ABSTRACT: The purpose of this paper is to accomplish two objectives: (1) review and flesh out in detail the philosophical, theoretical, and pragmatic issues underlying differing perspectives on sustainability and offer up an integrated sustainability framework; (2) consolidate and utilize the findings from the literature review to shed theoretical and practical insights into the foundation of sustainability leadership. This paper takes an integrative approach of weaving and stitching together theories from the field of philosophy, ecology, social psychology, sociobiology, anthropology, economics, and strategic management to provide an integrated view of sustainability and sustainability leadership. Finally, the paper will cogently argue that morality, virtuousness, and character serve as building blocks for sustainability leadership and in so doing offer up a series of six propositions about the antecedents and outcomes of sustainability and sustainability leadership. The paper concludes with recommendations for future study and research.

Introduction

According to the United Nations, the world population reached 7 billion on October 31, 2011. This milestone in human history represents both an achievement and a challenge. The paramount challenge of this century is to meet the needs of 7 billion human beings now – and the billions to come – while protecting the intricate balance with nature that sustains life. I include here a direct quote by Peter M. Senge in the foreword for John Ehrenfeld’s (2008) book, Sustainability by Design, to help facilitate the direction and tone for this paper:

This simple word, sustainability, has escaped from the clutches of academics and social activists and now shows up in newspapers and political speeches. But what does it mean? […] for Ehrenfeld it is all about “flourishing,” not just surviving […] For millennia, societies that have nurtured civilization, east and west, north and south, have honored the timeless quest after transcendent ideals: the good, the true, and the beautiful; to be guided by Great Spirit, the Tao. When such aspirations become replaced by the mindless quest for more, we fall out of alignment with our deepest nature. Is it any wonder that we then fall out of alignment with nature as a whole? Economics is the science of means, the efficient use of resources; it has nothing to say,

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 2

inherently, about ends. Yet, there is hardly a politician on the planet who does not believe that her or his job security does not hinge on economic growth. (p. xiv)

The economist and philosopher David Korten (2008) suggests that history will look back at this time as either the Great Unraveling or the Great Turning. What is sustainability? John Ehrenfeld defines sustainability as “the possibility that humans and other life will flourish on earth forever” (Ehrenfeld, 2008, p.49). He elaborates further, suggesting that sustainability is an existential problem, not an environmental or social one and accordingly we cannot and will not begin to take care of the world until we become whole ourselves. Ehrenfeld’s position on sustainability is more fundamental than the often-cited Brundtlund’s definition of sustainable development which involves meeting “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987, p. 8). Put another way, the goal of sustainability is to meet the basic needs of all and extend to everyone the opportunity to fulfill their aspirations for a better life, while moderating and renewing the use of finite resources (Shrivastava, 1995). I contend that sustainability requires a holistic approach to its understanding and adoption of strategies that migrate away from the mechanistic, philosophical, and purely economic prescriptions that are prevalent in present day research and practice. The interconnected nature of sustainability calls for borderless strategies – both geographical and institutional.

The landscape of this paper is divided into three major sections. The first section provides different perspectives on sustainability with literature review from different fields, such as philosophy and social science; physical and natural science; economics and strategic management, to capture their respective positions and their contribution to the field of sustainability. At the end of each review, I offer up a proposition to set the stage to argue for an integrated sustainability framework. There are four propositions (P1, P2, P3, P4) in the first section (refer to figure 1). The second section consolidates the findings from the first section and provides an integrated model for sustainability. This model argues that morality and virtue ethics undergird the foundation of sustainability. The third section extends the findings and insights; it explores, and discusses the antecedents for sustainability leadership and offers up two propositions (P5, P6). The six propositions in this paper are summarized in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1. Summary of Propositions

P5, P6

Individual P3 P4 S Sustainability Leadership Organiza Societal tional Systems Thinking P2 Sustainability

Outcomes

Virtue Ethics P1

Moral and Ethical Foundations for Sustainability: A Multi-disciplinary Approach • 3

Perspectives on Sustainability

In this first section, I provide different perspectives of sustainability from different fields; each field defines the complexity of sustainability through their unique lens and proposes their unique response to the challenge of our times. I will review the fields of philosophy and social science, physical and natural science, economics, and strategic management.

Contribution from the field of Philosophy and Social Science

Gomis, Parra, Hoffman, and Mcnulty (2011) define sustainability within the ethics framework; they posit a kind of virtue similar to the Aristotelian notion of “prudence and temperance”:

Sustainability refers to a moral way of acting, and ideally habitual, in which the person or group intends to avoid deleterious effects on the environmental, social, and economic domains, and which is consistent with a harmonious relationship with those domains that is conducive to a flourishing life. (Gomis et al., p. 176)

In this section, I explore sustainability through the lens of philosophers and social scientists.

Virtue-based View of Morality

The word ethics comes from the Greek word ethos and ethikos. Toffler (1986) translated ethos as character and ethikos as “the theory of living.” He defined ethics as “rules or standards” and moral as “relating to principles of right and wrong.” The two words – moral and virtue are intimately related and for the purpose of this paper, I will use them interchangeably. Virtues are skills of social perception and action (Churchland, 1988; Dewey, 1922; McDowell, 1979) that must be acquired and refined over a lifetime. According to social psychologists Haidt and Kesebir (2010) an important feature of virtue-based view is that, it educates children not just by teaching rules but also by shaping children’s perceptions, emotions, and intuitions. A second feature of virtue-based view is that it emphasizes practice and habit, rather than knowledge and reasoning.

From an organizational perspective Cameron, Bright, and Caza (2004) summarized the view of numerous scholars’ perspectives on virtuousness. Virtuousness is associated with what individuals and organizations aspire to be when they are at their very best. States of virtuousness are uniquely human, and they represent conditions of flourishing, ennoblement, and vitality (Lipman-Blumen & Leavitt, 1999). Virtuousness has been defined in connection with meaningful life purpose (Becker, 1992; Overholster, 1999), the ennoblement of human beings (Eisenberg, 1990), personal flourishing (Nussbaum, 1994; Weiner, 1993), and that which leads to health, happiness, transcendent meaning, and resilience in suffering (Myers, 2000a, 2000b; Ryff & Singer, 1998). It produces “moral muscle,” willpower, or stamina in the face of challenges (Baumeister & Exline, 1999, 2000; Emmons, 1999; Seligman, 1999). At the aggregate level, virtuousness has been associated with organizations, communities, and cultures. According to economist Adam Smith (1790/1976) and sociologist George Simmel (1950), it is the basis upon which all societies and economies flourish because virtuousness is synonymous with the internalization of moral rules that produce social harmony (Baumeister & Exline, 1999). Virtuousness in societies provides the integral elements of good citizenship (White, 1980), reciprocity (Simmel, 1950), and stability (Smith, 1790/1976) needed to ensure societal longevity. JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 4

Cardinal Virtues

Thomas Aquinas (2005) proposed four primary Christian virtues: justice, fortitude, temperance, and prudence. According to Aquinas, justice, the first cardinal virtue, means giving to each person, and other living beings what they deserve (e.g. basic human rights and what is needed to live a full life). Aristotle (2005) also gave the virtue of justice great attention and he talked about two types of justice – general justice that deals mostly with laws and particular justice that deals with fairness. Both Aristotle and Aquinas understood the moral significance of the created world and they counseled humans to consider their duties to it. Within the context of sustainability and sustainability leadership, we need the virtue of justice to help us navigate the ever complex and challenging issue of our time. The virtue of justice requires a genuine and thoughtful response from us: (1) to act justly; (2) to foster just relationships between people and planet earth; (3) to consider the global extinction of endangered species as well as the hundreds of millions of people who lack the environmental resources necessary to live a life of dignity; and (4) foster the kind of character that cares about fairness and equity in the world.

The second cardinal virtue is fortitude, often referred to as courage or bravery. When faced with a challenging situation, fear can dominate and take the place of reason and dissuade one from pursuing what is right. Fortitude is working with fear to do the right thing – perseverance in the face of adversity. The information contained in scientific reports about the state of the world can be truly frightening (e.g., global warming), and can engender a state of paralysis. The virtue of fortitude unfreezes us to move beyond our negative feelings and focus on what kind of person we want to be, what kind of character will help us live out our commitments. Courage can give us the perseverance to struggle for justice in the face of discouragement. Courageous individuals act prudently and “stand immovable in the midst of dangers” (Aquinas, 2005). Fortitude spawns “the quality of mind and spirit that enables one to face up to the ethical challenges firmly and confidently, without flinching or retreating” (Kidder, 2005). As a sustainability leader, Ray Anderson (1998) embodied this virtue – he courageously confessed to being “the plunderer of the earth” in contextualizing his vision for a sustainable world.

The third virtue of temperance speaks to the idea of moderation and the ability to control one’s emotions. Aristotle (2005) compares a man who lacks temperance to a stereotypically spoiled child who knows no limits. A temperate person avoids what Aquinas called “concupiscible passion” which is defined as an extreme attachment to pleasure and an extreme aversion to pain (Knight, 2006). The current consumerism society is at odds with this virtue. For example, the United States has the world's highest per capita consumption, and people around the globe have utilized natural resources such as forests, fisheries, and ecosystems to support the western way of life in an unsustainable manner. Many industrial processes employed to create consumer goods generate large quantities of toxic chemicals, and these have a much greater chance of harming disadvantaged communities than wealthy ones. The virtue of temperance is a highly desirable ethic that can be used to moderate consumerism. One relatively simple way to express solidarity with those suffering environmental injustice can be to reduce one's consumption, especially of materials that require the use of toxic chemicals for their production. Temperance is an antidote to greed.

The last virtue is prudence and is often associated with knowledge, insight, and practical wisdom. Aristotle (2005) uses the word phronesis –which describes the ability to find the balance between two extremes and make appropriate decisions by minimizing harm and maximizing the Moral and Ethical Foundations for Sustainability: A Multi-disciplinary Approach • 5

good. He further states that finding the moral sweet spot is a skill that requires learning and knowledge. Many consider prudence as the mother of all virtues as it has a “directive capacity with regard to other virtues. It lights the way and measures the arena for their exercise” (Delaney, 1911) by managing and leading people in the right direction. Without prudence, the practice of fortitude can morph into foolhardiness, temperance may turn into fanaticism, and justice degenerates into weakness. The virtue of prudence entices us to consider making wise judgments in complex tradeoffs in the world of sustainability. This is a critical habit to develop for those seeking a more sustainable world. According to the Brundtland Report, “sustainability means meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs” (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987, p. 8). It always requires a balance between competing needs, and thus making wise choices. This would suggest that we take precautionary action now, and assume the responsibility for environmental protection over time, rather than push problems off on future generations. The Serenity Prayer attributed to St. Francis of Assisi captures the spirit of prudence:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change Courage to change the things I can And the wisdom to know the difference

To summarize the cardinal virtues, prudence does what is just, while temperance and fortitude protect prudence from inner and outer threat. Temperance and fortitude seek to make a good person, while it is only the specific aim of justice to make a good person a good citizen (Floyd, 2006). The world-renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs1 (2011a) in his recent book, The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity, calls on his fellow citizen to restore basic virtues as the foundations of national prosperity. Virtue ethics provide moral orientation and undergird the foundation for sustainability. I conclude the review of the field of philosophy and social science with the first proposition.

Proposition One (P1): Sustainability disposition is positively related (anchored and rooted) to morals and ethics.

Contribution from the field of Physical and Natural Science

Many leading scholars in the fields of physical and natural sciences (Capra, 2002; Senge, 1990; Maturana, 1987; Bertanffy, 1968) champion systems thinking as a moderating factor in today’s complex, often overwhelming, and seemingly out-of-control world. Our fragmented, linear, cause-effect, Cartesian approaches to dealing with life and its institutions are not functioning optimally to say the least. Senge (1990) defines systems thinking as a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework that focuses on interrelationships, on patterns of change and not static ‘snapshots’. He attributes much of the unhealthiness in the world today to our inability to view the world holistically.

The field of organismic biology during the first half of the century spawned a new way of thinking – ‘systems thinking’ – in terms of connectedness, relationships, and context (Capra, 2002).

1 Jeffrey D. Sachs is Professor of Economics and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is also Special Adviser to United Nations Secretary-General on the Millennium Development Goals. JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 6

Systems thinking represents a fundamental move away from Descartes method of analytic thinking. System thinking is “contextual,” which is the opposite of analytic thinking. According to the systems view, the essential properties of an organism, or living systems, are properties of the whole, not found in any individual parts. Simply put, we live in a dynamic, ever changing universe, where no single action occurs in isolation but is inextricably linked, often to many other actions – everything is connected to everything else (Ferdig, 2007).

Associated with the idea of systems thinking is an important characteristics called emergence. Ehrenfeld (2008) asserts that emergent properties are features of complex systems that are recognized by observers standing outside of the systems. Emergence is the result of relationships among the parts, even if we cannot quantify them. In very simple terms, emergence is what we mean when we say the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. For example, hydrogen and oxygen in isolation from each other would not result in wetness. Wetness is an emergent characteristic of the mutual interaction of hydrogen and oxygen when combined to produce the molecular form called water. Ehrenfeld (2008) defines sustainability as “the possibility of humans and other life forms flourishing on the planet forever” (p. 49). In this context both flourishing and sustainability are emergent properties of complex living systems. According to Wheatley and Frieze (2008), emergence violates many Western assumptions of how change happens. In nature, change never happens with a top-down, pre-conceived strategic plan, or from the mandate of any single individual or boss. Change begins as local actions spring up simultaneously in many different areas. If these changes remain disconnected, nothing happens beyond each locale. However, when they become connected, local actions can emerge as a powerful system with influence at a more global or comprehensive level. (Global in this instance means a larger scale, not necessarily the entire planet.) These powerful emergent phenomena appear suddenly and surprisingly. Think about how the Berlin Wall suddenly came down, how the Soviet Union ended, how corporate power quickly came to dominate globally. In each case, there were many local actions and decisions, most of which were invisible and unknown to each other, and none of which was powerful enough by itself to create change. However, when these local changes coalesced, new power emerged.

Fritjof Capra2 (2002) developed a conceptual framework that integrated biological, cognitive and social dimensions of life and allowed for the adoption of a systematic approach to sustainability. He provided some practical illustrations to breathe life into his framework – he discussed the deficiency of the economist’s theoretical framework of externalities and recommended ways to counteract their deficiencies. Capra argued that corporate economists treated natural resources – air, land, water as free commodities and for the most part, they subscribed to the “take, make, and waste paradigm”. Private profits take precedence over public costs in the general deterioration of the environment and quality of life, at the expense of future generations. The marketplace, which the economist relies on, simply gives the wrong information. There is a lack of feedback, and basic ecological literacy would suggest that such a system is unsustainable. Capra suggests an ecological tax reform to effect positive change. The tax reform would be revenue neutral, shifting the tax burden from income taxes to “eco-taxes.” This means that taxes will be added to existing products and services to reflect the true costs. This strategy utilizes the basic

2 Fritjof Capra is the bestselling author of The Tao of Physics, The Web of Life, The Hidden Connections, The Science of Leonardo, and other books. A physicist best known for his work in systems thinking, Capra is also cofounder and chair of the board of the Center for Ecoliteracy.

Moral and Ethical Foundations for Sustainability: A Multi-disciplinary Approach • 7

economic principle of supply and demand to locate the ‘sustainability sweet spot.’ The long-term and slow ecological tax reform would gradually drive wasteful and harmful technologies and consumption patterns out of the market. As energy prices go up, with corresponding income tax reductions to offset the increase, people will increasingly switch from cars to other mode of transportation such as bicycles, and public transport. As taxes on petrochemicals and fuel increases, with the corresponding decrease in income taxes, organic farming will become not only the healthiest but also the cheapest means of food production.

Understanding the systems approach to sustainability has far-reaching implications, it will provide the necessary orientation and structure for the design and formulation of sustainable economic and business strategy. I conclude the review from the field of physical and natural science with the second proposition.

Proposition Two (P2): The systemic conception of life, mind, and consciousness transcends disciplinary boundaries and this conception of life positively relates to flourishing and hence sustainability.

Contribution from the field of Economics

The economic perspective or economic way of thinking envisions individuals and institutions making rational decisions by comparing the marginal benefits and marginal costs associated with their actions (McConnell, Brue, Flynn, & Barbeiro, 2010). This perspective implies that individuals must coordinate their wants and desire in a world of finite resources. Most people would agree that we have a responsibility to manage the planet’s resources in order to ensure that future generations have access to a good quality of life that is sustainable. Economists John Pezzy (1992) and Eban Goodstein (2008) define this goal more precisely as sustainability (similar to Brundtland’s definition): “providing the typical person alive in the future with a standard of living, including both material and environmental welfare, at least as high as that enjoyed by the typical person today”.

Neoclassical and Ecological Economics

Conversations about sustainability by economists can be divided into two broad categories (Goodstein, 2008), neoclassical and ecological. Neoclassical3 economists posit that: (1) created capital can generally substitute for natural capital in production; and (2) technological progress will uncover these substitutes as natural capital becomes scarce. The assumptions imply that “resources are not running out.” They believe that market-based economies provide powerful foundations for achieving sustainability – as resource becomes scarce, prices will rise, and innovations will yield high-quality substitutes resulting in lower prices.

Fundamentally, neoclassical economists tend to view nature as highly resilient. Although they see a need for government regulation to control and regulate resource depletion, they are optimistic that as markets spread, living standards will rise and population growth rate will fall, all within the acceptable range of environmental degradation.

3 The Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (AERE) – housed in a think tank in Washington, DC, called Resources for the Future (RFF), represent the Neoclassical. www.rff.org. JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 8

In contrast, ecological4 economists argue that natural and created capitals are complements – that is they are used together in production and have low substitutability. They subscribe to the Malthusian view (Malthus, 1798) and accordingly believe that rapid increases in population coupled with an even faster consumption are putting unsustainable pressure on the earth’s natural resource base.

They are technological pessimists and believe in the notion that the earth is “running out of resources.” Fundamentally, ecological economists view nature as fragile and while not hostile to the spread of markets, they prefer an expanded role of government in protecting the natural stock. Ecological economics promotes the notion to redesign the economy so that it restores rather than degrades natural systems, accrues rather than depletes natural resources. From the ecological perspective, Paul Hawken (1993) offers a vision of a transformed economy in which business practices mimic natural systems.

Heated debate continues between the two camps, the issue ultimately comes down to the degree of substitution between natural and created capital, and this differs from case to case. That said, there is an important point that both camps agree on and this point of agreement fundamentally affects the sustainability paradigm. Gross domestic product (GDP) is the government measure of the final value of all goods and services produced and consumed in the market annually; it also equals the income earned and spent by consumers (Goodstein, 2008) and it is the most widely used measure to gauge the health of an economy. GDP is a bad measure of sustainability (Goodstein, 2008; Cobb, Halstead, & Rowe, 1995) and on this point both ecological and neoclassical economists agree. They offer different measurement alternatives. GDP has at least four well-known problems. (1) GDP fails to include the value of nonmarket production; (2) GDP fails to subtract the costs of growth; (3) GDP fails to account for the depreciation of the capital used up in production; and (4) GDP reflects the experience of the “average” rather than the “typical” person. Neoclassical economists proposed alternative measures of sustainability such as net national welfare (NNW) (Goodstein, 2008) and genuine progress indicator (GPI) (Cobb, Halstead, & Rowe, 1995). Since ecological economists do not view natural and created capital as substitutes, they reject the NNW approach and instead use physical measures of ecosystem resilience and resource stocks weighted against population and consumption pressure as their measure of sustainability. Setting their differences aside, what is important to note is that the conversation has shifted away from GDP towards a more relevant and comprehensive measure of sustainability – a conversation that engenders flourishing.

Jeffrey Sachs (2011b) was a co-host with Bhutan’s Prime Minister, Jigme Thinley, a leader in sustainable development and a great champion of the concept of gross national happiness “GNH”. Forty years ago, the kingdom of Bhutan adopted the notion of GNH rather than GNP to measure prosperity. The assembly examined how to achieve happiness in a world that is characterized by rapid urbanization, mass media, global capitalism, and environmental degradation. How can economic life be re-ordered to recreate a sense of community, trust, and environmental sustainability? Here are some of the initial conclusions:

4 The International Society of Ecological Economics represents ecological group; browse ISEE at www.ecoeco.org. Moral and Ethical Foundations for Sustainability: A Multi-disciplinary Approach • 9

1. We should not denigrate the value of economic progress.

2. Relentless pursuit of GNP to the exclusion of other goals is also no path to happiness.

3. Both individuals and societies achieve happiness through a balanced approach to life.

4. Global capitalism presents many direct threats to happiness.

5. To promote happiness, we must identify the many factors other than GNP that can raise or lower society’s well-being.

Deep knowledge of economics allows the formulations of more subtle and powerful hypotheses and the development of a richer sustainability strategy – it promotes the operationalization of sustainability (example: the notion of gross national happiness). I conclude the review of the field of economics with the third proposition.

Proposition Three (P3): A Gross National Happiness (GNH) indicator provides for a more accurate measure of social well-being and relates positively to sustainability.

Contribution from the field of Strategic Management

Strategy is fundamental to an organization’s success. According to some leading scholars in the field, strategy is:

the determination of the basic and long-term goals and objectives of an enterprise, and the adoption of the courses of action and the allocation of resources necessary to carry out these goals (Chandler, 1962).

the pattern of objectives, purposes or goals, and the major polices and plans for achieving these goals, stated in such a way as to define what business the company is in or should be in or the kind of company it is or should be (Andrews, 1971).

what determines the framework of a firm’s business activities and provide guidelines for coordinating activities so that the firm can cope with influence of the changing environment. Strategy articulates the firm’s preferred environment and the type of organization it is striving to become (Itami, 1987).

The idea that strategy defines what business the company is in or should be in or the kind of company it is or should be implies that strategic decisions determine the company’s psyche, shape its competitive stance, the value it will add to society, and finally determine if it will get on the road to sustainability. Ray Anderson (1998), a corporate sustainability pioneer, spoke directly to this point when he redefined how Interface, the company he founded, will reinvent itself by embedding sustainability at the “genetic” level to achieve competitive advantage, which encompass many new opportunities to achieve superior value through stakeholder value creation. Some business strategists and thought leaders in the field (Hart, 2010; Laszlo & Zhexembageva, 2011) posit that it is indeed possible to focus on both doing good and doing well, and that the time is ripe to unshackle ourselves from the “trade-off myth” (Hart, 2010, p.19). JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 10

Hart asserts that business – more than government or civil society – is uniquely equipped at this point in history to lead us toward a sustainable world. He argues that corporations are the only entities in the world today with the technology, resources, capacity, and global reach required. Business strategists like Hart and Laszlo have ceaselessly advocated embedding sustainability into the core business strategy. To illustrate their position that business will lead the sustainability journey, consider the case of Wal-Mart. In 2005, Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott made a startling announcement broadcast to all 1.6 million employees and communicated to some 60,000 suppliers that Wal-Mart is initiating a far-reaching “business sustainability strategy” (Plambeck & Denend, 2008). Wal-Mart selected three goals as part of their sustainability vision: 1) to be supplied 100 percent by renewable energy; 2) to create zero waste; and 3) to sell products that sustain the environment. The ripple effect of Wal-Mart’s ambitious goals would be astounding when it achieves its sustainability vision.

However, some critics argue that corporations get on the sustainability “bandwagon” solely as a ‘business case’ – that is in terms of profitability and strategic advantage. For example, in a Time Magazine article, “GE’s Green Awakening,” it is stated that, “GE has a history of opposing environmental regulations that don’t suit the firm”. And yet, according to the article, the company’s new CEO, Jeff Immelt, is pushing the company in areas associated with sustainability. “Is Immelt responding to a guilty corporate conscience?” the article asks. “No. He’s seizing a blossoming opportunity: Green is where the green is” (Fonda, 2005). I take the position that by allowing strategic management as a discipline to blossom, it will facilitate the operationalization of sustainability. Both Hart (2010) and Laszlo & Zhexembayeva (2011) proposed fresh ideas and models on parallel tracks to actualize the notion of “doing good and doing well without trade-offs”. Hart proposed The Sustainable Value Portfolio5 and Laszlo proposed and developed the idea of Embedded Sustainability6. I conclude the review of the field of strategic management with the fourth proposition.

Proposition Four (P4): Strategic management fosters the germination and emergence of business creativity – “it is possible to do good and do well” and this positively relates to sustainability.

The following section will make a compelling argument that all these different fields provide “grist for the sustainability mill” that eventually leads to flourishing – a true convergence.

Integrated Sustainability Model

All four perspectives on sustainability approach the subject through their respective lenses, with pros and cons associated with each perspective, but when viewed as an integrated whole, we get an integrated sustainability framework (see Figure 2). I posit that morality and virtue ethics undergird the sustainability “pyramid,” while systems thinking, economics, and strategic

5 The concept of The Sustainable Value Portfolio can be found in Stuart Hart’s book, Capitalism at the Crossroad. 6 The concept of Embedded Sustainability can be found in Chris Laszlo & N. Zhexembayeva’s book, Embedded Sustainability the Next Big Competitive Advantage. Moral and Ethical Foundations for Sustainability: A Multi-disciplinary Approach • 11

management operationalize sustainability. All the different fields provide “grist for the sustainability mill” that eventually leads to flourishing – a true convergence.

Morality and virtue ethics provide direction and suggest what is appropriate, legitimate, and feasible for the organization to focus on. They connect individuals and organizations to what is valuable and enduring. The integrative nature of systems thinking provides a spawning ground for the emergence of creativity. In the field of economics, seminal thinkers like David Ricardo (1817) formulated the notion of economic rents that have served society well. The field of strategic management leveraged Ricardo’s work and developed it into the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm. RBV theory maintains and explains how firms’ resources and capabilities are sources of sustained competitive advantage. According to the RBV theory, resources and capabilities are bundles of tangible and intangible assets, including a firm’s management and organizational skills, and knowledge it controls that can be used to help choose and implement strategies (Barney, 1991). As mentioned earlier, both Hart (2010) and Laszlo & Zhexembayeva (2011) proposed fresh ideas and models on parallel tracks to actualize the notion of “doing good and doing well without tradeoffs.” To summarize, morals and virtues provide the fuel while the field of systems thinking, economics, and strategic management operationalizes sustainability.

Figure 2. Integrated Sustainability Framework

One can visualize the integration When leaders and their of sustainability activities by way organizations pursueFoundations objectives of Sustainability of the triangle in Figure 1. Each and actions in one area without corner represents a different area Environmental understanding their impact of focus – environmental, social, more broadly, they may and economic – yet each corner is inadvertently negate or an integral part of the holistic undermine well-considered integration of sustainability objectives and actions being knowledge, understanding, actions, pursued by others who are also outcomes, and impact. committed to a sustainable future” (Ferdig 2007).

S Operationalization of Sustainability

Systems Thinking Social Economic

Prude Foundations of Core Virtues – Prudence; Fortitude, Temperance, Justice Sustainability

With an integrated model of sustainability in place the next section addresses sustainability leadership – are there any ‘special’ requirements to lead in this domain? JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 12

Implications for Sustainability Leadership

Based on the integrated model, sustainability leadership will need to extend the capabilities and attributes associated with traditional leadership as espoused under established leadership theories such as ethical leadership, transformational leadership, and authentic leadership. Sustainability leadership endeavors to acquire and adopt unique approaches to today’s complex leadership challenge. Ferdig (2007) has a unique perspective and she defines sustainability leadership as:

Anyone who takes responsibility for understanding and acting upon complex sustainability challenges qualifies as a ‘sustainability leader’ whether or not they hold formal leadership position or acknowledged political and social-economic influence. Sustainability leaders take conscious actions, individually and collectively, leading to outcomes that nurture, support, and sustain healthy economic, environmental, and social systems. (p. 32)

Ferdig (2007) went a step further and offer up her position on sustainability by contributing the following to sustainability leadership literature:

1. Sustainability leaders engender an environment for people to come together and generate their own answers. They recognize that the experience of change itself, and the dissonance it creates, fuels new thinking, discoveries and innovations that can revitalize organizations, communities, and ultimately the earth. (Ferdig & Ludema, 2005)

2. Sustainability leaders subscribe to the holistic view of life. This can result in win/win partnerships and joint strategies that maximize the use of resources needed to initiate far-reaching solutions.

3. Sustainability leaders manifest the virtue of humility – they put away ego- driven certainty of ‘right’ answers. Instead of avoiding or ‘managing’ conflict, they become adept at exploring differences with people in ways that enhance the potential of identifying, understanding, and confronting challenges. (Shaw, 2002)

Portugal and Yukl (1994) proposed three distinct behaviors critical for environmental leaders: (1) articulating an inspired vision with environmental components; (2) raising awareness of environmental issues to change perceptions; and (3) taking symbolic actions to demonstrate personal commitment. They contend successful environmental leadership is a dynamic process and it requires influencing, consensus building, and coalition forming with internal and external stakeholders.

Cox (2005) conducted an in-depth study of for-profit organizations pursuing sustainability. These were organizations that subscribed to the notion that it was possible to focus on both doing well and doing good. Based on his research findings, he re-conceptualized leadership in the context of living organizations, which he called organic leadership:

Moral and Ethical Foundations for Sustainability: A Multi-disciplinary Approach • 13

Organic leadership is an array of dynamic, open, complex relational and dialogic process focused on facilitating the emergence of high performance environments that human experience around corporate responsibility, sustainability, and social justice principle within the business context. These processes of relating are ubiquitous and similar to the organizing processes found in all living systems. The essence of organic leadership is purpose, relationships, conversation, and self-organization. (p. 185)

Cox (2005) listed five core commitments or competencies that sustainability leaders exhibited and offered some practical insights. The five commitments include: (1) working from a deep sense of personal purpose; (2) redefining the purpose of business; (3) working with a broad range of stakeholders; (4) engaging in transformational interactions; and (5) embracing emergent organizations (p. 120). Although Ferdig (2007), Portugal and Yukl (1994), and Cox (2005) radically expanded the contribution to sustainability leadership literature, in today’s challenging business environment the attributes and applications associated with traditional leadership theories are more critical than ever.

Sustainability Leadership and Virtue Ethics Connections

Leadership is deeply rooted in virtue, and leaders being key organizational members have extensive influence and power (Barling et al., 2010). Bass and Steidlmeier (1999) posit that leadership is a moral compass, and that a leader’s ethical values and actions are pillars of leadership. Ethical leaders exert positive, “virtuous influence” on followers through role modeling and relationship building and contribute to a win-win situation for both business and employees (Neubert et al., 2009). Leadership is about character and as Dr. Martin Luther King said, “I dream of an America in which man would be judged not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character”. What is the “content of character?” It is morals and virtues, and more precisely, the set of classical human virtues – courage, justice, humanity, temperance, wisdom, and transcendence. Virtues serve as foundations and building blocks of leadership. Leadership character is forged through the cultivation of virtue and one’s growth as a leader is proportionate to one’s growth in virtue. Major leadership theory such as ethical, transformational, authentic, and sustainability leadership have clear moral dimensions with strong virtuous undertones.

Virtuousness is associated with moral goodness and is conducive to eudaimonia, the happiness associated with human flourishing. It represents what is good, right, and worthy of cultivation (McCullough & Snyder, 2000; Peterson, 2003). Virtuousness is most closely associated with goods of first intent or that which is inherently good, such as love, wisdom, and fulfillment. Goods of second intent include that which is good for the sake of obtaining something else, such as profit, prestige, or power. People never tire of or become satiated with goods of first intent, but that is not true of goods of second intent. The moral component of virtuousness is characterized by goods of first intent, is desired for its own sake, and it is characteristic of organizations as well as individuals (Peterson & Park, 2003). These goods are associated with anything that contributes to the flourishing of human beings and their moral character (Ryff & Singer, 1998). The virtue of sustainability is one that is conducive to creating the happiness that follows from a world in balance, which is essential to human flourishing (Gomis, Parra, Hoffman, & Mcnulty, 2011).

Proposition Five (P5): Sustainability leaders are anchored in virtue ethics and do not rely on rule-based ethics; they affirm that the essence of ethics is more than just rules – rules are JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 14 subservient to virtue. The heart of a sustainability leader is imbued with virtue causing it to flourish.

Cross cultural Convergence of Virtues

Dahlsgaard, Peterson, and Seligman (2005) classified positive traits across culture by examining philosophical and religious traditions in China (Confucianism and Taoism), South Asia (Buddhism and Hinduism), and the West (Athenian philosophy, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). The authors found that six core virtues recurred in these writings: courage, justice, humanity, temperance, wisdom, and transcendence converged across time, place, and intellectual tradition. This convergence suggests a non-arbitrary foundation or the classification for human strengths and virtues and it is ubiquitous. They summarized their key findings in Table 1.

Table 1: Core Virtue Model of Dahlsgaard et al.

Core Virtues

VIRTUES DESCRIPTIONS Emotional strengths that involve the exercise of will to accomplish goals in the face of Courage opposition, external or internal; examples include bravery, perseverance, and authenticity (honesty)

Civic strengths that underlie healthy community life; examples include fairness, Justice leadership, and citizenship or team work

Interpersonal strengths that involve “tending and befriending” others (Taylor et al., Humanity 2000); examples include love and kindness

Strengths that protect against excess; examples include forgiveness, humility, Temperance prudence, and self-control

Cognitive strengths that entail the acquisition and the use of knowledge; examples Wisdom include creativity, curiosity, judgment, and perspective (providing counsel to others)

Strengths that forge connections to the larger universe and thereby provide meaning: Transcendence examples include gratitude, hope, and spirituality

Dahlsgaard et. al (2005, p. 205)

Proposition Six (P6): There are ubiquitous virtues and values that converge across time, place, and intellectual traditions. Ubiquitous virtues undergird sustainability leadership.

To reinforce the forgoing argument that morality and virtue ethics underpins sustainability leadership, I mapped the findings and recommendations from Ferdig, Portugal and Yukl, and Cox against the Core Virtue Model of Dahlsgaard et al. – there is a profound fit (see Table 2).

Moral and Ethical Foundations for Sustainability: A Multi-disciplinary Approach • 15

Table 2: Virtue Ethics as Foundations Mapping Cox; Ferdig; Portugal & Yukl against Dahlsgaard’s Core Virtues Model VIRTUES COX FERDIG PORTUGAL & YUKL

Embracing emergent Courage organization (5)

Working with a broad Justice range of stakeholders (3)

Engender an environment Take symbolic actions to Working with a broad for people to come Humanity demonstrate personal range of stakeholders (3) together and generate commitment (3) their own answers (1)

Sustainability leaders Temperance manifest the virtue of humility (3)

Raising awareness of Redefining the purpose of Wisdom environmental issues to business (2) change perceptions (2)

Working with a deep sense Sustainability leader Articulating an inspired of purpose (1) Transcendence subscribes to the holistic vision with environmental Transformational view of life (2) components (1) interaction (4)

Conclusion

The impetus of this paper was to study and assess the sustainability landscape to help weave the basic fabric for sustainability and sustainability leadership and in so doing, align and position ourselves with the most challenging issue in human history. My findings suggest that virtue and morality undergirds the foundations of sustainability and sustainability leadership; whilst the field of systems thinking, economics, and strategic management operationalize sustainability. The time is now for humans to embrace the challenges and opportunities ahead so that life on earth can continue to flourish. That said more research is required to draw conclusions that are more definitive to the six propositions posited. The propositions need to be further developed, refined, and tested in the crucible of daily living – from the boardroom to the lunchroom. For example, the strength and directionality of the relationships between Gross National Happiness (GNH) and sustainability would need further investigation. The measurement of virtues within the sustainability context would require attention and a robust set of indicators of virtuousness in organizations will be required to extend this work. Future work in this arena must continue to examine virtuousness from the individual, organizational, and societal perspectives. In light of the current environment where the Cartesian view and cynicism still dominates, it is incumbent on scholars in organizational studies to extend their reach into areas that represent highest human flourishing. JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 16

References

Anderson, R. C. (1998). Mid-course correction toward a sustainable enterprise: The Interface model. Chelsea Green Publishing Company.

Andrews, K. (1971). The concept of corporate strategy. Homewood, IL: Irwin.

Aquinas, T. St. (2005). The cardinal virtues: Prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. (R. J. Regan, Trans.). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing. (Original work entitled Summa theologiae, written 1265–1274).

Aristotle. (2005). Nicomachean ethics. (W. D. Ross, Trans.). (Original work published 350 BCE).

Barney, J. (1991). Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage. Journal of Management, 17, 99–120.

Barling, J., Christie, A., & Hoption, C. (2010). Leadership. In S. Zedeck (Ed.), APA handbook of industrial and organizational psychology: Building and developing the organization (Vol. 1, pp. 183–240). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Bass, B.M., & Steidlmeier, P. (1999). Ethics, character, and authentic transformational leadership behavior. The Leadership Quarterly, 10(2), 181–217.

Baumeister, R. F., & Exline, J. J. (1999). Virtue, personality, and social relations: Self-control as the moral muscle. Journal of Personality, 67, 1165-1194.

Baumeister, R. F., & Exline, J. J. (2000). Self-control, morality, and human strength. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 19, 29-42.

Becker, L. C. (1992). Good lives: Prolegomena. Social Philosophy and Policy, 9, 15.

Bertanffy, L. V. (1968). General systems theory: Foundations, development, applications (revised ed.). New York: George Brazzier.

Cameron, K. S., Bright, D., & Caza, A. (2004). Exploring the relationships between organizational virtuousness and performance. American Behavioral Scientist, 47(6), 766-790.

Capra, F. (1996). The web of life: A new scientific understanding of living systems. New York, NY: Anchorbooks/Doubleday.

Capra, F. (2002). The hidden connections integrating the biological, cognitive, and social dimensions of life into the science of sustainability. New York : Doubleday.

Chandler, A. (1962). Strategy and structure: Chapters in the history of the American industrial enterprises. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Moral and Ethical Foundations for Sustainability: A Multi-disciplinary Approach • 17

Churchland, P. M. (1998). Toward a cognitive neurobiology of the moral virtues. Topoi, 17, 83-96.

Cobb, C., Halstead, T., & Rowe, J. (1995). If GDP is up, why is America down? Retrieved from http://www.glaserfoundation.org/program_areas/pdf/If_the_GDP_is_Up_Why_is_America _Down.pdf

Cox, C. K. (2005). Organic leadership: The co-creation of good business, global prosperity, and a greener future. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Benedictine University.

Dahlsgaard, K., Peterson, C., & Seligman, M.E.P. (2005). The convergence of human strengths across culture and history. Review of General Psychology, 9(3), 203-213.

Delaney, J. F. (1911). The Catholic Encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12517b.htm

Dewey, J. (1992). Human nature and conduct: An introduction to social psychology. New York: Holt.

Ehrenfeld, J. (2008). Sustainability by design. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Eisenberg, E. M. (1990). Jamming: Transcendence through organizing. Communication Research, 17, 139-164.

Emmons, R. A. (1999). The psychology of ultimate concerns: Motivation and spirituality in personality. New York: Guilford Press.

Ferdig, M. A. & Ludema J. D. (2005). Transformative interactions: qualities of conversation that heighten the vitality of self-organizing change. In W. Pasmore & R. Woodman (Eds.), Research in organizational change and development. Stamford: JAI Press, Inc.

Ferdig, M. A. (2007). Sustainability leadership: Co-creating a sustainable future. Journal of Change Management, 7(1), 25.

Floyd, S. (2006). Aquinas’ moral philosophy. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from http://www.iep.utm.edu/a/aq-moral.htm

Fonda, D. (2005). GE’s green awakening. Retrieved from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1079496,00.html

Gomis, A. J. B., Parra, M. G., Hoffman, W. M., & Mcnulty, R. E. (2011). Business and Society Review, 116(2), 171-191

Goodstein, E. S. (2008). Economics and the environment. (5th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

Haidt, J., & Kesebir, S. (2010). Morality. In S. Fiske, D. Gilbert, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), Handbook of Social Psychology (5th ed.) (pp. 797-832). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 18

Hart, S. (2010). Capitalism at a crossroads. (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Wharton School Publishing.

Hawkens, P. (1993). The Ecology of commerce: A declaration of sustainability. HarperCollins.

Itami, H. (1987). Mobilizing invisible assets. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Kidder, R. M. (2005). Moral courage: Taking action when your values are put to the test. New York, NY: William Morrow.

Knight, K. (2006). The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas. (Fathers of the English Dominican Province, Trans.). Retrieved on February 10, 2007 from http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2023.htm

Korten, D. (2008). The great turning. San Francisco: Barrett-Koehler

Laszlo, C. & Zhexembayeva, N. (2011). Embedded sustainability: The next big competitive advantage. Stanford, CA : Stanford Business Books.

Lipman-Blumen, J., & Leavitt, H. J. (1999). Hot groups: Seeking them, feeding them, and using them to ignite your organization. New York: Oxford University Press.

Malthus, T. (1798). An essay on the principle of population. Retrieved from http://129.237.201.53/books/malthus/population/malthus.pdf

Maturana, H., & Varela, F. (1987). The tree of knowledge. Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications Inc.

McConnell, C. R., Brue, S. L., Flynn, S. M., & Barbiero, T. P. (2010). Macroeconomics. (12th Canadian ed.). McGraw-Hill Ryerson.

McCullough, M. E., & Snyder, C. R. (2000). Classical sources of human strength: Revisiting an old home and building a new one. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 19, 1-10.

McDowell, J. (1979). Virtue and reason. Monist, 62, 331-350.

Myers, D. G. (2000a). An American paradox: Spiritual hunger in an age of plenty. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Myers, D. G. (2000b). The funds, friends, and faith of happy people. American Psychologist, 55, 56-67.

Neubert, M. J., Carlson, D. S., Kacmar, K. M., Roberts, J. A., & Chonko, L. B. (2009). The virtuous influence of ethical behavior: Evidence from the field. Journal of Business Ethics, 90, 157–170.

Moral and Ethical Foundations for Sustainability: A Multi-disciplinary Approach • 19

Nussbaum, M. C. (1994). The therapy of desire: Theory and practice in Hellenistic ethics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Overholster, J. C. (1999). Elements of the socratic method: VI. Promoting virtue in everyday life. Psychotherapy, 36, 137-145.

Peterson, C. (2003). Classification of positive traits in youth. In R. M. Lerner, F. Jacobs, & D. Wertlieb (Eds.), Promoting positive child, adolescent, and family development (Vol. 4, 227-255). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Peterson, C., & Park, N. (2003). Positive psychology as the even-handed positive psychologist views it. Psychological Inquiry, 14, 141-146.

Pezzy, J. (1992). Sustainability: An interdisciplinary guide. Environmental Values, 1(4), 321-362

Plambeck, E. L., & Denend, L. (2008). The greening of Wal-Mart. Stanford Social Innovations Review, Spring, 53-57

Portugal, E., & Yukl, G. (1994). Perspectives on environmental leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 5(3/4), 271-276.

Ricardo, D. (1817). The principles of political economy and taxation. London: Repr. J. M. Dent & Son.

Ryff, C. D., & Singer, B. (1998). The contours of positive human health. Psychological Inquiry, 9, 1-28.

Sachs, J. D. (2011a). The price of civilization: Reawakening American virtues and prosperity. New York, NY: Random House.

Sachs, J. D. (2011b). The Economics of Happiness Project Syndicate. Retrieved from http://www.projectsyndicate.org/commentary/sachs181/English

Seligman, M. E. P. (1999). The president’s address. American Psychologist, 54, 559-562.

Senge, P. M., (1990). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. Doubleday.

Shaw, P. (2002). Changing conversations in organizations: A complexity approach to change. London: Routledge.

Simmel, G. (1950). The sociology of George Simmel. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.

Smith, A. (1976). The theory of moral sentiments (6th ed.). Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. (Original work published 1790).

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 20

Shrivastava, P. (1995). The role of corporations in achieving ecological sustainability. The Academy of Management Review, 20(4), 936.

Toffler, B. L. (1986). Tough choices: Managers talk ethics. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Weiner, N. O. (1993). The harmony of the soul: Mental health and moral virtue reconsidered. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Wheatley, M.. & Frieze, D. (2008). Using emergence to take social innovation to scale. The Berkana Institute. Retrieved from http://margaretwheatley.com/articles/using- emergence.pdf

White, H. (1980). A heteroskedasticity-consistent covariance matrix estimator and a direct test for heteroskedasticity. Econometrica, 48, 817-838.

World Commission on Environment and Development (1987). Our common future. New York: Oxford University Press.

Journal of Global Citizenship & Equity Education Volume 2 Number 2 - 2012 journals.sfu.ca/jgcee

1 What Kind of Global Citizen is the Student Volunteer?

Clare Talwalker, Ph.D. Lecturer, International & Area Studies Teaching Program Vice Chair, Global Poverty & Practice Minor University of California, Berkeley

Keywords: Aid World; Volunteering; International Service Learning; Global Citizenship; Gift Economy; Political Selfhood; Collective Interdependence

ABSTRACT: College students in the United States, and other countries of the Global North, are signing up in growing numbers to volunteer with aid and human rights organizations around the world (and also domestically). Yet in so doing, many students experience their best intentions muddied by the inefficiencies or profit-motives of the aid world volunteer industry. To explore the dilemmas raised both for students and for faculty and staff supporting them, this essay reaches beyond the instrumentality of the aid world (its focus on doing something concrete and good) to other possible outcomes of the encounters between volunteers, aid workers, and aid beneficiaries. I conceive of the “volunteer-aid beneficiary” encounter in ways that draw simultaneously on the anthropological approach to “gift economies” as well as related concepts and arguments made by social psychologists, a philosopher, and a literary critic. The goal here is to contribute to the pedagogy supporting college students’ service learning or volunteer experiences (mostly international, but also domestic) and to explore possible meanings of the term “global citizenship” in this context. I argue for the need to foreground the political selfhood of aid beneficiaries, alongside (or not merely) their economic or biological selfhood.

Anthropologist Erica Bornstein describes the spontaneous impulse to help a suffering stranger as an act of “freedom.” She opens her 2009 essay, “An Impulse to Philanthropy,” with a story of her young son’s response to beggars on the street in New Delhi. She writes, “The impulse of philanthropy is spontaneous and has its own beauty: when giving is unregulated, it becomes deeply moving, an act of freedom” (p. 623). I can identify. I, too, have little children who were born in the United States and who (in my case) return with me each year to Bombay/Mumbai, and together we have had our share of street encounters. Waiting at a traffic light, they will ask me about those who appear at our taxicab window, begging. “Why are they poor?” my then 4-year-old asked on one such recent trip. I let my inadequate reply (perhaps I said, “Some people in the world are poor,” or

1 Thank you to the Global Poverty and Practice Minor program of the University of California, Berkeley’s Blum Center for Developing Economies (especially its undergraduate students, Education Director Ananya Roy, and former Director of Student Programs Alexis Bucknam) for inspiring this essay. I am also very grateful to Nilgun Uygun, Munis Faruqui, and Lydia Boyd for their generous and insightful feedback on earlier drafts, as well as to the anonymous reviewers for their suggestions. JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 22

“The government is not taking care of all its people here”) become garbled by reaching into my bag and rustling through for the Cliff’s Kids Z-Bars that had been carried all the way across the Atlantic to stave off their every hunger pang. These I handed to the two young girls and the baby they held at our taxi window. My little one’s eyes grew wide and she launched us into a conversation all the way to our destination noting that they were very hungry, how it was hard for their parents to find food for them, probably, how it was nice that we were sharing what we had, how they could eat something now, how we didn’t need those Z-Bars for ourselves anyway, how we had more at home if we wanted. As Bornstein notes, giving the Z-Bars to the children at our taxi window without too much deliberation felt okay; it felt better than not giving them anything or doing anything, and certainly better than continuing to wonder about the question, why are they poor (or, why are they poor)? This essay will explore further, among other things, her characterization of this as an act of freedom.

Throughout this essay we remain focused on the form taken by the philanthropic impulse in the volunteer aid industry, especially considering college students in the Global North who participate as volunteers (often overseas). Bornstein would suggest that in the aid industry the impulse to philanthropy is institutionally regulated and thus its freedom is quite utterly obliterated. This essay will offer instead another understanding of what might constitute freedom for these student volunteers,2 as well as for us – the faculty, staff, and development practitioners working with them. An alternative understanding of freedom, I will suggest, might be reached if global northerners are willing to consume the aid volunteer industry creatively, in turn allowing us to conceive of global citizenship in a very particular way.

I will reckon that many college students are very familiar with the obliteration of a simple desire to “reach out and help”, to “make a difference” in another less fortunate life. Many have sat through classes that detail the histories of colonialism and then modernization, and classes that pick up, consider dourly, and then toss aside the goals and pretensions of most development planning. Yet at some point in their earlier education—perhaps as far back as elementary school—they were drawn to the call: you can do good in this world, and to the suggestion: you should work to serve others. So many young school children in the United States—indeed, in middle class school settings all over the world—will enthusiastically participate in efforts to raise money for a particular cause (cancer research, or the most recent natural calamity). Such civic-minded extra- curricular projects are considered by most of us an integral part of school life, and teachers and parents carefully inculcate the disposition to engage in them. But on the subsequent journey our students and children discover, to their dismay, that “doing good” (Fisher, 1997) is not a straightforward matter; it has a history and a politics and in many cases it is doomed to reproducing the world’s inequalities (or at best it does little to counter these), in which they themselves are implicated and positioned. The philanthropic impulse of the middle classes, it would seem, is not merely obliterated in volunteering; it is revealed to be misled.

2 The main thrust of Bornstein’s essay is less about freedom as such and more about the “regulation” of the free impulse to help another. Her essay explores the layers of meaning within which acts of charity are embedded, specifically in the Indian context. She focuses on new forms of practice emerging in India where middle class aid work (underpinned by a liberal entitlement and rights regime) intersects with Hindu notions of religious gift giving (dan dharma). Later, as I return to the topic of freedom, I will refer to a scholar cited by Bornstein herself, James Laidlaw (2002), who calls on anthropologists to theorize freedom and bemoans the lack of production of an anthropology of freedom as such.

What Kind of Global Citizen is the Student Volunteer? • 23

Yet it is hard today not to be struck by the growing number of college students seeking to do something themselves toward meeting the UN’s Millennial Development Goals (MDG) to “end poverty and hunger,” provide “universal education” and child and maternal health, enable “gender equity” etc. by 2015. But the post-MDG world and its discursive milieu of global citizenship together place these students in a deeply ambivalent situation.3 For on the one hand, they are called upon to put themselves out there, spending time in places and interacting with people and organizations; and they often do so with the genuine desire to be of concrete help. On the other hand, for many reasons, their efforts are often thwarted. For example, the short time spans they spend on their volunteering or the sloppy structure provided to them by organizations means that, wittingly or unwittingly, many are little more than “student development tourists” (Hudgins 2010). Moreover, volunteering in the Global South feels uncomfortably painful for many who thus learn first-hand about the world’s inequalities, about the deprivations of the majority of the world’s populations, and about their own relative fortune and affluence. And some students have downright unpleasant experiences with mediating (volunteer placement) organizations whose profit motive, they cannot help but notice, overshadows any actual aid work.

The aid world is purportedly set up to serve those deemed necessary beneficiaries of aid. How these beneficiaries actually fare at the hands of the aid world is an urgent topic (much debated), yet not the focus here. Rather, I attend to the aid world as it presents itself to colleges and universities in the guise of extra-curricular learning opportunities. I dedicate this essay to all those college students (so many of my students among them) who are moved to work on some aspect of social inequality in the world, such as the lack of access to health care, clean water and sanitation, housing, a clean environment, or citizenship status. By exploring creative consumption of this volunteer industry and reflecting critically on “global citizenship,” I write also for fellow teachers whose task it is to guide student volunteers.

Rethinking the Goal of Helpful Volunteering

Since there is no single training ground for these large numbers of student aid world volunteers (this being a marketplace and not John F. Kennedy’s Peace Corps), the option to volunteer – and this is especially applicable to international placements – ends up appealing to different students in different ways and for different reasons. Some believe their nascent engineering and medical knowhow ought to be available to every citizen of the world, everywhere, and they are energized

3 The UN Millennium project has foregrounded the poverty analytic, which now takes the place previously occupied by the related terms ‘development’ and ‘modernization’. Despite its seeming technical underpinning (see Ilcan and Phllips, 2010) and despite the various discussions of how to complicate the measurement of poverty (see Booth, Leach, and Tierney, 1999), the poverty framework divides the world into two parts, the poor versus the not-poor. And just as the development/modernization analytic justified and encouraged moves by the ‘developed’ to help the ‘developing’ and the ‘underdeveloped’, so now the not- poor are encouraged to help the poor (see the work of critical development studies scholars such as Arturo Escobar, James Ferguson, Akhil Gupta, Michael Watts, Gillian Hart, Tania Lee). Both sets of terms generate an active donor giving something to a passive recipient; they disregard (many have persuasively argued the current aid climate actively undermines and condemns) how and when “the poor” take social transformation into their own hands (see the writings of Frances Fox Piven). Such technical discourse is flourishing precisely in this neoliberal era when nation-states are deprived of funds and their capacity for legislating social change and financing social welfare and infrastructure are undermined.

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 24 by the task of taking its benefits (de-worming medicine, improved cook stoves and latrines, maternal health care, water sanitation habits and techniques) where it is not easily available. Others are motivated by a religious or spiritual (or humanist) energy to relieve suffering somewhere or somehow to repair the harmony of the whole. Still others act on the conviction that injustice has been done for decades or centuries to some populations of the world and they seek to work with them to redress these injustices; or, they are determined to fight for social justice and against oppressive and powerful systems in places where their effects are felt most keenly. Some students have already formulated a sense of self that is closely linked with a particular struggle – say, to protect the environment, or to fight for gender equality or for human rights – and they travel overseas to extend and participate in this struggle. Many today in the U.S. are journeying to their parents’ or grandparents’ place of origin, seeking as college students to connect with their “roots” or to give back to the country from which their family hails; and then many are eager simply to travel abroad and “do some good” while they are at it. For some of these travelers, international experiences are sought as a way to take a break from the rat race of student credential-building and career-seeking, to learn about the world and meet and interact with people overseas to help clarify life goals; for others, overseas volunteering itself counts as a credential. Of course, today there are also those whose attention is fixed on redeeming the market, who believe in the power of entrepreneurs to creatively harness market forces to social ends or in the possibility of making corporations socially responsible. So also, there are those whose interest in the market economy direct them to more expressly macroeconomic approaches, or political-economic approaches; these students would like to repair the broken apparatus of foreign aid, third world debt, and domestic subsidies, placing a pro-poor mission cleanly centre stage in the worlds of international relations, diplomacy, and banking.

This multiplicity of motivation and projects is bewildering for teachers and staff who work with these students. As a teacher myself, I am sometimes tempted to view student volunteers as simply resume-building, tacking on grand-sounding international exposure and international NGO- work to their list of achievements. Other times, I am overwhelmed by the depth of their desires to engage the world and their striving for perfect venues in which to do so. How can such longings be met? Does the world really have thousands of places, perfect diving boards awaiting a volunteer from the Global North who can be launched into thoroughly useful action that will bring someone out of poverty, or find redress for a violation, or bring modern health care where there is none? Or (for me, this is more sinister) is the apparatus of the aid industry itself remaking the world so as to offer up more and more such places?

Given the growing numbers of student volunteers in the aid industry, one might assume a certain clarity of purpose has emerged – that a certain set of obligations has crystallized around a new notion of global citizenship. Surely to be participating in such large numbers is to be acting at least on the conviction that a college student can and must do something in whatever part of the world demands it, and that the something is worthwhile. Yet, students, and those of us working with them, are plagued by all manner of questions: What is the best thing to do? Is it useful? How can we ensure our volunteer experience is rewarding? Even more vexing questions follow: Who exactly counts as “poor,” or, as the sufferer of inequality or injustice (who decides, and how)? Who exactly should be a beneficiary of aid, and then who exactly should assume the role of delivering that aid? What about the obvious pitfalls of thinking in these categories of aid receiver and aid deliverer? After all, some college students themselves hail from poor backgrounds or are recipients of financial aid; and yes, some are troubled by the whole aid framework and reject what they see as

What Kind of Global Citizen is the Student Volunteer? • 25

the NGO-ization of social movements for change,4 struggling instead for the far more difficult goal of identifying collective action in which they might participate.

The phenomenon, however, will not go away despite the most trenchant critiques of it. Students from the Global North are volunteering, domestically and overseas, in large numbers. At least as a starting point, I believe we can say, however, that it is the aid industry that is set up with concrete goals in mind, inciting volunteers to come make a difference. This incitement to act on others’ behalf, however, is most often hasty and misled. And so I wish to make a case here instead for us to consume the volunteer aid industry, if we do so at all, creatively.

Perspectives on the Impulse to Act for/with Others

Let us return to Bornstein’s “philanthropic impulse” and note that it must be prompted in historically and culturally specific ways and contexts. So, in contemporary Bombay it might be prompted by moments such as the arrival of a person begging at the window of a car or taxi stopped at a traffic light. This is a more or less daily occurrence in a city like Bombay whereas it would be rare in the United States – though now and then we might find ourselves eye to eye with a person or pair of individuals sitting or standing on a road divider at a traffic light, usually with cardboard signs broadcasting a fact or two of their situation and putting forward a plea. (It would be another essay to theorize the difference between these two phenomena.) In urban commercial districts in the United States, the philanthropic impulse might be prompted when a person emerging from a restaurant with a doggy bag of restaurant food comes upon a homeless man outside on the street, and hands him the bag.

If the prompts for this impulse are contingent, so also the impulse is regulated (as Bornstein’s essay suggests) in historically and culturally specific ways. Muslim shopkeepers and restaurateurs in many parts of the world will feed the poor on Fridays, often on the pavements before their stores. Such a sight is a regular weekly feature in Muslim neighborhoods in Bombay, for example.5 Bombay also offers several vestiges of a British charity model, continued from the colonial period. In the Bombay of my childhood, I went to the church-run Pavement Club on Friday afternoons where children who lived on the streets around the Victoria Terminus railway station came to play ball, to share a donated meal, to bathe, to receive first aid. As for the auto-rider/beggar encounter at traffic lights in the Global South, any impulse to philanthropy it might stimulate is regulated by middle class myths that circulate about criminal beggars, crafty children in the employ of powerful underworld dons, manipulative, ungrateful beggars, lazy beggars who refuse an honest day’s work, and so on. In the United States, too, of course, there is every size and shape of soup kitchen, charity institution, service delivery non-profit, free clinics offering legal aid or health care. So also, there is fair trade shopping and aid contributions facilitated by the internet, and there is the NGO industrial complex and the volunteer opportunities it offers6 – the latter being the focus here.

4 See Incite! Women of Color Against Violence (2007), an edited volume that discusses what is lost (in terms of radical visions of change and accountability to the people involved) when social movements register themselves as non-profits to enable raising funds and soliciting donations. 5 This even happens on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland, in which milieu it appears as unfamiliar and perhaps out-of-place, prompting curiosity, questions and explanations. 6 See Redfield and Bornstein (2009) and Bornstein and Redfield (2011). Redfield and Bornstein lay out a three-fold typology of the aid world (development, humanitarian aid, human rights).

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 26

However, to speak of a “philanthropic impulse” as such in the singular – and merely its moments of prompting, and then furthermore its regulation, as contingent and plural – is to conceive of it as something pre-social, pre-cultural, as somehow fundamental to being human (ingrained in our psyche and part of our evolutionary behavior). At this point, it is worthwhile to recall how the word “philanthropy” is defined. Sure enough, while the Merriam-Webster dictionary’s second meaning talks of humanitarian acts or gifts, and the organizations who make them, its first meaning is “goodwill to fellow members of the human race; especially: active effort to promote human welfare.”7 The former (the familiar one) seems particular to highly industrialized society with its corporate foundations and their philanthropic missions. The latter general meaning (the lesser assumed one), however, is more easily adapted to what I can conceive as universal – in the spirit of anthropological gift scholarship. “Goodwill to fellow members of the human race,” it seems to me, needs to be stretched and kneaded only a little to make it fit within the rubric of “moral economies.” It also evokes Adam Smith’s concept of “fellow feeling” and the political philosophic scholarship to which that concept gave rise.

French anthropologist, nephew of Emile Durkheim, and earliest theorist of the gift, Marcel Mauss (2000/1950) famously described the three fundamental obligations of economic life when it is organized around gift-giving: the obligations to give, to receive, and to reciprocate.8 These, he sought to demonstrate, were universal (though in modern societies they have been transformed almost beyond recognition, existing in no more than trace-form, if at all, in the tax codes), and presumably emerged therefore from some universal human behavior. As an anthropologist, Mauss wrote in a descriptive and analytical way about actually-existing practices that he saw as supporting his insight about the three obligations of economic life that featured in all human societies. For Mauss, the three obligations that structured how people related to each other, and built relations with each other via things were so fundamental as to amount to a “total social fact,” a set of processes that tied all aspects of social life together or that could be explained through any aspect of living, from the cosmological to the mundane.

Prosociality, Not Philanthropy?

Working more recently and in a different discipline, the social psychologists Paul Piff, Michael Kraus, Stéphane Côté, Bonnie Hayden Cheng, and Dacher Keltner (hereafter Piff et al.) deploy another category; they speak not of social “obligations” to give, receive, and reciprocate but rather of an individual’s “prosocial behavior” (2010). Their material is not so much collective meanings and shared social practices, but rather micro-behaviors and individual responses observed in a staged experimental setting. Based on such experimentation, they argue that “lower class individuals” (defined by Piff et al., amongst other things, as having fewer resources and as

7 Merriam-Webster m-w.com. 2011. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/philanthropist?ref= dictionary&word=philanthropy# (accessed July 25, 2011). 8 Mauss’ main contrast in The Gift was between gift exchange and the modern Western exchange subject to the modern contract. He wanted to show that, absent of a modern contract, many (perhaps he believed, all) societies practiced elaborate and customary rule-shaped exchanges. Later theorists have developed the contrast in terms of gift exchange versus commodity exchange, more clearly outlining how Mauss’ work can be brought into conversation with Marxist scholarship. For further scholarship on the gift, see the works of Chris Gregory, Nancy Munn, David Graeber, Katherine Brown, and others.

What Kind of Global Citizen is the Student Volunteer? • 27

experiencing greater exposure to death and a reduced sense of personal control) demonstrate greater prosocial behavior (that is, for Piff et al., greater willingness to be socially connected with others) than do “upper class individuals.” Furthermore, “lower class individuals” are more compassionate and more generous and helpful to others, including to strangers. As for “upper class individuals” (for Piff et al., those who experience their own lives as generally comfortable, safe, and who have a general faith in the possibility of their future comfort and safety), the authors suggest they are just as capable of prosocial behavior, but in their case “compassion” has to be specially induced (in this series of experiments, it was manipulated experimentally, by having participants watch a poignant video on child poverty). In terms of a “baseline compassion,” however, they conclude that “lower class individuals” simply rate higher, requiring no manipulation to demonstrate prosocial behavior.

These are stark observations, working with very clear-cut categories (might there not be individuals who do not fit cleanly into either the “lower class” or “upper class,” for example?) and offering in conclusion a startling contrast between those categories. Furthermore, the conclusion flies in the face of the common wisdom that it is the rich who more readily – or, are more readily able to – help others (usually the poor), whereas the poor may be assumed to be miserly, needing to look out for themselves. Certainly, this social psychology experiment suggests that in a class- segregated and hierarchical society (such as modern capitalist societies, but also including older large-scale and complex societies), the talk of universal impulses to help others is a complicated matter indeed.

For our present discussion, I would like to highlight something else that this article brings up: our apprehension of our collective interdependence.9 For the Piff et al. study suggests that lower- class individuals act prosocially with less inhibition and more consistently (perhaps more as an enduring habit, or inhabiting a prosocial habitus, if you will), because they act on a gut feeling (conscious or unconscious) of their own interdependence. And, on the flip side, their study implies that it is in such an understanding of interdependence that upper class individuals appear lacking.

We might say that Piff et al. are describing people (for them, “lower class individuals”) who are not so much attached to a view of themselves as autonomous beings but rather enjoy another view of themselves, as tied up in webs of interdependence, as needing other people perhaps at some indefinite point in the future or as having relied heavily on people in their past and present, and as being indebted to those other people to extents impossible to “repay.” So also, Piff et al. seem to suggest that upper-class individuals do not view themselves as interdependent in the same way; they enjoy a view of themselves as relatively autonomous, indeed such a view is actively nurtured and independence of all kinds is aspired to. Of course, close relations with family and friends are

9 I work here with Jameson’s 1986 use of the term “collective interdependence,” and will return later in this essay to discuss it more fully. The notion of interdependence is also theorized within anthropological discussions of the self. Marilyn Strathern’s work (1984, 1988, 2004) on personhood in Melanesia and on non-Western “partible selves” has inspired a scholarship on selfhood, or self-representations, in different settings (see for eg. Piot 1999), demonstrating alternatives to the Western liberal representation of the autonomous person such as the notion that selves are incomplete, partial, in themselves, imbricated in the selfhood of others, and also context-specific. (See also Ewing (1999) for a comparison of psychoanalytic and anthropological discussions of self. Ewing suggests that individuals in all cultures are apt to deploy different context-specific selves, “multiple selves.”)

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 28 valued but always also with a stress on independence. This valuing of independence is buttressed by social expectations of independent behavior (starting as early as sleeping habits and elementary school social norms) and social requirements of independent achievement and coping (scholarly, professional, and otherwise). When prosocial behavior (specifically, compassion) is thus induced in upper-class individuals, it cannot emerge from some understanding of interdependence, since this is underdeveloped or repressed here (suggest Piff et al.); rather the compassion is of a different quality – it is such as one might feel for a victim, a sufferer, someone in need of assistance. For to need another’s help is to have failed to cultivate sufficient quantities of one’s own autonomy or independence. Such compassion is a one-way transaction, not premised on any assumptions regarding what the person assisted might give in return, nor invested with the possibility that the two transactors share intertwined fates or inhabit a shared social-political space.10

As such, and if we can take Piff et al.’s “upper class individuals” to include all those of us who are able to put food on the table and who feel more or less assured of a future of doing so, both for ourselves, and for our children – if, in other words, we can take their category to apply also to the majority of students who attend four-year colleges and to the faculty and staff who work with them – then we might also wonder whether our volunteer efforts in the aid world, our engagements with organized projects of alleviating poverty and inequality, are not also constrained within a “one-way transaction” frame and whether the challenge of volunteer work for us is precisely our struggle to experience our volunteering as something other than a service by “us” to “them.” Piff et al. suggest that the problem, if so, arises from our very comfort; for it is vulnerability and uncertainty about the future that generates, according to them, a lived prosociality among “lower class individuals,” actions done for and with other people. I would venture to say that the recognition of one’s relative privilege and affluence is indeed the most painful lesson learned by so many college students who seek out volunteering experiences, domestically and overseas.

Learning Prosociality as a “Larger Loyalty” through Volunteering

Consider another essay, this one by philosopher Richard Rorty (2000) who contrasts not so much the lower class and the upper class, but rather the individual in hard times versus in times of affluence. Rorty explains why and how our loyalties change when times go from hard to comfortable.

A main concern for Rorty in this essay is the idea of universal human rights; he is skeptical of this abstract idea’s power to move humans to act. For the most part, he writes, humans do not tend

10 This point – that upper class individuals feel and substantially live their own interdependence less than do lower class individuals – is arrived at differently by anthropologists Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Parry (1989) who suggest that, whereas most societies demonstrate beliefs and/or practices for relating the short- term (and individual) transactional order to the long-term (and group-level) transactional order and for subverting the former to the latter, in contemporary capitalist societies such ways of imagining how individual transactions ought to be subverted are lacking or impoverished. In other words, Bloch and Parry suggest most societies feature arenas of short-term transactions focused on individual gain (such as those of the bazaar or the give-and-take between neighbors); yet all but contemporary capitalists societies do a fairly good job prioritizing the arena of long-term transactions focused on reproducing the social order (such as marriage, other collective rituals that involve exchange of resources, housework, child care, restoring environmental balance, and so on).

What Kind of Global Citizen is the Student Volunteer? • 29

to act on such abstract and universal notions of justice. In this belief, he stresses how he is at odds with Immanuel Kant who viewed justice, in its abstractness and large scale, as emerging from an exalted form of reason. Kant contrasted such a reasoned justice from “loyalty,” which, in his view, was merely a matter of sentiment. For Kant, moreover, our morality (our exalted and abstract sense of justice) starts out thin in our youth and thickens with age. Differing with him on all counts, Rorty supports Michael Walzer’s position instead. Walzer argues, “... morality is thick from the beginning, culturally integrated, fully resonant, and it reveals itself thinly only on special occasions, when moral language is turned to special purposes” (cited in Rorty 2000, p. 47). In this spirit, Rorty makes a case precisely for the power of loyalties (over abstract ideas of justice) to motivate us to act. Rorty suggests that even little children are quick and open to identifying sides, to placing themselves on one particular side, and to feeling and acting for that side; Rorty further suggests that a loyalty to one’s family group and one’s school group or city can move us from early in our youth. What is more, these loyalties underpin an early, thick morality that is demonstrated in the “detailed and concrete stories you can tell about yourself as a member of a smaller group”, whereas thin morality shows up in the “relatively abstract and sketchy story you can tell about yourself as a citizen of the world” (p. 48). Where Kant lays out a progression over time from a thin, small-scale, sentimental morality to a thick, high-minded, near-universal and rational morality, Rorty (building on Walzer) more or less inverts that progression. He puts more faith in the morality that is based on sentiments felt for the relatively small groups of which we are a part (Walzer’s “thick morality”) – first that of our family members and then progressively larger circles around us such as our school and neighborhood, our town, all fellow Argentinians, all fellow Muslims, and so on. We are much more likely to act, he says, on loyalties to groups of which we feel ourselves to be an integral part rather than to act in the name of an abstract notion of what is just and proper for all human beings. To the possibility of feeling part of a “community of all humankind” and acting, with loyalty, on such a sentiment,11 Rorty seems to suggest this is rare.

I must add, and not merely in a footnote, that both Rorty – via Walzer – and Piff et al. do not account for emergent groupings. In other words, they fail to tackle the political arena where, for example, colonized peoples, or peoples dispossessed in any particular society, may mobilize together, finding common cause against an oppressor, thus deliberately expanding their “in group” in response to particular circumstances. Hard times can generate new and larger groups of fellow strangers, especially for those experiencing a shared injustice. And so also as Edward Said (1986) notes in a provocative reading of Michael Walzer’s fuller writings, a focus on our loyalty to specific communities is immediately suspect if and when it is premised on deeming others in another community to be outside, marginal, or in any way less than a full human being – in this spirit, Said is suspicious of Walzer’s particular, albeit left/liberal, commitment to Zionism.12

11 See the provocative Michael Perry (2000), who argues that for an individual to be moved to act for any and every other human being, in other words to feel a part of the “community of humankind,” the individual necessarily must subscribe to a “religious cosmology.” 12 This is a nuanced reading specifically of Walzer’s book Exodus and Revolution, but also with reference to his famous book Just and Unjust Wars and his other writings. Said describes Walzer as a progressive or leftist Zionist intellectual, but also ultimately as having a “peculiar” slippery position that Said finds deeply troubling. “[Walzer’s] is at bottom a position retaining the vocabulary of the Left, yet scuttling both the theory and critical astringency that historically gave the Left its moral and intellectual power. For theory and critical astringency, Walzer has substituted an often implicit but always unexamined appeal to the concreteness and intimacy of shared ethnic and familiar bonds, the realism, the “moral” responsibility of insiders who have “made it.” Still, as I have said, if like the Canaanites you don’t happen to qualify for

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 30

Nonetheless, for our purposes here, the point we are taking away is that actually-existing groups united in a shared set of experiences and circumstances, be they formed “organically” or politically, fire up loyalties and thus passionate action in a way that abstract commitments to universal groupings do not and cannot.

It is thus that Rorty arrives at two key points within his main argument: (i) that “justice” is not something distinct from “loyalty,” as Kant would have it; rather, it is merely a “larger loyalty,” a loyalty felt for larger groups, on rare occasion for all of human kind (p. 47); and, (ii) that it is only in times of relative affluence and comfort that humans can afford to indulge in those loyalties to the largest groups. And conversely, “The tougher things get,” he writes, “the more ties of loyalty to those near at hand tighten, and the more those to everyone else slacken” (p. 45). For Rorty, thus, the morality that is based on an abstract sense of justice for the abstract, universal human is a privilege of the comfortable classes. Again, he would suggest such a universal morality is felt, if at all, only transiently, and moreover only by the relatively comfortable who do not feel (or can take for granted) their dependence on the more finite, relatively knowable groups (for example: their fellow citizens) of which they are a part.

We must stretch both Rorty’s essay and the Piff et al. study in order to connect them. Indeed, on the surface, they seem at odds, with Rorty arguing that the affluent can more readily commit to a morality that encompasses every single human being in the world while the Piff et al. study reveals that upper-class individuals tend to be less compassionate to their fellow human beings. It is worth our while to dig a little deeper, however, as I would like to show how both can be usefully applied to our discussion of the growing numbers of U.S. college students doing volunteer work in communities other than their own.

Despite their different terminology and the seemingly different conclusions at which the two essays arrive, both seem to suggest that something changes with affluence or with a customary comfort and absence of worry about the future. For Rorty, with affluence comes the possibility of distancing oneself from that thick morality, the one that is narratable in full, detailed, and emotive stories, and a greater tendency to embrace a thinner morality, narrated in abstract terms and directed toward large groups, all of the world perhaps, including people whom one does not know and may never meet. This thinner morality, we might say, is not necessarily undergirded by actually lived socio-political interchange and intimacy. For Piff et al., prosocial behavior becomes compromised by affluence such that upper-class individuals show less compassion to their fellow human beings. What Rorty does not actually say, but what Piff et al.’s social psychological study concludes in no uncertain terms, is that affluent people are less given to help a fellow person in need who is right in front of them whereas poorer people are more willing to help such a near-at-

membership, you are excluded from moral concern. Or, in Walzer’s other surprisingly disparaging, dismissive judgment, you are relegated to a mere cause, like the FLN intellectuals” (p. 104). And later, he writes: “The strength of the Canaanite, that is the exile position, is that being defeated and “outside,” you can perhaps more easily feel compassion, more easily call injustice injustice, more easily speak directly and plainly of all oppression, and with less difficulty try to understand (rather than mystify or occlude) history and equality.” Said believes Walzer shows suspicious preference for organic communities over political movements built on alliances and mobilized by particular causes. For his part, Walzer (2006) criticizes his theologian colleague Michael Wyschogrod for not being critical enough of the necessary carnage involved in building one’s Promised Land – What of those vanquished? Are they not innocent others, dehumanized?

What Kind of Global Citizen is the Student Volunteer? • 31

hand, flesh-and-blood fellow being. So also, what Piff et al. do not say, but what Rorty says in no uncertain terms, is that people suffering hard times are less likely to be moved by abstract principles of justice for all humans, or for all citizens of a particular country, but they will nonetheless act readily on thickly felt loyalties that they extend to people they view as like them (part of their group) in any particular moment.

Bringing their categories and conclusions together, we might ask some suggestive questions: Is it the case that an abstract and thin morality (to fight injustice in the world, for example), being a principle rather than a lived habitus, translates with more difficulty into immediate action than does a thicker lived morality (to help your kith and kin, for example)? Could we take away from this that the conditions of relative ease require a conscious rekindling of our prosociality through, say, our creative consumption of the aid volunteer industry? As development scholar Ilan Kapoor (2004), drawing on Gayatri Spivak (1990, 2003), puts it: “Development may indeed have become a shady business, but this does not mean one cannot retrieve from within it an ethico-political orientation to the Third World and the subaltern” (pp. 15-16).

For though quite different in their methods, terminology and argumentation, both Piff et al. and Rorty can be read to imply that the affluent do not feel a sense of being interdependent in real, material ways with others. It is, after all, an understanding of interdependence that moves less affluent, or lower class, people to help a fellow stranger. In her classic 1975 book, anthropologist Carol Stack made a very similar argument, drawing on ethnographic work in a poor African- American neighborhood in Chicago. Stack showed that residents in this neighborhood were willfully caught up in webs of interdependence, doing favors for each other, borrowing and loaning objects and money, helping with child care and housework. Her fieldwork on the high levels of exchange is often cited as evidence of a “gift economy” in urban poor neighborhoods in the United States. Gift economies, after all, are broadly defined as economies where material life is marked by a high degree of non-market exchanges between people who feel themselves to be reciprocally interdependent (Gregory, 1982). In such economies, people consciously and unconsciously assume that they are, or may be, dependent on others for their everyday needs. As a result, this understanding or gut feeling of one’s interdependence with others makes the act of helping another person a very sensible and even automatic thing to do, since it could very well be oneself who may need that same help tomorrow. The action here is less based on individual rational thinking and emerges more from a shared habitus, or set of norms and feelings about oneself and one’s social grouping. By contrast, the affluent do not feel that they inhabit such interdependent worlds and, with gut feelings of interdependence thus absent or repressed, their capacity to view others as simultaneously beneficiary and resource is compromised, this in turn undermining the impulse to extend concrete help to a fellow stranger.

These essays suggest that our relative comfort and our fetish for self-reliance and independence inhibit our apprehension of human interdependence. We can choose to take from them also this: that it is precisely an apprehension of our interdependence that we might anticipate learning about in the context of volunteering in the aid world. Note, however, that Piff et al. state that upper-class individuals can be actively persuaded to help another, but when they are, they tend to help more in the spirit of a benefactor and less as a fellow traveler. So also, Rorty states that people enjoying relative affluence are precisely the ones most able to answer a call made in the name of abstract justice, or loyalties to the human race at large. And both essays imply that when she or he does so, it is less from the sense of helping another because “tomorrow it could be me”

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 32 and more as the privileged helping the underprivileged, as a one-way and unequal transaction. Yet, even so, if our compassion is compromised, both because of our inability to feel our collective interdependence and such that it seems more like pity, can we not entertain the possibility of transforming it on both counts? What could this mean for our students contemplating their stint of domestic or international volunteering in the aid world?

I would like to turn to consider one final source, a 1986 essay by literary theorist Fredric Jameson, “Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism,” before returning in my conclusion to these questions. I do so because in it Jameson talks of “collective interdependence” in the process of reflecting on the encounter between the “West” and the “Third World.” As such, I hope to show how this essay is very suggestive for thinking about the social encounters generated by the spaces of humanitarian aid and development around the world.

Our Privilege as our Impoverishment

Where Piff et al. talk of upper-class individuals, and Rorty talks of people enjoying comfort and affluence, Jameson’s essay speaks in terms of the West (versus the Third World).13 In his essay, more broadly, Jameson discusses how the West reacts to Third World texts (such as a telenovella from Argentina, or a Bollywood film, or a novel by a Nigerian writer). When Westerners are confronted with things emerging from the Third World, Jameson writes, they tend to feel as though they are confronting (reading, experiencing) something un-modern, something such as might have existed in their past. For example, the melodramatic telenovellas feel like 1950s American TV shows, or Bollywood music feels like the Hollywood musicals of the 1930s and 40s; they seem somehow lacking and old-fashioned. These Third World texts make Westerners squirm or laugh in embarrassment.

For our purposes here, consider how Jameson compares with Rorty and Piff et al. on the compromised compassion of the comfortable classes – for him, the impoverishment of the West. In discussing how Westerners tend to read Third-World texts, Jameson suggests that the West is impoverished in being inward-looking, unable to comprehend and appreciate the perspectives generated within the Third-World, and in its privilege even rendered fearful of those other perspectives. We can extrapolate from Jameson’s discussion to our context of U.S. college students versus their less privileged fellow citizens or versus citizens of the Global South. When U.S. college students visit poor neighborhoods or places in the Global South, they feel they are in un- modern or half modern or forgotten places, places still stuck in a period now part of the past for us in the West, or places that were overlooked and neglected. The term “developing country” suggests places still in process, “half baked” (as Booker Prize-winning novelist Adiga writes irreverently of contemporary India in his 2008 novel). Thus if we compare Kampala to New York, or Cairo to Los Angeles, or the Berkeley and Oakland Hills to West Oakland, then Kampala and Cairo and West Oakland seem to be lagging behind, aspiring, trying to catch up.

13 Jameson was criticized by some (see Ahmed 1992) for, among other things, his use of the terms ‘West’ and ‘Third World’. Yet he maintained that for us here in the affluent West, or in developed countries, the ‘Third World’ does serve occasionally as a single unit of thought, even as we know it is woefully inadequate.

What Kind of Global Citizen is the Student Volunteer? • 33

It is this apprehension we cannot help but have – this view that there are those half-baked, less- developed parts of the world (some in our very backyard), places defined by their lack of things and by their lagging behind us – that is, for Jameson, “humanly impoverishing” (66). If we stretch Jameson’s discussion (arguably in a way he fully meant it to be stretched), we can take him to be suggesting that if our upbringing in a developed country or our aspiration for a middle class life undermines our ability to understand the ways of life in countries outside the affluent West, or the ways of life of people in poor neighborhoods, if we’re only able to experience those ways of life as lacking and backward and un-modern, then it is our lives that are impoverished; then we are poor. Poor, Jameson means, in an experiential sense – our experience of our humanness is impoverished because it is blinkered by comfort and ease.

This, in my opinion, is a remarkable point, and Jameson moves on from it to work through the older remarkable idea from which it is derived, that of Hegel’s ironic reversal of Master and Slave. Working with a similar reversal, we might say that in the world of student volunteering, it is we (the student, the faculty and staff, the development practitioner) who are poor in our understanding. In the encounters generated by the aid world, we struggle to make sense of what the world looks, seems, and feels like to those who in all their heterogeneity are labeled the beneficiaries of aid.

Jameson is not moralistic, however, in his discussion. The perspective of the First World, or of the comfortable classes, he points out, is “perfectly natural, perfectly comprehensible”; yet, he adds, it happens also to be “terribly parochial.” He writes: “There is nothing particularly disgraceful in having lived a sheltered life, in never having had to confront the difficulties, the complications and the frustrations of urban living, but it is nothing to be particularly proud of either” (p. 66). He suggests that our views and responses toward the less affluent make sense, springing as they do from our upbringing, our experiences living in relative comfort, learning to aspire for a comfortable middle class life. There is no reason for shame in this. Yet, nor also does being affluent grant a person the right to serve as guide or helper to aid beneficiaries (for example), for there is no reason for pride either in the chance circumstances of our birth and in our relatively sheltered, comfortable lives.

Furthermore, Jameson suggests that our upbringing instills in us a fear “about the way people actually live in other parts of the world – a way of life that still has little in common with daily life in the American suburb.” Our tendency to view life in poor countries or in poor neighborhoods as backward, he says, is in fact only the outer face of an inner fear of lives that are lived so differently from that of middle class U.S. lives. On the surface, our judgment of the non-West and of the poor as a work in progress, needing (our) help, seems reasonable or sympathetic, but this judgment masks what is really a deep fear of how people actually live in vast parts of the world. The fear, he suggests, is related to our:

[…] sense of our own non-coincidence with that [Other], so different from ourselves; our sense that to coincide in any adequate way with that [Other ...] we would have to give up a great deal that is individually precious to us and acknowledge an existence and a situation unfamiliar and therefore frightening – one that we do not know and prefer not to know. (p. 66)

Let us dwell a moment on the fear of which Jameson writes and on his unnerving suggestion that this fear is part and parcel of the process of relating to people less well off than ourselves. We

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 34 might thus bring a new lens to bear on the street encounter with which this essay began and on its image of the needy presenting outstretched hands to the not-needy. We might also shed light on college students volunteering in the aid industry, domestically and in other countries. Jameson offers the insight that when we interact with people whose circumstances are so different from our own, we recognize that to build a connection with such an individual may involve a very large sacrifice on our part. First, we struggle to understand their view of the world; we begin to recognize that to see their neighborhood or dinner through their eyes, to live their work lives in the way that they do, to become, in other words, a bit more like this less affluent Other, we would have to give up a great deal that is precious to us. And this potential loss of familiar comforts, of the ability to take such comforts for granted, is frightening. Jameson seems to suggest that we do not need so much to fret about being properly generous when confronted by another’s need, rather we need (also, or perhaps more importantly) to reflect upon the depth of our attachment to our own comforts – for that attachment is usually very deep indeed. It is this attachment by which we are impoverished.

Conclusion

There are some threads yet to tie up in order to conclude this essay. For it seems that with middle class/First World comforts comes a tendency to be a pitying benefactor. We tend to more easily love the abstract human, but not the flesh and blood neighbor, the stranger near at hand. We are deeply attached to our comforts. What lessons are there here for all of us and particularly for college students volunteering in the aid world? As consumers of the volunteer experience, can we approach the planned experience in ways that complicate the benefactor/giving approach? Here, in conclusion, I will explore two possibilities.

The discussion so far would suggest that our goal should not after all be the alleviation of another’s poverty or suffering in itself. The first possibility, then, is to conceive of the volunteer aid industry as opening spaces for a range of social encounters between volunteers (often, though not always, middle class) and aid beneficiaries. In such human interaction, perhaps, we and the college student might learn to put aside the philanthropic impulse itself, to continuously reorient ourselves to asking how, if not as benefactors, we can apprehend and interact with the people we meet in these spaces of aid and Otherness. We might, perhaps, witness others’ living alternatives to the fierce self-sufficiency so valued in the highly industrialized nations. Thus the first of two possible ways we might be creative consumers of aid volunteering is by replacing the benefactor/giving approach produced by the volunteer experience with something else, something such as Gayatri Spivak’s “face-to-face ethical encounter.” Kapoor reminds us that Spivak writes of such encounters as replacing the commonplace depictions of needy aid beneficiaries as generated for us by the aid world. Moreover, Kapoor adds, this could involve a good deal of not fully understanding. As she writes, “Coming to terms with the Other’s difference is precisely reckoning with the impossibility of knowing it, accepting that it exceeds our understanding or expectations” (p. 122). Says Kapoor, accepting that we cannot fully understand also means rereading the “non-speakingness” of subalterns or aid beneficiaries. Where we might at first read silence as ignorance or stubbornness, says Kapoor, we need to learn to read it instead as a “[form] of resistance and agency,” as a “refusal to answer or submit to the gaze and questioning of”... the aid world.

This essay opened with an evocation of freedom. Can engagements such as those described above be a journey toward freedom (and for the moment I am still focusing on the college student,

What Kind of Global Citizen is the Student Volunteer? • 35

and not on the beneficiaries of the aid world, for their stories would require a different discussion)? Anthropologist James Laidlaw (2002) offers us an unusual perspective on freedom, one that we might bend to our purposes here. Laidlaw writes that we need to shake up our views of what counts as freedom. Specifically, he says, we need ways of describing “how freedom is exercised in different social contexts and cultural traditions” (p. 311) – he refers to this as an anthropology of freedom.14 He then evokes Michel Foucault’s description of self-fashioning or “techniques of the self,” including “our response to invitations or injunctions to make oneself into a certain kind of person” (p. 322). In an unusual reading Laidlaw writes that for Foucault such deliberate self- fashioning is indeed a practice of freedom in the modern world, and an ethical practice of freedom furthermore. Laidlaw cites the French philosopher: “‘Ethics’, Foucault writes, ‘is the conscious (réfléchie) practice of freedom.’” (p. 324). Laidlaw sees Foucault as suggesting that “[o]ne can have more or less freedom, and it takes different forms, in different historical situations” (p. 323). And further, “[Foucault] speaks not of achieving but of exercising freedom.” In this spirit, can we posit that for U.S. college students seeking volunteer experiences in a globalizing world, freedom might be pursued through a self-fashioning project involving exposure and interaction with people whose lives are very different from their own along with continuous self-reflection during that process? The goal is not to “aid” the beneficiaries of the aid industry, nor to accomplish anything “measurable” at all, but rather to play witness and in the process to fire one’s imagination, to plant seeds of possible future transformation, to influence one’s own future decisions. Can the above creative consumption of the purchased volunteer experience be, for students, also a practice of freedom, where freedom is conceived of as a deliberate self-fashioning, a conscious attempt to learn in the presence of people who live without the comforts of middle class life or the mostly taken-for-granted quality of everyday life in highly industrialized societies? Can we conceive of freedom as a freedom from the limitations of middle class-ness itself exercised as a process of self reflection and self-(re)fashioning?

If the hope here is for a transformation of us, the middle class volunteer, what about the aid beneficiary herself or himself? It would be a problem all over again if we were to make of this beneficiary a romanticized, innocent Other, primarily stimulus for our own self-(re)fashioning. Volunteers are likely to interact, surely, with all kinds of individuals and groups – the subaltern, Spivak might remind us, is irretrievably heterogenous.15 We will need a most adult appreciation of human complexity, and we will need to recognize also that all our lines are blurry and fluid. For

14 Laidlaw recounts Friedrich Nietzsche’s historical account of the past ten thousand years, of the shift from a pre-moral to a moral society, as a result of what he calls the “slave revolt”. In the pre-moral world, “good” and “bad” were simply great versus inadequate/low/bad. After the slave revolt, which emerges when the “ressentiment” of the weak becomes creative and effects social change, a new set of ideas, the slaves’ ideas, about good and bad emerge, such that: “What had been good characteristics [of the nobles and of social superiors] were now ‘re-touched, re-interpreted, and re-viewed through the poisonous eye of ressentiment’ ... where force, vitality, and formidableness had been inseparable natural expressions of strength, they are now seen, as if strength had the choice of not being strong, as ‘aggression’ ... Weakness now becomes, in the new moral sense, good” (pp. 319-320). This transformation is fuelled by guilt. Guilt’s origins in turn lie in the non- or pre-moral notion of debt. But whereas debt was based on notions of equivalence, “Guilt cannot be got rid of simply by repayment. Instead, it leaves a residue of ‘inner pain’” (p. 320) that is essential to morality. Furthermore, Laidlaw suggests, in Indic religions and in karma (his work’s main focus), “ressentiment is redirected, as an ascetic impulse, against yourself” (p. 320). 15 See, among others, these ethnographic discussions complicating notions of the innocent native (thinking instead with terms such as ‘canny native’): Gefou-Madianou (2010); Hernandez-Reguant (2008).

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 36 example, does every U.S. college student fit that role of a rich global citizen visiting poor global citizens? In a strict sense, surely not. Students in universities in the West hail from different cultural, economic backgrounds. And what about middle and upper middle class people in developing countries? In them, college students feel they meet people with whom they seem to share something of the perception that they live in a place catching up with the West. Yes, they do indeed complicate any clean binaries – rich/poor; volunteer/beneficiary; Master/Slave. They require that we displace the lines of this division, thinking not of Global North versus Global South alone but also of perceived distinctions of class and race, and so on.

Yet all the while we can maintain, when students travel or work as volunteers in the aid industry, they cannot shake off the nametag of the American or Western European college student. This subjectivity travels with them and frames all their interactions. When they introduce themselves in the spaces of aid work and development, there is no way around their having to account for being a college student from the Global North. The burden of embodying the world’s inequalities, often in their very corporeality (one Filipino-American student spoke in my class of being wrenchingly struck by how much taller and muscular his American diet made him than the Filipinos he met in Manila), feels heavy for many, even unbearable.

This takes me to the second possibility for how we might conceive of being volunteers in the aid industry. For this, I would like to borrow an insight from Faisal Devji (2011) writing of Mohandas Gandhi’s approach to other people’s suffering. Devji describes how, in the face of a famine and people dying of drought, Gandhi elected not to offer a helping hand to the hungry, but rather to train the spotlight on the responsible national government and to thus lift the problem to the “necessary political plane”.16 Writes Devji:

So [Gandhi’s] response to suffering was not in the first instance to ameliorate it but instead to make sure that those who had been wronged behaved like moral agents and not victims, thus allowing them to enter into a political relationship with their persecutors. (pp. 272-273)

Gandhi’s politics went a step further, Devji points out. He sought to make of injustice and suffering an occasion not only to energize a political encounter between the powerful and the dispossessed, but also to transform the morality of the persecutor, the Master. Thus Devji continues: “[The persecutors], after all, were themselves in need of a moral transformation, for which their victims were to be made responsible, preferably without the intervention of any third party” (p. 273).

What would it mean for a North American or Western European college volunteer to abandon the role of assistant to the poor and needy and take on instead the part of witness to – and, perhaps, facilitator of – others’ political engagement with their national government? It would be another essay to theorize if and how the flexing of one’s citizenship in radically democratic ways might be viewed as a contemporary form of collective interdependence, in turn suggesting the possibility of new forms of loyalty that cross national boundaries, forged by countless ethical encounters in the spaces opened up, if necessary, by the aid industry itself. Yet, it is just such preliminary theorizing

16 Nirmal Kumar Bose’s reflections on this very incident, as cited in Devji (2011).

What Kind of Global Citizen is the Student Volunteer? • 37

that allows us to reimagine the international volunteer experience as a crucible for some emergent form of citizenship in an as-yet unknown global polity.

For all too easily, as so many now have persuasively argued, the individual – and with especial harm, the aid beneficiary – in today’s neo-liberal world is granted no political selfhood but rather reduced either to an economic self (whose income should be raised, or whose productivity enhanced) or to a biological organism (whose body is to be properly vaccinated, operated upon, and fed).

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 38

References

Adiga, A. (2008). White Tiger: A Novel. New York: Free Press.

Ahmed, A. (1992). Jameson’s Rhetoric of Otherness and the ‘National Allegory’. In In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (pp. 95-122). London: Verso.

Bloch, M. & Parry, J. (1989). Introduction: Money and the Morality of Exchange. In M. Bloch & J. Parry (Eds.), Money and the Morality of Exchange (pp. 1-32). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Booth, D., Leach M., & Tierney, A. (1999). Experiencing Poverty in Africa: Perspectives from Anthropology. Background Paper 1(b) for the World Bank Poverty Status Report.

Bornstein, E. (2009). The Impulse of Philanthropy. Cultural Anthropology, 24(4), 622-651.

Bornstein, E. & Redfield P. (Eds.) (2011). Forces of Compassion: Humanitarian Between Ethics and Politics. Santa Fe, NM: SAR Press.

Devji, F. (2011). The Paradox of Nonviolence. Public Culture, 23(2), 269-274.

Ewing, K. (1999). The Illusion of Wholeness: Culture, Self, and the Experience of Inconsistency. Ethos, 18(3), 251-278.

Fisher, W. F. (1997). Doing Good?: The Politics and Antipolitics of NGO Practices. Annual Review of Anthropology, 26, 439-464.

Gefou-Madianou, D. (2010). Ethnography in Motion: Shifting Fields on Airport Grounds. In M. Melhuus, J. P. Mitchell & H. Wulff (Eds.), Ethnographic Practice in the Present (pp 152- 168). Oxford: Berghahn Books.

Gregory, C. A. (1982). Gifts and Commodities. Waltham, MA: Academic Press.

Hernandez-Reguant, A. (2008). Copyrighting Che: Art and Authorship under Cuban Late Socialism. In J.X. Inda & R. Rosaldo (Eds.), The Anthropology of Globalization: A Reader (pp 254-276). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Hudgins, K. (2010). Student Development Tourism: A Growing Trend to What End? Anthropology News, 51(8), 29.

Ilcan, S. & Phillips, L. (2010). Developmentalities and Calculative Practices: The Millenium Development Goals. Antipode, 42(4), 844-874.

Incite! Women of Color Against Violence (2007). The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.

What Kind of Global Citizen is the Student Volunteer? • 39

Jameson, F. (1986). Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism. Social Text, 15, 65-88.

Kapoor, I. (2004). Hyper-self-reflexive development? Spivak on representing the Third World ‘Other’.’ Third World Quarterly, 25(4), 15-16.

Laidlaw, J. (2002). For an Anthropology of Ethics and Freedom. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 8(2), 311-332.

Mauss, M. (2000). The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. (W. D. Halls, Trans). New York: W. W. Norton. (Original work published 1950).

Perry, M. J. (2000). Is the Idea of Human Rights Ineliminably Religious? In The Idea of Human Rights: Four Inquiries (pp. 11-42). New York: Oxford University Press.

Piff, P. K., Kraus, M. W., Côté, S., Cheng, B. H., & Keltner, D. (2010). Having Less, Giving More: The Influence of Social Class on Prosocial Behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99(5), 771-784.

Piot, C. (1999). Remotely Global: Village Modernity in West Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Redfield, P. & Bornstein, E. (2009). A Modest Map of the Aid World. Anthropology News, 50(1), 22-23.

Rorty, R. (2000). Justice as a Larger Loyalty. In P. Cheah & B. Robbins (Eds.), Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation (pp. 45-58). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Said, E. W. (1986). Michael Walzer’s ‘Exodus and Revolution’: A Canaanite Reading. Grand Street, 5(2), 86-106.

Spivak, G. C. (1990). The Post-modern Condition: The End of Politics? with Geoffrey Hawthorn, Ron Aronson, and John Dunn, in S. Harasym (Ed.), The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues (pp. 17-34). New York & London: Routledge.

Spivak, G. C. (2003). A conversation with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: politics and the imagination, interview by Jenny Sharpe. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28(2), 609–624.

Stack, C. (1975). All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in Black Community. New York: Harper and Row.

Strathern, M. (1984). Marriage Exchanges: A Melanesian Comment. Annual Review of Anthropology, 13, 41-73.

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 40

Strathern, M. (1988). The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Strathern, M. (2004). Losing (Out On) Intellectual Resources. In A. Pottage & M. Mundy (Eds.), Law, Anthropology, and the Constitution of the Social: Making Persons and Things (pp. 201-233). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Walzer, M. (2006). Morality and Politics in the Work of Michael Wyschogrod. Modern Theology, 22(4), 687-692.

Journal of Global Citizenship & Equity Education Volume 2 Number 2 - 2012 journals.sfu.ca/jgcee

Marginalization and Leadership: Iranian Immigrant Women’s Challenges in Canadian Academia and Society

Zahra Hojati, Ph.D. Graduate, Ontario Institute for Study in Education (OISE) University of Toronto

Keywords: Iranian Women Graduate Students; Racialized Women’s Bodies; Higher Education; Marginalization; Exclusion; Identity; Integration; Social Justice; 9/11

ABSTRACT: Iranian women disappointed by increasing social and political instability in their homeland have migrated to Canada to achieve their dream of social rights and justice. However, the tragedy of September 11, 2001 directed considerable hatred toward Middle Eastern people. They did not feel at peace, were not treated with respect, and their presence in the west aroused suspicion. More recently, Iran’s president, Mahmood Ahmadinejad is largely seen to be a person who threatens world peace; this negatively impacts Iranians in the west as those remaining in Iran face heavy economic sanctions. In this article, which is a small part of my thesis research findings, I discuss the challenges of first- generation of Iranian immigrant women through their experiences in Canadian graduate schools and workplaces. How do they negotiate the many negative images of Iranians and how do these images shape their experiences within these institutions?

First-generation female Iranian graduate students’ experiences in Canada are unheard and undocumented. In interviews, these women questioned the ability of neo-liberal capitalist schools to connect them to Canadian society while honouring their Iranian origins and identities and enabling them to achieve their goal to live and study in Canada. I argue that Iranian immigrant women experience a double exclusion both at school and in the workplace despite their willingness to engage with both places. This dual exclusion is an enormous source of pressure on their minds and spirits. The goal of this research is to give these women a voice. Policy makers in school and workplaces will benefit from the findings of this research, which calls for significant changes to realize social justice in Canadian society.

Introduction

The literature on graduate students’ experiences in North American academia states that graduate students consciously pursue their studies to further their own personal goals, be it for better job opportunities or in response to their internal wishes. Regardless of their race and gender, they are frustrated by a lack of financial support, supervisor incompatibility, and a rigid curriculum in their institution of choice (Bannerji, 2000; Braden, 2000; Hutt, 2000; Willie, Grady, & Hope, JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 42

1991). These issues intensify when race and gender are added to the students’ characteristics (Acker, 2001; Bannerji, 2000; Braden, 2000; Hutt, 2000; Murray, 2008; Samuel, 2005; Willie et al., 1991).

Due to the growing immigrant population in Canadian society, more racialized women are entering graduate school. Thus, ethnicity, language, and nationality intersect with race and gender for further exclusion of racialized bodies. Bannerji (2000), Braden (2000), and Hutt (2000) explore how Canadian academia is biased against gender and race. According to their findings there were no significant improvements in the challenges faced by women graduate students nowadays than those encountered by women from 1980 to 1990. Not only did the bias not improve but students encountered more severe regulation and disadvantages. In this research, graduate students criticized the lack of financial and emotional support from their supervisor or department, and few opportunities to raise their voices, which are not part of the mainstream white, male, middle class. Mazzuca (2000) similarly investigates the challenges of second-generation female Italian students in Canadian graduate schools. She finds cultural adaptation even for the second generation is a major issue as the educational system, “rarely incorporates the languages and cultures of its students within the mainstream curriculum” (Mazzuca, 2000, p. 11). Samuel (2005) identifies immigration and nationality as contemporary sites of migrants’ struggles against colonialism (p. 51). Canada’s immigration and citizenship laws are racialized, classed, and gendered; for example, the point system is rooted in systemic racism, classism, and sexism and it especially adversely affects immigrants from developing countries (Samuel, 2005). This sexism and racism manifests in the educational system; South Asian students found it difficult to obtain work as teaching assistants or research assistants in their universities. Their skin colour, non-Canadian accents and cultural backgrounds were found to be factors that hindered them from getting jobs quickly (Samuel, 2005, p. 53). Migration intersects with gender and race, and I argue that migration is a source of marginalization and exclusion in Canadian universities. As a result, it is important to analyze the situation of immigrant/international students from a political-economic point of view, since they participate directly in the profit cycle of higher education. Thus, these questions need to be asked: What is the benefit of higher education for immigrant and international students? Is there an actual fair exchange of learning for social and economic mobility? Moreover, in this exchange, are racialized immigrant women students allowed to fully participate in the institutional structures that they are supporting? Can their voices be included in the restructuring of Canadian academia for social change and justice?

The experiences of Middle Eastern women, including Iranian immigrant women are absent from the literature on structural exclusions in the academy. My research attempts to elaborate and analyze these neglected experiences in a Canadian context. However, the experiences of these women in Canadian universities are not separate from their histories in their home country, which shape their perspectives on the society they are living and studying in – Canada. In this paper, I explore the social-political reform in Iran and the women’s situations in that milieu. Next, I examine Iranian immigrant women’s experiences in the Canadian context. Finally, I offer suggestions for social change and justice in Canada, in academia, and the workplace.

Contemporary Social Reform in Iran

In 1979, the Iranian people protested against 2,500 years of monarchy. Although Iranians are diverse in their beliefs, religion, language, and ethnicity, they all protested in a revolution that Marginalization and Leadership • 43

ended up with the formation of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Since then, the Iranian people have witnessed dramatic changes in the social, cultural, and political areas of their lives. The revolutionaries had hoped for more justice and equity in the establishment of an Islamic state compared with the monarchical system. Unfortunately, their dream did not come true.

Iran is a country of young people, with a population of 72 million, of which two-thirds are under 30 years of age. Therefore, 70% of the population represents an extraordinary human resource, and yet they are not involved in the socio-economic development of their own country. These young people are deprived of cultural and political freedoms. Quality of life, according to the Economic Intelligence Unit, is the measurement of material well-being, political stability and security, family life (percent of divorce), community life, climate and geography, job security, political freedom, and gender equality (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2005). Based on this index, Iran ranks 88th among 110 countries (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2005). The unemployment rate in 2012 is about 12% (UNFPA, 2012).

Iran boasts a growing literacy rate. In 2002, the literacy rate for men aged 15 and above was 83.5%, and for women it was 70.4%, and for the total population it was 77% (CIA, 2012b). As of 2012, the literacy rate for the total population has increased to 84.6% (UNFPA, 2012). From 1999 to 2000, the gross enrollment index (GPI) in primary school between girls’ and boys’ increased to 0.96 from 0.90 from 1990 to 1991 (Mehran, 2003, p. 1). Despite these encouraging statistics, the high rate of growth in Iran did not lead to a high quality of life for its people.

Iran’s population is diverse. While the official language is Farsi (Persian), there are also many other languages spoken, such as Arabic, Turkish, Luri, and Kurdish, to mention but a few. There is also a great diversity of religions practised such as Judaism, Christianity, Baha’i faith, and Zoroastrianism, but the dominant religion is Islam. Shia Muslims represent 89% of the population, and Sunni Muslims represent 9%. The Sunni Muslims do not enjoy the same advantages as the Shia Muslims. The diversification of religions and languages, has created a multicultural country, but minorities cannot freely practice their ethnic customs. As a result, Iran is a country of ambiguities with regard to moral values, which is why there are always people seeking social, cultural, and political justice and equity.

In post-revolution Iran, women’s conditions not only did not improve, but women were increasingly excluded from decision-making regarding their families and social rights (Kar, 1999). Such cultural, social, and political inequalities forced many Iranians to migrate to all parts of the world. These migrations took place in several waves. The first wave immediately followed the revolution; most refugees and immigrants were supporters of the (monarchical) system and were against the application of Islamic law, or sharia. The war between Iran and Iraq, from 1980 to 1988, resulted in the second wave of migration as people fled Iran to protect their families from the horrors of war. Later, as people witnessed more injustice and inequality, other groups, such as educated, critical Muslims and those on the political left gradually began to leave their home country. In 1996, Mohammad Khatami, who promised liberalization and reform, became president, and everybody expected the country to change dramatically. However, because of the influence of the autocratic regime, these dreams could not be achieved, and a third wave of migration happened. In the late 1990s, many educated people who had lost their hope for change and justice left the country. After 2000, the fourth wave of migrants came to Canada as a result of the country’s evolving migration policies. The new immigration laws provided more opportunities for business JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 44 people to invest in Canada (Knowles, 2007). Finally, when the Green Movement was silenced in 2009, the fifth wave of migrants, consisting of mostly young people disappointed by the lack of positive change in Iran, migrated to North America and South Asia. This vast migration of escaping intellectuals represented a brain drain from Iran, which has benefited Canadian society. Certainly, the shared experience of a lack of social justice, and cultural and political freedoms back home are common factors for Iranian immigrants.

Social change in Iran clearly influences Iranian women’s decisions to leave their native country, and in turn it impacts the challenges in and their resistance to their host society. Beyond the fifth wave of immigration, the imposition of Sharia law in Iran further pressures Iranian women to migrate. Sharia strips away gender equality by giving men more control over women. Women’s status in education and the workforce in Iran constitutes a significant challenge these women faced at home and this chapter of their life sheds light on these immigrant women’s relationship to education and work in Canada.

Iranian Women’s Status in Contemporary Iran

Compared with the monarchical system in pre-revolutionary Iran, in which women’s participation in higher education was not significant, in contemporary Iran 60% of university students are women (Hojati, 2011). This high participation can be analyzed from many viewpoints, such as a desire for a safer space for women’s mobility, a greater family awareness about enhancing their daughters’ futures, fewer job opportunities for women compared with men, more prestige for women and their families, and a desire to go abroad for further education since education provides opportunities for migration to other countries. In addition, educated women have more financial independence and mobility than uneducated women in Iranian society, and as a result, their voices are heard more. In Iran, women can study in all programs except male- dominated programs such as mining. Women can study law and become lawyers, but they cannot become judges. Also, men cannot study in women’s programs, such as midwifery. Even though Iranian women are able to achieve high educational levels, they are not necessarily welcome in the male-dominated employment spheres. Women’s presence in managerial jobs in Iran is 2% of 17,563 jobs, compared with the whole world, which is 11.2% (Shojaei, Samsu, & Asayeseh, 2010). As for women’s presence in government, among 137 countries, Iran ranks at 131st; Afghanistan is 27th and Iraq is 36th. Some countries that rank lower than Iran are Qatar, Oman, and Saudi Arabia (Shojaei et al., 2010). These statistics must be understood in the context of patriarchy and the presence of a glass ceiling, a universal issue that Iranian women face much more because of the social implications of sharia. Although the country has many educated people, the social, cultural, and political structure of the country does not provide equal rights to women. This is one of the fundamental reasons that Iranian immigrant women in all parts of the world tolerate challenges and difficulties in their host societies; they are not happy with the idea of going back to their county of origin (Hojati, 2011).

Because of these circumstances, some first-generation Iranian immigrant women with Iranian university degrees want to further their studies in Canada. Not only do they wish to develop their knowledge but also to live in a safe and respectful society that provides them with more rights. In the remainder of this article, I discuss how racialized women who are excluded and marginalized in graduate schools and workplaces can take a role of leadership in Canadian society. The aim of this article is to contextualize their voices in graduate school and workplaces. Marginalization and Leadership • 45

Theory and Methodology of the Research

Global social, political, and economic insecurity, and the War on Terror, have stimulated a global immigration movement. Neo-liberalism is a framework that supports globalization, and new foreign policies resulting from global insecurity that affect local people as well as racialized immigrants. Because Iranian people are known as Middle Eastern people, Orientalism, as defined by Said, is, therefore, an appropriate theoretical perspective from which to investigate the way these people have been presented in the Western knowledge, literature, and institutions (Said, 1979, 2003, Yegenoglu, 1998). According to Said (1979, 2003) the roots of Orientalism are colonialism and racism – the superiority of the west over the east. In my research, I also adopted an integrative anti-racist feminist perspective to examine the integration of race and gender with religion, ethnicity, and nationality, and etc. in one’s identity (Dei, 2005; Ng, 2005; Wane, 2004). Using this framework, I will examine the interconnection of such factors in the marginalization and exclusion of Iranian immigrant women and their resistance to and engagement with their host society, Canada.

I utilized standpoint theory as my methodology of research, which is a critical feminist approach used to validate marginalized and ignored women’s voices advocated by Dorothy Smith, Nancy Hartsock, Hilary Rose, Alison Jaggar, Sandra Harding, and bell hooks (Harding, 1995, p. 103; Thomas-Long, 2006, p. 68). This methodology addresses the issues of whose questions are being asked and whose problems have been resolved. Dorothy Smith, in 1987, and bell hooks, in 1990, started from the local and everyday experiences of their subjects (Thomas-Long, 2006, p. 69). In 1995, to this practice Dua (2003) brought Bannerji’s idea that in standpoint theory we have to go beyond women’s inclusion. Bannerji claims that, in order to know the culture of advanced capitalism, we have to start from ourselves: “Once again I must begin from myself. From my body as a political signifier” (Dua, 2003, p. 18). Moreover, in this methodology the integration of experience and knowledge is a key concept that can lead to women’s liberation (Harding, 1995).

I conducted interviews in the summer of 2008 with eleven first-generation Iranian immigrant women graduate students who had already earned a degree from an Iranian university. Because of cultural limitations among Iranians (where Iranians are reluctant to talk with each other about the oppression in their lives), a focus group could not be used as a method of data collection. All eleven participants were students in six different graduate schools in Ontario. To avoid compromising anonymity, I prefer to not mention the name of their schools. Seven of them studied in master’s programs, and four of them studied in doctoral programs. Their respective programs of study were varied (science, health, engineering, education, and humanities). Their marital statuses and family lives were diverse, from single to divorced to remarried, with and without children. Their ages varied between 26 and 55 years, and at the time of the interviews, they had been present in Canada from one to 30 years. What unites this diverse group of women is their experiences of marginalization and exclusion in the classroom and workplace.

The Promise and the Reality of the Land of Opportunity

In this section, I introduce the participants’ voices regarding their experiences in Canadian graduate schools and workplaces. In general, all of the participants were hoping to achieve what they had not achieved back home, justice and freedom in society. These individuals wished to be JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 46 included in a cohesive social group. They hoped that their previous education and experience would help them integrate into Canadian society and enhance their contribution to Canadian social development. They brought their past expertise to their present circumstances, which they hoped would help them adapt easily to their new country. They expected that this connection would balance their minds and spirits and that they would be happier people. They entered graduate school in order to achieve this connection and integration. One student, Hoda, speaks to this topic:

I think in Iran we knew how to proceed in school. I was familiar with the educational system, but here I am like a stranger and do not know what to do. Besides stressing about proving myself, I also want to show that I am like others. I have tried to get good marks, have perfect presentations. It took me a long time to adapt with the new educational system and do well. Gradually, I became “normal”…I am not different. (Interview, summer 2008; italics added)

According to Said (1979, 2003) all Middle Eastern people, who he refers to as Oriental people, are known mainly as Muslims and Arabs. Although the historical and cultural background of Iranians goes back to the Persian Empire and the formation of the Farsi language, according to Said’s Orientalism thesis, Middle Eastern people are still stigmatized as Arabs and Muslims who are backward, oppressive and male-dominated. Middle Eastern women are represented negatively. Said elaborates:

The association of the West with modernity, progress, development, and freedom and the East with the opposites of these features is indeed a phallocentric gesture, which associates the Orient with negativity, simultaneously construes it as that which is Other than the established norm. (as quoted by Yegenoglu, 1998, p. 104)

With the above concept in mind, Yegenoglu (1998) points to women as the essence of Orientalism. Since the 18th century, the West has sought to discover this creature, and, even in the 21st century, “women’s freedom” was one of the motivating justifications for the occupation of Afghanistan in 2001. As a result of the negative image of Iranian and other Middle Eastern women, understood through the Orientalist perspective, Hoda feels she is different from white Canadian students. As a Muslim woman who practises hijab (where a woman covers her hair in observance of Islam), her body is thus racialized and this compels her to put in the effort and work harder at school in order to show that Middle Eastern women are like everyone else; like western women, they can succeed in academia. Some white Canadian students consider the hijab to be abnormal (Hojati, 2011), which causes Iranian women to feel more pressure over their racialized bodies. These women need to prove to themselves that they are not different from others – that they can study and get good marks.

In another interview, we find that another student, Negar, believes that the tragedy of September 11, 2001, caused a dramatic change in her personal and educational life. She states:

September 11 brought me to a Ph.D. program. Society changed a lot after that accident [sic]. I thought I wouldn’t be affected by such tragedy because I was completely involved with and familiar with Western system and culture. I never considered myself as an immigrant. I grew up in this society. After 9/11 I witnessed how others’ views and values changed, and how they expressed their attitude towards Others. Simultaneously, in the past two years of my work, I commuted to U.S.A, and after Marginalization and Leadership • 47

9/11 my commute got worse because of my nationality. I got tired of this travelling and also the way the U.S.A. treated Middle Eastern people. My view towards society changed in the same way society’s view changed about people like me. (Interview, summer 2008; italics added)

Local people are affected by state policies. Cainkar (2004) states that foreign policy impacts the domestic sphere and causes violence towards local people. The way the United States treated Middle Eastern countries and counted Iran, Syria, and Iraq as an “Axis of Evil” created a harsh environment for Iranian women in Canada. Negar commuted to the United States for many years without any problems, but after 9/11 in 2001, the scenario changed and Iranian people were treated as potential terrorists. The foreign policy between Iran and the United States worsened, and Canadian immigration and foreign policies continued its pressure on Iranian women in and out of Canada. One consequence of this negative relationship between the foreign policy of Canada and Iran was the halting of their diplomatic relations after the death of Iranian-Canadian woman journalist Zahra Kazemi in Iran in 2003 (Kazemi, 2007). Moreover, Citizenship and Immigration officers impeded the ease of entry of Iranian immigrants’ families hoping to visit their relatives in Canada (Shahrvand, 2008). In April 2012, the Canadian embassy in Iran transferred the visa section from Tehran, Iran, to Ankara, Turkey. Since May 2012, Toronto Dominion (TD) bank in Toronto/Canada has been closing the accounts of some Iranian-Canadian citizens without explanation. The Iranian community weekly news, Salam Toronto, started to bring attention to this racist behavior and now it is broadcasted widely in Canadian media (Salam Toronto, 2012). Moreover, more than one Apple employee refused to sell products to Farsi speakers in a misinterpretation of the sanctions against Iran (Moradi, 2012). I can analyze these restrictions in the light of neo-liberalism and racism, which stimulate global war and insecurity for southern countries and people. I argue that the foreign policy affects local people when it creates a harsh environment for immigrant Iranian women, in turn causing a fragmentation of their identity: Are they Canadian/American Iranian? Are they welcome in the host society? The challenge of connecting their past to the present turns into a serious inquiry.

Leila is another student affected by the negative image of Iran in the world, and it dramatically affected her school and personal lives. Leila states:

Being an Iranian woman creates two sorts of conflict for me. I have to fight what Iran offers me personally, as a liberal woman, as well as how Iran is portrayed in the world, so both personal and political challenges. Iranian president! I hate to be realized as a defender of Ahmadinejad, as a supporter of nuclear power. Being accused of spying by a young man, all pierced and tattooed whose smell of beer and smoke early in the day and in a computer lab, was obvious from a long distance ended in a bitter laugh for me, but my other experience broke my heart. One day when one of my friends and I were walking by the riverside, two gentlemen offered to let us fish. The man beside me asked me where my accent belonged to. “Iran,” I said and smiled, still impressed by his generous offer and his teaching me fishing. “I don’t like my kids being bombed while they are going to school!” His naive and innocent look while he was almost asking me not to kill his kids made my eyes tearful. “I won’t kill your kids,” I handed back the fishing tools and walked away with a lump in my throat. I don’t like to be put down because of the president. “Should I deny my nationality?” I wondered. But, I want and like to identify as a proud Iranian woman and break all the stereotypes. (Interview, summer 2008; italics added).

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 48

Many Canadians, both in and out of school, stereotype Iranian women. These stereotypes are drawn from media representations. Iranian women are considered representative of Iranian policy, not as individuals trying to make their way in the world. The image of Leila as described by the white Canadian man is based on the Euro-American media and knowledge, which is a colonized knowledge. From a critical perspective, colonization goes beyond the occupation of land by means of physical domination; it is the global occupation of the mind, culture, and spirit by way of new technologies and new ideologies such as the neo-liberal perspective (Bakker, 1994; De Sousa Santos, 2006; Dwyer, 2006; Magnusson, 2005; Rhoades, & Slaugher, 2006). Leila is a woman who does not believe in Islam or the hijab, and politically she is against Iran’s state policy, but she is still regarded as “the Other.”

Being treated as the Other is not limited to Middle Eastern women; it also applies to anybody who does not fit in the mainstream in terms of race, class, gender, sexuality, and so on. The Other indicates an individual who is not “normal,” someone who is different. Ng (2005) articulates the marginalization of Indian and Chinese immigrants through the immigration process in Canada and the marginalization of Indigenous women through the colonization of Canada (Das Gupta, 1995; Murray, 2008). Murray (2008) researched the narratives of eight First Nations female educators in terms of their experiences as students and faculty members in order to ascertain how Euro-Western educational practices contributed to or interfered with their learning process and cultural beliefs. She discovered that the cultural misrepresentation and harmful stereotypes about First Nations people that permeate Euro-Western society contribute significantly to the marginalization and oppression of these women (Murray, 2008, p. ii). If you are Canadian but not of British decent then you are marginalized. According to Ng, those minorities suffer from being oppressed and are marginalized in favour of mainstream agenda. Integration into the white-dominated culture is problematic for their ethnic groups because the Eurocentrist perspective considers “immigrant women” as the “outsider” (Ng, 2005, p. 14). This linguistic structure is used even for Canadian- born women of colour (including First Nations women), women who do not speak English well, and immigrant women from the so-called Third World.

Leila continues:

My look and accent show I am a second-language speaker. In fact, Canadian people do not obviously express their hatred towards me. I remember one day in a computer lab one of the students, when he realized I am an Iranian student, asked me, “Are you a spy or a terrorist?” “Both,” I said. “You better watch out!” He said he is an —— Canadian and that his country is close to Iran, so Iran can send a bomb to his country easily now that he has recognized me. His absolute ignorance made me laugh at him. “I don’t care how idiots think of me,” I said. “Oh, I don’t think like that,” he said. “But I know most people sitting in this computer lab have this kind of image of you.” “Yeah, right!” I said. “You don’t think like that. Everyone else does!” That conversation happened one week after I entered Canada. (Interview, summer 2008; italics added).

According to the Orientalist understanding of Middle Eastern people, all Iranian women are generalized as hijab-wearing Muslims and, hence, that they are terrorists or spies. This Oriental image of Iranian women was incited after September 11, 2001, and as we can observe in the student’s statement above, and also in general in my entire research findings, all the interviewees Marginalization and Leadership • 49

claim they had negative experiences that lead them to believe most North Americans have a negative image of Iranians.

As Leila’s voice shows, the negative image of Iranian women was not limited to only one person in her school. According to her interlocutor, “most people” in that institute shared this image as a result of discussions about Iranians on the university campus. The way those Canadian students construct their knowledge is not free from bias; their knowledge is colonized/occupied by Euro-American education and media. Clearly, this negative image is more pervasive than Leila’s white-dominated graduate school; it might be in the larger community as well. I analyze this negative image in the light of the influence of the media: television, newspapers, radio, and books on average people. According to Said (1979), Western institutions produce the image of Middle Eastern people as inferior. It is important to note that Leila does not wear a hijab, so her clothing does not identify her as a Muslim woman, but her accent indicates that she is not Canadian born and that she is “the Other.” The accent barrier to integration in a larger community is also evidenced in Samuel’s research (2005) of South Asian students in Canadian higher education. Samuel’s finding demonstrated that a lack of proficiency in the English language and a ‘foreign’ accent contributed to student’s difficulty. A student mentioned that because of that, “I felt alone and stupid at times, not being able to join with the others and have fun” (Samuel, 2005, p. 57). Another participant in Samuel’s research claims that even though “I could speak English, it was my accent that may have contributed to this exclusion. The feeling of seclusion can be very disturbing and inhibiting” (Samuel, 2005, p. 57). So, I realized that one’s accent is not depoliticized in his/her representation of a nation. I will elaborate this notion in later pages.

The stigma of racialization that marks Middle Eastern women’s bodies is a structural effect of Canadian higher education; it cannot be individualized. To address students’ requests, challenges, and needs, most Canadian universities have a graduate students’ centre that provides financial and emotional support. Shaad, in her talk regarding the effectiveness of one such office, says:

Yes we have a counselor to address our issues, but if I complain, the counsellor tells me, “Don’t say anything, only study and finish your school; you cannot change anything.” Even the good professor only listens to you but doesn’t do anything for you and says she is sorry to hear that. (Interview, summer 2008; italics added)

The counselor confesses that minority women do not have any agency to effect change and to achieve justice and comes to the conclusion that the best policy would be to ignore discrimination and stay silent. Even a sympathetic professor only listens to the student but cannot support change or justice. I noticed the same experience in Samuel’s (2005) research among South Asian students. She states that “the human coordinator on campus, who liaised between students and instructors and who was constantly alert, felt that many students were afraid to lodge complaints of any kind. Through her interaction with students on campus she realized some instructors were mean and treated minority students shabbily but most of the students did not want to complain, they just bore it silently because they belonged to the minority group” (p. 89). Thus the school’s structure contributes to the perpetuation of discrimination. There are counselors to solve and mediate challenges between faculty and students, so why do they encourage students to be silent and obedient? As a result of democratic racism, which is the conflict between social rights constitutions about people of colour and their daily experiences of racism and discrimination (Henry & Tator, 1994), capitalist higher education inherently practises patriarchy and racism towards its racialized JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 50 students. This negative image exists at an individual, organizational, and systemic level (Henry & Tator, 1994, p. 2). Leila also explains:

The school has a “Students’ Counseling Service,” where I was referred to [when I was] disappointed by my grades. The counselor was more like an indifferent listener, well not even a listener. I felt I was talking to a wall. The only sentence she spoke was when she looked at her watch and told me I have only a few more minutes! If school cannot provide me with a counselor, a listener, they definitely do not care about bigger issues such as the financial ones. All they know is to have a certain number of international students to make money and make their profile look good. There’s absolutely no academic support. (Interview, summer 2008; italics added)

There are two main points in Leila’s experience. One is the nature of Canadian higher education, which, according to Magnusson (2000, 2005), Shahjahan (2004), and others, is moving from being student-centred to profit-centred. Secondly, her experience is of a racialized international woman who is discriminated against based on her identity, nationality, religion, language, and accent.

Canada is largely publicized as a multicultural welfare society and is proud of this distinguished image (Galabuzi, 2005; Hojati, 2006). Gradually, as a result of following the neoliberalism that focuses on the marketization of society, including higher education, Canada has moved away from the policies of the welfare state image. This agenda manifests itself in the reduction of healthcare benefits, increasing higher education tuition, and the cutting of student services in universities as these increasingly became part of the industrial centre that is embroiled in capital accumulation (Itwaru, 2008; Lee, 2004; Magnusson, 2000; Shahjahan, 2004). What then is the social, cultural and economic benefit of higher education for racialized women?

Leila explains that she also has a position in the department as a graduate assistant (GA) as well as a scholarship, but the income from these goes towards her tuition fees. She has to struggle to meet the cost of her living expenses. Interestingly, her GA position is at a writing development centre, where she edits English-speaking students’ papers. If she is knowledgeable and skilful enough to work in student services helping native speakers’ academic writing, why can she not get a good mark in her graduate class? Do other factors such as nationality, ethnicity, accent, and religion intersect in the evaluation of her work? Braden (2000) expresses her experience that in Canadian graduate school, “language is a strong barrier for silencing students” (p. 51). Leila’s situation conveys the idea of inclusion and exclusion as a social-political reality, as well as a personal ambiguity of her inclusion in a Canadian school and society. Ultimately, Leila’s work is discriminated against because she is “the Other.”

Speaking on the topic of teacher-student relationships, Maryam explains that she has two supervisors because of the nature of her thesis. She explains her relationship with them as follows:

My supervisors do not know how to guide and direct their students. They don’t know how much time must be spent for work, so their expectation is not realistic. They are from other ethnic groups and came from the U.S.A to Canada. Both are so young and dictatorial. We could not understand each other, and maybe the problem is because of a language barrier as they are not native too. It also refers to their personality, age, and culture. They can’t define the relationship between students and themselves. A democratic definition does not have any meaning for them, they say, “It is only my Marginalization and Leadership • 51

word. I don’t care about your idea. It is only my call.” So I can’t explore my idea through my words. Believe me, putting all these professors together is killing me. Sometimes I don’t want to see them. (Interview, summer 2008; italics added)

Androcentric universities privilege men’s interests. According to my research, professors who follow this patriarchal perspective could not tolerate a democratic atmosphere. According to Maryam, “we suppose Canadian graduate school is prepared for hearing graduate students’ voices, especially when it is about academic work” (Interview, summer 2008). Willie et al. (1991) researched the role of race in American graduate schools among 147 black scholars in 1977–1985. The findings of this research illustrate that “the success of students in graduate level was mainly because of a strong relationship between the individual and faculty members, mentors, or supervisors and fellow students” (p. 79). Once a graduate student has a supportive and understanding supervisor, I argue, school becomes a pleasant place where s/he is more likely to succeed. But in Maryam’s scenario, supervisors have their own cultural values that conflict with the democratic climate. They can misuse their power and authority to compel students to accept their ideas. Subsequently, when students complain to student services, the response is similar to those of Leila’s and Shaad’s. It is hard to believe that this patriarchal behaviour happens in a Canadian graduate school. I suppose, based on the Oriental image of Middle Eastern people, that many people expect this kind of patriarchal behaviour to exist in the Middle East, but not in North America. Based on my findings I can claim that patriarchy and domination are universal, yet manifest themselves in different individuals and are not exclusive to people from the Middle East. It is about power and privilege. In Shad’s case her professors also have to adopt an inclusive teaching pedagogy that takes into consideration Shad’s interests, thoughts, life, and knowledge regarding her work. As the professors do not integrate this into their teaching method, they contribute to the fragmentation of the students’ identity, mind, and spirit.

Maheen also shares her experiences with a professor in the classroom:

“You are from a country whose experience is not related to here and our subject” [these words were from a professor in Maheen’s class and were directed at her]. However, I knew my knowledge and experience are completely related, but the professor wanted to ignore it, and even my classmates were surprised and upset at the professor’s behaviour. And they told me, “she wants to put you down.” Why the professor did so to me? [She asked the question in a sad tone.] (Interview, summer 2008; italics added)

Nationality, religion, body, language, and accent are thus factors for rejecting one’s experience. According to Mohanty (1994), the politicization of gender and race in class often involves the “authorization” of marginal experiences and the creation of spaces for multiple, dissenting voices in the classroom. The authorization of experiences is thus a crucial form of student empowerment—a way for them to enter the classroom as speaking subjects. However, this focus on the centrality of experience can also lead to exclusion. It often silences those whose experiences are deemed “Other” (Mohanty, 1994, p. 153). I argue that the politicization of gender and race is integrated with ethnicity, religion, nationality, and so on, as everyone has his or her own individuality and identity. An appreciation of difference is the main core of an integrative, antiracist, feminist perspective. Therefore, every student has a right to a forum for active and meaningful dialogue that produces and accepts diverse knowledge. While Maheen is deprived of such an opportunity, she is aware of her situation and questions the power and authority of her JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 52 professor. Maheen’s marginalization is similar to the exclusion of Maryam in the sense that they feel a fragmentation of self and identity.

In another interview, Shaad, who wears a hijab, experiences intolerance at her workplace. She states:

To me, multiculturalism is a racist concept. At my work, some colleagues are biased and preoccupied, and because of my language and my accent, they push me and manipulate my thoughts and my words. For example, one of my colleagues pushed me and even changed my words to the manager, and when I noticed and revealed his tendency, he told me. “I can put a ring around your neck and kill you.” I laughed and told him, “You can do it, but then you won’t have a team leader.” (Interview, summer 2008; italics added)

Shaad realized from her experience that multiculturalism inherently is a concept that intertwines with racism and discrimination. The concept of democratic racism that Henry and Tator (1994) elaborate in their work in order to argue that racialized people’s experiences do not fit with established rules in a multicultural neo-liberal society. In a multicultural environment, there is always a dominant culture and “Other” cultures that, according to Ng (2005), are ethnic groups. Thus, “the Other” is inherently structured in a multicultural society. Henry Giroux in 1988 (as cited in Rezai-Rashti, 1995) states that “multiculturalism should mean analyzing not just stereotypes but also how institutions produce racism and other forms of discrimination” (p. 88). Hutt (2000) and Braden (2000) analyzed the marginalization of black people who suffered from the paraphrasing/censoring of their thoughts in a graduate school dominated by racist white students. An inclusive society requires self-articulating racialized voices in mainstream culture. But the question is, how can a multicultural capitalist/neo-liberalist and racist society structure itself to include diverse people?

Returning to Shaad’s interview, we find that language and accent are related to the first- generation immigrants who came to Canada as adults. The mainstream image of these immigrants relates directly to the negative political image of their first country. Do French, British, German, or Italian accents incite the same hatred in mainstream society as Iranian, Chinese, or Indian accents? Is it because the reputation of political Iran is not like that of France or Italy? Shaad is a professional and a team leader, yet she is threatened with murder in her professional environment. How can Shaad feel secure and safe in such a situation? And how can she engage her body, mind, and spirit in her workplace?

Following the pattern of Shaad’s exclusion in her workplace, Maheen states the following:

At my workplace, they stared at me, “Are you are in the master’s program?” And I said, “Yes, I am.” They can’t believe it and said, “Oh, oh … YOU, YOU!” [with a surprised tone] “Are you in master’s program?” And I said, “Yes, I am.” And they said it was impossible. In other words, I am a source of encouragement for them. When they see a second-language Muslim woman is in a master’s program, some of them started to continue their study. (Interview, summer 2008; italics added)

In this scenario, Maheen is marginalized based on the stereotype that a Muslim woman cannot be a master’s student. To my understanding, this kind of conversation is dehumanizing to a person, it is Marginalization and Leadership • 53

an emotional assault (Hoda, Zeeba, and Shaad encountered the same stigma). In Maheen’s story, the mainstream could not accept her as an educated woman, and perhaps her colleagues are hesitant to have a racialized body as a leader. According to Maheen, her presence in graduate school encourages white colleagues to continue their studies in graduate school so as not to be left behind by a racialized body. However, the unanswered question remains: Why, at the workplace, do people feel at liberty to act in racist ways towards Maheen? Is it the result of racist and capitalist education that is imposed in Euro-American society? It has become evident that while we are living, studying, and working in a so-called multicultural society, racist behaviour is still prominent in our daily lives, and according to Bannarji (2000), it is a very common behaviour that most people are not aware of. In other words, democratic racism exists as a result of multiculturalism in a racist society, and it manifests itself in various sectors (Henry & Tator, 1994).

Zeeba also shares her experience in the workplace:

In my work I have also experienced being put down. In my recent work I felt someone wanted to interfere with my work … his purpose was taking away my tasks and my position to show the supervisor that my work is devalued and he is an expert and is faster than me. So it was a challenge for me to prove again my work and ability, I had to convince my supervisor that I could do my work and my colleague intentionally took it over. My supervisor told me, “I am worried about those employees who can’t work together”… This taught me to stop complaining. If my supervisor wanted to choose one of us, for sure he would choose that person because he is a Canadian white man with English as his first language, and he has more experience in that company than I did … My supervisor asked me, “Why did that person interfere with your work, and not someone else’s?” So it was my feeling that when we complain, it is not just the subject that is under review but it is other issues as well, everything comes under judgment, maybe my religion, hijab, nationality, and language. Huge issues came to my mind as maybe my supervisor thinks I am different from others and cannot culturally match them. Or, maybe my supervisor thinks it is only me who complains and others don’t do that and for my case it goes back to my culture and other factors. Finally, my supervisor accepted my rationality, but that person again interfered in my work and always professionally bothered me, but I cannot complain again … so now I got a lesson, never complain in Canada. (Interview, summer 2008; italics added)

Zeeba was ultimately the winner in the above challenge in that she successfully proved her abilities to her supervisor, but she learned a lesson: Don’t complain in Canadian society. This happened to her because in a neo-liberal society the product is more important than people, and people’s relationships are treated as industry tools and they are considered unimportant. In the philosophy of neo-liberalism, all human and social life is the product of conformity to market forces. So, there is no distinction between a market economy and a market society. There is only the market, market society, market culture, market values, and market persons marketing themselves to other market persons (Treanor, 2005, p. 11). Following the above statement, I can argue that in the white, male- dominated workplace, racialized minority women do not have the agency and privilege necessary to break the discrimination and marginalization. Thus, the question arises, if racialized immigrant minority women have to be silent and obedient, how will social justice apply in Canadian schools and society? How can social and institutional change happen if we have to apply “no complaining” rules in our workplaces or schools?

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 54

Discussion and Conclusion

Although my interviewees encountered marginalization and racism, due to Iran’s social- political and cultural climate they preferred to stay in Canada. Compared to life in Iran and even with all pain and suffering they encounter in their graduate school and workplaces here, staying in Canada made them happier. They adopted strategies for overcoming the barriers and also they empowered themselves by connecting to their self and identity. The intersection of their nationality, culture, ethnicity, even language and accent, and (for some) religion, connects to their identity: who they are and what they want to be are sources of internal strength. In other words, external factors such as an instructor’s behaviour in the classroom, a thesis supervisor’s role, student services, or indifferent or hostile colleagues at work did not cause my participants to internalize their marginalization. This is because, in general, their past education and experience in Iran made them strong and knowledgeable people who have life goals; they immigrated to Canada for a better education and life and for justice and equality. They have very resilient personalities, which permit them to pursue their goals as well as the passion to pursue their education, and these factors enable them to tolerate discrimination in school and society. Moreover, the current situation in Iran contributes further to their willingness to tolerate their struggles in Canada. Thus instability around the globe can benefit developed countries like Canada. Canada’s immigration laws have become increasingly restrictive to professionals from unstable places, and so, Canada can select the “best” of the world.

Participants in this research adopted different strategies for empowering themselves. For example, they worked hard, tried to ignored racism/oppression/marginalization, practiced patience, increased their spirituality, shared their stories with sympathetic people, and employed different forms of therapy, such as biking, walking, and writing. None of them mentioned that the university student services helped them to cope or to follow up on the racist behavior; instead, they connected with their inner strength. These factors are also connected to their nationality, culture, family support, identity, and pride for their Iranian heritage. For some, though not all, the Islamic religion inspired them to actively participate in the social and economic development of Canadian society by not internalizing oppression and marginalization. They tried to connect themselves to their faith and to overcome barriers. In general, by applying a strategy of resistance, they hope to achieve leadership positions in their jobs and to inspire change and justice.

At the time of writing this article, I can report that two participants are still in graduate school, two are hunting for employment, one continues her education as a post-doctoral student, and the remaining six are employed professionals. Needless to say, there are many successful female Iranian Immigrants in the Canadian academy and workforce, but there is no academic research about them. In the future, we can extend our research to professionals of Iranian descent in order to elaborate their strategies for success in the Canadian context. Regarding the limitations of this research, I am aware that this research did not cover male Iranian immigrant students or second- generation Iranians. Such research would enable us to analyze gender differences and the impact of cultural adaptation in one’s inclusion in or exclusion from Canadian higher education.

Following my research, I would recommend that the same research be conducted for other racialized bodies in Canadian higher education context. We need to have a community of knowers, so it is worthwhile to contextualize their voices in order to have a more productive and inclusive Canadian citizenry. Marginalization and Leadership • 55

Solutions for Engagement in Graduate Schools

“[T]he university is a place in the world and the world is in it” (Brecht, cited in Bannerji, 2000, p.114)

Academia is the state apparatus for shaping society and educating specific nations and citizenship; it is the state’s ideology in an intelligent structure. Higher education trains people, the market determines what kind of people the state needs in terms of education, skills and attitude, and then the power behind the market sets the curriculum. It follows a neo-liberal agenda. Thus, I argue that dramatic changes should be applied to universities, and that, across the early and higher educational spectrum, inclusive, anti-racist education must be adopted. Education systems are complicit in continuing racism and discrimination. Schools should be decolonized and made to be inclusive; the content and methodology of teaching should be directed towards having bias-free people in order to have healthy and happy citizens. To achieve this goal, I recommend the following:

1. Decolonize teaching methodology. Graduate school needs critical pedagogy not only in its content, but also in the method. A critical (feminist) approach allows diverse students to contribute their history, knowledge, and experience to others’ knowledge production. And this process of decolonization facilitates change in the academic environment.

2. Create a strong, active, and meaningful connection between faculty and graduate students; engage them in social and cultural activities.

3. Employ self-evaluation by faculties, effective evaluation of faculties and student services employees.

4. Encourage an antiracist perspective among institutions at all levels; organize workshops, field trips, and teamwork events.

5. Don’t interfere in foreign policy that affects the people in those countries.

Workplace Engagement for Social Change

Education has a critical role to play in shaping people’s behaviour, knowledge, and beliefs. We also have to consider that our identities are multilayered, shaped by race, gender, culture, religion, nationality, and so on. The attempt to integrate the above factors in the workplace can be a source of racism when the power hierarchy imposes its customs on others. Integrative anti-racist education provides us with the motivation and methodology to examine these power relationships and to pursue the question of injustice. This is why the educational system has a tremendous role to play in people’s knowledge construction. I offer suggestions for extending this to the workplace:

1. Encourage an anti-racist perspective in the workplace through workshops, field trips, and teamwork events.

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 56

2. Encourage people to report racist and discriminating behaviour. This encouragement can be through giving a prize and/or writing a note of appreciation in the employee’s file.

3. Invite anti-racist scholars to present their relevant works in different workplaces and engage employees in discussion about their own experiences.

4. Encourage dialogue among employees. Sometimes people are not aware of the effect of their behaviour on others. I believe that conversation is the best solution for removing conflict

Marginalization and Leadership • 57

References

Acker, S. (2001). The hidden curriculum of dissertation advising. In E. Margolis (Ed.), The hidden curriculum in higher education (pp. 61–77). New York, NY: Routledge.

Bakker, I. (Ed.). (1994). The strategic silence: Gender and economic policy. London, UK, Zed Books.

Bannerji, H. (2000). Faculty voices. In The York Stories Collective (Ed.), York stories: Women in higher education (pp. 94–115). Toronto, ON: TSAR Publications.

Braden, S. (2000). On hearing women’s silences in the classroom. In The York Stories Collective (Ed.), York stories: Women in higher education (pp. 44–57). Toronto, ON: TSAR Publications.

Cainkar, L. (2004). Introduction: Global impacts of September 11. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 24(1), 154–158.

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). (2012a). Middle East: Iran: Economy – overview. The World Factbook. Retrieved from https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world- factbook/geos/ir.html

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). (2012b). Middle East: Iran: People and society. The World Factbook. Retrieved from https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world- factbook/geos/ir.html

Daily Mail Reporter (2012, June 22). We can’t let Iran have an iPad! Georgia Apple stores refuse to sell Farsi-speaking Americans their products. Daily Mail. Retrieved from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2163035/Apple-store-bans-Sahar-Sabet-19- buying-iPad-speaking-Iranian-language-Farsi.html

Dei, S. G. (2005). The intersection of race, class, and gender in the anti-racism discourse. In V. Zawilski & C. Levine-Rasky (Eds.), Inequality in Canada: A reader on the intersection of gender, race, class (pp. 17–35). Toronto, ON: Oxford University Press.

De Sousa Santos, B. (2006). The university in the 21st century, Toward a democratic and emancipatory university reform. In R. A. Rhoads & C. A. Torres (Eds.), The university, state, and market (pp. 60–102). Palo Alto, CA, Stanford University Press.

Dua, E. (2003). Introduction. In E. Dua & A. Robertson (Eds.), Scratching the surface: Canadian anti-racist feminist thought (pp. 7–34). Toronto, ON, Women’s Press.

Dwyer, A. (2006). Welcome to the boarder. In I. Grewal & C. Kaplan (Eds.), An introduction to women’s studies: Gender in transnational world (pp. 463–466). New York, NY, McGraw- Hill.

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 58

Economist Intelligence Unit. (2005). Quality-of-life index. Retrieved from http://www.economist.com/media/pdf/QUALITY_OF_LIFE.pdf

Galabuzi, G-E. (2005). Canada’s economic apartheid: The social inclusion of racialized groups in the new century. Toronto, ON: Canada Scholars’ Press.

Harding, S. (1995). Subjectivity, experience, and knowledge: An epistemology from/for Rainbow Coalition Politics. In J. Roof & R. Wiegman (Eds.), Who can speak? Authority and critical identity (pp. 97–108). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Henry, F., & Tator, C. (1994). The ideology of racism: Democratic racism. Canadian Ethnic Studies, 26(2), 1–13.

Hojati, Z. (2006, March 18). Are we treated fairly? The application of critical pedagogy to practising social justice in Canadian society? Unpublished paper presented at the Conference on engaging social justice: Opening transformative dialogue(s), McGill University, Montreal, Canada.

Hojati, Z. (2011). Ironic Acceptance – Present in academia discarded as Oriental: The case of Iranian female graduate students in Canadian academia. Unpublished thesis research. Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, ON.

Hutt, S. (2000). Graduate voices, Women’s experiences in graduate school. In The York Stories Collective (Ed.), York stories: Women in higher education (pp. 58–93). Toronto, ON: TSAR Publications.

Itwaru, A. (2008, October 25). Master race culture: White supremacy, liberal democracy, and the continuing colonization of the world. Unpublished paper presented at the 7th Annual New College conference on racism and national consciousness. University of Toronto, ON.

Kar, M. (1999). Legal structure of family system in Iran. Tehran, Iran: Roshangaran & Women Studies Publication.

Kazemi, Z. (2007, November 27). Iran’s changing story. CBC News. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/kazemi/

Knowles, V. (2007). Strangers at our gates: Canadian immigration and immigration Policy, 1540– 2006 (Rev. ed.). Toronto, ON: Dundurn Press.

Lee, J. (2004). Higher education and privatization. NEA Higher Education Research Center, Update, 10(2). Retrieved from http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/HE/vol10no2.pdf

Magnusson, J. L. (2000). Canadian higher education and citizenship in the context of state restructuring and globalization. Encounters on Education, 1, 107–126.

Magnusson, J. L. (2005). Information and communication technology: Plugging Ontario higher education into the knowledge society. Encounters on Education, 6, 119–135. Marginalization and Leadership • 59

Mazzuca, J. (2000). Italian Canadian women “crossing the border” to graduate education. Unpublished thesis research. Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, ON.

Mehran, G. (2003). Gender and education in Iran. Paper commissioned for the UNESCO Education for All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report 2003/4: The Leap to Equality. Retrieved from http://ddp-ext.worldbank.org/EdStats/IRNgmrpro03.pdf

Mohanty, C. T. (1994). On race and voice, Challenges for liberal education in the 1990s. In H. Giroux & P. McLaren (Eds.), Between Boarders: Pedagogy and the politics of cultural studies (pp. 145–166). New York, NY: Routledge.

Moradi, S. (2012, June 26). Apple Sales Assistants in Atlanta Refuse to Sell Products to Iranians. Inside Iran. Retrieved from http://www.insideiran.org/media-analysis/apple-sales- assistants-in-atlanta-refuse-to-sell-products-to-iranians/

Murray, D.A. (2008). Aboriginal women breaking the silence: Beating the big drum. (Unpublished thesis research). Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, ON.

Ng, R. (2005). Sexism, racism and Canadian nationalism. In V. Zawilski & C. Levine-Rasky (Eds.), Inequality in Canada: A reader on the intersection of gender, race, class (pp. 5–16). Toronto, ON: Oxford University Press.

Rezai-Rashti, G. (1995). Connecting racism and sexism: The dilemma of working with minority female students. In R. Ng, P. Staton, & J. Scane (Eds.), Racism, feminism, and critical approaches to education (pp. 87–97). Toronto, ON: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

Rhoades, G., & Slaughter, S. (2006). Academic capitalism and the new economy, Privatization as shifting the target of public subsidy. In R. A. Rhoades & C. A. Torres (Eds.), The university, state, and market: The political economy of globalization in the Americas (pp. 103–140). Palo Alto, CA, Stanford University Press.

Said, E. W. (1979). Orientalism. New York, NY: Vintage Books.

Said, E. W. (2003). Orientalism. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Classics.

Samuel, E. (2005). Integrative antiracism: South Asians in Canadian academe. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto.

Salam Toronto. (2012, July 12). Iran warns local media against sanctions report that “hurt country.” Salam Toronto Weekly Newspaper, 583(12), 122.

Shahjahan, R. (2004). Spirituality in the academy: Reclaiming from the margins and evoking a transformative way of knowing the world. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 18(6), 685–711. JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 60

Shahrvand. (2008, May 1). An interview with ministry of immigration. Shahrvand Weekly Newspaper, 1175, 10–15.

Shojaei, S. N., Samsu, K. H., & Asayeseh, H. (2010). Women in politics: A case study of Iran. Journal of Politics and Law, 3(2), 257–268. Retrieved from http://us- iran.org/sites/default/files/webform/userarticle-submissions/women_in_politics-iran.pdf

Thomas-Long, R. (2006). The politics of exclusion: An examination of graduate student funding experience in Ontario. (Thesis research). OISE, University of Toronto

Treanor, P. (2005, December 2). Neoliberalism, origins, theory, definition. Retrieved from http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/neoliberalism.html

United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). (2012). Iran: Country profile. Retrieved from http://iran.unfpa.org/Country%20Profile.asp

Wane, N. (2004, February). The politics of naming feminism. The debate continues. Paper presented at the Centre for Women’s Studies in Education. Popular Feminism presentation 20th anniversary. No. 10. Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, ON.

Willie, C. V., Grady, M. K., & Hope, R. O. (1991). African-Americans and the doctoral experience, Implications for policy. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Yegenoglu, M. (1998). Colonial fantasies: Towards a feminist reading of Orientalism. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Marginalization and Leadership • 61

Appendix

Interview Guide

Part One: Iranian Women Graduate Students’ Education and Experience

1. What was your educational background in Iran? 2. What was your work experience in Iran? 3. What was your main reason for coming to Canada? 4. What is your main reason for continuing your study? 5. What are your challenges in Canadian academia in terms of choosing courses, having a supervisor, connecting with other students and faculty members, and regarding the general atmosphere of your school? 6. What kind of support do you get in academia in terms of financial, emotional, and intellectual? And in what ways? 7. What has been the impact of Iranian education and experience on your success in Canadian school and society? Explain. 8. What is the family support for your study? 9. Do you have any connection with the Iranian community? In what ways? 10. What is your experience as an Iranian woman in Canadian society? 11. Do you feel any pressure in school, family, Iranian community, and society as a whole? If so, what kind of strategy do you use for coping with? 12. How do you define yourself as an Iranian woman? Do you have a sense of “belonging” to the academia and society? Explain.

Part Two: Participant’s Information

1. What is your name? 2. What is your email address? 3. What is your age? 4. What is your relationship status? What is your partner’s occupation/education? 5. Do you have children? If so, how many and what are their ages? 6. What university did you attend in Iran? 7. What program did you study in Iran? 8. What degree did you receive in Iran? 9. What year did you come to Canada? 10. What year did you start your Canadian graduate school? 11. What is the name of the school and program? 12. What degree will you have earned?

Journal of Global Citizenship & Equity Education Volume 2 Number 2 - 2012 journals.sfu.ca/jgcee

Peace Education Primer

Kevin Kester Assistant Professor, School of Global Studies Hannam University Adjunct Professor, UN University for Peace Asia-Pacific Centre

Keywords: Peace Education; Conflict Resolution; Transformative Learning

ABSTRACT: This article aims to briefly introduce the field of peace education to adult, higher education and secondary school practitioners. Aiming to confront and resist violence, peace education focuses on the necessary content and pedagogical approaches needed to nurture cultures of peace in a variety of communities. The common themes, pedagogies, training objectives, enabling conditions and evaluation processes of the multidisciplinary field are identified in this paper within the perspective of peace education as education for global citizenship. A brief overview of peace education in action at the United Nations University for Peace is outlined, and popular books and articles on peace education are provided for academics interested in further infusing principles of peace pedagogy into their educational practices.

What is Peace Education?

The Integrated framework on education for peace, human rights and democracy (UNESCO, 1995) provides an overview of the broad objectives of peace education:

The ultimate goal of education for peace, human rights and democracy is the development in every individual of a sense of universal values and types of behavior on which a culture of peace is predicated. It is possible to identify even in different socio-cultural contexts values that are likely to be universally recognized…Education must develop the ability of non-violent conflict-resolution. It should therefore promote also the development of inner peace in the minds of students so that they can establish more firmly the qualities of tolerance, compassion, sharing and caring. (Section 2)

It is possible to situate peace education as part of the larger field of peace and conflict studies, which may be subdivided into peace research, peace studies, peace education (hereafter referred to as PE) and peace activism. PE can find its roots in the work of several educators, including John Dewey (1916), Maria Montessori (1949), Paulo Freire (1970), Johan Galtung (1975), Elise Boulding (1988) and Betty Reardon (1988), as well as Toh (2004) and Jenkins (2007). In addition, critical humanist authors and peace activists, such as Gandhi and King, influenced PE thought through their practices of social critique, civil disobedience and active nonviolence. Many heads of states, including Jose Ramos-Horta, Oscar Arias, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and His Majesty King Hussein of Jordan, also influence practices in the field through their connections with peace Peace Education Primer • 63

institutes. The writings of Henry David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoy, and William James are used to teach peace lessons, as is the theoretical work of Margaret Mead (1928), Michel Foucault (1969, 1975), Gene Sharp (1973), Albert Bandura (1977), and Howard Zinn (2006). The field has a number of conceptual frameworks that serve to underscore the development of programs and taught content, much emanating from the aforementioned thinkers (Kester, 2008).

As a values-oriented field that aims to cultivate in learners the knowledge, attitudes, skills, and behaviors upon which a culture of peace is predicated (UNESCO, 1995), PE serves as a reflexive educational and community approach to social change. In this sense education is viewed as a social investment, not merely a personal means to a vocation. Betty Reardon (1999) stated: “The development of learning that will enable humankind to renounce the institution of war and replace it…with the norms of a peaceful society [as articulated in] the Universal Declaration of Human Rights remains a core of the peace education task” (p. 31-32). As such, peace educators teach about contemporary social, political, economic, ecological, and ethical problems, exploring the root causes of conflict and facilitating the exploration of nonviolent social strategies to manage social discord without resort to violence.

Hence, educators for peace seek to nurture intercultural understanding and global citizenship through developing respect for oneself, others, and the larger environment of which we are all a part (Reardon, 1988; Earth Charter, 2000). One dominant objective of the field is to nurture cultures of peace that challenge the assumption that violence is innate to the human condition and that violence emanates from our common animal ancestors (Adams, 2000). PE is receiving increasing attention due to its policy and values-centered alignment with the work of UNESCO, UNICEF and other international organizations (UNESCO, 1974, 1995; Fountain, 1999; Earth Charter, 2000).

A Brief History of Peace Education

European philosophical thought greatly influenced PE with the field becoming largely institutionalized in the 1950s and 1960s in Western Europe and the United States. Johan Galtung, a Norwegian sociologist is often credited as the ‘Father of Peace Studies’ (Ikeda, 2002). He founded the International Peace Research Institute (PRIO) in 1959, which in 1964 began the first academic journal devoted to peace studies - the Journal of Peace Research. In 1964, Galtung also co-founded the International Peace Research Association (IPRA), which today houses the influential Journal of Peace Education and Peace Education Commission. As a peace scholar, Galtung is known for promoting the dialectic between ‘negative peace’, or the absence of war, and ‘positive peace’, the presence of cultural values and institutional practices that sustain peace cultures and nonviolence. His theory of ‘structural violence’ is also widely used by practitioners and academics alike (Galtung, 1988; 1996).

During the same time Galtung was initiating the movement for peace research in Europe, several educators in the United States were mobilizing networks for peace in North America. Notable among these academics are Kenneth Boulding, Elise Boulding and Betty Reardon. Kenneth and Elise Boulding – an economist and sociologist, respectively – were active Quakers and peace activists. The Bouldings, along with Johan Galtung, were instrumental in the development of IPRA, and in gaining its consultative status to the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). Elise Boulding additionally served on the Congressional panel that led to the

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 64

creation of the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) in Washington, D.C., an institute that is currently responsible for numerous conflict resolution programs in public schools across the United States (see Morrison, 2005).

Many contemporary scholars cite Betty Reardon of Teachers College, Columbia University as the ‘Mother of Peace Education’, particularly as a leading pioneer in the design of education for peace programs within higher education institutes (Stomfay-Stitz, 1993; Harris, 2004; Kester, 2010). Reardon sought to construct formal education programs that were taught expressly for peace, whereas Galtung and Kenneth and Elise Boulding conducted peace research and established civil society organizations for peace activism within communities. In this respect, Reardon oversaw the establishment of the PE concentration in Masters and PhD programs at Teachers College Columbia University in 1981. She also founded the International Institute for Peace Education (IIPE) in 1982. IIPE brings together researchers, educators, and activists across the globe annually to study peace and conflict issues in local learning communities. In its 30-year history, IIPE’s annual conference has been held in various locations across North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Reardon was also instrumental in forming the Global Campaign for Peace Education at the Hague Appeal for Peace, a civil society conference held in the Hague in 1999. In 2002, she served as a lead consultant in the formation of the MA program in Peace Education at the United Nations University for Peace in Costa Rica. Reardon remains an active author and practitioner in the field.1

Towards Transformative Learning and Cultures of Peace

Since the late 1980s, several educators have amalgamated various dimensions of PE under the umbrella term ‘culture of peace’ (Adams, 1989, 2000; Boulding, 2000; Goodman, 2002). In this view, the overarching goal of education for peace is both the reduction of violence and the transformation of mindsets that emphasize cultures of war. Through a culture of peace lens, peace educators explore cultures of violence more deeply and aim to transition cultures of violence to cultures of peace. To realize this aspiration, programs purposefully educate for critical awareness, cultural solidarity, empowerment, and transformation toward a culture of peace. To achieve this, programs aim to enable students to become responsible citizens, who are open to other cultures, respectful of differences, and have the ability to resolve conflicts nonviolently (Kester, 2008). In respect to the transformation of a culture of war to a culture of peace, UNESCO describes a culture of peace as:

a set of values, attitudes, traditions and modes of behavior and ways of life based on, among others, respect for life, ending of violence and promotion and practice of nonviolence through education, dialogue and cooperation; full respect for and promotion of all human rights and fundamental freedoms; commitment to peaceful settlement of conflicts; and adherence to the principles of freedom, justice, democracy, tolerance, solidarity, cooperation, pluralism, cultural diversity, dialogue and understanding at all levels of society and among nations. (UNESCO, n.d., n.p.)

1 For more information on Betty Reardon’s contributions to peace education, read Kevin Kester (2010), “Betty Reardon creates the International Institutes on Peace Education”, an extended bio of her life work, In D. Schugurensky (Ed.), History of Education: Selected Moments of the 20th Century, available online at http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/research/edu20/moments/1982bettyreardon.html.

Peace Education Primer • 65

Furthering this agenda, an important document that grounds the movement for cultures of peace is The Seville Statement on Violence (Adams, 1989). The Seville Statement is a declaration by psychologists and medical practitioners that violence is not an innate characteristic of the human condition. These practitioners challenge the biological fatalism that underscores many peoples’ justifications for violent conflict, defense spending and fear of others. The Seville Statement is organized around five scientific propositions. It argues that it is scientifically incorrect to say that:

1. We have inherited a tendency to make war from our animal ancestors,

2. War or any other violent behavior is genetically programmed into our human nature,

3. In the course of human evolution there has been a selection for aggressive behavior more than for other kinds of behavior,

4. Humans have a 'violent brain',

5. War is caused by 'instinct' or any single motivation (p.1)

In this vein Mikhail Gorbachev, as quoted in Adams (1989), proclaimed:

When disarmament is discussed a common thesis is that man is violent by nature and that war is a manifestation of human instinct. Is war the perpetual concomitant of human existence then? If we accept this view, we shall have to reconcile ourselves with continuous development and accumulation of ever more sophisticated weapons of mass destruction. Such thinking is unacceptable. It is reminiscent of times when more sophisticated weapons were invented and used to conquer other peoples and enslave and pillage them. That past is no model for the future. (p.1)

Adams (1989) goes on to declare:

The Seville Statement confronts an active resistance in the mass media and related social institutions more than it confronts an inherent ignorance or 'psychological inertia' in ordinary people. The myth that war is part of human nature does not appear to be so much an inherent component of 'common sense' so much as it is the end result of a campaign of psychological propaganda that has been promulgated in the mass media in order to justify political policies of militarism. (p. 8)

Gorbachev insisted that a new model for the future was needed. In this respect, peace educators sought to propose alternative possibilities through futures-envisioning exercises (Boulding, 1988; Hicks, 1988, 2004). Through philosophical inquiry - Where are we now? Where did we come from? How did we get here? Where do we want to go? And how do we get there? - educators are promoting a type of transformative learning (Berry, 1988, 1999; O’Sullivan, 1999). Transformative learning is a deep cultural and philosophical adjustment through which people come to see life and living through new lenses. Values and attitudes are transformed, for example, from competition, consumerism and a- historicism to cooperation and shared resources, and through this transformation new possibilities begin to emerge for a society based on common principles, needs, interests and shared visions.

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 66

O’Sullivan (1999) writes: “Truly, we live in a momentous time of survival and we are in desperate need of a broad historical system of interpretation to grasp our present situation. Although we cannot predict the future, we must nevertheless make educated guesses about where our present state of affairs is leading” (p. 16).

Anne Goodman, Professor of Community-Based Peacebuilding at the University of Toronto, writes that cultures of peace encompass diverse and integrally connected projects and actions as well as the principles that underscore the work of peacemakers (Goodman, 2002). She contends that there are numerous paths toward peacebuilding that educators and students may participate in. These include working to abolish nuclear weapons, generating alternative sustainable energy, challenging the global market economy, working toward disarmament, conducting conflict resolution training in conflict zones, working for more democratic political institutions, advocating for more women in decision-making roles at all levels of political and economic institutions, and trying to get PE into schools (ibid). All of these endeavors converge with the process of education as educators and students reflect on the lessons learned through participation.

Goodman (2002) also delineates between the “official” and “unofficial” aspects of cultures of peace. She explains that the official culture of peace mission is outlined and promulgated by UNESCO and the UN, while unofficial components are driven by grassroots efforts in local communities such as peace gardens, peace circles, peace zones, advocacy networks, and local educators for peace. Examples of these regional networks include the Canadian Voice of Women and the anti-nuclear movements of the past 60 years in North America, Europe and Asia, as well as the more recent Occupy movements in the US and student demonstrations in Quebec. The current civil society initiative in Canada for a Canadian Department for Peace2 and the Global Campaign for Peace Education3 are additional initiatives for broad-based peace education. As the field continues to expand, there is an increasing demand for investigation into what kind of impact PE is having on learners and whether or not the programs are contributing to more peaceful societies (Nevo & Brem, 2002; Harris, 2003, 2008; Danesh, 2008).

Enabling Factors of Successful Programs

In respect to the impact of PE, there are a number of enabling factors that support successful PE programs. Program designers and educators may draw on these enabling conditions to ensure effective educational interventions. Gordon Allport (1954) formulated a contact hypothesis that pinpointed under what conditions prejudice was reduced and mutual understanding fostered. His hypothesis though over 60 years old, still informs many practices of PE (Salomon & Nevo, 2001; Tal-or, Boniger and Gleicher, 2002). He argues that conditions necessary for inter-group contact to be effective include (a) supportive environment, (b) equal status among participants, (c) close and sustained contact, and (d) cooperation. In other words, trainers and participating members of peace programs need to be committed to the entire agenda. They must take full moral and financial responsibility for the training and the physical and ecological environment in which the learning takes place. For training to have a sustained effect, members of the larger community, other departments in the school,

2 See http://www.departmentofpeace.ca/. As expressed previously, movements for departments of peace are growing in numerous countries. Departments of peace have already been established in Nepal, the Solomon Islands, and Costa Rica. 3 See http://www.peace-ed-campaign.org/.

Peace Education Primer • 67

and outside community organizations also need to reflect the goals and values of training. This is a complex and complicated endeavor, particularly in regions of prolonged intractable conflict (Feuerverger, 2001).

Gordon Allport’s hypothesis presents an ideal situation. In most situations it is likely that not all of these factors will be present or possible, such as financial stability. In this case it is necessary that many of these conditions be met (not necessarily all). When financial constraints are present, practitioners may wish to emphasize the broader support of the entire community. It is additionally paramount that members of the learning community be regarded as equals. This includes educators and participants. Freire’s pedagogy (1970) offers tremendous guidance on how to establish and maintain a culture of respect and equality in the classroom. After a supporting environment of equal status has been established, it is then possible to move forward with close prolonged contact that may foster continued international understanding and cooperation. This community could be enveloped with a common goal and sense of purpose, which will assist in fostering cooperation in the learning community. Kester and Booth (2010) also assert that at least one important element is missing from Allport’s model: (e) the revelation and dialogue on power dynamics present in communities, which mirror greater societal norms and political institutions.4

Another important condition of building PE communities is the recognition of multiple forms of identity. Tal-Or, Boninger, and Gleicher (2002) note how discussing identity may help form peaceful environments where learners begin to reconstitute notions of in-group and out-group. This consequently leads to dialogue on concepts of Othering, a process that may or may not lead to the production of super-ordinate identities. They describe super-ordinate identities where Black and White share identities as US citizens, or Muslim and Hindu share a South Asian identity. These super- ordinate identities when facilitated well may lead to discussions of shared values and common futures, where historically competitive relationships may convert to cooperative partnerships. Arie Nadler (2002) also highlights enabling factors of successful programs that include (a) deliberately designed equality, (b) interpersonal trust, (c) awareness and respect for the various cultural beliefs and practices present in the training, and (d) addressing real, pressing, and common problems. Nadler, therefore, includes the need to incorporate “real and common problems” in the training. This ensures contextually relevant training and serves to expand on the conditions developed by Allport (1954) and Tol-Or, Boniger & Gleicher (2002).

With enabling conditions in mind, there are myriad ways to ensure they are met to facilitate successful learning. First, the values associated with PE could be infused throughout the curriculum and across disciplinary boundaries (Apple, 1969; Pike & Selby, 1988; Reardon & Cabezudo, 2002). For example, educators could use dialogue circles to foster equality and trust and to deconstruct assumptions of the Other in a variety of classroom situations (Bohm, 1996). Practitioners could also use social justice theatre to develop trust among participants (Boal, 1992), or the jigsaw teaching technique, which manufactures a sense of equal status and responsibility among learners. Futures- envisioning activities might also assist learners to define shared values and common visions for the group (Boulding, 1988; Hicks, 1988). These activities, along with enabling factors could help in the creation of sound education for peace programs.

4 The work of peace educator Mohammed Abu-Nimer (1999, 2007) is useful in dealing with contact across power differentials.

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 68

Peace Education in Action: The UN University for Peace

This section describes a model of PE developed largely from the work of many actors behind the scenes at the UN and Betty Reardon at Teachers College, Columbia University. The program is the United Nations University for Peace MA Program in Peace Education in Costa Rica.

In 1980, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 35/55 for the founding of a higher education institution dedicated solely to the study and pursuit of sustainable global peace. That resolution led to the establishment of the United Nations University for Peace (UPEACE) Graduate School of Peace and Conflict Studies, with its headquarters in San Jose, Costa Rica.5 The University has liaison offices in New York and Geneva, and regional programs in Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and the Caribbean. UPEACE with its worldwide reach and impact could be argued to be the leading international institution in the global movement toward education for peace and international understanding. There are other leading institutions that have departments and centers focused on peace research, such as the University of Bradford, George Mason University, and Notre Dame. However, UPEACE is the only institution dedicated solely to the study of peace.

The mission of the University, as agreed by the UN General Assembly and stated in its Charter, is “to provide humanity with an international institution of higher education for peace, with the aim of promoting among all human beings the spirit of understanding, tolerance and peaceful coexistence, to stimulate cooperation among peoples and to help lessen obstacles and threats to world peace and progress, in keeping with the noble aspirations proclaimed in the Charter of the United Nations” (UPEACE Charter, 1980, Article 1). UPEACE was not the first institution of the UN to be established and dedicated to the pursuit of peace through education. Others include UNESCO, the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) and the United Nations University (UNU) in Tokyo, Japan. UPEACE was, however, until 2009 the only educational institute of the United Nations to offer degree programs.6 The UN Secretary-General serves as Honorary President of UPEACE, a position currently held by Ban Ki-Moon of South Korea.

The University is mainstreaming the objectives of education for peace and sustainable development in alignment with the UN International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence for Children of the World (2001-2010) and the Decade for Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014), as well as gender mainstreaming in alliance with UN Security Resolution 1325 (2000). As part of these declarations and resolutions, UN organizations and Member States are encouraged to emphasize education for nonviolence, sustainable ecological development, and gender equity into their policy priorities. At its San Jose campus, the University is also home to the Earth Charter Center for Education for Sustainable Development.7

These priorities impact the campus culture. Students at UPEACE interact with concepts of social justice and peacebuilding through exploration of the values, beliefs and worldviews present among

5 Website: www.upeace.org. 6 In 2009, UNU in Tokyo and its affiliate institutes also began matriculating students in MA, and subsequently PhD programs, focused on sustainability science. 7 Online at http://www.earthcharterinaction.org/content/.

Peace Education Primer • 69

cultures of the diverse student body. The more than 200 students that study at UPEACE’s main campus represent nearly 60 nations. This manifest itself in a multicultural approach to PE, which embodies a symbiotic relationship between education for peace and international education where both multicultural education and PE aim to raise global awareness and intercultural respect. At UPEACE graduate students deconstruct their previously held prejudices and beliefs about other cultures and formulate models for greater cooperation in the future. These issues are explored through a broad curriculum, including the following courses within the PE concentration:

 Foundation in Peace and Conflict Studies  Peace Education: Theory and Practice  Cultures and Learning: From Violence Towards Peace  Practices of Conflict Management and Peacebuilding  Language, Media and Peace  Human Rights Education  Education for Sustainable Development  Gender and Education

This model of PE is being implemented in multiple centers of UPEACE within Asia, Africa and Europe. Culturally sensitive, PE offers a model of education that promotes peace, justice and democracy through radical inquiry and compassionate listening. How are such programs evaluated?

Evaluation of Programs

Nevo and Brem (2002) summarized a body of research on PE programs, broadly defined, that were conducted from 1981-2000. The publications were identified through a search of PsyLit and ERIC databases and PE websites. The authors began by categorizing programs into ‘facets’ pertaining to the purposes of programs, age of participants, didactic approaches, duration of programs, research design and methods of measurement. One of the most important findings of Nevo and Brem is that not enough attention in PE programs is given to behavioral development. Most programs, on the contrary, appeal to rationality, not emotions, which could be perceived as problematic when emotions and psychology are so central to conflict resolution. Few programs work with participants beyond one year, and most evaluations of programs conclude that they are effective with few critical perspectives. Nevo and Brem (ibid) also found that programs that attempted to reduce violence were less effective than PE programs that emphasized intercultural understanding. Additionally, shorter programs (with a total duration counted in weeks and months) were more effective than longer programs that extended beyond a year. These findings have serious implications for PE developers.

UNICEF Egypt (1995) outlined behavioral indicators for PE programs. It categorizes behavioral indicators as knowledge objectives, skill objectives, and attitude objectives. The knowledge objectives include knowledge of prevailing gender norms and stereotypes with indicators such as participants labeling the concept of stereotype when presented with bias and providing examples of prejudices. The skill objectives include development of communication skills, including attentive and active listening, restating the events of a story, refraining from creative liberty (i.e. changing the actual events of the story), and paraphrasing concepts back to the speaker. The attitude objectives include willingness to take action with indicators such as knowing one’s agency and control over things in one’s own environment (e.g. personal and natural), identifying range of choices in the face of conflict,

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 70 choosing constructive and collaborative action, and expressing satisfaction with having taken action and achieving the desired outcomes. If these attitudinal and behavioral indicators are witnessed among students during and after the program (measured preferably against pre-tests and post-tests), then it is possible to quantify changes among learning participants in evaluating the impact of programs.

Other scholars contend that in evaluating programs, the emphasis should be on monitoring pedagogy, not students (Hicks, 1988; Toh, Cawagas, & Durante, 1993; O’Sullivan, 1999). Churchill and Omari (1981), for example, provide a list of criteria for program evaluation that seeks to assess programs in relation to PE program goals, indicators, students’ learning, teaching skills and associational networks. They propose general criteria for evaluation that monitors the education program’s “relevancy and worth of the projects in light of evolving needs,” as well as the program’s consistency with PE objectives (ibid, p. 11). They also question the “worth of the activities in relation to expenditures (financial and human), taking into account eventual opportunity costs to participants” (ibid). Finally, Churchill and Omari (1981) assess criteria indicating the worth of the program to participants. They ask how the program has increased positive effects on participating schools, education in the country, and international relations. Their model operationalizes program value through assessing students and educators’ post-program attitudes toward international understanding, education innovation, and educational partnerships.

Conclusion

In conclusion, PE aims to confront and resist violence. PE focuses on education about peace, education for peace, and education through peace, while addressing the knowledge and skills needed to nurture cultures of peace. The content of programs includes diverse worldviews, nonviolent methods of social transformation, political economy of peacebuilding, case studies of peacemakers, human rights and responsibilities, sustainability education, disarmament education, and global justice. The pedagogy of PE is student-centered and directed towards solving “real and pressing issues” in contemporary politics and international affairs. Conditions that foster successful programs include a supportive environment, equal status among participants, close and sustained contact, interpersonal trust, cultural awareness, and dialogue on contemporary social issues. Furthermore, shorter intercultural understanding programs seem to be more effective than long programs seeking to reduce violence in schools and communities. Indicators of success include attentive and active listening, paraphrasing, and identifying a range of choices in the face of conflict. Finally, the overall goal of PE is to transform conflict through dialogue and nonviolence towards the creation of sustainable and peaceful communities.

Peace Education Primer • 71

References

Abu-Nimer, M. (1999). Dialogue, conflict resolution and change: Arab-Jewish encounters in Israel. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

Abu-Nimer, M. & Shafiq, M. (2007). Interfaith dialogue: A guide for Muslims. Herndon, VA: International Institute of Islamic Thought.

Adams, D. (1989). The Seville statement on violence and why it is important. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 29(3), 328-337.

Adams, D. (2000). Toward a global movement for a culture of peace. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 6(3), 259-268.

Allport, G. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Apple, M. (1969). Ideology and curriculum. New York, NY: Routledge.

Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Berry, T. (1988). The dream of the earth. San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books.

Berry, T. (1999). The great work: Our way into the future. New York, NY: Random House.

Boal, A. (1992). Games for actors and non-actors. London: Routledge.

Bohm, D. (1996). On dialogue. New York, NY: Routledge.

Boulding, E. (1988). Building a global civic culture: Education for an interdependent world. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Boulding, E. (2000). Cultures of peace: The hidden side of history. New York, NY: Syracuse University Press.

Churchill, S., & Omari, I. (1981). Evaluation of the UNESCO Associated Schools Project in education for international cooperation and peace. Paris: UNESCO.

Danesh, H. B. (2008). The education for peace integrative curriculum: Contents, concepts, and efficacy. Journal of Peace Education, 5(2), 157-174.

Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York, NY: Free Press.

Feuerverger, G. (2001). Oasis of dreams: Teaching and learning peace in a Jewish-Palestinian village. New York, NY: RoutledgeFalmer.

Foucault, M. (1969). The archeology of knowledge. Paris: Gallimard.

Foucault, M. (1975). Discipline and punishment. The birth of the prison. Paris: Gallimard.

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 72

Fountain, S. (1999). Peace education in UNICEF. New York, NY: UNICEF.

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Continuum.

Galtung, J. (1975). Peace: Research, education, action. Essays in Peace Research (Vol. 1). Copenhagen: Christian Ejlers.

Galtung, J. (1988). Peace and social structure. Essays in Peace Research (Vol. 6). Copenhagen: Christian Eljers.

Galtung, J. (1996). Peace by peaceful means: Peace and conflict, development and civilization. London: Sage.

Goodman, A. (2002). Transformative learning and cultures of peace. In E. O’Sullivan, A. Morrell, & M. O’Connor (Eds.), Expanding the boundaries of transformative learning (pp. 185-198). New York, NY: Palgrave.

Hague Appeal for Peace (1999). The Hague Agenda. UN Ref A/54/98.

Harris, I. (2003). Peace education evaluation. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, April 21-25, Chicago, IL.

Harris, I. (2004). Peace education theory. Journal of Peace Education, 1(1), 5-20.

Harris, I. (2008). The promise and pitfalls of peace education evaluation. In J. Lin, E. Brantmeier & C. Bruhn (Eds.), Transforming education for peace (pp. 245-264). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

Hicks, D. (Ed.). (1988). Education for peace. London: Routledge.

Hicks, D. (2004). Teaching for tomorrow: How can future studies contribute to peace education? Journal of Peace Education, 1(2), 165-178.

Ikeda, D. (2002). Johan Galtung – Father of peace studies. Retrieved from http://www.sgiquarterly.org/global2002Jan-1.html

Kester, K. (2008). Developing peace education programs: Beyond ethnocentrism and violence. Peace Prints: Journal of South Asian Peacebuilding, 1(1), 37-64.

Kester, K. (2010). Betty Reardon creates the International Institutes on Peace Education. In D. Schugurensky (Ed.), History of education: Selected moments of the 20th century. Retrieved from http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/research/edu20/moments/1982bettyreardon.html

Kester, K., & Booth, A. (2010). Education, peace and Freire: A dialogue. Development, 53(4), 498- 503.

Peace Education Primer • 73

Mead, M. (1928). Coming of age in Samoa. New York, NY: Harper Perennial.

Montessori, M. (1949). Education and peace. Oxford: CLIO.

Morrison, M. L. (2005). Elise Boulding: A life in the cause of peace. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland.

Nadler, A. (2002). Post-resolution processes: Instrumental and socio-emotional routes to reconciliation. In G. Salomon & B. Nevo (Eds.), Peace education: The concept, principles, and practices around the world (pp. 127-141). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

National Council of Educational Research and Training. (2005). Education for peace. Retrieved on September 4, 2010 from http://www.ncert.nic.in/html/education_peace.htm

Nevo, B., & Brem, I. (2002). Peace education programs and the evaluation of their effectiveness. In G. Salomon & B. Nevo (Eds.), Peace education: The concept, principles, and practices around the world (pp. 271-281). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

O’Sullivan, E. (1999). Transformative learning: Educational vision for the 21st century. London: Zed Books.

Pike, G. & Selby, D. (1988). Global teacher, global learner. UK: Hodder and Stoughton.

Reardon, B. (1988). Comprehensive peace education: Educating for global responsibility. New York, NY: Teachers College Columbia University Press.

Reardon, B. (1999). Peace education: A review and projection. In Peace Education Reports No. 17. Malmo, Sweden: School of Education, Malmo University.

Reardon, B., & Cabezudo, A. (2002). Learning to abolish war. New York, NY: Hague Appeal for Peace.

Salomon, G., & Nevo, B. (2001). The dilemmas of peace education in intractable conflicts. Palestine- Israel Journal of Politics, Economics and Culture, 8(3). Retrieved from http://www.pij.org/details.php?id=843

Sharp, G. (1973). Politics of nonviolent action. Boston, MA: Porter Sargent.

Stomfay-Stitz, A. (1993). Peace education in America, 1828-1990. Sourcebook for education and research. London: Scarecrow Press.

Tal-Or, N., Boninger, D., & Gleicher, F. (2002). Understanding the conditions and processes necessary for intergroup contact to reduce prejudice. In G. Salomon & B. Nevo (Eds.), Peace education: The concepts, principles, and practices around the world (pp. 89-107). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Toh, S. H., Cawagas, V. F., & Durante, O. (1993). Building a peace education program: Critical reflections on the Notre Dame University experience in the Philippines. In A. Bjerstedt (Ed.), Peace education: Global perspectives. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International.

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 74

UNESCO. (n.d.). Culture of peace: A declaration on a culture of peace. Retrieved on 20 November 2009 from http://www.unesco.org/cpp/uk/declarations/2000.htm

UNESCO. (1974). Recommendation concerning education for international understanding, cooperation and peace and education relating human rights and fundamental freedoms. Paris: UNESCO.

UNESCO. (1995). Declaration and integrated framework of action on education for peace, human rights and democracy. Paris: UNESCO.

UNICEF Egypt. (1995). Education for peace project: Description of activities conceived within the project’s plan of action 1995-1997. Cairo: UNICEF.

Zinn, H. (2006). A power governments cannot suppress. San Francisco, CA: City Lights.

Recommended Resources

Brenes, A. (2004). An integral model of peace education. In A. Wenden (Ed.), Educating for social and ecological peace. New York, NY: SUNY Press.

Burns, R. J., & Aspeslagh, R. (Eds.). (1996). Three decades of peace education around the world. New York, NY: Garland.

EURED. (2002). The EURED teacher training programme: Design for a European peace education course. Austria: EURED.

Fountain, S. (1999). Peace education in UNICEF. New York, NY: UNICEF.

Galtung, J. (1997). A manual prepared for training programs of the United Nations. (Part I & II, pp. 1- 16). Kyoto, Japan.

Jenkins, T. (2004). Comprehensive Programme and Course Planning Frameworks for the University for Peace Master’s Degree Programme in Peace Education. In consultation with Betty Reardon and Janet Gerson. (Rev by A. Brenes). New York: Teachers College Columbia University.

Jenkins, T. (2007). Community-based institutes on peace education (CIPE): Organizer’s manual. New York, NY: IIPE.

Kester, K. (2008). Developing peace education programs: Beyond ethnocentrism and violence. Peace Prints: Journal of South Asian Peacebuilding, 1(1), 37-64.

Reardon, B. (1988). Comprehensive peace education: Educating for global responsibility. New York, NY: Teachers College Columbia University Press.

Reardon, B. (1999). Educating the educators: the preparation of teachers for a culture of peace. In Peace Education Miniprints No 99. Malmo.

Peace Education Primer • 75

Toh, S. H., Cawagas, V. F., & Durante, O. (1992). Building a peace education program. In Peace Education Miniprints No. 38 (pp. 1 -25). Malmo: Preparedness for Peace.

Toh, S. H. (2004). Education for international understanding toward a culture of peace: A conceptual framework. In V.F. Cawagas (Ed.), Education for international understanding toward a culture of peace: Teachers resource book (pp. 7-22). Seoul: Asia-Pacific Centre of Education for International Understanding.

Journal of Global Citizenship & Equity Education Volume 2 Number 2 - 2012 journals.sfu.ca/jgcee

Learning to Accompany Through a Self-Study of Critical Global-Citizenship Engagement1

Sherry Ann Chapman, Ph.D. Assistant Director, Lifelong Learning Community-University Partnership for the Study of Children, Youth, and Families (CUP) Assistant Professor, Faculty of Extension University of Alberta

Keywords: Phenomenological Self-Study; Critical Engagement; Compassion; Lifelong Learners; Global Citizenship; Poetry

ABSTRACT: Immersed in making sense of a global-citizenship experience while studying community-university engaged research, I happened upon the field of global-citizenship education. In 2010-2011, I lived in East Jerusalem for three months, accompanying Palestinians and Israelis who sought and continue to seek a just and peaceful end to the Israeli government’s occupation of Palestine. As a researcher/educator with a longtime interest in the concept of meaning- making, I struggle to make sense of my experiences, both cognitively and emotionally. Through a phenomenological self-study, I uncovered knowledge about myself as a learner in a global-citizenship experience. I identified five voices within my ecumenical-accompanier (EA) identity and now I am integrating them into my facilitation of lifelong learning. These voices are lyrical, ironic, relational, activist, and reflective. The voices run through four assertions about my learning: first-hand experience is essential; I use various meaning- making tools; accompanying learners is inherently relational; and I continue to ‘unpack’ meaning in the post-return home. My voices and assertions now inform my facilitation of learning about community-university engaged research. With this newly explicit knowledge, I feel better able to accompany learners. I realize the potential for describing more explicitly in workshops, courses, and experiential learning that I have had a transformative experience. I see the potential to model my own critical global-citizenship engagement as a way to create compassionate spaces for lifelong learners as they get involved in the global and local issues of the 21st century.

Introduction

Immersed in making sense of a global-citizenship experience while studying community- university engaged research, I happened upon the field of global-citizenship education. In 2010- 2011, I lived in East Jerusalem for three months, accompanying Palestinians and Israelis who sought and continue to seek a just and peaceful end to the Israeli government’s occupation of

1 I thank the many who have accompanied me on this journey. Learning to Accompany Through a Self-Study of Critical Global-Citizenship Engagement • 77

Palestine. As a researcher/educator with a longtime interest in the concept of meaning-making about identity, I struggled to make sense of my experiences, both cognitively and emotionally. Much of the direct and structural violence (Zaru, 2008) that I witnessed still lies ‘beneath the surface’ of my understanding, as tacit knowledge. Upon my return to Canada, I found myself looking at people as global citizens with rich life experiences. As a facilitator of lifelong learning about community-university engaged research, I regard myself as a citizen with a transformative global experience, bringing my own definition/meaning to the term, global citizen.

Until recently, I was unaware of transdisciplinary global-citizenship education (GCE). Once I returned from East Jerusalem and started to view my experiences through a scholarly lens, the 2011 abstracts call for an Institute for Global Citizenship and Equityi conference resonated deeply. As I familiarized myself with the field (e.g., Shultz, Abdi, & Richardson, 2011) and how it has focused on the need to teach post-secondary students about global citizenship, I wondered how we might further educate ourselves, as facilitators of that learning. Some research exists regarding GCE and teacher education (e.g., Bottery, 2006; McCully, 2006; Syed, 2011) and collective institutional reflection (e.g., Shultz, 2011). Other points of reference come from those who may not be familiar with the term, global citizenship, yet study critical engagement internationally (e.g., Ward, 2010). What has been and can be learned through self-study, to inform facilitation of learning about global citizenship?

I lived in East Jerusalem as an ecumenical accompanier (EA) with the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel. Since 2002, EAs have “monitor[ed] and report[ed] human rights abuses and support[ed] Palestinians and Israelis working together for peace” (www.eappi.org)ii. Upon return to home societies, EAs raise awareness about and respect for international law and United Nations resolutions, which are being violated in the occupation of Palestine. Through methodical reflection and analysis of the content of my EA web log or blog, I identified five voices within my EA identity: lyrical, ironic, relational, activist, and reflective voices. In this paper, I describe how I have become aware of them, and how I could use them as I facilitate learning about community-university research to achieve social justice. Compassion guides my practice as I re-imagine facilitation as accompaniment. I invite GCE facilitators to consider self-study research as a way to enhance awareness about how to engage lifelong learners in their critical responses to pressing issues in global and local society in the 21st century.

Focus of this Paper

I study community-university engaged research (e.g., participatory action research), or more broadly, critical engagement. The study of critical engagement is defined as research that focuses on understanding how committed researchers, service providers, policy makers, and interested citizens gather “to share … knowledge and learn with those who struggle for social justice, and to collaborate … respectfully and responsibly for the purpose of improving life” (Fear, Rosaen, Bawden, & Foster-Fishman, 2006, pp. xiii, 257-258). I perceive that global citizenship is a type of critical engagement, when the former is conceptualized in terms of shared responsibility for all humans and nature, and with a vision for a “just world” (Shultz & Jorgenson, 2008). Through this paper, I use the term, critical global-citizenship engagement, to refer to an interrelated area of research.

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 78

Discussions have been underway for over a decade about whether post-secondary faculty are prepared to facilitate teachers’ learning about “multicultural and global education” and what methods are used (Merryfield, 2000; Carson & Johnston, 2000; Conklin, 2008). In the GCE literature, teachers are called upon to serve as role models to “motivate and inspire” students (Syed, 2011, p. 212). This modeling requires a high level of consistency between the content of what is being taught and how it is facilitated. To aspire to and maintain this consistency requires some self- knowing, which can be hard work. In addition, creating spaces for learners to grapple with contentious issues can be emotionally challenging (Chickering, 2008) for facilitator-learner relationships, as the parties involved might not understand the full responsibilities all at once (Guimaraes-Iosif, 2011). Turning to a “pedagogy of compassion” (Carson & Johnston, 2000), to be wholly present in learning relationships, may be one direction in which to advance this area of research in critical engagement including GCE. In this paper, I consider how self-study of my global-citizenship experience is a step toward adopting this pedagogy.

Purpose of the Study

With increased discussion among critically engaged scholars about the issue of post-secondary institutions having a moral obligation to respond to societal issues (Fear et al., 2006), I suggest that facilitators of learning about critical engagement reflect on how we are participating as citizens. Then, we might ask: how do we facilitate adults’ abilities to understand mutual responsibility in knowledge-creating and sharing partnerships, locally and globally? Awareness about justice issues is one thing; shared responsibility to act is another, as is described in the GCE literature (Davies, 2006; Guimaraes-Iosif, 2011; Jorgenson & Shultz, 2012).

I have a responsibility to make intentional and informed use of my voice(s) as a global citizen, an individual in my local community, and as a scholar. In this study, I ask: How are my experiences as an ecumenical accompanier shaping me, my facilitation of lifelong learning, and my study of critical engagement? Through a phenomenological self-study (e.g., Brown & Duke, 2006; Edmonds, 2010), I made explicit my understanding of my global-citizenship experience, through various lenses - not just as a feminist researcher/educator (thinking in her head) but also as a whole person (with emotions) who cares about social justice, human rights, and Canadian complicity in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The purpose of this self-study is to uncover my tacit understanding of that wholeness and to consider how to apply that now-explicit insight to my facilitation practice.

Significance of the Study

In my practice, I introduce diverse adults to community-university engaged research and hope that they will share what they know with their research partners. After my global-citizenship experiences of injustice, I realized that I could serve as a role model in my practice, as I ‘listen for the truths and values at the heart’ of my identities (Chickering, 2008, p. 90). How do I access my tacit knowledge to be able to apply it in facilitating learning about critical engagement?

The significance of this study is that it is an example of self-study by a researcher/educator who seeks to integrate her experiences into the facilitation of lifelong learning about critical engagement. The study explores how a facilitator’s self-knowledge may inform the practice of “a pedagogy of compassion” (Carson & Johnston, 2000). Experiencing new and differing perspectives Learning to Accompany Through a Self-Study of Critical Global-Citizenship Engagement • 79

about global issues may threaten our worldviews as learners, causing us to shut down. Choosing to study how we react, cognitively and emotionally, in these situations can enhance our understanding, helping us to live compassionately as global citizens and facilitators of learning. Seeking community, I invite self-study among other researcher/educators so that those who introduce adult learners to critical engagement have resources upon which to draw.

Framework for the Study

Exploring Explicit Self-Knowledge

By “giving ourselves to others”, we learn about ourselves (Fear et al., 2006, p. 296), at least at a tacit or implicit, unarticulated level. In choosing to accompany Israelis and Palestinians who are seeking a just peace, I shared part of my life. I know that I have learned a great deal, and yet, I feel as though I am learning how to learn, again, as I try to make sense of what I experienced in East Jerusalem. Here is what I know in an explicit way. I am a researcher/educator with a PhD in human ecology, working in the context of a local community-university partnership. My responsibility is the design and implementation of workshops, graduate courses, and experiential learning about community-university engaged research. To inform my facilitation, I study relational ways of making meaning (e.g., through dialogue). I facilitate in ways that rely on learners’ interactions, conceptualizing myself as a learner, too (Vella, 2008).

I support social justice. As ecumenical accompaniers (EAs), we live as internationals, from across faith-based and secular backgrounds, alongside Palestinians and Israelis amid their nonviolent actions to achieve a just peace. For three months, I looked through the perspectives of diverse groups of people living under a particular oppression in the Middle East. I witnessed direct and structural violence (Zaru, 2008). The term, direct violence, describes the type of destructive activities that are profiled in news headlines (e.g., shootings; home demolitions). Structural violence refers to ongoing, systemic policies and practices that undermine the well-being of individuals, families, communities, societies, and nature (e.g., denying freedom of movement through a permit system; preventing access to water, a human right, through economic and political actions). Personally, I was yelled at, detained, physically searched, and interrogated. I described what I was experiencing on my blogiii, which served as a communication tool with friends, family, colleagues, and interested readers in Canada, Palestine, Israel, England, and the United States.

Trying to Voice Meaning

When I returned to Canada, I was asked by many about how I had been changed by the experience. My answer, “I don’t know”, did not satisfy me. In response to institutional support for my leave of absence from work, I agreed to study my EA experiences with a critical-engagement lens. As a result, I learned about self-study in teacher education. My self-study is helping me to learn the meaning of my experience, embedded in my poems such as this one from February 2011 after a visit to Hebron (occupied West Bank). The following is an excerpt:

One woman called out “Shame on you!!” Why? JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 80

Who do you see within this [Ecumenical-Accompaniment] vest? Within this skin? What do you see? What label? Me? … I am guessing that you have more layers than this surface. I can feel them. And the fear. And your shock. Can you feel my shock? Are you feeling a kind of oppressive pressure-like nausea, too? Your accent sounds North-American, like mine perhaps… What is your name… My name is Sherry Ann… I am a visitor here, too…who cares… Perhaps, we will meet again… Perhaps, we might find ourselves in a discussion about this place… I hope that you might see me, then…I hope that I will be allowed to see and hear more of your layers… Until then… Shalom Assalaamu alaykum Peace be with you.

Reading this poem makes me feel, again, the shock of that moment. Through my self-study, I learned that I used my lyrical voice when I wrote that poem to express the emotional intensity of that interaction. I have become aware of this voice, an artistic perspective that can carry emotional dimensions. Since returning to Canada, I realize that I have been using this voice in my facilitation of graduate classes (e.g., sharing prose-poetry to open a talking circle).

Uncovering Implicit Self-Knowledge and Five Voices

To understand how I was shaped by this and other moments as an ecumenical accompanier (EA), I conducted a phenomenological self-study. This form of qualitative inquiry has two dimensions. First, on the phenomenological side, the research is “a look at lived experience” (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009, p. 70). I regard phenomenology as an opportunity to study and describe essence in rich detail relative to context (Edmonds, 2010; Groenewald, 2004). A phenomenological approach helped me to study what I experienced, anew, as “the investigation of experience as lived rather than conceptualized” (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009, p. 73). By uncovering assumptions and presuppositions, I also uncovered underlying cognitive and emotional dimensions of my EA life.

Second, in terms of self-study, this work is “a look at self in action” (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009, p. 70). Through this self-study, I wished to become systematically aware of tacit knowledge or of how I lived as an EA and learner. I studied what I wrote during my experiences and my reflections about my experiences. I situated this content in various contexts of my accompaniment: the local and regional socio-structural, cultural, historical, political, geographical, economic, and religious contexts (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009). Bullough and Pinnegar (2001) wrote that, “The aim of self-study research is to provoke, challenge, and illuminate rather than confirm and settle” Learning to Accompany Through a Self-Study of Critical Global-Citizenship Engagement • 81

(p. 20). Each time that I prepare to share what I am learning through this self-study, I develop my understanding further (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009). Through a blending of phenomenology and self-study, researchers seek to challenge conventions, are in dialogue (through internal reflection and with other learners/practitioners), and make assertions based on the uncovered knowledge to inform action (Bullough & Pinnegar, 2001).

Through this phenomenological self-study, I have learned that my meaning making has at least five types of voices or perspectives within my ecumenical-accompanier (EA) identity. My voices include:

 A lyrical voice that links conceptual, artistic, and emotional dimensions.

 A surprising (to me), ironic voice (with some darkness and bitterness).

 An activist’s voice revealing my social-justice sensibility.

 A relational voice that shares information with perceived readers.

 A reflective voice that observes my own lifelong learning.

These voices provide insight into my multiple selves, respectively as artist, researcher/educator, activist, and social, reflective being. This self-study has provided me with an opportunity to move into a new phase of self-understanding, amid immersion in the competing narratives of Israel and Palestine. Who wants to be challenged cognitively and emotionally to understand ongoing conflicts? Carson and Johnston (2000) wrote that, “The self resists dangerous knowledge, because it threatens the imagined coherence of the self” (p. 80). Humans wish to protect a self-concept from such challenges (Mead, 1934). However, self-study was an opportunity to consider how my multiple voices co-existed in East Jerusalem and again, back home in Canada (Holstein & Gubrium, 2000).

In contrast to my lyrical or poetic voice, my ironic voice reveals my perception of double- meanings, harsh juxtapositions, and bitter twists in history. For example, as Canadians engaging in national and global debate about the Israeli government’s occupation of Palestine, we need to be prepared to understand how the Canadian pass-and-permit system (restricting the freedom of movement of Aboriginal peoples) was a point of reference for the South-African apartheid system. In turn, that system was a point of reference for Israeli authorities. Indirectly, Canada is complicit in Palestinian suffering. Regarding such connections, I see potential to engage Canadians in learning about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Since my return to Canada, I have been using my activist’s voice, speaking with the general public and special interest groups. I continue to post on my blog and realize that new readers continue to find my blog. In these ways, I participate in civil-society discussion at a critical time in Canada; various groups are debating how to exert pressure on the Israeli government (e.g., through boycott, divestment, and sanctions) for violations of international law (e.g., Fourth Geneva Convention). Self-study enabled me to realise that I have the voice of an activist and that I have been oriented this way for much of my life. Only in recent years have I felt empowered to act on my social-justice sensibility. JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 82

I see my relational voice in my blog as I write for readers, particularly Canadian ‘followers’ and ecumenical accompaniers (EAs), Israelis, and Palestinians with whom I am now connected. With this voice, I describe human suffering as the occupation separates Israelis and Palestinians from each other and leads to conflict within both societies.

Through my reflective voice in my blog, I realized that while I set out to accompany others, I was being accompanied in East Jerusalem. Palestinians and Israelis showed incredible patience for the ongoing, three-month rotation of ecumenical accompaniers (EAs) from around the world. Repeatedly, those living amid the occupation showed us compassion as we struggled to make sense of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its implications not only for local people but also for the Middle East, the east and west, the global south and global north. Through self-study, I am reflecting on how my global-citizenship experience has not been only about Palestine and Israel but that it is also nudging me to critique my own country of Canada (Davies, 2006). I realize that I write as a researcher/educator who seeks to be a partner, not an ‘expert’ isolated from society in ‘the ivory tower’. All of these voices are part of me, enabling me to “critique” responses to global issues (Fear et al., 2006).

Method

As a human ecologist, I assume that people live in interdependent relationships with various contexts; in addition, I have an explicit value orientation in that I care about people’s quality of life (Westney, Brabble, & Edwards, 1988). I bring a critical-constructivist worldview to research. From my perspective, multiple realities co-exist and people co-construct knowledge relative to explicit and implicit systems of shared beliefs, pre-existing knowledge about phenomena, and the seekers who are involved (Guba, 1990). I relate to phenomena in an iterative manner, by working back and forth reflecting on personal and shared understandings of a phenomenon and relative to my historical and societal contexts (Palmer, 1969). I identify with an emerging theory of knowledge for the scholarship of engagement as characterized by Ward (2010). She argues that this new epistemology:

has moved beyond the borders of the disciplines and even beyond the universities where what is called knowledge territory is shared with other knowledge professionals (Bjarnason, et al, 2001). These knowledge professionals are practitioners, researchers, consultants, legislators, and think tanks. The new epistemology requires that pursuit of knowledge takes place in the context of its application. It also requires that the epistemology is grounded in and driven by practice, is participatory and inclusive of community in the multidirectional and multidimensional ways Lynton speaks of, and is connected to a sense of social responsibility and the desire for positive social change (Lynton, 1992, 1995a; Sullivan as cited in Ehrlich, 2000; Fear et al., 2006). (Ward, 2010, pp. 49-50)

Given this way of thinking, I chose phenomenological self-study to enhance my understanding of my lived experience to inform practice of the facilitation of lifelong learners about critical engagement. I wished to enhance my understanding of the essence of being an ecumenical accompanier in East Jerusalem in 2010-2011. Further, I sought to learn how that lived experience was shaping: (i) my self-understanding; and (ii) my work as a researcher/educator. Learning to Accompany Through a Self-Study of Critical Global-Citizenship Engagement • 83

For data, I turned to the text that I posted on my blog while living in East Jerusalem and after I returned home. In addition, I interviewed myself (winter 2012) and created theoretical memos throughout the study. My data set included: my blog postings from November 2010 to February 2012, my written responses to the interview questions, and my theoretical memos. Being a self- study, the data came from my writing.

To make sense of the data, I worked with the concept of explicitation. In seeking to study the essence of a phenomenon, researchers study the parts of the phenomenon relative to the whole phenomenon (Hycner, 1999, citing Georgi, 1975). Following Groenewald’s (2004) lead, I proceeded through a basic explicitation process. First, I read through all of the data to develop a holistic impression of the data set. At this stage, interpretation begins with attention to words and tone (Caelli, 2001). Presuppositions are suspended (Groenewald, 2004) so as to work “with an openness to whatever meanings emerge[d]” (Hycner, 1999, p. 144). The intention is “to see the phenomenon anew as it was experienced” (Caelli, 2001, p. 276). Second, for each of the blog postings, the interview responses, and the theoretical memos, I highlighted general and then relevant units of meaning that related to understanding my lived experience as an ecumenical accompanier and how that informs my facilitation of lifelong learners about critical engagement (Hycner, 1999). Third, working iteratively across the three parts of data and with the list of units, I sought to identify clusters of meaning. In turn, working with these clusters, I identified “significant topics” (Groenewald, 2004, citing Sadala & Adorno, 2001). Fourth, I summarized separately: (a) the blog postings and (b) the interview. I asked myself whether I had captured the essence of my postings and interview: Were these summaries valid? Did they fit with my experience of this phenomenon? Finally, I looked for general and unique themes across the postings and the interview. I wrote a composite summary to include all of the themes set within the context of the whole. This required some initial theorizing in the form of assertions in terms of self-study, critical engagement, and the facilitation of lifelong learning.

Summary of Insights from the Self-Study

Relative to understanding my lived experience as an ecumenical accompanier and how that informs my facilitation of learning about critical engagement, I gained insight into how I processed difficult experiences and emotions through my blog. My postings include a mixture of:

 Direct dialogue with readers with ways for them to learn more and take action (my relational voice);

 Descriptive text regarding the situations, people, and places that I encountered (my relational voice);

 The voices of Palestinians and Israelis living under and with occupation (my relational voice);

 My “experiential” poetry that appears when I have been intensely impacted by an experience (my lyrical voice);

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 84

 An underlying discourse in the blog, created in terms of physical embodiment and the concept of place (my lyrical voice);

 Commentary with a particular thread of irony and double-meaning, sometimes connected with juxtapositions that I experienced (my ironic voice);

 Many questions, as much for me as for my readers (my reflective and activist voices).

Overall, the blog content carries two types of messages. On the one hand, the writing is explicit and addressed to Canadians. In effect, I urged: “Please see yourselves in the humanity of these experiences and act in support of a just peace and the ending of this occupation of the Palestinian territories and illegal annexation of East Jerusalem”. On the other hand, the blog carries an implicit message: “I am a woman who is highly sensitive to the world; however, I am not naïve, retiring, or simply an observer. Through my prose, poetry, and photographs, I ask that you read this blog and let the pain of this unjust humanitarian crisis touch you, relative to your own contexts and life experiences”.

Presenting Assertions Through Found Poetry

In self-study, assertions are made with the intent of applying what was previously tacit knowledge. Pinnegar & Hamilton (2009) write that self-study research is:

judged trustworthy by others when the assertions for an action or understandings seem plausible and when results can be used to guide action in practice. In this way, studies are valuable not so much for their contribution to knowing but because of their contribution to acting in practice. (p. 5)

Feldman (2003) adds that the way in which self-study researchers represent their findings is important for purposes of validity. A first step is to describe how the data were collected (as in the Methods section of the present paper).

A second step is to state clearly how representations of the data were constructed (e.g., as “found poetry”). Through my global-citizenship experience, I became aware that I turn to writing poetry when faced with emotionally intense situations. Given this awareness and given that I have learned through this self-study that one of my voices is lyrical, I am drawn to the use of poetry to represent my findings. Feldman (2003) describes this affinity for artistic representations of self- study in this way:

Scientific forms of representation of research (Eisner, 1981), while satisfying criteria for validity, do not allow for the subtleties required to present one’s way of being to others. It is for this reason that self-study researchers resonate so well with literary genres of representation such as narrative, autobiography, and epistolary exchanges. To put it simply, in self-study we delve into our existential ways of being in the world, which may best be made public through artistic representations of research (Eisner, 1981). (Feldman, 2003, p. 27) Learning to Accompany Through a Self-Study of Critical Global-Citizenship Engagement • 85

One immediate way to apply significant topics in the data is by deriving a narrative from the data (Caelli, 2001) or creating “found poetry” to share what is learned. Such narratives “derive directly from the participants’ accounts of their experiences” (Caelli, 2001, p. 278). In addition:

When the researcher uses found poetry to distill the themes and main ideas as poetry, then it allows hidden, more tacit, themes to emerge in data analysis as much from the construction of the poetry as in the distillation of the elements from which it is constructed. (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009, p. 131)

Whereas “experiential” poems are written from a poet’s internal reflection, “found” poetry is constructed from the text of the data (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009).

To derive “found” poems from the findings, I turned to the clustered data that had been organized according to four significant topics. Relative to each topic, I copied segments of data that particularly reflected each topic and pasted the segments into a new document. While I pieced the segments to be read in a fluid manner, I retained the data verbatim. In each new document was an emerging poem. I checked the overall meaning of each poem relative to its significant topic.

Feldman’s (2003) third validity step is to, “Extend triangulation beyond multiple sources of data to include explorations of multiple ways to represent the same self-study” (p. 28). I did this by working with assertions (as in the next section of the present paper) and by framing the study with the five voices I had identified. Hycner (1999) described this alternative exploration in terms of phenomenological reduction and studying, “the matrices of that person’s [the one being studied] world-view in order to understand the meaning of what that person is saying” (p. 144). Fourth, Feldman (2003) advised that self-study researchers provide evidence of the effect of the self-study on practice.

Significant Topics as Assertions

Working iteratively across the data set, I identified clusters of meaning. Then, I identified “significant topics” (Groenewald, 2004, citing Sadala & Adorno, 2001). In self-study, researchers make assertions to inform their action in practice (Bullough & Pinnegar, 2001). With four significant topics in mind, I assert that:

 First-hand experience is essential for my practice.

 I use irony, experiential poetry, and place-based language as a learner.

 My accompaniment practice is inherently relational.

 I continue to ‘unpack’ and am making meaning in the post-return home.

In response to my four assertions, I derived four found poems. In the first poem, I assert that, in my facilitation practice, I continue to draw upon experiences of my life amid the Israeli government’s occupation of Palestine.

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 86

“I lived these experiences”

As Ecumenical Accompaniers, We seek to contribute to that resolution process by accompanying those who are experiencing the conflict first-hand. They are facilitating our learning …

I didn’t set out to be an ‘adult educator’ or a ‘facilitator’. Looking in my mind’s eye for the roots of this activity, I go to my professional work as a museum educator….

She helped me to see how the interpreter had created parameters for us learners (in part, the house served as a physical parameter) and then opened up control of the direction of our learning to us, as learners

thrust into a world of pain, survival, and joy…like the warm smiles of the students in Shu’afat Refugee Camp…

I felt joy, learning how to count in Arabic from two little boys in what was a battlefield in Silwan; we perched on the back of a bumper of a van, protected from the Jerusalem police on top of the illegal settlers’ apartment building. …media were there, some wearing bullet-proof vests with gas masks and helmets hanging off their belts…

I was incredibly self-conscious as an international…standing there watching the lines of men…form. I felt uncomfortable - what right did I have to come and stare at strangers who were commuting to work –… but the Israeli government’s checkpoint made that commute incredibly degrading and humiliating. And, there I was to count them –… But, over time, I began… to identify with them – to recognize our shared humanity in their eyes. I began to feel empowered to advocate…as the Israeli soldiers watched us all through the bullet-proof glass and cameras, deciding when to open the turnstile gates and … when not to. I drew back with some fear … I was re-assured … I felt helpless … I felt vulnerable … I felt violated … I worried further…Without the Arabic language, trying to help was really difficult. I felt angry … I took a photo of the mom and the baby – knowing that the incongruity of admiring this beautiful family through the metal bars also revealed their vulnerability to the world – and that was my ‘job’ - gave me great pain. I was angry and in tears. … She encouraged me to write about it and I did…

 “And, why didn’t I become a Muslim?” I responded that I would need to learn more … I felt honoured, respected, ‘seen’, valued…and I loved them, all…for being who they are…as the next generation of young women who have so much to share with their community, Jerusalem, the Middle East, and the world…I wonder if they’ll have a proper, real chance to do that…

They gave me a paper heart made up of hearts – they’d written their names on the hearts. … I miss them and hope that we might meet again…

Through this phenomenological self-study, I have come to understand how important experiential learning is to my meaning-making process as a learner and facilitator.

Learning to Accompany Through a Self-Study of Critical Global-Citizenship Engagement • 87

In the second poem, I assert that I coped with the intensity of EA life using meaning-making tools: a physicality and place-based language; irony (e.g., juxtapositions); and a poetic voice (e.g., my experiential poetry; others’ poetry).

“Meaning-Making Tools”

I am a woman, highly sensitive yet not naïve. I have been breathing irony. I ask that you read this blog and let the pain of this un-just crisis touch you, relative to your own place.

“Which side are you on?”

I was on both ‘sides’ of the Irish Troubles… north and south, with Protestant and Catholic roots.

The Palestinians and Israelis offered me patience, as a learner… patience is a space for people to respond to questions or to each other…– what right does this emotion have in presenting itself here, right now!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

I choose to stand with all those who are working toward a just peace. We are a diverse group,

Finding our way…we had to ‘learn our place’ in a larger collective …we had to learn quickly how to find our way…time could not be wasted, for advocacy and safety purposes…

Place…ment: Jerusalem This division of the word, placement – “ment” – what is the meaning? Like accompaniment, depart-ment, judge-ment, place-ment… to be part of the creation of that place?

And so the disappearing trick goes…This news just in from the EAPPI office in Jerusalem: “The Israeli military demolished Beit Arabiya”.

December demolitions…’tis the season

Israel occupied East Jerusalem along with the West Bank in 1967. Occupation is regarded internationally as a temporary situation. Permanent changes in occupied territory are not allowed … Destruction of property is not allowed …. Confiscation of property… not allowed. The forced displacement and inhumane treatment …not allowed. … The Israeli government has been moving its citizens into occupied East Jerusalem. This is population transfer and is a war crime [Article 49(6), Fourth Geneva Convention]. … house and infrastructure demolitions are a war crime … And yet, the Israeli authorities declare that homes built without building permits in East Jerusalem are “illegal” structures. Through this declaration, they issue demolition orders.

War crime vs. illegality…which holds greater weight…the one that is less inconvenient to the international community????

Can I go? JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 88

Go. Don’t ever come back. Come back and see… The freedom of this democracy. Who is it that you say that you are? No. Not your name. Where is your number? Ah, but are you that person? She is Palestinian. Have you asked her name, perhaps? Leave. Now. No. Wait.

“Most people – Christian, Muslim, and Jews – we just want peace.”

an international travelling on a Palestinian bus, into Palestinian neighbourhoods,…did I feel conspicuous? I will write more on all of this in the coming weeks and months…from the City of Peace [Jerusalem – Jer-u-shalom]. “No one will accept others’ control of Jerusalem; it’s a place of conflict.” Do you see the barbed wire in the foreground of this picture?iv

The cited photo, from my blog, represents the harsh juxtaposition between an oppressed people’s collective cry for freedom (through graffiti on the Israeli Separation Wall) with barbed wire (in the foreground) (material evidence of the occupier’s presence).

In the third poem, I assert that my accompaniment and being accompanied are relational. I am in dialogue with readers, seeking to form relationships in support of a just peace. This requires connecting with others, sometimes with explicit invitations to readers, other times through a hyperlink, implicitly asking readers to inform themselves.

“Feeling Connected”

Accompaniment means being a companion to someone else or a group…to listen – to empathize with their experience – to be patient with my own needs so that I can put them in perspective to create space…

[What am I defining? Accompaniment or facilitation? Does it matter?] a concept that I can cognitively hang on to and emotionally experience and make sense of. I’m grateful for those who have been accompanying me in my life – without my understanding or appreciating that as much as I wish now.

One particular teen and I seemed to communicate so much through eye contact. Perhaps, we are alike in being kind-of-quiet observers.

For the past year, I’ve been trying to articulate another effect of my EA experiences, simply on being a human being. I feel like I’m looking more intently into people’s eyes now…seeking to know what they know… …I have to remember that they may wish to know something about me, too

Learning to Accompany Through a Self-Study of Critical Global-Citizenship Engagement • 89

I continue to watch the news in East Jerusalem because I feel connected…. For example, see this recent story about two home demolitions. (Click here.)

Let’s move away from ‘either/or’ side-making. We are in ‘this’ together; people are hurting right now. Shall we focus on opening this door together?

“Of course!!” my mind, soul, and body cries. Of course! This is what I’m seeing…in the blatant differences in municipal infrastructure on one side of Road No. 1 (…the Green Line) – the West-Jerusalem side is spacious and bright – the East-Jerusalem side is crammed and crumbling. This is what I’m seeing as three types of armed personnel stand and roam the streets of the Old City... This is what I’m seeing when Israelis use only the Egged buses and Palestinians use the ‘Green and Blue’ buses. This is what I’m seeing on the Ministry of Tourism map of The Old City of Jerusalem – that shows only Israeli parts of the Old City and sketches in parts to be built after evictions and demolitions…This is what I see in the Separation Wall…

This is what I see…apartness, apartheid…

Please forward this information to those in your circles...to raise awareness...

I will need to be patient with them, just as Palestinians and Israeli peace activists were patient with me. A lonely place, at times… waiting for Canadians to see/hear…understand…

In the fourth poem, I assert that I live with many questions to ponder, emotionally, and cognitively. I need to continue to uncover dimensions of my experiences, through reflection.

“Needing to Unpack”

violence and destruction.. It’s just not right that people have to experience this. There’s such pain there – I’m struggling…. Clearly, I’ve got some more work to do to feel pain that I’ve kept stored up this year….

I’ve got many memories and feelings that I’ve not dealt with…unpacked…made sense of. …one of the effects of my EA time is that I’ve experienced things that many Canadians will never experience. Yet some people, particularly First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples probably know very well, as an effect of European occupation of Turtle Island.

I think that I have a deeper awareness now and appreciation for all of the unknown aspects of life experiences and expertise that adult learners bring to a learning situation.

so, rather than being as shy…, I’m keen to make connection with that person who is new to me… what have they seen in their lives that inform how they make meaning and live their lives…?

Hmmm,

Respecting that each person may not completely understand how another person views issues… JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 90

Everyone wants peace, but what kind of peace?

I’ve experienced situations as an international observer/visitor, witnessing things that no one/being should have to experience. Yet, Palestinians are experiencing these injustices in almost every waking and sleeping moment of their lives.

As we were leaving, a younger son, about 12 years old, arrived from school. He looked stunned and was hanging close to his mother though not able to be with her because she was being interviewed by a journalist. [and I exposed his vulnerability through my photo yet should not the international community be aware of this vulnerability???]

Near the Central Bus Station [in West Jerusalem] with people coming and going. And standing. She was hurt and died. She Who is my mother. Your mother.

We need to identify with each other as human beings…not as objects…but feeling creatures who can think…how might my roles as accompanier and facilitator help?

Can I go? I’m looking forward to home Please wait.

awareness of my freedom of movement in Canada and how I need to make use of that freedom in the interests of international humanitarian law and international human-rights law…

Another need for a poem – an intense experience that can only be communicated in the terse format of poetry and close-cropped photos… I notice that the title for this posting is definite with that closed period… no ellipsis to suggest an openness…

Blank yet deepest wells for eyes: Slight shrug. “We’re trying to move forward.”

Found poetry is one way to reveal layers of meaning and emotion within self-study assertions (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009); my lyrical, ironic, relational, activist, and reflective voices run through the poems. How might my assertions and my voices inform my facilitation of learning about community-university engaged research to effect social justice?

Implications for Facilitating Learning about Critical Global Citizenship Engagement

I am one who has been, and is, fearful of conflict. East Jerusalem is a place with direct and structural violence. With my ironic voice, I describe painful juxtapositions of privilege and pain evident across the international armistice line (i.e., the Green Line) between East and West Jerusalem. Yet, amid such conflict, I was treated with respect and compassion as a learner. With that first-hand experience, I can feel my way into an openness to demonstrate respect for other Learning to Accompany Through a Self-Study of Critical Global-Citizenship Engagement • 91

learners’ diverse perspectives on issues (McCully, 2006) and fears about challenging injustice. We live amid an ever-oppressive norm, in neo-liberal society, to be passive and obedient citizens (Shultz, 2011). In this context, moving from talk to action can feel risky (hooks, 2003; Vogel, 2000). In being open about what challenges I have faced and how I have faced them, I create cognitive and affective space for a sharing of learners’ voices and emotions.

Through the course of this study, the concept of compassion has arisen, for example, in the self-study teacher-education literature, GCE literature, the critical-engagement literature, and in my own writing. For example, in my interview, I wrote:

Accompaniment means being a companion to someone else or to a group of people or to creatures or to parts of our world (e.g., fresh water, clean air). It means being in constructive relationship with that other being or thing in a supportive, encouraging, enabling way. It means to listen to that other, to hear with my heart (Steeves, 2012) – to empathize with their experience – to be patient with my own needs so that I can put them in perspective to create space to be more present with the other for whom I seek to be a companion.

Karen Armstrong (2010) wrote that “‘compassion’ means ‘to endure [something] with another person,’ to put ourselves in somebody else’s shoes, to feel her pain as though it were our own, and to enter generously into his point of view” (p. 9). When I revisited the website for the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel, I found that one essential description for the program is “to experience life under occupation” (Retrieved 26 March 2012: www.eappi.org), to live with those seeking to end that occupation. Fear et al. (2006) observed that, “Without caring, compassion, and attentiveness, there can be no understanding; and without understanding, engagement is a cold, lifeless activity…” (p. 288). With my assertions in hand, I envision adopting the term, accompaniment, to describe a compassionate approach to facilitation of learning about critical engagement. Facilitation and accompaniment both rely on mutually influencing dynamics, trust, and respect. Both require patience, critical thinking, and an emotional openness to the possibilities of what can be achieved in relationship. With my reflective voice, I realize that I was accompanied through a dialogical approach, in my training as an ecumenical accompanier (EA) (Vella, 2008). I remember the facilitators listening at the edges of small-group discussions, as we, EAs, learned from and with each other. The facilitators waited for us to seek them out as resources, if necessary; they created space to think, feel, and act. Now, I am aware that as I accompany learners, not only am I listening, but I am also empathizing with their perspectives and individual and collective moments of cognitive and affective insights. In this way, I practise compassion.

With my self-study assertions, I can imagine ways to actualize Conklin’s (2008) “pedagogy of critical, justice-oriented teacher education that focuses on modeling compassion” (p.654). Conklin identifies the need for attention to affective components in teacher educator-prospective teacher relationships. I have begun a process of adopting such pedagogy as Conklin’s (2008), but with diverse adult participants who seek to learn about community-university engaged research. When I accompany learners in workshops, courses, and experiential moments, I adopt an interactive, peer- learning approach based on dialogue (Vella, 2008). Each program is designed with the resources adults may need and parameters for discussion.

Given how important first-hand experience is for me and how I need time to make sense of experience to inform my practice, I am aware of the need for time and space for learners to share JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 92 experiences, emotions, and expertise from their lives. Learners may not be aware of this need to reflect. Moon (2004) recounted that experience without reflection may not result in learning; students may not know how to make sense of their community-university engaged research experiences. For example, graduate students in my program often appear unfamiliar with articulating personal learning objectives for their practicum; I ask, “what would you like to learn?” and “how will you know what you are learning?” Then, I listen, appreciating anew how reflection is part of the action-research cycle (Carson & Johnston, 2000), which is one approach to community-university engaged research. My sense of juxtaposition resonates with Levin’s (2012) description of tension between involvement and reflection as action researchers strive for rigour and relevance. Prior to this self-study, I set a goal to describe how I mentor graduate students in their experiential learning, yet I did not have a plan for that goal. Post self-study, I started a journal to record instances of this accompaniment, particularly in terms of supporting students’ exploration of personal learning objectives and indicators.

I strive for consistency between the nature of the content of a learning moment and how people are learning that content. Conklin (2008) described this as “demonstrating in action the very practices one advocates” (p. 660). For example, to accompany is to be in relationship, and mutuality is critical in community-university engaged research with partners’ negotiations about diverse perspectives, values, and agendas. A shared vision – a unity of purpose –characterizes this work. As an accompanying facilitator, I highlight for learners that awareness of this unity is part of our context in Canada, where community-university engaged research is informed by Indigenous research methodologies. Steinhauer (2002) observed that even though research partners may gather as individuals who have been “taught to be responsible for ourselves”, in addition, “…we must never think of ourselves in isolation. Everything we do, every decision we make, affects our family, our community, [sic] it affects the air we breathe, the animals, the plants, the water in some way” (p. 77). Community-university engaged research is hard work; at times, power relationships are out of balance, frustrations arise, and conflict happens. However, learning moments can be designed and implemented with time and space for individuals to grow in relationship with each other – in ways that are consistent with the relational nature of community-university engaged research.

Since preparing for and undertaking ecumenical accompaniment, my relational and activist voices have grown in confidence; for example, I have dedicated time at the beginning of graduate classes for talking circles. Participants are invited to pass a talking stick as a physical reminder of whose turn it is to speak – valuing each individual within that immediate collective. Recently, I sought information about facilitating collaborative, creative conversations ‘in the round’. As a global citizen, I recognize incongruities between contemporary society’s linear structures (e.g., sitting in rows; hierarchical organizational charts) (Baldwin & Linnea, 2010) and the desire for circle-based consensus (e.g., the Occupy movement’s consensus decision making) (Meerkat Media Collective, 2011). In response, I use my ironic voice to name these incongruities and offer learners what I am learning about iterative, democratic approaches to social change.

This past spring, I began integrating reflective and experiential learning (e.g., Moon, 2004) into my curricula (e.g., five-minute moments for individual reflective writing; collective reflection through large-group debriefing; personal learning objectives for experiential learning with integrated journaling). For example, for a full-day workshop, I created a Reflection Worksheet with key questions and prompts for individual writing (e.g., in set moments during the workshop). I Learning to Accompany Through a Self-Study of Critical Global-Citizenship Engagement • 93

anticipated empathizing with participants, as they grappled with juxtapositions (e.g., trying consensus decision making amid hierarchical work contexts); the Reflection Worksheet was a way for participants to reflect initially within themselves before engaging in small-group discussion in which peers might offer challenging perspectives. In this way, I mediated participants’ learning, “signaling” (Moon, 2004) what to do: Reflect as individuals; consider key concepts in terms of work/life contexts; ask: “What am I learning through this reflection? How is it relevant?” My purpose was to support potential insights regarding what participants already knew about the workshop content.

As I reflect on learner feedback over the past years, my reflective and relational voices are affirmed as participants note that I create space for many voices so that we might all, as learners, hear each other as we co-construct meaning (Vella, 2008). The feedback reflects that I am quiet; I perceive that I sit back rather than ‘play the expert’. With my activist voice, I self-identify as a feminist with an interest in social and environmental justice. With my lyrical voice, I identify with fluid ways of thinking and gathering; I strive to follow learners and their interests, even as I remain faithful to the objectives of that learning experience. I now initiate graduate classes with readings (e.g., from bell hooks) as foundation for seminar discussions. Through various media (e.g., prose poetry), I model how emotions are attached to thoughts in learning.

In dialogue with others who seek to accompany learners in critical global-citizenship engagement, we can enhance our self-knowledge for society’s benefit (Bottery, 2006). As we seek to contribute to global justice, we have an opportunity to describe “what we are doing and why— offering it up for public witness and scrutiny” (Vogel, 2000, p. 18). Should any one of us feel embarrassed by self-study, Bottery (2006) offers this: “professional self-reflection does not mean an appeal to introversion, but precisely the opposite; for greater self-knowledge is only possible where the person is situated within contexts and when the impact of such contexts is appreciated” (p. 112). Learners need facilitators “who are psychologically, physically, and temporally accessible” (Chickering, 2008, p. 91). Yet, I note that in the field of teacher education, only a small body of research appears to exist regarding the practice of modeling of co-constructed, dialogically oriented learning (Conklin, 2008; Lunenberg, Korthagen, & Swennen, 2007). I invite others to engage in self-study to uncover tacit knowledge. Understanding how we react cognitively and emotionally in challenging moments can make us more compassionate as accompanying facilitators.

Strengths and Limitations

A strength of this self-study is that I was able to draw on my newly understood affinity for writing with a lyrical voice. Hycner (1999) describes an “artistic” aspect in clustering relevant units of data and cites Colaizzi who wrote: “‘… the phenomenological researcher [is] engaged in something which cannot be precisely delineated, for here he [sic] is involved in that ineffable thing known as creative insight’ (1978, p. 59)” (pp. 150-151). That artistic aspect is related to artistic representations of self-study (Feldman, 2003) and enabled me to derive found poetry to communicate emotional aspects of the data.

Regarding limitations, my lived experience as an ecumenical accompanier is relatively unique in Canada; in 2010, I was only the twelfth Canadian to participate in the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI). I have not created a research JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 94 committee to which to turn with members who are familiar with phenomenological self-study and who are familiar with ecumenical accompaniment. This type of committee could serve as a check on the analytic process that involves “creative insight” (Hycner, 1999, p. 151, citing Colaizzi, 1978, p. 59). However, this limitation is motivation for me to engage colleagues as I did during the Institute for Global Citizenship and Equity conference in April 2012.

Conclusion

In this paper, I recount how I arrived at the study of global-citizenship education (GCE), from a need to make sense of my lived experience in Palestine and Israel. Through a phenomenological self-study, I uncovered knowledge about myself as a learner in a global-citizenship experience. I identified five voices within my ecumenical-accompanier (EA) identity and now I am integrating them into my work as a researcher/educator. These voices run through four assertions about my learning: first-hand experience is essential; I use various meaning-making tools; accompanying learners is inherently relational; and I continue to ‘unpack’ meaning in the post-return home. My voices and assertions now inform my facilitation of learning about community-university engaged research.

This self-study has helped me integrate learning moments as an EA when I recognized shared humanity amid the Israeli government’s occupation of Palestine. I shared in some of the vulnerability of life there. With this newly explicit knowledge, I feel better able to accompany learners as they grapple with community-university engaged research toward effecting social change. I realize the potential for describing more explicitly in workshops, courses, and experiential learning that I have had a transformative experience. I see the potential to model my own critical global-citizenship engagement as a way to create compassionate spaces for lifelong learners as they get involved in the global and local issues of the 21st century.

Learning to Accompany Through a Self-Study of Critical Global-Citizenship Engagement • 95

Endnotes i Centennial College, Toronto, ON. See: http://www.centennialcollege.ca/citizenshipandequity/HeartsMinds2012 ii The United Church of Canada is an EAPPI-partnering organization for Canadian ecumenical accompaniers in Palestine and Israel. See: http://www.united-church.ca/getinvolved/global/overseas/invitations#ecumenical iii EA Stories4Peace. See: http://peacingstories.wordpress.com My two related blogs are: WallArt4Peace at http://taggingpeace.wordpress.com/ and KidsStories4Peace at http://sherryannea2.wordpress.com/ iv See: http://peacingstories.wordpress.com/2011/01/15/the-music-managed-to-get-through-the-checkpoints- and-the-walls/

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 96

References

Armstrong, K. (2010). Twelve steps to a compassionate life. Toronto, ON: Random House of Canada.

Baldwin, C., & Linnea, A. (2010). The circle way: A leader in every chair. Foreword by M. J. Wheatley. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

Bottery, M. (2006). Education and globalization: Redefining the role of the educational professional. Educational Review, 58(1), 95–113.

Brown, J. D., & Duke, T. S. (2006). Librarian and faculty collaborative instruction: A phenomenological self-study. Research Strategies, 20, 171-190.

Bullough, R. V., & Pinnegar, S. (2001). Guidelines for quality in autobiographical forms of self- study research. Educational Researcher, 30, 13-21.

Caelli, K. (2001). Engaging with phenomenology: Is it more of a challenge than it needs to be? Qualitative Health Research, 11(2), 273-281.

Carson, T., & Johnston, I. (2000). The difficulty with difference in teacher education: Toward a pedagogy of compassion. The Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 46(1), 75-83.

Chickering, A. W. (2008). Strengthening democracy and personal development through community engagement. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 118, 87-95.

Conklin, H. G. (2008). Modeling compassion in critical, justice-oriented teacher education. Harvard Educational Review, 78(4), 652-674.

Davies, L. (2006). Global citizenship: Abstraction or framework for action? Educational Review, 58(1), 5-25.

Edmonds, M. L. (2010). The lived experience of nursing students who study abroad: A qualitative inquiry. Journal of Studies in International Education, 14(5), 545-568.

Fear, F. A., Rosaen, C. L., Bawden, R. J., & Foster-Fishman, P. G. (2006). Coming to critical engagement: An autoethnographic exploration. P. P. Miller (Ed.). Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

Feldman, A. (2003). Validity and quality in self-study. Educational Researcher, 32(3), 26-28.

Groenewald, T. (2004). A phenomenological research design illustrated. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 3(1). Article 4. Retrieved on 1 June 2012 from http://www.ualberta.ca/~iiqm/backissues/3_1/pdf/groenewald.pdf

Learning to Accompany Through a Self-Study of Critical Global-Citizenship Engagement • 97

Guimaraes-Iosif, R. (2011). Rethinking citizenship education in higher education institutions through the lens of critical pedagogy: Educating the local and global emancipated citizen. In L. Shultz, A. A. Abdi, & G. H. Richardson (Eds.), Global citizenship education in post- secondary institutions: Theories, practices, policies (pp. 76-92). New York: Peter Lang.

Guba, E. C. (1990). The alternative paradigm dialog. In E. C. Guba (Ed.), The paradigm dialog (pp. 17-27). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Holstein, J. A., & Gubrium, J. F. (2000). The self we live by: Narrative identity in a postmodern world. New York: Oxford University Press. hooks, b. (2003). Teaching community: A pedagogy of hope. New York: Routledge.

Hycner, R. H. (1999). Some guidelines for the phenomenological analysis of interview data. In A. Bryman & R. G. Burgess (Eds.), Qualitative research (Vol. 3, pp. 143-164). London: Sage.

Jorgenson, S., & Shultz, L. (2012). Global citizenship education (GCE) in post-secondary institutions: What is protected and what is hidden under the umbrella of GCE? Journal of Global Citizenship & Equity Education, 2(1)(Special Edition), 1-22.

Levin, M. (2012). Academic integrity in action research. Action Research, 10(2), 133-149.

Lunenberg, M., Korthagen, F., & Swennen, A. (2007). The teacher educator as a role model. Teaching and Teacher Education, 23, 586–601.

McCully, A. (2006). Practitioner perceptions of their role in facilitating the handling of controversial issues in contested societies: A Northern Irish experience. Educational Review, 58(1), 51-65.

Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self and society: From the standpoint of a social behaviorist. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

Meerkat Media Collective. (2011, Oct. 13). Consensus (Direct Democracy @ Occupy Wall Street). [YouTube]. Retrieved on 2 Aug. 2012 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dtD8RnGaRQ

Merryfield, M. M. (2000). Why aren’t teachers being prepared to teach for diversity, equity, and global interconnectedness? A study of lived experiences in the making of multicultural and global educators. Teaching and Teacher Education, 16, 429-443.

Moon, J.A. (2004) A handbook of reflective and experiential learning: Theory and practice. London: RoutledgeFalmer.

Palmer, R. E. (1969). Hermeneutics: Interpretation theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 98

Pinnegar, S., & Hamilton, M. L. (2009). Self-study of practice as a genre of qualitative research: Theory, methodology, and practice. New York: Springer.

Shultz, L. (2011). Engaging the multiple discourses of global citizenship education within a Canadian university: Deliberation, contestation, and social justice possibilities. In L. Shultz, A. A. Abdi, & G. H. Richardson (Eds.), Global citizenship education in post- secondary institutions: Theories, practices, policies (pp. 13-24). New York: Peter Lang.

Shultz, L., Abdi, A. A., & Richardson, G. H. (Eds.). (2011). Global citizenship education in post- secondary institutions: Theories, practices, policies. New York: Peter Lang.

Shultz, L., & Jorgenson, S. (2008). Global citizenship education in post-secondary institutions: A review of the literature. Retrieved on 1 June 2012 from http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/uai_globaleducation/pdfs/GCE_lit_review.pdf

Steeves, N. (2012, March 4). Path of wisdom: Listening. [Podcast]. Southminster-Steinhauer United Church, Edmonton, AB. Retrieved on 1 June 2012 from http://www.smsuc.com/reflections?sermon_id=108

Steinhauer, E. (2002). Thoughts on an indigenous research methodology. Canadian Journal of Native Education, 26(2), 69-81.

Syed, K. T. (2011). The question of global citizenship in teacher education. In L. Shultz, A. A. Abdi, & G. H. Richardson (Eds.), Global citizenship education in post-secondary institutions: Theories, practices, policies (pp. 208-218). New York: Peter Lang.

Vella, J. (2008). On teaching and learning: Putting the principles and practices of dialogue education into action. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Vogel, L. J. (2000). Reckoning with the spiritual lives of adult educators. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 85, 17-27.

Ward, E. C. (2010). Women’s ways of engagement: An exploration of gender, the scholarship of engagement and institutional rewards policy and practice. (Doctoral dissertation). University of Massachusetts, Boston. Available at ARROW@DIT, http://arrow.dit.ie/aaschssloth/10

Westney, O. E., Brabble, E. W., & Edwards, C. H. (1988). Human ecology: Concepts and perspectives. In R. J. Borden & J. Jacobs (Eds.), Human Ecology: Research and Applications (pp. 129-137). College Park, MD: Society for Human Ecology.

Zaru, J. (2008). Occupied with nonviolence: A Palestinian woman speaks. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.

Journal of Global Citizenship & Equity Education Volume 2 Number 2 - 2012 journals.sfu.ca/jgcee

Promoting Global Citizenship Outside the Classroom: Undergraduate-Refugee Service Learning at Lehigh University

Gisella Gisolo, Ph.D. Director of Global Citizenship, College of Arts & Sciences Lehigh University

Sarah Stanlick Ph.D. Candidate, Learning Sciences and Technology, College of Education Graduate Assistant, Global Citizenship Program President, Graduate Student Senate Lehigh University

Keywords: Global Citizenship; Refugees; Reflection; Program Assessment

ABSTRACT: Global citizenship education aims to develop students into engaged citizens of the world. As Richardson (2008) explains, global citizenship is one manifestation of social studies education that gives students a “wider and more sophisticated understanding of self and community”. The Global Citizenship Program at Lehigh University requires students to examine the questions of meaning and value associated with the theme of citizenship within today's global world. Through a mandated service-learning requirement, first year Global Citizenship students were exposed to the global-local connection between themselves and refugees resettled in the Greater Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, United States. The purpose of this study was to assess the efficacy of service learning as a facilitator for global citizenship awareness and self- concept for the students. This study is the result of a mixed-methods research design that incorporates both qualitative measures (e.g. document analysis) and quantitative data (e.g. psychometric and survey data) to create profiles of student growth and change. Through this analysis, it was concluded that service learning promoted concepts of social justice and global citizenship by the students, as well as leading to meaningful character development in realms such as empathy and tolerance for ambiguity.

Introduction

This paper examines the design, implementation and impact of a semester-long service- learning project between first-year students at Lehigh University (a private research university located in Eastern Pennsylvania) and a group of refugees recently resettled in the area through the Allentown chapter of Catholic Charities, a faith-based social services organization working extensively on refugee resettlement all over the United States. The project was developed as part of a course titled “Introduction to Global Citizenship,” a foundational writing-intensive course that JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 100 constitutes a core requirement for students admitted into the Global Citizenship certificate program at Lehigh.

In this article, after surveying some literature in support of the use of service learning in achieving global citizenship development, we lay out the project’s goals and structure as well as present the mixed methodology used to assess the project’s impact. Through the use of participant observation, quantitative pre- and post- surveys, as well as the analysis of the students’ reflective essays, we show how project assessment was conducted and what insights emerged from the data. We conclude by spelling out how the original goals set for the project were met, and by hinting at how project assessment is going to inform future implementations of the project.

Literature Review

While global citizenship is a concept that is still being formed and debated, there are basic values of respect, diversity, social justice, and responsibility that characterize its core (Peters, Britton, & Blee, 2008). Global citizenship, in its operationalized form, is a set of guiding principles that inform the way one relates one’s experience and life to the wider global landscape with respect and sustainability (Oxfam, 2006). Richardson (2008) theorizes the “global imaginary” stating that all humans have the same wants and needs, and this basic fact gives rise to the possibility of functional cosmopolitanism. He goes on to theorize that the concept of global citizenship comes from an “expanding horizons” perspective of social studies that emphasizes more sophisticated relationships between the individual and their community. Educators are now expected to integrate the phenomena of globalization and increasing cultural diversity into their curricula to prepare students for future global citizenship (Mbugua, 2010). Thus, preparing students for global citizenship is imperative for this new generation of learners and leaders.

Service learning in an undergraduate context has been shown to be an effective tool for learners to gain curricular knowledge and develop character (Wade & Saxe, 1996). Bringle and Hatcher (1996) stipulate that such learning must happen in a context that, while experiential, is also course-based and credit-bearing. Service learning can foster positive cognitive and emotional growth through experiential learning opportunities in a variety of settings and across developmental levels (Eyler, 2000; Steinke & Buresh, 2002). Learners grapple with issues of identity development, societal inequality, agency, and civic engagement that can then tie in with prior knowledge and personal experiences (Wade & Saxe, 1996).

Service learning and civic education, both nationally and internationally, have had an intertwined history. One can trace this relationship back to Dewey (1916), who called for the exercise of democratic and civic practices in one’s own backyard to understand democracy best. This relationship highlights the belief that one can develop the skill of citizenship through works. The National Council for the Social Studies (2001) asserts that service-learning affords “authentic means for using social studies content and skills to investigate social, political, and economic issues and to take direct action in an effort to create a more just and equitable society.” Battistoni, Longo, and Jayanandhan (2009) affirm that beyond the national democratic practice, acting globally in one’s community through service learning can promote global citizenship in undergraduates. Naidoo (2008) states that service learning allows for transnationalism and internationalization of higher education through both building bridges between institutional partners and connecting students with cross-cultural experiences. Promoting Global Citizenship Outside the Classroom • 101

High quality service-learning experiences can be defined by six hallmarks: integrated learning, community service, collaborative development and management, civic engagement, contemplation, and evaluation and disclosure (Smith et. al., 2011). If a high quality service-learning experience is designed and executed, students will be able to understand and apply curricular content, exhibit a commitment to social good, have increased motivation for good works/volunteerism, and be better positioned to develop professionally (Terry & Panter, 2010). Levitt and Schriehans (2010) further explain that integration of service learning into normal curriculum has resulted in practical application of course concepts, enhanced knowledge of those concepts, commitment to civil society, motivation to participate in volunteerism and the motivation then to participate in an internship and other forms of experiential learning.

As stipulated by Wiggins and McTighe (2005), any high quality learning experience is characterized by a reflection component to help facilitate understanding. Service learning is no exception, and reflective practices are key to its success. Reflection as a tool promotes metacognition and emotional exploration as learners relate new knowledge and experiences to their own understandings and prior knowledge (King & Kitchener, 2004; Blumenfeld, 2010; Chick, Karis & Kernahan, 2009). Reflection has been shown throughout the literature as the assessment of choice for both measuring individual growth in service learning, as well as the success of the program (Blumenfield, 2010; Cord & Clements, 2010; Novak, Markey, & Allen, 2007). Through reflective processes from journaling to blogging to portfolio creation, learners can exhibit their understanding of global citizenship and changes in their conception of themselves as global citizens (Mautadin, Santally & Boojhawon, 2011). Such constructivist exercises have been shown to improve students’ long-term retention of knowledge and experiences (Hmelo-Silver, 2004; Levesque-Bristol & Stanek, 2009).

Also through reflection, students reveal how they understand the experiences and how they connect them to larger concepts learned in the curriculum. Sheckley and Keeton (1997) offer a framework to understand service learning and the way in which students process those experiences. They theorize that learning happens in three ways for students: accordion, conduit, and cultural. Accordion learning experiences create cognitive dissonance and force the learner to grapple with knowledge that contradicts previously held beliefs. Conduit learning experiences give students information that works with prior schema to make more concrete or understood concepts previously held. Finally, cultural experiences offer new information that neither goes against or with prior knowledge but rather broadens one’s worldview. This framework was chosen due to its ability to encompass the broad spectrum of experiences and information processed by the learner and as an adequate operational model of their understanding of that information.

Project Background

The Global Citizenship Program at Lehigh University is an undergraduate program aimed at preparing students for civically engaged learning and living in a culturally diverse and rapidly globalizing world. The program emphasizes critical analysis and value reflection and aims at structuring impactful educational experiences through which students can learn to negotiate cross- national and cross-cultural boundaries and develop a solid sense of personal and social responsibility to the global community. Envisioned as an interdisciplinary certificate program JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 102 rather than a traditional major or minor, the program attracts students from all three of Lehigh University’s undergraduate colleges (Arts and Sciences, Engineering, Business and Economics) and offers an integration of curricular, co-curricular and study abroad experiences so as to address the personal and civic development of students – as it relates to a globalized world – in all of its dimensions. From the point of view of the academic curriculum, the program requires the completion of five core courses as well as three free electives that best suit each student’s major or minor (to be chose from over 60 courses cross-listed with more than 25 academic departments across the university). The study abroad component of the program requires students to be involved in two experiences abroad during their four years at the university. The first experience is subsidized by a university scholarship and the second one (of the duration of a minimum of five weeks in a non-English speaking country) is planned and funded by the students themselves. Finally, the co-curricular component is fulfilled through a multiplicity of leadership activities and opportunities for civic activism and social engagement outside of the classroom.

The program strives to achieve the following interrelated goals:

1. Structure learning opportunities for the students that can involve them not only intellectually (via more traditional, scholarship-based classroom learning), but also emotionally (via engaging forms of experiential learning and empathy-building experiences);

2. Provide students with knowledge and awareness of global inequalities, while also nourishing their ability to become agents of change and preparing them for transformational leadership in a global world;

3. Challenge the students to make meaningful connections between the local and the global, to identify theoretically poignant analogies between their domestic environments and the foreign environments they are being exposed to through their two study abroad experiences.

The service-learning experience that is the subject of this article served particularly well in achieving these goals. In our experience, it proved to be an effective tool through which to engage the hearts and minds of the student participants, as well as to address very tangible needs in the target refugee population. As our data analysis and evaluation show, by the end of the service- learning project the students achieved increased compassion for other cultures and circumstances, as well as a new awareness of their own power and self-efficacy in the realm of global citizenship. Furthermore, the students exhibited through their reflections and writing that they were able to grapple with and construct their own identity as burgeoning global citizens and what that conceptual framework means to them. Before turning to the assessment outcomes, in the following section we present the work done by the students in preparation for the project and during its implementation phase.

Project Design

In an attempt to make service learning relevant to the students’ global citizenship focus, the Global Citizenship Program has been experimenting for several years with globally-minded civic Promoting Global Citizenship Outside the Classroom • 103

engagement projects implemented in the local community. While the students admitted in the program are, for the most part, self-selected in that they show the highest degree of eagerness to travel abroad and explore unfamiliar cultures, they are sometimes less ready to observe and analyze the complexities and correlations that globalization brings about in our own local communities. The typical global citizenship student is often fascinated by far-away destinations and distant challenges, but a little less cognitively and emotionally equipped to reflect on how globalization has been changing our own familiar environments. For that reason, the Global Citizenship Program seeks to provide students with opportunities for civically-engaged interactions with local populations that are as akin as possible to the foreign populations targeted by the study abroad experience the students will be led on.

An example from a past project may be helpful to exemplify this global-to-local service- learning approach. In preparation for a trip to Costa Rica, Global Citizenship students were matched with a Spanish-speaking-only population of residents from a nearby low-income facility funded by the local Housing Authority. This population (mostly from Puerto Rico, with a small minority from other Central American countries) offered our students an invaluable understanding of the challenges posed by the language barrier (which made interactions arduous for our students, and made it necessary for them to rely on body language, music and artistic expression to facilitate some communication). Most importantly, it unveiled to the students the puzzle of the hundreds of legal residents interspersed in our local communities who, despite being cut out from several key aspects of the US mainstream culture and way of life, seem to be leading a perfectly functional parallel life and displaying an amazing level of resilience and adaptability. Paired with these Spanish-speaking residents, the students were charged with the task of collecting their personal stories of migration and integration (or lack thereof), and to become their public voices within the campus community. This project sparked in the students an in-depth and real-life reflection on what it means to be a fully legal citizen of a country, and what socioeconomic, linguistic and cultural barriers may exist to the acquisition of such a full-fledged status (with all its attached rights and responsibilities) for people belonging to certain minorities impeded from any impactful access to the participatory nature of our democratic society.

Along the same methodological lines, the refugee service-learning project, which is the focus of this article, was designed to provide a meaningful civic experience for the students soon to head to Malaysia for their university-sponsored trip abroad. Unable to find a clearly identifiable local Malaysian community that would offer an ideal experiential opportunity similar to the one outlined above, an opportunity arose to partner with the local chapter of Catholic Charities, serving a population of a few hundred refugees mostly coming from South-East Asia, Northern Africa and the Middle East. Amongst them, the presence of a sub-group of Burmese refugees, who had spent some time as asylum seekers in a UN refugee camp near Kuala Lumpur while waiting for their final resettlement destination, offered the best service-learning community for our students. By reflecting upon these unexpected connections, and by drawing parallels between ‘here’ and ‘there,’ the students had an untapped opportunity to be exposed to the ‘human face’ of globalization. This prompted a high degree of compassion amongst the students, while at the same time offering them a priceless learning opportunity to draw important global-to-local connections at the cognitive level as well.

As a result of this serendipitous match-up, 23 first-year global citizenship students embarked on a semester-long service-learning project with twelve refugees. In order to design an experience JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 104 that would be personally meaningful and academically solid at the same time, we had to make sure that the following criteria were met: 1) identify and address specific needs for both the student and the refugee populations; 2) ground the experience in appropriate scholarly work; 3) provide the students with the tools to be able to become active co-planners of the experience, and not just passive executors; and, 4) complement the experience with a variety of reflective assignments that would help the students tie the experience back to some scholarly discussion.

Criteria 1) and 2) were met by a careful preparatory stage that occupied the students for the first four weeks of the semester. Towards the beginning of the semester, the refugees were invited on campus to present their perspectives in the form of a panel. It was clear that the refugees were eager to share their stories and to overcome their shyness and linguistic barriers in order to show their thankfulness for the country and the organization that had assisted them so heavily in their resettlement process.

This is how one of the students reflected upon what she was presented with during this panel presentation:

“I learned that being a refugee is much more mentally challenging than physically challenging. Also, I think refugees tend to value personal connection over physical aid, and I will make a conscious effort to provide a personal connection in my own interaction with the Lehigh Valley refugees. Moreover, yesterday’s presentation reiterated the idea that a refugee basically must re-start their life when they move to a new country. When one of the refugees said that she went from having everything to having nothing, I suddenly grasped the magnitude of the changes a refugee encounters.”

Another student debriefed that first moving encounter thus:

“One of the refugee stories we heard was very moving and inspirational. This refugee was forced to spend two months in prison just because he questioned authority and asked about his rights. We live in the US and we sometimes take for granted the rights we have, the rights that the government cannot take away. We have read about and idolized leaders such as Rosa Parks, Susan B. Anthony, and Nelson Mandela, who have taken their stand against injustices. The refugee who was imprisoned, to me, is a leader, similar to the leaders we read about in our history textbooks; he spoke up for what was right, despite the significant dire consequences to himself and his family.”

If the introductory refugee panel was a very inspirational venue for the exchange of personal feelings as well as of life stories that would otherwise be hard to share, a preliminary meeting with a refugee caseworker from Catholic Charities assisting the refugees on a daily basis laid the groundwork for an understanding of the complexity of the process that leads to the final refugee resettlement. The high level of professional expertise and personal compassion displayed by the refugee caseworker provided the students with additional opportunities for reflection. As one student put it:

“After listening to the presentation on refugee resettlement and management I gained an overall view of how the process of resettling refugees works in the United States, the obstacles the refugees face when resettling in America and what my fellow classmates and I should expect when we are working with the refugees. One fact I Promoting Global Citizenship Outside the Classroom • 105

learnt that struck me the most was that about 15 million people on our planet are refugees, all trying to resettle to a safe place away from the terror, prosecution, oppression, danger and fear that tore them away from their homes. This number is too big for me to even wrap my head around. [...] The presentation also gave me a better understanding of how much bureaucracy a refugee has to go through to obtain legal status as a refugee. People can be waiting for years to be relocated, sitting in camps or apartments waiting and waiting for an answer.”

The information presented by the refugee caseworker was actually echoed in some of the scholarly readings assigned for the course. Amongst them, there were reports on refugee resettlement trends and demographics around the world and in the United States, as well as an article on the reactions spurred in the New Orleans populace, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, by the improper use of the term “refugee” by the media to describe the victims of that catastrophe. The class discussions that were elicited by comparing proper and inappropriate “labels” as well as stereotypes attached to such labels were quite effective ways of bridging classroom learning and the real-life experiences that the students were beginning to be exposed to via the refugees’ and the caseworker’s testimonials.

In line with the third criterion for a meaningful service-learning experience outlined above, we aimed at providing an opportunity for service that would not be, so to speak, prepackaged, that is, that would not transform the students into mere deliverers of helpful tidbits of information. A series of preliminary meetings with the refugee caseworker had helped us narrow down some key areas where to focus our efforts on, namely, English as a Second Language (ESL) instruction (with a special emphasis on workplace and medical terminology and etiquette) and computer literacy, introduction to US customs and culture, and arts and crafts sessions for the children of the refugees. Despite the availability of several ready-made instructional tools, we wanted to make sure that the students could contribute to designing their own instructional tools, tailoring them to the particular needs and characteristics of the population they were going to serve. For that reason, the students were provided a minimal framework, and some simple assignments aimed at helping them refine their own personal learning objectives and teaching strategies.

The first such assignment asked the students to reflect on how to “bring service and learning together.” The following table was presented to the students, with prompts provided by the instructor (listed in table). A selection of students’ responses is provided in the following rows, and it reveals how deeply at heart the students took this charge.

Fig. 1 – Student-generated learning educational and community objectives Educational Objectives for GC Community Agency Needs/Objectives

Assist the refugees with basic adjustment Understand the importance of global needs (ESL, computer literacy, arts and change through local interaction. crafts). Instructor

Prompt Reflect about what makes of a person a Teach the refugees the spirit of solidarity and full-fledged citizen. self-reliance Americans are known for.

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 106

Understand the relationship between Teach the refugees how to use the computer helping/volunteering with refugees and (and other skills) instead of using the becoming a better global citizen. computer (or those other skills) for them.

Expose the refugees (and especially their Learn to listen to the refugees’ needs and children) to positive, friendly, and welcoming problems. role models.

Teach the refugees a way to effectively Learn how life in the US is different from communicate in a society that relies so heavily life in the refugees’ societies. on technology.

Student- Make the refugees more aware of Reflect on how Americans treat people Generated opportunities available for their education and who do not “belong”. Objectives personal enjoyment.

Understand what kind of struggles Help the refugees to incorporate aspects of refugees go through when transitioning their own culture in their new American way from their homeland. of life.

Understand cultural barriers and how to Offer an open-minded forum to allow the express and overcome them. refugees to tell about their experiences.

Understand the root causes of the problems the refugees face and what Help the refugees become more competitive needs to change in order to address those on the US job market. causes.

Based on the identification of mutually relevant objectives, the first assignment then brought the students’ planning one step forward by asking them what service-learning strategies would allow for both the educational needs of the Global Citizenship Program and the practical needs of the refugees to be fully met. Again, a sample of the students’ own, self-generated responses is reported in the table below.

Fig. 2 – Student-generated service learning strategies Instructor Prompt Student-generated service-learning strategies

GC students will create a friendly environment for the refugees to Given the objectives above, what eagerly learn basic survival skills, and for them to be comfortable would be the best service-learning to share the real life political/social injustices and problems from strategy to meet those objectives? their respective countries and in the US.

Promoting Global Citizenship Outside the Classroom • 107

GC students will create an open-minded environment where they can listen to the refugees’ questions, evaluate their previous knowledge about ESL and technology and try to address their specific needs on a one-on-one basis.

GC students will use their previous knowledge of learning a foreign language and talking to people whose first language is not English to better teach English and other skills to the refugees.

GC students will use the information available to achieve simple goals with the help of carefully planned lesson plans.

A second assignment subsequently asked the students (who were by then divided into small teams of 3-4 students each) to reflect upon “best practices” to achieve the objectives identified through the first assignment. The students were presented with a list of resources (gathered from the Internet upon doing research on a variety of programs –mostly offered by non-profit organizations– working with refugee resettlement issues) and were asked to compare and contrast resources, teaching techniques, and identify what tools could be best used given the specific logistical constraints and challenges posed by the project (e.g., transportation issues, timing issues, conflicts with classes and after-class activities, uneven levels of English language proficiency, etc.).

A third preparatory assignment would then ask the students’ teams to further build on this knowledge by making specific, detail-oriented plans on how to structure the various sessions and by preparing engaging, self-contained, age-appropriate and impactful lesson plans. This last preparatory stage allowed for the students’ teaching to be extremely effective and focused, and hence for the refugees to take advantage of the face time at its best. The student teams alternated for the rest of the semester offering computer literacy, ESL, US culture classes and activities for children, offering a total of about 30 hours of service to the refugees and using class time to debrief on each session with the rest of the class and the instructor and to reflect upon what they were teaching as much as about what they were learning.

As the students were eagerly working on the project throughout the semester, we made sure to assess the project’s impact with the use of a mixed methodology. According to the fourth criterion for an impactful service-learning experience as outlined above, reflective assignments of various kinds accompanied the students through this journey. The next section presents in some detail our research and assessment design and highlights some of the most meaningful findings.

Research Design

The purpose of this study was to understand best practices for service learning and inform future iterations of the service-learning component for our students. Upon completion of our survey of literature and goals for the program, the following research questions emerged:

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 108

1. How does service learning allow for students to practice and apply skills of global citizenship education?

2. Can service learning affect conceptual change in undergraduate freshmen in the way they see themselves as global citizens and in the way in which they perceive their civic self-efficacy?

3. How do undergraduate students exhibit change and growth through their reflective practice? And are such self-reported accounts accurate measures of such change?

The researchers aimed at answering these questions by means of a mixed-methods research approach comprised of surveying, psychometric testing, interviews, and document analysis. It was informed by the work of Tashakkori and Teddlie (2003), who assert that mixed methods research has developed in recent years into a scientifically sophisticated practice that can give researchers what Geertz (1973) calls a “rich, thick” narrative from participants and subjects. Utilizing this methodology, we aimed to understand the complex reality of identity development for these first year students and their growth as global citizens through in-classroom curriculum and experiential service-learning opportunities. In order to understand the ways in which students were developing their identities as global citizens, the assessments designed provided both quantitative and qualitative data. From the qualitative perspective, reflection was the key assessment tool. This reflection came in many formats: group reflection at the end of each session with the refugees, reflective writing assignments, and the student creation of an e-portfolio that displayed evidence of their global citizenship development.

For the quantitative data portion, a survey was administered prior to the service-learning experience and again at the conclusion of the semester to capture perspectives on service and social justice, prior knowledge, and psychosocial factors. Ethnocultural empathy (signified as “Emp” in the figures below) was an especially important metric because so much of what we intend to instill into our global citizenship students has to do with acceptance of other cultures and ideas. To measure empathy, participants answered questions on the Scale of Ethnocultural Empathy (SEE), an instrument that aims to understand individuals’ comfort level when interacting across cultural boundaries (Wang et. al., 2003). The reliability of the SEE has been tested at ranges between r = .73 to r = .91, p < .01 and has a re-test reliability of .76. The SEE also has subscales built into the measurement for more detailed understanding of which realms the subjects gain or lose aptitude in. Those subscales are: empathic feeling and expression, empathic perspective-taking, acceptance of cultural differences, and empathic awareness.

Ambiguity tolerance (“AT” in the figures) was another factor used as an assessment tool. As global citizenship educators, flexibility and openness are essential to the character development of our students. Previous research shows that students who self-selected service-learning projects over traditional instructional formats exhibited a higher tolerance for ambiguity (Weber, Schneider & Weber, 2008). Ambiguity tolerance has also been shown to be a characteristic developed in short-term study abroad programs (Tucker, Gullekson & McCambridge, 2011). Goel, de Jong and Schnusenberg (2010) have also found a high ambiguity tolerance to be a predictor of those choosing to participate in study abroad. Thus, with the nature of this program being self-selecting, Promoting Global Citizenship Outside the Classroom • 109

challenging, and with a study abroad component, it was a worthy measure for the researchers to see if our Global Citizenship students follow such a trend.

Data analysis took place in phases and in capacities both individual and collaborative. First, we combed through the qualitative data individually to capture and understand patterns and thematic overtones. The second level analysis then incorporated the framework of Sheckley and Keeton (1997) to assess the process of service learning by the students and their method of utilizing the knowledge that was presented to them in each session. Finally, the qualitative and quantitative data was triangulated to understand the connections between the students’ perceptions of their own experience, the impact that interactions with the refugees had on them, and how they responded to the challenges and successes of working in a community-based partnership towards a social justice aim.

Findings

The following data analysis incorporates nineteen out of 23 students’ work (pre- and post-test survey, reflections, group participation, and digital portfolio). While the other 4 students did complete all of their coursework, either a pre- or post-test was missing from the data and therefore they were not included in the analysis. The most significant outcomes are highlighted in the table below, as well a correlation to the aforementioned Sheckley and Keeton (1997) model for each qualitative sample. The qualitative sample is from end-of-semester reflective essays that ask the students to reflect on their experiences throughout the semester.

Fig. 3: Student profiles and indicators of change Student College ΔEmp Δ AT Qualitative Evidence and Type of Learning

“The refugee project made me re-evaluate my stance on the concept of “citizenship". I am a born-citizen of the United States, yet I don't fully understand the reasons behind American traditions. Although understanding Arts and GC1 -0.90 1 American traditions is not a qualification of being an Sciences American citizen, shouldn't this be considered? Through the refugee project, GCP 010 has made me question why I qualify as a citizen in a social sense, rather than just in a legal sense.” [Accordion]

“Before then, I had never really thought to stop and examine our most treasured holiday [Christmas] from an outside, objective perspective. It truly opened my eyes to how strange our own traditions can seem even though we Arts and have always accepted them to be completely normal. GC2 -0.10 1 Sciences Overall, our meetings were very successful. We all had a lot of fun and I felt that we really bonded with the kids. Moreover, it showed me how difficult it must be to be immersed in a completely foreign culture and not understand anything that is going on.” [Accordion]

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 110

“Though the objective was to teach them more about our culture to help them understand American culture Arts and specifically during the holidays I learned much from GC3 -0.06 4 Sciences them. The job of a Samaritan is not only to help humanity but to learn from the individuals we help.” [Accordion]

“While our goal was to teach the refugees English as a Second Language, Computer Literacy, and Arts and Crafts, they taught us so much more through their personal stories. I learned from Umeri, a migrant from Eritrea, that one could be put in prison for questioning the motives of a military operation; from Ismael who is from Burundi what it was like to be “country-less” and to Arts and grow up in a refugee camp; and from all how genuinely GC4 0.61 -3 Sciences excited they were to find their places in mainstream America…. I will never forget when Ismael said, “all people have the same hearts; but some just have more to give.” Coming from a teenager who has been through so much hardship, worry, and fear, this observation, spoken in a Burundian accent, resonated deeply within me. No matter how we live our lives, all humans can relate to one another as we all share a common destiny.” [Accordion]

“The refugees expressed interest continuing lessons, especially ESL lessons so they can continue to practice and learn more about American culture and try to adjust to life here. Being part of their adjustment to life in Arts and America and aiding them as they try to move on from GC5 0.19 -1 Sciences their past is something I would be honored to be a part of…Doing service projects like this will develop and improve my skills working with people from different cultures and being a global citizen, and in addition, aid to my career as an anthropologist.” [Conduit]

Promoting Global Citizenship Outside the Classroom • 111

“This project had a bigger effect on me than the Oxfam project because instead of us just sending money to an organization, I gained firsthand knowledge from people that have been around the world. They had such compelling stories to tell from the interesting situations that have lived through. It was also extremely interesting to see the similarities and differences between their cultures and ours. I distinctly remember the class when Engineering & GC6 -0.68 1 my group taught the refugees about holidays. To explain Business the reasons behind our holidays, we had to ask them about and compare them to their holidays, such as Eritrea’s Martyrs’ Day to our Memorial Day. Not only did I become more comfortable teaching a group of people, but my listening and improvisation skills as well as my patience have greatly improved. The positive feedback I received from the refugees really made me appreciate being a global citizen.” [Cultural]

"In the past, I have taught a wide range of material to young children as a part of a summer volunteer program. I was sure the skills I developed working with them would lay dormant in me until I had children of my own; I never pictured myself teaching classes again, especially not in college. The global citizenship program forced me to revisit those skills and utilize them when I was assigned to teach computer literacy skills to a group of refugees with some of my classmates. I panicked. I felt highly unqualified to teach a group of determined, Arts and capable young adults valuable skills that they would later GC7 0 -1 Sciences depend on in their search for jobs. I also felt inconsequential. I felt that the two lessons our group would be providing would not have a big enough impact on these refugees’ lives for them to really learn anything. Teaching takes time, and time was not something of which we had an abundance. However, my expectations were wildly exceeded. Not only did the refugees assure me of how much they had learned at the end of each lessons, I was approached after lessons were over and asked to keep teaching! This is a solid example of simple, local action making a difference." [Accordion]

“…before actually working on the Oxfam and Refugee project I had no clue what global citizenship was to me. However, through my experience I learned that global citizenship is making a meaningful contribution to a local Arts and community that impacts the global community. GC8 0.10 -1 Sciences Throughout both projects, I needed to keep a positive mindset even when projects did not go well, think on my feet, and work with my peers to make a positive impact. My experience showed me that global citizenship does begin in one’s own community.” [Accordion]

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 112

“These experiences contributed to our learning and filled a void that essay writing and reading could not. It is impossible to fully understand global citizenship until it is seen and put into action affecting those beyond my direct surroundings. Through these projects, I was able to witness grassroots efforts in conjunction with government aid to make a positive change in civil Arts and GC9 -0.68 -2 society, expand my ability to question my preconceived Sciences ideas as well as my ability to listen to others, and learn the importance of judging my own community to see its flaws. All of these learned objectives were achieved by simply working in my direct community thus proving the simplicity of incorporating global citizenship into everyday life as well as finding its role in ‘my own backyard’.” [Cultural]

“This project helped show us how we, as poor college students, can help others. We did not need to give any money to the refugees; all we needed to donate was our time. How much does time really cost? Nothing. We helped the refugees without needing to pay on our own part. We are on our way to slowly becoming global citizens by helping others in need. The refugees did not ask for our help but we gave it willingly anyway and they GC10 Engineering -0.42 0 were grateful. There is no reason that they should not get the opportunities that we get. They had to flee their own country for various reasons and should be given safety and respect here. Some of the refugees came here as children and have lived in the United States as long as they have lived in their home country. These children are growing up in the United States and should not be treated differently than other American children. They are Americans too.” [Accordion]

“My communication skills also improved this semester through working with the refugees. Communication is the most vital to civil society when there is a cause to be advocated. This semester I have seen how communication brings the individual into direct contact with acts of global citizenship. The refugee project put together two grassroots organizations, Global Citizenship and Catholic Charities. We had to work through cultural Arts and GC11 0.29 3 and language barriers to communicate our lesson plans. Sciences By breaking down these barriers and communicating effectively, we were able to create a setting that fostered global citizenship. I previously had thought the individual was only able to communicate to the government what needed to be done in terms of performing global citizenship work, but through this project I learned that communication within civil society was of even greater advantage.” [Accordion]

Promoting Global Citizenship Outside the Classroom • 113

“If we are able to teach the refugees English, and later they teach their children English, their children may one day be inspired to try to attend college. The world’s most intelligent people are not destined to come from one nation or one class status. Innovation is a human characteristic, we want to learn more and bring about Arts and change. The individual who is capable of curing cancer, GC12 -0.55 -5 Sciences or inventing the next great piece of technology may be one who does not have the funds to attend college. It is our job, to help these individuals thrive to become the world’s next great leaders. The readings throughout GC 010 have inspired me, made me question my beliefs and myself, and ignited me to start making a difference today.” [Conduit]

“The amazing thing is that it does not take much to get familiar with the situation – after one two-hour session, we had learned the names and the learning techniques of most of the refugees, and were better able to communicate our questions, advice, and opinions to them in the next session. In that moment, between when a confused refugee looked us in the eyes blankly and when Arts and GC13 0.39 2 he smiled and nodded in understanding, we came just Sciences that much closer to being global citizens. With this knowledge, of how to get to know other people and their plights on a basic human level – unguarded by language barriers and culture shock – and an idea of what to do with it to improve the lives of people who aren’t as fortunate as us, we can truly conquer the world.” [Accordion]

“Through volunteering for Oxfam to solve the problems causing FGM as well as teaching English to refugees it is easy to see small “global” acts on and off campus combined into a larger understanding of global Arts and GC14 -0.35 0 citizenship. Originally thought to be a broad, even Sciences confusing concept, global citizenship has different meanings for each individual depending on the extent of their awareness, action, and personal connection.” [Accordion]

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 114

“As a person who has two different cultural backgrounds and experiences, I could easily link myself to the refugees and there was something that made me want to help them more than I was required to. Since my parents moved to America, they have always been having little and big problems that they would not have had in their own country, and I was fully aware of how difficult it was to do anything in a foreign country. Especially when I joined the Computer Literacy group and had the opportunity to work with one of the participants, Dawit, GC15 Business 0.58 0 it was the moment I was very proud of myself that I decided to join Global Citizenship. Dawit was far more familiar with the computer than other refugee participants, but he could not figure out how to open his brother's email that contained a very important message. When I finally got to the email from his brother and once he finished reading it, he would not tell me what it was, but he kept appreciating me, and I was grateful to see his big smile. At that minute, I earnestly felt like he was my brother and I would like to help him continuously.” [Conduit]

“The refugees taught me that you can thrive no matter what you have faced in your past and I taught them how to use a computer. Although what I learned from the refugees was much more serious and impactful in life than what I taught them, I felt that we were able to learn GC16 Business 0.77 0 a lot from each other--something I did not necessarily anticipate. In all, the refugee project taught me that a true global citizenship should approach any service project focusing on commonalities rather than differences and without rigid expectations for their interaction with the people they will be working with.” [Accordion]

“Before, I was one of those people who was uncertain about their own voice and was a little afraid of getting involved. However, after the refugee project I have come to realize that you don’t need “saintlike” characteristics to tackle the worst and the biggest problems at once in order to help out and make a difference. What matters is GC17 Business 0.07 5 to use the knowledge and the wisdom you gained through your experiences to see the world and its people in different perspectives. By being able to put yourself in others’ shoes and try to reflect about your surroundings you evidently start reflecting about yourself and realize what you can do to improve yourself as well as the world around you” [Accordion]

Promoting Global Citizenship Outside the Classroom • 115

“At first I was slightly skeptical that teaching the refugees how to use a computer would make any impact at all on the world or even their lives. I thought to myself, “Who in this day and age does not know how to use a computer?” I just assumed that everyone knew how to use a computer, even though ironically my mom just turned on a computer for the first time a few years Engineering & GC18 0.58 4 ago. It was at the first refugee class that I realized that Business some of the refugees had never touched a computer before. Mya said that it was her first time on the internet, which was such a shock for me. After seeing the refugees so enthusiastic to learn and quickly picking up all of the technology skills, it was clearly evident that they would take away much more from the class than I had initially anticipated.” [Accordion]

“For me, the discussions we had in class and the service projects we did in Global Citizenship was similar to the way I had donned my first pair of global citizenship glasses. Through these glasses I did not just see clearer letters; I saw different worlds, different cultures, and different thoughts. Every foundation, every thought and theory I had beforehand was crushed, kneaded, and GC19 Engineering -0.23 1 baked into the bread of knowledge and what else could I do but to feed my starving mind? I realized that, similarly to the way I had thought the world was supposed to be blurry, the ideas I had about citizenship, refugees, the world was just my own illusions I had built around myself. I not only learned how global citizenship is best served with grass root efforts, but to expect the unexpected and to open my mind.” [Accordion]

Finding 1: Conceptualization of self as global citizen promoted through service learning and reflection

Throughout the analysis of the documents and notes from sessions with the students, the theme of development of a global citizenship identity clearly emerged. Frequently, students said that they were unclear about what global citizenship was technically, or had a grasp of its theory but not of how it would be put into practice. As evidenced by their writings, the students grappled with the definition and worked out their own understanding of what it meant to be a global citizen. These characteristics included acting on a local level to affect change globally, respecting cultural differences, improving their communication skills, and the importance of volunteerism. Student GC19 clearly articulates this through a metaphor on bread, likening her prior knowledge to raw dough that had been kneaded and crushed into a new framework. This is one example of a recurring theme through the student’s work that had not previously seen the possibilities for local manifestations of global citizenship work. Student writings also indicate their acceptance of global citizenship as a process. In student GC13’s words, “we came just that much closer to being global citizens”. JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 116

Finding 2: Depth of emotion and transformative experience through service learning

Empathy was a key indicator for this change in the students. While our sample of students was small, interesting patterns for growth emerged. Quantitatively, data was inconclusive for a pattern of change for our students in terms of empathy, as no trend or correlation appeared to explain the changes. This could be attributed to a number of reasons ranging from quality of individual engagement with the experience to outside first-semester stressors that could have affected the students. However, key patterns that emerged in the reflective writing pointed to the increased compassion and understanding for the refugees and their challenges in a new environment. Through reflective writing, participant observation and conversations with students, many students demonstrated that they could relate the refugees’ experience to their own as first-year students in a new environment, trying to acclimate and understand a new culture. In the work of all of the students, words such as “moving”, “inspirational”, and “grateful” were used to explain their experience. More specifically, in the work of student GC16, she articulated that “a true global citizenship should approach any service project focusing on commonalities rather than differences and without rigid expectations for their interaction with the people they will be working with.”

Ambiguity tolerance (AT) was the other factor for which we tested quantitatively. While there were many students who experienced increases, there was no significant pattern to point to in the quantitative data to show that the service learning directly impacted it. However, one important finding of note is that the AT-20 scores were high to begin with for most of our students following the service-learning experience. In line with previous research on study abroad, service, and social justice, ambiguity tolerance was high from the time of admission into the program for many students, and even more students had above-average (10 or higher) AT-20 scores following the service-learning experience. Students post-service learning experience exhibited an average score of 10.22 (minus one outlier who improved in score from 1 to 2 between the experiences). A number of dramatic changes in student scores (i.e., GC 17 scoring an 8 in pre-testing and a 13 in post-testing) also gives us an indication that there is further research to be done in this area to better understand the correlation.

Finding 3: Student self-efficacy and learning success

Using constructivist models of education, students were involved in the planning and implementation of lesson plans for the refugees, as well as being the self-reflector that guided their own education. Through student-generated program objectives and service-learning strategies, global citizenship students were given the ability to play a vital role in the success of the project (see figures 1 & 2). Such responsibility was reflected in the quality of their created materials for the refugees as well as their reflective writings, which mentioned the feeling of importance of their work for their own development as well as the benefit of the refugees. For instance, student GC12 cited her work teaching ESL to the refugees, and theorized that such a small act could nevertheless encourage the perception of education as important for the refugees, thus impacting themselves and their children. The student’s writing indicated pride and amazement at their own ability to make such an impact.

Promoting Global Citizenship Outside the Classroom • 117

Finding 4: Reflection as a tool for understanding conceptual change

Reflection is a necessary tool that promotes metacognition and processing of identity development, as was stated in the literature review. Giving many avenues for reflection – group discussion, individualized writing, and e-portfolio creation – enriched the learning process. Using the framework of Sheckley and Keeton (1997), the reflective writings showed that students did process information in the forms of accordion, conduit, and cultural means. The majority of information processing came from the accordion effect, with students learning or transforming knowledge that was in opposition to previously held beliefs. Reflection allowed students to work through the complexities of global citizenship. As student GC14 stated, global citizenship seemed a “broad, even confusing concept”. Rather, through the service learning they found that it has a variable meaning but with concrete steps for application. This is a detail that would not have been captured in the numbers, but instead was an obvious learning moment found in the qualitative work.

Discussion and Implications

The strength of the positive outcomes for student learning as well as the perceived benefit to the community partner leads to the conclusion that there is value in the addition of service learning to global citizenship curricula. Community-based service learning indeed proved to be an effective educational tool through which to engage the hearts and minds of the student participants, as well as to address very tangible needs in the target population. Our data analysis and evaluation showed that, by the end of the service-learning project they had embarked on, the students achieved a higher level of appreciation of the impact of local civic engagement to address issues that have a global reach. Student participants not only showed a higher degree of understanding of the global power dynamics pushing individuals to claim asylum-seeking status, but also a higher level of empathy for the struggles and tribulations of those who traumatically lost their citizenship status in their home country. All in all, as we set out to argue in this article, they displayed a higher level of “global citizenship” learning and a heightened sense of personal and civic empowerment.

Future iterations of this program will continue to engage the students through an empowerment model, allowing for student-generated lesson plans, assessment, and implementation. This methodology allowed for student growth and exploration of their connection with the community and building of self-efficacy, and that was considered essential for their development as global citizens (albeit in early stages for many). With that in consideration, the team will also continue working closely with our community partner. We would look to expand our assessment beyond the students and engage refugees as well, to see what programming particularly helps their transition and what learning occurs through these sessions. This allows for a meaningful experience for both the students and the refugees. This collaboration gave both the facilitators and the students the ability to be more connected with the community and their work’s impact.

Finally, the use of both qualitative and quantitative approaches to evaluate service learning in the global citizenship context is a useful framework for future studies. Through the triangulation of data sources, it was apparent that the students grew and processed information about the experience meaningfully through the constructivist tasks of reflection, teaching, writing, and portfolio creation. If we had used only qualitative or only quantitative assessments, we could have missed out on the JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 118 larger picture of the transformative experiences had by the students. This gave us ample data with which to work and understand how to design future assessments and iterations for maximum student and refugee growth.

Conclusion

The refugee service-learning component of the Global Citizenship Program’s first year experience has proven to be both a successful learning experience for the students and a valuable contribution to the community. For the purposes of this study, the focus was on individual change in the students and their ability to operationalize global citizenship. Service learning does have the potential to affect students’ concepts of themselves as global citizens, as students practice theoretical concepts learned in the classroom. Mixed methods design allowed a multifaceted look at the service-learning process and provided metrics to triangulate with the reflection data. Through reflection and psychometrics, there was an observable growth in ethnocultural empathy, as well as a burgeoning understanding of oneself as a global citizen.

Promoting Global Citizenship Outside the Classroom • 119

Endnotes i Names have been changed for the refugees and students are identified by code to protect identities.

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 120

References

Austin, R., & Anderson, J. (2008). Building bridges online: Issues of pedagogy and learning outcomes in intercultural education through citizenship. International Journal of Information & Communication Technology Education, 4(1), 86-94.

Battistoni, R. M., Longo, N. V., & Jayanandhan, S. (2009). Acting locally in a flat world: Global citizenship and the democratic practice of service-learning. Journal of Higher Education Outreach & Engagement, 13(2), 89-108.

Blumenfeld, E. R. (2010). Reflections on student journals and teaching about inequality. Journal of Poetry Therapy, 23(2), 101-106.

Bringle, R. G., & Hatcher, J. A. (1996). Implementing service learning in higher education. Journal of Higher Education, 67(2), 221-239.

Chick, N., Karis, T., & Kernahan, C. (2009). Learning from their own learning: How metacognitive and meta-affective reflections enhance learning in race-related courses. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning, 3(1), 1-26.

Cord, B., & Clements, M. (2010). Reward through collective reflection: An autoethnography. E- Journal of Business Education & Scholarship of Teaching, 4(1), 11-18.

Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York: Macmillan.

Duit, R. (1999). Conceptual change approaches in science education. In W. Schnotz, S. Vosniadou, & M. Carretero (Eds.), New Perspectives on Conceptual Change (pp. 263-282). Oxford: Pergamon.

Eyler, J. S. (2000, Fall). What do we most need to know about the impact of service-learning on student learning? [Special issue on “Strategic directions for service-learning research”]. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 11–17.

Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books.

Goel, L., de Jong, P., & Schnusenberg, O. (2010). Toward a comprehensive framework of study abroad intentions and behaviors. Journal of Teaching in International Business, 21(4), 248-265.

Hmelo-Silver, C. E. (2004). Problem-based learning: What and how do students learn? Educational Psychology Review, 16(3), 235-266.

King, P. M., & Kitchener, K. (2004). Reflective judgment: Theory and research on the development of epistemic assumptions through adulthood. Educational Psychologist, 39(1), 5-18.

Promoting Global Citizenship Outside the Classroom • 121

Levesque-Bristol, C., & Stanek, L. R. (2009). Examining self-determination in a service learning course. Teaching of Psychology, 36(4), 262-266.

Levitt, C., & Schriehans, C. (2010). Adding a community university educational summit (CUES) to enhance service learning in management education. Journal of Instructional Pedagogies, 3, 1-11.

Mautadin, G., Santally, M., & Boojhawon, R. (2011). Integrating e-portfolios in innovative pedagogical scenarios for enhancement of students' online learning experiences: Learning design specification for an innovative e-portfolio module for the University of Mauritius. International Journal of Learning, 18(5), 7-22.

Mbugua, T. (2010). Fostering culturally relevant/responsive pedagogy and global awareness through the integration of international service-learning in courses. Journal of Pedagogy, 1(2), 87-98.

Oxfam. (2006). Education for global citizenship: A guide for schools. Retrieved from http://www.oxfam.org.uk/education/gc/files/education_for_global_citizenship_a_guide_for _schools.pdf

Naidoo, L. (2008). Crossing borders: Academic service learning as a pedagogy for transnational learning. International Journal of Learning, 15(3), 139-145.

National Council for the Social Studies. (2001). Service-Learning: An Essential Component of Citizenship Education. Retrieved from http://www.socialstudies.org/positions/servicelearning

Novak, J. M., Markey, V., & Allen, M. (2007). Evaluating cognitive outcomes of service learning in higher education: A meta-analysis. Communication Research Reports, 24(2), 149-157.

Peters, M.A., Britton, A, & Blee, H. (2008). Many faces of global civil society: Possible futures for global citizenship. In M. A. Peters, A. Britton, & H. Blee (Eds.), Global citizenship education: philosophy, theory and pedagogy (pp. 3-27). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

Richardson, G.H. (2008). Conflicting imaginaries: Global citizenship education in Canada as a site of contestation. In M. A. Peters, A. Britton, & H. Blee (Eds.), Global citizenship education: philosophy, theory and pedagogy (pp. 115-131). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

Sheckley, B. G., & Keeton, M. T. (1997). Service learning: A theoretical model. In J. Schine (Ed.), Service learning: Ninety-sixth yearbook of the national society for the study of education (pp. 32-55). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press

Smith, B., Gahagan, J., McQuillin, S., Haywood, B., Cole, C., Bolton, C., & Wampler, M. (2011). The development of a service-learning program for first-year students based on the hallmarks of high quality service-learning and rigorous program evaluation. Innovative Higher Education, 36(5), 317-329. DOI:10.1007/s10755-011-9177-9 JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 122

Steinke, P., & Buresh, S. (2002). Cognitive outcomes of service-learning: Reviewing the past and glimpsing the future. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 8, 5–14.

Tashakkori, A. & Teddlie, C. (2003). Handbook of mixed methods in social & behavioral research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Terry, A. W., & Panter, T. (2010). Students make sure the Cherokees are not removed... again: A study of service-learning and artful learning in teaching history. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 34(1), 156-176.

Tucker, M. L., Gullekson, N. L., & McCambridge, J. (2011). Assurance of learning in short-term, study abroad programs. Research in Higher Education, 14, 1-11.

Wade, R. C., & Saxe, D. (1996). Community service-learning in the social studies: Historical roots, empirical evidence, critical issues. Theory & Research in Social Education, 24(4), 331-359.

Wang, Y.W., Davidson, M. M., Yakushko, O. F., Savoy, H. B., Tan, J. A., & Bleier, J. K. (2003) The Scale of Ethnocultural Empathy: Development, validation, and reliability. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 50(2), 221-234.

Weber, P. S., Schneider, K. R., & Weber, J. E. (2008). Choosing to serve? An exploration of student self-selection of service learning projects. Mid-Western Educational Researcher, 21(2), 30-35.

Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by Design (Expanded 2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Wilson, J.C. (2011). Service-learning and the development of empathy in US college students. Education & Training, 53(2), 207-217.

Journal of Global Citizenship & Equity Education Volume 2 Number 2 - 2012 journals.sfu.ca/jgcee

Delivering Justice for Sexual Violence in the D.R. Congo and Beyond: Cooperation, Education, and Capacity-Building through National and International Courts

Amanda Claire Grayson Senior Morehead-Cain Scholar Student Attorney General University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Key Words: Capacity-Building; International Tribunals; National Courts; Sexual Violence; Democratic Republic of the Congo; Judicial Reform

ABSTRACT: The Democratic Republic of the Congo has been called “the worst place in the world to be a woman”. With mass rape and systematic sexual violence becoming an increasingly prevalent weapon of warfare, the international community has created special international criminal tribunals and courts to address crimes as such: war crimes, crimes against humanity, and even genocide. This paper aims to trace the developments in international criminal law and procedure for the prosecution of sexual violence from Nuremberg and Tokyo to Kigali and The Hague while also identifying shortcomings and potential reforms. As the International Criminal Court hears landmark evidence and testimony on charges of rape in the case of Jean-Pierre Bemba, local and national courts in the Congo still fail to deliver the more “nationalized” justice that rape victims seek and prefer. This paper, using sexual violence and conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as a case study, highlights the often underestimated importance of strengthening local and national judiciaries through legal and judicial reform as well as the critical role that international courts must play in sharing information, expertise, and prosecution strategies, especially on cases of sexual violence.

Introduction

Since the beginning of warfare, armed groups from bands to national armies have considered rape as a part of the spoils of war, but only in recent years has sexual violence gone from being a side effect to an actual tool of war. As the Crimes of War Project recounts, “Rape as a spoil of combat can be found throughout history, as far back as the oral recounting of Mediterranean warrior-kings attributed to Homer” (Shanker, 2007). In World War I and World War II, soldiers on all sides of the battlefield committed sexual violence, making the crime so commonplace that armies practically considered it “S.O.P.—standard operating procedure” (Askin, 1997). For example, rapes occurred in the Armenian Genocide of 1915, in the death camps during the Holocaust, and by conquering armies including the Allied troops during World War II. Over 100,000 rapes were reported in Berlin during the last two weeks of the war alone (Askin, 1997). On JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 124 the other side of the world, Asian forces were doing the same; as Askin indicated, “The first three months of the Japanese occupation of Nanking constitutes one of the most egregious accounts of unbridled sexual rampages ever documented in military history” (Askin, 1997).

However, sexual violence did not reach such international recognition until the early 1990s when Serb and Croat armed groups mass-raped their way through town after town in the Balkans (Shanker, 2007). Some 20,000 to 50,000 mostly Bosnian women suffered rape, other forms of sexual violence, and even mutilation at the hands of mostly Serb forces, who used these crimes as a form of ethnic cleansing, humiliation, and terror (Askin, 1997). After the war, hundreds and thousands of women emerged from sex-enslavement camps pregnant or with the children of their rapists (Shanker, 2007). Such crimes have become even more common tools of warfare in the civil wars that have plagued every continent around the world. Governments, armed forces, militias, and even civilians have utilized rape and sexual violence in Bosnia, Darfur, Cambodia, Rwanda, Iraq, Sierra Leone, Bangladesh, Colombia, Chechnya, “and—to this very day—in the Democratic Republic of the Congo” (Kirchner, 2007). The recent pandemic of sexual violence as a tool of warfare has forced the international community to begin taking actions to criminalize such atrocities. This paper will study the case of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in order to highlight the importance of education, expertise-sharing, and capacity- building among national and international actors in order to combat wartime sexual violence.

Documenting Sexual Violence in the Eastern Congo

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is the “worst place in the world to be a woman” (Clifford et al., 2008). Mass rape, the spread of sexually transmitted infections, social stigma and inequality, and general insecurity paint a horrifying picture of the situation in the eastern Congo. With sexual violence perpetrated as a tool of warfare by armed groups, hundreds of thousands of women suffer consequences ranging from pregnancy and fistulae to social isolation and depression. As conflicts erupted in the DRC in the mid-1990s, sexual violence marked every phase of the war with every possible consequence and every possible motivation. Since the war’s official end in 2003 (though sexual violence and insecurity continue), a number of national and international responses have aimed to prevent, protect, and treat victims of sexual violence. However, only collaboration and capacity-building between these national and international actors will allow the international community to end the culture of impunity – a major underlying cause behind sexual violence’s prevalence in warfare.

The scope of sexual violence in Eastern Congo can only be adequately understood through hundreds and thousands of stories, pictures, and documentary clips in addition to an impressive array of statistics aggregating the incidence of mass rape that human rights organizations have compiled. Most alarmingly, a November 2006 Newsweek report estimated that 250,000 women were raped in the conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1996-1997 and 1998- 2003 (Kirchner, 2007). This does not even account for the many more in North and South Kivu who have suffered even after the conflict’s official end in 2003. Between 2003 and 2007, the International Rescue Committee assisted over 40,000 Congolese rape survivors (Bartels et al., 2010). In South Kivu alone, the UN High Commission on Human Rights reported 27,000 sexual assaults in 2006 (Bartels et al., 2010) and an estimate of 25 rapes every day in 2007 (Breton-Le Goff, 2010). In 2008, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) reported 15,996 cases of sexual violence throughout the country—4,820 of which occurred in the eastern province of North Delivering Justice for Sexual Violence in the D.R. Congo and Beyond • 125

Kivu (Human Rights Watch, 2009). Another striking trend can be seen in the proportion of sexual violence cases in which the survivors were children. The UNFPA estimated that over 65 percent of sexual violence victims were children, typically adolescent girls. Almost 10 percent of victims are less than 10 years old when raped (Human Rights Watch, 2009).

The relative inaccuracy of these statistics is even more shocking: each of the listed numbers describes verified and reported cases, but what happens to the sexual violence that is unreported or unverified? Stefan Kirchner offers an explanation:

Although the reported rate of sexual violence remains high, such incidents are underreported and accurate statistics are difficult to obtain because of a number of factors, including the fear of ostracism and retribution which prevents survivors from coming forward; the prohibitive distance and lack of access to medical care owing to the prevailing security situation in some areas; a lack of faith in the judicial system; and the local tendency of amicable settlement, whereby the perpetrator pays the victim an agreed upon sum or value in kind. (Kirchner, 2007)

Given that these statistics most likely represent the low end of the amount of mass rape that has actually occurred and is still occurring in the DRC, national and international actors must take action to stop such crimes. The high prevalence and huge impact of sexual violence in the DRC and other war-torn countries have caused the international community to consider mass rape and other forms of sexual violence as weapons or tools of warfare in themselves.

War in the Great Lakes Region

Prevalent enough to be considered a “defining characteristic of the war,” sexual violence in Eastern Congo has occurred at the hands of nearly every rebel, militia, and national armed group during nearly every phase of the conflict. Prior to the First Congo War’s beginning in 1996, rape was considered a serious crime (though typically punished by compensation and shaming rather than the weak court system) that violated both the individual victim and his/her family and community (Baaz, 2009). However, political officials and military leaders in Mobutu’s regime commonly committed sexual violence as a means of intimidating and controlling the population (Breton-Le Goff, 2010); Zairian state agents from prison guards, army officers (including the Forces Armées Zairoises (FAZ)), police, and senior civil servants subjected women to rape, enforced prostitution, sexual slavery, and more (UN High Commissioner, 2010).

Not until the massive influx of Hutu genocidaires from Rwanda, though, did rape become a part of conflict and insecurity. From 1994-1995, extremist Hutu militias re-formed across Rwanda’s western border as “liberation forces” like the Forces Democratiques pour la Liberation du Rwanda (FDLR) in North and South Kivu (UN High Commissioner, 2010). As Wilhelmine Ntakebuka, the director of a sexual violence program in Bukavu, states, “The epidemic of rapes seems to have started in the mid-1990s. This date coincides with the waves of Hutu militiamen who escaped into Congo’s forests after exterminating 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus during Rwanda’s genocide” (Gettleman, 2007). In 1996, Laurent-Desire Kabila’s forces known as the Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo-Zaïre (AFDL) attacked South Kivu with the support of Rwanda and Uganda and progressed toward Kinshasa, committing sexual violence all along the way, which was matched by the retreating national army (Breton-Le Goff,

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 126

2010). Kabila’s regime was marked by sexual violence, as his officers and soldiers raped and tortured women and punished suspected enemy supporters through abuse (Breton-Le Goff, 2010). Only a year after the end of the First Congo War, violence erupted again.

Tensions sparking the Second Congo War began in 1998 when Kabila, beginning to fear Rwanda and Uganda’s presence in Kinshasa, ordered all external military forces out of the country. The situation deteriorated when the Banyamulenge, Mayi-Mayi groups, and later the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie (RCD) movement rose up in opposition to the new government and began a regional conflict in the East (Breton-Le Goff, 2010). Human rights organizations have found evidence of nearly every armed groups’ perpetration of sexual violence, from the RCD-Goma, Mayi Mayi rebels, Burundian and Rwandan Hutu rebel groups, the RCD-ML, Ituri regional actors like the Mouvement de Libération du Congo (MLC), Union des Patriotes Congolais (UPC), and Front des Nationalistes et Intégrationnistes (FNI), and even government armed forces including the Congolese Armed Forces (FAC) and the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC) (Human Rights Watch, 2005).

Sexual violence in the East during the Second Congo War was intractably linked to the exploitation of valuable minerals, with data about sexual violence in South Kivu showing a clear correlation “between the location of coltan mining areas and the incidents of sexual violence” (Whitman, 2010). Walungu’s gold and coltan deposits and Kabare’s coltan-rich areas sparked FDLR control, whereas Shabunda’s coltan-rich status caused it to be attacked by the Mayi-Mayi and exploited by the Great Lakes Mining Group, controlled by armed groups; all of these areas have suffered higher than usual rates of sexual violence (Whitman, 2010). To further emphasize the connection between coltan and rape, the rapid increase in the price of coltan from $30 per pound to $380 per pound (a result of new Sony PlayStation 2 and laptop models) caused a huge coltan rush, which sparked new highs of sexual violence and attacks in Eastern Congo (Whitman, 2010). Though the war ended officially in 2003 with the signing of the Pretoria Agreement, sexual violence and general insecurity did not stop.

After 2003, insecurity remained in the Congo and spread to new actors, including the new Congolese national army and even civilians. In a bid to stop sexual violence after the war, the FARDC “brought together soldiers from all of the main rebel groups as well as the former government army into a new force,” where by a policy of brassage, the transitional government created new brigades and divided officer and command positions amongst the rebel groups (Human Rights Watch, 2009). However, the rapid integration process worsened problems in the absence of a clear strategy regarding military discipline, salary, command and control, and especially sexual abuse (Human Rights Watch, 2009). After the elections in 2006, insecurity increased in North and South Kivu and culminated in many instances of mass rape, such as those in the gold- and tin-rich Walikale region in 2010 (Baaz, 2009; Amnesty International, 2010).

However, the FARDC was not the only “new” group committing sexual violence, as civilians came to take advantage of the insecurity and impunity in perpetrating an unprecedented number of rapes as well. A 2010 Oxfam report found that civilians perpetrated nearly 38 percent of rapes in 2008, compared to only 1 percent in 2004. Much of this increase can be explained by two factors: “an increase in demobilized combatants who have reintegrated into society with minimal rehabilitation measures, and the brutalization of society that eroded previous protective social norms” (Human Rights Watch, 2009). As Dr. Margaret Agama noted in a statement for UNFPA, Delivering Justice for Sexual Violence in the D.R. Congo and Beyond • 127

“Now sexual violence is unfortunately not only perpetrated by armed factions but also by ordinary people occupying positions of authority, neighbors, friends, and family members” (Egan, 2008). As impunity and social breakdown from the war spread into general society, sexual violence continued and is still going on today.

Characteristics of Sexual Violence in the DRC

The methods and types of sexual violence perpetrated span just as large of a spectrum as the types of perpetrators and the phases/areas of the conflict. While the most victimized age range is 19 to 45 years old, young adolescent girls are specifically targeted (Doctors without Borders, 2006). The Panzi Hospital has treated sexual violence victims ranging from 3.5 to 80 years old (Bartels, 2010). The types of sexual violence cover every crime mentioned in international law, from rape and forced prostitution to forced pregnancy and torture. Women are raped in front of their families, in public spaces, while going to work in the fields, while armies retreat, and even after abduction or conscription by armed forces (Breton-Le Goff, 2010). As many scholars and activists horrifyingly recount, “Rapists used different objects, including rifles, sticks, bananas, bottles, and pepper- covered pestles. These acts resulted in permanent injuries, fistulas, HIV infections, unwanted pregnancies, and the destruction of reproductive organs” (Breton-Le Goff, 2010).

Other crimes have reached new levels of atrocity. For example, Thomas Lubanga’s UPC army forced girls to undergo abortions (Breton-Le Goff, 2010). RCD prison guards subjected detainees to “electric shocking of the genitals, as well as compression or stretching of genital organs and breasts” (Breton-Le Goff, 2010). AFDL soldiers humiliated, stripped, and beat women who violated their ban on wearing pants, leggings, and mini-skirts. The FDLR would force a husband to watch while soldiers and then his own children were forced to rape his wife. Also, the Mayi-Mayi, Interahamwe, and Burundian rebels all frequently abducted women and forced them into sexual slavery. The UN mapping report also documented instances of disemboweling pregnant women, public rapes, and forced cannibalism (UN High Commissioner, 2010). Crimes of this gravity and frequency leave scholars and human rights advocates, Central African citizens, and the whole of humanity asking why? and how?

Sexual violence in Eastern Congo occurs due to a convergence of many factors that motivate and allow perpetrators to simultaneously justify and escape accountability for their crimes. Though the majority of experts who study rape “de-link” it from any kind of sexual desires and treat it merely as a violent manifestation of hatred or power, others lend credence to the “sexual urge” explanation. Some argue that warfare and conflict erode society’s constraints on a “male’s natural bestial sexual behavior,” causing men to unleash their sexual desires on women victims. In her interviews with perpetrators, Maria Baaz notes another explanation, that many soldiers “repeated that their harsh living conditions made it difficult for them to fulfill their supposed role as ‘the head and provider of the family,’” causing their wives to not love them and therefore not fulfill the conjugal obligation of sex anymore (Baaz, 2009).

In addition, tribal beliefs and customs are used to justify or even promote certain acts of sexual violence. Some tribal chiefs claim the right to sex with young virgin women, while militia groups often rape virgin girls and pregnant or breast-feeding women for their “protection” in combat or “cure” of diseases like HIV/AIDS. The Mayi-Mayi and the MLC under Jean-Pierre Bemba both

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 128 created fetishes with dried sexual parts of the body (hands, breasts, penises, etc.) and wore them during military operations for protection (Breton-Le Goff, 2010).

The group structure of military groups may also account for such widespread willingness to engage in these acts, as the conventions of obedience, loyalty, conformity, and hierarchy remove a sense of agency from individuals by allowing them to participate in collective actions for which they themselves are not responsible (Baaz, 2009). This is particularly true for men and even boys who were taught from an early age “to be ‘masculine’ and violent in the military through methods specifically designed to create soldiers who are able (and willing) to kill to protect the state/nation” (Baaz, 2009). The UN mapping report documents the use of rape with kadogo (“little ones”) as military groups force their child soldiers to rape women – the embodiment of peace and protection – in order to “toughen them up” and to teach them the “masculine” ways of “protecting, warring, and killing” (Baaz, 2009; UN High Commissioner, 2010).

The “spiral of violence” also catalyzes rape in warfare, as the stigma and sensitivity to violence decreases, creating “morally disengaged” witnesses whose morality no longer prevents them from inflicting torture and rape (Baaz, 2009). In addition, rape in recent conflict has commonly represented a form of ethnic cleansing, where perpetrators destroy social ethnicity by “inflicting shame, suffering, and humiliation” and biological ethnicity by “polluting bloodlines, forcibly impregnating women to produce ‘ethnically-cleansed’ children,” and spreading HIV/AIDS (Bartels et al., 2010). Finally, armed groups throughout history have utilized rape as a tool to demonstrate power and victory; Jullienne Chakupewa, who works in Goma as a rape counselor, told New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof, “All militias here rape women, to show their strength and to show your weakness” (Kristof & WuDunn, 2009). As no motivating factor can explain every crime or even every rape that occurs in any country, clearly sexual violence in the Congo occurs due to combinations of each of these factors as well as others. However, each act of violence arises out of an environment of conflict and insecurity in which perpetrators realize their actions will go unpunished.

Even in the midst of a death toll upwards of 5 million, the incidence of sexual violence in the conflict in Eastern Congo has given rise to a uniquely atrocious array of physical/medical, socio- cultural, mental/psychological, economic, and political consequences. Mass rape and sexual abuse have turned the pervasive inequality and lack of autonomy that women experienced in the Congo into disease and injury, social stigma, psychological trauma, economic deterioration, and lack of political agency. The primary documentation for these consequences comes from hospitals, clinics, nongovernmental organizations, humanitarian aid organizations, and social agencies, which collect and aggregate information about sexual violence and its consequences. For example, a look at rape survivors who sought treatment at the Panzi hospital: on average 22 percent were treated for pelvic pain, 11 percent for lumbar pain, 7 percent for abdominal pain, and 6 percent for pregnancy (Bartels et al., 2010). With the high infection rate among perpetrators, 36 percent of the women feared contracting sexually transmitted infections or HIV/AIDS (Bartels et al., 2010; Kirchner 2007).

Many victims also suffered psycho-somatic difficulties including disrupted sleeping and eating patterns, decreased interest in sex, and behavioral changes (Rwanika, 2010). There is also the issue of social stigma, as many husbands and communities shun their rape survivors. Men often banish their wives for fear of contracting sexually transmitted infections as well as for the affront to their Delivering Justice for Sexual Violence in the D.R. Congo and Beyond • 129

masculinity because they could not protect their families (Rwanika, 2010; Clark 2009). Isolated and shunned women often are more vulnerable to additional instances of sexual violence, thereby repeating the cycle. Such stigma is often worse for male victims of rape, who lose their entire social identity due to their emasculation and forced homosexuality. Communities ridicule male victims as “bush wives” and cast them out (Rwanika, 2010).

The social stigma and memory of the rape also create mental and psychological problems including “intense fears (particularly of stimuli reminiscent of the attack), anxiety, phobias, tension, nightmares, anger, hostility, chronic depression, suicidal ideation, and/or suicide attempts, dissociative symptoms (e.g., feeling disconnected and/or ‘outside’ of our bodies) and chronic depression” (Rwanika, 2010). Victims also commonly suffer loss of economic autonomy and political agency. Physical injuries and fear of leaving the house prevent women from continuing their daily occupations and providing for households (Rwanika, 2010). Sexual violence survivors commonly feel voiceless and powerless in a male-dominated society, causing them to remain politically silent about their suffering (Rwanika, 2010). This lack of political agency is also due to a lack of confidence in a political system whose senior officials, military officers, police, and other agents perpetrate and subsequently fail to punish such crimes. In general, the culture of impunity and lack of security that create conflict and thus sexual violence also exacerbate their consequences by preventing effective treatment of and awareness about their horror.

International Responses to Sexual Violence

Since the international community learned of the mass sexual violence in the Congo, a number of different responses have aimed to address such large-scale violence; some have been more effective than others. The first major response came in the form of human rights reports, as awareness about sexual violence in the Congo would necessarily precede more tangible action. In 2002, Human Rights Watch released the first report focused solely on sexual violence in Eastern Congo. This sparked a number of other human rights organizations including Amnesty International and Doctors without Borders to research and publish reports as well (Breton-Le Goff, 2010). Additionally, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights prepared the mapping report, a compilation of research that documented the “most serious violations of human rights and international law in the DRC between March 1993 and June 2003” and included an entire chapter on sexual violence (Human Rights Watch, 2010).

However, public awareness has only gone so far in spurring international action to stop sexual violence in the Congo. Several global advocacy and humanitarian aid campaigns have sought to treat sexual violence victims and share their stories, but few offer tangible solutions to stop the violence. In 2008 V-Day and UNICEF launched a global campaign called “Stop Raping Our Greatest Resource: Power to Women and Girls in DRC,” while partnering with the Panzi Foundation to build a special sexual violence center called The City of Joy in Bukavu (“City of Joy,” 2010). Doctors without Borders has succeeded in opening options for medical consultation after rape, including administration of antiretroviral prophylaxis and the morning-after pill, and providing medical certificates attesting rape to ensure legal protection (Doctors without Borders, 2006). In addition, the Enough Movement has focused on the international community’s role in the trade of conflict minerals that are associated with the increase in sexual violence. Despite the increased awareness, little has been done in terms of improvements on the ground (Enough Project Team, 2010).

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 130

Finally, international actors ranging from the US State Department to the African Union have passed laws aimed at addressing sexual violence in the DRC. After her visit to the DRC in September 2009, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton encouraged the UN to adopt Security Council Resolution 1888 while simultaneously pushing the Congolese government to investigate and prosecute members of FARDC who committed sexual crimes (Human Rights Watch, 2010). In 2007, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution “eliminating rape and other forms of sexual violence,” while the Security Council passed Resolution 1820 of a similar nature; neither have yet achieved their goals (Breton-Le Goff, 2010). The International Conference on the Great Lakes Region oversaw the adoption of Protocol on the Prevention and Suppression of Sexual Violence against Women and Children, and the European Parliament passed legislation urging action from other actors (Breton-Le Goff, 2010). The UN Secretary-General also appointed Margot Wallstrom to serve as a new Special Representative for combating sexual violence in conflict (Whitman, 2010) and has since appointed Zainab Hawa Bangura to succeed her. While these efforts have been admirable and important, these actors must follow through on implementation and enforcement of resolutions in order for victims to see lasting improvement.

Preventing and Protecting against Sexual Violence

As the general insecurity in Eastern Congo allows sexual violence to continue, it is imperative that national and international actors prioritize the prevention of and protection against sexual violence, as well as security sector and military reform in order to establish peace and security in the region. The UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC, now MONUSCO) failed through its temporary and limited mandate to protect civilians from rape or to secure the eastern region of the Congo. As Human Rights Watch explained in its 2010 annual report:

MONUC struggled to balance its mandate for civilian protection with its support to the Congolese military operations [... Diplomats] raised human rights concerns, especially on sexual violence, but stopped short of putting pressure on the Congolese government or MONUC to suspend military operations until measures for civilian protection were in place. (Human Rights Watch, 2010)

These peacekeeping forces must stop sexually exploiting Congolese women and girls, as this jeopardizes the mission’s legitimacy as a whole (Human Rights Watch, 2005).

A major mistake on the part of the UN Mission was to shift its focus toward post-peace processes before peace was ever established. A 2008 MONUC inventory of donor funding logged that only 11 percent of funds were devoted to protecting women and girls from sexual violence, while the rest was spent on “medical treatment, legal assistance, and capacity-building” (Human Rights Watch, 2009). The UN Mission must fulfill its obligations under Chapter 7 to protect civilian lives first and foremost by implementing a number of reforms: mobile police forces that patrol villages likely to be attacked, more secure prison systems, an Early Warning System to determine and spread awareness of sexual violence on a massive scale, a Women’s Protection Unit within the UN’s Department of Peacekeeping Operations, and other strategies to protect civilians (Bhanji et al., 2009). Such innovations would prevent attacks like what took place in Goma and Walikale where nearby UN peacekeepers could not reach the afflicted areas in time to protect civilians from rape and sexual violence (Breton-Le Goff, 2010).

Delivering Justice for Sexual Violence in the D.R. Congo and Beyond • 131

While the peacekeeping force’s 2009 Comprehensive Strategy has achieved some success, it “faces severe challenges due to the lack of functioning formal state institutions and a professional police force” (Solhjell, 2009). Security sector and military reform are absolutely critical to effective state institutions that can control the violence and negotiate for peace. The local and national governments must professionalize the police force through enhanced training and higher salaries in order to reduce corruption. Security agents and forces must vet all state institutions—from the civil service and law to the army’s ranks and police—to remove individuals who have committed breaches of international humanitarian and criminal law (UN Mission in Democratic Republic of Congo, 2009). Additionally, armed groups must undergo demobilization and disengagement plans as well as more effective brassage in order to reform the FARDC and prevent its perpetration of sexual violence as well as insecurity overall (UN Mission in Democratic Republic of Congo, 2009).

The United Nations should encourage women’s participation in government, “including the political, judicial, and law enforcement sectors” (Bhanji et al., 2009). Women’s participation in peace processes could change the bargaining dynamic in favor of peaceful resolution; participation as judges in rape cases could prevent such corruption and partiality in the judicial system; participation in police forces could create a security sector more willing to accept reports of sexual violence; and participation in government could allow women to advocate for better services for rehabilitation and recovery. Overall, the national government and the UN Mission must make sweeping reforms and innovations to establish peace (or at least security from sexual violence) in the eastern Congo; lack of basic security will prevent the DRC and international actors from ever effectively investigating and prosecuting sexual violence crimes.

Responding to Sexual Violence

To address the culture of impunity that allows perpetrators to escape punishment, the DRC and international actors have taken limited but somewhat effective steps toward establishing judicial accountability. However, the international community must devote more attention, political will, and resources toward judicial reform that punish past crimes and deter future ones. Of those surveyed in a national poll, 82 percent of respondents believed that accountability is necessary to secure peace, and 70 percent believe that rape/sexual violence crimes are the most important to hold war criminals accountable for. Furthermore, the general population surveyed supported more nationalized trials as opposed to those at the International Criminal Court (Vinck, Pham, Baldo, & Shigekane, 2008). While judicial reform in 2006 created revolutionary laws against sexual violence including rape, forced pregnancy, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, and forced sterilization, the UN mapping report still predicted that the Congolese judicial system would “lack the capacity in the short- or medium-term to prosecute the crimes it documented” (Human Rights Watch, 2010).

A number of military tribunals have begun trying soldiers charged with sexual violence (including the Mbandaka and Walikale military courts). Critics, however, point out that military law does not follow the ICC’s definition of sexual violence nor does the procedure guarantee many internationally standardized rights including the right to appeal (Breton-Le Goff, 2010). On this local and national level, NGOs have successfully trained “activists, lawyers, police officers, and judicial bodies” while the European Union provided capacity building through construction of court houses, prisons, and other structures in the Bunia region (Breton-Le Goff, 2010; Oury et al., 2005). Of the 1,221 rape and sexual violence cases monitored since 2008, the Human Rights Office has documented conviction of 374 war criminals (Breton-Le Goff, 2010). Unfortunately, these

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 132 prosecutions face inefficiency, as gathering evidence takes time; corruption, as perpetrators pay off judges; insecurity, as witness protection programs are lacking; and impunity, as many prisoners escape from jail after conviction (Clark, 2009). These major problems stem from a lack of political will, as the weak judicial system received no more than 0.3 percent of the national budget in 2007 (Bhanji, 2009).

On an international level, the DRC government reported its situation to the International Criminal Court in 2004 (Human Rights Watch, 2010). Since then, the Office of the Prosecutor has charged two individuals – Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui – with rape and sexual slavery, though notably dropping sexual slavery counts and also choosing not to indict Thomas Lubanga for sexual violence (Breton-Le Goff, 2010). By fusing international criminal law with the national judicial system, the DRC can learn from the expertise of international prosecutions and further the pursuit of justice for victims of sexual violence.

Applying International Criminal Law

International law has, especially throughout the 20th century, come to criminalize sexual violence and developed procedure to prosecute such crimes. While the history and role of rape in warfare dates back to the beginnings of war itself, international law’s inclusion of sexual violence as a war crime or other violation of international law is a more recent development. The first international criminal trial occurred 471 years before Nuremberg, when 27 judges of the Holy Roman Empire tried Sir Peter von Hagenbach in Breisach, Germany for crimes of pillage, murder, and rape (Shanker, 2007; Askin, 1997). The 1907 Hague Convention implicitly criminalized rape in Article 46 when guaranteeing respect for “family honour and rights” (Shanker, 2007), and Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 declared sexual violence a “crime against humanity” (Bartels et al., 2010). While the Nuremberg Trials did contain some witness testimony about cases of sexual violence, neither rape nor any other sexual crime was prosecuted in the trials or in their counterparts in Tokyo.

Much of the important case law about sexual violence came from the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda, as these represented the first modern attempts to prosecute sexual violence as a crime of war (Bartels et al., 2010). In The Prosecutor v. Jean- Paul Akayesu, the trial chamber of the Rwanda tribunal (ICTR) convicted the defendant of rape as a form of genocide on September 2, 1998 (The Prosecutor, 1998). Just two months later on November 16, 1998, the trial chamber of the Yugoslavia tribunal (ICTY) determined that in the case of The Prosecutor v. Zejnil Delalic, rape could constitute torture if it met all of the necessary elements, as it likely would (The Prosecutor, 1998). In the subsequent ICTY verdict of The Prosecutor v. Dragoljub Kunarac, the trial chamber convicted the defendant of sexual slavery, rape, and violations of human dignity as war crimes and crimes against humanity (The Prosecutor, 2001).

On July 1, 2002, international law jumped leaps and bounds toward prosecuting sexual crimes when the UN General Assembly convened in Rome, Italy, for a diplomatic conference in which the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court was adopted (UN High Commissioner, 2010). The Rome Statute (ratified by the DRC on April 11, 2002) defines “rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, and any other form of sexual violence of a comparable severity” as a crime against humanity. The ICC could also define sexual violence as genocide if carried out with “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, Delivering Justice for Sexual Violence in the D.R. Congo and Beyond • 133

racial, or religious group” (Rome Statute, 2002). These recent developments in international law are of the utmost importance in the current conflict in the DRC, where impunity reigns and international actors turn to the law for solutions.

Applying International Criminal Procedure

A number of very important procedural innovations have occurred between the first trial of Sir Peter von Hagenbach for rape in 1474 and the trial of Ratko Mladic that began in summer 2011. Across the board, war crimes tribunals have realized the importance of a more gender-balanced staff in addition to advisors and legal officers who possess specific experience related to sexual violence, women’s issues, trauma, and other topics (Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice, 2011). In October 1994, ICTY Prosecutor Richard Goldstone appointed Patricia Viseur Sellers as the first Legal Advisor for Gender to the Office of the Prosecutor; she served as Legal Advisor for Gender to the ICTY Prosecutor from 1995 to 1999 (Sellers, 2009). Sellers notes, however, that despite being hired to develop investigation and prosecution strategies to effectively address sexual violence, “[The legal advisors] commanded a limited sphere in which to set gender policy and monitor its execution” (Sellers, 2009). The Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court requires that the Prosecutor “take appropriate measures to ensure the effective investigation and prosecution of crimes,” giving particular interest to “sexual violence, gender violence, or violence against children” (Rome Statute, 2002).

The reluctance and ignorance of many prosecutors, investigators, judges, and others to devote extra time, effort, and resources on a specific strategy for sexual violence presents a key problem even today. National and international NGOs lobbied at the Rome Conference for courts not only to focus on women more but also to include more women on staff and achieved requirements in the Rome Statute for a legal advisor for sexual and gender-based violence as well as “fair and equal representation of female and male” judges, prosecutors, and staff (Rome Statute, 2002). Currently, the International Criminal Court as a whole is 46% female, including a 58% female Judiciary, a 46% female Office of the Prosecutor, and a 48% female Registry (Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice, 2011). Many looked to the election of a new female Chief Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, to give sexual violence the focus its victims deserve. Bensouda warned war criminals the day after her election that, while sexual violence too often goes unreported and unpunished, that her office “will make sure that these crimes that they have suffered will be punished – their perpetrators being arrested and prevented from committing additional crimes” (ICC, 2012).

In addition to increased focus on ensuring prosecutions and convictions for sexual violence, tribunals have developed procedures to protect victims and witnesses of rape and sexual violence. At the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), victims and witnesses who testified in Arusha often returned home to harassment and even violence (Nowrojee, 2005); as a result, the Tribunal implemented local protection measures including extra security and surveillance, psychosocial support, identity protection, and even witness relocation programs (De Brouwer, 2005). In-hearing privacy measures include closed and private sessions, voice and picture scrambling, in camera testimony, and redacted/protected names and information (De Brouwer, 2005). During the trials, ICTR and ICTY victims and witnesses may be provided support staff, psychologists, or therapists to assist them in testifying (De Brouwer, 2005). The ICC’s Victims and Witnesses Unit coordinates witnesses and helps them to understand and prepare for trial

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 134 proceedings, especially when testimony may include traumatic events or discussion of private sexual parts or acts (Pillay, 2010).

Finally, prosecutors and defense attorneys are expected to respect gender sensitivity during questioning and cross-examination periods by not asking repetitive questions, allowing for breaks, and avoiding unnecessary questions about consent (De Brouwer, 2005). The ICC’s Rules of Procedure and Evidence contain special rules regarding evidence in sexual violence cases; Rules 70, 71, and 72 declare inadmissible any evidence regarding the victim’s prior or subsequent sexual conduct or the victim’s consent, and Rule 63 states that additional testimony is not required to corroborate a victim’s testimony, as is the case in many national jurisdictions (Rules of Procedure and Evidence, 2002).

Reforming the Congolese Judicial System

In order to overcome the lack of capacity and political will to prosecute sexual violence, the DRC should embrace a number of judicial reforms informed by years of developments and lessons learned at other tribunals. Existing international tribunals in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Cambodia, and The Hague must spread their best practices and legal developments on sexual violence to national jurisdictions such as the DRC through capacity-building, legal and judicial reform, training, and other innovative practices.

First, the international community should assist the DRC in establishing a hybrid war crimes tribunal or a domestic mixed chamber to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. This tribunal or chamber should include a special division or team devoted to investigating and prosecuting sexual violence. While an ad hoc International Criminal Tribunal like that in the former Yugoslavia or Rwanda is no longer internationally popular, and International Criminal Court jurisdiction cannot extend to acts before its ratification in 2002, the Congolese government can and should establish a chamber or tribunal with both national and international officials that can investigate and prosecute crimes dating back to the DRC’s first war in 1996. By modeling its structure and jurisdiction on the Bosnian War Crimes Chamber – a domestic chamber – or the Special Court for Sierra Leone – an international hybrid tribunal, officials from these judicial bodies can assist in the creation and practice of a Congolese body effective at prosecuting international crimes, especially sexual violence. In November 2010, the Congolese Minister of Justice proposed a bill establishing a specialized mixed court to prosecute international crimes and has since procured the advise of almost fifty Congolese and international organizations (Lee, 2012). By publicly investigating, prosecuting, and potentially convicting the most well-known government officials and military commanders notorious for sexual crimes, this judicial body can make important strides in restoring the public’s faith in the judicial system, deterring future crimes, and ending the culture of impunity (Pratt & Werchick, 2004).

In addition, the Congolese judicial system should continue utilizing mobile courts, traditional mechanisms, and international assistance in bolstering its prosecutions of sexual violence. Recently, the American Bar Association’s Rule of Law Initiative harnessed mobile courts – which have long traveled throughout remote regions in the DRC to hear cases – to develop specialized bodies to try gender crimes (“Justice in DRC,” 2012). Out of 248 cases heard from 2009 to 2011 by one mobile court, 140 resulted in rape convictions and yielded sentences ranging from 3 to 20 years (“Justice in DRC,” 2012). Further, the DRC should draw on the experience of Rwanda’s gacaca courts in Delivering Justice for Sexual Violence in the D.R. Congo and Beyond • 135

order to develop its informal judicial processes into effective responses to sexual violence (Freccero et al., 2011). While this will require ensuring protection for due process and international human rights standards as well as adequate security and sensitivity for such crimes, these informal judicial systems can represent the most accessible, culturally-friendly, efficient, and cost-effective means of achieving justice and reconciliation for masses of victims.

Finally, the Congolese judicial system can harness international expertise surrounding sexual violence by domesticating the Rome Statute; allowing international attorneys, judges, and staff to train their local and national judicial counter-parts and recruiting sexual violence experts with international tribunal expertise. By enacting legislation to implement the Rome Statute, the DRC will ensure its judicial system possesses jurisdiction over international crimes and that its law and procedure conform to international standards. For example, the current Congolese Criminal Code should be revised to define penetration with objects and male rape as “rape” and to incorporate war crimes and crimes against humanity (Human Rights Watch, 2005). In training local and national police, prosecutors, and judges to properly investigate and prosecute sexual violence, the international community can assist in effective prosecutions of sexual violence. These trainings should focus on collections of forensic evidence, medical examinations of sexual violence survivors, evidentiary analysis, gender sensitivity, criminal law and prosecution strategies, varying modes of liability, sexual violence jurisprudence, judgments and sentencing, and appellate procedures. Specialized international sexual violence and gender experts should be infused into the mixed chamber or hybrid tribunal to support investigations and prosecutions. Many of these reforms themselves are not novel or untested, but rather have been unsuccessful due to lack of coordination, training, capacity-building, and lessons-sharing.

Cooperating, Educating, and Building Capacity to Prosecute Sexual Violence

While no two national systems share identical challenges or require identical solutions, the international community should utilize the mounting attention to and expertise in sexual violence that exists among current legal scholars, prosecutors, and judges to design and implement tested and effective practices. David Kaye (2011) of the Council on Foreign Relations notes, “Typically, governments and international organizations do not coordinate their efforts […] The creation of regularized information sharing and joint country approaches would go a long way to improve coordination”. Possible venues for information sharing include outreach strategies, best practice manuals and guides, joint investigations, an online database of jurisprudence and resources, legal trainings and education, trial monitoring, and conferences of experts and donors. First, an outreach strategy can drastically improve the efficacy and perception of a controversial war crimes tribunal within local communities; the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia learned this the hard way when, after six years of existence, the court had still not developed an outreach strategy and faced significant disillusionment in local communities due to political and media bias.

An effective outreach strategy is one of many best practices and lessons learned that should be utilized from successful international courts, including the tribunals in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Cambodia. In 2008, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda published a manual that outlined best practices – for senior management, dedicated teams, investigations, witness preparation, trial chamber prosecutions, appeals, interpretation, witness care

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 136 and protection, and courtroom environment – for effectively handling sexual violence cases (Best Practices Manual, 2008). In addition, the UN High Commission for Refugees and the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children have each published guidelines and manuals for sexual and gender-based violence, though neither have been widely disseminated or utilized (Pratt & Werchick, 2004).

The United States and its allies should also encourage international NGOs – including the American Bar Association, Avocats San Frontieres, and the Open Society Justice Initiative – to develop training programs and centers to provide education to prosecutors, judges, counsels, and other staff (Kaye, 2011). Moreover, the International Criminal Court’s new Chief Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, has considered allowing the Court to share information gathered on lower-level perpetrators in the DRC (Clifford et al., 2008), an innovation piloted in Bosnia’s War Crimes Chamber for the ICTY’s Rule 11bis cases. By drawing on the ICTY’s model and practices, the Chief Prosecutor can infuse proper investigation and prosecution tactics in the Congolese system while also bolstering the potential success of prosecutions and convictions. The ICC could even utilize this leverage to secure Congolese judicial reforms – abolition of the death penalty, witness protection, enforcement of arrests, etc. – in the absence of true political will (Clifford et al., 2008).

Establishing a legal library or an online database would allow Congolese staff to access the jurisprudence and resources of other international tribunals while also sharing their own effective strategies and developments for future tribunals. In a similar vein, prior to or upon creating a hybrid tribunal or domestic war crimes chamber, the international community should convene a series of conferences in which donors, legal scholars, NGOs, and Congolese officials can share effective strategies, build upon existing legal knowledge, and advance the collective will and expertise internationally for prosecuting sexual violence (Kaye, 2011). Finally, the appointment of international trial monitors to ensure that due process standards are met, sexual violence cases are prioritized, and prosecutions are effective, has historically raised awareness of the problems facing domestic chambers. According to Amnesty International (2009), in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a backlog of between 6,000 and 16,000 unresolved war crimes cases existed in the War Crimes Chamber; a sexual violence trial monitoring project launched last year by UN Women is tracking these prosecutions and putting pressure on the Chamber to make progress (ACIPS, 2011).

Through all of these different avenues – outreach strategies, best practice manuals and guides, joint investigations, an online database of jurisprudence and resources, legal trainings and education, trial monitoring, and conferences of experts and donors – the international community should facilitate the cooperation and coordination of international experts to advance the collective knowledge on justice for sexual violence. In this way, the international community can work with the Congolese judicial system to end impunity for sexual violence while also building upon the experience of the DRC to shape future justice for sexual violence.

Conclusion

In conclusion, local communities, the national government, and international actors must implement a broad array of reforms and policies designed to eliminate the culture of impunity and insecurity, which are characterized by high rates of sexual violence. The incidence of sexual violence as a tool of warfare in the Congo began in the early 1990s when, through the breakdown of local accountability mechanisms, Hutu genocidaire from Rwanda created insecurity in the East, Delivering Justice for Sexual Violence in the D.R. Congo and Beyond • 137

sparking civil and later all-out regional war. This insecurity and environment of conflict, as well as the pervasive culture of impunity, allowed sexual violence to flourish as a “war within the war” (Human Rights Watch, 2002). Only when the DRC addresses structural issues of impunity and insecurity through seeking cooperation with and capacity-building from the international community can it truly remove sexual violence’s place in warfare.

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 138

References

ACIPS. (2011). Introducing gender trial monitoring for wartime sexual violence cases in Bosnia and Herzegovina. UN Women.

Amnesty International. (2009). ‘Whose justice?’ The women of Bosnia and Herzegovina are still waiting. Amnesty International, 1-84.

Amnesty International. (2010). Mass rapes in Walikale: Still a need for protection and justice in Eastern Congo. Amnesty International. Retrieved from http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AFR62/011/2010/en

Askin, K. D. (1997). War crimes against women: Prosecution in International War Crimes Tribunals. Boston: Martinus Nijhoff

Baaz, M. E. (2009). Why do soldiers rape? Masculinity, violence, and sexuality in the Armed Forces of the Congo (DRC). International Studies Quarterly, 53, 495-518.

Bartels, S. et al. (2010). Surviving sexual violence in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Journal of International Women’s Studies, 11(4), 37-49.

Bhanji, A. et al. (2009). Combating rape as a weapon of war. The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs. R. Mahdi. (Ed.). Retrieved from http://www.gpia.info/files/practicum/28/UNIFEM%20Final%20Paper.pdf

Breton-Le Goff, G. (2010). Ending sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, 34(1), 13-40.

City of Joy. (2010). V-Day Campaign. Retrieved from http://drc.vday.org/city-of-joy

Clark, M. (2009). Congo: Confronting rape as a weapon of war. Christian Science Monitor, 4. Retrieved from http://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/print/content/view/print/25013

Clifford, L. et al. (2008). Special report: Sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Institute for War and Peace Reporting.

De Brouwer, A. (2005). Supranational criminal prosecution of sexual violence: The ICC and the practice of the ICTY and the ICTR. Antwerp-Oxford: InterSentia.

Doctors without Borders. (2006). Democratic Republic of Congo: Rape as a weapon in North Kivu. Retrieved from http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/news/article_print.cfm?id=1836

Egan, S. (2008). Campaign says ‘no’ to the sexual violence that rages in DRC. UN Population Fund. Retrieved from http://www.unfpa.org/public/News/pid/1012

Enough Project Team. (2010). A comprehensive approach to Congo's conflict minerals. Center for American Progress. Retrieved from Delivering Justice for Sexual Violence in the D.R. Congo and Beyond • 139

http://www.enoughproject.org/publications/comprehensive-approach-conflict-minerals- strategy-paper

Freccero, J. et al. (2011). Responding to sexual violence: Community approaches. Sexual Violence & Accountability Project. Human Rights Center. University of California Berkeley.

Gettleman, J. (2007, Oct 7). Rape epidemic raises trauma of Congo war. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/world/africa/07congo.html?_r=1

Human Rights Watch. (2002). The war within the war: Sexual violence against women and girls in Eastern Congo. Human Rights Watch. Retrieved from http://www.hrw.org/en/node/81076/section/1

Human Rights Watch. (2005). Seeking justice: The prosecution of sexual violence in the Congo war. Human Rights Watch, 17(1), 1-53. Retrieved from http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2005/03/06/seeking-justice-0

Human Rights Watch. (2009). Soldiers who rape, commanders who condone: Sexual violence and military reform in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Retrieved from http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2009/07/16/soldiers-who-rape-commanders-who-condone

Human Rights Watch. (2010). DR Congo: Q&A on the United Nations Human Rights Mapping Report. Retrieved from http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/10/01/dr-congo-q-united- nations-human-rights-mapping-report?print

Human Rights Watch. (2010). World Report: 2010. New York: Human Rights Watch.

International Criminal Court . (2012). ICC Weekly Update. Retrieved from http://www.icc- cpi.int/NR/rdonlyres/FC0AFEA7-6097-498D-AF64- 6987D9DE5F35/284276/ED116_ENG.PDF

International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. (2008). Best practices manual: For the investigation and prosecution of sexual violence crimes in situations of armed conflict.

International Federation for Human Rights. (2008). Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC): Breaking the Cycle of Impunity. UNESCO. Retrieved from http://www.fidh.org/IMG/pdf/press-kit-drc-eng-final.pdf

Justice in DRC: Mobile Courts Combat Rape and Impunity in Eastern Congo. (2012). Open Society Foundations. Retrieved from http://www.soros.org/sites/default/files/justice-drc- 20120619.pdf

Kaye, D. A. (2011). Justice Beyond the Hague: Supporting the Prosecution of International Crimes in National Courts. Council on Foreign Relations. Special Report No. 61 Retrieved from http://www.cfr.org/international-criminal-courts-and-tribunals/justice-beyond- hague/p25119

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 140

Kirchner, S. (2007). Hell on earth: Systematic rape in Eastern Congo. The Journal of Humanitarian Assistance. Retrieved from http://jha.ac/2007/08/06/hell-on-earth-systematic-rape-in- eastern-congo/

Kristof, N. D., & WuDunn, S. (2009). Half the sky: Turning oppression into opportunity for women worldwide. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Lee, R. (2012). Plans for a hybrid court in Congo – Pascale Kambale. Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa. Retrieved from http://www.osisa.org/openspace/drc/plans-hybrid-court- congo-pascale-kambale

Nowrojee, B. (2005). Your justice is too slow: Will the ICTR fail Rwanda’s rape victims? United Nations. Research Institute for Social Development. Retrieved from http://www.unrisd.org/80256B3C005BCCF9/(httpPublications)/56FE32D5C0F6DCE9C12 5710F0045D89F

Oury, J. et al. (2009). The rape epidemic in the Congo: Why impunity in the Congo can be solved by international intervention. Loyola University Chicago International Law Review, 421.

Pillay, N. (2010). Address: Interdisciplinary Colloquium on Sexual Violence as International Crime: Sexual Violence: Standing by the Victim. Law and Social Inquiry, 35(4), 847-853.

Pratt, M., & Werchick, L. (2004). Sexual terrorism: Rape as a weapon of war in Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. US Agency for International Development. Retrieved from http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PNADK346.pdf

The Prosecutor v. Jean Paul Akayesu. (1998). Judgment. Case No. ICTR-96-4-T. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

The Prosecutor v. Zejnil Delalic. (1998). Judgment. Case No. IT-96-21-T. International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

The Prosecutor v. Dragoljub Kunarac. (2001). Judgment. Case No. IT-96-23-T. International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Rwanika, D. M. (2010). Rape and warfare: Its impact on female body: The case of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Journal of the Institute of Justice and International Studies, 10, 117- 130.

Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. (2002). International Criminal Court.

Rules of Procedure and Evidence. (2002). International Criminal Court. ICC-ASP/1/3.

Sellers, P. V. (2009). Gender strategy is not a luxury for international courts: Prosecuting sexual and gender-based crimes before internationalized criminal courts. American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy and the Law, 17(2), 327-335.

Delivering Justice for Sexual Violence in the D.R. Congo and Beyond • 141

Shanker, T. (2007). Sexual violence. Crimes of War Project. Retrieved from http://www.crimesofwar.org/thebook/sexual-violence.html

Solhjell, R. (2009). Combating sexual violence in the DRC: From resolutions to practice. Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, 6. Retrieved from http://english.nupi.no/Activities/Programmes2/Training-for-Peace/Randi-Solhjell

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. (2010). Democratic Republic of the Congo, 1993-2003. United Nations. (pp. 280-317).

UN Mission in Democratic Republic of Congo. (2009). Comprehensive strategy on combating sexual violence in DRC: Executive summary. Office of the Senior SV Advisor and Coordinator. (pp. 1-8).

Vinck, P., Pham, P., Baldo, S., & Shigekane, R. (2008). Living with fear: A population-based survey on attitudes about peace, justice, and social reconstruction in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.” International Center for Transitional Justice.

Whitman, S. (2010). Sexual violence, coltan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.” In M. Schnurr & L. Swatuk (Eds.), Critical Environmental Security: Rethinking the Links Between Natural Resources and Political Violence (pp. 1-17). Centre for Foreign Policy Studies, Dalhousie University.

Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice. (2010). 2010 Gender Report Card. Retrieved from http://www.iccwomen.org/news/docs/GRC10-WEB-11-10-v4_Final-version-Dec.pdf

Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice. (2011). 2011 Gender Report Card. Retrieved from http://www.iccwomen.org/documents/Gender-Report-Card-on-the-International-Criminal- Court-2011.pdf

Journal of Global Citizenship & Equity Education Volume 2 Number 2 - 2012 journals.sfu.ca/jgcee

When All Else Fails: The Critical Role of Civil Society in Addressing Northern Ireland’s Segmental Autonomy

Zealan Hoover Moorehead-Cain Scholar University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Keywords: Consociationalism; Structuralism; Constructivism; Contact Theory; Divided Society; Integration

ABSTRACT: Northern Ireland remains a deeply divided society. The education system mirrors the broader societal divisions between Catholics and Protestants and the vast majority of students experience an education that remains almost wholly segregated based on religious identification. This paper places that segregation in a political context, by analyzing how the type of political system has impacted education reform as it relates to the development of an integrated education sector. Northern Ireland provides a unique opportunity to test the impact of political systems on education reform because, over the past ninety years, the state has been governed under majoritarian home rule, direct control by an external actor, and consociational home rule. Despite the deeply segmented education system, a group of parents began a concerted push for integrated education beginning in the 1970s. Over the course of three decades, their advocacy spurred substantial reform and served as the catalyst for an integrated education sector that now serves more than five percent of elementary and secondary students. The successes and failures of that movement provide strong empirical evidence that no matter the political system in place, civil society is critical to promoting integrated education reform in deeply divided societies.

“Even if the last move did not succeed, the inner command says move again.” - Seamus Heaney

Introduction

Northern Ireland’s education system has changed remarkably little over the past two hundred years. In the mid 19th century, the British government at Westminster approved the development of a national school system in Ireland intended to harmonize a disparate system of independent schools that received state funding and funneled most of it to Protestant children. Unfortunately, those reforms had little effect. The national schools quickly became fiefdoms of the respective Protestant and Catholic churches, children continued to attend schools run by their Church, and Protestant schools continued to receive preferential funding. While the funding is now equitable, that same separation remains. In contemporary Northern Ireland, 94 percent of students attend a school that is almost wholly Catholic or Protestant in its enrollment (DENI, 2012a). When All Else Fails • 143

Protestant children attend controlled schools run by the Department of Education in Northern Ireland (DENI) and Catholic children attend maintained schools run by the Catholic Church but funded by the state. This practice is so firmly entrenched that only five percent of children in controlled schools identify as Catholic and less than one percent of children in maintained schools identify as Protestant (DENI, 2012a). However, there is a third side to this story. The remaining six percent of children in Northern Ireland attend integrated schools where the status quo is far different. These schools aspire to reach at least 40 percent enrollment of each group; maintain a diverse faculty, administration, and governorship; and commit themselves to the ideals of integration (NICIE Statement of Principles, 2009). The development of this integrated sector is a fascinating story that spans the modern history of Northern Ireland and provides unique insight into the challenges of integration under successive political systems and the important role of civil society in that process.

Literature Review & Hypothesis

Education in Northern Ireland relies heavily on a system of segmental group autonomy that seeks to maintain stability through separation. Lijphart (1977) called this concept “negative peace” in the sense that it seeks to maintain stability without attempting to overcome the underlying cause of conflict. Andeweg (2003) puts it in more colloquial terms with the saying “good fences make good neighbors” (p. 528).

The suitability of this theory’s application to deeply divided societies is contested by a substantial body of research that finds sustained intergroup contact capable of moderating intergroup hostility (see: Stringer et al., 2009). Meanwhile, less-than-optimal outcomes in segmental states as varied as Northern Ireland, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Israel-Palestine have emboldened Lijphart’s detractors. Summarizing much of their position, Oberschall (2007) argued, “Recent history has repeatedly shown how ‘live and let live’ separatism rapidly descends into ethnic warfare in a crisis” (p. 237).

Irish civil and political leaders going back almost two centuries have expressed sentiments similar to Oberschall’s and argued for greater integration between the historically segmented Catholic and Protestant communities, particularly in regards to education. Despite the frequency of such rhetoric, progress has been slow and halting. Nonetheless, an integrated sector has developed in spite of the obstacles.

For the first fifteen years, efforts to establish integrated schools existed in a realm situated between the state and other basic building blocks of society − what Manor, Robinson & White (1999) defined as “civil society”. In the Northern Ireland context, it is best described as the realm between the Churches and the State. Since neither the Churches nor the State had an interest in surrendering control over to their respective sectors of the segmented school system, it fell to a coalition of parents to drive reform. The organization they formed – All Children Together (ACT) – was the primary driver for integrated education in the earliest stages and ACT formed the nucleus of the non-governmental, non-sectarian coalition that has pushed reform over the past forty years.

This paper hypothesizes that civil society – represented in Northern Ireland by ACT and its allies – is necessary to the successful implementation of an integration agenda in deeply divided JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 144 societies. For the period of time prior to the creation of ACT, this paper considers the null hypothesis that without a civil society committed to reform, an integrated agenda in deeply divided societies will not progress.

Research Design

Northern Ireland’s political history can be divided into six phases of government (see Timeline 1) employing one of three political systems: majoritarian rule, consociational power-sharing, or direct control by an external actor. This paper treats each of the first four phases (ending in 2002) as a separate case study that the hypothesis and null hypothesis can be tested against. This method of organization provides a manageable system for analyzing eight decades of Northern Ireland’s history while also accounting for the variations in political structure under which reform is being attempted. This paper draws on primary and secondary sources for data, including interviews conducted by the author, academic studies, official reports by the Department of Education in Northern Ireland (DENI), and detailed accounts of ACT, the Catholic Church, and other key players and periods in Northern Ireland’s history.

Timeline 1: Political Systems 1920-1972 Majoritarian Rule 1973 Consociational Power-sharing 1974-1998 British Direct Control 1998-2002 Consociational Power-sharing 2002-2007 British Direct Control 2007 Consociational Power-sharing

Failure at Stormont 1920-1972

Northern Ireland came into being with the 1920 Government of Ireland Act, which divided the island into two political entities. The 26 southern counties and their Catholic majority formed the Republic of Ireland and retained the Irish capital of Dublin. The six northern counties with their Protestant majority remained a semi-autonomous region within the United Kingdom and created a new seat of government in Belfast, with its Parliament at Stormont (McEwen, 1999). From 1920- 1972, Northern Ireland was ruled under a devolved system of majoritarian government that heavily favored the Protestant population. Structural inequalities in employment, housing, and justice would remain the status quo until a Catholic civil rights movement in the 1960s erupted into violence known as “The Troubles” in the 1970s.

In deeply divided societies majoritarian systems pose a major challenge because the party in power has total control over the resources of the state and little vested interest in the rights of the minority. In Northern Ireland, this created strong vested interests on the part of both the majority and minority to maintain influence over their own education systems, which appears to have crowded out civil society. Prior to the formation of ACT in 1974, there was no dedicated nongovernmental, non-sectarian effort to break down the segmented educational system. Instead, that When All Else Fails • 145

segmented system only strengthened during the period of majoritarian rule, confirming the null hypothesis that without a civil society committed to reform, an integrated agenda in deeply divided societies will not progress.

From 1920 to 1972, the Ulster Unionist party controlled between 62 and 76 percent of the seats at the Parliament of Stormont (Crighton & Iver, 1991). Since Stormont operated under a British system of majoritarianism during this time, the Unionists were able to “form one-party governments with no Catholic representation whatsoever” (p. 131). This heavy-handed majoritarianism had deleterious effects on the state institutions, which “appeared to express the interests of only one group in society and therefore lacked the autonomy so essential to political development” (p. 131). In laymen’s terms, this meant that the state significantly privileged Protestants to the detriment of legitimacy and, ultimately, stability.

Protestant schools received more funding, Protestant communities received better services, and – even when controlling for lower levels of education – Protestant workers received better jobs in both the public and private sectors (Hancock, 1998). As Brinkerhoff and Goldsmith (2004) highlight, this type of clientelism – a process where goods and services are exchanged for political support – “tends to flourish in insecure political and economic environments […] and is integral to the politics of survival for both patrons and clients” (p. 165). It also further entrenched division because the majority, which had the power, had no incentive to change the arrangement on its own accord.

Lord Londonderry, Northern Ireland’s first Minister for Education, harbored an idyllic vision of “schools where children of different faiths might study and play together” and “denominational religious instruction only [took place] outside hours of compulsory attendance" (Bardon, 2009, p. 13). However, Londonderry’s views clashed with the political realities of a system underpinned by segmentation. He could not even find support from the commission that he convened to make suggestions for education reform. That body – the Lynn Commission - declared:

Whilst we deplore the fact that children of all denominations have not been educated together, and believe that this separation of the pupils has been productive of great injury to the community, we think that under existing conditions no attempt to amalgamate schools under Roman Catholic and Protestant management would meet with any measure of success. (Lynn Report, 1922, p. 221)

Londonderry ignored this advice and moved forward with an attempt to create inclusive schools. Although he had the initial support of his Ulster Unionist Government, he was handicapped by the absence of a civil society to support his reforms. This did not prove to be a challenge initially when his 1923 Education (Northern Ireland) Act, complete with language that restricted denominational instruction in state-managed schools, passed an unwitting Parliament. However, the bill quickly generated a firestorm of controversy with both the Protestant and Catholic churches “embittered by what they saw as the Act’s usurpation of their traditional role in education” (Irish Educational Documents, 1995, p. 34).

Capitalizing on their influence in the majoritarian system, the Protestant clerics formed the United Education Committee of the Protestant Churches and quickly set about “directly threatening the new and fragile government” (McEwen, 1999, p. 8). Without any organized group (i.e., civil JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 146 society) in a position to support Londonderry’s reforms and counteract pressure from the Churches, the 1923 Act was short-lived. Northern Ireland Prime Minister James Craig withdrew his support for Londonderry’s reforms, an amending bill was rushed through Parliament that rolled back his reforms, and Lord Londonderry resigned the following year (Akenson, 1973).

Timeline 2: Major Acts, Events, and Orders 1920 Government of Ireland Act 1923 Education (Northern Ireland) Act 1930 Education Act 1973 Sunningdale Agreement 1974 ACT 1978 Dunleath Act 1981 Lagan College founded 1989 Education Reform (Northern Ireland) Order 1998 Good Friday Agreement

The lack of a civil society capable of mitigating the influence of the Protestant Churches certainly hastened the failure of the 1923 Act, but that narrative only tells half the story. It is also important to understand that the Catholic Church had little intention of ceding influence over its schools and would sustain great injuries to maintain its control.

After Londonderry’s departure, subsequent legislation only further separated Catholic and Protestant school children, with the 1930 Education Act “putting denominational schooling on a statutory footing” for the first time (McEwen, 1999, p. 9). The Act established tiers of schools, with the most funding going to those that acquiesced to full state control. Protestant churches were willing to cede control to the Protestant state, but that option was unacceptable to the Catholic community whose schools represented “the only major state system in their control in an otherwise hostile cultural and political environment” (McEwen, 1999, p. 10). As a result, the Catholic Church maintained control over its own schools and accepted the lower levels of funding. This was only the most egregious example of “the unionist government with its unassailable majority discriminating against Catholics in education provision” (Bardon, 2009, p. 15). However, the willingness of the Catholic Church to accept this discriminatory arrangement shows the barriers that would face the government if, acting alone, it sought to reduce the influence of the Catholic Church. In fact, in later years as the advent of a civil society dedicated to integration led to the creation of integrated schools it would be the Catholic Church and not the Protestants that would provide the fiercest opposition.

Sunset on Sunningdale 1973

In 1972 the Catholic civil rights movement that had been gaining traction over the course of the 1960s erupted into violence so severe it led the British Government to exercise its authority to suspend the Parliament of Northern Ireland and reintroduce direct control. However, negotiations When All Else Fails • 147

to reinstitute a power-sharing government began immediately and resulted in the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement. The Agreement created a new legislative body called the Northern Ireland Assembly that would be elected by proportional representation and then select an executive through the D’Hondt method.1 The power-sharing executive began its work at the end of 1973, only to be struck a critical blow two months later when anti-Sunningdale leaders were elected to all but one of the Protestant districts in a Westminster general election. As a result, the opinion of Basil McIvor, the recently installed Minister of Education, was that “the time available for implementing educational change was likely to be exceedingly short” (Bardon, 2009, p. 23). The specter of an impending collapse of the Government significantly complicates interpretation of the Sunningdale government’s actions during the five months before the Agreement failed on May 28, 1974. Since there was still no active civil society, this section tests for the null hypothesis in the context of consociational power-sharing.

In April of 1974, just a month before the government failed, Basil McIvor proposed to introduce a new category of “Shared Schools” that would be open to children of any religion. Despite its voluntary nature, the plan was incredibly audacious for a government whose political fortunes were in question. Nonetheless, McIvor had the unanimous support of the Northern Ireland Executive, the strong support of the Methodist Church and the Church of England, the cautious support of the Church of Ireland and the Presbyterian Church, and the endorsements of the two principal teaching unions. Meanwhile, although the Catholic Church stated its opposition to the plan, a majority of SDLP members (the core Catholic party) indicated their willingness to explore the option (Bardon, 2009).

At its surface, this seems to indicate a surprising willingness to break down the segmented education system and – if this effort were successful – would refute the null hypothesis since ACT, our marker for civil society, was not formed until a year later. Unfortunately, the government collapsed before the rhetorical support for the Shared Schools Initiative could be put to the test, precluding a conclusive decision on the null hypothesis in this case study. However, there are several reasons why the evidence suggests that, despite the excitement this bill precipitated, the Shared Schools Plan would not have been implemented.

First, following the Westminster General Election, the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive knew its time was limited, which reduced the potential cost of taking controversial stands. Second, the Churches had a history of publicly supporting integration but then failing to match their rhetoric with action. This would be seen four years later when, inspired by the ecclesiastical support for the Shared Schools Plan, a law was passed to allow the Churches to voluntarily convert their schools to integrated status and none did so. There is no reason to believe the circumstances were drastically different in 1978. Third, Assembly members were opportunistic in using debate on the Shared Schools Plan to make partisan attacks, which strained relations and likely would have fractured the already uneasy alliance if the government had not fallen shortly thereafter (Bardon, 2009). As would be seen three decades later when consociational power sharing was reinstituted, it does not take long for issues to become divisive in the Northern Ireland Assembly.

1 The D’Hondt method is a mechanism for selecting a power-sharing executive. It functions as a form of draft, with each party allotted a number of minister appointments proportional to their representation in the Assembly. For more information see O’Leary, B., Grofman, B., & Elklit, J. (2005). JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 148

Ultimately, protests collapsed the Sunningdale government before the fate of the Shared Schools Plan could be divined, so the null hypothesis is inconclusive in this case. However, the evidence suggests that the null is valid and the effort to provide integrated schooling options would have failed even if the Sunningdale government had not. Luckily, the Shared Schools Plan inspired a wide cross-section of society, which joined the nascent ACT when it formed shortly thereafter and began agitating for change. The founding of ACT created the first civil society organization created to promote educational integration and its efforts would ultimately play a critical role.

The Era of Direct Control 1974-1998

In 1974, facing widespread civil disorder, the British Government sitting in Westminster had little choice but to dissolve the Sunningdale Agreement and reinstitute direct control as an external actor.2 Rose (2001) points out that, prior to the beginnings of the Catholic Rights Movement, Northern Ireland was “given a low priority by the Labour Party in part […] due to the absence of political unrest or violence” (p. 11). Since the presence of unrest then prompted intervention, the presumption is that Westminster’s primary concern was ensuring peace and stability. As a result, one would expect reluctance to take any action that could aggravate the situation. Palmer’s (2005) hypothesis was that external actors had the latitude to make unpopular decisions because they were not accountable to domestic interests. Although Palmer acknowledged the potential for concern about stability, he still argued that Westminster played a critical role in reform by virtue of its qualities as an external actor. This section conditions his hypothesis by highlighting that Westminster was a reluctant reformer pushed to action by civil society. With ACT now constituted and actively lobbying for reform, it is possible to test the hypothesis that civil society is necessary to the successful implementation of an integration agenda in deeply divided societies. To do that, this section argues that without civil society Westminster’s concerns about stability would have trumped its capacity to act and stymied reform.

Immediately following the introduction of direct control, British Home Secretary Callaghan took a strong position against educational segmentation. In his speech to the Labour Party Conference, he said it was “offensive that separate education is advanced as an unshakeable principle” (McGrath, 2000, p. 182). That speech set off rampant speculation about the approach Westminster would take to education reform. However, those hopeful for change had their hopes dashed by the Minister of State for Northern Ireland’s Education Portfolio, who told DENI that he was not mandated to change the laws surrounding segmentation and therefore would not take assertive action. From this early point it became clear the British leadership was not interested in pushing for transformational change out of fear such actions could incite backlash (Bardon, 2009).

ACT responded by putting pressure on the British Government to take action. During this time, the organization commissioned public opinion polls that showed widespread support for integration, encouraged the Churches to make public declarations of support for such options, and frequently referenced documents – including the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights, and the second Vatican Council’s Declaration on

2 Westminster is not a perfect external actor, but for the purposes of this analysis the categorization holds because (1) only 18 of the 650 Members of Parliament at Westminster are elected from districts in Northern Ireland, and (2) because Westminster assumed direct control after fifty years of devolved autonomy. When All Else Fails • 149

Christian Education – to argue that the British government and the Catholic Church had a legal obligation to support reform (McGrath, 2000).

When those efforts failed to prompt action from Westminster, ACT recruited Lord Dunleath of Ballywalter – a Northern Irish Peer – to its cause. Lord Dunleath agreed to introduce a private members bill that would create a process through which the Boards of Governors of Protestant controlled and Catholic maintained schools could voluntarily elect to transform into a new category of controlled integrated schools. Despite last minute attempts from within the British government to discourage Lord Dunleath from taking action, once his bill was introduced, it passed both houses and was amended into the Education (Northern Ireland) Act of 1978, colloquially known as “the Dunleath Act.”

Dorinda Lady Dunleath recounted this masterful strategy by ACT and how their lobbying placed considerable pressure on the British Government, which could not explicitly oppose an entirely voluntary option for integration without alienating British and international popular opinion (personal communication, July 22, 2011). Sure enough, the British Government made clear that it was not opposed to integration, even if it was still clearly determined to be a passive actor in the process. Meanwhile, the voluntary nature of the Act meant little came of it at the time, even if it was a landmark statutory development. The bill had been inspired by the public support several Churches had given McIvor’s Shared Schools Plan, but following the Dunleath Act it became clear that none of the Churches were willing to match their rhetoric with action. Although they now had statutory authority to formally integrate their schools, not a single school chose to integrate (Bardon, 2009). As a result, ACT continued to pressure the system by opening Lagan College, Northern Ireland’s first integrated school, in 1981.

The story of Lagan College aptly demonstrates the challenges that supporters of integration faced under British direct rule as well as their determination to demonstrate that Catholic and Protestant children could indeed learn together. Opposition to the school was so great that DENI refused it any form of financial aid when ACT approached the Department for assistance. As a result, a group of parents was prepared to mortgage their homes for start-up funding before the Rowntree Charitable Trust provided last minute support. In large part, Lagan College was a pioneer by proving the possibility of opening an integrated school without government aid. Nonetheless, the costs were daunting: Lagan College had to raise £750,000 to fund its first four years. During this time, ACT continued to pressure the government for assistance, which it ultimately began receiving in 1984. However, the reluctance to provide that aid – which only came after four years – is damming proof that Westminster had little interest in dispelling the view that opening an independent integrated school would be cost-prohibitive (Bardon, 2009).

Even after Lagan opened, the environment remained very difficult for new schools, and the Government did little to ameliorate the situation for at least the next several years. The implicit lack of support during the late 1980s is best illustrated by the plight of Forge Primary School, Northern Ireland’s second integrated school, which opened in 1985. A group of parents, supported by ACT, decided to open Forge Primary School when an existing school closed due to falling enrolments. As Bardon (2009) recounted, DENI first denied their request to use the Dunleath Act to transform the existing school before it closed and then insisted they purchase the property at the full asking price (without government assistance) if they wished to open an integrated school. This was similar to the situation that Lagan College had faced and was the normal, if still daunting, JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 150 status quo under British control at least until 1989. ACT took out a short-term interest-free loan from the Nuffield Foundation, bought the site, and began leasing it to the newly vested Forge Primary School. After self-funding for two years, Forge qualified for integrated status by its third year and began to receive full funding for recurrent expenses. At that point, it started the process to purchase its school site from ACT using the government’s capital funds.

In a seemingly fortunate stroke of luck, the British Government issued the Education Reform (Northern Ireland) Order in 1989, requiring the government to begin providing active support to the integrated sector. This implied that there would be greater support for Forge as it applied for government funding to purchase its site from ACT. However, Forge’s experience demonstrated another instance of the gap between rhetoric and action. The new Education Order shifted jurisdiction of integrated schools from DENI’s direct authority to the control of the local Education and Library Boards, which oversaw controlled schools on a district level. Although DENI had already encumbered approximately $200,000 to purchase Forge’s school site, when the matter transferred to the Belfast Library and School Board, that entity decided it was not interested in purchasing the site ACT had bought with funds from the Nuffield Foundation, a loan that had to be repaid. Neither DENI nor the Government intervened in what subsequently proved to be a long and drawn out legal proceeding that disrupted the school, which had to move; strained relations with the Nuffield Foundation, which did not receive payment for eight years; and nearly bankrupted ACT, which had to pay £46,704 of interest on the original £110,000 loan that would have been interest-free if repaid on time (Bardon 2009).

The 1989 Education Reform Order is often referred to as a “watershed moment” in the development of integrated education because it introduced statutory support for integrated education, began government funding of the Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education (NICIE3), and allowed new schools to qualify for recurrent funding from day one if they met the necessary criteria (Montgomery, 2002). Henceforth, Westminster was significantly more supportive of integrated education than it had been during the prior fifteen years. However, engaged observers described that support as far more passive than active, and ACT and its allies had to remain active in promoting reform. In sociologist Ken Palmer’s words, the British government was still prone to “mouthing support for inclusive education, [but] never demonstrating any sustained commitment, and more often instead balancing out demands of reformers and those in favor of the status quo” (Palmer, 2005, p. 168). Sir Kenneth Bloomfield, former ranking British Civil Servant in Northern Ireland, echoed that sentiment in stating his biggest regret to be not pushing a more assertive reform agenda while the British government reserved authority to do so (personal communication, July 19, 2011).

As an external actor, Westminster was risk-averse and reluctant to support integrated schooling if it had the potential to aggravate local politics (which it always did) so it took years of dedicated action by ACT before Westminster was willing to take a more supportive approach. It was during this period of British direct control that the integrated sector evolved, and the critical role civil society played in prompting government action must be recognized. Without the work of ACT (and

3 NICIE was established in 1987 to coordinate efforts between integrated schools in Northern Ireland, support new schools, and serve as a clearinghouse for funding. NICIE ultimately absorbed ACT. For more information, see Bardon (2009). When All Else Fails • 151

later NICIE and the IEF4), legislation like the Dunleath Act could have been years coming – or never come at all – and the same could be said for the opening of integrated schools. The developments during this phase strongly confirm the hypothesis that civil society is necessary to the successful implementation of an integration agenda in a deeply divided society.

Questionable Consociationalism 1998-2002

After more than two decades of British direct rule, a settlement was finally reached that began the process of devolving power back to Northern Irish institutions. On April 10, 1998, the majority of Northern Ireland’s political parties signed the Belfast Agreement (Good Friday Agreement), vowing their “total and absolute commitment to exclusively democratic and peaceful means” (Declaration of Support, 1998, p. 2). Although the peace accord was more inclusive and broader in scope than Sunningdale, the political institutions it created bore a number of similarities. Power was restored to the Assembly of Northern Ireland, which would be elected by proportional representation and appoint ministers using the D’Hondt system (Ibid). While this marked the beginning of a move towards greater peace and stability, there were still years of low-intensity violence and sectarianism ahead that only furthered the need for an active civil society.

The signatories to the Belfast Agreement also pledged “to facilitate and encourage integrated education and mixed housing” in order to create “a culture of tolerance at every level of society" (Ibid 23). However, Northern Ireland remains heavily segregated and has actually become more segregated over the past twenty years (Knox, 2010). In large part, this is because the consociational government shows the same unwillingness to take controversial positions as Westminster. However, there is an additional complicating factor. Andeweg (2003) suggested that under a consociational system elites were incentivized to strengthen segmentation in order to “reduce their own increased intrasegmental vulnerability that is caused by their intersegmental cooperation” (p. 528). In laymen’s terms, when a deeply divided society begins to integrate it is not always in the interest of the existing elites if they begin losing support to new crosscutting groups. Collectively, these two factors – timidity and skewed incentives – have acted as a disincentive for the consociational government to instigate education reform and underscored the importance of a dedicated civil society committed to counteracting these interests.

Elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly took place on June 25, 1998, but continued violence meant the peace process remained fragile. The formation of the Executive was continually delayed over disagreements about the decommissioning of armed groups, such that a Government was not selected until November 29, 1999. That Government would rule under devolution for just under three years, until Westminster would be forced to restore direct control in October 2002 (BBC Timeline, 2006). However, during that time the Northern Ireland Assembly had total control over the education system. Most of this power was (and currently is) vested in the Northern Ireland Minister of Education, who has wide latitude over education policy once he is selected through the D’Hondt system. The Belfast Agreement does build in a consociationalist check on this authority by ensuring an opposing party leads the legislative committee tasked with oversight. However, a member of this committee was quoted to say: “It is difficult to identify one issue where the

4 The Integrated Ireland Fund (IEF) was founded in 1992 as an independent financial foundation that seeks to further integrated education in Northern Ireland. Information about the IEF can be found at http://www.ief.org.uk/. JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 152

Education Committee got the department to change or to make policy” (McKeown & Osborne, 2006, p. 135). One reason is likely that, from the beginning of devolved power, the relationship between Minister and committee has been strained (Ibid).

In 1999, Sinn Fein shocked everyone when they used their fourth pick in the D’Hondt process to select the education ministry, and then announced that Martin McGuinness – a former Regional Commander of the IRA – would serve as Minister of Education (Palmer, 2005). This led to massive protests in Protestant schools, insubordination within DENI, and conflict with the Education committee. However, without much formal authority over policy, the committee has often been known to resort to political grandstanding that only further increases tensions (N. Richardson, personal communication, July 20, 2011).

This type of “ethnic particularism” is indicative of the partisanship that has been present in the education sector since power was devolved, and it has had far reaching consequences for education reform (Gallagher, 2006). Palmer’s grim assessment is that once power was devolved, “any momentum towards integrated education was soon halted” because every issue became a cause for sectarian gridlock (Palmer, 2005, p. 195).

As a result, the consociational government shared Westminster’s propensity to be a reluctant reformer. One manifestation of this timidity was the emphases on opening transformed schools, a process that began under direct control but reached its nadir under devolution. Within the integrated sector there are two categories of schools that have not hitherto been differentiated. Grant-maintained integrated schools are those like Lagan College that are started from the ground up by interested stakeholders. Starting in the mid-1990s, these schools now qualify for recurrent operational funding as early as year one and capital grants as early as year three, if approved by DENI. Next are controlled-integrated schools. These are traditional controlled schools whose Boards of Governors elect to transform them to integrated status, which entails diversifying the leadership and enrolment draw to ensure a minimum of 30 percent minority representation.5 These schools continue to be funded and managed by DENI.6

Prior to 1996, only three of Northern Ireland’s 28 integrated schools were controlled schools that had elected to transform. However, that year, DENI engaged in a review of the integrated schooling sector and, as a result of the review, raised the viability criterion for new grant- maintained integrated schools while simultaneously making it easier for controlled schools to transform to controlled-integrated status (DENI, 2010). As a result, there has been a significant increase in controlled-integrated schools, which now represent more than one-third of the integrated sector (DENI, 2012b).

The transformation policy has been favored under both direct and consociational rule, respectively by Westminster and Stormont, because it provides an avenue through which calls for reform can be appeased without provoking backlash. Opening grant-maintained schools is inherently controversial because these new schools compete with existing controlled and

5 In practice, this means drawing in Catholic students since the controlled schools are majority Protestant. 6 In theory there is a third category of maintained-integrated schools, which would be comprised of any Catholic-maintained schools that elected to diversify their governorship and enrolment draw, while remaining under the management of the Catholic Church. However, the Catholic leadership remains opposed to this option. When All Else Fails • 153

maintained schools for students, generating opposition from both the Catholic and Protestant communities. By voluntarily transforming an existing controlled school into a controlled-integrated school, substantial opposition is mitigated since the number of schools remains constant.

The problem is that transformed schools often transform in an effort to stave off declining enrolments, and this has raised questions about their dedication to the mission of integration as well as their suitability relative to grant-maintained schools. The Nuffield Foundation found that transformed schools rarely meet the same standards as grant-maintained schools. That study corroborated the common assessment among stakeholders that transformed schools often lack a dedication to the precepts of contact theory, do not have strong buy-in within their community, fail to properly train their staff, and often continue to function like a normal controlled school (McGonigle, Smith & Gallagher, 2003). Placed within the context of the political system, transformation offers a number of benefits attractive to a consociational government unable to take controversial stands because of political gridlock and with a vested interest in maintaining some level of inter-group segmentation.

This is very much the argument that Ken Palmer (2005) takes when he argues, “the devolved power-sharing government established under the Good Friday Agreement lacked any commitment [to integrated education] at all” (p. 169). The integrated sector did continue to expand under the consociational system but that was very much driven by a civil society that had taken the initiative to both open new schools and transform existing ones, while providing them with technical and financial assistance. It is difficult to divine what actions the consociational government would have taken if an integrated sector had not already existed by 1999. It is unlikely that it would have taken major action. Under the current consociational system, Protestants and Catholics continue to be largely schooled separately and there has been no effort to change the status quo. Instead, by supporting transformation, the consociational government has been as conservative as possible without taking an actively opposed position. Despite the government’s impotence, supporters of integration have continued to push the standard forward, opening new schools, supporting existing ones, and ceaselessly lobbying for further reform.

Conclusion: A Role for Civil Society

In 1973, almost no students were cross-enrolled in schools outside of their denomination, yet polling found “sixty-four percent of Catholics and fifty-nine percent of Protestants supporting integration” (McGrath, 2000). In 2011, six percent of students were attending integrated schools and a poll commissioned by the Integrated Education Fund found 90 percent of the population supporting integrated education (Attitudinal Survey on Integrated Education, 2011). At the school level there are incredible success stories like Lagan College and the other sixty integrated schools now open. Yet, at the macro level, 94 percent of Northern Irish pupils still attend schools exclusive to their religious background in a society that continues to be deeply divided.

Where there have been successes, it is important to recognize the critical role played by civil society. Beginning with All Children Together (ACT), a dedicated group of parents and local citizens of both faith communities rallied around the cause of integrated education. Following the failure of the Sunningdale Agreement and its Shared Schools Plan they began actively lobbying Westminster to provide an integrated option. That led to a watershed moment when the Dunleath JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 154

Act was passed in 1978, finally establishing a de jure route for the establishment of integrated schooling. Yet, facing continued recalcitrance from both church and state, ACT opened Lagan College in 1981. Since then, ACT – and now NICIE and IEF – have supported dozens more schools. All throughout, they have placed continual pressure on the Government, be it Westminster or the Northern Ireland Assembly. Despite the challenges of the 1990s and the partisanship of the 2000s, supporters of integrated education have continued to open schools and support them, even if the government has been far from supportive. The history of ACT from 1974 onwards strongly confirms the hypothesis that civil society is necessary to the successful implementation of an integration agenda in deeply divided societies.

It is also important to recognize the validity of the null hypothesis that without a civil society committed to reform, an integrated agenda in deeply divided societies will not progress. The best efforts of Lord Londonderry in the 1920s and Basil McIvor in 1973 failed to lead to an integrated option. In both cases, there was not a group dedicated to supporting their policies and counteracting the opposition, or simply acting outside the political system and opening their own schools – as ACT did initially with Lagan College and Forge Primary.

Civil society’s successes must be qualified so long as there is a substantial gap between the stated support of the general population for integrated schooling and the actual numbers of enrolled students. However, without civil society it is unlikely the integrated sector would exist at the scale it does today, if it would even exist at all. This has important policy implications for any deeply divided society. Regardless of the political system in place, the lesson of Northern Ireland is that civil society’s dedication to fostering peace cannot be underestimated.

When All Else Fails • 155

References

Akenson, D. (1973). Education and enmity: The control of schooling in Northern Ireland, 1920-50. New York, NY: Barnes & Noble Books.

Andeweg, R. (2003). Consociational democracy. Annual Review of Political Science, 3, 509-36.

Bardon, J. (2009). The struggle for shared schools in Northern Ireland. Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation.

BBC timeline: Northern Ireland’s road to peace. (2006, January). Retrieved on 15 April 2012 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/4072261.stm

Brinkerhoff, D. & Goldsmith, A. (2004). Good governance, clientelism, and patrimonialism: New perspectives on old problems. International Public Management Journal, 7(2), 164 185.

Crighton, E. & Iver, M. (1991). The evolution of protracted ethnic conflict: Group dominance and political underdevelopment in Northern Ireland and Lebanon. Comparative Politics, 23(2), 127-142.

Declaration of support: Agreement reached in the multi-party negotiations. (1998, April). Retrieved on 10 April 2012 from http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/peace/docs/agreement.htm

Department of Education in Northern Ireland (DENI). (2010). Transformation – An information pack for schools. Retrieved on 20 April 2012 from http://www.deni.gov.uk/transformation_pack-4.pdf

Department of Education in Northern Ireland (DENI). (2012a). List of integrated schools in Northern Ireland. Retrieved on 22 April 2012 from http://www.deni.gov.uk/index/schools-and-infrastructure-2/schools-management/10 types_of_school-nischools_pg/16-schools-integratedschools_pg/16-schools types_of_school-listsofintegratedschools_pg.htm

Department of Education in Northern Ireland (DENI). (2012b). Enrolments by school management type 2000/01 – 2011/12. Retrieved on 12 April 2012 from http://www.deni.gov.uk/enrolment_by_school_management_type_updated_1112.xls

Gallagher, T. (2006). The impact of devolution on education policy: Two case studies. In C. Donnelly, P. McKeown, & R. Osborne (Eds.), Devolution and pluralism in education in Northern Ireland (pp. 139-148). New York, NY: Manchester University Press.

Hancock, L. (1998). Northern Ireland: Troubles brewing. In CAIN: Conflict and politics in Northern Ireland. Retrieved on 21 April 2012 from http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/othelem/landon.htm

Hyland, A., Milne, K., Byrne, G., & Dallat, J. (Eds.). (1995). Irish Educational Documents. Vol. III. Dublin: Church of Ireland College of Education.

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 156

Integrated Education Fund. (2011). Attitudinal Survey on Integrated Education. Retrieved on 15 April 2012 from http://www.ief.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Attitudinal Survey Final-Report.pdf

Knox, C. (2010). Peace building in Northern Ireland: A role for civil society. Social Policy and Society, 10(1), 13-28.

Lijphart, A. (1977). Majority rule versus democracy in deeply divided societies. Politikon: South African Journal of Political Science, 4(2), 113-126.

Lynn, R. (1922). Interim Report of the Department Committee on the Educational Services in Northern Ireland, Ministry of Education, 1922. In A. Hyland, K. Milne, G. Byrne, & J. Dallat. (Eds.). (1995). Irish Educational Documents. Vol. III. Dublin: Church of Ireland College of Education.

Manor, J., Robinson, M. & White, G. (1999). Civil society and governance: A concept paper. Institute for Development Studies (IDS). Retrieved from http://www.ids.ac.uk/ids/civsoc/public.doc

McEwen, A. (1999). Public policy in a divided society: Schooling, culture and identity in Northern Ireland. Brookfield: Ashgate.

McGonigle, J., Alan S., & Gallagher, T. (2003). The challenge of transformation. Integrated Education in Northern Ireland (Vol. 3). Nuffield Foundation.

McGrath, M. (2000). The Catholic Church and Catholic schools in Northern Ireland. Dublin: Irish Academic Press.

McKeown, P, & Osborne, B. (2006). Making education policy under devolution: the role of the Northern Ireland Assembly committees. In C. Donnelly, P. McKeown, & R. Osborne (Eds.), Devolution and pluralism in education in Northern Ireland. New York, NY: Manchester University Press.

Montgomery, A., Fraser, G., McGlynn, C., Smith, A., & Gallagher, T. (2002). Integrated education in Northern Ireland: Integration in practice. Retrieved from http://arrts.gtcni.org.uk/gtcni/bitstream/2428/6018/1/Integration%2520in%2520Practice.pdf

Oberschall, A. (2007). Conflict and peace building in divided societies. New York: Routledge.

O’Leary, B., Grofman, B., & Elklit, J. (2005). Divisor methods for sequential portfolio allocation in multi-party executive bodies: Evidence from Northern Ireland and Denmark.” American Journal of Political Science, 49(1), 198-211.

Palmer, K. (2005). Power-sharing extended: Policing and education reform in Bosnia Herzegovina and Northern Ireland. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Rose, P. (2001). How the troubles came to Northern Ireland. New York, NY: Palgrave.

Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education. (2009). Statement of Principles. Retrieved on 22 April 2012 from http://www.nicie.org/aboutus/default.asp?id=27 When All Else Fails • 157

Stringer, M., Irwing, P., Giles, M., McClenahan, C., Wilson, R., & Hunter, J.A. (2009). Intergroup contact, friendship quality and political attitudes in integrated and segregated schools in Northern Ireland. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 9, 239-257.

Journal of Global Citizenship & Equity Education Volume 2 Number 2 - 2012 journals.sfu.ca/jgcee

Urban Reality of Type 2 Diabetes among First Nations of Eastern Ontario: Western Science and Indigenous Perceptions1

Hasu Ghosh Ph.D. Candidate in Population Health Institute of Population Health, University of Ottawa

Keywords: Type 2 Diabetes, Urban First Nations People, Aboriginal Peoples, Structural Violence, Determinants of Health, Chronic Disease Perception

ABSTRACT: This paper presents an anthropological investigation of perception and management of Type 2 Diabetes among First Nations people in an Eastern Ontario urban setting. Applying the concept of structural violence and based on the semi-structured interviews conducted with urban First Nations people and health care professionals, findings of this study reflect that diabetes is entangled in a complex web of social and cultural circumstances that make the coping and management of this disease very challenging for today’s First Nations people. Results also document the shared social, cultural and historical circumstances which have contributed to the emergence of diabetes among First Nations people. Diabetes in this regard can be viewed as a reflection of economic and social conditions, but also low self-esteem and self-worth arising from a colonial past. These perspectives have repercussions for reaction to diabetes diagnosis and coping strategies around diet, physical activity and medication. Existing levels of diabetes management strategies, including treatment, support and education meet the urban First Nation peoples’ need to some extent. The paper concludes with the recommendations for development of future health and social programmes that engage stakeholders and pay considerable attention to their strengths and needs.

Introduction

The urban Canadian landscape continues to change due to the shifting nature of its population composition. Several push and pull factors trigger within and outside of the country population migration, which is again to a great extent a reflection of federal and provincial policies regarding

1 The author gratefully acknowledges her supervisors Prof. Derek G. Smith and Prof. Jared Keil for their guidance and mentorship during all phases of her Masters’ research. Author is also indebted to Dr. Gail Valaskakis (deceased), Aboriginal Healing Foundation; Kevin Armstrong (deceased), Assembly of First Nations; Vince Kicknosway and Marge Lanigan (deceased), of Odawa Native Friendship Centre; and Dr Beverley Shea of CIET Canada for extending their help and support during the tenure of this project; and to the CIHR-IAPH funded Anisnawbe Kekendazone—Ottawa ACADRE for providing her the Masters Research Award. This paper has received enriching comments from the session moderator at the First Nations Research Conference, November 13-15, 2005, Ottawa; and the participants from AK-NEAHR Knowledge Translation Colloquium, February 21-23, 2010, McGill University, Montreal, QC. Urban Reality of Type 2 Diabetes among First Nations of Eastern Ontario • 159

health, education, settlement and employment. For Canadian Aboriginal Peoples2, the census data reveal that there has been a dramatic change in the proportion of people living in urban centres from 6.7% in 1951 to 54% in 20063. Today, First Nations people4 account for 50% of urban Canadian Aboriginal Peoples (Statistics Canada, 2008). It is projected that this trend of urbanization will continue to increase (Newhouse & Peters, 2003). Again in Ontario 62 per cent of the Aboriginal population live in urban areas (Ontario Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs, 2012). In many instances, First Nations people arrive in cities with diverse history, culture, realities, identities, hopes and aspirations to contribute in urban life. The majority of programs and services available in cities, however, are unable to meet their diverse needs (Peters, 2002; 2006). Over the last several decades, urbanization along with continued colonization and marginalization has exposed the First Nations people to a broad range of contextual stressors that have contributed to the increasing susceptibility to adverse health events, their spirit and capacities (Peters, 2006; Reading, Kmetic & Giddion, 2007; Smylie, 2009). Understanding these contextual stressors from peoples’ narratives is very important for health and social service providers; and their applications in a service delivery context is a major and much needed task and, at the same time, a health provision challenge.

Since the early 1970s, diabetes has been recognized as an emerging serious health problem among many Aboriginal communities. Literature states that Aboriginal Peoples are considered as one of the ‘high risk’ population groups as they are at increased risk of developing Type 2 diabetes (Young, 1994; Haffner, 1998; Champlain LHIN, 2009). Aboriginal Peoples are mostly affected by Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) or Non-Insulin-Dependent Diabetes Mellitus (NIDDM) 5 (Public Health Agency of Canada [PHAC], 2011; Public Health Agency of Canada [PHAC], 2005). Findings from the Aboriginal Peoples Survey II (APS II) also reveal that diabetes among the non- reserve Aboriginal population is most prevalent among First Nations people (Statistics Canada, 2004). There is also evidence that genetics predispose in the pathogenesis of diabetes (Zeggini & McCarthy, 2007; Patti et al., 2003; Haffner, 1998; Szathmary, 1987).

An emerging body of research from anthropology and allied health sciences, however, has demonstrated that the differential prevalence and incidence of diabetes across the population groups correlate with the socio-economic status of the affected people (Lieberman, 2003; Zimmet, Albert & Shaw, 2001). It is the socio-economically marginalized people, who are inequitably affected by diabetes within the developed nations (Raphael et al., 2011). Most of these health inequalities result in health inequities that are systematic, unjust, unfair and preventable (Braveman & Gruskin, 2003; Whitehead, 1991). For example, immediate or proximal biological risk factors responsible for the onset of diabetes can emerge from the practice of consumption of high fat diets, reduced physical activities and increased stress, factors which seem to result from increased urbanization and broader structural inequalities among socio-economically marginalized Aboriginal Peoples (Leiberman, 2003; Raphael et al., 2003; Rock, 2003). Consequently, researchers such as Raphael et al., (2003) and Rock (2003), among many others, critique diabetes

2 Throughout this paper wherever collective reference is necessary I use the term ‘Aboriginal People’ except when referring to other authors’ work. 3 2006 census report has most recent data on Aboriginal population. 4 First Nation people are one of the three constitutionally recognized Aboriginal population groups in Canada. Métis and Inuit people are the two other Aboriginal population groups in Canada. This study, however is restricted in First Nation people only. 5 See, Health Canada 1998: 3, Aboriginal Peoples Survey I (APS I, Statistics Canada 1993).

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 160 research for solely emphasizing genetic variation as an explanation of diabetes epidemic and for overlooking the consideration of the nature and type of structural issues that mediate biological risk factors for diabetes.

In this paper I explore peoples’ narratives surrounding diabetes and its consequences to consider how diabetes achieved social significance among First Nation people in a particular geographical setting, such as in Small Town, eastern Ontario6. Based on existing literature and lived experiences gathered through semi-structured interviews this paper offers an anthropological investigation of the antecedents and consequences of Type 2 Diabetes. This investigation goes beyond the medical model of diabetes and argues that diabetes emerged as a consequence of numerous changes in urban First Nations peoples’ lives, resulting from colonialism and assimilation policies. Contemporary structural and economic inequalities along with historical contingencies continue to influence the increasing prevalence of diabetes in this urban population group. Based on data gathered from my Masters research on explanatory models of diabetes among urban First Nation people, I argue for the idea that increasingly prevalent chronic diseases such as diabetes that originate and propagate in social inequalities may appear as a reflection of continued socio-economic sufferings of First Nations people. Narratives indicate that participants may use diabetes to communicate the damage inflicted by colonialism. At the same time, these narratives provide enough impetus for rethinking diabetes prevention strategies among First Nation people despite many preventative initiatives being put in place. The essence of these narrative discussions finally calls for health and social programmes to heal the damage caused by colonization and perpetuation of First Nation peoples’ lived experiences.

An Overview of Diabetes

Diabetes mellitus in bio-medical science is generally regarded as an endocrine disease resulting from a deficiency or absence of insulin, characterized by hyperglycemia and possible long-term complications (Health Canada, 2001). There are three main types of Diabetes:

Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) is caused by the body’s inability to make insulin7, either making too little or none resulting in a higher concentration of glucose in the blood.

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is characterized by hyperglycemia resulting from a deficiency of insulin. As a result of this, the level of glucose in the blood becomes elevated and results in a condition commonly known as high blood sugar where the body makes insulin but cannot use it effectively (nine out of ten people with diabetes have type 2 diabetes).

Noninsulin dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM) is another name for Type 2 Diabetes mellitus.

Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is a form of diabetes that can develop during pregnancy, when the body is not able to properly use insulin. Although GDM usually goes away following childbirth, both mother and child remain at increased risk of developing Type 2 diabetes in the future (Health Canada, 2007).

6 Small Town, Ontario is the pseudonym of the place where I conducted my interviews 7 Insulin is a hormone which controls the amount of sugar in the blood Urban Reality of Type 2 Diabetes among First Nations of Eastern Ontario • 161

It has been recognized that Type 2 diabetes is caused by a combination of multiple, interlinked and complex risk factors. In bio-medical science, risk factors for this health complication have been largely classified into modifiable and non-modifiable risk factors. Modifiable risk factors are those that can be controlled to reduce risk of developing Type 2 diabetes. These include lack of physical activity, unhealthy weight, unhealthy diet and smoking. Non-modifiable risk factors are those that cannot be reduced or acted upon, such as age, genetic predisposition, ethnicity, family history, etc. (Millar & Dean, 2012; PHAC, 2011). A review based study by Ghosh and Gomes (2011) classified socio-economic and political marginalization, legacy of colonization, access to health care, etc. as intermediate risk factors of Type 2 diabetes, particularly for Aboriginal Peoples; these factors are modifiable to some extent. Ghosh and Gomes (2011) also developed an etiology-based classification of ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ risk factors of Type 2 diabetes, which focuses on psychosocial imbalances, hereditary predisposition, physiological disturbances, etc. The common comorbidities and complications of Type 2 diabetes include hypertension, dyslipidemia, and microvascular disease resulting in end-organ damage to the kidneys, eyes, peripheral nerves, and heart. It is well elaborated in the literature that Type 2 diabetes is a multifactorial disease (PHAC, 2011). Thus, adopting a holistic approach is needed to address the multiple and complex risk factors to prevent and alleviate Type 2 diabetes and its complications (PHAC, 2011, Ghosh & Gomes, 2011).

Interview Process: Questions Posed

Findings of this paper emerge from the author’s Masters research in anthropology. The research location was an Eastern Ontario urban setting among local First Nations peoples. Fieldwork was completed during the period of March-May, 2004. Twenty urban First Nations people voluntarily participated in this research. They include eight First Nations diabetes patients and, twelve First Nations community members who are not diagnosed with diabetes but are familiar with diabetes as a family member, friend, or community member. One of the patients was an Elder as well as a traditional healer. All of the eight diabetes8 patients have Type 2 Diabetes. They have been diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes over a period of one to twenty-eight years. In addition eight key informant interviews with professionals were also conducted. They include front-line service providers, health care providers; one researcher who regularly provides services and interacts with urban First Nations people. Tables 1 and 2 provide a summary of information on participants interviewed for the research.

This research project received ethics approval for data collection from the Research Ethics Board (REB) of Carleton University, Canada. Considerable time and effort was invested to develop meaningful engagement with local Aboriginal community organizations, research organizations and educational institutions. The recruitment of community participants was planned in a way that best answers the research objectives, such as consultation with researchers and program coordinators from Aboriginal organizations in and around the study locality, including cross referral, presentations at various locations and circulation of a letter of introduction within the supporting organization’s networks. The lay interviewees or urban First Nation community participants including clients and staff members from three local Aboriginal organizations and a community college however participated in this research on a voluntary basis. Key informants were

8Throughout this paper Type 2 Diabetes and Diabetes are used interchangeably.

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 162 contacted and recruited directly by the researcher. In order to protect identity and maintain anonymity, pseudonyms were used for every participant. The objective of capturing such a wide range of participants was to get a broader view of diabetes perceptions from different categories of participants. For example, to understand the community perspectives, emphasis was put towards gathering the perspectives of Aboriginal organizations that had been actively working with the Aboriginal Peoples. The insights drawn from their practical experiences of working with the people provided key inputs to the study.

All interviews were conducted at mutually convenient but closed-door locations while priority was given to the participants’ choice. Interview locations ranged from participant’s home to Native Friendship Centre, health centres, Aboriginal organizations, and a community college. Interview questions were structured as loosely as possible to have a relaxed conversation. The interview guide was developed based on the literature and my interests in explanatory models of diabetes causation (Hunt, 1998; Kleinman 1988; Loewe & Freeman, 2000). A semi-structured interview guide for First Nation community members and a slightly modified one for the health care professionals were developed to ensure general consistency across interviews as well to capture diversities in understandings within and across participant groups. During the interviews, however, issues raised in earlier interviews were formulated as questions for subsequent interviewees, but I avoided probing questions unless it was absolutely necessary. This gave me the opportunity to elicit stories from lay participants or particularly significant cases from professionals. The respondents were not requested to provide any direct demographic information except for questions about their age and duration of residence in urban settings. Information on other basic characteristics such as economic condition, source of income, etc. was assessed indirectly from some of their answers. The semi-structured interview method followed in this study provided the opportunity for the interchange of views between researcher and the participant in a flexible manner on a topic of mutual interest. Here interviews provide an avenue for the participants to get involved in the research and talk about their perceptions and interpretation of their life experiences in regards to a given situation. The interchange was meaningful both ways since their lived experiences that I was privileged to hear from them may not have had the opportunity to be shared otherwise (Mattingly & Lawlor, 2000). At the end of each interview, the participants were asked if they had anything else to add to the discussion. This gave me an opportunity for their additional input if there was a topic that they thought had been missed. All but one of the interviews were audio-taped with the informed consent of both parties and transcribed for analysis.

Qualitative Analysis and a Framework for understanding Diabetes

The conceptual framework that was developed has helped to analyze and understand the diabetes experience among urban First Nations people. During the course of formal or informal conversations, the respondents brought up a number of issues that were integrated under several broader themes. The key themes associated with T2DM in this urban community were the connection between colonialism, abuse, poverty and food insecurity and the onset of diabetes as a result of what Gaultung (1980) and Farmer (2005; 1999) called structural violence within their everyday lives. I applied the concept of structural violence, which is widely used in medical anthropology, in contrast to pre-existing assumptions of bio-medical science which approaches “sickness as a natural phenomenon” (Gordon, 1988, p. 24). In this approach, the socio-economic and political contexts in which someone lives are “critical determinants of their health status” (Singer, 2009, p. 144). Farmer (2004) explained that structural violence refers to social structures Urban Reality of Type 2 Diabetes among First Nations of Eastern Ontario • 163

that are “characterized by poverty and steep grades of social inequality,” which systematically limit one’s life choices and chances, and is embodied in “adverse outcomes… [such as] death, injury, [and] illness” (p. 307-308). In order to understand the role played by structural violence in diabetes incidence and prevalence, it is necessary to address intersecting structural determinants, such as socio-economic conditions, cultural background, and the political environment of diabetes that work on multiple levels.

In examining the results of semi-structured interviews, themes were analyzed to determine where diabetes fits into the life experiences of interviewees of different ages, some with diabetes and others without. At the analytical phase, the goal was to identify areas of similarity in perceptions as well as gaps and misconceptions of patients with those of professionals. Some analysis was also devoted to various means for the delivery of diabetes education, prevention treatment initiatives, and how these meet the needs and perceptions identified by the interviewees. A particular focus was placed on what First Nations people thought had contributed to their diabetes and how are they coping or managing with the disease.

A Conceptual Framework for Understanding the Diabetes Experience

The conceptual framework is enriched with the diverse theoretical perspectives not discussed here but well elaborated in Ghosh (2004). This framework explores how colonization as identified by research participants has impacted generations of Aboriginal Peoples through its discriminatory policies and practices that resulted in poverty, food insecurity, homelessness, addiction, and violence, which has its bearing on the incidence of chronic diseases, such as diabetes. This framework also helps us to understand the major social, cultural and historical processes that put the First Nations people at risk of becoming chronically ill. It also helps us understand the coping mechanisms and disease management among the populations. Considering diabetes only as a lifestyle related health complication may mask the fact that these causal factors as identified by the participants do not exist in isolation but are situated within the broader context of marginalization and oppression perpetuated by unequal power relations between the larger Canadian system and Aboriginal Peoples. It is therefore critical to contextualize why and how people are engaged in lifestyles that are detrimental to their health, what motivates them to seek medical care, or how they are coping with the disease and managing life situations. For instance, research participants identified several of these factors including, the legacy of residential schools, and associated separation from their families; subsequent loss of parenting skills and traditional knowledge of food preparation. These combined with continued marginalization have contributed to their current dietary practices; which again have significantly contributed to their present health condition. Structural violence is another outcome of colonial policies and practices, which is enacted through political, social and economic structures that disregard values and beliefs of others. Marginalized communities such as urban First Nations people have faced cultural transitions, loss of language, loss of identity, pride and self-esteem. Participants’ comments revealed that the situation was far more complex in cities where they became victims of further marginalization due to the limited material resources that they lived with. Situations become further complicated because of the limited cultural supports in larger cities and a general lack of cultural sensitivities in the delivery of health and social services towards the overall wellbeing of urban First Nation people (Peters, 2002; Wilson & Rosenberg, 2002). When individuals or population groups are prevented from managing their desired livelihood, achieving their full potential, and when they encounter barriers to following disease prevention and management regiments due to discriminatory policies and limited

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 164 socio-economic resources, these individuals are then considered victims of structural violence (Gaultung, 1980; Farmer, 1999).

The anthropological approach pursued in this research to understanding the antecedents and consequences of diabetes among First Nations people is in concordance with the Aboriginal philosophy of health and sickness described by the medicine wheel. The Medicine wheel (see for example, Warry, 1998) symbolizes balance in emotional, spiritual, mental and physical well-being. If one quadrant is off balance (e.g., by diabetes), then the whole wheel is out of balance. This concept of the medicine wheel not only encompasses a holistic view of health and wellbeing, but also recognizes the articulation of the individual with the community through socio-cultural, economic and political wellbeing, and all of these with the much broader surroundings in order to achieve balance in life. This concept may be expanded to explore the renegotiation of self in the face of diabetes and again, at a community level, the renegotiation with numerous elements of contemporary Aboriginal life (socio-cultural, economic and political). Thus a healthy management of the disease can be achieved.

Peoples’ lived experiences were examined together with bio-medical, sociological, anthropological and historical literature available in the area of Aboriginal health with special reference to urban First Nations people. In order to get a comprehensive picture of the subject under investigation, I consulted several national surveys and government documents published by Statistics Canada, Health Canada, National Aboriginal Health Organization, the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, and other government departments and Internet resources (O’Neil, 1986; Frideres, 1993; Canadian Medical Association [CMA], 1994; Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples [RCAP], 1996; Milloy, 1999).

Understanding Diabetes: the Lived Experience

A majority of the First Nations people that participated in this research had migrated to this urban setting from different parts of Canada; few were also born and raised in this locality. While talking to them, one of the most interesting things I found was that there were a number of remarkably similar themes (e.g., childhood disease experience; significant social, political and historical changes) regardless of age groups and peoples’ original place of birth and residence. I did find diverse opinions surrounding lifestyle factors and issues of diabetes management among First Nations people with varying levels of formal education, employment status and the resources available for their everyday living. My objective for the interviews was to present the changing prevalence of type 2 diabetes in the context of peoples’ memories of culture, society and history. The stories of urban First Nation people particularly highlight how colonial socio-political structure promote acts of structural violence, including displacement of people, relocation of children, and discrimination. These acts are evidenced in the First Nation peoples’ limited access to affordable diet, physical activities, and culturally appropriate health services and the barriers they face to avail existing services. Based on the experiences of research participants, the following themes emerged. The conversations I had during the interviews are mostly presented here using direct quotes.

Urban Reality of Type 2 Diabetes among First Nations of Eastern Ontario • 165

Changes in Aboriginal Lifestyle: Present and Past

The semi-structured interviews conducted in this research provided a greater depth of understanding about how the contemporary factors influenced the life-style patterns, such as dietary choices, physical activities and stress among contemporary urban First Nations people. Broadly speaking, on the one hand there are growing kinds of middle class professionals who are working in organizations and living in cities and raising their children in families that are not much unlike with those of urban mainstream middle class families. At the same time there are real substantial numbers of urban Aboriginal people who are very poor and live on very limited resources (RCAP, 1993; Native Women’s Association of Canada, 1995). I had the opportunity to interact with a group of First Nation people with varied socio-economic and educational backgrounds. The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1993) revealed that Aboriginal Peoples have been and continue to be on the bottom rung of the economic ladder in Canada. The unemployment rate among Aboriginal Peoples is much higher, they earn less, depend more on welfare, and suffer more from extreme poverty compared to non-Aboriginal Canadians. When it comes to participation in community programs, participants shared that they cannot afford to participate in these community programs because of the cost of transportation, program schedules, distance and lack of information. This creates a web of factors that put these groups of people at the margin of information flows, which is again very detrimental to their health and wellbeing. For women, this situation becomes further complicated when as a mother and care giver they give priority to the health of their family, ignoring their own. This ultimately may result in increased stress, limited mobility, weight gain, etc. and, in turn, increased prevalence of diabetes among women as argued by Iwasaki and Bartlett (2006), who mentioned that “perhaps living in an urban setting may create an additional source of stress, unique to urban dwellers, compared to Aboriginal individuals who live in a non-urban (i.e., rural, on-reserve) setting” (p. 24).

Life was quite different in the past as it was painted in a participant’s recollection of her early days. Louise, a First Nation woman recalled that they were living off the land partially; it was half and half grocery store. People also talked about their residential school dietary experience, which indicates consumption of a higher concentration of carbohydrates (macaroni, potato, porridge, etc.). This is also partly indicative of higher incidences of diabetes among First Nation people. In the literature, emergence of diabetes is broadly linked to concomitant changes in lifestyle with special reference to diet and physical activity (Joe & Young, 1993; Narayan, 1997).

Discussions with participants who grew up in different places of this country but migrated to this city, also indicate that the story is much similar for them. While there is an association between lifestyle change and diabetes, there have been many other subsequent changes in the lives of Aboriginal people that have transformed these nomadic people into a sedentary community (Preston, 2000). Added to these are the legacies of the residential school that disconnected the traditions, language, and the pride and dignity of generations of people (Abonyi, 2001). Participants also talked about the ‘negative structuring of life-style’ that they feel had been imposed by the residential school system. They also mentioned the loss of parenting skills. They did not have the capability of sharing their traditional knowledge of leading a healthy lifestyle to their children. The residential school experience directly affected those who were educated through this system. Others were indirectly affected through the collective loss of parenting skills (Milloy, 1999). These changes undoubtedly play a role in the contemporary context of diabetes. The residential schooling system is only one part of displacement of all the oppressive relations that

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 166

Aboriginal Peoples had with the dominant power. There are other factors of changes, that are often considered as improvements in the quality of life, which have also contributed new challenges, such as type 2 diabetes. The following section makes an attempt to shed some light on those issues.

Perceptions of Diabetes:

An exploration of past and present determinants of First Nations peoples’ lifestyle certainly suggests reasons for the current increasing prevalence of type 2 diabetes both at the Western bio- medical level as well as in First Nation peoples’ understandings. As discussed before, urban First Nation people do not necessarily share a common view with Western bio-medical explanation on the emergence of diabetes. Diabetes to urban First Nation people is the outcome of major social, cultural and historical processes that they have gone through over the generations. There are many interpretations of diabetes as a disease both at the lay and professional levels. In the context of the complexities of present day urban life, it is necessary to understand these varied perceptions of diabetes and their consequences.

Why Do We Get Diabetes?

At the outset I must say the people across different professional and community groups interviewed for this project were clearly aware that a lack of appropriate life opportunities might be involved in relation to the increasing prevalence of diabetes among First Nations people. There is more to the story, particularly from the perspectives of the diabetes patients and non-diabetic community members. Some people believe that fast food and store-bought foods may be implicated with diabetes, not only because they are calorie dense, but also because canned food contains many preservatives that have negative health effects. People also talked about other factors that may relate to diabetes such as the lack of physical activity, diet and obesity. In fact, the lack of physical activity, obesity and diet were most frequently mentioned altogether:

In my case I think it is the eating habit, the type of food, being over weight…when I was diagnosed, I was quite overweight. So it is important being able to move around and burn off extra weight.

In order to understand ‘why we get diabetes’ from the First Nation people’s perspectives, the following discussions are focused on socio-economic conditions and their impact on urban areas.

...it also could be the way I ate. Sometimes I crave sweets. When I have money, I go and buy some donuts… I do not care about diabetes…regardless…some days I feel happy next day I am back to my old self again…so I do what I want to do. I did not change anything.

The comments above are significant because in her case, she equates sweet consumption with poverty and depression and social isolation. These factors produce “vulnerability [which] is all about… context,” and it is “a process to be understood in terms of cumulative conditions” (Webb & Harinarayan, 1999). This vulnerability makes First Nation people structurally at risk to disease as these factors aggravate and compound one another, and weaken the capacity and resilience of individuals, families, and communities to cope and recover. This structural risk is a form of Urban Reality of Type 2 Diabetes among First Nations of Eastern Ontario • 167

structural violence due to its adverse impacts on one’s life chances and choices, and has very serious and cumulative health consequences.

Deep-rooted explanations beyond diet, physical activity and psycho-social stress are offered by the health care providers and front line workers, researcher and Aboriginal elders. Professionals point out that First Nation peoples’ limited access to basic needs such as diet and physical activities have been systematically and often violently refuted or represented insufficiently for maintaining their good health. Other factors such as cultural transitions, loss of language, lack of communication, loss of identity, pride and self-esteem have also contributed to the incidence and prevalence of diabetes among First Nation communities. Their comments also indicate that the situation is much more complex in cities. A front line worker says:

…when you are in city and you are in high school, it is hard world out there. There are lots of bullying and as Aboriginal teenagers have different body shapes… they think they are bigger, it is very difficult that affects their self-esteem, motivation and how they treat themselves, how do you love yourself… lots of teenagers do not have that, and they end up doing more harmful behaviours.

These afore-mentioned comments reflect the effects of history combined with contemporary compromised social determinants of diabetes.

Managing or Coping with Diabetes:

Coping with diabetes and its proper management is regulated by various individual level or community level factors. Medical professionals, care givers and non-diabetic community members are of the view that ultimate responsibility for control over diabetes and its management depends on the patient.

Lack of Dietary Choices:

Difficulties implementing and maintaining dietary changes surfaced in both the professional and lay experiences. “Exchanges and offering of food as gestures of hospitality are integral to the Aboriginal social fabric,” (Joos, 1984, p. 230) but we also know that foods available in social gatherings are not always the best choice to eat for a diabetes patient. A First Nation community member says:

…I cannot make ends meet till the end of the month to make sure I have foods…I am in a set income. So I have to manage everything out of that. I don’t know whether it is on the diet or not on the diet. I just cut down, that is all I do.

The above comment seems very similar to the comment of a medical doctor I interviewed.

…I have patients who have food security issues and diabetes. To me that’s a crime, so I can’t put them on certain medications and they are going to the food bank and you know…

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 168

Front line health workers and medical professionals also talked about alcoholism. Diabetes control is especially challenging for the people who are dealing with alcoholism. This is an important factor to address diabetes and its prevention among urban First Nations people, and which demands further exploration.

Lack of Choices for Physical Activities:

Traditionally, physical activities were an integral part of the everyday lifestyle for all Aboriginal Peoples. But changing lifestyle patterns in fast-paced urban centres leaves very little or no place to do physical work. Here the only option is to take part in routine physical activities. Physical activity is clearly recognized to be important both for weight control and as a means of reducing health risks by the First Nations people I interviewed. The big problem for many to partake in organized physical activities, as discussed in the previous section, is the restricted choices for physical activities. Even walking, which is increasing in popularity for everyone, regardless of age and sex, is burdened with all sorts of difficulties ranging from availability of safe outdoor walking area, difficulty in movement, and knowledge about appropriate physical activities. As one diabetes patient said, “I try to maintain healthy lifestyles … although it is not always possible with the hectic lifestyle. I exercise and take care of myself.” In the same line another participant said:

…right now, no physical activities, because I tore my ligaments in my knee two years ago… But before that I used to do my yard and planting, and I walked quite a lot but I can’t do that now because of my leg.

One medical professional explained:

…I mean for sure the ability to access the healthy exercise, like having the time and the financial resources for healthy physical recreation are also a problem.

By reviewing the literature and listening to the above discussion with lay and professionals, it is quite clear that the range of barriers both at the individual and community levels prevent First Nation people to manage or cope with the disease. Their narratives show how colonial stereotypes and structures continue to be perpetuated within the present socio-economic environment, and how this affects their lives and healthy choices surrounding diet and physical activities. It is also particularly difficult for women in family settings with a lot of dependents, and when they have a notion that family is much more important than the individual; then to separate one self out to have a special diet or exercise plan for diabetes would be most unrealistic.

Lack of Treatment Choices:

Almost all the diabetes patients of Small Town that participated in this research largely depend on biomedical treatment. Only one person said that she sometimes would go to the doctor for diabetes, but she thinks that the doctor’s advice does not help her to reduce her blood sugar level, so she relies on naturopathy. Interviewees, such as community members or non-diabetic First Nation people have also shown their primary reliance on biomedicine. The limited references to traditional medicine, however, do not necessarily indicate that many more Aboriginal people are not exploring traditional medicinal approaches. It may be that some people were reluctant to Urban Reality of Type 2 Diabetes among First Nations of Eastern Ontario • 169

discuss traditional medicines with outsiders, as reported in the Regional Health Planning Study (Kapashesit, 1997, cited in Abonyi, 2001), or, perhaps in my limited interviews I simply encountered people who have a primary reliance on western bio-medicine. Alternatively, people from the older age groups may primarily depend on western biomedicine because of its easy accessibility in urban settings. On the whole, people expressed various levels of interest in terms of seeking help from traditional medicine. As Warry (1998) points out, faith or beliefs in Aboriginal health systems are hardly uniform or universal in Aboriginal communities. The presence of the western biomedical regime as a treatment of choice among the urban First Nations people I interviewed is overwhelming. People, however did not express any definitive interest in the integration of western biomedicine and traditional medicine. At the professional level, however, people placed reliance on the integration of the two systems, in terms of their complementarities for the usages of some kind of medications, but they are not in terms of health systems. In this regard, health care professionals have also expressed concern about the difficulty of locating credible Elders in an urban setting. One health care practitioner said:

Western medicine has some useful tools to offer…I share some tools like glycemic index… I mean some medications are useful…but again, I think there is certainly a role of bringing together Elders…

Support Systems and Education Strategies:

Diabetes is an everyday battle that needs a tremendous amount of care and support for its prevention and management. In my view, support systems currently in place in Small Town, Ontario meet the needs of Aboriginal Peoples to some extent. There is only one Aboriginal health centre situated in this city, which for different reasons (distance, hours of operation, lack of information about services, transportation, etc.) seems not always accessible for the people that participated in this study. On the other hand, the public health system is not geared to provide Aboriginal specific health care and support. This discrepancy arises due to the differences in perception between the First Nations community members and medical professionals.

The interaction with participants reflect that primary sources of general support for diabetes prevention and care are family and friends, while professional sources of support are regulated by a complex public health care system. It is understood that both health care professionals and First Nation people accept that the ultimate responsibility for diabetes care lies with the individual, but family plays a significant role in terms of diabetes management. During my interviews with representatives of these health care providers, I found that there are varied perspectives on health and experiences of diabetes.

Similar to any other Canadian cities, the one I examined has a range of health care professionals including medical doctors, nurses, dieticians, diabetes educators and health promotion workers who provide diabetes management, education and prevention strategies for patients. Persons who have developed diabetes or are at increased risk of developing diabetes ideally start getting their formal medical support from a physician’s clinic. A family physician mentioned that once diabetes is diagnosed she generally refers her Aboriginal patient to a dietician at the local Aboriginal health centre or at some other local centres of the patient’s convenience. Depending on the blood glucose level, the patient might as well be put onto oral medication or insulin. The doctor refers her patients to the local Aboriginal health centre diabetes group for

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 170 undertaking physical exercises and other relevant activities required to control or prevent diabetes. She found that most of the time Aboriginal patients do not keep up-to-date with their follow-up visits, therefore it is not possible for her to monitor their progress, and to support them in terms of any kind of life-style modification that might be needed to control diabetes and prevent its subsequent complications. From our conversation, I recognized that overall medical professionals are in agreement about the holistic philosophy of health. They also agree that seeking medical help or motivation to seek medical help depends on social, economic, and emotional circumstances of their lives. Health care professionals are aware that there are often more immediate pressing issues in their patients’ lives, such as housing, unemployment, food insecurity, substance abuse that may take priority over diabetes management. A registered nurse also echoed similar experience regarding follow-up sessions with her patients, but she recognized that these behaviors are rooted in the range of daily obstacles and challenges that her First Nation clients experience.

In regard to the diabetes education programs, both health care providers and front line workers agree that the education and prevention programs available in this city, apart from what is being provided in the Aboriginal health centre, are not well-designed for Aboriginal culture and their present social circumstances. The effectiveness of Western ways of teaching in different diabetes education workshops appeared to be a poor fit with the First Nation culture specific teaching style. In the same line, one front line health care provider said:

…you know Aboriginal people are very visual people. If you give them a book and ask them to read it about diabetes that would not be effective for them… if you say, ‘look this is a can of coke and this contains twelve tea spoons of sugar… then when your son comes home and he has got a big bottle of coke from Seven Eleven…and you know there are forty eight tea spoons of sugar’… this is more visual for Aboriginal people…

Some health care providers expressed their frustrations about the lack of appropriate teaching tools for Aboriginal patients. According to the professionals, Aboriginal ways of teaching are that Elders talk and others listen and observe, and there is a lot of role modeling and social reinforcement there. It is clear that there is room for incorporating culturally appropriate methods of teaching by community Aboriginal Elders or persons knowledgeable about Aboriginal culture, history and their views about health and wellness.

Summary and Concluding Remarks

Based on academic and grey literatures and most importantly the narratives from my interviews with urban First Nation people in Small Town, Ontario in this paper, I explore and explain the causes and consequences of diabetes as a lived experience. In this final section I would like to review some of my key findings, delimit areas of this research, and highlight some areas of future research and policy implications.

I set out to explore “Why are First Nation people contracting diabetes at a higher rate than the rest of the Canadians? How do First Nation People perceive the risk of contracting Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus? What are the characteristic ways in which they cope or manage the consequences of this disease?” The contribution I offer here is an exploration of diabetes as a human problem that is being shaped by various determinants of health (e.g., social, cultural, historical, economic, and Urban Reality of Type 2 Diabetes among First Nations of Eastern Ontario • 171

political, etc.) that present serious challenges for today’s First Nation people living in urban centres. The connection between the concept of structural violence and this research project is compelling. From peoples’ narratives we have seen the socio-economic, political and cultural circumstances within which First Nation people were born, grew, migrated and lived have negatively inflicted their dietary, physical activity and subsistence patterns. Much of that explains the development of biological risk factors of Type 2 diabetes and the consequent increase in diabetes incidence among First Nations people. The determining factors, causes and consequences of diabetes as revealed in this research are inseparable from the exhibits of structural violence in colonial history, resulting in cultural transitions, loss of language, identity, pride and self-esteem, stress and marginalization among First Nations people and their health condition today (Canadian Institute of Health Information [CIHI], 2004). The ultimate outcome of this cycle of marginalization and neglect was that the First Nation persons’ health and health of their families and communities were put at risk of developing chronic disease like diabetes.

First Nations people understand the emergence and causes of diabetes in a number of ways. The link between diabetes and westernized lifestyles revalue the health benefit of a traditional lifestyle. Diet is a particular concern among the community people, as well as among medical professionals. The explanation of unhealthy diets lies partially in the high cost and availability of appropriate foods. This issue is also supported by health care professionals who agree on the role of the economic burden of unemployment, poverty and food insecurity. The traditional modes of subsistence and food procurement are no longer feasible in this urban setting. Therefore it is suggested that the explanation is located in socio-cultural factors that include low self-esteem, lack of pride and dignity or frustration with poverty and issues such as those experienced in the contemporary context. But these behaviors can also be traced back to the isolation (reserves) and assimilation (residential schools) processes that First Nations people are still going through in the contemporary urban context. It is also true that the residential schooling system is but one part of displacement of all the harmful impacts resulting from colonialism and assimilation policies. It is very much in existence in the present day context where First Nations people face a harmful relationship with the broader social system that produces restricted lifestyle choices for them. In this regard, diabetes emerges along with poverty, food insecurity, lack of education, unemployment, and so many other socioeconomic factors that emerge as a challenge to these people in this urban setting. Not having sufficient material resources to lead a healthy life is not the fault of an individual family member, but rather a result of larger social, economic and political system characterized by inequities in which they were born, grow, eat and live. The outcome of all these is structural violence of food insecurity, unemployment, lack of education and resulting health consequences. Thus, much of the explanation for contemporary lifestyle patterns of these urban First Nations people can be located in socioeconomic conditions and in the demands of a western sedentary lifestyle.

Diet, physical activity and stress are the three immediate triggering factors identified by community members and medical professionals that work behind the emergence of diabetes. It is also brought to attention that women tend to carry an extra burden of stress, have fewer physical activities and have compromised healthy diets in this fast pace of city life. The difference begins early in childhood and continues through the childcare years. Women have fewer opportunities than men to pursue physical activities. Community activities are also limited for women because there are few activities that accommodate the presence of children. On the other hand, women are the ones who balance their families’ diet on a restricted budget, since a significant number of

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 172

Aboriginal families are living in substandard financial strata. All of these complex life situations place extra stress on them. All these three triggering lifestyle factors may suggest differential weight gain patterns among men and women, and perhaps account for increasing prevalence of diabetes among women.

On a general level, the people of this urban setting lead a diabetogenic lifestyle characterized by a higher concentration of fast food, canned food high in calories and a sedentary pattern of city life. This research also indicates the role of colonialism in creating contemporary conditions. Aboriginal people throughout Canada share a colonial experience that gives rise to the issues of lack of pride and dignity, low self-esteem and low self-worth among themselves. The residential school experiences have had a significant effect on the diet and other aspects of family. People commented on the lack of parenting skills and expressed frustration in terms of having limited culture-specific experiences to share with their children, which could in fact act as a protective factor against T2DM. In reality, these contextual factors serve as the backdrop of creating and propagating risk factors of chronic health conditions, such as diabetes for First Nations people living in urban Ontario areas (Browne & Varcoe, 2006; Browne, 2005). Persistent inequalities in health and social status are thus entrenched in the history of relations between First Nations people and the broader Canadian system of government (Adelson, 2005; Dion Stout, Kipling & Stout, 2001; Kelm, 1998). Continued struggle for their land claims, health provisions, Aboriginal self- government and economic development in many First Nations communities shape overall health and wellbeing. These, in turn, bring about a consecutive impact on the health status of First Nations people living in urban areas (Browne, McDonald, & Elliott, 2009).

Current levels of diabetes and management strategies, including treatment, support and education only partially meet the needs of urban First Nation people. This public health system is limited in its responses to provide Aboriginal culturally specific care and support. Structural factors including socio-economic and political conditions that impact on incidence and management of diabetes are largely beyond the control of First Nation individuals. While this situation is not that different than the case of other populations of low socioeconomic status living in urban areas, the notable difference between these populations is the apparent lack of culturally appropriate services, such as employment, education, health and housing services required to facilitate the transition from on-reserve conditions to urban settings (Peters, 2002; Kastes, 1993). This difference has been worsened by limited cultural supports in larger cities and a general lack of investigating the potential effects of cultural factors on urban Aboriginal Peoples’ overall wellbeing (Peters, 2002; Wilson & Rosenberg, 2002). There are also no structured connections to the psychological, social, cultural and economic sources of support that might help diabetics or pre-diabetics to deal with their disease in a more effective way. As discussed in various literature (Reading, 2009; RCAP, 1996) addressing the causes of the causes is necessary to improve many social determinants of diabetes including access to health services, education, employment and economic development, housing etc. Interventions that aim to improve these social determinants being informed by the concept of structural violence can have the potential for reducing diabetes incidence and improving equities in First Nations’ health outcome (Marr et al., 2011).

Future Research and Policy Implications:

While I feel I have managed the primary objectives set for this study, I am also left with the knowledge that I have only just begun to understand the implications of the findings. On a practical Urban Reality of Type 2 Diabetes among First Nations of Eastern Ontario • 173

level, priority should be placed on the collection of up-to-date, Aboriginal population and regionally specific health statistics, particularly on diabetes prevalence and incidence. It is also important to carry out research that aims at exploring perceptions surrounding diabetes and its prevention within and between Aboriginal population groups. This may provide a further cue to explore differences in gender-specific perceptions of diabetes. I have presented some opinions on the basis of qualitative information I gathered from the health care providers and community people. But, in this case, a rigorous understanding of community members, health service professionals along with the policy makers’ analysis is needed to address and overcome the challenges with diabetes among Aboriginal Canadians. Overall, improving the inequalities in urban Aboriginal health, specifically women’s health should be given priority with the identification of the most pressing program and policy needs of this population. It will be valuable to include more diabetes patients from different age groups in order to get more varied experiences. As health care professionals witnessed, the age range of diagnosis is decreasing, therefore it will be necessary to include research participants from as early as eighteen years of age in order to deal with earlier adult-onset diabetes. It is also important to explore people’s perceptions of diabetes and its coping strategies according to different age groups, gender and socio-economic strata. Research related to these areas should be funded as a basis for the development of health programs and policies directed specifically toward urban Aboriginal people.

It must also be noted, however, that my intention here is not to generalize the findings, given the very specific nature and number of research participants of a particular geographical setting involved in this research. Unfortunately, it was beyond the scope of this research to include the perception of First Nations people who are homeless and living on the streets. I know that in a sense this research leaves out a considerable section of First Nations people, who are visible in this urban world and unarguably dealing with diabetes and its complications. It is therefore extremely necessary to devote the research attention to the problems facing urban First Nation street people or homeless people with diabetes, so as to inform health promotion programs and policy makers to enhance their quality of life through improved service delivery. Further efforts should be placed in understanding the individual and community strengths through which First Nation people live and cope with diabetes. Consideration to these individual and collective strengths can form the basis of developing future preventative services and strategies for policy decisions surrounding diabetes.

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 174

Table 1: Summary of information of the Community Participants interviewed for the Research Lay people Staying in Place of Number Sex Age Ancestry First Nation Non-diabetic urban setting birth diabetes First Nation (Years) patients people

First 1 F 77 Bush Yes No 10 Nation

First 2 F 39 Reserve Yes No 12 Nation

First Throughout 3 M 55 Urban Yes No Nation his life

First Throughout 4 M 27 Urban Yes No Nation his life

First 5 F 56 Rural Yes No 15 Nation

First Rural 6 F 52 Yes No 6 Nation reserve

First 7 F 68 Bush Yes No 20 Nation

First Suburban 8 F 62 Yes No 19 Nation area

First 9 F 74 Reserve No Yes 36 Nation

First 10 F 58 Reserve No Yes 41 Nation

First Throughout 11 F 39 Urban No Yes Nation her life

First 12 F 65 Reserve No Yes 29 Nation

First 13 F 24 Urban No Yes 5 Nation

First 14 M 45 Reserve No Yes 5 Nation Urban Reality of Type 2 Diabetes among First Nations of Eastern Ontario • 175

Commute to First 15 F 21 Reserve No urban area for Nation work everyday First 16 F 27 Reserve No Yes 5 Nation

First 17 F 46 Bush No Yes 3 Nation

First 18 F 42 Reserve No Yes 4 Nation

First Suburban 19 F 44 No Yes 4 Nation area

First 20 F 45 Reserve No Yes 17 Nation Note: N/A= does not apply, N/K = not known

Table 2: Summary of Information of the Key informants interviewed for the Research Health care Staying in Place of Diabetes Number Sex Age Ancestry professionals Urban setting birth patients or researcher (Years)

1 F N/K Aboriginal N/A No Yes N/A

2 M N/K Non-Aboriginal N/A No Yes N/A

3 M N/K Aboriginal N/A No Yes N/A

4 F N/K Non-Aboriginal N/A No Yes N/A

5 F N/K Aboriginal N/A No Yes N/A

6 F N/K Aboriginal N/A No Yes N/A

7 F N/K Aboriginal N/A No Yes N/A

8 F N/K Aboriginal N/A No Yes N/A

Note: N/A= does not apply, N/K = not known

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 176

References

Abonyi, S. (2001). Sickness and symptom: Perspectives on diabetes among the Muskegowuk Cree. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). McMaster University, Hamilton.

Adelson, N. (2005). The embodiment of inequity: Health disparities in Aboriginal Canada. Canadian Journal of Public Health, 96(Mar/Apr), S45-S61.

Braveman, P. & Gruskin, S. (2003). Defining equity in health. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 57, 254- 258.

Brownem, A., McDonald, H., & Elliot, D. (2009). First Nations urban Aboriginal health research discussion paper: A report for the First Nations Centre, Ottawa, ON: National Aboriginal Health Organization.

Browne, A. J. (2005). Discourses influencing nurses' perceptions of First Nations patients. Canadian Journal of Nursing Research, 37, 62-87.

Browne, A. J., & Varcoe, C. (2006). Critical perspectives on culture and health in Aboriginal health. Contemporary Nurse (special edition): Advances in Indigenous Health Care, 22, 155-168.

Browne A.J. McDonald, H. & Elliott, D. (2009). First Nations Urban Aboriginal Health Research Discussion Paper. A Report for the First Nations. Centre, National Aboriginal Health Organization.

Canadian Institute for Health Information(CIHI). (2004). Aboriginal Peoples’ health. In CIHI, Canadian population health initiative: Improving the health of Canadians. Retrieved from http://secure.cihi.ca/cihiweb/products/IHC2004_ch4_e.pdf

Canadian Medical Association, (1994). Bridging the gap: promoting health and healing for aboriginal people in Canada. Ottawa, ON: CMA.

Champlain LHIN. (2009). Champlain Diabetes Strategy. Retrieved from http://www.champlainlhin.on.ca/Page.aspx?id=0&LinkIdentifier

Dion Stout, M., Kipling, G. D., & Stout, R. (2001). Aboriginal women's health research: Synthesis project final report. Ottawa, ON: Centres of Excellence for Women's Health.

Farmer, P. (1999). Pathologies of power: Rethinking health and human rights. American Journal of Public Health, 89(10), 1486-1496.

Farmer, P. (2004). An anthropology of structural violence. Current Anthropology, 45(3), 305-325.

Farmer, P. (2005). Pathologies of power: Health, human rights, and the new war on the poor. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Urban Reality of Type 2 Diabetes among First Nations of Eastern Ontario • 177

Frideres, J. S. (1993). Native urbanization. In Native peoples in Canada: contemporary conflicts (pp. 257-280). Scarborough, ON: Prentice Hall Canada Inc.

Galtung, J, (1980). The true worlds: A transnational perspectives. New York, NY: The Free Press.

Ghosh, H. (2004). Antecedents and social consequences of type 2 diabetes among urban First Nations Peoples especially women of Eastern Ontario: Western science and indigenous perceptions. (Unpublished masters dissertation). Carleton University, Ottawa.

Ghosh, H. & Gomes, J. (2011). Type 2 diabetes among Aboriginal Peoples in Canada: A focus on direct and associated risk factors. Pimatisiwin, 9(2), 245-275.

Gordon, D. (1988). Tenacious Assumptions in Western Medicine. In M. Lock & D. Gordon (Eds.), Biomedicine Examined (pp. 19-56). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Haffner, S. M. (1998). Epidemiology of type 2 diabetes: Risk factors. Diabetes Care, 21, C3-C6, Supplemental.

Health Canada. (2001). Diabetes among Aboriginal People (First Nations, Inuit and Metis) in Canada: The evidence. Aboriginal Diabetes Initiative. Retrieved from http://www.hc- sc.gc.ca/fnih-spni/alt_formats/fnihb- dgspni/pdf/pubs/diabete/2001_evidence_faits_e.pdf

Health Canada. (2007). Factsheets. Retrieved from http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fnih-spni/pubs/diseases- maladies_e.html#diabete

Hunt, L. M. (1998). Moral reasoning and the meaning of cancer: Causal explanations of oncologists and patients in Southern Mexico. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 12(3), 298– 318.

Iwasaki, Y. & Bartlett, J. (2006). Stress-coping among Aboriginal individuals with diabetes in an urban Canadian city: From woundedness to resilience. Journal of Aboriginal Health, 15-25.

Joe, J. R. & Young, R. S. (1993). Introduction. In J. R. Joe & R. S. Young (Eds.), Diabetes as a disease of Civilization: The Impact of Cultural Change on Indigenous Peoples (pp. 1-17). New York, NY: De Gruyter.

Joos, S. K. (1984). Economic, social, and cultural factors in the analysis of disease: Dietary change and diabetes melliltus among the Florida Seminole Indians. In L. K. Brown & K. M. (Eds.), Ethnic and regional foodways in the United States: The performance of group identity (pp. 217-237). Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press.

Kapashesit, R. (1997). Traditional medicine in regional health planning. (Unpublished report # 6). Submitted to Kelly & Associates et al as part of the Regional Health Planning Study. Moose Factory: Weeneebayko Health Ahtuskayawin.

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 178

Kastes, W. G. (1993). The future of aboriginal urbanization in prairie cities: Select annotated bibliography and literature review on urban aboriginal issues in the Prairie Provinces. Winnipeg: Institute of Urban studies.

Kelm, M. (1998). Colonizing bodies: Aboriginal health and healing in British Columbia, 1900-50. Vancouver, BC: UBC Press.

Kleinman, A. (1988). The illness narratives: Suffering, healing, and the human condition. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Lieberman, L. S. (2003). Dietary, evolutionary, and modernizing influences on the prevalence of type 2 diabetes. Annual Review of Nutrition, 23, 345–377.

Loewe, R. & Freeman. J. (2000). Interpreting diabetes mellitus: Differences between patient and provider models of disease and their implications for clinical practice. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, 24(4), 379–401.

Maar, M. A., Manitowabi, D., Gzik, D., McGregor, L., & Corbiere, C. (2011). Serious complications for patients, care providers and policy makers: Tackling the structural violence of First Nations People living with diabetes in Canada. The International Indigenous Policy Journal, 2(1). Retrieved from http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/iipj/vol2/iss1/6

Mattingly, C., & Lawlor, M. (2000). Learning from stories: Narrative interviewing in cross-cultural research. Scandinavian Journal of Occupational Therapy, 7(1), 4–14.

Milloy, J. S. (1999). Disease and death. In A national crime: The Canadian government and the residential school system, 1879-1986 (pp. 77-107). Winnipeg, MB: The University of Manitoba Press.

Millar, K. & Dean, J. (2012). Developmental origins of type 2 diabetes in Aboriginal youth in Canada: It is more than diet and exercise. Journal of Nutrition and Metabolism, 2012, 1-7.

Narayan, K. M. V. (1997). Diabetes mellitus in Native Americans: The problem and its implications. Population Research and Policy Review, 16, 169-192.

Native Women’s Association of Canada. (1995). Second Stage Housing for Native Women. Ottawa, ON: Author.

Newhouse, D., & Peters, E. (2003). Not strangers in these parts: Urban Aboriginal peoples. Ottawa, ON: Policy Research Initiative.

O’Neil, J. D. (1986). Colonial stress in the Canadian Arctic: An ethnography of young adults changing. In C. R. Janes, R. Stall & S. M Gifford (Eds.), Anthropology and epidemiology (pp. 213-246). Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Company.

Urban Reality of Type 2 Diabetes among First Nations of Eastern Ontario • 179

Ontario Federation of Friendship Centres (OFIFC). (2000). Campaign 2000, Report card on child poverty in Canada, 1989-1999.

Ontario Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs. (2012). Fact Sheets-Aboriginal People in Ontario. Retrieved from http://www.aboriginalaffairs.gov.on.ca/english/default.asp

Patti, M. E. Butte, A. J. Crunkhorn, S. Cusi, K. Berria, R. Kashyap, S. et al. 2003. Coordinated reduction of genes of oxidative metabolism in humans with insulin resistance and diabetes: Potential role of PGC1 and NRF1. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100(14), 8466–8471.

Peters, E. J. (2002). Our city Indians: Negotiating the meaning of First Nations urbanization in Canada, 1945-1975. Historical Geography, 30, 76.

Peters, E. J. (2004). Three myths about Aboriginals in cities. Retrieved from http://fedcan.virtuo.ca/images/File/PDF/BOH/breakfast-peters0304.pdf

Peters, E. J. (2006). First Nations and Métis people and diversity in Canadian cities. Retrieved from http://www.irpp.org/books/archive/AOTS3/peters.pdf

Preston, R. J. (2000). James Bay Cree culture, malnutrition, infectious and degenerative diseases. Paper prepared for the 32nd Conference on Algonquin Studies, Montreal.

Public Health Agency of Canada. (2005). Building a national diabetes strategy: A strategic framework. Ottawa, ON: Author.

Public Health Agency of Canada. (2011). Diabetes in Canada: Facts and figures from a public health perspective. Ottawa, ON: Author.

Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP). (1993). Aboriginal Peoples in Urban Centres. Ottawa, ON: Minister of Supply and Services Canada.

Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP). (1996). Gathering strength. Vol 3, Ottawa, ON: Author.

Raphael, D., Daiski, I., Pilkington, B., Bryant, T., Dinca-Panaitescu, M., & Dinca-Panaitescu, S. (2011). A toxic combination of poor social policies and programmes, unfair economic arrangements and bad politics: The experiences of poor Canadians with Type 2 diabetes. Critical Public Health, 22(2), 127-145.

Raphael, D., Anstice, S., & Raine, K. (2003). The social determinants of the incidence and management of type 2 diabetes mellitus: Are we prepared to rethink our questions and redirect our research activities? Leadership in Health Services, 16, 10–20.

Reading, J., Kmetic, A., & Giddion, B. (2007). First Nations holistic policy and planning model: Discussion for the World Health Organization Commission on Social Determinants of Health. Ottawa, ON: Assembly of First Nations.

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 180

Reading, J. (2009). A life course approach to the social determinants of health for Aboriginal Peoples’. The Senate Sub-Committee on Population Health. Retrieved from http://www.parl.gc.ca/Content/SEN/Committee/402/popu/rep/appendixAjun09-e.pdf

Rock, M. (2003). Sweet blood and social suffering: Rethinking causes – effect relationships in diabetes, distress and duress. Medical Anthropology, 22, 131- 174.

Singer, M. (2009). Desperate measures: A syndemic approach to the anthropology of health in a violent city. In B. Rylko-Bauer, L. Whiteford & P. Farmer (Eds.), Global Health in Times of Violence (pp. 137-156). Santa Fe, N.M.: School for Advanced Research Press.

Smylie, J. (2009). The health of Aboriginal peoples. In D. Raphael (Ed.), Social determinants of health: Canadian perspectives (2nd Ed) (pp. 280-301). Toronto, ON: Canadian Scholars’ Press.

Statistics Canada. (2004). Aboriginal Peoples Survey 2001 — Initial findings: Well-being of the non-reserve Aboriginal population. Cat # 89-592-XIE Ottawa: Ministry of Industry, Science, and Technology.

Statistics Canada. (2008). Aboriginal peoples in Canada in 2006: Inuit, Métis and First Nations, 2006 Census. Ottawa, ON: Author.

Szathmary, E. J. (1987). Genetic and environmental risk factors. In T. K. Young (Ed.), Diabetes in the Canadian native population: Biocultural perspectives. Toronto, ON: Canadian Diabetes Association.

Warry, D. (1998). Unfinished dreams: Community healing and the reality of Aboriginal self- government. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.

Webb, P., & Harinarayan, A. (1999). The measure of uncertainty: The nature of vulnerability and its relationship to malnutrition. Disasters, 23(4), 292–305.

Whitehead, M. (1991). The concepts and principles of equity and health. Copenhagen: WHO/EURO.

Wilson, K., & Rosenberg, M. W. (2002). Exploring the determinants of health for First Nations peoples in Canada: can existing frameworks accommodate traditional activities? Social Science and Medicine, 55, 2017- 2031.

Young, T. K. (1994). The health of Americans: toward a biocultural epidemiology. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Young, T. K., Szathmary, E. J., Evers, S., & Wheatley, B. (1990). Geographical distribution of diabetes among the Native population of Canada: A national survey. Social Science and Medicine, 31(2), 129-139.

Urban Reality of Type 2 Diabetes among First Nations of Eastern Ontario • 181

Zeggini, E., & McCarthy, M. I. (2007). TCF7L2: The biggest story in diabetes genetics since HLA? Diabetologia, 50, 1–4.

Zimmet, P., Alberti, K. G., & Shaw, J. (2001). Global and societal implications of the diabetes epidemic. Nature, 414, 782–787.

Journal of Global Citizenship & Equity Education Volume 2 Number 2 - 2012 journals.sfu.ca/jgcee

Refugees: the “Other” Human face, and the “other” academics, an African and Personal Experience

Felix U. Kaputu,1 Ph.D. Massachusetts College of Art and Design Boston, USA

Keywords: “Other”, Human Face, Refugee, “Other” Academics, Homelessness, Scholars at Risk

ABSTRACT: For many centuries, refugees have continued to move from one country to another, pushed away from their homes for many different reasons. This often results in aimless journeys around the world as they change into homeless wanderers. Wars, political conflicts, ideological differences, social rejections, natural disasters, and socio-economic failures are the main reasons, pushing thousands in different ways toward the unknown. If immigrants are indeed observed all over the world, the case of African refugees is very much outstanding. The Middle Passage shipped many Africans to the Americas during the slave trade era, and many still leave the continent today and go to all parts of the world. Immigration statistics project no change in this trend in the near future.

This paper covers the main reasons for the African massive exodus towards overpopulated continents. It also expands on the conditions these generally unwanted immigrants face in hostile hosting countries, while offering a set of examples where good hearts and minds have facilitated both social insertion and human communications. The Scholar at Risk Network represents an exceptionally good example, and illustrates the author’s personal example as an academic “other”. Finally, the paper proposes what countries all around the world could do together to avoid large human flows.

Far from their homelands, aliens stand for the “others”, different from the local people, perpetually in quest for recognition, social insertion, and identity reconstruction under various stressful conditions. Capetillo-Ponce (2004) provides the first understanding of the “other" defined as a stranger speaking a different and unknown language, and a “barbarian”. In addition, Capetillo- Ponce (2004) looks at how human groups construct their identity, and define their standards through interaction with the “other”, the stranger, assigning distinguishing and unique racial,

1 Felix U. Kaputu is ending a three-year contract at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, Massachusetts, the United States of America. This step came on a long pilgrimage that brought him, successively since 2006, to the W. E. B. Dubois Institute at Harvard University, Purchase College (SUNY) in New York, the International Research Center for Japanese Studies in Kyoto, Japan, and the international Christian University of Tokyo, Japan. Massachusetts College of Art and Design comes on the top of a long pilgrimage where academic institutions facing rough recession times manage to get an opening for sharing the expertise of the “other” academic.

Refugees: the “Other” Human face, and the “other” academics, an African and Personal Experience • 183

cultural, and socio-political characteristics. Language, art and religion, along with such concepts as race, ethnicity, community, nationalism — among many others — emerged to explain certain obsessive aspects of the “other”, and the sense of belonging to groups, neighborhoods, institutions, primitive tribes, nations, and thus to foster legitimacy and identity among individuals and groups, and sometimes to create divisions and conflict.

For many centuries, immigrants – including refugees seeking asylum, forcibly sent away from their homes for various reasons – have moved in big waves from one country to another, from one continent to another, all around the world in search of a peaceful haven. These forced immigration and refugee waves became particularly reinforced during and after World War II when many Jews hastily left Germany to avoid Nazi xenophobic hatred and mass extermination in gas chambers, became exiles, who built vibrant diasporic communities.i Nowadays, a wider understanding of the term “refugee” includes internally displaced people (IDP) facing similar dangers – tribal-ethnic, racist, xenophobic, irrational motivations and uncertain futures, including community extermination − within their own country, which has suddenly changed from paradise into hell.ii Phillips (2011) mentions a steady growth from 1.5 million refugees recorded in 1951, to approximately 43.7 million forcibly displaced in the world, 15.4 million refugees 837,500 asylum seekers and 27.5 million Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). For individuals in all categories, i.e., refugees, immigrants, asylum seekers, and IDP, displacement often ends in aimless and endless journeys around unpredicted areas – national and international. Their destinations are frequently similarly hostile, offering only in rare cases a new beginning in an organized Diaspora, or a new collective area of occupancy within the new country. These immigrants become homeless wanderers who rely on human charity, such as recognition by United Nations institutions, while facing governments they do not understand. In many countries, they experience immigration exclusive conditions.iii Wars, political conflicts, ideological differences, social rejections, natural disasters, and economic failures further inflame this hotly burning melting pot of anti-democratic, dangerous conditions that push thousands on their atypical, dangerous ways to the unknown. They perpetually seek peaceful horizons never reached, always pushing ahead on their roads to imagined possibilities and only virtually understandable happiness. Weine et al. (2011) have observed how all along their relocations, refugees (especially African refugees, Burundians and Liberians) still carry with them traumatic experiences resulting from political, sexual, and criminal assaults. Poor education, unemployment, family break-up, and extreme poverty characterize secondary and relocations among many African refugees.

In spite of refugees’ international presence and origins, these forced immigrants are visible everywhere, with Africans comprising one fourth of this population. Africa, with the close proximity of all its countries, has become an experimenting field of violence, producing tools that uproot many people from their natural biotopes, including light weapons, land mines, ideological oppositions, rampant ethnic theories, rigged elections, pre-electoral, electoral and post-electoral conflicts, mineral scramblers, proxy wars, anti-nationalist eccentricities, opposing colonial and postcolonial discourses, artificial borders, and state-nation constructivist patterns. These influences, in particularly violent combinations, find in Africa a free and large field of application, that fabricates different forms of intra and extra muros migrations. Chabal, Engel, & Gentili (2005) mention citizenship often reduced to ethnicity, political clientelism, ethnic power construction, and war among reasons that force Africans on endless migration journeys.iv

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 184

The Slave Trade Middle Passage saw many Africans shipped to the Americas in the sixteenth century, and many still leave the continent today for other parts of the world. The Middle East is increasingly becoming a new problematic destination. Recently, many Sudanese illegal immigrants have been expelled in successive waves from Israel.v Paz (2011) already pointed out new trends in African immigration towards the Middle East, and predicted a very quick growth. vi African immigration statistics project no change in this trend in the foreseeable future. On the contrary, these human movements are very quickly reaching an alarming level that portends all kinds of catastrophes both in Africa and in the hosting countries. In fact, in spite of the high birth rate that still persists in parts of the continent, it is not impossible to imagine a systematic emptying of Africa due to endemics, wars, malnutrition, famine and immigrations.vii Africa is facing the worst possible contradictions. Rich in very rare minerals and large water reserves, deserts replete with interesting archeology, and forests widely important for world climate equilibrium normally would stand as perfect hosting lands for populations coming from all around the world. Unfortunately, apart from multinationals launching wild mineral exploitation, facilitating local fighting factions, and fueling multifaceted violence, international NGOs associated with human rights or grassroots development have been rare, and the continent continues to be replete with inhospitalities connected to wars, violence, undemocratic practices, and natural and forced disasters. Apart from different wars, political assaults, and regional instability, Kaputu (2010), for instance, gives many details on health conditions in Sub-Saharan African – through the sample of Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo – and documents on the conditions that lead to many diseases, especially HIV-AIDS. Malnutrition, area desertification, armed militias, extreme poverty, and especially HIV-AIDS ravage many areas, and have brought death to many places. Much of the work done by international NGOs has contributed to a given stability, but poverty still brings much death, and continues to be among the most important death triggers and immigration reason indicators. Potential wealth from minerals, according to Prunier (2009), creates war and violence centers that oppose African countries, and force many peaceful people to change into IDPs or to start endless migration and relocation around the world.viii

This paper covers the main reasons underlying the massive exodus of Africans toward other continents, even under inclement weather conditions for tropical immigrants. It expands on the conditions faced by these generally unwanted immigrants in hostile hosting countries. This paper also offers examples where human, good, charitable, open hearts and minds have facilitated both social insertion and human communications, care for small groups’ resettlement, and unexpectedly welcoming horizons open to many possible dreams. Finally, the text will offer suggestions for what countries all around the world could do together to stem the large flow of refugees on hopelessly endless roads, paying attention to global welfare factors that can lead to economic and socio- political best options for all countries. This paper will consider the most appropriate course of action to take when people are forced en mass to leave their countries in search of sanctuary. Finally, this will be a good opportunity to highlight the Scholar at Risk Network and its connection with a specific kind of refugee.

On the transition to the unknown

All around the world, men, women and children of various nationalities are constantly on the run on unknown roads while searching for a hosting land. Like ships in a sea of turmoil, many drown before the end of the storm and only a few reach safe, solid land. In addition, as Haas (2008) states, “Trans-Saharan and Trans-Mediterranean victims recruited by merciless and unscrupulous Refugees: the “Other” Human face, and the “other” academics, an African and Personal Experience • 185

traffickers and smugglers” (p. 9) are adding to the fast growing number of illegal migrants. ix Reaching a safe land, however, does not necessarily mean getting safer or achieving one’s democratic dream and its implication of peace, prosperity and political participation as Weine et al. (2011) pointed out (here) regarding migration and relocation issues of Burundian and Liberian refugees in the United States. Additionally, chaotic situations shake these immigrants, forcing them towards horizons never reachable, new challenges to survival, and often additional desperate trips. The United Nations and other international government and non-government organizations focus on different areas of challenge and the violence patterns that certain refugees face, and figure out their various interventions. Finally, the overused term “refugee” strikes people’s attention a bit like a species of human beings different from others, often at the origin of problems, essentially living on the social margins, and quite often relying on the charity of those who can drop unnecessary coins into the coffers of churches and non-government organizations to extend to the world. Refugees may also be compared to cast systems so often condemned, but largely encouraged here and there for exploitation reasons, and curiously also often accepted by the very victims. Presentation of this collection of characteristics of this type of refugee may lead people to believe that nothing good can come from them, only instability, unsolvable financial burdens, and the impossibility of assimilation into society. Quite often, scholars fail to find out a clear definition of the term refugees, Ralston (2012) locates them at the intersection of many local and international preoccupations, “Refugees exist at the intersection between international and local politics, as well as between discourses about humanitarian, political, and human rights responsibilities” (p. 363).

The United States of America is an excellent illustration of the result of massive exoduses. During its early years of development, people left many parts of the world as voluntary or forced refugees, and finally settled down on the new continent. Due to the formation of and struggle for a democratic government, they were able to build a nation that allowed expression of their aspirations and beliefs. They transformed the new continent into a place of opportunity for many who looked to the American dream as a better destiny. The settlers were allowed a new constructed identity free from ideologies reducing human rights, killing human and social dynamics. However, some immigrants, especially Africans, are accused of bringing many problems. Huttman et al. (1991) underline how progressively immigrants stopped being considered a positive force of change and economic interest, but were seen as scapegoats of economic recession, and development failure of any kind, “Real or imaginary… immigrants are being scapegoated by people of color and whites directly and indirectly…the economic fortunes of African Americans have always been linked to immigration”. x Other scholars go as far as suggesting that immigration’s rising tides are inversely correlated with African-American economic and social progress. Unfortunately, the general opinion often fails to make a clear distinction between larceners, burglars, beggars, dangerous people, and genuine refugees. Immigrants in general and refugees in particular are often classified in any of the above categories quite often depending on the places where they are more or less accepted or refused, and the main social issues for which they are very good scapegoats (Hartman, 2001).xi Today, more and more, scholars integrate in their research on refugee resettlement religious and theological dimensions that group refugees around their faith both home and in the relocation (Ralston, 2012; Groody, 2009).

The process to a new identity, and the insertion within a new social tissue, do not necessarily reflect what all refugees expect or live on a daily basis. African refugees have for years relocated to many parts of the world under different conditions. Many have completely become part of their new society; newly born generations hardly remember their connections to Africa to the point that JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 186 such cases could be looked upon as successes, in spite of very difficult beginnings and obvious prejudices. Holtzman (2008), for instance, mentions among many things how the Nuer (from Sudan) were looked at as “exotic, black tribal Africans, refugees,” (p. 114) very much confirming the use of the concept “other” as early presented in this text, and forgetting to mention their social success in their relocation process. xii

However, these days many African countries seem to excel in filling the world with irregular immigrants, scam champions, and other loafers who roam the roads from Madrid to London, from Belfast to New York. They inhabit many cities in the western world, Israel and other parts of the Middle East and Far East, and increasing numbers of places in South America often presented as new virtually safe paradises. Many Africans who have reached these places are accused of surviving through theft, robbery, drug selling, and other dangerous behaviors.

Another general category has come about especially after September 11, 2001. Terrorist attacks on the New York towers, and elsewhere in the United States have increased prejudice toward refugees and immigrants from Islamic lands who happen to be Muslims, and they are likely to be called terrorists. Public psychology is put into contribution (Bongar, 2003) in order to call people terrorists with regard to religion rather than to personal responsibilities. Thus, some immigrants become a very dangerous group whose social insertion cannot be easy, and whose presence is likely to be avoided under the false claim of terrorism, pushing them on other dangerous roads. Ruby (2002) gives an excellent illustration of different attempts to get a definition of the concept terrorism. Patterns of terrorism that include illegality, moral understanding, and “abnormal” behavior easily leave an open space, providing different definitions of refugees labeled “others”. xiii

In addition to attempts by UN institutions to facilitate the settlement and social integration of refugees and IDP, more and more other specialized institutions are dealing with specific categories of refugees.xiv Even though they share a lot in common with other refugee categories, these distinct categories require special attention. International institutions dealing with refugees have specific orientations. The ones very closely linked to churches generally show interest in poor people, and victims of local traditions that impose social suffering after funeral rites and other subsequent suffering judged pagan. There are institutions that deal with students and give them opportunities to continue their studies. Others include specifically widows, orphans, and war victims. Jackson (1999) rather enriches the debate on refugees’ identity in underlining definitions and identities linked to group situations.xv Other scholars like Morin (2007) from the reading of Derrida’s texts project many other types that lead to a transcendental order and consideration of the “other”. A special category focusing on scholars and academics is attracting more and more attention. We will have the opportunity to talk about them and consider challenges that lead them from one country to another, from one continent to another as refugees in search of a possible continuation of their profession in hosting high education institutions. These individuals are lucky enough to go through a set of academic institutions that consider and develop a new kind of partnership connecting a good number of academic institutions around the world. Unfortunately, many academic institutions are not yet affiliated with programs that provide opportunities for “other” academics in danger in their respective countries.

Refugees: the “Other” Human face, and the “other” academics, an African and Personal Experience • 187

“Others’” Hybridity

One of the major challenges faced by all refugees – and IDP – as they go around their country or the world has to do with establishing an identity needed for successful insertion in a new social environment. These challenges include refugees’ capacity to understand themselves as well as the societal expectations. With regard to identity construction through successive social changes and insertions, Babha (2005) offers comprehensive attempts to understand refugees’ challenges.xvi The text pinpoints the concept hybridity and extends it to many possible human new configurations. With a background reference to biology, hybridity would suggest a mixed gene heritage that produces a new species or at least a new kind of individual that adapt themselves to a new environment and to new conditions. Indeed, according to Darwinism new species are generally better equipped and resist better against weather conditions, parasites, and are likely to offer better benefits as they survive over time and other conditions. Refugees might in exceptional cases look like those biological successes that solve problems and facilitate new environments’ growth. The cases mentioned earlier with regard to the first immigrants to the US would easily fit this pattern. Individuals that moved from their native countries and continents and settled on another continent in order to live their own dreams, created a new understanding of a country. This new understanding included, for example, the concepts of separation of state and religion, clear boundaries between the sacred and the profane, and a better chance for all citizens to enjoy human rights and spiritual aspirations. Mircea Eliade’s many books and especially the 1987 publication underline the hybridity of the sacred the profane that produces different kinds of beings presenting different combination dimensions.xvii The United States experience, despite violent controversies with the first land occupants and civil war could be looked at as an illustration of refugees’ successful metamorphosis, collective identity change, construction and adaptation to a new social insertion in a new environment for the building of a new big nation. Their expanding numbers, their quick evolution towards the use of the same language, and the presence of very close friends and relatives moving together likely facilitated many aspects of this evolution: cohabitation, culture, political institutions, social aspirations and the building of the same dream(s) and the fabric of democratic institutions.

However, with another reference to biology, hybridity leads to an identity that belongs not to one group or another specifically, and thus may be difficult to accept. It may be perceived as strange as well as fluid in its definition. However, the difficulty of classification in one group or another may make hybridity especially challenging for newcomers to adapt to the new environment and create difficulty adhering to pre-established social insertion norms. In this vein, many refugees who might have had much hope for success and advancement in their country of origin end up not finding any kind of job that matches their previous experiences or leadership dreams. This failure of satisfaction leads to much frustration, an additional traumatic experience that further develops the persona here referred to as “others”, very different from everybody, from themselves, easily identifiable and even self-accepting of the identity of being the ones bringing the most crucial problems to a country. This leads to a traumatic experience.

Hybridity includes psychological dimensions as indicated by the signals mentioned above. However, the consequence of that state of mind finds its expressions in many fields. Evan (2007) guides readers on a very fertile land where hybridity freely expresses itself and reveals its connections with many philosophical, aesthetic, religious, and cultural trends around the world. Literature, in its creative expressions, depicts meeting points of different cultures and civilizations. JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 188

Literature is not alone that endeavor, Fleischmann (2009), Waters (2003), Fludernik (2003), and Naficy (1999), among many others, concur with the idea that human minds wander aimlessly through narrow dream-like paths searching for a homeland. Through their relocation(s), many people feel they belong to several places at the same time, thus running the risk of being perpetually dissatisfied wherever they are as remembrances of other places keep haunting them, and questioning their citizenship. Multiculturism and common traditions recreated in new locations still underline the need of a home, the feeling of exile, and a virtual homeland that runs the risk of failing to meet a physical land. Along with literature, films, media, and other artistic expressions become the political space open to “otherness”, hybridity, virtual global citizenship longing through a constant of potential satisfaction on a unfinished journey to complete exile and land possession.

The Scholar at Risk Network rescuing academic “others”

Despite the fact that international refugees are often looked at as “others”, strangers, scapegoats and oftentimes confused with terrorists, outlaws, or “gypsies,” (Bankcroft, 2008),xviii some human rights associations offer a glimmer of hope in their approaches toward and consideration of these people from around the world. Human rights associations stress the fact that people all over the world are often subjected to situations that degrade human dignity, and they recognize universally accepted rights and freedoms. These associations create forums that offer possibilities to those who are exposed to exploitation or lack freedom to express their opinions and, if possible, engage in exchange within professional groups within the same categories. It goes without saying that speaking about these possibilities is not enough, and those who speak freely about human rights needs in their countries risk victimization or death.

Apart from the youth and war victims that are often taken care of by church and non- government organizations, individuals who fall into other categories are unfortunately not given much attention. Indeed, many academics, for instance, generally trained in western universities and academic institutions are exposed to atrocities. Their only fault is they decided to go back to their countries and implement with their peers new teaching methodologies designed to reinforce students’ critical minds and judgment for better social services. These academics often end up mistreated, imprisoned, or killed if not forced, for safety, into exile far from their home. They join the big flows of refugees traveling around the world, running after the unreachable virtual horizon, regularly taking petty jobs quite different from their training, and suffering many kinds of traumas. The International Migration Office (IMO) knows this specific category of immigrants, as they are very visible in Europe, and include scholars and academics. Although the IMO takes interest in them, it tends to concentrate only on the few who are forced to stay in Europe after their studies, rather than on the needs of others around the world.

Refugees in this specific category of academics, who are threatened at home and in hosting countries, are in a situation that cannot possibly permit them to work and fill the academic mission for which they received training. They cannot give needed services to their home country nor share their skills and knowledge with new generations. It is not easy for these academics to emigrate to another country for several reasons. Many universities and colleges do not recognize the category of threatened scholars and do not pay attention to them. These scholars face neglect or suspicion in the hosting countries, and a lack of specific attention to their persons that is generally associated with the main groups wandering around the world, or worse, with the many “others”. Refugees: the “Other” Human face, and the “other” academics, an African and Personal Experience • 189

To put an end to these differences, and to give attention to scholars, a group of scholars and human rights associations sat together to think about their own understanding of freedom in general, and the freedom “to pursue scholarship and research without discrimination, censorship, intimidation, or violence”.xix It was evident to everyone involved that many scholars around the world cannot afford this kind of freedom under dictatorship and other violent political systems that generate wars, hatred, and xenophobia. As a preamble to their meeting, a quick historical review revealed how scholars’ situations were addressed throughout history, specifically cases from 15th century Greek scholars after the conquest of Constantinople, to the more than 600 scholars and students fleeing Russia in the early 20th century, to the unprecedented attacks on scholars in the World War II era when racist and nationalist policies of European dictatorships – Nazi Germany principally, but Italy, Spain, and Russia as well – drove thousands of scholars and intellectuals into exile”.

The groups that met noticed that throughout history, scholars and intellectuals were defended and treated with a specific consideration for their career. They decided they needed to find new ways to protect these specific endangered refugees.

In 2001, the Scholar at Risk Network was launched. Its aim was to bring scholars facing severe human rights abuses in their region to positions at universities, colleges and research centers in safe countries. Work done by pioneers in the long past for the protection of scholars and intellectuals inspired the work the Scholar at Risk Network has undertaken. Today, after ten years of strong activities, the Scholar at Risk Network has been able to host academics and scholars, and to grow very quickly in order to cover needs from many parts of the world. The Scholar at Risk Network is currently present in about 45 countries, representing about 245 universities and colleges. It reaches out for collaboration with about 50 academic institutions.xx

Rescued by the Scholar at Risk Network: Personal Testimony

In 2005, I had just arrived from a training session on religion and gender at Nanzan University in Nagoya, Japan. During the time I spent there, I had the opportunity to be invited for a panel with the president of my University and the colleague with whom I was teaching. I wanted them to have a chance to meet scholars from around the world and engage in different cooperation protocols that could bring changes to our home University. It could enable connections that would develop different aspects of its academic programs, social services, and aspirations for a better future. After the panel, I went on with the work and the training, and my visitors returned home.xxi

On my arrival back home, I was invited to a meeting with the director of Security in my home province Katanga in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This was not unusual and I did not suspect any danger at all. I was often called in to assist in matters related to my research. I was actually excited that the director was interested in my work.

When I arrived for the meeting, I was arrested on accusations of smuggling weapons into the Democratic Republic of Congo from Japan, where I had attended the conference, and of being the mastermind of a rebel army (20,000 member military) that intended to declare independence of the Katanga Province after secession. These claims were so absurd, I did not know how to react.

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 190

When they threw me in prison, the warden said, “Here, you are no longer a professor.” The conditions were nightmarish. It was months before my family even knew where I was. When they finally found me and tried to visit, the guards told them to save their money. “Once he is here…” the guards said, “He is already dead. Do not waste your money for a useless corpse soon rotten”.

Well… I am not dead. And thanks to the Scholars at Risk Network and its many participating institutions and partners, I am still a professor. I am indeed a very good example of the “other” accepted, transformed and integrated into another society, thus justifying the very concept of university that includes traditions from all over the world.

It was a Canadian scholar from Toronto, whom I had met in the summer 2003 in Switzerland at a conference of the Initiative of Change (an international NGO on human security and international fraternity), who was first informed of the dangers I was facing in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She contacted Amnesty International, the Toronto chapter, at first, and the Scholar at Risk Network based in New York, and documented my case. The conjugated efforts of these people and institutions eventually were strong enough to smuggle me out of the Congo and lead me to the United States.

Conclusion

In spite of internationally ratified conventions of human rights, and the presence of UN institutions, refugees remain on the run all over the world, facing the same drastic conditions that put the first ones on the roads many centuries ago. Of all categories of immigrants who leave for different reasons, Africans are among the most exposed as they try to find refuge on foreign continents. Africa, in spite of its potential wealth, faces different atrocities linked to a continental disorganized market of light weapons easily sold to fighting factions. Adding to this are ethnicities reformulated around arbitrary power acquisition strategies, using ethnicity and clientelism to secure undemocratic power for violent factions also exposed to the same patterns of violence, power keeping and release. Victims of these oppositions and the resulting violence and killing, run for their security towards the unknown.

Among those running for safety, are more and more academics, oftentimes targeted for their faith in education: their desire to secure a decent education for all, new capacities of judgment, and quick involvement in democratic institutions. They are forced to leave their respective countries because they refuse to reduce their academic training to incomprehensible local politics. The Scholars at Risk Network is one of the rare institutions that has, for the last decade, offered hosting opportunities to academics in danger in their home institutions.

Refugees: the “Other” Human face, and the “other” academics, an African and Personal Experience • 191

Endnotes i With approximately 43.7 million people forcibly displaced in the world, 15.4 million refugees, 837, 500 asylum seekers and 27.5 million Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs); it is a steady growth from 1.5 million refugees recorded in 1951 – the highest figure so far reached: data available and well documented in Asylum seeker and refugees: What are the facts? by Janet Phillips, Social Policy section, Parliament of Australia, Department of Parliamentary Services, Parliamentary Library, Information, Analysis, Advice, July 2011. ii Judy El-Bushira and Kelly Fish, “Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons,” in International Alert Women Waging Peace, Washington DC, 2004. These authors retake the UN definition insisting on the dangers that threatened people face in their own country and elsewhere if there is not an organized, and competent structure that takes care of them. iii Immigration Laws have become very tough. The United States and Canada are the only ones today. Japan, China, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the European Union have more than ever reinforced their laws and attitudes on foreigners. iv Patrick Chabal, Ulf Engel, Anna-Maria Gentili, Is Violence Inevitable in Africa? Theories of Conflict and Approaches to Conflict Prevention, Boston: BRILL, 2005. This book enumerates many reasons that push Africans on migrations. Anna-Maria Gentili’s chapter entitled “Ethnicity and Citizenship in Sub Saharan Africa” particularly describes the construction of ethnicity and political clientelism for both building political power, and for pushing people’s far from political arenas and from their countries. v Sudan and South Sudan were one and the same country, victim of many years of violence and wars, until the United Nations divided it into two on July 9, 2011. Unfortunately, much more violence and heavy weaponry war oppose the new countries, sending more and more South Sudanese in exile. Israel seemed to offer opportunities, but the global recession has quickly become an excuse to get rid of refugees. News24 has still an article on a small group of South Sudanese flown back home. http://www.news24.com/Africa/News/Israel-expels-South-Sudanese-20120618 Consulted on August 7, 2012. vi Yonathan Paz: “Ordered Disorder: African Asylum seekers in Israel and discursive challenges to an emerging refugee regime,” in New Issues in Refugee Research, Research Paper N0 205, UNHCR, The UN Refugee Agency, Policy Development and Evaluation Services, for instance, largely documents on a high and unprecedented phenomenon of a recent influx of African Asylum seekers undertaking a very long and risky journey to Israel. vii Philippe Denis and Charles Becker, editors, The HIV-AIDS Epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa in a Historical Perspective, Online Edition, Réseau Sénégalais “Droit, Etiquette, Sante” / Senegalese Networks “Law, Ethics, Health”, October 2006; also Dean T. Jamison et al., Disease and Mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa, second edition, Washington DC: The International Bank for Reconstruction and development, 2006, and this article Felix Ulombe Kaputu, “The Deadly Pandemic, Quarter a Century After: The Katanga Province (D.R. Congo) and the Northwester Province (Zambia), Women in a World of HIV-AIDS,” in The Journal of Social Science, International Christian University Social Science institute, N0 69, March 2010, Pp. 33 – 51: These books and article gives many details on health conditions in Sub-Saharan African and documents on the conditions that lead to many diseases, especially HIV-AIDS. Malnutrition, area desertification, armed militias, extreme poverty, and especially HIV-AIDS ravage many places, and have brought death to many JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 192

places… Much work done by international NGOs has contributed to a given stability, but poverty still brings much death. viii Gérard Prunier, From Genocide to Continental War: The ‘Congolese’ Conflict of Contemporary Africa, London: Hurst & Company, 2009. This book explains how Congolese minerals attracted many African nations (and others) to Congolese successive wars essentially for their own possibility to have access to Congolese natural wealth. ix Hein de Haas, Irregular Migration from West Africa to the Maghred and the European Union: an overview of recent Trends, Prepared for IOM, International organization for Migration, 2008. P.9 Boats leading migrants to Europe have become a generalized phenomenon linking especially both Western and Maghreb African coasts to the European Union. However, the number of victims by accidents still goes increasing through other dangerous immigration routes. x Elizabeth D. Huttman, et al., ed. Urban Housing of Minorities in Western Europe and the United States, Duke University Press, 1991, P. 79. This document provides information on how minorities are often looked at as scapegoats when politicians fail to take the right social solutions. xi Chester W. Hartman ed., Challenges to equity: Poverty and Race in America, New York: M.E. Sharpe, Inc. 2001, P. 276 illustrates the suffering that immigrants undergo in different countries. Their increasing number is often considered as the reason of the host countries. However, all along history there are cases that show how immigrants give a punch to the economy of their new country. xii Jon D. Holtzman, Nuer Journeys, Nuer Lives: Sudanese Refugees in Minnesota, second edition, Boston, Pearson Education, Inc., 2008, page 114 mentions among many things how the Nuer were looked at as “exotic, black tribal Africans, refugees”, very much confirming the use of the concept “other” as presented in this text. Nicole Kidman’s “God Grew Tired of Us” rather depicts how lost boys from southern Sudan were able to go through several atrocities, but still turned out to be very successful in their relocation in the United States. xiii Charles L. Ruby, “The definition of Terrorism”, in The Society of the psychological Study of Social issues, Analyses of Social issues and Public Policy, 2002, Pp. 9-14 gives an excellent illustration of different attempts to get a definition of the concept terrorism. Patterns of terrorism that include illegality, moral understanding, “abnormal” behavior would easily leave an open space to the “others”. xiv International institutions dealing with refugees have specific orientations. The ones very closely linked to churches generally show interest for poor people, and victims of local traditions that impose social suffering after funeral ritual and other subsequent suffering judged pagan. xv Ivor C. Jackson, The Refugee Concept in Group Situations, Refugees and Human Rights, The Hague, Kluwer Law International, Martinus Nighoff Publishers, 1999 gives situations that explain how refugee groups get identities. xvi Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, New York, Routledge, 2005. In this book, the author describes how the borderline in cultural difference engagements are often based on consensual and conflictual terms, often moving between different groups.

Refugees: the “Other” Human face, and the “other” academics, an African and Personal Experience • 193

xvii Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, the Nature of Religion, Orlando, Harcourt, Inc., 1987 “The customary boundaries between the private and the public, high and low… challenge normative expectations of development and progress” (p. 3). xviii Angus Bankcroft, Roma and Gypsy-Travellers in Europe: Modernity, Race, Space and Exclusion, Research in Migration and Ethnic Relations Series, Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2005; and Valentina Glajar and Domnica Radulescu, “Gypsies” in European Literature and Culture, Studies in European culture and History, New York: PALGRAVE MACMILLANTM, 2008 offer a very good comparison of immigrants with European Gypsies. They go from one country to another, and belong to nowhere. When they seem to represent a danger in France, they shuttled to Romania or elsewhere. In spite of relocation fees they are given, they are again on their way to France, or to another European country before reaching France again. xix The Scholar at Risk Network and the Scholar Rescue Fund largely document such cases and have been able to have connections with different academic connections. They have taken the responsibility to connect with endangered academics, and try to help them in their academic pilgrimage wherever there are possibilities of hosting them. xx The Scholar at Risk Network’s website (http://scholarsatrisk.nyu.edu/) gives many details on its work, development, and services in many academic institutions that have adhered to its principles turning around the safety to give to endangered academics. xxi Marianne Onsrud Jawanda, “From Professor to Prisoner,” http://voxpublica.no/2007/11/from- professor-to-prisoner/ retrieved on August 7, 2012 still accounts for what happened.

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 194

References

Bankcroft, A. (2005). Roma and Gypsy-Travellers in Europe: Modernity, race, space and exclusion. (Research in migration and ethnic relations series). Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company.

Bhabha, H. K. (2005). The location of culture. New York, NY: Routledge.

Bongar, B. M. (2007). Psychology of terrorism. New York: Oxford University Press.

Capetillo-Ponce, J. (2004). Defining the Other. Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, 2(2), Fall.

Chabal P., Engel, U., Gentili, A (Eds.). (2005). Is violence inevitable in Africa? Theories of conflict and approaches to conflict prevention. Boston, MA: BRIL.

Denis, P., & Becker, C. (Eds.). (2006). The HIV-AIDS epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa in a historical perspective. Retrieved on March 20th, 2012 from http://www.refer.sn/rds/article.php3?id_article=245

El-Bushra, J., & Fish, K. (2004) Protecting vulnerable groups: Refugees and internally displaced persons. In International Alert and Women Waging Peace (Eds.), Inclusive Security, Sustainable Peace: A Toolkit for Advocacy and Action. London, UK: International Alert.

Eliade, M. (1987). The sacred and the profane, the nature of religion. Orlando, FL: Harcourt, Inc.

Evan, M. (2007). Hybridity in emergence East African poetry: A reading of Susan N. Kiguli and her contemporaries. Africa Today, 53(3), 41-62.

Fleischmann, E. (2009). I only wish I had a home on this globe, transnational biography and Dr. Eddy. Journal of Women’s History, 21(3), 108-130.

Fludernik, M, (Ed.).(2003). Diaspora and multiculturalism: Common traditions and new developments. New York, NY: Editions Rodopi B.V.

Glajar, V. & Radulescu, D. (2008). Gypsies. In European literature and culture: Studies in European culture and history. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan TM.

Groody, D. G. (2009). Jesus and the undocumented immigrants: A spiritual geography of a crucified people. Theological Studies, 70(2), 298-316.

Haas, H. (2008). Irregular migration from West Africa to the Maghreb and the European Union: An overview of recent trends. Prepared for International Organization for Migration. IOM Migration Research Series N0 32. Geneva: International Organization for Migration.

Refugees: the “Other” Human face, and the “other” academics, an African and Personal Experience • 195

Hartman, C. W. (Ed.). (2001). Challenges to equity: Poverty and race in America. New York, NY: M.E. Sharpe, Inc.

Holtzman, J. D. (2008). Nuer journeys, nuer lives: Sudanese refugees in Minnesota (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc. Retrieved on August 7, 2012 from http://voxpublica.no/2007/11/from-professor-to-prisoner

Huttman, E. D. et al. (Eds.). (1991). Urban housing of minorities in Western Europe and the United States. Durham: Duke University Press.

Jackson, I. C. (1999). The refugee concept in group situations: Refugees and human rights. The Hague: Martinus Nighoff Publisher, Kluwer Law International.

Jamison D. T. et al. (2006). Disease and mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Jawanda, M. O.(2007) From professor to prisoner. Retrieved on August 7th, 2012 from http://voxpublica.no/2007/11/from-professor-to-prisoner

Kaputu, F. (2010). The deadly pandemic, quarter a century after: The Katanga Province (D.R. Congo) and the Northwestern Province (Zambia), women in a world of HIV-AIDS. The Journal of Social Sciences, 69, 33-35.

Naficy, H. (Ed.). (1999). Home, exile, homeland: Film, media, and the politics of place. New York, NY: Routledge.

Paz, Y. (2011). Ordered disorder: African asylum seekers in Israel and discursive challenges to an emerging refugee regime. New Issues in Refugee Research. (Research Paper No. 205). Policy Development and Evaluation Services. Geneva: UNHCR, The UN Refugee Agency.

Philipps, J. (2011). Asylum seeker and refugees: What are the facts? Parliament of Australia, Department of Parliamentary Services: Parliament Library.

Prunier, G. (2009). From genocide to continental war: The ‘Congolese’ conflict of contemporary Africa. London: Hurst & Company.

Pyszczynki, T. A. et al. (2009). In the wake of 9/11: The psychology of terror. Oxford: American Psychological Association.

Ralston, J. (2012). Toward a political theology of refugee resettlement. Theological Studies, 73(2), 363.

Ruby, C. L. (2002). The definition of terrorism. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 2(1), 9-14.

JGCEE, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2012 • 196

Waters, J. (2003). Flexible citizens? Transnationalism and citizenship amongst economic immigrants in Vancouver. Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe Canadien, 47(3), 219-234.

Weine S. M. et al. (2011). Secondary and relocation among African refugee families in the United States. Family Process, 50(1).