Essential Christmas List: Donations in my na...

December 05, 2002 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg

Essential Christmas List:
Donations in my name to low-income housing orgs
Hikes on the butte
Bread making sessions
Lair trade coffee dates
Luxury hugs
Movie marathons
Head massages
Bought gifts need not apply


I'm rockin' the free world and heading for finals. Ack. Smooches to all y'all, and rock on Jenny with your bad new employment self.

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November 25, 2002 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg

I walk past paradise pond almost every day, w...

November 14, 2002 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg

I walk past paradise pond almost every day, which is so crisp that it reflects the red dying trees like glass, and overwhelmes me with a sense of etherial place... anyway, it makes me want everyone to visit and see the place in May, when all the trees are in bloom again. Classes are treating me like the Zen masters that they are, kindly beating me with sticks for self-betterment. But I turned in a paper today, and am exploring a new one tying South African tourism to the government's nation building, which is based on the ever-popular human rights discourse. I haven't decided if I'm going to ride on the human rights as western imperialism argument, but it's tempting. My papers have become scathing far-left critiques of globalization, neoliberalism, and the South African government, which is kinda fun. We'll see how the anti-capitalist feminist skin fits out on the street.

Happy Birthday Seraphina! All the hugs and ki...

November 10, 2002 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg

Happy Birthday Seraphina! All the hugs and kisses and love in the world from three thousand miles away! I hope Isa slept through the night, you get your favorite breakfast, and don't even have to do the laundry. Hogs and Quiches.

Hello

November 05, 2002 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg

Hello. I'm in senior year crisis. Send chocolate or job opportunities. Much love.

I'm laying looking through a bright window an...

September 30, 2002 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg

I'm laying looking through a bright window and tangled up in comforters, contemplating how I should play for Mountain Day, the great Smith tradition of spontanious day offs on one nice fall day. I'll probably take a shower and meander to the chapel. perhaps a visit to Will's old haunt, Shelburne Falls, which was always the perfect new England town. Thank the universe he lives in a commune in Shutsbury now. Which I actually visited on a chapel retreat this weekend, where we interpretive danced and kumbaya sang. he was in maine. all went well. all is well, by the way. I'm perfect, save the absence of you.

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September 20, 2002 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg

happy 19th birthday, Jamie!

The programme students and staff just had a b...

August 08, 2002 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg

The programme students and staff just had a big long talk about strengths and weaknessness of the last three weeks, and it was pretty nice. I wish I didn't have a cold or that the whole group wasn't alternately sick and/or being treated for post traumatic stress disorder, but we're chuggin' along. We're leaving for Durban tomarrow morning, which will certainly change, if not improve, our situation. All we needed as a group was to have a bit more sharing and to hear that our profs were also negotiating things and struggling with the programme fuck ups.

Mucho love.

I was so happy to hear about the water pick i...

August 05, 2002 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg

I was so happy to hear about the water pick incident that I shared it with my friends scattered around the UCT computer lab. These things keep me going.

I'm a bit tired, having spent the morning in class listening to lectures and the afternoon at a residential home for disabled and abandoned children, who didn't have toys, medication or diapers, let alone adequate diets. It was frustrating to do as much as we could, knowing that toys would dissapear, the underpaid nurses would take donated funds, and nothing we could do would be sustainable. So we got a new carpet and put in new ceiling tiles, and held these increadibly neglected children for four hours. Hmm. I don't know what else to say, for I haven't processed it myself yet.

Missing all of you.

A very postmodern lecturer this afternoon

July 29, 2002 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg

A very postmodern lecturer this afternoon. All she did was humbly challenge and renounce essentialism with the vision of moving beyond to a new progressive, not reactionary, individualist psyche within collective histories. Her discussion of bringing Coloured identities from the margins between black and white cultures was fascinating, because she didnÆt shy away from the issues so entrenched in antiracist work- the traps of colour-blindness, assimilation, and multiculturalism. Holding up critical antiracism and personal work is a new movement in sociology towards multiplicity and transcendence of essentialism. She questioned the narrowness of æblackÆ as privileging black æAfricanÆ identities over black Coloured and black Indian identities. She critiqued the Rainbow nation as depoliticising and multiculturalism as disregarding the history and process of power in shaping cultural identities. I drank it in.

Then she began discussing her newer work, her personal work, and a process of ôtaking down the armour of blackness without losing [her] politics and location.ö As someone who found herself arguing vehemently with one of my closest friends on the trip about the consumerist commodification of womenÆs bodies the hour before, I asked how one could separate a kind of defensiveness with maintaining strength in conviction. She said that defensiveness was a sign of weakness more than strength, and openness (but not porousness) is a key to opening needed dialogue about race. By this time, for me at least, this discussion has moved way beyond race in South Africa to a discussion of Smith and anti-oppression work as a whole.

The most essential thing she discussed was shifting racism from pathology (everyone is racist except for the person accuser) to norm. Thus, people may move away from a hierarchy of righteous black politics to a discussion of what we do with who we are. In that, all must acknowledge and work through their position within racist norms.

What I find most problematic about her discussion is that on a personal level, taking down the armour of blackness (as an example) works, but its implications are potentially depoliticising. In addition, this is an academic discussion that takes place apart from the pain of life and apartheid, and doesnÆt acknowledge a need for continued political solidarity that may be exclusive. A class analysis of race discussions was left out too- the conversation that may happen between a white Afrikaner and Cape Malay Coloured over a pool table in some club is accessible only to those who can pay the 30 Rand cover charge. I was impressed by the emphasis on dialogue, but like my views on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, there is a place for such things, and they cannot marginalize the equally essential issue of redistribution.

An issue that I have found too easily skirted with passive voice and an academic emphasis on symbolic cultural revival and African renaissance. IÆm still holding onto the perspective that cultural roads are formulated, paved, and used with money as fuel. I canÆt privilege classism over racism, but I canÆt forget class eitherà even in South Africa.

I realize I haven't posted for several weeks,...

June 24, 2002 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg

I realize I haven't posted for several weeks, and as I'm presently in a contemplative mood, I'll write a bit. Luke and I just parted after a wonderful evening listening to Mark Allen at Jo Fed's. He is travelling to Alaska to work for a native rights preservation council. It's difficult to know when I'll see him next, for after Alaska is Palestine, and I am still bound to New England for another year. Most of the rest of my buds are also scattered about the country. We are trying to arrange a life that includes each other in the long term, but the good fight has too many fronts to keep us all in one town. Since I don't think I will be reproducing for a while, my friends will (hopefully) remain a priority. We just have to work out the vacinity issues.

I am still plowing right along on the fulbright, and considering taking the GREs in the fall. Ugh. Please send any suggestions and/or vocab priming my way.

SADIE'S 21st BIRTHDAY LIST: (in order of mos...

May 24, 2002 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg

SADIE'S 21st BIRTHDAY LIST:
(in order of most essential to least essential)

1. Drinks on the fam
2. car tape player
3. jump rope
4. hiking stove
5. coolant and car oil

That is all.

Well, I'm leaving on a jet plane tomarrow aft...

May 09, 2002 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg

Well, I'm leaving on a jet plane tomarrow afternoon, and plan to get into Portland in the late evening. I sure hope someone is going to pick me up...
I had an interview with the Chapel this morning- Hoping to be their big intern next year, although I think it's somewhat competative. I still have a twenty or more page paper to write, which I plan to finish next week. No worries. Can't wait to see yous all.
kisses,
Sadie

Any suggestions on summer internships? I'll d...

April 23, 2002 by Jamie in Sadie & Greg

Any suggestions on summer internships? I'll do anything for May and June...
How about a crash course in child development and the social lives of human young (aka nanny :-)?

I just got back from that cellebrating collab...

April 20, 2002 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg

I just got back from that cellebrating collaboration poster session- had an interesting conversation with a prospective Ada comstock scholar from Ghana about structural adjustment programmes and the World Bank/IMF. Fascinating perspectives. John Foran came and offered me a lifetime of UCSB lovin as a graduate student. they have a very good graduate programme in cultural sociology, which is one of those weak in the knees interests I have. It might be nice to be in a sunny place for seven years. He wants me to be a professor, which I'm a bit dubious about. but all that's a year away. Hope everyone is doing well.

All is well here- finishing up an OCD paper a...

April 08, 2002 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg

All is well here- finishing up an OCD paper and hoping to write one on SA this afternoon. Crunch time is upon me, but I've perfected the art of muddling through. I'm hoping to go to Southern Africa early and do some research in South Africa or Botswana, but don't have much time to formulate the details of any of it.
We'll see.
Love and hugs to all.

Just got into the Smith South Africa Programme

April 04, 2002 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg

Just got into the Smith South Africa Programme. Send chocolates.

Well, I have this presentation for special st...

April 02, 2002 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg

Well, I have this presentation for special studies works in progress on friday, and thought you guys might be interested in what I'm actually doing here in teh ivory towers. Here's what I have- suggestions are welcome!

First, I want to say that IÆve left a hundred things out for the sake of brevity and clarity. IÆm not talking about the labor movement, nor about the Pan African Congress, which organized pass law boycotts in 1959. One of these, the Sharpeville massacre, led to the banning of the ANC. I donÆt even come close to addressing the psychological impact of the ANCÆs shift to military resistance, or of the Black Consciousness Movement. I canÆt unpack the relationship between race and class in South Africa except to say that capitalism and racism were as symbiotic then as they are now. One of the important things that I leave out is the global context of colonization and the cold war. It is essential to remember South AfricaÆs geopolitical and mineral importance in both imperialism and cold war politics throughout this entire discussion, because it was international economic support that kept the apartheid regime in power.

My research on the political revolution of South Africa works within John ForanÆs theoretical framework of third world social revolutions. First, he uses Theda SkocpolÆs definition of social revolutions- the rapid, basic transformation of a societyÆs state and class structure, accompanied and in part carried through by class-based revolts from below. He has theorized that in a third world context, five factors cause such social revolutions: dependent development; a repressive, exclusionary, Personalist state; the elaboration of effective and powerful political cultures of resistance; and a revolutionary crisis consisting of an economic downturn and a let up of external controls. IÆm going to explain the first two as a historical basis for South AfricaÆs political cultures of opposition.
Basically, dependent development is economic growth with social consequences. In South Africa, this refers to the 26.3 billion dollars of foreign capital invested in the economy by 1978. In 1979, South Africa was producing 47 percent of the worldÆs platinum, which is used for refining petroleum and 60 percent of the worldÆs annual supply of gold.
Now the dependent part of the equation is that the whole population was not getting rich on the countryÆs mineral wealth. In 1980, out of ninety countries surveyed by the World Bank, South Africa had the most inequitable distribution of incomes. While white South Africans had the highest rate of coronary disease in the world, an industrialized disease, the principle African diseases were pneumonia, gastroenteritis, and tuberculosis. The main causes of black infant deaths were pneumonia and gastroenteritis, which are products of malnutrition.
There are also some fundamental structural problems with keeping most of your population at sub poverty levels. Apartheid kept black labor cheap for industries. It also kept them poor and therefore unable to consume what was being produced. Apartheid policies didnÆt allow black laborers to become skilled. Unskilled workers canÆt meet the changing labor needs of an expanding economy.
In addition, South AfricaÆs economic growth relied on increased mechanization to increase productivity and profits. This required imported capital goods, making the state vulnerable to balance of payments deficits. This can be contrasted to other third world nations that have labor-intensive industries like textiles instead of farming or mining.
So thatÆs a basic overview of dependent development.

Now a repressive, exclusionary, Personalist state. What does that really mean? Foran describes it as a dictator-like leader who represses the lower class and excludes the growing middle classes and the economic elite from political participation. Collective military rule isnÆt a Personalist state because it usually has the support of the elite and is

Well, I haven't posted for so long because I'...

March 15, 2002 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg

Well, I haven't posted for so long because I've been... err... busy. but I have this application/story for a South Africa programme, and thought you guys might like it:
Every evening before dinner, my Gaborone father- I called him uncle Douglas- read the newspaper. And every evening I slid into a velour chair next to him, and waited for his sitting room stories. In the beginning I had to ask about his life as BotswanaÆs first news broadcaster, his plans to buy a Mercedes with my bride price, or the children he sent off to South African private schools who came back white inside. After a few weeks, Uncle Douglas would fold up his paper without prompting and, eyes half closed as if dictating straight from remembered imagery, begin his monologue.
Like everyone else in Botswana, he had South Africa stories. He worked in Mafikeng when it was still the capital of Botswana, met his wife there, sent two ambitious children to work in Johannesburg, and crossed the border for weddings and funerals every month. We had family there. We spoke Xhosa and Setswana and listened to South African news in Zulu. We brushed our teeth with toothpaste manufactured in South Africa. Uncle DouglasÆ South African stories were not animated like the ones where heÆd get off the bus at the wrong Kansas City. He was quiet, and slower with the plotÆs unfolding. I remember one story more clearly than the rest, when he told me about his certificate from the South African government. During apartheid, Aunt Jean and Uncle Douglas helped ANC members cross the border to Zambia. The story whispered of SADF raids and BotswanaÆs plea for sovereignty in political neutrality policies- the periphery of something I needed to see for myself.
What he couldnÆt tell me, what I had to understand on my own terms, was how the other side of our family lived. I listened but didnÆt have my own images to recall, eyes half-closed. After a seminar and special studies on South Africa, research on Zimbabwe, Angola, and Mozambique, and a semester in Botswana, I have a coherent social, political, and historical framework of Southern Africa. I can articulate how racism is constructed, codified, and inherited with real estate planning. IÆve theorized on the causal factors of the countryÆs political revolution, analyzed dependent development and neoliberalism and examined the race-class dialectic. IÆve even argued politics with Afrikaner farmers on vacation at Chobe National Park. But I havenÆt negotiated my skin privilege in a country where the top five percent consume more than the bottom eighty-five or felt the implications on a kombi. My academic focus on Southern African revolutions is incomplete without an experiential understanding of South Africa. Learning in context would bring two years of regional study into acute focus. Hopefully IÆd also return with my own stories and quiet convictions.

It was so nice to hear mum and dick's voices ...

March 04, 2002 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg

It was so nice to hear mum and dick's voices last night- I'm still in the middle of my papers, and people really do go crazy during midterms. Anna Levitt came into my room last night to say she that her night was full of weeping women- lord. I just hope I can manage to finish my OCD presentation and South Africa paper today without losing any more sleep or drinking too much coffee. Wish me luck, people.

I am plowing into a week of midterm papers, a...

February 27, 2002 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg

I am plowing into a week of midterm papers, all due on tuesday, when Megan Wells Jamieson returns for a visit from Germany. The list goes as such: today, citizen crusaders paper; thursday through monday, obsessive compulsive disorder and South Africa papers. I'm so glad one of my classes is a self-directed independent study- it means I just have to e-mail my professor on occasion and say things like "I'm really getting my head around this issue of dependent development." On the social front, everything is as interesting as college can make it. Going to watch a movie tonight with Tommy, the European gentleman caller. There are other such things, but none as exciting as pretending to be in Southern Africa for eight credits of my life. Hope everything on the homefront is settling down- happy birthday to the old man (aka Dave), and hugs to the little spastic childrens.

One more little tidbit: right now I'm explori...

February 07, 2002 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg

One more little tidbit: right now I'm exploring the internships this summer. There are interesting international baccalaureate (the IHS thing)schools in England that I'm looking at, as well as possibly trying to find an internship with the IB programme itself. I can also apply for UN internships around the world, and see where I end up. Smith funds an intership for the summer- basically if you can get it, smith gives you 1500 bucks. Pretty nice of them, I think. Right. But that's enough from me.

I think to the globalization lecture last nig...

February 07, 2002 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg

I think to the globalization lecture last night, and the woman who said -This would be a much easier course if we were teaching in Jakarta. It's hard to be smart inside the seat of power. I think this is important. I learn so much more in the way of analysis and history, but there isn't the emotional attachment like being there. I know so much about paper South Africa, but I can't feel it save a deep sense of distanced sympathy. I think this is the strength of the Pitzer program- the experiential stuff. Unfortunately, there isn't much in the way of supplamentary analysis. I didn't get so much of the "wait- look at 'customary law' and the kgotla... do you really think that's customary, or a codified version of what (male) traditional elites and (male) missionaries and colonists wanted for 'customary law'?". The history teachers in Botswana were all male, and didn't give us much juice to interpret things with. Its nice to be with feminist teachers, thinkers and deconstructionists again. But it's hard to go home to something so different (Morris house), lose perspective and juice, being dulled by the seat of power. So I'm a little jealous of there and a little glad I'm here. But certainly there is a need to go everywhere and get living perspective on everything.
Things are great here. Crispy cold and midnight blue and brown hats with matching gloves and friendly electricians to fix the old fashioned metal heaters. Gotta appriciate overdevelopment.

My classes are amazing, and it looks like all...

January 30, 2002 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg

My classes are amazing, and it looks like all of them are based on a large final paper, student presentations, and constant reading, all seminar style. Even qualitative methods in sociology is based on a large research paper on a community activist of our choice. South African international relations and politics is fasinating, and the teacher is so passionate- I'm thrilled. We only have six in the class, and Obsessive Compulsive Disorders has thirteen. I'm meeting John tomarrow for our first meeting on the special studies on south Africa. I'm getting the pre-independence period from the special studies and the post-independence period from the S.A. seminar. She also seemed intent on covering relations with the region, with an emphasis on Zimbabwe. All very rewarding.