The Current Status of the “Arab Spring”

George Ritzer, Introduction to Sociology. Sage, 2013.

Chapter 1, Page 1

The Current Status of the “Arab Spring”

The dramatic changes associated with Arab Spring that began in 2010  continue to reverberate in 2013. Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, among others, are trying to create and institutionalize more democratic regimes. Other parts of the Muslim world such as Bahrain and Jordan are experiencing unrest, although significant change has yet to occur. Especially notable is the civil war that has raged in Syria since early 2011. The euphoria of the early years of Arab Spring has given way, at least for some, to worry about its negative consequences. While the deaths of tyrants like Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya, and the departure of others from Tunisia and Yemen, are welcome developments, those despots had managed to suppress internal differences in their countries and to exert at least some control over their borders. However, their demise and the continuing failure to replace them with strong democratic regimes have had a variety of dangerous consequences.

As a result, new areas of violence and bloodshed have arisen (including the killing of the American Ambassador to Libya in 2012), especially in the African area known as Sahel. This is a band of land that stretches across North Africa from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea and lies between the desert areas to the north and the grassy plains to the south. It cuts through several troubled countries, most notably two recent and interrelated trouble spots Mali (Hagberg and Korling, 2012) and Algeria.

Mali has been experiencing for some time a low-level civil war involving the Tuareg minority in the northern part of the country, but the country was  destabilized by a coup d’etat in 2012 that overthrew the president and further weakened the government. The war in the north took on a new form and was heightened in intensity by weakened borders with neighboring Libya and the resulting influx of weapons and fighters, the existence of members of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in northern Mali, as well as the influx of battle-hardened militant Islamists from elsewhere in the Middle East. The Islamists began to move south conquering a vast portion of Mali and by late 2012 they threatened to take over the entire country. The French intervened militarily in Mali (their former colony) in order to prevent it from becoming a radical Islamic state.

As this was happening, radical Islamists, claiming that they were retaliating for the French incursion in Mali, invaded a gas-production complex in neighboring Algeria taking a number of hostages. Members of the Algerian security service stormed the complex and in their wake many hostages and militants were killed (Nossiter, 2013).

The events in Mali and Algeria were described by an expert on the Middle East and Africa as “the darker sides of the Arab uprisings” (Worth, 2013: A1). None of this is to indicate that the Arab Spring has been a failure, but it does demonstrate that a series of changes have been set in motion and it will take years to determine their long-term implications.

The developments in the Sahel area of North Africa reflect current thinking on globalization (see pp. 5-9), especially the increasing fluidity of global flows of many kinds. They also reflect the declining ability of structures such as national governments and borders to impede many types of flows.

References

Hagberg, Sten and Gabriella Körling, “Socio-political Turmoil in Mali: The Public Debate Following the Coup d’État on 22 March 2012.” Africa Spectrum 2-3, 2012: 111-125

Nossiter, Adam. “Algerians Find Many More Dead at Hostage Site.” New York Times January 21, 2013: A1, A8.

Worth, Robert F. “Jihadists’ Surge in North Africa Reveals Grim Side of Arab Spring.” New York Times January 20, 2013: 1, 13.

Violence against Women in India

George Ritzer, Introduction to Sociology. Sage, 2013.

Chapter 10, Page 375

Violence against Women in India

Violence against women, especially rape, is a global problem, but the case of a 23 year-old Indian woman who died as a result of a horrific gang rape in New Delhi in December, 2012 galvanized India and much of the world. This was not an isolated case nor is it restricted to New Delhi. For example, in what was apparently a well-planned attack just a month later in the north Indian state on Punjab, a woman was assaulted after accepting a motorcycle ride from the driver of a bus on which she had been riding. He took her to a nearby village where she was raped by repeatedly by six men, including the driver, the bus conductor and four other men (Timmons and Kumar, 2013).

The New Delhi case was particularly outrageous and brutal. A 23-year-old female medical student and a male friend had seen a movie and were seeking a ride when a bus pulled over, they were waved on board, and were charged 36 cents each. However, the bus was not a public but a private bus, although the couple was fooled into believing that it was a public bus. Six men, including the driver and another posing as a conductor, were out for a joy ride on the bus. Soon after the bus departed, the harassment of the woman began and her companion was beaten with a metal rod. The woman was then repeatedly raped by the men and she was penetrated by the metal rod as the bus circled the city. Eventually, the naked couple was dumped by the side of a highway on the outskirts of the city (Mandhana and Trivedi, 2012). The woman survived for almost 2 weeks but then died as a result of internal injuries.

The case aroused global indignation and public protests in India. It also brought attention to a broader pattern of murder and other forms of violence against women in India including killings over dowry disputes, sexual violence, family disputes, and discriminatory treatment of both infant girls and elderly women (Harris 2013). Sexual harassment is common and rape is a daily occurrence in New Delhi. In fact, New Delhi experiences nearly two rapes a day. One woman who lived in New Delhi for 24 years described the ways in which her life had been affected while living in New Delhi:

As a teenager, I learned to protect myself. I never stood alone if I could help it, and I walked quickly, crossing my arms over my chest, refusing to make eye contact or smile. I cleaved through crowds shoulder-first, and avoided leaving the house after dark except in a private car…I wore clothes that were two sizes too large…The steady thrum of whistles, catcalls, hisses, sexual innuendos and open threats continued. Packs of men dawdled on the street…To make their demands clear, they would thrust their pelvises at female passers-by…In my office…at the doctor’s office, even at a house party- I couldn’t escape the intimidation (Faleiro, 2013).

While this violence against women has a long history in India, as well as in many other places in the world, some believe that is has been fueled in recent years by the progress of women in Indian societies and the resulting hostility of males who blame their failures on the success of women (Harris, 2013).

The New Delhi rape has attracted global attention and spurred protests and demonstrations in India (Timmons and Gottipati, 2012). It remains to be seen whether anything changes; whether Indian women will be less subject to rape and other forms of sexual violence and harassment.

Faleiro, Sonia. “The Unspeakable Truth About Rape in India” New York Times January 1, 2013.

Harris, Gardiner. “India’s New Focus on Rape Shows Only the Surface of Women’s Perils.” New York Times January 13, 2013.

Mandhana, Niharika and Anjani Trivedi. “Indians Outraged Over Rape on Moving Bus in New Delhi.”  New York Times India Ink December 18, 2012.

Timmons, Heather and Sruthi Gottipati. “Indian Women March: `That Girl Could Have Been Any of Us”. New York Times December 30, 2012.

Timmons, Heather and Hari Kumar. “Indian Woman is Gang-Raped after Bus Ride.” New York Times India Ink January 13, 2013.

Extreme Weather around the World

George Ritzer, Introduction to Sociology. Sage, 2013.

Chapter 14, Page 585

 Extreme Weather around the World

An overwhelming body of scientific research over a long period of time and covering many parts of the world shows that the global climate has changed and that it is likely to change even more dramatically in the foreseeable future (National Research Council, 2011). As a result, the vast majority of scientists believe that we are in the early stages of global warming that is going to lead to a number of different kinds of weather extremes in various parts of the world (Field, 2012). These extremes, as well as climate change in general, are likely to have increasingly negative effects on life throughout the world. The impact is going to vary in different parts of the world, but in many the effect is going to be negative if not catastrophic. Those who doubt this, and are dubious about global warming, were likely shocked by the extreme weather patterns throughout much of the world in 2012 and which continued into early 2013. While these could have been aberrations, they are consistent with various weather extremes that have occurred for decades, especially throughout the first decade of the 21^st century. It is likely that these extremes foreshadow what we can expect in the future. Among them are the following (Lyall, 2013):

• 2012 was the hottest year in the recorded history in the United States
• Rio de Janeiro reached a temperature of 109.8 degrees in late 2012- the highest since records began in 1915; the heat wave continued in Brazil into 2013
• The same was true of a heat wave in Australia which followed two of its wettest years in its history; 2013 began in Sydney with the first days of the year being among its 20 hottest days in recorded history; since the 1950s every decade in Australia has been hotter than the preceding one
• At the same time, the Middle East experienced extreme cold which brought, among many other stunning weather events, a highly unusual storm dumping eight inches of snow on Jerusalem
• Extreme cold gripped Siberia and China, among other places
• The northeastern coast of United States was struck by a devastating hurricane that wreaked havoc on many areas, especially New York City and the Jersey shore
• England has a had a variety of weather extremes with 2012 being the wettest year in its history resulting in, among other things, floods in various places; London experienced unusually heavy snowfall in early 2013

A resident of England summed up the feelings of many in the country, as well as in many other parts of the world, about these new weather realities: “’We don’t expect extremes. We don’t expect it to be like this’” (Lyall, 2013: A10). It seems clear that in the future we will all need to learn to expect the unexpected as far as weather is concerned as well as the need to learn how to deal with it as best we can. Of course, what we most need to do is to change the various ways in which humans are serving as the major cause of these climate changes.

References:

Field, Christopher. Testimony of Christopher B. Field before

United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works

on Update on the Latest Climate Change Science.

Washington, DC, August 2012.

Lyall, Sarah. “Heat, Flood or Icy Cold, Extreme Weather Rages Worldwide.” New York Times January 11, 2013: A4, A10.

National Research Council. America’s Climate Choices. National Academies Press, Washington DC., 2011.

Are You a Digital Drone?

George Ritzer, Introduction to Sociology. Sage, 2013.

Chapter 16, Pages 666-667

Are You a Digital Drone?

Most people, especially young people, view the Internet as a “playground” and much of what they do their as fun; as an enjoyable leisure-time activity. There is, however, an alternative perspective on this. While you might not see yourself in this way, there are those in sociology and other fields who are coming to look at much of the Internet as a “factory” and what you do there as a form of labor or work (Scholz, 2013). From the latter perspective, you are seen as spending hours every day slaving away on such tasks as updating your Facebook page and checking recent additions to other’s pages or detailing your most recent fashion choices on Pinterest. To some observers, you seem to resmble worker-bees tirelessly toiling away at a never-ending series of tasks.

In addition to thinking about what you do on the Internet as a fun, leisure-time activity, you might also see it as a series of tasks that you perform largely for yourself. They therefore seem to stand in contrast to traditional occupational activities in which you are working for others and in the process enhancing their interests while gaining little for yourself except for the pay involved. However, many critics now view what you do on the computer as very much like such work since you are often working for others and in the process making them wealthier. However, one important difference is that you are not working for a wage; on the internet you are usually engaging in “free labor”; you are working for nothing (Terranova, 2013).

For example, when you write product reviews for Amazon.com you are enhancing the value of that site and the company; you are working for them and you are not being paid for that work. Similarly, you work for Facebook, again for nothing, when you indicate your various likes and dislikes, especially for commercial products. More troubling is the much greater amount of such work that you do even though you are unaware of doing it. Google, for example, uses various data-mining techniques (web crawlers, personalized algorithmns) to track all of many things that you click on (Ross, 2013). The results are used to determine the kinds of advertisements that appear on your computer screen. Google earns money, lots of money, from those advertisers.

To put it baldly, the value of these computer-based businesses is based largely on the “work”- those clicks and likes- that you do for them free of charge. In a capitalist world you ought to be paid by all of them, but of course you are not paid. From the perspective of the critics of capitalism, you are being exploited by firms such as Google and Facebook (Fuchs, 2013). In fact, you are being exploited more than the paid workers in the capitalist system. Most of them are being paid relatively little, but you are paid nothing at all. Low paid work often yields great profits, but work that is unpaid leads to an even higher rate of profit. As a result, Google earns huge profits with a comparatively small workforce and while Facebook is not yet nearly as profitable, it has a market value of $100 billion even though it only has about two thousand paid employees.

While you might regard sites such as Facebook and Pinterest as playgrounds, you might feel a bit different about them, and perhaps behave differently, if you also thought about them as modern-day factories and yourself as unpaid drones slaving away on those sites for the benefit of their corporate owners.

References

Fuchs, Christian. “Class and Exploitation on the Internet.” Trebor Scholz, ed. Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory. NY: Routledge, 2013: 211-224.

Scholz, Trebor, ed. Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory. NY: Routledge, 2013.

Ross, Andrew. “In Search of the Lost Paycheck.” Trebor Scholz, ed. Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory. NY: Routledge, 2013: 13-32.

Terranova, Tiziana. “Free Labor”. In Trebor Scholz, ed. Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory. NY: Routledge, 2013: 33-57.