"Transnational Struggles for Water and Power" and "Dams, Democracy, and Development in Transnational Perspective"

Dams, Democracy, and Development in Transnational Perspective

              The rise and the global spread of big dam building is clearly a 20th-century phenomenon. Big dam building and international big dam regime are activities and symbols that reflect and shape the larger dynamics of development. Therefore, there are a lot of dams were built around the world either in big or small rivers. But the trends of dam buildings has been declined by the movements of various actor who being against the big development projects such as which tend to have more negative impact such as environment, displacement, ecology in those certain area that has been replace by dams.
              There are not only the domestic group or movement, such as nongovernmental organizations, grassroots groups, and social movements, that prevent the large-scale projects like dam building to being built, but also the international norms and international institution in the issue area of eviranment, human rights, and indigenous peoples also become important in transformation in development. The of dams building has been declined because it has been condition by the global spread and international institution of those norms and principles. Those priciples and norms that first promoted by the international institution also influence the domectic group or movement on empoerment. These actors are sources of infomation, ideas, power, strategies, and legitimacy within transnational coalitions and network.
              There are 3 alternative explanation mentioned in the articles. First, the lobbyingof foreign and transnational nongovernmental organizations my have been sloe factor that changed the dynamic of big dam building in the third world. Second, the global spread of emergent norms on indigenous peoples, humanrights, and the environment could have been so powerful that international organizations, state and non-state proponents altered their big dam building practices as a result of independently adopting and actually following these principles. Finally, it is possible that domestic advocacy and social mobilization, particularly in democracies, was sufficient by itself to stop or reform big dam projects.
               The level of democracy are also relate to the degree of social moblization in each countries. The countries that has high degree of domocracy tend to have high degree of movement. In the article, India and Brazil are the example of this case. So the government decision on those development projects tends to have difficulty in order to launch the project and achieve it unlike the authoritarian regime, such as china which tend to has less number of movement, would increase and achieve economic development which consider as necessary.
                It does not suggest to change the political regime in order to minimizing the effects of transnational contestation, globalizing norms, and domectic mobilizing that might be the threat of development. But, in order to  refiorm or transform delopment, the meaning of development may have to be contested and reconstituted. In my opinion, Since we define development in this way has caused a lot of problems, thus, we should change the way that we define the development nowadays. Economic is not just the only aspect of development. Development can indicates by various way such as human development.
                 

Gringolandia: The Construction of a New Tourist Space in Mexico

Cancun resort, product of transnational forces, metaphor for the inequities manifest in the global economic system, a globalogoland  

“Cancun has transformed it into a circuslike spectacle referred to as Gringolandia by locals. Disneyesque quality of the spectacle that is large-scale mass tourism in Cancun, but it also implies the invasion and expropriation of Mexican space by an American place.”

Quintana Roo was a space of exile, referred as the “empty quarter” was selected by Mexican Government as the site for the nation’s first master-planes resort or Tourist Integral Center, a new externally oriented, and it is state-driven for economic development. Cancun was a transition from the “empty quarter” to mass tourism resort serving pleasure periphery of the “first world”, has inserted the region into the global capitalist sphere. There are 2 main forces according to the article that constructed the Cancun: The transnational economic structure of the resort and the consumption - and production - led migratory flows to Cancun.

According to Massay (1994,4) “ the spatial can be seen as constructed out of the multiplicity of social relations across all spatial scales.”  Gringolandia is fabricated of dynamic and multiple social relations and interactions conducted by a diversity of actors. These social relations based on tourism-related transnational forces operating at multiples scale. The Cancun can also be understood as the product of globalization, which has reduced geographical barriers and increased international tourism as well as other forms of temporary and permanent migration. Societies increasingly interconnected, with the “global” and “local” blending to reshape local realities. There are three interconnected spheres comprise Cancun’s transnational social fields:

1.      The international sphere exert influence in constructing Gringolandia by the continuous circular flow of tourists, foreign home owner, and retirees, Mexican elites with strong ties to the U.S., foreign professionals and entrepreneurs, and expatriate tourism-industry workers.

2.       The Mexican urban sphere consists of back-and –forth flows of immigrants from other parts of Mexico working in tourism-industry-related employment

3.       Quintana Roo rural periphery sphere has circular flow of temporary migrants and permanent settlers who maintain ties with both Cancun and their cities, towns, or villages of origin. Typically, these temporary laborers fill the lower-paying, seasonal jobs because they have neither the training nor education for the more senior positions occupied by urbanities from other Mexican states.  

The migratory in Cancun divides in to two main groups which are the consumption – led and production – led migration. Consumption – led is mobility include short and long stayed tourists, second home owners, retirees, and repeat visitors. Whereas production – led is mobility responds to opportunities associated with tourism growth and includes circular migration of seasonal workers, permanent migration of domestic and international employees, and migration of entrepreneurs. These two categories of actors in the Cancun are forces,that are part of each sphere, that produce and reproduce the Cancun. The Cancun that result as the Gringolandia , a dynamic “hybrid-space” in which elements of Mexican, American, and artificial Maya culture have been reconstituted for tourist consumption.

The migration in this sense, in Cancun, focus on the tourist which another kind of migrants. It does not refer to only the short term stayed, but also refers to the long term stayed and the expatriate people. In my opinion, I think tourist is the term that refers to the person who have a good economic status, does not struggle for an opportunity and come as the legally status unlike other temporary migrants. In addition, the Cancun that has reconstructed to be the tourism space, so the income in this area also depends on the tourists.        

Speechless Emissaries

Refugees, Humanitarianism, and Dehistoricalization

            The refugees have seen as the encounter of state sovereignty.  But In the meantime, refugees are also the passive objects of humanitarian intervention. Because the government has the right to do anything in its own territory, state can have authority over its own citizens so, these people can easily legitimize harm by state.  Refugee populations usually consist of people in urgent needs who have been victimized in numerous ways. Refugee is term that dehistoricizing itself, as the refugees stop being specific persons and become pure victims in general or so called universal man, who have no subjectivity under particular state. This degistoricizing universalism creates a context in which it is difficult for people in the refugee category to be approached as historical actors rather than simply as mute victims.  

            Humanitarian intervention is created in order to help all human regard the nationalities and ethnicities from the abuse by its own government or any abuses that violate human rights and dignity. However, this concept of humanitarian intervention is problematic and cannot be applied effectively to help these subjectivity people. The consequence of ineffective on play the role is that people are suffered and abused by the government. So they willing to relocate and displace to somewhere to seek for protection. So in this sense, they become an immigrant or refugee.

            The refugee, as the passive object of humanitarian intervention, was shown to the people by media, photograph, and journal. It shows about the suffering of refugee who really need help and assistance by they do not have to speak but the media will speak for them and also represent their situation. So, Humanitarian intervention has to play the role to help them based on the human beings which have to get rid of the cultural or political differences. It became problematic that refugee unable to return to their homeland because the state can threaten and harmed them because the status of citizen. Humanitarian intervention can consider as the process that help to dehistoricize and depoliticize the people to become pure or to be the universal man. The refugee status will guarantee safety and protection, because refugees are not the subjectivity of state that state can control anymore.       

    

The Maze of Fear: Security and Migration after 9/11

The threats of immigrant subversion 

The United States of America has been remarkably open to immigrants from most part of the world. Americans, a variety of moments, have also feared immigrants and lashed out at specific groups of new comers who were thought to imperil the nation’s present or future.

There are four threats of immigrant subversion. Firstly, fear of religious: Irish-Catholic immigrants in the 1830s-1840s threatened the US where wanted to be a Protestant country. Secondly, fear of political subversion which the leftist, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, threaten the republicanism of the US. Thirdly, the fear of economic subversion which native-born American often accused immigrants of causing unemployment and depressing wages. Lastly, fear of racial subversion, Racism was a defining of the American republic from the moment of its creation and remained so far one hundred and fifty years. The educated and popular opinion were attempting to measure the “racial character” of people arrange in a hierarchy of racial aptitude. The western and northern Europeans, who are Anglo-Saxon, Nordic, or Caucasian, were labeled on top of racial hierarchies. Whereas, “blacks”, “Orientals”, and browns peoples such as Mexicans and Indians are labeled at the bottom. The eastern and western Europe people were moreover labeled in the middle. This sense of discrimination also made people treat them differently.

 In the case of Japanese immigration since World War II is one of case example from this book. According to aftermath of Japan attack in Pearl Harbor in 1941, Americans definitely feared of Japanese. Government forced the Japanese to move to the camps which much alike federal prison without distinction between Japanese Americans who were likely to be subversives and who are innocent native-born citizens. Since that, the Japanese race is an enemy race Although many are the second or third generation who possessed of United States citizenship that has become Americanized. Fear of racial subversion had joined fears of political subversion in this case.

The historical record instructs us that war or near-war situation often put immigrants at risk as they possibly threaten the security of the states in 4 main mentioned dimensions. The American people become anxious and realize about the “otherness”. Moreover, they started to define the “Americaness.” For example they started to define who is the American, according to fear of racial subversion, they define in hierarchy racial labeled and clearly seen that they recognize the American as the white people.

This fear of subversions can also explain by the Self-consciousness of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. The American can define them from the reflection of the otherness. Only American itself will not able to define what is the “Americaness” because there is no comparison. Moreover they will not concern or aware until there is something threatens their collective things that they are sharing or something in common such as the idea of republic and Protestant.  

The Concept of the Political

The Concept of the Political

          This article pointed out the relationship between “state” and “political”. The concept of the state presupposes the concept of the political. State and political are interdependent. The political utilize the concept of power as the decisive factor, this power appears mostly as state power. The state that also mentioned in the article is like a tool for men to maintain political power.

          But the perception that state is equal to politic becomes a mistaken when state and society penetrate each other. The social matters as the neutral domains become affairs of state which necessarily occur in a democratically organized unit. The religious, economic, cultural, legal, and scientific domains are the antitheses of political. The boundary between state and society was blurred by the demand for control of people in society, and thus the total state is no longer knows anything absolutely nonpolitical.

          The political has its own criteria which express themselves in a characteristics way. The political must therefore rest on its own ultimate distinctions, to which all action with a specifically political meaning can be traced. The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between “friend and enemy”. The distinction of friend and enemy show the utmost degree of intensity of a union or separation, of an association or dissociation.

          The enemy is not just any competitor or partner of conflict in general. An enemy existed only when one fighting collectivity of people confronts a similar collectivity, particularly to a whole nation. It refers to public enemy not a private one. In its entirety the state as an organized political entity decides for itself the friend-enemy distinction.

          The enemy concept in the present possibly belongs to combat. War is armed combat between organized political entities. It occur the sense of friend-enemy distinction.  The political has been decided who is enemy. War is neither the purpose of politics; it is the only example that determines way of human action and thinking and thereby creates specifically a political behavior.

          Politics is something that makes a distinctive means. Religious, cultures and economics are all consists of politics, therefore everything relevant to politics. Politics also make conflict happen, however the world without politics is only the ideal that hardly exist in the reality.