American Dream | Achieving the Dream

What is the dream and who can achieve it?

The United States of America is the land of great opportunity, in which people can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and give their children better than they had.  This idealistic vision is the American Dream. In addition to improving chances for children, the Dream also typically includes home ownership, having a chance to get rich and achieving a secure retirement. The Dream finds its roots in our Declaration of Independence which states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  As humans, life has been given to us.  Liberty is established through the social contract.  The Pursuit of Happiness — that is the promise of the American Dream.

The term was made popular by James Truslow Adams in his 1931 book, The Epic of America.  According to Adams, the term was “that American dream of a better, richer, and happier life for all our citizens of every rank.”

However, the idea of the American Dream is neither simple nor universal.   Americans oddly tend to hold contradictory views of ways to achieve success.  We simultaneously think that people should get out of the system what they put into it (an idea called meritocracy), and that people should be able to pass wealth generationally, thus effectively nullifying a meritocratic system.  The tensions between these widely held views are what makes the Dream complex.

The American Dream is the great American story.  It is given power at least partially by what Max Weber called the Protestant Ethic, which taught that hard work and prosperity are signs of the achievers’ place in heaven and of God’s favor towards them.  The Protestant Ethic contributed to America’s financial success.  We worked hard, saved and spent frugally.  Protestantism also affected how we view work.  Martin Luther taught that all work, not just ordained ministry, was a sacred thing.  In a sermon, Luther preached that, “every occupation has its own honor before God, as well as its own requirements and duties.”  This dedication to work from the 16^th century is evident to us in the 21^st through the nation of workaholics.  Once Americans decided work was a positive, we took it to the extreme.  Because of this Protestant framework, Americans came to view work as an opportunity, not merely a necessity.

Stories of the American Dream are ubiquitous in the American Experience.  Indeed, they portray some of our greatest figures such as Abraham Lincoln who was famously born in a log cabin and rose, due to his intellect and work ethic, to become one of the nation’s most visionary presidents.  In the present day, two O’s tell the story of the Dream: Oprah and Obama.  Oprah was famously raised in poverty in Mississippi before she became the queen of day time talk and just about everything else.  President Obama continuously touted his credentials as an American Dream president, the son of a Kenyan and a Kansan during his historic 2008 presidential campaign.  Using his unusual past to his advantage, he continuously said on the trail, “In no other country on earth is my story even possible.”

The Dream mentality is so all-encompassing that it can be found almost anywhere.  Some of our great American art personifies the Dream.  Citizen Kane and The Godfather II, two of our greatest films portray rags to riches stories.  Recently, the Will Smith film The Pursuit of Happyness (2006) showed some of the heart-breaking realities of chasing success.  In one moving scene, Smith and his son find themselves homeless and spend the night in the public restroom of a Bay Area Rapid Transit station.  Another scene from this film epitomizes the Dream mentality.  Smith’s character teaches his son that the Dream is a possibility for those who work for it.

You got a dream… You gotta protect it. People can’t do somethin’ themselves, they wanna tell you you can’t do it. If you want somethin’, go get it. Period.

Will Smith’s character endures barrier after barrier to achieving success but it is this belief in the Dream that propels him forward.  This spirit of opportunity and drive is necessary in working toward the Dream.  Without it, the goal seems unachievable.

However, that same drive can turn against those who devote their lives to it.  F. Scott Fitzgerald’s acclaimed work, The Great Gatsby is also about the American Dream and the potential pitfalls of too much success.

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy–they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money of their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

Excess is not a concept included in the Dream. Rather, the Dream is to have enough to be comfortable and give your children a little better than you had.  Enormous wealth is a bastardization of the Dream, an unintended consequence of unbridled ambition.

Dream stories serve to inform us of possibility.  Last year we heard an American Dream story recounted over and over, that of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.  An e-mail from President Obama to his supporters recounts the now familiar story.

And then there is Judge Sotomayor’s incredible personal story. She grew up in a housing project in the South Bronx — her parents coming to New York from Puerto Rico during the Second World War. At the age of nine, she lost her father, and her mother worked six days a week just to put food on the table. It takes a certain resilience and determination to rise up out of such circumstances, focus, work hard and achieve the American dream.

In Judge Sotomayor, our nation will have a Justice who will never forget her humble beginnings, will always apply the rule of law, and will be a protector of the Constitution that made her American dream and the dreams of millions of others possible. As she said so clearly yesterday, Judge Sotomayor’s decisions on the bench “have been made not to serve the interests of any one litigant, but always to serve the larger interest of impartial justice.”

This story shows who can achieve the American Dream: anyone.  According to the Dream, we all have the opportunity to achieve it.  Our own hard work and moral fiber will help us along the way.  As Americans, this story is our story and permeates every aspect of our society.  We are constantly told that we can achieve it.

But, is that true?  For some, pursuit of a Dream turns into the American Nightmare, faced with the inability to break into a closed system no matter how hard they work.  The ideology of the American Dream has been used to justify the inequalities of our society, as if those who have not been able to get ahead do not deserve it and have not worked hard enough.  This is where the tension between meritocracy and inheritance becomes important.  For the argument that those who get ahead deserve success to be logically sound, everyone would have to originate in the exact same place.  But, we don’t.  Those with privilege start out light years closer to the finish line.  The next installment of this series will examine the barriers and impediments to achieving the American Dream.

When It Hits Home: follow-up and the future

Last Wednesday, February 24th, 150 people attended When It Hits Home: an evening concerning intimate partner violence.  The event, sponsored by The Xenia Institute, the Center for Social Justice, and the OU Women’s and Gender Studies program, pre-screened One in Three, a film on domestic violence created by local Oklahoma filmmakers.  After the film, dialogue fellows from Xenia facilitated a public dialogue designed to create lists of ideas and topics for future discussion and action.  The various lists were assembled into a single document that was then sent to the event attendees.  It is our hope that the attendees will continue working with this issue alongside our work.  The list can be seen here:

When It Hits Home: ideas through dialogue

Additionally, three podcasts were produced leading up to the event.  One podcast was a conversation with the filmmakers of One in Three, another was a conversation with an OU law professor and former domestic violence prosecutor, and the final one was made up of highlights from the first Xenia/WGS joint event on domestic violence, held in April 2009.

Gabe and Leguiera podcast

Connie Smothermon podcast

Don’t Look Away podcast

Click here for a gallery of photos from the event:

When It Hits Home photo gallery

Xenia Institute completes video series, “What is Dialogue?”

In the past three years, many people have asked us the same question: what is dialogue?  Next come questions about specific meanings for the word “dialogue” and the way we use it at Xenia.  We also get several questions a week concerning our vision for the future: transformation through dialogue.  Since these topics are constantly in our hearts and minds, we decided to produce a series of short videos on this subject.

We proudly submit these four videos for the first time in one place.  Enjoy them as you contemplate the question with us: what is dialogue?

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

5th annual Matthews Banquet highlights

The 5th annual Sam Matthews Social Justice Award Banquet was held on Thursday, February 11th in honor of longtime Norman resident and supporter of Bridges, Jim Agar.  Over one hundred people were in attendance to bear witness to this man’s amazing story and his work as a volunteer leader in the Norman community.

We were very fortunate to have wonderful speakers to help us with our evening.  Rev. Chris Moore, Associate Pastor at Mayflower Congregational Church in Oklahoma City, opened the evening with a blessing over the meal.  The blessing also challenged us to honor those in social justice who have come before by taking up the cause ourselves.  To see a transcript of Rev. Moore’s prayer, click here.

Commissioner Lisa Schmidt, of the Norman Human Rights Commission, read a letter from the mayor and made our keynote remarks on social justice and community engagement.  Lessa Keller-Kenton, one of Xenia’s interns this semester, wrote a wonderful reflection on Commissioner Schmidt’s remarks.  Take a look here.

Finally, here are a few more photos from the event.  To see all the photos, take a look soon in Xenia’s media gallery or visit our Facebook page.

When It Hits Home: An Evening Concerning Intimate Partner Violence

When It Hits Home: An Evening Concerning Intimate Partner Violence will preview the Oklahoma-made film “1 in 3” and host a dialogue and discussion session on the issue of intimate partner violence beginning at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 24, in the Mary Eddy and Fred Jones Auditorium at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, 555 Elm Ave. in Norman.

The event is hosted jointly by the University of Oklahoma Women’s and Gender Studies Program, the Center for Social Justice, and The Xenia Institute.

The event will be held in two segments.  In the first part, participants will screen a preview of “1 in 3,” a film made by Norman resident and University of Oklahoma alumna Lagueria Davis.  “1 in 3” is a poignant and sometimes humorous tale of two women dealing with the different faces of domestic violence: one the wife of an abuser, the other a shelter worker facing her own family’s encounter with the problem.

In the evening’s second segment, dialogue fellows from The Xenia Institute will facilitate small discussion groups with the attendees. Through the discussion process, attendees will be given the opportunity to reflect on the film and transform their thoughts and feelings on intimate partner violence into active strategies that will address this issue.

Last fall, Lagueria Davis started the journey of her dreams by shooting her first feature-length film in the Norman and Oklahoma City area.  She enlisted the help of her friend and producer Gabe Miller, and together they set about accomplishing a daunting task: shooting a film in just 10 days. Cast and crew were enlisted through friends, co-workers and a local casting agent.  Local merchants and law enforcement agencies donated time and effort.  All involved were united by their concern about a pressing issue: domestic abuse.

For more information, please contact Clint Williams at The Xenia Institute (clint@xeniainstitute.org 405.321.8682) or Karin Jonsson at the Center for Social Justice (karin@ou.edu 405.325.3481).

American Dream | Prologue: Dream a Little Dream

To tell the story of The American Dream is to tell the story of an American’s dream.  And so, unable to synthesize any story but my own, I will use it to illustrate.

I am Caitlin Frazier, 23 years old and a graduate of the University of Oklahoma.  I grew up in an upper-middle class household on the west side of Norman, Oklahoma. I went to amazing schools, and when I was in high school I participated in orchestra, choir and took Advanced Placement classes. My parents supported me through college, and I graduated without a cent of debt. Afterward, I was able to move across the country and participate in a year of service as a community volunteer. I consider myself very lucky. I also have one sibling, an older brother who is currently pursuing a doctorate in mathematics, which he will complete in 2012.

But the present is not where the story begins; it’s where it ends.

Backtrack 55 years.  The date is February 6, 1955.  My father is being born at his grandmother’s house outside of small-town Drumright, Oklahoma.  Doctors are not present, only midwives, trained by tradition and instinct and prayer.  My father already has a brother, two years his senior.  Another will come along in two more years.  A girl will complete the quartet four years after that.

Previously, my grandfather had been in the Navy for four years on a destroyer escort, after which he and my grandmother settled in their native Oklahoma to raise a family. He worked as a letter-carrier, and she was a homemaker who later worked as a school cook.  Like most Oklahomans at the time, they raised a few farm animals and grew their own vegetables.  Money was very tight but love abounded.

My dad graduated from Drumright High School, the head of a class of 47 students.  He was the first in his family to go to college. At the University of Oklahoma, he earned both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering, putting to work the practical know-how of building things he had been taught by his father.  To afford college, my dad hauled hay during the summers and worked other odd jobs to save money. In 1980, my father married my mother, another recent University of Oklahoma graduate.  They started a family and in 1986, I was born.  Reference the first paragraph for how lucky I have been to have so much provided for me and have opportunities that my father lacked, like international travel and the luxury of being a full-time student without worrying about debt.

Quite simply, our story is The American Dream. My father, whose family struggled with money, was able to pass on opportunities to me, a young woman completely financially stable with the world at my fingertips.  An essential part of the Dream is that parents are able to give their children more than they had.  My great grandfather was a sharecropper in Davis, Oklahoma.  He died early in my grandfather’s life, so not much is remembered about him in the family. But I would imagine that he worked incredibly hard to make ends meet and had very minimal education.  My grandparents graduated high school but did not have the luxury of higher education.  My father (and mother) received both a bachelor’s and master’s.  My brother is working for his doctorate.  It’s a beautiful story, particularly moving to me as I am one of its characters.

The American Dream is one of the essential ideologies of the United States.  It is as American as apple pie, baseball and freedom. But, the Dream is so ubiquitous that its effect on us is very rarely pointed out. We swim in it all the time so we cannot see the water.

In this series, I hope to make you see the water.  The huge effect of the Dream was first pointed out to me three years ago and The American Dream has captured my imagination ever since.  Bookended by an introduction and a conclusion, this series will examine four aspects of the dream:

• What is the Dream and who can achieve it?
• Who is not able to achieve the Dream?
• How does American Dream ideology affect our everyday lives and policies?
• How does The American Dream empower us?  How does it hold us back?

I invite you to dream the Dream with me.  Please leave your own comments about your experience of The American Dream.

Social Justice Award Honoree Built Bridges Toward Community

The Xenia Institute will honor longtime Bridges supporter Jim Agar as its Sam Matthews Social Justice Award recipient at a banquet set for 7 p.m. Feb. 11, 2010, at First Christian Church, 220 S. Webster in Norman.

Agar has been an active supporter and fundraiser for Norman service organizations, primarily Bridges (formerly Independent Living Services for Youth), for which he has raised more than $100,000 in the past 12 years. Agar’s efforts have helped fund the Bootstrap Scholarship, which provides college funding to high school students who live alone due to family crisis. Bridges offers these students support such as food, clothing, medical care and housing, in order to help them graduate high school and pursue a college education or career. Bridges also provides one-on-one mentoring and guidance.

Lester Reed, a friend of Agar and a previous Sam Matthews Social Justice Award recipient, said Agar’s work with Bridges grew out of his giving spirit.

“To give an example, (Agar) went to college at Stanford and got a degree in business, and he came here in the insurance business and so forth, and he was one of the early ones to enroll in at that time the new human relations program at the university that George Henderson was responsible for,” Reed said. “But here was a guy who’d been successful in business and had that much sensitivity to enroll in human relations. It gives you an idea about him, doesn’t it?

“He’s that kind of a person, and I know in his own business efforts he has done this for several people, gone out of his way to make opportunities for them.”

The social justice award is named for Sam Matthews, who in 1967 was the first Realtor in Norman to sell a home to an African-American family. By selling the home to Henderson, a University of Oklahoma professor, and his wife, Barbara, Matthews had defied the unofficial real estate practices of the time that attempted to prevent Norman neighborhoods from being racially integrated.

Henderson, who taught in the human relations program at OU, was the third African-American appointed to a full-time faculty position and the first to hold an endowed professorship in Oklahoma. He created the human relations program at OU in 1969, and also was dean of the College of Liberal Studies from 1996-2000. He retired as the director of the advanced studies program in OU’s Department of Human Relations.

Sam Matthews posthumously received the inaugural award named after him in 2005; he died in 2000. Past award winners have been Joe Ted Miller, Lester Reed and Kay Holladay.

Agar, assisted by E’Ann Robinson, has personally secured funding, arranged mentors and awarded graduating students with a plaque marking their achievements. More than 50 students have received a Bootstrap Scholarship since Agar began fundraising for the scholarship in 1996.

Hal Smith, chairman and chief executive of Hal Smith Restaurant Group and a former Bridges mentor, said Agar was inspired to begin the Bootstrap Scholarship as a way of recognizing the efforts of students who persevere to stay in school despite hardships. He cites a letter Agar sent to him: “By lending a hand,” Agar wrote, “we may help a child become a productive and responsible adult. To know that we have tried and that we sometimes succeed should be ample reward for our efforts.”

Agar’s work with Bridges at first glance may not seem like the the type of act typically associated with social justice work, Reed said. However, Agar’s quiet generosity (“You don’t see him doing any of this for credit,” Reed said, “Jim’s not that way; he never has been.”) and thoughtful work to help cultivate relationships between Norman students and community leaders have helped create networks of care.

“His philosophy that he operated under even in his business was to make people feel part of it, people who had no monetary investment but to participate in the success of the business,” Reed said.

Reed, who has been a Bootstrap mentor, said that he knew several students who had participated in the program who, inspired by Agar’s work and the relationships they built with their mentors, in turn also became community leaders who generously give their time and attention to others in need.

“Those kind of things rub off,” Reed said.

Agar has been a part of the Norman business community for the past 55 years, and played key roles in several businesses. He has also been a community leader, serving on the Norman City Council, as a member of the Chamber of Commerce and president of the Norman Rotary Club, and as a supporter for several city and county events.

“We are thrilled to announce Mr. Agar as this year’s Matthews Award recipient,” said Clint Williams, executive director of The Xenia Institute.  His volunteerism in the community is a perfect representation of the vision of this award: regular people taking us a step forward toward social justice for all.”

The Sam Matthews Social Justice Award Banquet will be at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 11, 2010, in the fellowship hall of First Christian Church, 220 S. Webster in Norman.  Tickets are $20 and are available by calling the Xenia Institute at 405.321.8682, or by e-mailing Paige Hoster, assistant to the executive director, at paige@xeniainstitute.org.

The Xenia Institute brings people together, creates a safe space for dialogue, and transforms dialogue into action.

For more information about The Xenia Institute, call 405.321.8682, or e-mail Executive Director Clint Williams at clint@xeniainstitute.org.

The Dao of Community Gardening | The Answers

Last week, Haven Tobias examined the questions that need to ask before starting a community garden. This week: She offers some answers.

By Haven Tobias
Xenia Dialogue Fellow

Writing this article series has been a fun experience for me because of the availability in our local area of knowledgeable and personable teachers. I would like publicly to thank these people and thereby also provide you with their names and contact information in this section. For example, Kara Joy McKee lives up to her middle name and brings joy and enthusiasm to the subject of community gardens in general and those at Food and Shelter for Friends in particular.  She can be reached at Norman Sustainability.

Kara is the one who advises that now, in the fall, is a good time to start cooking your garden. I say “cooking your garden” because she calls it her lasagna recipe.  First, get out whatever grass and weeds have crept in;  then, put down a solid layer of cardboard, and then alternate  layers of leaves, of compost, leaves, compost etc.  The compost does not have to be fully composted at this time, because the neat thing about this recipe is it will cook itself over winter.

Red wiggler worms and nightcrawlers are great in both the compost and the garden mix. If you are preparing a school community garden, the kids will love watching these little critters.

So now is a good time to start preparing good soil.  Diane Van Landingham shares wise advice given to her:  “Grow good soil, and the plants will grow themselves.”  Diane is a knowledgeable student of many aspects of gardening, including horticultural therapy.  She can be reached at g.gardendancer@gmail.com.

As an aside about the compost, I note that the City of Norman is proud — and rightly so — of its new composting facility at 348 Bratcher-Miner Road, off Highway 9 and Jenkins.  However, you might want to check whether organic compost is available there for you, if such additives as pre-emergent are a concern for you. You can contact the Cleveland County Cooperative Extension Service at 405.321.4774.  Or, you can contact the Norman Sanitation Department at 405.329.1023.  Organic compost may be available at The Earth.

Finally, in terms of local resources, a good contact is Bruce Edwards, Urban Harvest director at the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma, 604-7108, or bedwards@regionalfoodbank.org. Urban Harvest is a member of American Community Gardening Association.  Now through January, Urban Harvest is already working with 28 community gardens in the area and can take on more.  Bruce will come to your organization with a PowerPoint to get you started.  Groups that affiliate with Urban Harvest are eligible for free plants and seeds, and for consultation throughout the year.

In conclusion, now is a good time to begin getting in touch with Mother Earth.  May you enjoy sharing community with her and with other friends.  May you enjoy becoming fruitful and may you enjoy sharing the bounty.

Main photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrec1/ / CC BY 2.0

Nicaragua Journal | Working for Women

The growing immiserization of governments and economics in the global south … enables and even promotes the migration and trafficking of women as a strategy for survival. The same infrastructure designed to facilitate cross-border flows of capital, information and trade also makes possible a range of unintended cross-border flows, as growing numbers of traffickers, smugglers and even governments now make money off the backs of women. Through their work and remitances, women infuse cash into the economies of deeply indebted countries, and into the pockets of “entrepreneurs” who have seen other opportunities vanish. These survival circuits are often complex, involving multiple locations and sets of actors, which altogether constitute increasingly global chains of traders and “workers.”
– Saskia Sassen, “Global Cities and Survival Circuits” in Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy

By Barbara Schwartz
Editorial Director
The Xenia Institute

All of the topics I’ve talked about in this journal of my Nicaragua experience contain a single thread in common: They all affect women in one way or another.

In Nicaragua, women took part in the revolution as soldiers and supporters of both Sandinistas and Contras; women took their role in the government that worked to rebuild the nation after the civil war, and now are at the center of some of the nation’s political machinations. Women bear the brunt of Nicaragua’s poverty. And the lack of clean, safe water take the hardest toll on women, upon whom traditionally falls the responsibility for obtaining water and safeguarding sanitation for the families.

I encountered another intersection of women’s lives in Nicaragua and politics about a month after I returned from my eight-day Nicaragua journey. Tthe BBC reported that Amnesty International had started a campaign to protest Nicaragua’s abortion policy, which completely bans all forms of abortion, even in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother. Before the law was changed in 2008,  Nicaraguan law allowed for abortion in these cases; now the total ban prevents medical schools from even teaching the ban to doctors. Amnesty International calls the ban a threat to the human rights and health of Nicaraguan women and girls. According to the report:

At all stages of pregnancy, but particularly during the first three months, spontaneous  abortion (miscarriage) may occur for entirely natural reasons. Publicity surrounding the law has helped fuel fears among women who miscarry that they will be accused of self-induced  abortion. There is particular concern that women and girls who have a miscarriage may find themselves under suspicion of procuring an abortion if they present with symptoms of miscarriage and there is not sufficient medical evidence or expertise available to assess whether the pregnancy ended without external intervention.61 Because of fear of criminal prosecution, some women experiencing complications after miscarriages delay seeking medical treatment. Women who are suffering complications as a result of an unsafe abortion have a strong incentive not to seek medical treatment. Fearful of prosecution, they delay seeking the treatment they need and so put their own lives at risk.

Amnesty International and various news outlets who covered the abortion ban and Amnesty’s campaign, link it to President Daniel Ortega’s relationship with the Roman Catholic Church, which he cultivated in order to win its support in his successful 2006 bid for the presidency. The Sandinista leader had been a supporter of abortion rights in the past, and critics, of both Ortega and the party, have said the FSLN has turned its back on its people in its reach for power. According to a BBC report:

This was “playing politics with the lives of women and girls”, says Patricia Orozco. She fought on the side of the Sandinistas and is today a radio journalist and activist.

I asked her whether she felt there had been a betrayal of the revolution she took part in.

“We see our comrades in the revolution all changed, many of the women in particular.”

Abortion was not one of the topics that I was listening for while I was in Nicaragua, and as a result I don’t know how most of the women I met felt about the law. The closest I got to women’s health was to take snapshots of a beautiful mural outside a women’s clinic in Managua. I also got to deliver a plastic sack full of home pregnancy tests to the small health clinic in Chacraseca, whose single doctor, nurse, pharmacist and support staff are paid for by funds from JustHope supporters.

Primarily, my encounters with women’s issues came through an economic lens. I visited an artist co-op that supported women artists only.  I discussed the basics of a microfinance program that JustHope has begun in the district, and learned about the uses to which the women were putting their $25, $50 or $100 loans. Some were planning to start a pulperia, or a small, corner store or stand; some wanted to buy a pig to increase their farm’s output; others planned to start a bakery, sell makeup, or make and sell jewelry.

Why do microfinance programs primarily go to women? The New York Times’ Nicholas D. Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn recently wrote a book called Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide that, in part, describes why these programs target women. In an excerpt published in August in the New York Times Magazine, they wrote:

One reason involves the dirty little secret of global poverty: some of the most wretched suffering is caused not just by low incomes but also by unwise spending by the poor — especially by men. Surprisingly frequently, we’ve come across a mother mourning a child who has just died of malaria for want of a $5 mosquito bed net; the mother says that the family couldn’t afford a bed net and she means it, but then we find the father at a nearby bar. He goes three evenings a week to the bar, spending $5 each week.

Our interviews and perusal of the data available suggest that the poorest families in the world spend approximately 10 times as much (20 percent of their incomes on average) on a combination of alcohol, prostitution, candy, sugary drinks and lavish feasts as they do on educating their children (2 percent). If poor families spent only as much on educating their children as they do on beer and prostitutes, there would be a breakthrough in the prospects of poor countries. Girls, since they are the ones kept home from school now, would be the biggest beneficiaries. Moreover, one way to reallocate family expenditures in this way is to put more money in the hands of women. A series of studies has found that when women hold assets or gain incomes, family money is more likely to be spent on nutrition, medicine and housing, and consequently children are healthier.

In Ivory Coast, one research project examined the different crops that men and women grow for their private kitties: men grow coffee, cocoa and pineapple, and women grow plantains, bananas, coconuts and vegetables. Some years the “men’s crops” have good harvests and the men are flush with cash, and other years it is the women who prosper. Money is to some extent shared. But even so, the economist Esther Duflo of M.I.T. found that when the men’s crops flourish, the household spends more money on alcohol and tobacco. When the women have a good crop, the households spend more money on food. “When women command greater power, child health and nutrition improves,” Duflo says.

I found Kristoff and WuDunn’s take true, but somewhat unfair; while several men that I met in Nicaragua had that attitude of pleasure-before-responsibility, I also met several who were providing for their families the best they could. I met families where the men were absent either because they had left to live with another woman, or the mother of the family I had met was the other woman. I also found myself in communities and families of general respect and love. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it’s complicated. What I mean by that, I’m not sure. I think if I take away anything from my all-too-brief time in Nicaragua, I hope it’s that I remember this — it’s complicated — when trying to make a judgment on a situation. Too often when I have to make a judgment about a topic, an issue, a choice, I want to go with the soundbite or the side that most closely aligns with what I think I believe. And too often, reality slaps me upside the head to tell me that my own experiences aren’t always the best site to make a judgment about someone else. There’s a lot of grime on the lens I look at world through that needs to be cleaned off properly so I can see the whole picture.

For example.

On our last day in Chacraseca, our group visited some houses members had helped build the year before. One of the houses had been improved quite a bit: an extra room had been added on, decorative bars, to help protect the television and refrigerator within the house, had been added. Leslie, our group leader, told us that the mother of the household had gone to work as a domestic worker in Costa Rica for a year to pay for the improvements. Great, I said, thinking that it was good the woman had had the opportunity to make some extra money to pay for these luxuries. What initiative!

Leslie replied, “That means she left her children alone for a year. That was the only work she could find to support her family.”

Leslie didn’t have to explain further. I knew what this meant, had spent a semester studying this very issue, and yet I still assumed my own framework when I met it face-to-face. The mother of the family had become part of the global care chain, which an American Prospect article describes as:

A typical global care chain might work something like this: An older daughter from a poor family in a third world country cares for her siblings (the first link in the chain) while her mother works as a nanny caring for the children of a nanny migrating to a first world country (the second link) who, in turn, cares for the child of a family in a rich country (the final link). Each kind of chain expresses an invisible human ecology of care, one care worker depending on another and so on. A global care chain might start in a poor country and end in a rich one, or it might link rural and urban areas within the same poor country. More complex versions start in one poor country and extend to another slightly less poor country and then link to a rich country.

Care chains are one of the products of globalization, often unrecognized by those of us in the industrialized world because we see such work as a choice, rather than an only option that breaks up families and often leaves the woman vulnerable both at home and in her workplace abroad. Although care chains can be beneficial — they can provide economic freedom, which can lead to social and political freedom — they put a literal price on the emotional and psychological well-being of families, and human worth becomes yet another globalize commodity.

So what do I know?

Well, I know that all of the women I met in Nicaragua, all the women I’ve read about since coming back, aren’t victims. They are doing what they can do make the most of the opportunities they have access to, with all the agency and strength that they have access to. But I realize, also, that that there’s a big difference in being a victim and being in a position where you’re easy to victimize. I wonder how much our government, economic or international policies might change — hell, how much of our relationships with one another — might change if we kept that in mind.

Grasping at Democracy | Conclusion

In this series, C.J. Hobson has examined the Western  understanding of democracy and the different ways obervers might know it when they see it. Democracy, Hobson said, wears different faces, and that by changing the way democracy is understood, its emergence might be seen in unexpected places. After examining the complex evolution of the United States’ democratic system and introducing two theories of democracy applicable to the systems found in other nations, Hobson took a look at how Turkey, Ethiopia Russia and Chile have struggled to grasp, implement and maintain their own versions of democracy.

By C. J. Hobson,
Ph.D candidate
University of Oklahoma

“The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.”
–– Robert Maynard Hutchins

While seemingly very dark, the above quote hits to the core of the primary theme intended in this article series on democracy and democratization: participation.  Participation is also thoroughly guaranteed in the longue durée through real and meaningful contestation to use terms created by Robert Dahl and outlined in this series’ first article. I would argue that these two forces of democracy and democratization become mutually fulfilling. Where this process starts and ends seems to remain as elusive as the semi-scientific puzzle regarding the chicken and the egg.

Perhaps this starting point is less important being that it might indicate each state and people are on their own paths. Just this very week, the world has been made witness to a fitful exercise in mass participation and questions about genuine contestation in the recent elections for the president of Iran.  If these case studies are to prove anything, it will confirm that the Iranian path is as unique and varied as is everyone else’s. Perhaps I will return to you with future comments about this case study as events develop and evolve, but most assuredly we are watching a democratic exercise in Iran — one way or another.

More to the point, through the course of these articles I have introduced you to only four case studies among the almost 200 independent and internationally recognized states on the globe. It is my hope that the very nature of democracy with its undulations, ebbs and flows and, most importantly, with its highly particularistic nature that has been evidenced in these case studies. However, while it is unarguable that the experiences of Turkey, Russia, Ethiopia and Chile are vastly different in many ways, what can be displayed is the inherent struggle for a constantly improving system of government that strives for more democratic ideals. There are times where each extreme of the human condition –– glory and misery –– have been found in democratic exercise.  This gamble does not excuse each of us however. Critical to each of these two ends is the state. To quote the academic Christopher Pierson in his recent text Beyond the Welfare State:

No one who reflects for a moment on the history of the twentieth century can write of the benevolent power of the state.

While this point hints at the horrors of Stalin, Hilter, Pol Pot and Mao, it is undeniable that we are people who must organize in order to survive. To do this, we must in some way formulate a state, and it is only through the most authentically and organically organized version of this state that we will witness governments that walk with the blessings of their own citizens –– the mandate of their own people. It is this most genuine mandate that each nation should normatively seek.

While the process of democracy and democratization is undeniably messy and at times deeply painful, few of us can offer options to people aside from this process that are palatable. This process not only brings about the respect of their own citizens, but additionally brings a state into a family of global democracies, loosely based on mutually recognizable notions of human rights, dignity and justice. As global notions of these rights become increasingly uniform, it is my genuine hope to see an increase in global pressures towards democratization, while maintaining the vital space for states to explore this process under their own direction.

The opening quote of this segment indicates that it is incumbent upon each of us as members of a society to continue to engage and press for the evolutions of our democratic identities through this messiness. It should be evident from these articles that these identities are indeed, fluid and alive. The exercise, evolution and growth of these identities take place on a massive scale, but through individual action. Each increase in individual participation moves all of our respective societies towards meaningful contestations and perceived human goals of peace, access to rights and a brighter future for those of us to come.

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