Day 6
1. Names. Kristen on BB/BS and that opportunity. WC people are just about set. Also UMADAOP, and Wes’s church. We’re about to be underway, friends.
Those doing research projects: time to start thinking and investigating. You need to come up with an idea, do some initial research, write a proposal describing your interests and what you have found out so far. Initial bib. as well.
Things people found: clarification: send me actual web addresses so that I/we can go right to the particular pages you refer to. Also note: don’t expect me to proofread, correct spelling errors, etc.
2. Shift today from military/foreign affairs to economic, industrial, social history. Two foci: industrialization, capitalism, and labor; and gender issues. In a time of corporate scandals, stock market collapses, and accusations of collusion in the highest circles, the first chapter is all too obviously relevant. And in a time when we are still trying to sort out what it might mean for men and women to be equal, the second likewise. Or so it seems to me.
Chapter 7: Workers, industrial revolution, urbanization, poverty, inequity, labor organizing and resistance, violence, etc. What do principles like freedom, opportunity, equality, democracy actually mean? Those terms are still being defined and redefined today. In defense of freedom we’re keeping our enemies in cages in Cuba, and locking people up without warrants or charges for indefinite periods of time. We’re demanding that people from certain countries report to INS for interviews . . .
Another question: how do our opinions about these issues relate to our particular life situations? How many here are paying their bills with money made by factory labor? Farm income? Some kind of white-collar/professional income? (OK, loans don’t count . . .)
Jefferson and the ideal of the small farmer. The industrial revolution and the shift to worker/employer relations—80% self-employed in 1880, 20% by 1920. (141)
Wage slavery—is this just a bad-conscience accusation by defenders of slavery? Well, partly, surely. But conditions were indeed terrible, hours long, housing bad, wages low, prospects grim.
142: “Anyone caught permanently in a wage-earning position, lacking property and security for old age, was not a free person.”
Question: Anybody here know anyone who feels stuck in a job they hate but feel they can’t leave? What might it be like to quit a job that barely supported you and your family and allowed you to save almost nothing, move to a new city where you knew nobody and try to start over? Where would you get the money to move? How would you live until you found work and got your first paycheck?
Ehrenreich has a lot so say on such questions.
Inequality: rise of the industrial rich, late 19th century. We know about this; did you know that the most substantial welfare program of the time was veterans’ benefits?
Workers’ movements: the Knights of Labor, 144-5. The Haymarket Affair, demonstration for the 8-hour day.
A.F.L., Gompers, organized mainly skilled white males.
IWW, the Wobblies, pacifist and class-conscious.
Mother Jones and other socialists.
Farm organizing and the populist movement, 147.
Middle class reformers like Samuel Jones, Jane Addams, Nelson O. Nelson.
Debs and the Socialist movement. The Pullman strike of 1894. “While there is a lower class, I am in it . . .” (151)
Federal responses: corporations as legal persons, most govt. action on the side of business. Socialists and radical critics in U.S. marginalized even further after WW I and Russian revolution.
Ongoing question: how much inequality can a society tolerate before it becomes unacceptably unstable and violent? Worker/CEO inequities have skyrocketed in the last twenty years.
Much, much more might be said on this subject; we’ll return to it.
Chapter 8: Gender and gender inequities. Gender as social construction, 156.
157: on “warrior societies” and their qualities: male dominance, hierarchy, authoritarianism, lost of social violence. Rape and domestic abuse—shocking levels. Causes? Life problems? Biology? Simply a social choice that “works”? “Men in power make choices for violence,” says Andrea Dworkin, though she’s not exactly a middle-of-the-road theorist.
These paragraphs also could use a lot of unpacking and further qualification and analysis. But how about the idea that the power imbalance between sexes “traps both men and women in a limited range of behaviors”? I think it’s true; I also think that there’s been major change in the last thirty years or so. Again, we’ll talk more about Where We Are later on . . .
Varieties of gender relationships: agrarian patriarchy, separate spheres, companionate marriage, 159 ff. Separate cultural world, close same-sex bonds between both men and women. Alternatives to conventional thinking, the Quakers, the Great Peace of Deganawidah (again).
The separate sphere system, with industrial revolution and rise of wage work. Men the active, public business world, women home and church. The “angel in the house,” the “haven in a heartless world,” all that stuff. It’s not “the way things always were,” it’s a relatively recent social construction.
The Seneca Falls declaration on the rights of women. Early feminist movement, parallel to abolition movement.
164 the Muscular Christianity stuff of late century, sports, the military; rise of “masculinity” as value; sports as sanctioning violence, “hyper-masculine and hostile towards women.” Analogies with military are not hard to notice.
Side note: anybody note the odd statistic about beer consumption on 166? There must be some kind of typo, or lack of clarity . . .
The early-century movements for temperance and the vote. The anti-saloon movement, the WCTU. Prohibition 1919, suffrage 1920. Addams and Gilman, tensions between individualism and community values, about whether women have “essential” traits that would improve society if allowed more play.
But, as Carol Tavris asks, is there something essential different in men’s and women’s natures? Or is it all a matter of social construction?
Rapid redefinitions of gender roles in WW II and following, leading to the crisis of the 50s. Tompkins on the limits of men’s roles, 170, derived from Westerns and sports. “Kansas is good country for men and dogs, but it’s tough on women and horses.”
Friedan and the Feminine Mystique. Feminism and Vietnam as war for being tough and a winner. Continuing controversy about domestic violence, right to carry a gun, etc.
The need for courage, on the part of all, if we’re to create more equal gender constructions.
Student Responses:
The book makes a very good point in the difference between
industrial workers and slaves. Even
though industrial workers were paid a small amount for their work, the
industrial workers worked long hours for little to no pay. With this little pay some people tried to
work on farms trying to make more money than what they would have made by being
at a factory working. These early
farmers found out how hard it was to make a decent living in the competition of
prices of other farmers doing the same.
However we must realize that during this day and age that money was not
in high abundance as it is now. They
scrapped and saved each coin to make a living to keep food on the table. Through all these times it’s been assumed
that women work around the house and that men earn the living. There has and always will be controversy over
who earns the money in a household. I
really don’t think it should matter who makes the most money or who does what
work in or out of the house, but that it’s equal. However that would be a ‘perfect’ world and
we all know nothing like that exists.
Each gender role has an important role in everyday life. Even as America most likely prepares for war,
men and women are training to keep our country safe.
The NY Times headlines that Germany and France oppose the Iraqi war movements, while Fox News does talk about the Iraq war, but talks about how President Bush is sending threats of consequences to Saddam. I do think that these are somewhat of an empty threat. We invaded Iraq before and nothing has really changed. So why should anything be different now? The news from salon.com talks about how if Iraq is invaded it could be disaster with the chemical weapons threat that Iraq has. There is or should always be consideration that all methods of war are never kind or fair.
-Beau Beidelschies
I
agree with these authors in chapter 7 and what they said about how people use
to work back in the day. I feel that people got treated so badly because of the
environment that they were in. They had to work all the time in dirty and
cramped jobs. They worked hours on end. It's even worse that children had to
work in these environments at the ages of ten. I think it was ridiculous that
workers had to deal with the higher authority. Their bosses' got paid so much
more than the workers and I just feel that's not right at all. The Workingman's
Party was a very good idea and it was good that it spread to other states than
just Philadelphia. It abolished child labor and it shortened the working days.
This was a very smart idea. It's sad though to think that children have to be
stuck working with they should be out playing with other kids. I also enjoyed what it said about the
Cooperative Commonwealth and they only wanted to get people that have real jobs
together. They didn't want social parasites, that to me was
true. Those people just get the money, they might have built up the business,
but they aren't the ones working as hard as they can to get the money. I'm glad these groups made a change.
In
chapter 8 it talks about gender and how females get treated so differently than
the males do. It's still going on and I don't think it's ever going to stop. I
had a lot of respect for Abigail Adams when she wrote to her husband about
remembering the ladies. I'm not surprised that he laughed about it too. Some
men today still think that women can't do certain things. I agree with the book
and how they said that men are valued over women because men like to have that
power and they aren't willing to give it up to men. I think that some men do
take advantage to that and they abuse their wives like it said in the book. It
was sad to see how many women do get abused in America. I know men have been
superior for a long time,but
I think they would be able to let women have a say in things. I do admit though
that it has gotten alot better since then, but I
think it could get even better.
Everything that I
looked up from the three different lists were very
similar. All of them talked about Bush and what he wanted to do with the war.
The first one was with the New York Times and it talked about if there was
going to be any resolution for military action. The second one with the New
York Times was that Irauqui citizens express their
upsets. They are hoping to find weapons so they can mass destruct. The middle
section that I looked up with was the Fox News. They just said that Britain was
going to be supporting the United States . The second was that the U.S. military forces
in the Persian Gulf region are prepared.
The Left of Center I did was on The Nation. There was a Peace March in Washington. This
was to honor Martin Luther King Jr. and trying to stop the war that the
President has been planning. The second
one was how Bush is planning this attack on Iraq on his own. New York Times is more in depth with all of
this happening than the other two. The
two aren't as much information. These
are just all very similar. The only difference is that they talk about the war,
but they talk about it in different ways. Some talk about the war that's going
to take place and some others are how they are going to try to stop it. Cari Bowman
after reading the two sections
for this week's response i can honestly say that i found most of the parts of the chapters intersting and i agreed with a
lot of what the authors were discussing, which is rare since i have disagreed and found myself getting angry over a lot
of the material i have read in The Missing
Peace.
Within the chapter, Workers in
the US, i found the section very interesting. the quote by debs, intriged me,
(unless i'm reading this wrong or i
don't understand) because how can he say that he thinks people should be a boss
to themselves basically. that would just cause
chaos and no work would ever get done. people
can not be trusted to get work done...well some can, but not as effectively as
having someone there to oversee them and tell them what needs to be done.
moreover, how can debs comment that people are not
free, but are slaves if they work under government regulations and laws, people
need structure or there would be mahem, people are
free if they get paid for accomplishing an action. Concluding, the
chapter the book summarizes that there is a great unequal distribution of
wealth and power, HOW TRUE, but do these people that obtain this power and
wealth not deserve it, did they not work for it? also the other spectrum
(the lower class), most of the time are not as educated as these leaders of our
country, is this book telling me that everyone deserve fair share...my opinion
no! although it would be nice, and i do think
that the bill gates and ross peros
of this country need to help, support, and give to those who need it, so that
they can better themselves. also, i am upset
that this book did not point out all the factors and reseasons
why some people have more than others, they just listed stats with no backing,
which to me is a weak point of this book. it
lists stats and opinions of events that occured, but
does not point out the other side, or any counter arguments
the secound
chapter, Gender Matters, really hits home for me because i
hate this dominating male power, and i am all for
women becoming strong leaders, athletes, people. so,
most of the material in this section of the book, really interseted
me and i agreed with. i feel, like the chapter discusses that men are the
basis of the violence in this country. they are
controlling, masculine people that choose to use force as a treating power,
instead of using thought and communication that women would use to gain
control. i really like
the quote,"men are valued over women b/c of
their generally seperior strenght..."
to create power...how true. that quote was displayed
in the sohcking stats of domestic violence, murders
that the book mentions. i
was amazed! on another point that the chapter
highlights is women and mens different views on
sports. yes, women are different from men, but
sports are sports and are played with the same intensity and physical prowless. i
was very offended when the authors mentioned that women are docile when they
are in a competitive atomosphere b/c me sir are
not. i kick the others
teams butt just like a man. and that's what's
wrong with our society, women are not suppose to get physical b/c that is
"manly" and if we do are penilized for
it. but i could go on
and on about that subject and that really wasn't the point of this chapter so i'll stop. however, overall i really enjoyed these 2 chapters over the other ones we
have read in this book.
kelly dietrick
As i
looked over the major newspapers, i found that they
of course all include stories on the current Iraq situation and recently how
France and Germany are anti-war. On one of the left of center items,
"salon.com" as well as the washington
post had and article on the 30 year anniversay of
legalizing abortions. I guess Sandra o'connor
time is coming to retire which some beleive bush's
supporters will press for him to pick a strong anti-abortion nominee. I feel he
sould pick a more moderate replacement. My respose to the whole abotion
issue is honestly pro-abortion. I know it is wrong in advanced stages but now
they have the night after pills and i think teenagers
raising kids is not a wise thing either. Most anti-abortion people feel
strongly about their position, but what if they were put in the situation where
they are pregnant or got somone pregnant
unintentionally. You'd be surprised how their feelings change.
In the Book -- I'm so glad
things have changed somewhat from what they were before ww1. I cannot beleive what i read about the
inhumane conditions people used to work in and children getting their fingers
and arms lost and cut off makes me cringe, are these children homeless, what
kind of parents let their children endure such work? As for the workers and
employers i'm lost in position of the wage and work
struggle. I have four jobs right now and the job i
work the hardest at (Vicotis's Secret) is where i get paid the least and the job that is the easiest(
assisted living) i get paid four dollars more and
hour to pretty much visit with old people. I'm making more money that those
girls who work on the nursing floor lifting and changing diapers so i can't complain. But if i didn't
like what i did, no matter what the pay, i wouldn't do it. My father and grandfather used to be
tomato farmers and i've seen what the migrant living conditons were. My dad treated and paid them well but the
families lived in one room shacks and wore the same clothes all the time, and
worked their butts off hoeing tomatoes and working on the harvesters. I can't
even compare to that, and it still happens.
For the gender issues and even
racial inequality i find that the situation has
gotten better but will always exist. Even those races and women have the same
rights as whites and men now, their is still bias and
prejudice, and racism. As for violence to women and controling
men, i feel women shouldn't provoke a fight and under
no circumstances should a man ever man handle a woman. Being a victem and realizing now that men should never hurt a
woman, i feel any man that does needs to be shot.
Family and work roles should be shared, i love seeing
husbands who cook diner and do dishes and woemn who
mow the lawn. Men seem to be seen as s being the man of the house, but how many
of us have families where mom actually runs the show? I was impressed how the
Iroquois handled the equality roles within the tribe between men and women, hey
it was peaceful.
War changed womens
roles and those of different races after the collection of wars. Since todays reading were not directly all about war position i want to add my thought anyway. Imagine what the world
would be like if all the hate was replaced with love, might just be a glimpse
of heaven.
"make
love, not war"
Brooke Diller
I will start with
the articles and papers I have been reading. From the major newspapers,
I read the New York Times. I have often seen much bias towards America in this large
newspaper, such
as today, in its story on the French and German proclamation to not
go to war with Iraq until all other solutions are possible, to push for peace as long as it’s
possible. The newspaper seems to try to rationalize this politically by claiming that
they don’t want Washington and London to get to close because it threatens their
power in Europe. It seems to be that Americans can’t believe that most of the world
might actually be advocating for peace just for peace.
(http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/22/international/22CND_EURO.html)
The leftist paper I read is the Town Hall website. I think I will switch this site since articles are hard to find, and I don’t really get a sense of what the site agrees with, other than most of the
stories are often hard to distinguish from
rightists. The rightist paper I read is the CounterPunch.
The article I read Today certainly advocates that the
The reading in the Missing Peace for today was very interesting. One overall issue I am having with the class (besides the classes very apathetic view of war) it also seems to me that the people in the class are worried that the book is trying to say that all we have done should have been done in a way that we realize now is possible. One comment last class arguing against the book said that the things that have happened in the past should be evaluated and learned from in order
for future problems not to occur as often. It seems like this is what the book is trying to get across in the first place. Anyway, from the reading:
I agree to the general problems expressed in the book, however these things don’t surprise me as much as the first chapter stuff. All the stuff in these chapters seems to be what I had learned in the history books in my general education. The classes in my primary educational faze talked about the many horrors of the industrial revolution, and the struggles for the gains of human rights In a very violent aftermath of the Civil War. The one difference is that The connections of the violent industrial revolution was not tied to the violence of the Civil War as prevalently.
-Jacob Boehr
the chapter about the industrial revolution proved interesting. I certainly can't and won't argue the points that the common man worker of the late 19th century was often and greatly taken advantage of. Today workers complain of lacking benefits or demanding hours, it's easy to forget that in decades past people were jailed or killed for requesting simple human decency. 12 hour days, 7 days a week in a coal mine makes lacking a dental plan seem petty by comparison. The workers who were willing to unify and protest by peaceful means did indeed seem to win their battles over time, but I do believe that in certain working situations workers were faced with employers who not listen their requests under any circumstances. Thankfully our society has evolved, for the vast part, beyond the inhumane work environment many of our working class forefathers had to endure. Many did indeed suffer by both enduring their conditions or attempting protest, but they helped develop the laws and unions we all live in relative comfort within.
The chapter on the ineqaulity of the sexes over our countries history was enlightening, but it was an enlightenment that has been pitched endlessly even today. In some ways I feel like saying "Yes, women suffered and in many ways still suffer today; I GET IT BY NOW." The ineqaulity of the sexes is reminded to men constantly, on televsion and in our everyday lives. And while I believe in equal rights between men and women, there are times this issue feels like a dead horse. But then being a male, my opinion may not be valid, or for that matter appreciated.
In Other News: According to the Wall Street Journal, a small claims court has declared that fictional characters, such as Spiderman or the X-men, are "something more than human." This ruling pertained mostly to the character's action figures in order to seperate them from "human" dolls. Producers of dolls and action figures must pay higher taxes on their toys because they reperesent human beings. This rulling now exludes figures sporting super human abilities from this higher tax. I'm sure somehow, someway, this obscure case has made the world a better place. No, really. I'm not being sarcastic at all. Okay maybe a little.
-Brian Daniel
The web site that I found the most interesting was the
One of the things that I found interesting in chapter seven was when they talked about it being a choice for the employees to work in the factories. From what I understood the book was saying that although the conditions were inhumane employeers weren't forcing the employees to work. They had the choice to sign the contract or not. The book says that if the workers didn't want their jobs they could leave. That might be true but what else were they supposed to do. Factories were taking over and the amount of self employeed people were quickly decreasing. If the employees had other opptions I don't think that they would have continued working in the coal mines or factories.
At the beginning of chapter eight I thought that
the authors did a good job of talking about women and violence. It is sad that
in
Faith Blough
Disclaimer: I did not mean for this to be so long; I did it in sections at different times, and well, there is so much information, I had to succumb to their wars and try to make sense of a little bit of everything.
It would not be fair to put international students on the spot, but sometimes I really would like to hear the perspective of international students in our class, when we are speaking as Americans about how the rest of the world views us, and especially if the rest of the world is really as scared as we think they are. I just wonder exactly how different we are educated than the rest of the world, as far as stretching facts, etc. goes. Jane Elliot, during a presentation at ONU this MLK day, offered many examples about how we are conditioned to the myth of the dominant white society. She presented two maps; one that is highly inaccurate and is seen in many classrooms across our country, and the other, which is accurate, is unfamiliar to our eye. Very interesting and eye-opening to me. She also made a comment about how everyone thinks Jesus was white; we all have probably heard parts of this discussion before, but her point was, if Jesus came from where he came from, having blonde-haired blue-eyed, white-skinned parents with a child trying to hide among Egyptians, it could have presented a problem. I realize this is getting to be a response that is all over the place, but I think it has a great deal to do with how we have structured our thinking and accepting of the “way things are.” I can’t help but comment on our current class demographics. Following up on the slave-anti-slave-civil-war talk from the other day, I was burning to ask how different, if at all different, our conversation would have been if there were black students in the room? Could any of us, all white, and most likely attuned to the myth, and yes, the myth, that whites are the superior race, possibly understand the true history of African-Americans without trying really hard?. Maybe we’d say everything is better now, but we are still conditioned to be a very racist society. Every one of us is a racist. In ways we may not even recognize. That’s why I wonder if we would be more than willing to accept that there may have been other options to ending slavery, and sooner at that, then through the civil war. I can’t answer that; none of us can, but it is interesting to me how easily we push away anything that challenges how we think.
Let me fit in the reading here.
Out of everything we’ve read, the issues of gender inequality are unfortunately
most identifiable, and particularly in the form of the amount of violence that
occurs to women today. A lot of statistics were found in the reading; many more are amazing for our times. Yet as the violence
of women continues, we as a society let it blindly become part of our society.
Even as a woman, I have allowed myself to believe that such violence isn’t that
big of a deal, yet statistics show that this type of violence is, as the book
says, the number one cause of deaths/injury to women in our country. “Why is
this violence such an unacknowledged part of the contemporary
Just a quick note on capitalism:
supposing the natural outcome of capitalism is social inequalities, how in the
world do we go about making that better? More reform. And more reform means
citizens have to care about their democracy. IT is depressing, really, to think
the gap between rich and poor has such an historical background, and that
farmers have been suffering for a long time. Again, as history provides no hope
for either of these, neither does our current system of doing things. It seems
those idealistic, young, college-aged citizens may be the ones to make a
change; Jane Addams is cool. It is interesting to know that our “Wealth is
earned” attitude, like Carnegie held, is true. How do we get past the
consequence of that ideal in our social structure? Maybe we need to elect a
president running for office form jail. For some reason, I think he would get
just as many, if not more votes, as Debs.
From the left handed side of
current commentary, I went to the Café-uni. Com page
entitled: What the Papers Say. Questions raised by author Miles Kington for the independent argument, from the UK, struck
me and fits somehow into the discussions in our class the past few days: “where
did war start? Has there always been war? Are we at war more often than at
peace? Which is more normal, war or peace? Is peace a sort of aberration from
the normality of war? Is too much peace good for you?” He began his article
stating: 'We are creating a war by talking about it. It will be the first time
that we have ever had a war simply by announcing it.’ The light-hearted
discourse of the pending war seemed to somehow reject the attitude of war.
Another article from the left side set out to arouse confidence in the American
people, that
Form the right of center side,
Fox News, always a favorite for dramatic action, provides us with a site
apparently straight from the White House. I felt like I was on the inside as I
read the posted, “Apparatus of lies,” or Saddam’s Disinformation and Propaganda
1990-2003. (http://www.whitehouse.gov/ogc/apparatus/index.html)
I think this is the first time I have seen something like this, and wonder what
the details are behind each, if there is more, or if we are getting the whole
picture. Is it better if we do or if we don’t know all of this? I f these are
defining facts that are propelling the war mission, it
makes sense that there is reason to continue investigating. The Onion, one that
can be pretty entertaining to read, had an article “Bush on
-Kathy Dixon
Unfortunately, I feel my opinion will be a little biased for this time because I was unable to read the chapters completely. While skimming the gender matter chapter, I found the part where it talks of men forming organizations such as boy scouts and fraternaties. Although I feel that some of these organizations have come along quite nicely, at first the books talks about them coming around sort of to define men (from my short skim, that is the impression I got), and give them what little segregation they were allowed to have from women. There groups were formed to build character in the boys and men. This is what many of them do today, but back then, the male was seen differently. It was seen more highly for these men to be macho, so that is what the organizations dwelled on, manliness. I am glad that this isn't the way things are run now, but I feel that things were done correctly for the time being. Things wouldn't be as they are if it weren't for these minor differences in the beginning from now.
Angie Darr