"consciousness," commercialization, and the complex moral economy of reggae and hip-hop

*yeah, this has pretty much no connection to anything this blog is ostensibly about, but, meh..*

in "honor" of his recent cocaine trafficking conviction (and grammy award!), i've been enjoying a little buju banton in the office today. arguably one of dancehall and reggae's more influential voices in the last 25 years, i was still hesitant to post a link on my facebook page as unofficial song of the day (as is my wont), largely because of his horrifyingly violent homophobic streak, something that's incredibly common in a genre of music (well, reggae, more than dancehall), that styles itself as protest music, among artists who style themselves as champions of social justice, peace, and love.

at the same time, i realized i wouldn't hesitate to post songs from any number of hip-hop artists, despite the violence, misogyny and homophobia that is all too often a defining characteristic of the genre. ok, well then, is my discomfort greater with reggae because of the gap i perceive between the genre's stated mission and ethos, and its promotion of homophobia? if it is, it probably shouldn't be. just check out the lyrics of "conscious" hip-hop artists like tribe called quest, mos def, and common (rapwhitepeoplelike.com?), all of whom get significant play on my itunes.

how do we rationalize our engagement with (and enjoyment of) songs and artists that we find technically adept, musically compelling, and yet, at least in some circumstances, morally objectionable? one of my favorite answers to this is bryon hurt's documentary "beyond beats and rhymes",

"a riveting documentary that examines representations of gender roles in hip-hop and rap music through the lens of filmmaker Byron Hurt, a former college quarterback turned activist. Conceived as a “loving critique” from a self-proclaimed “hip-hop head,” Hurt examines issues of masculinity, sexism, violence and homophobia in today’s hip-hop culture."

as part of his thesis, he talks about how these are part and parcel of a strategically constructed and commodified portrayal of modern american black masculinity within a genre which, nonetheless, began as legitimate protest (explicit and implicit) against a system of structural violence and oppression of every stripe.

this new york times article from 2004 touches on a couple of interesting issues presented by reggae and dancehall on major record labels (as they increasingly are). commercialization pulls in two directions, with inter-genre and roots reputations being staked on "underground" releases with violent themes intact (and often a sense of a neo-colonial censorship by major labels), and the money being made in mainstream venues in which those themes are no longer acceptable. this is not in any way to claim that record labels, concert promoters and sponsors have an monopoly on the moral high ground. it's just what the market demands. i would suspect that maybe reggae's biggest market, dreadlocked middle class white kids in the global north*,  don't like their "peace and love" package too contradictory or culturally complicated. on the other hand, hurt shows evidence that the commercialization of hip-hop on major labels resulted in the marketing of a certain black masculinity that the demographic with the largest purchasing power (white, suburban, male adolescents) wanted to consume: a violent, misogynist, homophobic hyper-masculinity.

anyway, nothing too coherent here, ultimately. just throwing out some monday afternoon thoughts, and wondering whether anyone has recommendations for articles and books that look at the history, commercialization, and controversies of reggae, the way hurt, bell hooks, jay smooth, and others have considered hip hop.

*yeah, yeah, i know. i don't exactly have citation for this one. whatevs. you live through three tourist seasons in kathmandu and tell me if you don't end up with a serious antipathy for balloon pants, blond dreadlocks, and bob marley cover bands.

well, hey there, you, with the published thing.

yeah, sure, it's only in electronic format, but i'm still pleased about a case study i submitted for my NGO, ‘Countries, Communities and Conservation: Building Cooperation in Kanchenjunga’, getting selected for publication in ICIMOD's forthcoming collection on mountain biodiversity initiatives.

huzzah.

(i also, like, as a friend pointed out, that the call is "especially for success stories")

if they don't have "walkin' in memphis" i'll do this one

sometimes even i can't believe this stuff is real.

click to embiggen

#cantmakethisshitup friday

do you want to see the world? well, if you're an "ice cream processing specialist", acdi/voca wants to send you to lebanon for three weeks. please note, successful candidates will have "knowledge on making sorbet". new favorite RSS feed, or new favorite RSS feed?

~

if you didn't think you could hate the Bieb any more, check this shit out:

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Justin Bieber said, "I really don't believe in abortion. It's like killing a baby?" Asked about cases of rape, he added, "Well, I think that's really sad, but everything happens for a reason."

"i really don't believe you know what you're talking about, justin. it's like, let's talk when you hit puberty?"

~

on the formation of the new nepali cabinet:

Sources close to Khanal and Dahal said that though differences between the two coalition partners on some lucrative ministries remain unresolved, there has been an agreement to allot the Ministry of Home Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Peace and Reconstruction, Ministry of Law and Ministry of Forest and Soil Conservation to the Maoist party.

 "LUCRATIVE"?? man, if there's one thing i like about the nepali government, at least they're open about their rent-seeking. real talk, right there. (update: oh, the maoist's are backing out, anyway. SHOCKING.)

 ~

i was wondering what had happened with this story. looks like pakistan's getting a little frisky with the definition of the term "diplomatic immunity".

links and apologies

massive grant writing shenanigans, planning my parents' mid-march visit, and the fact that the brief but heavy late winter/early spring rains are making their presence felt though my bedroom ceiling means that i've been a little busy, but here are some quick/fun links. awoohoo!

today, in "your new imaginary internet boyfriends", ta-nehisi coates is dreamy:

Every day women choose to do the hard labor of a difficult pregnancy. Its courageous work, which inspires in me a degree of admiration exceeded only by my horror at the notion of the state turning that courage, that hard labor, into a mandate. Women die performing that labor in smaller numbers as we advance, but they die all the same. Men do not. That is a privilege.

working at peace dividend trust would be so so cool, mostly because i would want scott gilmore as my boss. read these two rants about the down sides of volunteering overseas (notwithstanding his snarky crack about teachers in the second post). then read this post about hug-an-orphan tourism at good intentions are not enough.

the excitement over the upcoming bryan adams concert in ktm mounts. crowd control makes me a little nervous, despite reassurances from the authorities (or maybe, given that it's nepal, given the reassurances). also a friend and local musician, smriti bajacharya, is quoted here. yes, she is just as adorable as she sounds.

also in local news...wtf? either this guy is the nepali chuck norris (without, presumably, the unfortunate politics), or someone accidentally re-printed the synopsis of a bollywood movie.

and now a video that involves two of the things that give me the greatest joy: jay-z and cats doing weird shit. (and speaking of videos, if you voted for me for world traveler intern, thanks so much! if you haven't had the chance, i hope you can take a sec and "become a fan" of my video application)

nostalgia

damn if i don't miss piebald. spent the afternoon/evening re-discovering their timeless (well for me) album "we are the only friends that we have". one of the best things about this album is that it is an ALBUM, meant to be listened to as a whole, and not as byte-sized mp3 download singles. at the same time there's nothing wasted on this album, nothing that doesn't deserve a listen on its own terms. ahh the days of cds.

the first track, just to get you started...

feb 9th quicklinks

another linkdump! because they're fun... and i sense a theme coming on...
from oktrends, the okcupid stats analysis blog, and just in time for valentine's day, the best questions for a first date. using the user-generated match questions, they tell you how to find out things like your date's religious, political, and sexual attitudes by asking seemingly innocuous questions that correlate strongly to certain answers on the big, but potentially inappropriate questions. for instance, if you want to know if you're getting laid that night, ask your date if they like the taste of beer. if the answer is yes, you have a 60% better shot. also, points awarded for being probably the only stats website that gets away with this line: "in the post-apocalypse, THERE ARE NO SECOND DATES."

however, not all of us are so bound by social constraint (or, y'know, um, sensitive to social convention). things that i, for one, would be THRILLED to discuss on a first date (hey, hey, see what i did there?), include...

our all-time favorite criminally insane heads of state
dear charles taylor's lawyer: if i had made a habit of handing in term papers 20 days late, i would have failed out of college. if i submitted grants 20 days late, my NGO wouldn't be funded. i'd have to check, but i'm almost positive law schools aren't so hot on that shit either. so, what, exactly, did you think was going to happen here? love, molly

granted, when it comes to sheer bat-shittery, he's no muammar gaddafi or kim jong-il, but i think turkmenistan's kurbanguly berdymukhamedov is starting to show some real promise.

talk nerdy to me
seriously, let's order another round and bag on the quant hegemony in americanist political science. if you manage to pull out your own zombie-based parodies of major academic disciplines, you're probably getting lucky, but i'll settle for world-weary discussions of failures of knowledge in the afganistan war, or the perverse incentive system that structures the development industry.

why we love the obamas
 reason #48547259

terrible tv
don't get me wrong, i am a BIG fan of mediocre television programming, but i actually meant the absurdly offensive advertising campaigns that have cropped up recently, from the girl store to groupon to pepsi. because, i, for one, spent $160k on an education, the most striking effect of which is that i can't watch things like the superbowl or disney movies without getting frothy with indignation.


...but then again, there are reasons i'm still single.

...and speaking of self-promotion!
emily put up a nice post responding to my question about generationally different perceptions of agricultural labor in nepal and india.

also, if you voted for me in STA's world traveler internship, thanks so so much. if you haven't, it would be just swell if you took a second to check out my video. become a fan (the button's shoudl be to the right of my photo and bio, but some people have had problems) and/or leave a comment to help impress the fine folks at STA, and, if you like it, feel free to re-post, tweet, email it, or whatever social media the kids are dancing to these days. thanks bunches!

why the nepal gvt's secret deal is bad news.

it was revealed today that the maoist party's apparent 11th hour support for the new UML PM khanal was, in fact, the result of a nearly year-long  series of secret negotiations between one faction of the maoist party and the UML. it was the result of a seven-point agreement, with several very contentious arrangements. this is all, to employ a technical term, bad news bears.

one thing that probably won't be covered in the international press, but is really important, is the way this whole incident embodies the factionalism that pervades the three major parties: UCPN-maoist, CPN-UML (united marxist-leninist), and NC (nepali congress). infighting among factions is a major reason for the chronic ineffectiveness of nepal's democratic government(s) since the early 1990's, and one of the original rallying cries of the maoist insurgency. at the moment, there are probably three major factions of the maoists, and 2-3 in the UML, depending on who's counting.  the negotiation of the secret agreement by certain factions of each party can be seen as internal power plays by those factions, as well as a bid for control of government as a whole. this ktm post article gives a pretty good run down of the situation, although it's a little hard to follow if you're not familiar with the players.

the factionalism in play also makes this deal even more precarious than it already otherwise clearly is. as this other ktm post article describes, dahal and khanal have agreed to "clarify" the meaning of the seven points, under pressure from the opposition parties. they are ALSO under pressure from their respective parties to stand firm by the points as articulated (dahal's maoists) and to hedge their asses off (khanal's UML). the points needing clarification are the most contentious ones:

"The opposition to the accord mainly revolves around the fourth point, which commits to the formation of a separate force for Maoist combatants and the sixth point, which states that the UML and the Maoists will lead the government on a rotational basis."

the NC reaction to the whole thing, but particularly those two points, has been, predictably, something along the lines, of "bitch, please...".

it's only a matter of time until the whole thing falls apart. either

1) the UML-maoist coalition won't be able to reconcile their differences over implementation, and so won't form a government, and we end up back where we were, if not worse off, three weeks ago.

or, 2) they work out something that allows them to form a government, but wherein both parties save face...which will of course be so vague and full of loopholes that one party will eventually inevitably claim that the other party has failed to abide by the agreement. for instance: "on a rotational basis"? what does that even MEAN? the UML is saying it be only on the "basis of broad based consensus — contrary to the sixth provision that commits for “long-term cooperation between the two parties.”" they may work out something suitably agreeable, but when it comes time to hand over the reins, an excuse will be found not to do so. furthermore, even is the parties weren't so heavily factionalized, this seems logistically infeasible to me: a rotation over what length of time? do you form a new cabinet every time you switch over? (because that SURELY won't obstruct the duties of government or anything.)

or, 3) the agreement is somehow hammered out, clearly and unambiguously, through actual compromise, to the satisfaction of both the UML and the maoists. except now that they've gotten an even tentative and unstable agreement to the effect, i doubt the maoists would agree to anything other than the wholesale integration of the PLA as a separate force, and so point four will have to go in as is. this is totally antithetical to the absolute good of the professionalization of the security sector in peacebuilding, not to mention a COMPLETE spoiler when it comes to getting to constitution written. the NC and opposition parties will never ratify a statute under those circumstances.

and that's what's ultimately at stake here.

vote for meeeee

hey y'all,

i'm hoping you can take a second to watch a video and become a "fan" of my application for STA's 2011 world traveler internship.

interns tackle a 3-month itinerary drawn up by STA travel that includes 16 countries (a full around the world trip). they file blog entries, video and photos to document their trip.

if you feel comfortable re-posting, tweeting, emailing it out, or whatever other social media the kids are dancing to today, well, that would be just swell.

thanks bunches,
m

feb 7th quicklinks

i'm not really so much for "coherent thinking" today. it's just not that kind of monday for me. so here's a collection of random links that i've enjoyed in the past couple days.

alien tort statute jurisprudence continues to evolve. particularly liked this: 

"Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs, part of the September panel that ruled for Shell, wrote that the original ruling "has no great practical effect except for the considerable benefit of avoiding abuse of the courts to extort settlements [from corporations]."

 oh, y'know, except for that whole accountability for the gross violation of human rights thing. have no doubt that this will go poorly if it ends up in the supreme court...well, "poorly" assuming you value human life and social and environmental justice, and you sort of resent the way that increasingly powerful international corporations crap all over the same for the sake of grotesque profit and even more so the way the roberts court actively helps them do it.

~

emily writes about the health and environmental impacts of quarrying in rural himachal pradesh. she notes that given the opportunity, people still express a preference for the polluting, unhealthy quarry work over traditional agriculture and husbandry, even if they could make the same amount of money. there's a possible additional factor that she didn't bring up in her speculation on the reasons for these preferences. in nepal, anyway, there seems to be a stigma associated with traditional agricultural and husbandry livelihoods among the younger generations. even when other factors might make agriculture a more viable option, it is viewed as undesirable and "backward" to continue the backbreaking labor of your parents' and grand-parents' generations. i wonder if this has an impact on what emily's seeing in india. regardless it's another example of the tension between progress and social and environmental welfare in developing countries, and the question of how much those members of the international community who benefited from the former without concern for the latter have the right to regulate it.

~

this is an old one from sociological images that i missed. it basically calls out avatar for being liberal guilt porn that should in no way be taken as a critical post-colonial narrative. i still haven't seen it, but i'm glad i can go into my next movie night with some pre-loaded righteous indignation.

~

oh my GOD do i miss good beer....

....almost as much as i miss electricity for 14 hours a day.

~

i didn't think it was possible for my crush on ted leo to get any bigger...but there ya go.

~

feb 14th: get in on flashmob kathmandu.

~

stars on NPR's tiny desk concerts: come for the unplugged version of "fixed" at 3:25; stay for the jokes about tote bags at the end.

spotting local power in aid interventions: preliminary thoughts

talesfromthehood is a perennial favorite on my google reader. it tends to be a smart, funny, and no nonsense commentary on aid and development (and the author is a co-blogger on the incomparable stuff expat aid workers like). i especially enjoyed the recent critique of three cups of tea's popularity.

i found today's post, "power", engaging as well, although i question the connection between the points made in the intro and the example chosen to illustrate them (although, to be fair, the intro and concluding bits seemed to be a kind of analytical dressing for the sake of drawing a lesson from the very very funny anecdote). TFTH says,

"Understanding who has power in a community is vital to doing good aid. And yet we very frequently get it wrong. We miss the cues. Local power often hides in plain sight in the eyes of outsiders."

right. i've been chewing on another post about positionality in development research and my experience in humla, so much more on this later, but for now: yes, blindness to the myriad and overlapping local structures of power is a really fast way to screw up a development intervention. but TFTH's example doesn't really turn out to be about that. his anecdote about an interaction with a "camp leader" in haiti is about an inability to spot locally powerful individuals, something that is only one small part of the manifestation of local power structures...and something that, in my experience, is actually not all that hard figure out. i'm working with much more limited, and possibly very different (community development, as opposed to humanitarian aid) experience, but i would say that local leaders are pretty easy to spot. they're the ones who will dominate group discussions, and the ones who will feel most comfortable approaching local NGO staff and engaging with them seriously and sometimes even contentiously; they speak with authority and are treated with visible respect. i mean, no assumptions about local power and local leaders should be taken without a grain of salt (and significant amounts of open-minded observation). however, it seems to me that identifying local leaders is only the first, and the least challenging, step of mapping the narratives that are made visible and invisible by local power structures, and, most importantly, making visible the invisible ones and incorporating them into planning and implementation.

bombing the everloving sh*t out of civilians may not be a great COIN stategy: now with 100% more statistical evidence

it absolutely made my morning to find an ungated copy* of kocher, pepinsky, and kalyvas' new article "aerial bombing and counterinsurgency in the vietnam war," which just appeared in the american journal of political science. they use just awesomely fine-grained data available from the hamlet evaluation system (HES), used by the US during vietnam, to assess the way indiscriminate violence in the form of aerial bombing affected insurgent control of the hamlets bombed (rather than occurrence of subsequent insurgent violence, which is more imprecise, but more commonly used out of necessity). they conclude that "A variety of estimation methods, including instrumental variables and genetic matching, show that bombing civilians systematically shifted control in favor of the Viet Cong insurgents."

on a personal note, i was lucky to have a lot of really great professors in college, but matt kocher was one of the best. he helped define what kind of teacher i hope to be, if i ever end up teaching...and i swear that has nothing to do with the slight crush on him that i may or may not have harbored.

anyway! if COIN and/or BALLER statistical analysis is your thing, definitely check it out. do people know if there's an equivalent data set for other conflicts? obviously, i'm thinking about the most immediately pertinent example of af-pak.


*thanks, dave!

did NOT see that one coming

honestly, i've been meaning to blog about nepal's revised PM-election process for about two weeks, but i assumed i'd have, like, three rounds of elections and run-offs to do it (and, cynically, that it would all end up going nowhere, anyway). much to my shock though, as of last night, nepal has a new prime minister. that the UML candidate, khanal, won isn't so suprising in and of itself; after the madhesi alliance threw in their own candidate instead of supporting the maoists' dahal, it became drastically less likely that the new government would be formed under maoist leadership. their 11th hour withdrawal and support of khanal makes sense, and it actually means the government might get moving, but...you know, that's just such a rare state of affairs in nepali politics.

of course the issue remains that there are only four months left for this government to draft the constitution. to "promulgate the statute in a timely manner", as they put it here, really really major issues have to be resolved. most immediate, and most contentious, is the integration of the PLA into the national security forces (i can't even find one or two links that summarize this back and forth; just google it). there's even a significant difference of opinion between groups as to whether the resolving the integration of combatants and other peace process issues is a prerequisite to writing the constitution or vice versa. you've also got other major hot button issues like federalism and land reform, which have been pushed aside in the attempt to form a government over the last seven months, but which will have to be addressed while writing the constitution.

anyway. it'll be an interesting four months.

new english-language online weekly from nepal

The Reporter
[h/t my roomie]

dear girl store: stop. just stop.

there is just so so much wrong with the girl store, but the three major points to be made are 1) the unsavory pitch, 2) the oversimplified "girl effect" logic, and 3) the lack of transparency.

the girl store ostensibly offers you the chance to support indian girls' access to education, by donating money through the purchase of school supplies for one of the girls pictured on the website. the logic is that education will prevent the sale of these girls into sexual slavery, forced labor or early marriage in a society rife with gender inequality, where sons are often prized over daughters, and where, among poor families, a daughter is an unwanted mouth to feed.

image from the girl store website

ok. so what's so wrong about this?

1) the fundamental cringe-worthiness of the pitch: there's a lot going on here for me, but imma try to articulate it as clearly as i can. i'm sure the theme of "commodification" is deliberate here; it's meant to emphasize the way these girls' lives are commodified and devalued by their societies and their families, particularly compared to sons. the problem for me is that, like a failed satire of racist attitudes, the girl store's presentation doesn't sufficiently undermine this concept through the appropriation of the theme. the girls pictured on the website appear, to me, dehumanized; they are precious little brown girl dolls that you, you white in shining armor, can make your very own. you can even dress her up (accessories not included)! the deliberately provocative commodification/child trafficking connection is also poorly served by the explicit appropriation of the language of child prostitution. like, i get where you were going with this one, girl store, but seriously: creepy. really really creepy.


2) the "girl effect" logic behind it: so, there's a lot of strong, reliable evidence that (some) aid is most effective when targeted at women and girls, but along with complexity and failure, "the girl effect" is set to be among the most overused and under-critically-analyzed buzz concepts in development in 2011 (self-promotion: i sort of wrote about this in regards to climate change a couple of months ago). the debate is well summarized elsewhere, so i'll just point out that the girl store seems to take a drastically oversimplified view of the causal connection between (specifically) lack of girls education and gender inequality as expressed by trafficking and early marriage*. it's just more, well, complex than that.


3) lack of transparency for donors: seriously we JUST WENT THROUGH THIS with the Great Kiva Debate. if you aren't familiar: basically, there was a huge blow up a few months ago over the way kiva, a micro-loan provider, told (or at least implied) to donors it did business, in comparison to how it actually did business. the story which kiva sold was that you, as a donor, are selecting an actual individual human to whom you are making a loan, kiva gives them the money, they do nice things, and you get to follow their progress and feel good about yourself. the reality, it was revealed, is much more complicated, and necessarily so. kiva partners with a microfinance organization in a developing country, the organization disburses loans to people and THEN the stories are posted. when you choose a loan to fund, partially or fully, you're actually sending your money to the organization that disbursed that loan, not the individual in question. bear in mind, this is the only ethical and effective way to go about doing this. you don't put people up all over the internet and then not give them money. you can't have a single US-based organization centrally disburse almost $200 million to individuals scattered throughout the third world. (well you could try, but it wouldn't work as well, if at all). the real debate was not over the necessity or propriety of the real model, but about the propriety of using implying that your money was doing something that it's not, because faces and personal stories are more compelling fund-raising tools than slightly more complex micro-finance mechanisms. it was about transparency.

the girl store does kiva one better (worse?). nowhere, but NOWHERE, on its website does it provide any information about the mechanics of how your donation is disbursed. it leaves you to assume that your $10 are actually buying little shruti's school uniform. now, this means that one of two unacceptable things is happening. we might have kiva redux, whereby the the girl store is providing reimbursement to its partners for support already given to girls whose photos are features on the website...and thus irresponsibly misleading its donors. alternatively, (and in my mind this is the worse, if less likely option) you have an organization that is promising actual individual children support for their education, posting their pictures on the internet (in a dehumanizing, colonial, and sexually objectified way, i will reiterate), and just stone cold hopin' that some money comes through. both options represent a drastic abdication of responsibility, the first, to donors, the second, to beneficiaries.


for any or all of these reasons, i say, "dear girl store: just stop."


*afterthought: this post doesn't even touch on the monolithic image of "indian" culture and society that the girl store creates.