Recycling Shanghai: A

In Praise of Borders

The Opinionator blog on The New York Times is running a series of posts on ‘borderlines’.  The first is by Frank Jacobs.  He writes about his hometown of Bree, in Belgium:

Borders seemed to mark the edge of the known world. Or, inversely, they were the high water marks of the Great Unknown, the Eternal Other. Even if the people in the first town across the line were only slightly different, there was no telling how weird the accents, customs or fashions might be a few towns over. Or behind the next border. Northeastern Belgium is shielded by a sliver of Dutch territory from Germany, home of fashion disasters like the mullet, the woolly moustache and tie-dyed jeans.

Germany is only a few dozen miles away, but the shortest way there involves two border crossings. As a child I found it bewildering to think that I’d need to cross only two more national borders to get to China. It almost made me feel sorry for the people living in between, having so few boundaries to insulate them from the big bad world.

He also writes about the town of Baarle,

…just north of the Belgian-Dutch border, which for arcane historical reasons is divided into a Dutch half (Baarle-Nassau) and a Belgian half (Baarle-Hertog). Simple enough. Then it gets weird. Essentially, B-H is a collection of about 20 Belgian exclaves in the Netherlands. But some of those Belgian parcels in their turn contain Dutch exclaves (seven in all) of B-N. The border cuts through houses, shops, restaurants — resulting in petty absurdity when different national laws apply on either side.

Baarle-Nassau frontière café. Photo: Wikipedia

The fight for space in…New York: once more about place and public protest

Zuccotti Park. Photo from CBS News

Following up on several earlier posts on the importance of occupying space in protest movements (for example, in Egypt, and in Bahrain), Michael Kimmelman has an article in today’s New York Times about ‘The Power of Place in Protest’.  While the occasion for Kimmelman’s report is the month-long occupation of Zuccotti Park by the Occupy Wall Street protesters in New York City, his article offers an interesting bit of pop geography.  “Politics troubles our conscience,” he writes, “but places haunt our imaginations.”

Kent State University, 1970. Photo: UPI

While my earlier posts have focused on the importance of public space, and the rights of citizens to claim public space as their own, the current occupation of Zuccotti Park offers a new and revealing twist on this issue.  This is because Zuccotti Park is not actually public space, but is private property, owned by Brookfield Office Properties, whose chairman is John Zuccotti.  Kimmelman writes,

A zoning variance granted to Brookfield years ago requires that the park, unlike a public, city-owned one, remain open day and night.  This peculiarity of zoning law has turned an unexpected spotlight on the bankruptcy of so much of what in the last couple of generations has passed for public space in America. Most of it is token gestures by developers in return for erecting bigger, taller buildings. Think of the atrium of the I.B.M. tower on Madison Avenue and countless other places like it: “public” spaces that are not really public at all but quasi-public, controlled by their landlords. Zuccotti in principle is subject to Brookfield’s rules prohibiting tarps, sleeping bags and the storage of personal property on the site. The whole situation illustrates just how far we have allowed the ancient civic ideal of public space to drift from an arena of public expression and public assembly (Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park, say) to a commercial sop (the foyer of the Time Warner Center).

Central Park, 1967. Photo: Bettmann/Corbis

Geographers, like Don Mitchell (see his 2003 book The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space), and Sociologists, like Sharon Zukin (for example, Landscapes of Power and The Cultures of Cities), have been writing about this for some time.  Among the various things that the Occupy Wall Street protests have been demonstrating is the importance of reclaiming public space in a world where space itself is increasingly privatized.  This is an issue also raised in an earlier post about the struggles of Filipina maids in Singapore to claim spaces of leisure in the increasingly privatized spaces of the city.

L’Affair Foulard part 2 – “Le regard”

Kenza Drider after her release last week from a police station in Paris

Today’s New York Times published an essay by Elaine Sciolino, on French anxiety over veils, which asks, “why all the fuss…about a tiny minority of women who wear odd-looking dress in a country that is the world’s creative headquarters for odd-looking fashion?”  The essay provides a nice follow-up to my earlier post on “L’affair foulard”.  The essay begins with the observation that, “Many scholars of Islam will tell you that nothing in the Koran requires a Muslim woman to cover her face — that its rules for proper Islamic dress are ambiguous and limited.”  Even Khadija, the first wife of the prophet Muhammad and a successful businesswoman, who surely guarded her modesty, is believed to have not worn a veil.  But, of course, fashion changes, as does religion, over time.  What interests me most in this whole story, though, is the difference that geography makes.

The essay goes on to speculate about why the French, in particular, find the veil so threatening.  What is it about France as a place that changes the way Islam is expressed by its believers, and the way those beliefs are understood by others?  Isn’t it ironic, for example, that in the deeply conservative country of Saudi Arabia, women are not required to cover their faces at all?  Religious expression, then, is very place-specific.  It is very geographical, and depends on many other things that don’t necessarily have anything to do with religion.  The essay offers some ideas about this, supposing, for instance, that there may be a place-based cultural explanation to France’s anxiety.  Here are some interesting excerpts:

“But the face-covering veils in France are different. Even though many here mistakenly call it a burqa, the garment worn by women here is a niqab, an improvised cover in black with no religious or traditional significance beyond what a wearer or observer gives it. Some of these women may be rebels, demanding control over their bodies and recognition within a Western culture whose social values they reject. Some may have been forced into covering their faces by domineering men; others may believe they are better Muslims because they hide their faces in public. Some are French converts from Christianity.”

“Le regard — the look exchanged by two people — is a classic component of French literature, developed centuries ago in the love poetry of the troubadours. Especially in Paris, a stare in public is not usually taken as a sign of rudeness, and can be accepted as a warm compliment. You never walk alone here, it seems. “The visual marketplace of seduction” is how Pascal Bruckner and Alain Finkielkraut define public space in their 1977 book, “The New Love Disorder.”  In another book, “Galanterie Française,” Claude Habib, a specialist in 18th-century literature, argues that the centuries-old French tradition of gallantry “presupposes a visibility of the feminine” and “a joy of being visible — the very one that certain young Muslim girls cannot or do not want to show.” French tradition has also long encouraged mixing of the sexes in social situations. “The veil,” Ms. Habib continues, “interrupts the circulation of coquetry and of paying homage, in declaring that there is another possible way for the sexes to coexist: strict separation.”

“A more familiar explanation for French antagonism to the facial veil is historical and political: the deep-rooted French fear, resentment and rejection of the “other” — the immigrant, the invader, the potential terrorist or abuser of human rights who eats, drinks, prays and dresses differently, and refuses to assimilate in the French way. Some of the French, particularly on the far right, still believe that France’s colonial “civilizing mission” was a noble one, and that the people of former colonies, including the Arabs of North Africa, have clung to backward ways that they are now exporting to France. “The veil’s presence reminds French people daily that that mission failed,” said Rebecca Ruquist, an American scholar of race and religion in modern France. “It has been seen as a sartorial rejection of the values of the French republic.”

The essay raises one final interesting question:  what about wealthy tourists from Arab states who come to Paris with fat wallets to shop in the trendiest boutiques?  Will they be forced to leave their faces uncovered?  In its consideration of a similar ban on facial veils, neighboring Switzerland has supposedly claimed that such tourists would be ‘exempt’ from the ban.

“Meanwhile,” the essay concludes, “France will remain France — the land where the uncovered body is celebrated.”

Fear of contamination – Italy’s Lega Nord

In lecture I mentioned Italy’s populist party, Lega Nord per l’Indipendenza della Padania (The Northern League for the Independence of Padania), which has often seen itself as a defender of the ‘purity’ of European culture against ‘outsiders’.  The Northern League has been a vocal opponent of Turkey’s EU candidacy, and has also opposed the EU’s idea of European culture as defined by its diversity and tolerance. Certain EU officials have, at times, accused the League of xenophobia and racism. The League sees itself as a defender of traditional European regional culture and values, and advocates for the regional autonomy and identity of northern Italy, or Padania.  During the recent 150th anniversary of the founding of Italy on March 17, according to Tim Parks in a recent New Yorker article about Italy, “Representatives of the Northern League ostentatiously absented themselves from all singing of the national anthem and refused to allow the flag to be waved in the regional assembly of Lombardy” (Parks also mentions that among his students where he was teaching in Milan, all but one said they would not be celebrating the holiday).

Joel Leonardi sent me a couple posters from the League, with translations.  Both clearly illustrate an anti-immigrant agenda and a desire to maintain the purity of European culture.  Thanks a lot Joel for sending these!

This one shows a typical northern Italian looking man at the back of the line and the text means ‘Guess who is last?’ And then, ‘for the rights of the house, work, and sanity.’

The second one, with an American Indian, reads something along the lines of ‘They had immigration immediately.. now they live on reservations’ and then under the emblem the word ‘penasci’ which essentially means ‘think about it.’

L’Affair Foulard continues in France

French police escorted Kenza Drider, center, a French Muslim of North African descent, away from the square outside Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on Monday.

What role does culture play in the ways that minority groups seek to integrate themselves (or not) into dominant societies? How do the cultural geographies of multiculturalism and globalization help us understand some of the seemingly intractable issues of cultural diversity being faced by states in the EU today?

On October 19 1989, Ernest Chenier, the headmaster of the College Gabriel-Havez of Creil, France, expelled three Muslim girls – Fatima, Leila, and Samira – for refusing to remove their headscarves, or foulards, while attending school. Although the scarf is an expression of a particular religious identity that is protected by France’s commitment to religious freedom, for Chenier it was also a symbol of beliefs that directly challenged the very idea upon which France’s principle of religious freedom was based.  That idea is laicité, a term which, though difficult to translate into English, refers generally to the concept of a secular state in which freedom of religion exists, but exists in a distinctly private realm that does not interfere with the public sphere in which citizenship exists. Indeed, it was perhaps a sincere belief in religious freedom that impelled Chenier to act in the first place, assuming as he might have that the girls were being required to wear the scarf in public, presumably against their will. This, however, was not the case.

photo from http://c-monavis.blogspot.com/2011/02/jai-pense-ne-serait-ce-pas-nous.html

School officials and the parents of the girls had already reached an agreement
in which they were to attend class without their heads covered. But Fatima, Leila, and Samira went to class covered anyway. In this way, their act took on a deliberate character, a gesture of both identification and defiance, which was thus explicitly political. Two weeks later, the Minister of Education, Lionel Jospin, took the matter to the Conseil d’Etat, France’s high court, which delivered an ambiguous interpretation of how laicité applied to the foulard. The Conseil ruled that the wearing of religious signs by students was not incompatible with laicité, but the wearing of such signs as an act of “pressure, provocation, proselytizing, or propaganda” or in a way that would disturb the normal function of public education, violated the basic principles of French law.

By 1994, the foulard was strictly forbidden in French public schools.  But, 15 years later, France is more anxious about the veil than ever.  Last year, a law was passed banning full-face veils in public, and that law went into effect today.  A small protest was staged near Notre Dame in Paris, and the above image shows police escorting one of the protesters – Kenza Drider – away.

L’Affaire Foulard in France continues to illustrate the politics of cultural identity in a rapidly changing Europe, where the EU’s explicit calls for ‘unity in diversity’ run head on against anxiety over whether Muslims really have a place within that ‘diversity’.

Documentary Thursdays

Hi Geography 1982. Here’s the flyer for Guggenheim’s Geographer Honor Society’s upcoming documentary screenings in April.

First up is tomorrow (April 7th) at 6pm in Hellems 201: Harlem’s Mart 125. Documentary director Rachelle Salnave will be presenting her film and hosting an informal discussion.

We’ll have free snacks and drinks too. Hope to see you there!

p.s. If you’re a Geography major and are interested in joining the Gamma Theta Upsilon honor society, shoot an email to darla.shatto@colorado.edu

More about social media and revolution

Continuing the discussion about the use of social media sites like Facebook by protesters in authoritarian states, The New York Times has a story about the Egyptian blogger Hossam el-Hamalawy, whose photos of Egyptian security police were removed by Flickr because they were not taken by him.  The article addresses the question of “how to accommodate the growing use for political purposes while appearing neutral and maintaining the practices and policies that made these services popular in the first place.”

Hossam el-Hamalawy

Xavier Jaillet also sent me this link to CNN commentator Fareed Zakaria’s take on the social media role, which he describes as transforming communication from one-to-many to many-to-many.

Women’s Rights in Saudi Arabia

Here’s a YouTube video of Wajeha Al-Huwaider driving a car in Saudi Arabia, which is illegal.  The video is the subject of a story on PRI’s The World. In the story we learn more about Wajeha Al-Huwaider, the background to the video, and the ‘sensation’ it caused.

Asia Day

The 10th Annual Center for Asian Studies Asia Day is being held Saturday March 12 in Eaton Humanities, beginning at 10:00 AM.  Click here for more information