and sugary soft drinks banned in schools. They will make healthier nutrition choices during their pregnancies and afterward. The status quo is not OK. The future of our children — and that of the children of the future — is at stake.

The origin of chronic disease lies in the habits of daily life – the food we eat, and how active we are – our levels of physical activity. Women (especially mothers) are actually the best solution for the problem of chronic disease because they can easily impact the food families eat and also get children into physical activity. However, there are some problems: women are often not the decision-makers and the husband’s tastes decide what gets cooked in the house. Nowadays with massive advertising spends of large companies directed at children and the peer pressure that children face in schools, the family buying-decisions are often run at the whims of children.

As gatekeepers of the food families eat and the physical activities they engage in, women deserve an important seat at the table.

In the spirit of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s “Every Woman, Every Child” initiative, which aims to save the lives of 16 million women and children by 2015, we have already asked for a focus on women as countries build NCD action plans. We must seize this unprecedented global movement to improve policy and services on the ground for the most vulnerable women and children.

… Because when you take care of women, women take care of the whole world.

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References:

Data – NCDs

World Economic Forum and Harvard School of Public Health Document (2011). http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Harvard_HE_GlobalEconomicBurdenNonCommunicableDiseases_2011.pdf
World Health Organization (2005). Preventing Chronic Disease: A Vital Investment: WHO Global Report Geneva
World Health Organization (2008). Global Burden of Disease 2004 Update Geneva
WHO Website (Sep 2013). http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs334/en/
UN Summit discusses NCDs:
http://www.hrc.govt.nz/news-and-media/news/un-summit-discusses-death-toll-non-communicable-disease

Op-eds by Nalini Saligram

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nalini-saligram/women-a-powerful-solution_b_922136.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nalini-saligram/one-more-window_b_852051.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nalini-saligram/noncommunicable-diseases-_b_946955.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jill-sheffield/women-ncds_b_1891269.html

Image references:

Image 1: NCD definition. From: http://www.indushealthplus.com/ncds-non-communicable-diseases/
Image 2: Global status report (NCD) http://www.who.int/cancer/en/
Image 3: Nalini pic: http://unitednationsyak.com/?p=1288
Image 4: NCD Logo (UN): http://www.unmultimedia.org/radio/english/2011/09/non-communicable-diseases-a-slow-motion-disaster-who/
Image 5: NCDs and risk factors: http://emanthi-news.blogspot.in/2011/02/health-minister-to-appoint-special.html
Image 6: Nalini speaks at a meeting – http://www.flickr.com/photos/79240988@N06/7259137562/
Image 7: 4 Diseases – 4 Risk Factors at http://www.who.int/ncdnet/about/4diseases/en/

Bibliography for the article titled ‘The Gift of Erving Goffman: The Micro-Drama of Everyday Life’

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