Re: [xmca] sounds like the young Dr. Cole?

[Carol Macdonald <carolmacdon@gmail.com>]

Thank you Peter, I shall certainly look into that.
Carol

2009/8/11 Peter Smagorinsky <smago@uga.edu>

> Obama is remarkably frank about his family and youthful experiences in
> Dreams from my Father. Highly recommended. There are decent summaries at
> http://www.amazon.com/Dreams-My-Father-Story-Inheritance/dp/1400082773 .
>
> And, of course, there's the equivalent of a "birther" who assumes that the
> book was ghost-written at
>
> http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/who_wrote_dreams_from_my_fathe_1.html
>
>
> Peter Smagorinsky
> Professor of English Education
> Department of Language and Literacy Education
> The University of Georgia
> 125 Aderhold Hall
> Athens, GA 30602
> smago@uga.edu
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
> Behalf Of Carol Macdonald
> Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2009 7:17 AM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: Re: [xmca] sounds like the young Dr. Cole?
>
> Golly
> No wonder that Obama is what he is...a formidable set of genes on the one
> side (We don't know about his Dad or do we?)  I respect anthropology even
> more than psychology, and that thesis sounds formidable.
>
> On the other hand, I would love to hear about how his grandparents brought
> him up--but that is in his books, I expect---and I haven't read them.
>
> I hope he can do all of them justice.
>
> Carol
>
> 2009/8/11 Peter Smagorinsky <smago@uga.edu>
>
> > Op-Ed Contributor
> >
> > Dreams From His Mother
> >
> > By MICHAEL R. DOVE
> >
> > Published: August 10, 2009
> >
> > New Haven
> >
> > PRESIDENT OBAMA's late mother, Ann Dunham Soetoro, was famous for the
> good
> > cheer and optimism that she preserved in the face of a complex and
> > challenging world. Her personality went hand-in-hand with her career as
> an
> > anthropologist in Indonesia and Pakistan, where she studied and worked
> with
> > village craftsmen, slum-dwellers and countless others. I knew Dr. Soetoro
> > as
> > a friend and colleague for many years before her death from cancer in
> 1995.
> > Though I only met her son once, briefly at her memorial service, I've
> > watched him as he's taken on the hardest job in the world, and often
> found
> > myself wondering how her worldview might have shaped him.
> >
> > Dr. Soetoro's most sustained academic effort was her 1,043-page
> > dissertation, "Peasant Blacksmithing in Indonesia: Surviving Against All
> > Odds," completed in 1992 and based on 14 years of research. This was a
> > classic, in-depth, on-the-ground anthropological study of a
> 1,200-year-old
> > industry. Her principal field site was a cluster of hamlets, containing
> > several hundred households, on an arid limestone plateau on Java's south
> > coast. There, village metalworkers produced dozens of different iron
> blades
> > and tools for use in farming, carpentry and daily life.
> >
> > When Dr. Soetoro began her study in 1977, the village could be reached
> only
> > by walking a mile and a half from the nearest paved road. The first
> > battery-powered television set did not arrive in the village until 1978,
> > and
> > was placed in a window and watched by the village en masse; electricity
> did
> > not arrive until a decade later. In her dissertation, Dr. Soetoro called
> > this village "a wonderful and mysterious place to live."
> >
> > Running through Dr. Soetoro's doctoral research, as through all her work,
> > was a challenge to popular perceptions regarding economically and
> > politically marginalized groups; she showed that the people at society's
> > edges were not as different from the rest of us as is often supposed. Dr.
> > Soetoro was also critical of the pernicious notion that the roots of
> > poverty
> > lie with the poor themselves and that cultural differences are
> responsible
> > for the gap between less-developed countries and the industrialized West.
> >
> > Indeed, Dr. Soetoro found that the villagers she studied in Central Java
> > had
> > many of the same economic needs, beliefs and aspirations as the most
> > capitalist of Westerners. Village craftsmen were "keenly interested in
> > profits," she wrote, and entrepreneurship was "in plentiful supply in
> rural
> > Indonesia," having been "part of the traditional culture" there for a
> > millennium.
> >
> > Based on these observations, Dr. Soetoro concluded that underdevelopment
> in
> > these communities resulted from a scarcity of capital, the allocation of
> > which was a matter of politics, not culture. Antipoverty programs that
> > ignored this reality had the potential, perversely, of exacerbating
> > inequality because they would only reinforce the power of elites. As she
> > wrote in her dissertation, "many government programs inadvertently foster
> > stratification by channeling resources through village officials," who
> then
> > used the money to further strengthen their own status.
> >
> > These same observations also led her to start working with institutions
> > like
> > the Ford Foundation and the United States Agency for International
> > Development to devise alternate pathways for reaching and working with
> the
> > poor. She helped to pioneer microcredit programs that made small amounts
> of
> > capital available to weavers, blacksmiths and other low-income groups -
> > people who would otherwise have had no access to credit.
> >
> > It's worth pointing out that though microenterprise is fairly well-known
> > today - and Indonesia now has one of the world's largest microcredit
> > programs - it was pretty radical stuff when Ann Soetoro was doing her
> work.
> > But then, she had a habit of swimming against the current. While many
> > American academics tried to avoid antagonizing the repressive Suharto
> > government, Ann Soetoro called attention to those the regime had failed
> to
> > benefit: the village craftsmen, the plantation workers and urban
> > scavengers,
> > the underpaid workers in the shoe and clothing factories.
> >
> > There is a final lesson from her work that is worth remembering: No
> nation
> > -
> > even if it is our bitterest enemy - is incomprehensible. Anthropology
> shows
> > that people who seem very different from us behave according to systems
> of
> > logic, and that these systems can be grasped if we approach them with the
> > sort of patience and respect that Dr. Soetoro practiced in her work.
> >
> > The anthropologist Clifford Geertz wrote that "the aim of anthropology is
> > the enlargement of the universe of human discourse." This was clearly a
> > central goal of Dr. Soetoro's work and life. From an admittedly great
> > distance, I can see those same values in her son.
> >
> > Michael R. Dove is a professor of social ecology and anthropology at
> Yale.
> >
> >
> >
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> >
>
>
>
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