Global Poverty

As we have seen throughout the course of this class, everything in the world is intricately interconnected. This rule applies to economics just as it does to environment and biodiversity. More than six billion of us share an already crowded planet, and we are starting to realize that our interests are increasingly transnational. So when nearly half of that booming population lives on less that $2/day (try to imagine living on $2/day), something has to give. As Susan Rice argues in "The Threat of Global Poverty,"

When Americans see televised images of bone-thin children with distended bellies, their humanitarian instincts take over. They don't typically look at UNICEF footage and perceive a threat that could destroy our way of life. Yet global poverty is not solely a humanitarian concern. In real ways, over the long term, it can threaten U.S. national security. Poverty erodes weak states' capacity to prevent the spread of disease and protect the world's forests and watersheds . . . It also creates conditions conducive to transnational criminal enterprises and terrorist activity, not only by making desperate individuals potentially more susceptible to recruitment, but also, and more significantly, by undermining the state's ability to prevent and counter those violent threats. Poverty can also give rise to the tensions that erupt in civil conflict, which further taxes the state and allows transnational predators greater freedom of action.

Poverty is an issue that affects all of us, but there is disagreement as to what is the best method of fighting it. Consider the two articles below:

1.) Jeffrey D. Sachs - "Securing the Future at the Evian Summit"
2.) Jim Klauder - "Paper Money Can't Save Billions from Poverty"

Then answer the following questions in relation to all three of the articles linked above:

1.) What is the argument of the piece?
2.) What techniques are used to persuade the reader?
3.) Is the argument convincing? Why or why not?

Post your responses in the "COMMENTS" section of this entry before class on Friday.

Biodiversity

One of the interesting things about biodiversity (as a political issue) is that it's extremely difficult to find anyone sane willing to speak against it (i.e. "biodiversity is not important"). There's a good reason for this: biodiversity is crucial to our continued existence on this planet. To get a sense of why this is the case, read this brief article:

David Mussared - Biodiversity in Your Backyard

Even though most people agree that biodiversity is important, sometimes the preservation of biodiversity interferes with economic development. When biodiversity and economy clash, there is often heated debate as to which is more important. This is the case with the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge drilling controversy.

Some argue that a large-scale drilling project in Alaska would threaten biodiversity in a pristine wilderness region and is therefore a bad idea. Others contend that the economic advantages of drilling outweigh the biodiversity issues. Read the two articles below:

1.) Paul Driessen - "It's Time to Support ANWR Drilling"
2.) Susan McGrath - "The Last Great Wilderness"

Then answer these three questions in relation to each article:

1.) What is the argument of the article?
2.) What techniques does the author use to persuade the reader?
3.) Do you find the argument convincing? Why or why not?

Post your answers in the "COMMENTS" section of this entry before class on Wednesday.

Global Warming

Consider these two articles on global warming:

1.) John Hepburn - "After the Thaw"
2.) George Will - "Let Cooler Heads Prevail"

After reading each article, answer the following questions:

1.) What is the argument of the article?
2.) What techniques does the author use to persuade the reader?
3.) Do you find the article convincing? Why or why not?

Post your answers in the "COMMENTS" section of this entry before class on Monday.

Comparing and Contrasting Visual Arguments

For Monday, choose one of the pairs of images below (if you want to talk about the Kate Moss Calvin Klein ad and its parody, refer to the last post for the images), then answer the following questions:

1.) What do the images have in common? (Consider such things as composition, lighting, framing, subject matter, color, argumentative technique, etc.)

2.) How are the images different? (Consider these same issues, but also think about the idea of PARODY. The Adbusters image in each set of ads is a parody of the original, so think about how this dynamic works).

3.) How do these images relate to Berger's notions of "envy" and "glamour" (which he defines in Chapter 7 of Ways of Seeing)?

For help with comparison/contrast writing, see pages 127-132 in Writing and Revising.

Representations of Gender in Advertising

In Chapter 3 of Ways of Seeing, Berger argues that:

To be born a woman has been to be born, within an allotted and confined space, into the keeping of men. The social presence of women has developed as a result of their ingenuity in living under such tutelage within such a limited space. But this has been at the cost of a woman's self being split in two. A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually.

And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman.

She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, and ultimately how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life. Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another.

A bit further on he adds:

One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object -- and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.

In light of these arguments, consider the two images below, and answer the following questions (for each image):

1.) What is the argument of the image?
2.) What techniques does it use to convey that argument?
3.) Who is the target audience?
4.) Do you find the advertisement convincing?

Then consider these two general questions:

5.) How does the second image parody/critique the first?
6.) Do you agree with Berger's analysis of gender? If so, why? If not, why not?

Reading and Writing About Advertising

After reading chapter 7 in Ways of Seeing, consider the two images below, then answer the following questions for each image:

1.) What is the argument of the advertisement?
2.) What techniques does it use to convey that argument?
3.) Who is the advertisement designed for? (Who is it the target audience?)
4.) Do you find the advertisement convincing? Why or why not?

Click on the ads to enlarge the images. Post your responses in the COMMENTS section of this entry before class on Wednesday.

Reading and Writing About Art

Now that we've talked about essays and poetry, I want to move forward and think about the visual arts a bit. Remember, the idea of the course is that "the world is a text," something that can be creatively and constructively "read." This applies as much to the visual arts as it does to traditional forms of written communication. I thought poetry would be a good transition between linguistic and visual arts because poetry is so densely imagistic (especially the poems we looked at by Williams, Davidson, Bishop, McHugh, and Koch, which were all defined by their vivid, visual imagery).

With this in mind, read Chapter 1 in Berger's Ways of Seeing, paying close attention to his ideas regarding belief and perception, text and context, and the relationship between art and mechanical reproduction. Compared to what we've read so far this semester, the ideas in this essay are a bit more dense and complicated, but don't let that frustrate you. If something is unclear in your reading, just write down a note and we can talk about it in class. Part of all constructive reading is friction and frustration; we only learn by going beyond what we don't understand.

When you're finished reading this section, answer these 4 questions:

1.) In what way is how we see the world affected by what we believe or know?
2.) Why does Berger argue, "today we see the art of the past as nobody ever saw it before"?
3.) According to Berger, how does actual written text around a painting change the text of the painting itself?
4.) Do you think mechanical reproduction has changed how we see art? How? Why?

Post your answers in the "COMMENTS" section of this post. You might also bring a printed copy to class, so that you have something to refer to when we are discussing the reading.