POST 16 BIS: EXCHANGES IN REAL SPACES: DEFINITIONS & PERSONAL DOCUMENTS

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5kQTVp-Mdv3Y0dhTkxCcEZYQXc/edit

POST 17: OUTSOURCING/OFFSHORING: Two Cartoons

In this cartoon we can see a man that we guess is Mitt Romney (because of his face and treasure box with the name ROMNEY written on it) with his gran-children (they call him "granpa"). They are in the Cayman Islands, very known place for offshoring (between others), and they have a boat called "Believin In America".  Also, Romney is explaining to his gran-chlidren how to keep all of their money to theirselves by not paying taxes thanks to offshoring and pay less their workers thanks to outsourcing. Romney is/was known and satirized a lot for offshoring all of his money which is not at all fruitfull for the economy but only for the personal interest of the richest, like him.

In this second cartoon, we see a man explaining to his fellow that he had to "move to the next country", talking about outsourcing, saying that they (probably his company) offered thousands of jobs in a poor country, making himself look like a savior and explaining that the reason he "moved" was because the people wanted to get paid, as if it was not normal. In this cartoon, we also see another non-ethical way to profit to the economy, but this time at a bigger scale, although here, human lives are not considered at all.

Both of these cartoons deal with the hypocrisy of capitalism in developed countries like the United States, whose values are freedom and equality between humans but do everything they can, through outsourcing and offshoring, to keep the money to themselves even by stealing it to other people.

POST 16: EXCHANGES IN REAL/PHYSICAL SPACES

Spaces & Exchanges

in Real Spaces

1.INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION

Immigration is the movement of people into a country to which they are not native in order to settle there, especially as permanent residents or future citizens. Immigrants are motivated to leave their native countries for a variety of reasons, including a desire for economic prosperity, political issues, family re-unification, escaping conflict or natural disaster, or simply the wish to change one's surroundings.

2.MIXED/HYBRID LANGUAGES

A mixed language is a language that arises through the fusion of usually two source languages, normally in situations of thorough bilingualism (Meakins, 2013), so that it is not possible to classify the resulting language as belonging to either of the language families that were its sources. Although the concept is frequently encountered in historical linguistics from the early 20th century, attested cases of language mixture, as opposed to code-switching, substrata, or lexical borrowing, are quite rare. Furthermore, a mixed language may mark the appearance of a new ethnic or cultural group.

3. HUMAN INTERACTION/INTERDEPENDENCE

In relationships, interdependence is the degree to which members of the group are mutually dependent on the others. This concept differs from a dependent relationship, where some members are dependent and some are not.

In an interdependent relationship, participants may be emotionally, economically, ecologically and/or morally reliant on and responsible to each other. An interdependent relationship can arise between two or more cooperative autonomous participants (e.g. a co-op). Some people advocate freedom or independence as the ultimate good; others do the same with devotion to one's family, community, or society. Interdependence can be a common ground between these aspirations.

4.TECHNOLOGY TRANSFERS

Technology transfer, also called transfer of technology (TOT), is the process of transferring skills, knowledge, technologies, methods of manufacturing, samples of manufacturing and facilities among governments or universities and other institutions to ensure that scientific and technological developments are accessible to a wider range of users who can then further develop and exploit the technology into new products, processes, applications, materials or services. It is closely related to (and may arguably be considered a subset of) knowledge transfer. Horizontal transfer is the movement of technologies from one area to another. At present^[when?]transfer of technology (TOT) is primarily horizontal. Vertical transfer occurs when technologies are moved from applied research centers to research and development departments.

5. OUTSOURCING/OFFSHORING

In business, outsourcing involves the contracting out of a business process to another party (compare business process outsourcing). The term "outsourcing" dates back to at least 1981. Outsourcing sometimes involves transferring employees and assets from one firm to another, but not always. Outsourcing is also the practice of handing over control of public services to for-profit corporations.

Outsourcing includes both foreign and domestic contracting, and sometimes includes offshoring (relocating a business function to another country). Financial savings from lower international labor rates can provide a major motivation for outsourcing/offshoring.

6. BRAIN DRAIN

Human capital flight is an Economics term equivalent to the Sociology term, brain drain, which refers to the emigration of intelligent, well-educated individuals to somewhere for better pay or conditions, causing the place they came from to lose those skilled people, or "brains." Typically, emigrating brains have learned English and have moved to the United Kingdom, the US or some other English-speaking country. An example is Albert Einstein. Brain drain is common in developing nations, particularly in former African colonies of the United Kingdom, the island nations of the Caribbean, and in centralized economies such as the former East Germany and the Soviet Union. China and India have recently been discovered to be at the top of the list of countries with skilled students of English leaving.

7. INTERNATIONAL/GLOBALIZED TRADE

International trade is the exchange of capital, goods, and services across international borders or territories. In most countries, such trade represents a significant share of gross domestic product (GDP). While international tradehas been present throughout much of history (see Silk Road, Amber Road, Salt road), its economic, social, and political importance has been on the rise in recent centuries. It is the presupposition of international trade that a sufficient level of geopolitical peace and stability are prevailing in order to allow for the peaceful exchange of trade and commerce to take place between nations.

Globalization (or globalisation) is the process of international integration arising from the interchange of world views, products, ideas and other aspects of culture. Advances in transportation and telecommunications infrastructure, including the rise of the telegraph and its posterity the Internet, are major factors in globalization, generating further interdependence of economic and cultural activities.

8. MASS/SUSTAINABLE/ECO TOURISM

Mass tourism developed with improvements in technology, which allowed the transport of large numbers of people in a short space of time to places of leisure interest, so that greater numbers of people could begin to enjoy the benefits of leisure time.

Ecotourism is a form of tourism involving visiting fragile, pristine, and relatively undisturbed natural areas, intended as a low-impact and often small scale alternative to standard commercial (mass) tourism. Its purpose may be to educate the traveler, to provide funds for ecological conservation, to directly benefit the economic development and political empowerment of local communities, or to foster respect for different cultures and for human rights. Since the 1980s ecotourism has been considered a critical endeavor by environmentalists, so that future generations may experience destinations relatively untouched by human intervention. Several university programs use this description as the working definition of ecotourism.

9. HUMAN SMUGGLING/TRAFFICKING

Human trafficking is the trade of humans, most commonly for the purpose of sexual slavery, forced labor orcommercial sexual exploitation for the trafficker or others. This may encompass providing a spouse in the context offorced marriage, or the extraction of organs or tissues, including for surrogacy and ova removal. Human trafficking can occur within a country or trans-nationally. Human trafficking is a crime against the person because of the violation of the victim's rights of movement through coercion and because of their commercial exploitation. Human trafficking is the trade in people, and does not necessarily involve the movement of the person from one place to another.

People smuggling (also called human smuggling) is "the facilitation, transportation, attempted transportation or illegal entry of a person or persons across an international border, in violation of one or more countries' laws, either clandestinely or through deception, such as the use of fraudulent documents". The term is understood as and often used interchangeably with migrant smuggling, which is defined by the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime as "...the procurement, in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit, of the illegal entry of a person into a state party of which the person is not a national". The practice of people smuggling has seen a rise over the past few decades and today now accounts for a significant portion of illegal immigration in countries around the world. People smuggling generally takes place with the consent of the person or persons being smuggled, and common reasons for individuals seeking to be smuggled include employment and economic opportunity, personal and/or familial betterment, and escape from persecution or conflict.

Unlike human trafficking, people smuggling is characterized by the consent between customer and smuggler - a contractual agreement that typically terminates upon arrival in the destination location.

10. ARMS TRADE/TRAFFICKING

Arms trafficking, also known as gunrunning, is the illegal trafficking or smuggling of contraband weapons or ammunition. What constitutes legal trade in firearms varies widely, depending on local and national laws.

11. ILLEGAL DRUG TRADE

Drug dealing is the exchange of illegal drugs for payment. The illegal drug trade is a global black market dedicated to the cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of drugs that are subject to drug prohibition laws. Most jurisdictions prohibit trade, except under license, of many types of drugs through the use of drug prohibition laws.

12. RURAL-URBAN/URBAN-RURAL MIGRATION

Urbanization is a population shift from rural to urban areas, "the gradual increase in the proportion of people living in urban areas", and the ways in which each society adapts to the change.^[1] It predominantly results in the physical growth of urban areas, be it horizontal or vertical. The United Nations projected that half of the world's population would live in urban areas at the end of 2008.^[2] It is predicted that by 2050 about 64% of the developing world and 86% of the developed world will be urbanized.

Counterurbanization is a demographic and social process whereby people move from urban areas to rural areas. It first took place as a reaction to inner-city deprivation and overcrowding. Initial studies of counterurbanization were carried out by human geographer Brian Berry. More recent research has documented the social and political drivers of counterurbanization and its impacts in developing countries such as China, which are currently undergoing processes of mass urbanization It is one of the causes that can lead to shrinking cities.

13.  UPWARD SOCIAL/GEOGRAPHIC MOBILITY

Geographic mobility is the measure of how populations move over time. Geographic mobility, population mobility, or more simply mobility is also a statistic that measures migration within a population. Commonly used in demography and human geography, it may also be used to describe the movement of animals between populations. These moves can be as large scale as international migrations or as small as regional commuting arrangements. Geographic mobility has a large impact on many sociological factors in a community and is a current topic of academic research. It varies between different regions depending on both formal policies and established social norms, and has different effects and responses in different societies. Population mobility has implications ranging from administrative changes in government and impacts on local economic growth to housing markets and demand for regional services.

Social mobility is the movement of individuals, families, households, or other categories of people within or betweensocial strata in a society. It is a change in social status relative to others' social location within a given society.

14. RELIEF ORGANIZATIONS/AID AGENCIES

An aid agency is an organisation dedicated to distributing aid. Many professional aid organisations exist, both within government (e.g. AusAID, USAID, DFID,EuropeAid, ECHO), between governments as multilateral donors (e.g. UNDP) and as private voluntary organizations (or non-governmental organisations, (e.g.ActionAid, Ducere Foundation, Oxfam, World Vision). The International Committee of the Red Cross is unique in being mandated by international treaty to uphold theGeneva Conventions.

15. STUDENT EXCHANGE PROGRAMS

 A student exchange program is a program in which students from a secondary school or university study abroad at one of their institution's partner institutions. A student exchange program may involve international travel, but does not necessarily require the student to study outside of his or her home country. For example, the National Student Exchange program (NSE) offers placements throughout the United States and Canada.

16. GLOBAL CITIES/GLOBAL CULTURAL EVENTS

A global city, also called world city or sometimes alpha city or world center, is a city generally considered to be an important node in the global economic system. The concept comes from geography and urban studies and rests on the idea that globalization can be understood as largely created, facilitated, and enacted in strategic geographic locales according to a hierarchy of importance to the operation of the global system of finance and trade.

17.GLOBAL WARMING

Global warming and climate change can both refer to the observed century-scale rise in the average temperature of the Earth's climate system and its related effects, although climate change can also refer to any historic change in climate. Multiple lines of scientific evidence show that the climate system is warming. More than 90% of the additional energy stored in the climate system since 1970 has gone into ocean warming; the remainder has melted ice, and warmed the continents and atmosphere. Many of the observed changes since the 1950s are unprecedented over decades to millennia.

POST 12: School shootings in the USA

The Columbine School Shooting.

I didn't have time to read a 10th of the information on the blog which is very detailed on every part of this tragic event. But what i thought was most interesting was:
*How the shooters plan the event, and how it happened, because every deteil given in the blog about what happenned shows that it was indeed planned by lost teenagers who, even though killed and injured a lot of innocent people, "failed" to do what they wanted, which was blowing up their school. In the sumary of the event, it is said that most of the bombs and molotov cocktails they had prepared failed to explode, which was initially part of a plan that they started a whole year before. i had heard of this shooting but had no idea how planned it was and it really surprised me.

*The shooters' profiles, especially Eric Harris, and what is said about him. At first sight, he has a James Deam kind of look, is handsome and looks confident, which is actually ery important to be accepted in high school years. Also, comments of people who knew him stroke me because they say he was a "nornal guy" with a "classic type" and the description of his life, wanting to raise two sons, joining the marine, does not give us at all the image of frustrated and rejected teen, but someone who had life goals. I think it is very interesting because it calls into question the whole theory that school shootings are done by rejected teens who want revenge.

*The diaries of the killers, which i didn't read but i caught a sentence written by Eric Harris which is very shocking and interesting at the same time: "I'm full of hate and i love it."
*Some pictures that i picked and wrote below

This is the first photo i saw and the website. The girl on the right, Jessica Holliday, just escaped the school and this picture captured in a very artistic and striking way, the chaos and the sudden pain that was going around during the event.

This is also a very beautiful moment well captured by a picture. The suffering going along with maybe relief on this boy's face makes us feel what was going on in people's minds this day.

Through an artistic point of view this is the best picture, although it is violent and sad but it makes the viewer question himself: "Whose shoes are these? Is this person dead? Injured? Maybe these are the shoes of one of the killers..."

For the films and movies that illustrates this topic, i choose American Horror Story's first season for several reasons: first of all because i started to watch this show a few months ago and loved it because of how it is shot, the great actors and the unusual topics.

Also because i thought of the first season as soon as we started talking about school shootings in class, but mostly because a part of the first season is inspired by the event of Columbine.

Some things, like the name of the school, or the fact their were 2 shooters, have been changed, but most of it stayed, for example this very striking moment in the library when Kyle (the shooter) asks for the Jocks to get up. Also, we get to know the character during the show and try to understand what is going on in his head, which i think is way more interesting then just talking about the facts.

 Here is the link to the episode of the shooting from 0:00 min to 4:50 min.

The main reasons that are given to explain school shootings are vendetta (because they were bullied, rejected or for other reasons), because they were deranged or because they were exposed to violence in their everyday lives. All of the other reasons revolve around loneliness, access to drugs and weapons, bad social background or mental problems or ideas like not valuing life, etc... Even though these are really the main reasons why these tragic events happen, i think putting every one of them in the same bag is going to fast, and studying the psychologic part of their act more interestinf maybe to prevent it from happening again...