I spent second semester of my Junior year with The Traveling School: an all-female semester school that travels through three different countries with five female teachers. We traveled through Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, as our global studies class constantly raised questions about "development" and the weight that idea carries. For one week, we were all paired off with a family in a small, rural, indigenous town in Ecuador. All of the families' first language was Quichua. Home stays was the most pivotal week for me.
I was led into a small house grounded with dirt floors. Women of the Agualongo community knelt around big metal pots as others hovered over, holding skinned guinea pigs. They kneaded dough with all the strength in their bodies, occasionally stopping to share stories. The men of the community intermittently walked through the doorway, delivering ingredients and asking if their assistance was needed. All of them participated in the communal cooking in preparation for Dia Del Campo -- a village-wide luncheon.
Prior to the semester, if someone were to ask me, "What three things come to mind when you hear the word development?" I would most likely think of tall skyscrapers, ivory-tower education, and affordable healthcare. If someone were to ask me the same question now, I would say, "A lot more than three things come to mind."
Education, infrastructure, and healthcare would still come to mind when I hear the word development, but I've realized development does not look the same universally. Development may involve a barter-trade system or a community based off of agriculture. Development may even involve a community of women gathering in a single kitchen to knead dough and cook guinea pigs.
Orientalism arises when we view unfamiliar societies as "savage" rather than different. The women and men of Agualongo showed me a new means of living. The savage/civilized binary is a construct of the Western World -- a way for the West to assert its power. My semester shattered any thoughts I had of that binary actually existing.
This trip first off sounds amazing, but what you said about development and how it is different universally was very powerful. Living in America we don't realize how more developed we are then other countries, and something so simple to us that we take for granted, can be a life changing tool to someone in a less developed country.
ReplyDeleteI think your thoughts on development are super interesting in the context of Orientalism because it shows that we really apply Orientalism to how we think about many different countries and cultures, not just those in the East. We don't even have to be thinking of a specific culture to have Orientalist thoughts, because as you showed, just thinking of a single descriptive word: development, can be influenced by Orientalist thought.
ReplyDeleteI really like that you took your personal experience and applied it to a bigger idea about how America views other countries and how consequential oblivion and ignorance can be. As an outsider looking in, you do set the precedent that people really do only think about themselves and their country and not others, but that can easily change as your perception did. Orientalism is a living problem, but a little insight can shift that.
ReplyDeleteJane!! You did a really good job incorporating the experience you had while in South America and bringing it back to the States. I really like how you mentioned development and how it is different in depending on the place.
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