Keywords

Visual Anthropology Programs in Taiwan

2018-04-19T00:00:00+00:00

While Taiwan may not have any MA programs dedicated to the study of visual anthropology, there are nonetheless many opportunities to study and engage with visual anthropology at the MA level. Much of this is due to the presence of Dr. Hu Tai-Li, currently serving as the director of the Institute of Ethnology at Academia Sinica, Taiwan’s premiere research institute. In addition to directing eight documentary films, Hu also helped establish the Taiwan Association of Visual Anthropology (TAVE) in 2000, and the Taiwan International Ethnographic Film Festival (TIEFF) in 2001. Run every other year, TIEFF is Asia’s longest running international ethnographic film festival. Moreover, in addition to the main festival, TIEFF has a smaller traveling festival which goes on tour of the country (primarily at college campuses, museums, and cultural centers) during the intervening years between festivals. Through her films, which include one of the first commercially successful documentary films to be shown in Taiwan’s theaters, the festival, and the association, Hu has helped give visual ethnography a high profile in Taiwan.

I was able to collect information on courses taught by a total of six anthropologists (including myself), each teaching at different universities. Of these courses, there are six classes offered at the graduate level, of which four have a production component. The courses with a production component include “Visual Anthropology,” taught by Hu Tai-li at the Institute of Anthropology, National Tsing Hua University. This course, which “explores how to use visual media to produce and deliver anthropological knowledge,” is taught on an occasional basis, is open to MA and Ph.D. level students. All students in the class produce a short ethnographic film (20-40 minutes in length) shot and edited by themselves. Dr. Lin Wenlin of the Graduate Program of Ethnicity and Culture, National Chiao Tung University, offers an MA course in “Visual Anthropology” which looks at both theories of “image creation” and “image analysis.” Recently she has also started teaching an MA course in “Digital Anthropology” which also has a production component focused on working with “sound, images, pictures, maps, text, etc.” My own graduate production course, taught every other year to MA and Ph.D. students in the Department of Ethnic Relations and Cultures at National Dong Hwa University is called “Visual Ethnography Production.” This course teaches students ethnographic research methods with a focus on developing basic skills in “research ethics, collaborative research methods, interviewing technique, transcription, and the art of participant observation.” All four courses also provide an overview of the history and theory of visual anthropology and ethnographic filmmaking.

In addition to these two production courses, Dr. Futuru Tsai at the Department of Public and Cultural Affairs, National Taitung University, and Dr. Lan Mei-hua at the Department of Ethnology, National Chengchi University, also offer MA-level courses in visual anthropology. Both courses are called “Visual Anthropology” and offer a comprehensive overview of key topics in the the discipline. Lan’s course is a two semester course, whereas Tsai’s course is just one semester. The theory-intensive course I teach in my department (open to both MA and Ph.D. students), “Visual Ethnography,” was originally intended as the first semester of a two-semester course, but because many of our graduate students work part time they were not able to take the two semesters in order, so I now teach them as separate courses and am working on restructuring them accordingly.

Finally, a number of courses are offered for undergraduate students as well. Dr. Lin offers a course in “Documentary Film Production” to students at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Chiao Tung University. Dr. Tsai, an accomplished ethnographic filmmaker, offers two courses for undergraduate students which have a production component: “Ethnographic Film,” and “National Memory and Documentary Film Production.” Dr. Mei Hui-yu of the Department of Southeast Asian Studies at National Chi Nan University also offers three courses at the undergraduate level: “Ethnographic Film Appreciation,” “Anthropological Visions,” and “Visual Ethnography on Southeast Asia.” In 2008 she edited a photo-ethnography of a Taoist ritual in Taiwan’s Puli township based on work done by her students (both graduate and undergraduate) which was released as both a book and a DVD. And I teach a course in my department called “Indigenous Images” which includes a strong visual anthropology component.

Although Taiwan lacks a dedicated program in Visual Anthropology, several programs mentioned here, such as the MA program at the Department of Ethnic Relations and Cultures, National Dong Hwa University, the Graduate Program of Ethnicity and Culture, National Chiao Tung University, the Institute of Anthropology, National Tsing Hua University, and the Department of Ethnology, National Chengchi University each now offer MA students the option of including a visual component with their thesis (along with a written portion). It should be noted, however, that most university courses in Taiwan are taught in Chinese. Although some faculty members may be willing to accept non-Chinese speakers into their classes on a case-by-case basis, most programs teaching visual anthropology require a certain degree of Chinese proficiency.

NOTE: This article originally appeared in a special issue of NAFA Network, the Newsletter of the Nordic Anthropological Film Association devoted to MA programs in Visual Anthropology around the world. You can download a PDF of that issue here.

The perspective glass

2018-02-04T00:00:00+00:00

He assembled for himself a significant collection of optical instruments that apparently enabled him to write his ‘Minute or First Draught of the Optiques’ in 1646, which addressed sight as the ‘noblest of ye senses’. The perspective glass, which was developed and marketed among others by [Jean-Francoise Niçeron] in Paris, was an especially significant instrument. The tube’s multifocal beveled lens was projected from a certain point onto an image of apparently unconnected fragments; the sections then came together to form a new arrangement. Hobbes apparently saw a witty example in which Ottoman sultans merge together and, from their fragments, reassemble themselves in the form of the young king of France, thus becoming visually subordinate to him. By optically sacrificing a part of themselves, they form their sovereign.

~ From Bredekamp, Horst. 2007. “Thomas Hobbes’s Visual Strategies.” In The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’s Leviathan.

Teaching Higher Ed Taiwan

2017-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

I frequently get approached by academics who would like to find a university teaching job in Taiwan, so I thought I’d share my standard advice as a blog post.

First off, this is not a blog post about finding English language teaching jobs in Taiwan. Most universities treat language teachers differently from other faculty and while I don’t agree with that policy, it means that the experience of English language teachers in Taiwanese universities is quite different from what I’ve experienced and so I’m not qualified to talk about it. The best I can do is direct readers to discussions on Forumosa, Taiwanese, and Facebook dedicated to the subject.

Secondly, the most important thing to know about higher education in Taiwan right now is this graph which shows the drop in university enrollments as a result of the shrinking student population:

The end result is that, over the next decade, Taiwan will be closing many of its universities and downsizing and merging departments at those that don’t close. This means that right now is a particularly bad time to be a foreigner looking for work in Taiwan. Doesn’t mean that it is impossible - people retire and many departments are still conducting job searches, but competition is fierce.

Third, if you are looking for jobs, this is the web page you want to bookmark. Unlike Hong Kong and Singapore where jobs are usually listed in the major international job listing sites, Taiwanese universities tend not to advertise outside of Taiwan. Part of this is because most (but far from all) jobs require Chinese proficiency, but it is also a reflection of the general insularity of Taiwanese higher ed. Whereas many academic departments in Singapore and Hong Kong can have as many as fifty-percent foreign faculty (if not more), Taiwanese departments that aren’t focused on English teaching rarely have more than one foreigner. But all jobs are required to be listed on the Ministry of Education’s website, so if you do read Chinese it is easy to stay abreast of new job openings via that link.

Frequently Asked Questions:

So what does it take to compete for a job in Taiwan? Like everywhere else, publications are key. Taiwanese universities are eager to boost their international rankings and they see hiring faculty who publish in prestige journals as one of the key ways to do this. For academics in the social sciences, this effectively means publishing articles in journals that are listed in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI). Previously books did not count for much, but some universities in Taiwan are now promoting book publications as well.

Beyond that, however, it is also hard to get a job here without some personal connections. This is true everywhere, even if nobody wants to admit it, but if you aren’t based in Taiwan you might have a difficult time getting taken seriously as a job candidate here. Nobody wants to hire someone who will leave as soon as they get a better job in the US or Europe. For this reason I frequently advise people who want a job here to first apply for a postdoc (even if it is unpaid) and spend some time getting to know people in your field. This will also help you better understand the departments you are applying to, allowing you to prepare a better application.

Is it necessary to speak Chinese to teach in Taiwan? If you are able to teach at one of the top universities in Taiwan, teaching in English is not a problem. And many other universities are trying to promote English language courses. Having said that, even if you can teach in English, most universities are Chinese work environments. You can expect dozens of (often important) Chinese emails each day, and faculty meetings are held in Chinese. (See what I said above about few departments having more than one foreign faculty member.) Even if courses are offered in English, most students outside of the top universities lack sufficient English ability to follow the material without some assistance in Chinese. Most of the people I know teaching in the social sciences in Taiwan are fluent Chinese speakers with a high level of Chinese literacy as well.

How well does it pay? The salaries at public universities are pretty standardized (unless you are a famous scholar, in which case they might be able to pay you more than the standard rate for Taiwanese). This PDF lists the salaries. As you can see, these are rather low by international standards. In terms of US dollars, these are actually some of the lowest in the developed world. But Taiwan is also a rather affordable place to live, with good health insurance, so you can do pretty well on these incomes if you live here and don’t travel a lot. Salaries at private universities are not as closely regulated as at national ones so there is much more variation.

A bigger concern is retirement. It is hard to save money on these salaries, and the current pensions given to foreigners are not as good as those for Taiwanese. Basically you get a lump sum payment of what you put into the system, rather than a monthly payment that is a percentage of your salary at retirement. There are a number of reforms being discussed right now that might improve the situation, but it is hard to know whether these will actually become law. Note that, like salaries, the pension situation is very different at private universities, with many getting much lower pensions than what is offered to public university professors.

How is the work environment? My biggest complaint about teaching here are the long semesters and large number of teaching hours. I currently have eighteen week semesters with nine lecture hours per week (three courses, each three hours a week). Added up this can be as much as five times what is required of some academics in Europe and North America. While the requirements for tenure and promotion are a little less stringent than in those places, they still require a significant commitment to research and publication on top of that heavy teaching load. And if you aren’t used to teaching in Chinese, expect this burden to be even harder your first few years. There are some efforts to switch to fifteen week semesters, and some of the better universities only expect professors to teach two courses a semester. As with salaries and pensions, the situation is much more variable at private universities.

What is your story? My journey to Taiwan, and my teaching situation here is rather unique. I wrote something about it back in 2010.

Ceci Nest Pas Andy Warhol

2017-03-13T00:00:00+00:00

Date: 03/13/2017 tag:images

Ceci n'est pas Andy Warhol

True story: when I was a kid I once got yelled at by Andy Warhol who thought I was surreptitiously taking his photo. He was really furious and his friends (one of whom I’m pretty sure was Basquiat) had to calm him down. The thing is, I really wasn’t taking his picture! I didn’t even know who he was. I only figured out it was Warhol when I later saw his photo on the cover of one of my mom’s art magazines… I was actually taking a picture of a garbage can. I told him that, but he didn’t believe me… Well, I recently found that picture while cleaning out boxes from my parent’s basement. I guess I should frame it and title it “Andy Warhol.” Maybe I could sell it for lots of money?

Nazi Cosplay

2016-12-26T00:00:00+00:00

So this happened:

An international incident was caused when students at Kuang Fu High School, a private high school in Hsinchu, Taiwan, dressed up as Nazis as part of celebrations to commemorate the school’s anniversary. The principle has already apologized and announced that he will be stepping down early (he was already scheduled to depart in February). Moreover,

The school will hold a series of educational activities, including showing films such as Schindler’s List and Life is Beautiful, Cheng said, adding that officials from the Israel Economic and Culture Office would be invited to speak with the students.

So what can we say about this? A lot, it turns out.

1. First of all, we should point out that this kind of thing happens a lot.

Michael Turton has been documenting Taiwan’s strange obsession with Nazi kitsch for a long time now. For the most part this kind of thing is not the result of genuine neo-Nazi beliefs on the part of Taiwanese, but the same kind of attitude that has Westerners ironically wearing T-shirts with the picture of a man responsible for tens of millions of deaths:

The difference being that Nazi imagery is still widely used throughout much of the world as a symbol of ethnic hatred.

2. Nor is it the only tasteless thing the school did that day.

On the same day they did a re-enactment of the 1930 Wushe Incident, in which indigenous Taiwanese attacked and killed hundreds of Japanese, bringing down the wrath of the Japanese colonial government and much more bloodshed. But that isn’t all, during the reenactment they shouted “Fight the Japanese Devils, Restore our Chinese people!” 「打倒日本鬼子，光復我中華民族」This is problematic because of the way it re-colonizes indigenous people by making them. As Michael pointed out on his blog, “the name of the school, is the KMT code term for the ‘restoration’ [Kuang Fu 光復] of Taiwan.” (And in 2013 they also did a rather inappropriate dance dressed as members of the Tao tribe of Orchid island. )

Indigenous activists have long been fighting for a true “restoration” of Taiwan, one that sheds not just the legacy of Japanese colonialism, but that of the KMT as well. In one incident , an activist spray painted graffiti on a police station in a town also named “Kuang Fu,” asking “Who’s retrocession?” and demanding that the town be restored to its original indigenous name.

3. Forget the Holocaust, Taiwanese don’t even know their own history

In 2015 students occupied the Ministry of Education over controversial changes to the history textbooks. Activists were upset that changes to newly proposed textbooks “misrepresent history, gloss over the KMT’s role in the 228 Massacre and the White Terror, and impose a China-centric curriculum.” After the Nazi cosplay incident, someone in Taiwan’s semiconductor incident wrote a letter to the Liberty Times newspaper explicitly raising the issue of Taiwan’s continued inability to face its own history, pointing out how many monuments Taiwan still has to its dead dictator.

Personally, I still feel about these issues of history education the way I did then. As I wrote in a Facebook post at the time:

True, a textbook shouldn’t just be propaganda for the ideology of the ruling party, but I think it’s even more important that students be taught how to evaluate historical claims for themselves and not just be asked to memorize a textbook for their exams. No matter what the textbook says, that’s not learning history. And if they did learn that skill (how to evaluate historical claims), then it wouldn’t matter so much what the textbook says. Taiwan doesn’t just need a new textbook, it needs a new curriculum.

(After I wrote that, the same point was made more eloquently by a history professor writing in Chinese.)

4. Even as Taiwanese should learn their history, we should be wary of the sacralization of the Holocaust

Corey Robin wrote about this in the context of a critique of Elie Wiesel, saying that “the Holocaust and Israel have replaced God and halakha as the touchstones of Jewish experience and identity.” As he says in response to something Wiesel wrote:

The Holocaust not as an event in secular history but as a leap into transcendence; it cannot be explained, it can only be circled, like a holy fire. Auschwitz is our Sinai, the ovens our burning bush. Like the Jews receiving God’s commandments, the Jews of the camps experienced a sacred mystery, received a secret message, which we can only approach at a distance, with awe and trembling. I, the Holocaust, am your God. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

Back in April I wrote about the importance of the Holocaust in developing Jewish identity:

During my weekly Hebrew school classes, as well as related weekend activities and camps, we almost never discussed Jewish religion, ethics, or philosophy. Instead, we were taught to think of ourselves as victims of historical persecution stretching back to the dawn of time. We were taught the importance of maintaining our ethnic identity in the face of this persecution.

I’d also like to point out that (like me) Corey Robin also hates Schindler’s List which is what the High School students in Hsinchu are going to have to watch in penance for their crimes….

5. A bad experience

Having said all that, I’m actually not entirely convinced that Taiwan is free of antisemitism and that all Nazi memorabilia is just “kitsch.”

Above is the cover of a Taiwanese magazine promising to tell its readers how to be rich “like a Jew.”

It is in the context that I want to share one of the few upsetting personal experiences I have had as a teacher in Taiwan. All faculty are assigned a number of “advisees” we take out to dinner a few times a year and get to know personally. One day one of these advisees, over dinner, showed me a prized possession: a very authentic looking Nazi ring. I remember looking at it in curiosity, then suddenly understanding what I was looking and jumping up from the table in shock. I couldn’t look at or talk to the student and had to get colleagues to intervene and help deal with the situation. I just couldn’t understand how anyone would be proud to own something like that, and then show it to me. In the end the student was asked to do something very similar to what was asked of these students: watch some movies, read some books, and write me a letter. Which he did. A very nice letter actually - although to be honest I still felt uncomfortable around this student until the day he graduated.

Politics as a Vocation

2016-09-27T00:00:00+00:00

Who would Weber vote for in this election? Here’s a hint:

As far as political… activities are concerned… Western experience has presented two fundamental types of protagonist. On the one hand, there are individuals for whom those actives constitute an aspect of broader social position, generally a privileged one. Typically, such individuals do not identify closely with those activities, are not expressly trained and qualified for them, and do not make a particularly strong commitment to them.

On the other hand, we encounter individuals for whom political and administrative concerns lie at the centre of their life, and constitute the most significant way of positioning themselves in society, or of orienting and in a sense justifying their very existence. Essentially, the process of state-building, as Politics as a Vocation construes it, involves the progressive devaluing of the first type - let us call it ‘notable’ - to the advantage of the second, to which we might attach the label ‘professional’…

From Gianfranco Poggi (p117)

Getting from Pudong to Hongqiao

2016-07-12T00:00:00+00:00

So let’s say you bought the cheapest plane ticket you could get, even though it involved a five hour layover in Shanghai, but it was only when you were heading out to the airport that you noticed the layover also involved switching airports in Shanghai! Fear not, this post is intended to help you make your connecting flight. When it happened to me I discovered that most of the relevant online information was out of date or confusing, so hopefully this will help others navigate their journey!

This post covers the trip from Shanghai Pudong International Airport 上海浦东国际机场 (上海浦東國際機場) to Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport 上海虹桥国际机场 (上海虹橋國際機場). I assume that it should help those going in the opposite direction as well, but I haven’t personally made that trip.

Arrival

When you arrive at Pudong the first thing you need to do is get your luggage and go through immigration. If you are arriving in China from a different city than your destination you may be eligible for a 144-hour visa-exemption. Check this site for more information. If you are lucky, someone is working at the separate counter set up for this and you can skip the big line. (It was closed when we arrived late at night going the other direction, but was open on the returning flight which arrived during the day.) Make sure to have a print out with your connecting flight information.

Maglev

After collecting your luggage (if any) and exiting customs, take the escalator to the right and head up to the second floor. There you will see a passage to terminal 2:

At the end of the passage, turn left. If you see the subway entrance and a food court you’ve gone too far!

At the end you will see a ticket booth just to the right of the Maglev entrance. The Maglev is called 上海磁浮示范运营线 (上海磁浮示範運營線) but usually abbreviated as 磁浮列車。 At the ticket booth you want to buy a combined Maglev & Metro Pass 磁浮地铁一票通 (磁浮地鐵一票通). It is ¥55 for a one-way ticket.

You will have to have your luggage X-rayed on the way through to the Maglev train, but it is very quick and you don’t need to take out your laptop, etc. Once inside you can’t go down to the platform until the train arrives.

The Maglev journey is about 8 min.

Subway Line 2

There is only one stop: Longyang Road Station 龙阳路站 (龍陽路站). Once you get out, just take the escalator down towards subway 上海地铁 (上海地鐵) line #2.

At the bottom of the escalator you have to cross the street, and have your luggage X-rayed again.

I couldn’t find a down-escalator, so I ended up having to carry my luggage down one flight of stairs. Not sure if there is an alternative? At the bottom take the side that is NOT going back to Pudong Airport!

The Line 2 journey is about 50 min. Here’s a list of all the train stops.

Subway Line 10

Once at the Hongqiao airport exit you will probably have to transfer to a train that takes you to Terminal 1 (the exit is at Terminal 2), but check with your ticket. For this train, follow the signs for subway line 10, and take it one stop. (You can still use the same metro pass for this.)

After getting out at Terminal one, there is a five minute walk under a covered walkway.

Once in Terminal 1, the escalator to the check-in counters is straight ahead and to the left.

Getting from Terminal 2 to Terminal 1 takes about 15 min.

Good luck! If anything is different from what is reported here, please leave a comment…

Explaining Israel to Taiwanese

2016-06-13T00:00:00+00:00

Last week the American Anthropology Association (AAA) announced the results of a historic vote over a resolution advocating the academic boycott of Israeli institutions. With 51% of the membership voting, the resolution failed by just 39 votes: 2,423-2,384, essentially a tie. Having written a fair amount advocating the boycott for Savage Minds (see here, here, and here) as well as a postmortem after the vote, I was asked to write a piece for the Taiwanese anthropology blog, Guava Anthropology. Since that piece draws a lot from the Savage Minds posts linked above, I won’t post the entire thing here; however, I did add a section trying to explain Israel to a Taiwanese audience which I think is worth reposting in English, so I’ve cleaned it up a bit and posted it below.

Jews are not the same thing as Israelis

Having lived in Taiwan for over a decade, I frequently find myself explaining to Taiwanese friends, colleagues, and students that being Jewish doesn’t make me an Israeli. Because so many of these same Taiwanese adamantly proclaim that their ethnic Chinese heritage does not make them “Chinese” I’m surprised that they find it so hard to separate my ethnicity from my nationality (I’m American). But it isn’t really that surprising. After all, the conflation of ethnicity and nationalism in both Taiwan and Israel is the result of deliberate government policies. Since 1950 Israel’s Law of Return offers Jews world over the right to Israeli citizenship. Similarly, for much of its history, Taiwan’s KMT government claimed to represent all of China and “depicted itself as the guardian of ‘traditional Chinese culture’.”

Today, the younger generation of American Jews, just like the younger generation of Taiwanese, is beginning to question such ethno-nationalist identities. Just as young people in Taiwan are more likely to support Taiwanese independence than their parents were, so too are young Jews in America more likely to be critical of Israel than their parent’s generation ever was.

Although many Taiwanese do see similarities between Israel and Taiwan, these are often informed by self-serving myths promoted by the Israeli government. Thus Israel is seen, like Taiwan, as a country whose existence is threatened by hostile neighbors. Israel likes to portray itself as a kind of David standing up to the Arab Goliath. As a Jewish kid growing up in America many of the holidays we celebrated (Purim, Hanukkah, etc.) were built around such David and Goliath narratives, encouraging us to think of ourselves in the same way.

While Jews from my parent’s generation still see Israel as a David figure, those my age or younger are more likely to see Israel in the role of Goliath. Just as younger Taiwanese tend to see China as a colonial presence in Tibet, Xinjiang, and Hong Kong, most younger Jews similarly see the continued occupation of Palestinians territory in Gaza and the West Bank as unjust bullying by one of the best funded military powers in the region.

There is another way in which Israel is more like China than it is like Taiwan: both countries deflect criticism of government policies by deliberately misunderstanding them as an insults against their population. China has objected to so many criticisms on the grounds that they “hurt the feelings of the Chinese people,” that the phrase has become a joke. Similarly, the Israelis frequently attempt to portray criticisms of their policies towards the Palestinians as anti-semitism.

Wawa No Cidal

2015-09-23T00:00:00+00:00

Some preliminary thoughts on having just seen 太陽的孩子 Wawa No Cidal.

First of all, this is an emotionally charged film that shows some of the real issues facing indigenous peoples in Taiwan without reducing them to stereotypes. It also deserves credit for making extensive use of the Amis language. For all these reasons everyone should watch and support this film. Having said all that, I really wish they had spent some more time on the screenplay. There were a lot of scenes that were insufficiently motivated and several dramatic tensions that were never sufficiently developed. (e.g. A sixth grader looks at a medical prescription and intuitively knows that this would be a better cancer treatment than what her grandfather is getting? An Amis police officer gets scolded by a grandmother and looks sick but doesn’t really do anything other than look sick? An old school friend changes enough to help the local community but not enough to really do anything to help the community? etc.) These things matter because I fear they will limit the films appeal to a mostly local audience.

More importantly, the main motivation for preserving a particular way of life presented in the film is because of the father character and vague references to ancestors. (The fact that the irrigation ditches shown in the film were probably built during the Japanese era and that the Amis traditionally grew millet, not rice are are convienetly ignored.) The film’s efforts to show the problems facing contemporary indigenous society mean that we don’t really get much of a sense as to what about indigenous society is worth preserving. The film mostly speaks to those who already value what the film’s protagonists are fighting for, but doesn’t have much to say to those for whom these values are not self-evident. The largely indigenous audience I saw the film with absolutely loved it, and maybe that is good enough, but I wonder…

The way of life presented in the film is one that is already dying. We mostly see empty houses and old people living on their own. It makes one feel that any efforts to preserve the culture are just a stop gap until the old people have gone. There is little to make us see what value the culture holds for the younger generation. The screenplay tries to make up for this with a forced scene in which the young girl shouts “I am Pangcah” to gain courage before a race, but I didn’t feel this scene worked as intended. It felt forced and seemed somewhat out of place with regard to the rest of the story. (The entire subplot about joining a track team was introduced into the film rather suddenly, like an afterthought.) I feel that 不一樣的月光 Finding Sayun did a better job grappling with what indigenous culture means for today’s indigenous youth and the tensions between urban and rural life. These themes are not ignored in the film, but they have to give way to the central theme of land development and remain under-developed.

Finally, I feel that the film would have benefited from a more complex portrayal of the NGOs and government officials working with indigenous groups. It is interesting to compare the film to Court (one of the best films of the year) because of its ability to portray exactly this kind of complexity without loosing any emotional depth. But maybe it is wrong to want this to be the kind of film that would do well on the international film circuit? To the extent that the film is simply intended to be a popular film aimed at a local audience I think it has succeeded admirably and I expect it to do well when it opens in theaters later this week.

Embassy to Rome

2015-08-12T00:00:00+00:00

In 155 BCE Rome fined Athens 500 talents for the sacking of Oropus. This was a huge amount for Athens to pay, so they sent the leading philosophers of the Stoic (Diogenes), Academic (Carneades, representing what is also known as the Skeptic school), and Peripatetic (Critolaus) schools to Rome to negotiate the fine. (The Epicureans were notoriously uninterested in politics, so there was no point in asking them.) It seems they were successful in significantly reducing the fine down to about 100¹, but it was also an important event in the history of philosophy as it accelerated the adoption of Hellenistic philosophy by the Romans.

Of the three, the skeptic Carneades seems to have made the biggest impression on the Romans:

During his stay at Rome, he attracted great notice from his eloquent speeches on philosophical subjects, and it was here that, in the presence of Cato the Elder, he delivered his several orations on Justice. The first oration was in commendation of the virtue of Roman justice, and the next day the second was delivered, in which all the arguments he’d made on the first were refuted, as he persuasively attempted to prove that justice was inevitably problematic, and not a given when it came to virtue, but merely a compact device deemed necessary for the maintenance of a well-ordered society. Recognizing the potential danger of the argument, Cato was shocked at this and he moved the Roman Senate to send the philosopher home to his school, and prevent the Roman youth from the threat of re-examining all Roman doctrines. Carneades lived twenty-seven years after this at Athens.

I have tremendous respect for Yanis Varoufakis, but his appeals to the Troika were nowhere nearly as effective or influential as those of Carneades before the Roman senate.

I learned about this event listening to an episode of the podcast History of Philosophy without any gaps in which David Sedley was interviewed. That is where I got the “100” figure for the reduced fine. I haven’t been able to find a source for this online. (Not that I spent much time looking…) ↩

A lot of school lunches

2015-04-19T00:00:00+00:00

An audit of the U.S. military’s spending in Afghanistan has revealed that a whopping $45 billion is unaccounted for.

– Full Story

From a post I wrote back in 2003:

A study by the Defense Department’s inspector general found that the Pentagon couldn’t properly account for more than a trillion dollars in monies spent.

That’s a lot of school lunches, affordable housing, environmental subsidies, NEH grants, etc…

Philosophy Podcasts

2015-04-04T00:00:00+00:00

One of the joys of being on sabbatical has been time to read and study philosophy. Equipped with my Bose QuietComfort 20i noise cancelling headphones I can clearly hear podcasts as I walk Juno around the streets and riverside parks of Taipei. Here are some quick notes on what I’ve heard so far.

Heidegger

I listened to both semesters of Hubert Dreyfus’ course on Heidegger. You can get the first semester here and the course notes here. The second semester (Division II) is only available via iTunes, and the course materials are available here.

I really enjoyed Dreyfus’ course, even with all the sound problems, long silences while students are speaking off microphone or while he is looking something up in the text, etc. His approach to Heidegger presents him as an analytic philosopher whose most important insights were in Division I of Being and Time. For this reason the second semester is something of a mess. I recommend just listening to the first semester and looking elsewhere for insight into Division II.

One problem with the analytical focus is that it erases the philosopher’s connection to National Socialism. I found Simon Critchley’s lectures at the European Graduate School to be a good corrective to this view. (His series in the Guardian is good too, but more introductory and less critical.)

Hegel

J.M. Bernstein’s lectures on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit are fantastic. Bernstein is a masterful lecturer and it is such a pleasure listening to these talks. Some sections I have listened to multiple times before going on – and not because they are confusing, quiet the opposite… There is so much richness, detail, and even humor in them that they inspire one to be a better lecturer. I’m only about 1/3rd of the way through right now – it is long course, but I find myslef taking Juno around the block a second time so I can hear a little more before heading home. I had never really been able to get into Hegel in any serious way before and I feel like this course has opened my eyes to the profound influence of Hegel on so many thinkers I admire while also showing how many of them misunderstood Hegel’s larger project.

What’s next?

I’m tempted by Dreyfus’ course on Merleau-Ponty and Bernstein’s course on Kant, but there are also a large number of other great philosophy courses available online. Or maybe I’ll listen to Peter Adamson’s podcast, the History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps? It would be great to find stuff that is more contemporary, or less Eurocentric (any good podcasts on Chinese or Indian philosophy?), but I’m mostly just happy there is so much great philosophy available online these days.

Update (Sept. 23, 2015)

I decided to listen to the History of Philosophy podcast which turns out to not be as Eurocentric as I had feared. In fact, Peter Adamson is a specialist on philosophy in the Islamic world and he spends a lot of time on this facinating topic. Also, he just launched a new podcast on the History of Philosophy in India! (Still looking for something good on Chinese philosophy…)

A new home for Keywords!

2015-04-03T00:00:00+00:00

I’m sick of Wordpress. For many of the same reasons articluated here. So I moved my homepage and this site over got GitHub Pages using Jekyll. It turns out it wasn’t as easy as it looked. Here’s a list of all the problems I encountered and how I fixed them. But I’m glad I made the change. I’m planning on slowly migrating most (but not all) of my other sites as well. Since I’m still tweaking a few things, let me know if you see anything strange…

Do What You Love

2014-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

By keeping us focused on ourselves and our individual happiness, DWYL [Do What You Love] distracts us from the working conditions of others while validating our own choices and relieving us from obligations to all who labor, whether or not they love it. It is the secret handshake of the privileged and a worldview that disguises its elitism as noble self-betterment. According to this way of thinking, labor is not something one does for compensation, but an act of self-love. If profit doesn’t happen to follow, it is because the worker’s passion and determination were insufficient. Its real achievement is making workers believe their labor serves the self and not the marketplace.

Miya Tokumitsu, “In the name of love“

The Authentic Benjamin

2014-09-09T00:00:00+00:00

we late-moderns turn to Benjamin as a kind of figure of pure authenticity, almost a source out of time and out of history. The reason for this is simple, once it is put against the background of, for example, Agamben’s theory of history and modernity. How else, conceptually, could we imagine a source for the kind of emancipation necessary to fully transcend political modernity? In this context, then, Benjamin’s very person emerges as the embodiment of this possibility, and the source, only apparently the product of this modernity, of a pure theory of potentiality – the living exception to the exception.

Jennings, Ronald C. 2011. “Sovereignty and Political Modernity: A Genealogy of Agamben’s Critique of Sovereignty.” Anthropological Theory 11 (1): 23–61.