COASTLINE JOURNAL

March 1, 2011

humanities as a revolutionary tool

This story piqued my interest in how study of and participation in “the humanities,” which as we well know is a very loosely defined category of academic disciplines, can be a tool for social activism:

Education Without Barriers: The ‘Hum’ Success Story

For those unfamiliar with Vancouver’s downtown eastside, this is a neighbourhood composed of mixed lower-income families, artists, as well as the disenfranchised poor, including those with no fixed address–the street person, the addict, the prostitute. Several of our friends, artists and academics, live in the downtown eastside. It is officially “Canada’s poorest postal code” which is increasingly being marginalized and squeezed by property development.

SFU recently moved its contemporary arts studios, classrooms and faculty from its mountaintop aerie at the main campus to the Woodward’s complex.

In the news now (2011) is a plan to build a giant casino nearby this impoverished neighbourhood, and the mounting opposition (including architects) to this proposal. Arrayed against the opposition are construction unions and sports franchises. Vancouver is justifiably respected across North America for its “liveability” which in many ways is the result of citizen action—in the late 50′s and early 60′s a proposed highway which would have cut through Chinatown and downtown was stopped by citizen opposition.

Also of local interest is the current Vancouver Art Gallery exhibit, WE: Vancouver – 12 Manifestos for the City.

February 8, 2011

Learning to Teach

SFU Surrey campus (photo: Cedric Chan, The Peak newspaper, SFU Student Ass'n)

A graduate student obtains an appointment as a TA (teaching assistant) or as a sessional instructor for an undergrad class. This is the first step toward that academic career she hopes she’ll obtain, even though she knows the current reality is that if she’s fortunate she’ll get part-time work with no guarantees, at a commensurately lower rate of pay. Her university may offer, as mine does, a “TA/TM Day” on the first day of each semester, in which instructors, staff, current and former teaching assistants, offer workshops on such topics as

• academic honesty and integrity
• improving students’ writing skills
• reflective practice in teaching
• facilitating effective discussions
• helping students in distress
• using technology in teaching
• active learning in labs and tutorials
• surviving your first tutorial
• conflict resolution in teaching
• evaluating student work fairly and efficiently
• setting the right tone in your classes
• creating an inclusive classroom
• helping students think critically & work cooperatively

(SFU website)

But its still nerve-wracking, that first class–that first semester! I made a number of mistakes in my first teaching job, the most egregious being to side with “my” students when they complained about the way essays were to be marked–ignoring the fact that I had been chosen to work with (and for) “my” professor. We ironed it out over beers after a few weeks, but it was one of those embarrassing and potentially devastating mistakes which could have affected my future employment prospects as a TA. It did not, and I have taught another two semesters to date, and an online course last summer… Read the rest of this entry »

February 8, 2011

Marx and the Evolution of Indian Capitalism

by Vinit Khosla, Simon Fraser University

download this essay: marx and india

The mention of Karl Marx often elicits sceptical responses and glazed looks. This is not surprising. After all, wasn’t he the thinker whose prediction of the demise of capitalism in Western Europe proved incorrect? Didn’t the revolutions that he waited for take place in the wrong places? Most important, hasn’t communism, as it has been actually practised, been a total failure, to be relegated to the dustbin of history?

I believe it is short-sighted to think this way, if only because capitalism is the dominant ideology and economic system of the day. Many of Marx’s insights into the development and workings of capitalism remain relevant, even if he may have been wrong about how we would transcend capitalist society. These insights can assist us in a critique of how we live today and where we are headed in our capitalist-dominated world order.

India is a good place to test the applicability of Marx’s ideas regarding a number of subjects: the nature of pre-capitalist societies; the transition from feudalism to capitalism; the role of imperialism in spreading capitalism; and the global nature of the forces of production. It is useful that Marx wrote extensively about India in a series of newspaper articles, and later in the Grundrisse and Capital. In these pieces, he placed Indian society in his materialist history and assessed the impact of the British presence. It is with these writings that I begin my exploration of the relationship between India and Marx. I then jump forward to the significance of India’s independence in 1947 (building on another GLS paper, titled “British Rule, Indian Independence, and Karl Marx”) How —if at all—can we construe this event in Marxian terms? Such an analysis takes us into contemporary India. I ask to what extent India today conforms to a Marxian description of capitalist society, both internally and within the context of the global economy. I conclude by summarizing the points of convergence and divergence between Marxian thought and Indian historical reality, and how this comparison shouId inform our use of Marx’s ideas. Read the rest of this entry »

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