Concluding my top ten list for 2008. Here's yesterday's part 1.

6. Wellsprings

Mario Vargas Llosa is a leading light of South American novelists. Apparently, that is, because I had never encountered him before stumblinng upon this marvelous collection of political and cultural essays (I don't read much fiction). It’s the fruit of a lifetime of letters, as he tackles Spanish regional nationalisms, Latin American political corruption, Borges, and more. Vargas Llosa here is developing a vision for multi-cultural democracy that can sustain the individual. He is profound without being pedantic. I plan on returning to this book in coming days in this blog.

7. Why the French Don't Like Headscarves: Islam, the State, and Public Space

The occasion is the ongoing battle in France over the Muslim female head-covering, a debate I’ve followed for years in English and French-language media. But John Bowen, an American anthropologist, has cracked the code, explaining to Anglo-Americans exactly why the “veil” is so troubling to the French. To do so, he has to explain some basic elements of the French world view, such as where freedom derives from, the importance of clothing as communication, and religion’s relationship to the public space. Very, very insightful.

8. Against Race: Imagining Political Culture beyond the Color Line

Paul Gilroy desires to be a “planetary humanist”. An English sociologist of Caribbean ancestry, who was teaching at Yale when this book was written earlier in the decade, Gilroy is concerned to demonstrate that all ethnic politics point toward Auschwitz, from Black Power to flag-waving patriotism. His answer? To develop a cosmopolitanism that gives all of us enough belonging and vision to move beyond race. This is where he falls flat; I fail to be convinced that planetary humanism has enough of a center to hold the house he’s building upon it. But if the prescription is weak, Gilroy’s diagnosis is superior. Few thinkers are this competent across disciplinary hedgerows.

9. Missions, Nationalism, and the End of Empire (Studies in the History of Christian Missions)

What happens when Christian missions are entangled with imperialism and nationalism? This collection of essays, edited by Brian Stanley of Edinburgh, explores the problem through historical case studies. Hartmut Lehmann, for instance, looks at German missionaries after WWI, after their African colonies had been stripped from them by the victor nations. Stanley’s introductory essay is the most important, and can be read through Amazon’s preview function.

10. Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947

A history of Prussia. Not exciting to many people, I freely concede. I read this one for my own reasons, and enjoyed every page, when I should have skimmed it. Christopher Clark combines military, bureaucratic and dynastic history with societal change for a 360° vision of Germany’s foundations.

Here are five of the top ten books I read this year, and in no particular order. I’ll do the other five tomorrow.

I don’t necessarily agree with these authors, but I recommend the books. In the case of Paul Gilroy (Against Race; tomorrow's list), my complaint is with his methodology, and not with his astonishing insights. Regarding Žižek, I disagree with his starting points, attitude, conclusions, and rhetorical strategies, but loved the book nonetheless.

1. The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography, from the Revolution to the First World War

Probably my favorite of the year. English Francophile Graham Robb explores the historical back-country of France and finds far more diversity than the nationalist republican myth would prefer broadly discussed. Modern France is more or less the imposition of an enlightenment dream upon a multi-lingual, multi-ethnic, destitute, provincial, underdeveloped and very big landscape. The best part of this book is the sheer abundance of local color—bizarre civil wars between villages; distinct tribes and lower castes, dissolved in the last century; villages inaccessible by any road; and so on.

2. Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future

Bill McKibben is one of America’s most important visionaries for an economically and ecologically sustainable society. This book is a song in praise of getting to know the neighbors, towns, histories, and environments of the places we inhabit. Most essays on sustainability come off as calls to sacrifice. This is an invitation to a fuller life.

3. Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling

Andy Crouch finally got this one out the door, and the wait was worth it. Look for a full review soon in this blog. Crouch’s great two-pronged insight here is that (1) if we wish our culture were different, we ought to stop reacting against it, and start making culture; and (2) any cultural change really worth working for is going to grow so slowly that we’re really working for our children’s children’s benefit, not our own.

4. Renewing America's Food Traditions: Saving and Savoring the Continent's Most Endangered Foods

 A region-by-region sampling of endangered foods of North America—those rare breeds of chickens, chiles, grapes, grains and fish that have not made their way into the industrial grocery supply chain. Some are too fragile for transport (paw-paws); some are too difficult to raise as factory agricultural products (quarrelsome, independent-minded, but hardy cattle). The book’s overall impact is that of awareness of the rich food landscape that’s probably lingering just outside my door.

5. Violence

 Slavoj Žižek, the cosmopolitan Slovene, is delightful to read for the bombast of his pen. Nothing is outside his bounds, although when he addresses issues I am reasonably well versed in (like American racism), I see through his conclusions. He almost always returns to what Max Weber called an ethic of intention, mixed with tiresome libertinism and a puerile delight in shock. The range of his reading is incredible, as when he jumps, in the course of a single point, from Native American architecture, to Russian literature, to capitalist psychology.

It struck me this year over Christmas just how much of the family celebration, as it currently lives in North American culture, is about memories. There is a sense of loss at Christmas—lost innocence, perhaps, or memories of better times, or when the children were young.

A lot of the decor evokes images of other Christmases—those long ago which we may have never experienced, but which convey meanings of comfort and love to us.

When I was a college student, I thought it clever to wax sarcastic about the commercialization of Christmas. Now I’m older and a little deeper. I want to know: how has Christmas (the family celebration, not the Christian holiday) evolved in meaning over the years of your memory? Photo credit sxc.hu user 80itenta.

American Churches have grown far more ethnically diverse and more informal, according to a USA Today interpretation of a paper by Marc Chavez in Sociology of Religion.

“Informal” means drums, amens, and the use of projectors (vs. hymnals). Of course, anyone who has participated in the life of the Black Church for any period of time recognizes that noisy services are not in themselves informal; the rules are just more subtle and woven into the context.

More importantly, white churches are far more ethnically diverse than they were ten years ago, a noteworthy rate of change because, Chavez says,

"Religious traditions and organizations are widely considered to be remarkably resistant to change."

I’m going to have to read the full report; this stuff is important to me—a white member of a historically black church. Meanwhile, I take issue with the wording of one sentence in the USA Today report, which mainly focuses on black and white:

The increase in diversity is only among primarily white churches; majority black churches are as segregated as ever, Chaves says. Among primarily white congregations, the number reporting at least some blacks rose from 27% in 1998 to 36% in 2006-07 (…). (emphasis mine)

This wording, once again, puts the blame for segregation on Black people. This is important: church selection is voluntary, and almost every church in America would welcome a member from another race.

If white churches are becoming integrated, it’s because black people are crossing boundaries to join. If black churches are remaining segregated, it’s because white people are not doing the same.

This is not to discount the efforts among white churches over ten years to reach out to black people; not at all. This has been a concerted effort driven by a mixture of goodwill, religious conviction, and ambiguous feelings of guilt, but in my experience black churches have a long and deep commitment to diversity, but here and elsewhere get blamed for segregation.

[photo credit: flickr user su-chan]

This picture kicks off a weekend series: I intend to reproduce an image, and ask for discussion. I'd love your replies, especially as this blog begins to take shape. This from sxc.hu user samplediz.

Oil has dominated our thought life this year like few others—from wildly fluctuating prices to political football. As the year ends, what impact is oil having on your travel plans? Are plans evolving with the prices? Are you travelling differently this year?

The scientific study of happiness over recent years has turned up fascinating insights into the relationship between material possessions and human satisfaction.

Contrary to what we've been told, there is indeed a correlation between money and happiness—up to the point of security. Until we have food and shelter, and some basic material possessions, we are on average less happy than those with enough.

But above the level of $10,000 a year, happiness and wealth diverge. Bill McKibben reports, in Deep Economy:

In general, researchers report that money consistently buys happiness right up to about $10,000 per capita income, and that after that point the correlation disappears. ...

The life satisfaction of pavement dwellers--that is, homeless people--in Calcutta was among the lowest recorded, but it almost doubled when they moved into a slum, at which point they were basically as satisfied with their lives as a sample of college students drawn from forty-seven nations.

This is really incredible. Money buys happiness only to the point that money buys food for one’s children and a little more.

[photo credit sxc.hu user rrss]

The Times is reporting that Guitar Hero is more than an ongoing hit of a video game: it's inspiring thousands of kids to take up lessons in real guitar.

Which strikes me as an overall positive. As an instrument, guitars are far more versatile than as rock anthem leads; we might see a surge in juvenile creativity as a result.

This is not to be understated. It is to everyone's benefit for more people in the world to develop the musical sides to their brains and souls.

I very much enjoyed Ian Buruma's Murder in Amsterdam last year. Here’s a review I wrote at the time.

One haunting scene in the book involves soccer fans from Rotterdam chanting anti-Jewish slogans against Ajax of Amsterdam (a team associated with Jews, albeit with no Jews on the roster):

"F__ing Jews!" [Feyenoord fans] went again every time an Ajax player touched the ball, even if he was a black Surinamese. "Cancer Jew!" they shouted when the blond referee from the northern province of Friesland whistled for a Feyenoord foul.

And then I heard it for the first time, a sinister hissing sound from hundreds, maybe thousands, of beer-flecked mouths. I didn't know what it meant, until [Buruma's friend] Hans explained it. The sound got louder: the sound of escaping gas.

In Budapest soccer stadiums, players of a side owned by a Jewish businessman were greeted by rival supporters shouting: "The trains to Auschwitz are ready!" In the Olympic Stadium of Amsterdam, the fans were a touch more inventive.

After a year of thinking about that story, I found the real thing on Youtube. Here it is, below:

Hamas, Hamas, the Jews into the Gas

It's around 0:25 of this clip. the Dutch is "hamas, hamas, joden aan het gas":

Comments below the clip (in Dutch) argue the finer point that they hate Ajax Jews (the largely gentile fans), not Jews in general.

I'm trying to decide if this is stupid to the level of childish, or a scary warning. Or both?

There’s been some tumult in France lately over desecrated Muslim graves in a WWI cemetery.

In staunchly secular (“laïque”) France, these graves—maintained by the government—are one of very few public concessions to religious identity. To vandalize the headstones is to attack Muslim presence and difference.

The trouble is that the logic of French secular republican thought inevitably eliminates any religious, racial, or other “communal” identities from the discussion, leaving us with bizarre answers. So an MP and author of a newly-minted report of grave vandalism, tells Le Monde that only one out of every eight of these incidents per year is racial in character, stemming rather from “stupidity, alcohol and drugs,” and a society-wide disrespect for the dead. Ignoring racial attacks, his solution, of course, is to have a unit on death in the high schools. And so on as we talk past each other.

Since this situation isn’t going to clear up anytime soon, a more interesting question to me is: who were these soldiers? North African colonials, most likely. But who were they? This one above, from the same cemetery, simply reads “Boungab Douadi Ben Amor” (sounds like an Algerian name), “Soldier, 1st RT,” and “Died for France, the 25th May 1915”. If we had access to all the records, we could find out lots, I suppose.

[photo credit: flickr user Laurent LAMACZ]
 

The Globe and Mail has published a remarkable story this week, profiling a mass exodus of highly skilled and experienced foreign-born financiers from collapsing Western (primarily US-American) firms. They’re headed back to India (and China and Malaysia and so on), sometimes with their newly-minted US passports.

The root causes are both bureaucracy and opportunity. On the one hand, the United States’ immigration policies make staying difficult for unemployment green-card holders, and make it difficult for firms to hire the best foreign workers, even those graduating from top American universities.

And on the other hand, sometimes the opportunities are plain better. What you may be giving up in earning power you may gain in a shot for the top.

Here’s the central point:

According to a large-scale study of 1,200 Indian and Chinese returnees to be published next month by Vivek Wadhwa, a U.S. immigration scholar and consultant, the majority of people joining the reverse brain drain are under 40, most have masters or doctorate degrees, and they're generally leaving because they believe prospects look better in the world's poorer half.

"These people seem to be doing better back home than they would have done in the U.S.," Mr. Wadhwa said. "More than 60 per cent of Indian returnees and more than 80 per cent of Chinese returnees believe their home countries offer better career and professional opportunities."

All this seems rather exciting, even if the trend poses new challenges for wheezing Western economies.

But “Reverse Brain Drain” is a bit of a misnomer; Brain Drain has never been unidirectional. It’s been going on for decades within the West, as European and North American corporations raid each others’ executives. And it’s been going on within the United States as well, as states and cities attempt to lure creative classes from each other. It’s not reverse brain drain—it’s globalization of the same.

Not entirely unrelated, Andy Crouch posted this last week on culture-making.com: a time-lapse map of airplanes around the world over a 24-hour period. Because this is basically a map of economic integration, you can at least somewhat read brain drain into the activity. These are people in motion, after all, not goods, and not information.