Pointing to problems
Topic: Development
DamselFish puts a finger on some of the many issues with the practice of development that I've been struggling with as I try to figure out what I'm going to do after grad school.

One of the things that I hadn't done much thinking about when I was working in development was the way that governments use aid in their own interests. Sure, I was aware of regulations in USAID grant contracts about flying on US airlines when using grant funding to travel and buying US products, but I didn't really think it all through. This is just one of the ways that governments can use aid to pursue their best interests, and those interests are often understood to be maintaining the status quo in aid-receiving countries, or supporting 'improvements' that donor governments think they can predict the outcomes of. Since governments are major suppliers of aid funding, many NGOs are, therefore, complicit in furthering government aims.

Is this a bad thing? That's the question I haven't resolved yet. It's a situation that, as DamselFish points out, is highly unlikely to lead to radical social change. Most development initiatives function on the premise that Western-style democracy and capitalism are the standard to which all nations should aspire, ignoring the fact that these models are also products of particular historical and cultural developments, and as such, may well be difficult to transplant. Another problematic premise is that 'developing' societies can be brought up to a standard equal to 'developed' societies without the developed societies having to make any substantial sacrifices of their own in terms of power and resource advantages.

Does all of this negate the positive changes that development programs have made in people's lives, though? I've talked to a lot of microfinance clients who were very clear that participating in the program had made important changes in their lives, and who were grateful to have had the opportunity to participate in it. In the face of their testimony, I find it difficult to argue that the programs are not achieving good ends. Whether they're truly having the last impact that aid and development NGOs claim they're aiming for remains to be seen.

And now it has been announced that the Bush administration is forging much closer ties between the US government's aid agency, USAID, and the State Department. A new position, the Director of Foreign Assistance has been created, with the aims of aligning US government aid more closely with foreign policy, and aligning State Department and USAID assistance activities. The Director of Foreign Assistance will serve as the head of USAID and have a position in State equivalent to Deputy Secretary. Although the official word is that USAID's status as an independent government organization will remain unchanged, USAID employees (Washingon Post, may require registration*) don't seem to be entirely convinced.

Oxfam America, which is not a recipient of USAID funding, also has some concerns about the restructuring, which are politely put forth in this statement. Although I might argue that the line between the US political agenda and US humanitarian aid hasn't ever been that clearly drawn, I do agree with Oxfam's concern that blurring the boundaries of US humanitarian, political and military actions would complicate the work of NGOs, both foreign and local, and could place their staff at risk. Any immunity that aid organizations and their staff currently enjoy due to the perception that their activities are separate from the political actions of a particular government would evaporate, and even if violence isn't a risk, if local people are suspicious of aid organizations, it makes their work much less likely to achieve any sort of success.

The nominee to fill the position of Director of Foreign Assistance isn't meeting with universal acclaim either. Ambassador Randall Tobias currently serves in the State Department as Global AIDS Coordinator, a position he was nominated for despite a conspicuous absence of public health expertise in his bio. The title of "Ambassador" comes with the position. I'm not enthusiastic about the idea that USAID could be headed by someone who doesn't seem to have any experience working overseas. Advocates for Youth has expressed concerns about the impact his leadership could have on foreign assistance targeted at HIV/AIDS prevention.

Whether any of these concerns will bear fruit remains to be seen, obviously. One the one hand, I'm skeptical about measures that would make humanitarian and development aid blatant political tools, but on the other hand, I find myself wondering if this isn't just a clearer articulation of a situation that already exists.

TomPaine.com and US Newswire were sources for this post.

Update: More from DamselFish on this topic (although she declines to comment on the USAID situation), with good points about the nature of the national interest and NGOs' moral stances and their alignment with donor government interests and foreign policy.

The point I'd like to elaborate on is 'improvement', because of the link to indicators, which I've posted a bit about before. One of the problems with indicators is that data has to be quantified, 'rationalized' and standardized to a fairly high degree in order to demonstrate 'improvement' or 'deterioration' and to make comparisons across different areas. This tends to lead to the sidelining of the perceptions and values of local people. The improvements that local microfinance clients talked to me about were not ones that were captured in our global indicator reports, which were concerned with aggregate increases in loan sizes and amounts, repayment rates, and value of savings.

This disconnect between indicators and local impact can be remedied, to some extent, by involving beneficiaries in identifying the indicators that they find most meaningful in describing change in their lives, but then you start to run into the problem of how comparable context-specific data is across regions and countries, and the attitude that some take is 'what's the use of having the data if it's not comparable?' Comparable to what? And should anything be more important than what local people think are the benefits and disadvantages of the change in their lives? It might not be an 'objective' measure, but I think 'objective' indicators create the illusion that change is far more controllable and comprehensible than it actually is. Is it possible that the value of indicators is that we can reassure ourselves that we know what's going on? See, we've got the numbers and the timelines, and look at these pretty charts and graphs!

I've got plenty more to say on this topic, but it strikes me that this post is more than long enough already. I also just got invited to go to the beach, so I'll finish here and go pack my beach bag.



*In which case, you may want to use BugMeNot

sooooooo tired
Topic: Reading
Argh. We finally had a cool night during which my flat was also relatively cool. I didn't set the alarm, figuring I could use some sleep after all the tossing-and-turning too-hot nights I've had recently. And I was awakened at sometime before 6:00 this morning by the wind slamming my blinds against the window frame. I can't win. If its not the birds, it's the heat, and if it's not the heat, it's the wind. I fell asleep in the library this morning - full on head-on-arms dead to the world in a carrell. I woke up with numb arms, a sore back, and a powerful urge to go home and go to bed. I just hope I wasn't snoring. People get tetchy about their silent study areas around here.

The only good thing about my early awakening was that it gave me plenty of time to finish Venus in Copper, the third Falco novel, in which our hero, tired of the stingy pay and dirty work offered by the Emperor, decides to return to private practice. He promptly finds himself embroiled in the machinations of a nest of nouveau riche former slaves, who despite their humble origins have made good in the world - some through murky business dealings, another through a string of conveniently deceased husbands. The case takes him into the nasty underbelly of the Roman real estate business, where unscrupulous landlords and developers swindle, threaten, and sometimes kill, their rivals and their tenants. Although I missed the political intrigue that drove the first two books, the story is well-plotted, and Falco's various impossible relationships provide plenty of humor and depth. So I now have to decide whether I go running right over to the Good Doctors' to borrow the next in the series, or do I make myself wait a few days for it? Dilemmas, dilemmas.

In other news, I think the cup of very strong tea I finished a few minutes ago has finally kicked in. Better get some work done before the buzz wears off.

More books under my belt
Topic: Reading
The thought that was stuck in my head earlier came from Sex, Sexuality and the Anthropologist, which my supervisor recommended as a way to get me thinking about the larger issues related to work and sex that I'll be addressing in my thesis. At least, that I'll be addressing in my thesis in its current incarnation. Ro pointed out to me earlier in the week that my topic has undergone a constant series of revisions since I was forced to commit something to writing back in November.

But my thesis topic is neither here nor there where this post is concerned. Sex, Sexuality and the Anthropologist is an edited collection by a group of anthropologists discussing how their own sex and sexuality and that of the people they were interviewing and observing complicated and enriched their field work in unexpected ways. When the book was published in 1999, the sexuality of anthropologists was not discussed. The ideal anthropologist was a desexed, depersonalized, impartial observer of cultures. The sexuality of those under observation might be discussed, but the anthropologist was meant to have no reaction to it, beyond perhaps a clinical curiosity. If an anthropologist wrote about personal experiences with sexuality, they were strongly encouraged to do so anonymously, for the sake of their careers. It wasn't until the late '90s that scholarly collections that dealt with the topic began to appear.

I'm not entirely sure what bearing this book will have on my thesis, but I enjoyed reading it. For the most part the authors have engaging writing styles and keep technical jargon to a minimum. The chapter that sticks with me the most clearly was written by a woman who did her fieldwork in the Caribbean. She recounts the various attempts the women in the community made to situate her within their social system according to their understanding of sexual and social relationships, essentially disregarding the anthropologist's attempts to create a desexed research persona. This complicated her personal life, but helped lead her to a more complete picture of how social and power relationships worked in the community. I thought it was a good illustration of the both the risks and rewards involved in attempting to open one's self to an unfamiliar culture, and a good reminder that one is never entirely in control of how one is perceived by others.

There was a common theme among the chapters of the observer's inability to remain uninvolved with the subjects of her or his observation. Some authors discussed how they made a conscious decision in the course of their research to reject the facade of objectivity and the pretense involved in desexualizing themselves, and involve themselves in relationships with local people, figuring that it led to richer and less exploitative relationships within the communities they were studying. Whether they chose this particular route or not, all the authors' stories confronted and questioned the traditional image of the anthropologist as impartial observer and the power over the observed that it implies. This, at least, I find relevant to development, where there is a tendency to want to reduce people and their experiences to numbers, implying that somehow, the 'experts' in development agencies know what is most important in the lives of local people, and can chart the progress, or lack of it, in local communities.

***

The other book I finished recently is just a little light reading. Shadows in Bronze, by Lindsey Davis, is the second in a series of novels that the Good Doctors introduced me to. I read the first, The Silver Pigs back in December, before I had even really thought about attempting the 50 Book Challenge, so I guess I may have a stab at a double review here.

The series is about the life and misadventures of Marcus Didius Falco, an 'informer' in the Imperial Rome of 70 A.D. What Falco is, in Davis's hands, is an homage to the hard-boiled-but-soft-at-heart 1940s private eye. Falco has a quick tongue, a nose for trouble, an eye for the ladies, and an utterly unmanageable personal life. Davis has a deft touch with characterization and banter, an eye for detail, and an ability to work a surprising amount of historical information into the text without disrupting the narrative.

As the series opens, Nero has finished wreaking havoc on the city and empire, and the new Emperor Vespasian has a precarious hold on power. Falco stumbles, as he is wont to do, on a plot to overthrow the Emperor. His investigation drags him from Rome to the gods-forsaken wilds of Britain, back to Rome again. He becomes involved with a family of senatorial rank, an uncomfortable position for a lower-class citizen of republican leanings, and learns far more about corruption and intrigue in the upper ranks of Roman society than he ever wanted to.

Shadows in Bronze picks up almost immediately where The Silver Pigs left off, with Falco involved in tidying up the loose ends left at the end of his investigation. It's thankless, underpaid work, and worse, it sends him off on a chase around Italy, trying to stay a step ahead of a murderer. As if that wasn't enough excitement, Falco is in love with an entirely inappropriate woman, he's traveling with a friend's family, and he's saddled with a nephew with growing pains. He finds himself juggling his professional role with that of pseudo-paterfamilias, frustrated lover, and infuriating (but loyal) friend, while trying to protect everyone from the man he's chasing.

Since Davis's books are littered with historical detail about everything from politics to daily life, I like to tell myself they're not totally guilty pleasures, but I read them like they are - in snatches throughout the day that usually turn out to be less brief than I intend them to be. The main appeal isn't in her research, it's Falco. Davis keeps him at the center of the books, not allowing either the pace of the narrative or the historical detail to overwhelm the development of his character. She subverts the high tone associated with Roman history by filtering it through the conventions of a 1940s private detective story, but subverts that convention as well by endowing Falco with relationships that give his character more depth than the hard-edged loners of noir legend. I couldn't be happier that there are plenty more Falco books waiting to be read - after all, I'm already almost done with the third one.

Rain, for the love of god!
Topic: Whatever
We've been sweltering here for days now. I woke up sweating. Started sweating as soon as I got out of the shower. Never really stopped sweating until I finally got settled in the movie theater early this evening. Thought I heard someone in the queue at the theater say that they'd heard it had gotten up to 46 in the city. The prediction was for 41, which is about 105 degrees, for those of you operating in Fahrenheit. Personally, after it hits about 32/90, I figure the exact temperature doesn't matter, because its too damn hot to care about fine distinctions.

Fortunately, I left the theater to strong breeze, heavy skies, and a noticeably reduced air temperature. Unfortunately, this fortuitous change in the weather had made very little difference to the temperature in my apartment, which is still giving off all the heat it sucked up this afternoon. We need a storm in the worst way - thunder, lightning, howling winds slamming raining against windows - and though it has cooled down, there's barely a breeze at the moment. Feh. I cannot face another night of lying down to sleep to find my sheets radiating heat.

Anyway, I know you're itching to hear about the movie I went to see to escape roasting and/or dessication. I saw The Constant Gardener, which I've been debating seeing for at least a month. I'm not usually much for thrillers, but I was intrigued by what I had been hearing and reading about the film, and it was pretty much the only thing playing in the right time slot.

I'm glad that I ended up seeing The Constant Gardener, although I was in the mood for a more frivolous diversion than this film offers. It tells the story of Justin (Ralph Fiennes), a British expatriate in Kenya who works for the British government's aid department, his activist wife, Tessa (Rachel Weisz), and the sordid story of corruption that he unravels as he learns about the circumstances surrounding her death.

One thing that the film does well is interweave human relationships and emotions with its grander themes. Justin's investigation of Tessa's death is driven by the tension between his love for her and his uncertainty about her love for him. Fiennes's performance is beautifully believeable, and Weisz is, for the most part, an excellent counterpart to him, although I couldn't understand why they were trying to pass her off as a 24-year-old. I found that she has far too much gravity to be believeable as a character that young.

There are some other things that the film doesn't quite get right, or explain enough. Like what caused a mild-mannered career diplomat from a foreign service family to marry a much younger woman with an intense commitment to her ideals and an uncomfortably confronting style. Fiennes and Weisz are absolutely believeable as lovers, but I'm still not convinced that it works for the character of Justin. Actually, I'm not entirely sure that 'diplomat' is the right word to describe Justin's role - I'm not familiar with the way the British system operates, but I don't think I would refer to a comparable position in the American system as a diplomatic one.

I struggled as well with the way that Kenya and the Sudan, and the local people of those places are portrayed. Basically, they serve as a backdrop to action that centers around the expatriate community. None of the black African characters are anywhere near as fully developed as the white British characters. Ultimately, though, I think that this technique works, whether it was intentional or not, because the point of the movie, basically, is that to the rest of the world, Africa doesn't matter. It's a cipher that has significance only to the extent that it can be exploited, literally and symbolically, by 'greater' powers. The mere fact that 'Africa' is considered acceptable shorthand for the setting of the movie - an entire continent, with all the social, political and geographic diversity that implies - indicates how readily most people are willing to oversimplify or ignore the continent.

However, as a significant point in its favor, the film is not disrespectful of its African settings or the people who populate them. For example, there is never a hint of an attitude that all Kenyans are alike or indistinguishable, which sadly cannot be said for many Hollywood products. Smaller players are singled out as individuals and interact with major characters in surprisingly rich ways. There are moments when a wealth of backstory is conveyed in a brief conversation or an exchange of glances.

Perhaps what surprised me the most was that a movie that has recognizable stars and a not-insignificant budget would grapple even reasonably effectively with issues affecting modern African countries and with a very complex, mature range of human emotions and relationships. It was a pleasant surprise to find that The Constant Gardener makes demands on its audience, not the least of which is attention to it's non-linear narrative structure, but more importantly, the demand it makes that you think about what you do and don't know about what goes on outside of your neighborhood.

Working from 'home'
Topic: Uni
That would not be me that the title refers to. No, it is far too hot today for me to work from home. One of those days where you wake up in the morning, despite having slept with the fan directly on you and no covers, and you think to yourself, 'Hot'. (Perhaps other people are more articulate in the morning. Myself, I am not.) While those days were common enough not to cause much comment during my East Coast summers, they are not so common here, and that sort of wake-up call heralds a particularly hot day. I packed up and headed to uni to work in the comparative comfort of the department's postgrad computer lab, where the air conditioner, although old and sorely put-upon, does at least provide a grudging draft of cooled air.

And I have not been alone. Others have been in and out over the past few hours, but my constant companion has been a youngish man I don't recall having seen around the department before, who has taken up his station at the computer next to the phone that postgrads are granted access to for in-house and local phone calls. Said gentleman is comfortably ensconced here in his sandals and shorts, with his own personal fax machine hooked up to the phone line. I thought the personal fax was a bit odd, but hey, most of us postgrads are a bit odd in one way or another. So I blithely gave it no further thought until he began making phone calls in which he introduced himself as 'Tom Shortpants, Solicitor'.

Note to self: Self, should you ever find yourself in the position requiring the engagement of a solicitor, pick one who you can confirm works from a fixed location that is not a university computer lab.

Things I have done recently:
Topic: Whatever
A fat load of nothing all afternoon after meeting with my thesis supervisor this morning. This, after having spent all day yesterday reading until I was cross-eyed because I thought I was woefully underprepared for said meeting. I continue to resist my own efforts to become one of those people who can get things done without a last-minute panic and immediately-after-last-minute burnout.

Had lunch with a friend and wrote a long-overdue e-mail. So the afternoon wasn't a loss on the social front, at least.

Giggled myself silly over the latest offering from Sars, TWoP goddess and Jersey girl extraordinaire.

Marvelled once again at the poignancy of this.

Went grocery shopping at the neighborhood's most inconsistently stocked grocery store. Always an adventure. I'd stop going there all together out of sheer frustration except that they carry a wide range of Eastern European/Turkish goodies which I enjoy perusing, even if I'm not in the mood for Kras biscuits, canned sarma or factory-fresh ajvar.

Started what hopefully will be a regular babysitting job for a local couple Mr Dr recommended me to. The kid is adorable. And possibly a bit too smart for his own good, but that won't be confirmed until he learns at least a few more words. But the way he works the gee-aren't-I-cute grin is indicative of a long toddlerhood for his parents.

Tried to muster up the energy to walk this evening after today's near-melting temperatures, and failed miserably. Plan to attempt an alarmingly out-of-character early morning walk instead. Which means the next thing I ought to do it get myself to bed.

Stuck in my head
Topic: Navel gazing
'Effective professional performance requires that one acquire a deepened awareness of one's own inner self and come to grips with the struggle which confronts all people in the quest to affirm their own human integrity and creativity. The process of self-discovery and self-knowing has an important corollary: having undertaken the journey to discover one's own self leads to acceptance of the parallel journey of others to discover their own true-authentic selves.'

~ Charles Lippy, quoted by Thomas K. Fitzgerald in 'Identity in Ethnography: Limits to Reflective Subjectivity'

I killed a tree today
Topic: Reading
Well, I didn't exactly kill it myself, not intentionally, but I printed out a lot of articles and UN documents today, and I'm feeling a bit guilty about all the paper I used. I thought about trying to read on the computer as much as possible, but I'm close to cross-eyed as it is from spending so much time on the library catalog and Google. Plus, its too hard to take notes switching between the Acrobat and Word windows. So paper it is, and I'll have to use my first post-postgrad paycheck to plant a small forest, rather than putting it to more amusing purposes. In the meantime, the trees can take their revenge on my spine as I give myself scoliosis trying to lug all this paper home in my backpack.

The day's other accomplishment was finishing Men, Militarism & UN Peacekeeping: A Gendered Analysis by Sandra Whitworth. Whitworth covered similar material as the various authors of The Postwar Moment, but approached the issue of masculinities in peacekeeping through the experiences of different countries: Cambodia, Somalia and Canada. An interesting parallel between the two books is that both address incidents where the Netherlands and Canada, "middle" powers who pride themselves on their peacekeeping experience had their national self-image as "the good guys" challenged by peacekeeping incidents - in the Dutch case, the surrender of Srebrenica and in the Canadian, the beating death of a Somalian teenager while in the custody of Canadian soldiers. Both cases highlight the tension between miitarized masculinity and the aims of peacekeeping missions, and provide insights into the myth of peacekeeping as a 'benign' variant of militarism.

Another distinguishing element of Whitworth's book is that she is more explicit in her questioning of the peacekeeping regime, posing questions about the neo-colonial nature of peacekeeping and asking whether the military is the best source for peacekeepers. A significant problem that she sees with current discussions in the UN about gender and peacekeeping is that gender is being used as a tool to solve problems that arise in peacekeeping missions, rather than as a critical tool that questions the underlying assumptions about the appropriateness and benefits of peacekeeping. Ultimately, Whitworth believes that using military forces to keep peace is counterproductive because of the risks to local men and women from peacekeepers.

Whitworth acknowledges that the questions she asks will seem impractical and idealistic to many. Myself, I'm not sure how I feel about the argument she makes at the end of the book that countries are better off without military peacekeepers than they are with them. Having heard Bosnians tell me that they believe that war would start again if the peacekeeping troops left, I'm inclined to give peacekeeping a bit more latitude, maybe. I appreciate, though, that the issue should be explored, particularly in light of the growing documentation of abuses perpetrated by peacekeeping troops. I don't know that its a question that will ever be resolved, but I appreciate Whitworth's willingness to ask it, and the thoroughness with which she establishes why she has been prompted to do that asking.

Update: I just finished Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love by Dava Sobel, while I was eating dinner. I'm very glad that I recently found out that she published a third book, The Planets just last year, because Galileo's Daughter was even better than Longitude, and I think I'm now hooked on Sobel.

Galileo's Daughter is perhaps a slightly misleading title, because the man himself is the major subject of the book. Sobel breathes life into the character of Galileo as only a talented biographer can. But she also offers tantalizing glimpses into the life of his oldest daughter, Suor Maria Celeste, a cloistered nun of the Order of Poor Clares. Suor Maria Celeste was a devoted correspondent of Galileo's, the child (he had three) to whom he could best relate both intellectually and spiritually. Unfortunately, only half of their correspondence has survived - Galileo kept his daughter's letters, but the ones he wrote to her are presumed to have been destroyed by the abbess of her convent, since at the time of Suor Maria Celeste's death, her father was still very much in the bad graces of the Vatican.

Sobel casts Galileo as a man of both science and faith, who could not stop trying to advance the former, but who had no desire to do so at the expense of the latter. Far from seeing a conflict between science and faith, Sobel's Galileo attempts to embrace both, unfortunately falling afoul of Church authorities whose understanding of the relationship between God and the world was less flexible and inquisitive than his own.

As in Longitude, Sobel's account of Galileo's life draws in countless colorful details that paint a rich picture of life in seventeenth-century Italy, from the convent where Suor Maria Celeste spent her days to the cities where her father moved in illustrious circles. The plague, Church politics, convent activities, and the daily concerns of housekeeping thread their way through the story of Galilei family. The ending of that story, as we know, isn't exactly a happy one, but it is a moving one, because Sobel succeeds in making Galileo and Suor Maria Celeste people that the reader can care about as people, not just as historical figures.

Hows about some nostalgia, hon?
Topic: Raving
Kit advertises Mango & Ginger as 'a blog about loving food'. And she does love her food, providing proof in recipes, pictures, and stories about memorable meals. What I like best, though, is that much of her blog is about loving food in Baltimore, because almost all of my best memories of Baltimore involve friends and food: very literally, in some cases - there have been a number of memorable gatherings at Friends in Fells Point, which, despite tough competition from Brewer's Art and Dizzy Issie's, wins my vote for the Baltimore bar with the best food, and could almost do it on the strength of their crab dip alone.

Mmmmmmmm. Crab dip.

Sorry. Got a bit lost there for a second. The crab dip at Friends is that good. But this is not a post about crab dip (mmmmmmmmmmm). Kit's latest post reminded me of one of my favorite ways to spend a Saturday, which was to roll out of bed late and wander around the Broadway Market deciding where to get brunch. The only problem was that there are so many places at the market to choose from, it could take a long time to decide where to eat. But it was a lovely, leisurely way to start off a Saturday, and could, if the mood was right, lead to an afternoon of shopping in Fells Point and an early evening stop at Friends for a beer and crab dip. Mmmmmmmmm. Crab dip.

While Kit's marketing adventures took place in Federal Hill, which is across the harbor from Fells and is one of the Baltimore neighborhoods I didn't spend a lot of time in, basically everything she says about Federal Hill applies to Fells as well - charming, historical, a bit gentrified without having lost all its local color, tends to be overrun with sodden young professionals after work on Fridays, and even more sodden college students from Thursday afternoon onward. But Fells on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon is a lovely place to hang out, and when the colleges are out for summer and winter breaks, evenings there can be quite nice, as well.

I have yet to find a neighborhood in Melbourne that does everything that Fells Point could do. Crab dip is probably too much to hope for, but I haven't found a neighborhood here where I could reasonably spend most of an afternoon and evening doing a bit of eating, a bit of shopping, and a bit of sitting on the waterfront watching people. Some of that is, no doubt influenced by the fact that I definitely have less money, and I feel like I have less time than when I lived in Baltimore, but some credit has to go to Fells Point for getting the mix of activities right and being a good neighborhood to hang out in.

What I know about the world
Topic: Quotidiana

I bought a child's desk when I was furnishing my flat. It was $15, if I remember correctly, and it has no drawers. What it does have is a world map printed on its top, and that's why I decided I needed it.

I fell in love with maps as a child. I think I was about ten when my parents gave me an atlas for Christmas or my birthday, and I was smitten with the possibilities that the maps in it represented. I had a globe, too - I can't remember if I got the globe before the atlas or not - but I do remember that I loved to give it a sharp spin, jab my finger at it while the colors were still a blur, and imagine (wild, romantic, entirely underinformed imaginings) what it would be like to live in the country I was pointing to. Although, often enough my finger ended up resting in the middle of an ocean, which put a bit of a crimp in the game.

The map on my desk has several entertaining features. One is that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is a vast green blob swallowing eastern Europe and northen Asia, just as it was on that childhood globe. Another is that, instead of North and South America sitting in the center of the world, the map is arranged so that eastern Asia and Australia are closest to the middle of the image. So the two strongest visual positions, the left and center, are occupied by Europe/Africa and the Asia/Pacific region, respectively.

It was very funny to stumble across a reminder of the subtle ways my worldview has been influenced in a second-hand shop. Even after years of exposure to the concept of maps as artifacts of a particular culture, its still hard for me to get past the presumed objectivity of the image of the world presented in the Mercator projection in my grade school textbooks. After all, there the world is, neatly delineated with clear boundaries, overlaid with the tidy gridwork of meridians and parallels. All the information you need in pastel colors and bold print. It's a very definitive view of the world; everything and everyone in its place.

A map makes the world seem 'knowable' in a way that the pictures and stories that are merely travelers impressions do not. But it seems to me that those stories and pictures are more true than maps, and more honest about the way people experience the world. We know that experience is individual and subjective, whereas maps attempt to be universal and objective. But as the difference between the maps I grew up with and the map now on my desk demonstrates, subjectivity can never be entirely out of the picture where our worldviews are concerned.

Today's ruminations inspired by Stay of Execution and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.