Linguists know, based on reams of research, that a form of [Proto Indo-European], the language, did arrive in India from elsewhere, becoming Sanskrit over time. That fact doesn’t have to diminish the ‘Indianness’ of the language. Sanskrit’s deep and longstanding cultural importance in the subcontinent is a strong enough connection. Its shared ancestry with farflung languages is just one of the many connections that have been made and remade over and over again in India’s history.
In defending a fascinating earlier post on parallels between the history of English and Dravidian languages such as Kannada,  The Economist’s Los Angeles–based language blogger, “Johnson”, reminds us that a strong present-day national identity need not be based on a mythology of “pure”, local cultural origin. Indeed, much of the vitality of today’s historically rooted identities lies in a rich collection of global connections reaching deep into the past.
Can you spot the globalization in this photo? Let me first set the stage. This is a picture of professional soccer player Lucas Barrios holding the trophy awarded to the champions of Germany’s Bundesliga. And in both 2010-11 and 2011-12, the victorious Deutschmeister was Borussia Dortmund. For a U.S. audience, Borussia Dortmund, or “BVB”, might best be described as the Pittsburgh Steelers of German soccer. The club’s colors are a bold yellow and black; the club’s fan base is very large and very passionate; the club has a long and distinguished history as one of Germany’s most successful, including nine Bundesliga titles and a pair of European trophies; and while beginning to emerge as one of Europe’s “super clubs” in world soccer, its identity remains intensely rooted in the modest-sized, industrial city that it calls home. What Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania are to the United States, Dortmund and its Ruhr Valley are to Germany, and BVB is not nearly the global brand that its southern, Munich-based rival, FC Bayern (aka “FC Hollywood”) represents. Against this intensely local backdrop, note two rather conspicuous global elements in the photo. First, there is the Döner Kebap Haus in the background, reminding us that Germany’s postwar industrial recovery relied heavily on a workforce supplemented by millions of gastarbeiter, especially from Turkey. Today, Turks represent the largest non-Germanic ethnic minority group in an increasingly multicultural country, accounting for about five percent of the total population. Through areas such as sport, music, film, and, of course, food, Turkish Germans are helping redefine what it means to be German in the 21st Century. (Sticking with film, the nearly two decades of work by Hamburg native Fatih Akin are a great place to start discovering the rich Turkish-German experience; also well worth watching is the multi-generational, guest-worker immigration story told by Yasemin Samdereli’s 2011 film, Almanya: Willkommen in Deutschland.) The second, no less obvious global connection in the photo, is Barrios himself, who is a native of Buenos Aires and, in soccer terms at least, a national of Paraguay thanks to family connections on his mother’s side. But there is even more to his global story. This photograph is linked from a recent article on Chinese professional soccer. Like many other big names from the ranks of world soccer, including both players and coaches, Barrios has been lured by a big pay raise to ply his trade in the fledgling Chinese league. It’s been a mixed story, both for players such as Barrios and for the league, but it reveals the large and lucrative market that exists in China, and eastern Asia more broadly, for the world’s game. It’s also a fascinating microcosm of the new dynamics of wealth that has accumulated in post-Mao China, with many of the country’s richest individuals generating and displaying their wealth through a combination of property development and soccer. As the article points out, real-estate companies own 13 of China’s 16 first-division teams, including Barrios’s FC Evergrande, owned by the billionaire founder of Evergrande real estate, Xu Jiayin.
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Can you spot the globalization in this photo?

Let me first set the stage. This is a picture of professional soccer player Lucas Barrios holding the trophy awarded to the champions of Germany’s Bundesliga. And in both 2010-11 and 2011-12, the victorious Deutschmeister was Borussia Dortmund. For a U.S. audience, Borussia Dortmund, or “BVB”, might best be described as the Pittsburgh Steelers of German soccer. The club’s colors are a bold yellow and black; the club’s fan base is very large and very passionate; the club has a long and distinguished history as one of Germany’s most successful, including nine Bundesliga titles and a pair of European trophies; and while beginning to emerge as one of Europe’s “super clubs” in world soccer, its identity remains intensely rooted in the modest-sized, industrial city that it calls home. What Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania are to the United States, Dortmund and its Ruhr Valley are to Germany, and BVB is not nearly the global brand that its southern, Munich-based rival, FC Bayern (aka “FC Hollywood”) represents.

Against this intensely local backdrop, note two rather conspicuous global elements in the photo. First, there is the Döner Kebap Haus in the background, reminding us that Germany’s postwar industrial recovery relied heavily on a workforce supplemented by millions of gastarbeiter, especially from Turkey. Today, Turks represent the largest non-Germanic ethnic minority group in an increasingly multicultural country, accounting for about five percent of the total population. Through areas such as sport, music, film, and, of course, food, Turkish Germans are helping redefine what it means to be German in the 21st Century. (Sticking with film, the nearly two decades of work by Hamburg native Fatih Akin are a great place to start discovering the rich Turkish-German experience; also well worth watching is the multi-generational, guest-worker immigration story told by Yasemin Samdereli’s 2011 film, Almanya: Willkommen in Deutschland.)

The second, no less obvious global connection in the photo, is Barrios himself, who is a native of Buenos Aires and, in soccer terms at least, a national of Paraguay thanks to family connections on his mother’s side. But there is even more to his global story. This photograph is linked from a recent article on Chinese professional soccer. Like many other big names from the ranks of world soccer, including both players and coaches, Barrios has been lured by a big pay raise to ply his trade in the fledgling Chinese league. It’s been a mixed story, both for players such as Barrios and for the league, but it reveals the large and lucrative market that exists in China, and eastern Asia more broadly, for the world’s game. It’s also a fascinating microcosm of the new dynamics of wealth that has accumulated in post-Mao China, with many of the country’s richest individuals generating and displaying their wealth through a combination of property development and soccer. As the article points out, real-estate companies own 13 of China’s 16 first-division teams, including Barrios’s FC Evergrande, owned by the billionaire founder of Evergrande real estate, Xu Jiayin.

A little more than three miles from the Stade du 26 Mars, the 55-thousand-seat home of Mali’s national soccer team, lies just one of several dirt pitches that occupy much of the open space in Bamako (population ca. 2 million). While the green grass field of the Stade represents one side of Malian soccer—a very distinguished side, to be sure, as Mali’s “Eagles” have been surprise semi-finalists in the Africa Cup of Nations two times running—the other side of Malian soccer represented by the city’s less formal dirt pitches arguably better embodies the heart and soul of the beautiful game. This is the game that Americans Gwendolyn Oxenham and Luke Boughen recently traveled the world to find, and play, as chronicled in both their film, Pelada, and Gwendolyn’s book, Finding the Game. It is also the game played a few years back by a group of U.S. Airmen from Florida’s Hulburt Field, against a local Bamako side, which was watched by as many as 2000 spectators. First Lieutenant Lauren Johnson captured the sheer joy of the action that day with some wonderful photographs. One of these photos is shown above; it and a couple of others can be viewed in full size here, here, and here. (The rest of images posted above are screen captures from some virtual exploration of Bamako using Google Maps.)
Zoom Info
A little more than three miles from the Stade du 26 Mars, the 55-thousand-seat home of Mali’s national soccer team, lies just one of several dirt pitches that occupy much of the open space in Bamako (population ca. 2 million). While the green grass field of the Stade represents one side of Malian soccer—a very distinguished side, to be sure, as Mali’s “Eagles” have been surprise semi-finalists in the Africa Cup of Nations two times running—the other side of Malian soccer represented by the city’s less formal dirt pitches arguably better embodies the heart and soul of the beautiful game. This is the game that Americans Gwendolyn Oxenham and Luke Boughen recently traveled the world to find, and play, as chronicled in both their film, Pelada, and Gwendolyn’s book, Finding the Game. It is also the game played a few years back by a group of U.S. Airmen from Florida’s Hulburt Field, against a local Bamako side, which was watched by as many as 2000 spectators. First Lieutenant Lauren Johnson captured the sheer joy of the action that day with some wonderful photographs. One of these photos is shown above; it and a couple of others can be viewed in full size here, here, and here. (The rest of images posted above are screen captures from some virtual exploration of Bamako using Google Maps.)
Zoom Info
A little more than three miles from the Stade du 26 Mars, the 55-thousand-seat home of Mali’s national soccer team, lies just one of several dirt pitches that occupy much of the open space in Bamako (population ca. 2 million). While the green grass field of the Stade represents one side of Malian soccer—a very distinguished side, to be sure, as Mali’s “Eagles” have been surprise semi-finalists in the Africa Cup of Nations two times running—the other side of Malian soccer represented by the city’s less formal dirt pitches arguably better embodies the heart and soul of the beautiful game. This is the game that Americans Gwendolyn Oxenham and Luke Boughen recently traveled the world to find, and play, as chronicled in both their film, Pelada, and Gwendolyn’s book, Finding the Game. It is also the game played a few years back by a group of U.S. Airmen from Florida’s Hulburt Field, against a local Bamako side, which was watched by as many as 2000 spectators. First Lieutenant Lauren Johnson captured the sheer joy of the action that day with some wonderful photographs. One of these photos is shown above; it and a couple of others can be viewed in full size here, here, and here. (The rest of images posted above are screen captures from some virtual exploration of Bamako using Google Maps.)
Zoom Info
A little more than three miles from the Stade du 26 Mars, the 55-thousand-seat home of Mali’s national soccer team, lies just one of several dirt pitches that occupy much of the open space in Bamako (population ca. 2 million). While the green grass field of the Stade represents one side of Malian soccer—a very distinguished side, to be sure, as Mali’s “Eagles” have been surprise semi-finalists in the Africa Cup of Nations two times running—the other side of Malian soccer represented by the city’s less formal dirt pitches arguably better embodies the heart and soul of the beautiful game. This is the game that Americans Gwendolyn Oxenham and Luke Boughen recently traveled the world to find, and play, as chronicled in both their film, Pelada, and Gwendolyn’s book, Finding the Game. It is also the game played a few years back by a group of U.S. Airmen from Florida’s Hulburt Field, against a local Bamako side, which was watched by as many as 2000 spectators. First Lieutenant Lauren Johnson captured the sheer joy of the action that day with some wonderful photographs. One of these photos is shown above; it and a couple of others can be viewed in full size here, here, and here. (The rest of images posted above are screen captures from some virtual exploration of Bamako using Google Maps.)
Zoom Info

A little more than three miles from the Stade du 26 Mars, the 55-thousand-seat home of Mali’s national soccer team, lies just one of several dirt pitches that occupy much of the open space in Bamako (population ca. 2 million). While the green grass field of the Stade represents one side of Malian soccer—a very distinguished side, to be sure, as Mali’s “Eagles” have been surprise semi-finalists in the Africa Cup of Nations two times running—the other side of Malian soccer represented by the city’s less formal dirt pitches arguably better embodies the heart and soul of the beautiful game. This is the game that Americans Gwendolyn Oxenham and Luke Boughen recently traveled the world to find, and play, as chronicled in both their film, Pelada, and Gwendolyn’s book, Finding the Game. It is also the game played a few years back by a group of U.S. Airmen from Florida’s Hulburt Field, against a local Bamako side, which was watched by as many as 2000 spectators. First Lieutenant Lauren Johnson captured the sheer joy of the action that day with some wonderful photographs. One of these photos is shown above; it and a couple of others can be viewed in full size here, here, and here. (The rest of images posted above are screen captures from some virtual exploration of Bamako using Google Maps.)

Geography and Topological Space

I’m not a mathematician. As much as I’d love to be able to understand and communicate the language and logic of concepts like “graph theory”, it usually doesn’t take more than a page or two of such abstract thinking—as elegant as it may be—before my aching brain yearns for the historical geographer’s chaotic world of empirical facts and subjective stories.

I nonetheless get excited by examples of abstract mathematical order made visible in my seemingly messy “real world”. Such is the case with a recent blog post by The Atlantic Cities’ Emily Badger, in which Badger summarizes the theoretical epidemiological geography of Northwestern University’s Dirk Brockmann. Applying graph-theory principles, Brockmann argues that a hypothetical global pandemic jumping around the planet in seemingly random, chaotic fashion via globe-trotting air travelers is, in fact, following a very conventional contagious pattern, like the radiating ripples on a pond made by the splash of single stone. We just need to look at this pattern of diffusion from the right perspective.

That perspective is topological space, which is about as abstract a concept as I introduce to my students in introductory human geography. The idea of topology typically is traced back to a classic 18th-century math problem involving the Seven Bridges of Königsberg. Part of this story’s appeal to me is that it sounds like a problem a bunch of old Prussians would have debated over tankards of Baltic Porter some evening: Was it possible to cross all seven bridges in the city without passing over any of the bridges a second time? The answer is no, but it took the mathematician Leonhard Euler to prove it. Euler’s key observation (illustrated below) is that the problem could be reduced to what we now call topology; the length and location of the bridges, in a conventional geographic sense, were irrelevant, and all that mattered for solving the problem was how each of the bridges connected two of this spatial network’s four nodes (i.e., the left and right banks of the Pregel River, plus the two islands on which Königsberg sat.)

image

When I introduce topological space to my students, and its application to more than just drunken debates at the bar, I discuss the cartography of mass-transit systems. Probably the most famous example is the map of the London Underground, which set the standard for efficiently displaying metropolitan rail lines topologically, distorting conventional geographical space in the process. Applying the concept to my own college in Santa Monica, and its location relative to downtown Los Angeles, one might observe that the college is a bit more than 13 miles away from City Hall, as the crow flies, from a west-southwest direction. That’s geographical space. But in terms of topological space, particularly that defined by the networks of mass-transit systems on which many of my students commute, SMC is functionally further from downtown than its crow-flying distance would suggest. It would take at least two bus rides, and/or a fair bit of walking, to make such a journey. And if one wanted to ride the train; forget about it. Despite the recent opening of the Expo Line to Culver City, Santa Monica remains miles (and years) away from being rail-connected to downtown. Indeed, one could reasonably argue that, topologically speaking, Long Beach is actually closer than SMC to the historic core of L.A., since the 20-mile distance between the two cities’ downtowns can be covered by a simple, single ride along the Metro Blue Line.

Any sort of spatial interaction that is mediated by networks is perhaps better understood in terms of topological space than conventional geographic space. This is exactly the idea exploited by Professor Brockmann modeling the theoretical spread of pandemic disease. If one were to map, as Brockmann does, the global diffusion (via air travel) of a theoretical disease starting on Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean, the resulting animated map appears chaotic; the disease literally pops up all over the place, with no apparent geographic pattern.

But if one alternatively envisions the world connected to Cyprus topologically, then the disease’s theoretical spread follows a very tidy contagious pattern.

Sometimes math can be quite beautiful. (Although in this case, it does require momentarily forgetting that all those animated red dots represent lots of people getting sick with the flu.)

The Uncertain Future of the Epidemiological Transition

I’ve just wrapped up a unit in my Introduction to Human Geography that focuses on the demographic transitions of the modern, industrial age. These transitions include a decline in death rates and corresponding rise in life expectancy that provide the primary trigger for the modern population “explosion”. As Abdel Omran explained, this “Epidemiological Transition” is built around developments in health care and infrastructure that change not only the rates of death, but also the common causes of death. In Omran’s words, the pre-modern “Age of Pestilence and Famine” eventually gives way to a modern “Age of Degenerative and Man-Made Diseases”; or, to put it another way, humanity moves from a time of cholera to a time of cancer.

Dr. Daniel Uslan

Among the modern innovations that have driven the Epidemiological Transition is the discovery and application of antibiotic medicines. Like so many other features of modern society, however, the long-term sustainability of antibiotics increasingly is coming under question. Dr. Daniel Uslan, assistant clinical professor of infectious diseases at UCLA and  director of the Antimicrobial Stewardship Program, estimates that as much as half of the use of antibiotics today is unnecessary or otherwise inappropriate. This is concerning because the overuse of antibiotics accelerates the evolution of resistant bacteria, endangering lives and inducing billions of dollars in additional health-care costs each year. Dr. Uslan will be on campus at SMC on Tuesday, October 30, to discuss the growing problem of antibiotic resistance, in the next presentation of our Distinguished Scientists Lecture Series (Science 140, 11:15 am).

The uncertainty surrounding the future of the Epidemiological Transition also concerns the other side of infectious disease—not the bacteria that thrive in unsanitary environments but the viruses that thrive in globally connected societies. Vaccination has been the primary tool modern humanity has used to guard against viral infections, and to such great success that none us who have lived in a time and place free of the fear of smallpox, polio, and the like, should take it for granted. As a recent book by David Quammen reminds us, however, there always lingers the threat of the next “big one”, the next virus to “Spillover” into humans from elsewhere in the animal kingdom and wipe out millions of people around the world, in one fell swoop, a la the “Spanish Flu” of 1918. As real a threat potential future pandemics might pose, society’s vigilance against new viruses also can be excessive. But rather than medical-demographic consequences analogous to our overuse of antibiotics, our excessive vigilance against new viruses can have adverse consequences that are of a more political-economic sort. At least that’s the argument made in another new book—Mark Harrison’s Contagion—which relates a history of humankind exploiting fear over impending pandemics to selfishly disrupt and redirect world trade; medical quarantine and embargo all too frequently become an excessive form of nationalistic protectionism.

As noted at the top of this post, the Epidemiological Transition is but one piece of a more complete Demographic Transition that also includes a “Fertility Transition” toward ever-lower birth rates. The continuing global, but geographically uneven, decline in fertility is a topic unto itself, but one that since the turn of the century is typically discussed with a great deal of optimism. Indeed, in 2002, the UN Population Division hosted a meeting of experts to outline the prospects for “Completing the Fertility Transition” in the foreseeable future. The reasons for fertility’s steady and near-universal decline are multiple, and at the local scale of village and household, may involve a wide range of variables, including religion and other notions of personal values and identities. At the aggregated global scale, however, it would appear that economic development, combined with the rising social status of girls and women, are what have led the way to lower modern fertility—one or two children per woman, rather than five or six. Paul Schultz of Yale University makes that case here, and the always entertaining and enlightening Hans Rosling, does so as well in the video below.

Culture, Colonialism, Misogyny, and the Middle East

foreign policy may-june 2012 cover

The current issue of Foreign Policy magazine features a provocative cover story by the Egyptian-American author and activist, Mona Eltahawy—and it’s not just the cover that’s provocative.

Much of the early attention that Eltahawy’s essay has received has been critical. Eltahawy is accused of painting with a very broad and simplistic brush. Which she does. The “they” whom she describes as hating women are variously identified as Arab, Muslim, and/or Middle Eastern, three diverse and overlapping communities who—in the context of this article—seem to be defined by little else than their apparent misogyny.

A closer, more sympathetic reading of the essay reveals that Eltahawy really isn’t trying to suggest that there is something essentially misogynistic woven, sine qua non, into the fabric of Arab, Muslim, and/or Middle Eastern culture. Indeed, Eltahawy argues quite passionately toward the end of the piece that to believe as such is to submit ourselves to a cultural relativism that apologizes for actions and attitudes we would never tolerate in the liberal, modern West. (Or at least we like to think we wouldn’t.)

First we stop pretending. Call out the hate for what it is. Resist cultural relativism and know that even in countries undergoing revolutions and uprisings, women will remain the cheapest bargaining chips. You — the outside world — will be told that it’s our “culture” and “religion” to do X, Y, or Z to women. Understand that whoever deemed it as such was never a woman. 

But if Eltahawy isn’t exactly saying women are systematically discriminated across the Middle East because of Arab and/or Muslim culture, she also fails to provide an alternative explanation. This is where Max Fisher’s response, posted today at The Atlantic, is a  welcome contribution. Fisher provides neither a defense nor a rebuttal, but rather a reinforcement, of Eltahawy. Despite his headline, Fisher, too, fails to provide a definitive explanation of ”…Sexism in the Middle East,” but he appropriately emphasizes that its “Real Roots…” can be found in the dynamics of colonial and post-colonial society. Fisher’s essay is not without its own problems, in particular a redefinition of the often-used concept of a ”patriarchal bargain“ that strays rather far from the original definition developed by Deniz Kandiyoti, which emphasized the agency of women around the world in negotiating a wide variety of distinct patriarchal systems. But that is a topic for another post, perhaps several more posts. For now, here are a handful of suggestions for additional, more academically oriented, reading on patriarchy, colonialism, Islam, and the Middle East. If you have additional suggestions, please share them below!

One of the more interesting ways to visualize the regional social-cultural geography of the United States. It certainly confirms my sense that Arizona is more Texas than California. Would be very interesting to see a similar map with the data presented at a county-level resolution. theatlantic: U.S. Teen Birthrates Are Down, But Still High in the Bible Belt Teen birthrates are highest in Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Arkansas, and New Mexico, with slightly lower concentrations in the neighboring states of Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Arizona. New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, and Massachusetts have the lowest rates of teen births. What factors lie behind this geographic pattern? […] Teenage births remain high in more religious states. The correlation between teenage birthrates and the percentage of adults who say they are “very religious” is considerable (.69). The 2009 study posited that attitudes toward contraception play a significant role, noting that “religious communities in the U.S. are more successful in discouraging the use of contraception among their teenagers than they are in discouraging sexual intercourse itself.” Teen birthrates also hew closely to America’s political divide. They are substantially higher in conservative states that voted for McCain in 2008 (with a correlation of .65) and negatively correlated with states that voted for Obama (-.62). Class plays a substantial role as well. Teen births are negatively associated with average state income (-.62), the share of the workforce in knowledge, professional, and creative class jobs (-.61), and especially with the share of adults who are college graduates (-.76). Conversely, teen birthrates are higher in more working class states (with a positive correlation of .58). Read more at The Atlantic Cities. [Image: Centers for Disease Control]
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One of the more interesting ways to visualize the regional social-cultural geography of the United States. It certainly confirms my sense that Arizona is more Texas than California.

Would be very interesting to see a similar map with the data presented at a county-level resolution.

theatlantic:

U.S. Teen Birthrates Are Down, But Still High in the Bible Belt

Teen birthrates are highest in Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Arkansas, and New Mexico, with slightly lower concentrations in the neighboring states of Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Arizona. New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, and Massachusetts have the lowest rates of teen births.

What factors lie behind this geographic pattern? […]

Teenage births remain high in more religious states. The correlation between teenage birthrates and the percentage of adults who say they are “very religious” is considerable (.69). The 2009 study posited that attitudes toward contraception play a significant role, noting that “religious communities in the U.S. are more successful in discouraging the use of contraception among their teenagers than they are in discouraging sexual intercourse itself.”

Teen birthrates also hew closely to America’s political divide. They are substantially higher in conservative states that voted for McCain in 2008 (with a correlation of .65) and negatively correlated with states that voted for Obama (-.62).

Class plays a substantial role as well. Teen births are negatively associated with average state income (-.62), the share of the workforce in knowledge, professional, and creative class jobs (-.61), and especially with the share of adults who are college graduates (-.76). Conversely, teen birthrates are higher in more working class states (with a positive correlation of .58).

Read more at The Atlantic Cities. [Image: Centers for Disease Control]