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Resilience in the Context of Poverty: The Experiences of Low-Income Urban Filipino Parents

December 21, 2016
By 19693

What factors make parents resilient to the effects of poverty in urban Manila? Rosanne Jocson, a 2008–2010 Sylff fellow of Ateneo de Manila University, the Philippines, and a doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan when she received her SRA grant, investigates protective factors that buffer the negative effects of poverty and adverse living conditions on low-income urban Filipino mothers and fathers.

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A snapshot from a low-income neighborhood in Metro Manila.

In the Philippines, little systematic research has been done to study the effects of economic strain on parents and children and the factors that buffer its negative effects. This is a cause for concern, given that poor and low-income families constitute more than half of the household population in the Philippines.[1] In Metro Manila, the urban capital, about 1.8 million households are considered poor and another 8.7 million households are low-income.[1] Poor and low-income families confront several stressors in their psychosocial and physical environment, such as residence in makeshift dwellings, inadequate sanitation and drainage, limited access to clean water, overcrowding, and other threats to physical health.[2] In fact, reports show that Metro Manila has the largest number and percentage of children experiencing shelter and water deprivation.[3] Residents in informal settlements also face stigma, housing insecurity, and eviction threats, along with violence and dangers due to crime, drug use, and neighborhood gangs.[2] How do parents and children manage risk and function well despite these difficult conditions? Broadly, my research seeks to identify the factors that contribute to their resilience and positive development.

What Is Resilience?

In physics, resilience is the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape after it has been pulled, stretched, or bent in some form. Applying this characteristic to people, resilience is typically viewed as “toughness,” or the ability to “bounce back” from difficulty. In the field of psychology, resilience is defined as the achievement of relatively positive outcomes despite risk or adversity.[4,5]

An important feature of resilience is that it is a process of overcoming the negative effects of risk exposure and not a static, individual trait.[4, 6] This is important to note because framing resilience as a trait that lies within the person could lead to some form of blame on the individual if it is not achieved. As such, the main question regarding resilience is, “What factors make some people succeed despite experiencing risk or adversity?” These factors are known as “protective factors.”

Broadly speaking, protective factors are resources that buffer the negative effect of adverse conditions on an individual’s functioning.[4,6,7] These could be family-level factors, such as support, cohesion, and quality of communication among family members. They could also be resources outside the family, such as friends, mentors, and other supportive relationships in the neighborhood and community. Finally, they may also include individual-level factors, such as resourcefulness, intelligence, optimism, self-regulation, and spirituality.

Taking these together, resilience is not just an individual achievement. Rather, it is a process that is achieved through protective factors that are derived from people and resources in the individual’s context.

Investigating Resilience among Low-Income Filipino Parents

Given my research interest in poverty in the Philippine context, I used an SRA grant to investigate the individual-, family-, and community-level factors that promote resilience among Filipino parents living in low-income neighborhoods in Manila. I was specifically interested in the roles of religiosity and spirituality, family-oriented values and behaviors, and community cohesion in buffering the effects of poverty-related risks on Filipino mothers and fathers.

The author with her research team at the host institution, Ateneo de Manila University.

My focus on these three factors is based on their cultural relevance in the local context. First, the Philippines has the third largest Catholic population in the world,[8] and as such, religiosity and spirituality, especially beliefs and practices that are rooted in the Catholic faith, are deeply entrenched in Philippine society. Second, Filipinos are often described as having a strong adherence to family-oriented values emphasizing cohesiveness among immediate family members and extended relatives, respect for elders and parental authority, and mutual obligations.[9,10] Third, Filipino family-oriented values extend to people in local communities and neighborhoods, with close neighbors typically treated as extended family.[11]

I visited Manila from January to July 2016 to work on this research project. I was hosted by the Ateneo de Manila University Psychology Department and worked with mentors, colleagues, and students who provided invaluable support throughout the entire research process. I had the pleasure of working with a team of local graduate students in psychology, who assisted me in the translation and adaptation of survey measures, pilot testing, and data collection in three local communities. The research team worked closely with community leaders and coordinators from the recruitment sites to ensure smooth data collection with the 200 parents who participated in this study. This process highlighted the importance of establishing partnerships and strengthening ties with communities and local institutions for the success of a research project.

The research team with the barangay chairman (the highest elected community leader) and other community coordinators of one of the research sites.

The main objectives of my dissertation are to (a) examine the ways in which poverty-related risks influence parents’ psychological well-being and parenting behaviors, (b) identify culturally relevant individual, familial, and community-level protective factors against poverty-related risks, and (c) investigate similarities and differences between Filipino mothers and fathers.

Initial analyses showed, after controlling for family income, that several poverty-related risks were associated with higher levels of psychological distress among mothers and fathers. These include neighborhood disorder, lack of access to water and electricity, food insecurity, and exposure to community violence. Many poverty-related risks were also associated with lower levels of warmth, after controlling for family income. These include lack of neighborhood resources, neighborhood disorder, and lack of access to water.

Further analyses showed that certain individual- and family-level factors had protective relations with parenting behaviors. For example, mothers’ spirituality was associated with higher levels of warmth and parent-adolescent communication quality. Maternal and paternal efficacy was also associated with higher levels of communication quality. Both mothers’ and fathers’ family-oriented behaviors were likewise associated with higher levels of communication quality and monitoring. These initial results highlight the importance of considering contextual risks when studying the impact of economic disadvantage on Filipino families and emphasize the roles of spirituality of mothers, as well as efficacy and family-oriented behaviors of both mothers and fathers, in enhancing their functioning.

Toward a More Global Perspective in Poverty Studies

The SRA grant has been instrumental in my goal to contribute international perspectives to the study of poverty and resilience. The need to adopt a more global perspective in this field is compelling, given the severe underrepresentation of developing countries in psychological research. As the nature and experience of poverty differ widely across contexts, it would be unwarranted to generalize findings derived from Western developed regions to the much larger population of children and families living in low- and middle-income countries. In the Philippines, for example, it is important to identify and highlight assets that are culturally and contextually relevant. These findings could then be incorporated to intervention projects, such as in the design and evaluation of parenting and child development programs for low-income Filipino families. Along with larger-scale efforts toward reducing poverty and inequality, such initiatives could help facilitate healthy family functioning and child development even in disadvantaged contexts.

References

1.Albert, Jose Ramon G. and Martin Joseph M. Raymundo (2015). Why inequality matters in poverty reduction and why the middle class needs policy attention. Philippine Institute for Development Studies Discussion Paper Series, 55, 1–42. Retrieved from http://dirp3.pids.gov.ph/websitecms/CDN/PUBLICATIONS/pidsdps1555.pdf

2.Racelis, Mary and Angela Desiree M. Aguirre (2002). Child rights for urban poor children in child friendly Philippine cities: Views from the community. Environment and Urbanization, 14 (2), 97–113.

3.Philippine Institute for Development Studies (2010). Global study on child poverty and disparities: The case of the Philippines. Retrieved from http://www.unicef.org/socialpolicy/files/Philippines_GlobalStudy(1).pdf

4.Rutter, Michael (2012). Resilience as a dynamic concept. Development and Psychopathology, 24, 335–344.  

5.Luthar, Suniya S., Dante Cicchetti, and Bronwyn Becker, (2000). The construct of resilience: A critical evaluation and guidelines for future work. Child Development, 71, 543–562.  

6.Masten, Ann S. (2014). Global perspectives on resilience in children and youth. Child Development, 85, 6–20.

7.Sameroff, Arnold, Leslie Morrison Gutman, and Stephen C. Peck (2003). Adaptation among youth facing multiple risks: Prospective research findings. In S.S. Luthar (ed.), Resilience and Vulnerability: Adaptation in the Context of Childhood Adversities (pp. 364–391). New York: Cambridge University Press.

8.Pew Research Center (2011). Table: Christian Population in Numbers by Country. Retrieved from http://www.pewforum.org/2011/12/19/table-christian-population-in-numbers-by-country/

9.Alampay, Liane Pena (2014). Parenting in the Philippines. In H. Selin (ed.), Parenting across Cultures: Childrearing, Motherhood and Fatherhood in Non-Western Cultures (pp. 105–121). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.

10.Medina, Belen T. G. (2001). The Filipino Family, 2nd ed. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.

11.Nadal, Kevin L. (2004). Pilipino American identity development model. Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, 32, 45–62.

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Verbs and the History of Bantu Languages Near the Serengeti

November 10, 2016
By 19668

It is said that there are more than 6,000 languages spoken today in the world. The majority of them are so-called minority languages and are endangered. Timothy Roth, a 2014 Sylff fellow of the University of Helsinki, conducted fieldwork in Tanzania to examine four Mara Bantu languages—so-called minority languages—using an SRA award. His article, explaining the findings from his fieldwork, highlights the importance of “minority” languages.

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Mara Region, Tanzania

The Mara Region of Tanzania is home to over 20 different language varieties in an area the size of the US state of Delaware.^ⅰMara is situated between Lake Victoria to the west and Serengeti National Park to the east, with the nation of Kenya just to the north. As one might assume, the sheer density of languages and dialects in the region is quite remarkable. Although there are several Nilotic languages in the region, most of the varieties belong to the Bantu language family.

The area around Lake Victoria is extremely important for reconstructing the history of the Bantu peoples, specifically concerning the general routes taken across sub-Saharan Africa during what is called the “Bantu migration.” There is consensus among scholars that the Bantu migration took place several thousand years ago from what is now Cameroon.ⁱⁱ What is in dispute among historians (and researchers from other disciplines) is the direction(s) in which the early Bantu communities moved. One major hypothesis places early Bantu communities to the west of Lake Victoria as the result of a primary migration from Cameroon. Some of these early Bantu communities would have soon spread to the east side of the lake. This hypothesis happens to correspond well with the paleoecological and archaeological evidence.ⁱⁱⁱ

Acacia savanna inside Serengeti National Park, about 90 km from Musoma.

Many of the languages in Mara are endangered to varying degrees and are linguistically underdescribed. There are many language endangerment issues here in terms of the need for language documentation, legitimacy, and the dynamic effects that language development and mother-tongue education can have on the communities themselves. There is an innate value to minority languages whereby language and cultural preservation result in a “mental” or “intellectual” wealth that belongs to humanity.^iv

Hale says, “At this point in the history of linguistics, at least, each language offering testimony for linguistic theory brings something important, and heretofore not known or not yet integrated into the theory. In many cases, data from a ‘new’ language forces changes in the developing theory, and in some cases, linguistic diversity sets an entirely new agenda.”^v

Thus, any additional linguistic understanding of the Mara languages could have ramifications not only for Bantu migration hypotheses but also for the advancement of current linguistic theory.

My research concerns four of these Mara Bantu languages: Ikoma, Nata, Isenye, and Ngoreme. These languages are closely related and form a subgroup called Western Serengeti. I am working on multiple languages rather than just one because the density of Bantu languages in the Mara region provides a unique opportunity to compare closely related languages. My research is focused on verbs, specifically the grammatical markers that encode tense, aspect, modality, and evidentiality (TAME). In Bantu languages—and many other languages around the world—differences in pitch can change the meaning of words and can also apply to these grammatical TAME markers; this concept is called “grammatical tone” and is a crucial part of any analysis of the verbal system. I am comparing the function and meaning of the TAME markers in Western Serengeti in order to understand how they developed and what that reveals about the history of these languages. As far as methodology is concerned, a focus on function and meaning (and not just forms) makes it necessary to combine any elicitation with the collection of natural texts.

View of Lake Victoria from Makoko, just outside of Musoma.

For the first phase of my research, I went to Musoma, Tanzania, in October 2014 as a Sylff fellow and collected initial data from each of the languages. This initial data mostly consisted of elicitation from lists of words and sentences but also included audio recordings of stories and conversations. Because the TAME systems were underdescribed, I needed to cast a wide net to see what I would find. (Bantu languages are known for having intricate TAME systems.^vi) The first phase was certainly a success, as I was able to figure out the general pattern of how the present-day TAME systems are organized. Surprisingly, I found that the systems are organized primarily around aspect (perfective versus imperfective) and not tense. This type of organization is more like some of the non-Bantu Niger-Congo languages of West Africa.^vii

These surprising facets of the initial research made the second phase that much more important, as I had many remaining questions as a result. For example:

• If the systems are organized around aspect, how do speakers choose a particular aspect to communicate past, present, or future? Is it merely whether the event is viewed as complete or incomplete?

• Do the semantics of the verbs themselves (lexical aspect) influence the selection of certain grammatical aspects? Are there any restrictions on which verbs can take which grammatical aspects?

• Quite a bit of overlap exists in some of the aspects that cover (what would be) the immediate past and present. Does modality play any role in distinguishing between these?

Ikoma language informants working on text transcription.

With the SRA grant, I traveled again to Tanzania in June 2016 for the second phase of fieldwork. I worked on my research for two weeks at the SIL International Uganda-Tanzania Branch regional headquarters in Musoma. I brought in two mother-tongue speakers per language group as language informants for two to four days each and used Swahili to talk with them about their language(s) and conduct the research. Part of the research included transcription of previous audio data as well as word-for-word translation into Swahili. Additional research elements included further elicitation and recording (for lexical aspect and grammatical tone).

With the research that the SRA grant allowed me to undertake, not only did I gain some answers regarding the first two questions above, but the major finding came in relation to the third question: in three of the languages—Ikoma, Nata, and Isenye—the morpheme -Vká- combines inceptive aspect with what is called witness/non-witness evidentiality. Although not modality per se as initially expected, evidentiality is the “grammatical marking of information source.”^viii In Ikoma, Nata, and Isenye the inceptive is used if the report comes from a witness to the event, while the perfective is used if the report comes from a non-witness to the event. Evidentiality has not been described for many African languages and is definitely an emerging area for research.

In addition, evidentiality has a clear relationship with episodic memory, or “the memory of past events that have been personally experienced and is thus based on sensory information.”^ix

Tense and aspect also have clear relationships with storytelling and, more generally, how events are conceptualized by speakers. Using the cognitive linguistic concept of construal, for instance, tense and aspect can be explored in terms of how speakers perceive themselves and time in relation to events. The construals “ᴛɪᴍᴇ is a ᴘᴀᴛʜ” and “ᴛɪᴍᴇ is a sᴛʀᴇᴀᴍ” form the backbone for these relationships. In a ᴘᴀᴛʜ construal, the speaker views himself as moving while time remains unmoving. In a sᴛʀᴇᴀᴍ construal, however, time is moving and either the speaker or the event are seen as moving along with it.^xRemember that the systems in the Western Serengeti varieties are organized primarily around aspect without nearly as many tense distinctions as other Bantu languages. Aspect “denotes a particular temporal phase of the narrated event as the focal frame for viewing the event.”^xi Think of different aspects in this sense as different video cameras set up around an event with one capturing the beginning, one the end, one the whole thing, and so forth. In Ngoreme, for example, there are at least four ways of communicating the “present tense” as shown immediately below. The underlined portions of the italicized Ngoreme verbs are the parts of the words that make their meanings different.

Ngoreme (Roth fieldnotes 2014, 2016)
a. Progressive
    nkohíka bhaaní
b. Perfective
    mbahíkire c. Imperfective
    mbarahíka
d. Inceptive
    bhaakáhika
“They [the tourists] (arrive, are arriving) [at the top of the mountain].”

If we begin to think about aspect in relation to the many verb forms involved in constructing a narrative, we can see how there are a multitude of choices available for the speakers of these languages to frame the story, and the events within that story. In analyzing narrative discourse, there is some scaffolding available to the speaker with some aspects used for foreground material (sequence of events) and others for background (e.g., flashbacks).^xii But in Western Serengeti these choices can also be affected by formal versus informal register considerations (e.g., Biblical text versus a folktale or story told over lunch).^xiii In Storytelling and the Sciences of Mind, Herman says that there is an “inextricable interconnection between narrating and perspective taking” and, further, that “storytelling acts are grounded in the perceptual-conceptual abilities of embodied human minds.”^xiv Why then do speakers make the choices they do, and what does that tell us about the human mind and cognition? I hope that my research may help to widen our understanding of what is possible in terms of cognition and memory, storytelling, and the conceptualization of events.

Not only does my research play a role in these types of questions, but it also has implications across several academic disciplines in addition to linguistics (e.g., history, sociology, and archaeology). Specifically, I hope my investigation will, in coming from a linguistic perspective, build on the research of Jan Bender Shetler who has written two integral sociohistorical works on the ethnic groups in Mara, Telling Our Own Stories and Imagining Serengeti. The former is mostly a collection and analysis of oral histories from several ethnic groups in Mara, including origin stories. The latter focuses on spaces and landscape memory and draws on multidisciplinary evidence (including archaeology) to support the argument that the Western Serengeti peoples have deep historical roots in the Serengeti land itself. Comparative tense/aspect research here should shed further light on where these groups originally came from, how they are related to one another and to other Bantu languages in Tanzania, historical movements, and possible contact with Nilotic and Cushitic peoples. Like fingerprints, the somewhat unique set of similarities and differences in the tense/aspect paradigms may in this way allow for an advancement in our understanding of the sociohistory of these ethnic groups.

Finally, as I mentioned briefly above, my research also has a part to play regarding the innate value of minority languages. Even though minority languages in Tanzania are often treated as lesser, by doing linguistic research in these languages we are able to treat what is inherently valuable as worthy of study and with proper respect. My research and subsequent dissertation allow for additional features of these languages to not only be documented but also be shared with the academic community worldwide. This material includes recorded stories and conversations, transcriptions of those recordings, and their Swahili and English translations. This fits right in with the ethos of the Helsinki Area and Language Studies (HALS) initiative at the University of Helsinki, not to mention the language development work that SIL is doing in the area: developing orthographies, providing literacy programs, translation, and increasing language vitality in the process.

ⁱHill, Dustin, Anna-Lena Lindfors, Louise Nagler, Mark Woodward, and Richard Yalonde. 2007. A sociolinguistic survey of the Bantu languages in Mara Region, Tanzania. Unpublished ms. Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: SIL.
ⁱⁱPakendorf, B., K. Bostoen, and C. de Filippo. 2011. Molecular perspectives on the Bantu expansion: A synthesis. Language Dynamics and Change 1: pp. 50–88.
ⁱⁱⁱNurse, Derek. 1999. Towards a Historical Classification of East African Bantu Languages.”In Hombert, Jean-Marie and Larry M. Hyman (eds.), Bantu Historical Linguistics: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives, pp. 1–41. Stanford: CSLI. p. 9.
^iv Hale, Ken. 1998. “On endangered languages and the importance of linguistic diversity.” In Grenoble, Lenore A. and Lindsay J. Whaley (eds.), Endangered languages: Current issues and future prospects, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 193.
^vIbid. p. 194.
^vi Botne, Robert and Tiffany L. Kershner. 2008. Tense and aspect in cognitive space: On the organization of tense/aspect systems in Bantu languages and beyond. Cognitive Linguistics 19 (2): pp. 145–218. p. 146. The E is left out here because African languages are not known for having evidentiality (see Aikhenvald 2004: p. 291).
^vii Nurse, Derek. 2008. Tense and aspect in Bantu. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 281.
^viii Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2004. Evidentiality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 392.
^ixDahl, Ӧsten. 2011. The structure of human memory and tense-aspect-mood-evidentiality (TAME). Abstract. Website: http://www.mpi.nl/events/mpi-colloquium-series/mpi-colloquium-series-2011/osten-dahl-february-15
^xBotne and Kershner 2008: pp. 147–50.
^xiIbid. p. 171.
^xiiNicolle, Steve. 2015. Comparative Study of Eastern Bantu Narrative Texts. SIL Electronic Working Papers 2015_003. Website: http://www.sil.org/resources/publications/entry/61479. pp. 36ff.
^xiiiIbid. p. 45.
^xiv Herman, David. 2013. Storytelling and the Sciences of Mind. Cambridge: The MIT Press. p. 169.

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Mr. Sasakawa Conferred Highest Honor by Most Prestigious Institution in Bulgaria

September 29, 2016
By 19617

Evgeny Kandilarov, a 2003 Sylff fellow of Sofia University in Bulgaria, reports on the day that Chairman Yohei Sasakawa of the Nippon Foundation, the endowment donor of the Sylff Program, visited his university to receive an honorary doctoral degree in June 2016.

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Conferral of a Doctor Honoris Causa

Rector Habil Anastas Gerdzhikov (center) awards a doctor honoris causa degree to Mr. Yohei Sasakawa (right).

On June 6, 2016, Professor Habil Anastas Gerdzhikov, rector of Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski,” conferred a doctor honoris causa degree on Mr. Yohei Sasakawa, chairman of the Nippon Foundation, at a solemn ceremony held at the university’s Aula Magna (great hall).

The Nippon Foundation has supported education at Sofia University since 1992, when the two institutions signed an agreement to establish an endowment for supporting the continued education of promising young graduate students in PhD programs in the fields of humanities and social sciences. Since the 1990s, with the support of the Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund (Sylff), every year around 10 students at the university have been selected to receive three-year PhD fellowships in the fields of international relations, market economy, multicultural studies, and Japanese studies. Additionally, the Sylff program now supports overseas research activities by outstanding PhD students in Asian studies, cultural studies, history, philosophy, sociology, political studies, and psychology.

Mr. Sasakawa delivers his lecture at the Aula Magna of Sofia University

The Faculty of Classical and Contemporary Philology of Sofia University proposed the conferral of an honorary degree by the oldest and most prestigious academic institution in Bulgaria to honor Mr. Sasakawa’s longstanding support for the education of young talented students at the university.

The ceremony was attended by H.E. Mr. Takashi Koizumi, ambassador of Japan to Bulgaria, guests from Japan, and faculty and students of Sofia University.

In his acceptance speech Mr. Sasakawa, who has made a lifelong commitment to eliminating leprosy, expressed his gratitude for the honor bestowed on him and remarked on how deeply touched he was of being given the opportunity to talk in front of a Sofia University audience about the efforts he has made over the years to eliminate the disease. He followed the speech with an academic lecture titled, “Victory on Two Fronts: The Elimination of Leprosy as a Disease and as a Stigma.” The audience also watched a short video dedicated to the noble cause of Yohei Sasakawa.

Warm Welcome by Bulgarian Sylff Fellows

After the conferment ceremony, Mr. Sasakawa and his colleagues from the Nippon Foundation attended another ceremony organized by the Japanese Studies program of Sofia University, held at the Center for Eastern Languages and Cultures. There, Mr. Sasakawa was first given a brief tour of the premises used by the Japanese Studies program, during which he was presented with the latest publications of the program’s faculty and students. The faculty, staff, students, and many current and former fellows of Sylff then warmly welcomed Mr. Sasakawa with a short ceremony. Professor Habil Alexander Fedotoff, who is the Director of the Center for Eastern Languages and Cultures as well as the coordinator of the university Sylff Steering Committee, gave some opening words expressing gratitude for Sylff’s support. Next, Associate Professor Anton Andreev, Head of the Department of East-Asian Studies and a former Sylff fellow, made a brief speech noting the exceptional opportunities and benefits that Sylff was offering, especially for the students in the Japanese Studies program. Proof of his words came from the speeches made by two of the excellent students enrolled in the Japanese Studies program, Ms. Silvia Ivanova and Mr. Martin Ivanov; Mr. Ivanov reprised the speech that won him first prize at the 2016 Japanese Language Speech Contest in Sofia.

On behalf of the Sylff fellows at Sofia University and of myself, I too presented a short speech to Mr. Sasakawa, in which I gave my most sincere congratulations for the highest honor bestowed on him from Sofia University. I also spoke a few brief words of gratitude to Mr. Sasakawa and to the Foundation itself.

Sylff Supports Education of Many Excellent Students

Dr. Evgeny Kandilarov gives a congratulatory speech on behalf of the Bulgarian Sylff fellows.

It has been nearly 25 years since the Nippon Foundation became one of the most generous sponsors of our university. During a difficult transition period for Bulgaria, Sylff provided significant and indispensable help for the further development of PhD programs at the university and for the research and career development of over 100 young, excellent, and promising students. Some of them already hold key positions in Bulgaria as leading journalists, politicians, political scientists, university professors, lawyers, diplomats, and more.

It is very important that this tradition continue and that the number of Sylff fellows in Bulgaria continue to grow every year.

Personally, as a former fellow of the Sylff program, I can say that the fellowship from the Nippon Foundation perhaps played the most significant role in furthering my research interest in Japan, Japanese studies, international relations in the Far East, and East-West relations in the contemporary world. It gave me the unique chance to start working on a subject that gave me a completely new perspective of the international relations between countries and regions that developed very differently in political, socioeconomic, and cultural terms. And I hope that, through my work, I have followed and fulfilled one of the main goals of the Nippon Foundation, which is to contribute to better mutual understanding and peaceful international communication and development.

Once again, I give my most sincere thanks for the honor of being a Sylff fellow.

Students of the Japanese Studies program welcome Mr. Sasakawa with a Japanese dance.

At the end of my speech I reminded all of the guests and colleagues in the audience that we had established a Society of Sylff Fellows in Bulgaria (SSFB) in 2003. The goals of the association are: to create a local Sylff fellows network, establish collaboration among Sylff fellows, strengthen relations with Sofia University’s Sylff administration, make our relations with the Nippon Foundation less formal and more active, share ideas for the future activities of our association, organize topic-based seminars and other events, publish the proceedings from these seminars and thereby create a yearbook of the association, establish contacts with other local associations of Sylff fellows as a step toward forming a regional Sylff fellows network, further develop and consolidate the Bulgarian Sylff fellows association, and, last but not least, to become an active part of the global Sylff family. The SSFB has not been very active over the last several years, but Mr. Yohei Sasakawa’s visit to Bulgaria has offered a great occasion for the Bulgarian Sylff society to restart its activities.

The ceremony at the Center for Eastern Languages and Cultures closed with a short Japanese dance performed by students of the Japanese Studies program. It was a great pleasure and honor for all of us to welcome in our center such distinguished guests from the Nippon Foundation, which has contributed so much to education and research at Sofia University and particularly to the Japanese Studies program.

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The Portrait Image of Emperor Akbar in the Akbarnama and Beyond

September 5, 2016
By 19609

Dipanwita Donde is a 2014–15 Sylff fellow from Jawaharlal Nehru University in India. Using an SRA award, she visited London and Dublin to see and study some of the original manuscripts of the Akbarnama, a beautiful illustrated book commissioned by a Mughal emperor. In this article, she explains how portraiture in the book is used to justify the sovereignty of the successors.

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Abstract

In the closing years of the sixteenth century in India, there was an unexpected burst of portraits of medieval Indian men drawn from life that appeared in illustrated manuscripts, patronized by the third Mughal emperor¹ Akbar (r. 1556–1605). The portraits included Turko-Mongol ancestors of Akbar who ruled in central Asia during the Timurid dynasty (1350–1507);² Akbar’s immediate ancestors, Babur and Humayun;³ the men of Akbar’s court belonging to several different cultural and regional backgrounds;⁴ and Emperor Akbar himself. During Akbar’s reign, hundreds of thousands of folios were produced (for assembling into albums and manuscripts) in the imperial atelier by an estimated 100 artists working together as a team.⁵ The subjects explored in the manuscripts were primarily Persian texts authored by medieval poets such as Firdausi, Nizami, and Jami. Along with Persian epics, Akbar had the reigns of his ancestors written and compiled into histories, several copies of which he ordered to be produced into magnificent manuscripts. These illustrated manuscripts contained portrait images of Timurid and Mughal ancestors based on textual descriptions available in the writings of Timurid princes, including Babur,⁶ and made into stunning folios by the imperial artists. Akbar also ordered the history of his own reign to be chronicled, and Abul Fazl was chosen to write it. Abul Fazl took several years to complete it, finally presenting the Akbarnama (Book of Akbar) to the emperor in 1579.⁷ The text written by Abul Fazl was further produced into illustrated manuscripts, documenting pictorially the important episodes in the life and reign of Emperor Akbar.

In this paper, I raise three questions about the portrait of Akbar in the Akbarnama and attempt to answer them through my research.
1. What was the significance of portraiture during the reign of Emperor Akbar?
2. Which transcultural prototypes helped shape the portrait image of Emperor Akbar in the painted folios of the Akbarnama?
3. Were there any differences between the portrait of Akbar illustrated during his reign and posthumous images illustrated during the reign of his son and successor, Jahangir (r. 1605–1627)?

These questions are relevant to my research on the portrait of Akbar, which occupies a significant position in the genre of portraiture, explored extensively during the reign of Akbar and his successors. By raising these questions, I wish to trace how portraiture became a political tool for stating the ideology and sovereignty of Mughal emperors.

Significance of Portraiture in Mughal Manuscript Art

Portraiture—that is, images of persons drawn from life—was introduced into manuscript art⁸ in India during the reign of Emperor Akbar. The hundreds of portrait images of Akbar that were illustrated during his reign and during the reigns of his successors Jahangir (r. 1605–1627), Shah Jahan (r. 1628–58), and Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707) signify a preoccupation with portraiture in manuscript art.

Akbar ascended the throne in 1556 at the age of 13, after the untimely death of his father, Humayun (r. 1530–40, 1555–56). Humayun had reconquered India in 1555 with the help of the Shia ruler of Iran, Shah Tahmasp (r. 1524–76). In addition to military support, Humayun had also requested the services of two painters from the Shah’s court to join him while he was in exile in Kabul. The two artists, Mir Sayyed Ali and Abd-ul Samad, joined Humayun’s camp at Kabul and accompanied him to India during his reconquest. Trained in Persian manuscript art, they were two of the finest artists in the court of the Shah, having displayed their brilliance in the several manuscripts produced during the reign of Shah Tahmasp. The artists brought with them a knowledge of Persian painting, which included portraiture learnt from the great master artist Bihzad (1450–1535) himself. Thus, the Persian iconographic canon that was in vogue in central Asia became the foundation of Mughal art, which originated during the reign of Emperor Akbar.

Soon after ascending the throne, Akbar launched a massive imperial manuscript art project, recruiting hundreds of artists from regional centers in the sub-continent. The two Persian artists who accompanied Akbar’s father to India became ustads (masters) under whom the Indian artists began illustrating episodes from Persian classics as well as the histories of the Timurid-Mughal dynasties. Under Akbar’s orders and his personal supervision, the histories of the reign of his ancestors as well as his own history were first documented textually and then illustrated into fabulous manuscripts, displaying the mature Akbari style.⁹ These illustrated histories carried portrait images of Akbar’s ancestors, some drawn posthumously, based on textual descriptions; some were copies of portraits of Babur and Humayun that had been drawn from life. Akbar also ordered portrait images of his courtiers to be drawn from life and assembled into an album for his perusal. He further showed keen interest in Sufis and Indian holy men living in his realm and ordered their portraits to be illustrated. These portraits of Timurid sultans, Mughal emperors, Rajput nobility, and other ordinary men displayed in the albums produced for Akbar, along with his own portraits represented in the Akbarnama, must have been the largest collection of portraits of medieval men in India in the sixteenth century.

My research, however, focuses on the portrait image of Akbar in the Akbarnama, tracing the different transcultural strains that were sourced and transferred from Persian, Indic, and European prototypes to shape the emperor’s portrait image.

Portraits of Akbar in the Akbarnama

During my research, I studied the portraits of Akbar in the Akbarnama published in art history books and read essays written by Mughal scholars about portraiture in Mughal art. I was deeply influenced by the writings of Dr. Susan Stronge, especially her essay in which she categorized the images of the emperor shown in one codex into different genres, which helped shape the personality of Emperor Akbar. Dr. Stronge further divided the illustrations into separate categories and placed groups of images under these subcategories. This exercise was very useful in that it enabled future scholars to study and compare the genres defined by Dr. Stronge.

The portrait of Akbar, indexing his particular characteristics, was used like a stencil in multiple compositions.
Portraits of Akbar from the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Akbarnama
Mughal c. 1586–89
©Victoria and Albert Museum, London (visited January 14–30, 2016)

Dr. Stronge argued that the paintings fell under five identifiable categories: the royal hunt, the depiction of treachery, scenes of prestige, battles, and the life of the king.¹⁰ This categorization, however, limits any further study of Akbar’s portrait, as the imperial image is repeatedly represented without much variation to his form, despite occupying a prime location within carefully composed narratives. If we were to expand the concept of portraiture by including the emperor’s personality and attempt to trace prototypes that could have served as models, we should be able to identify ideologies and identities absorbed from transcultural sources that defined the portrait image of the emperor.

After studying the portrait images of Akbar illustrated in the Akbarnama, I realized that these categories needed further research. I questioned where these ideas originated from. In other words, were there any textual sources that informed the construction of Akbar’s personality in the Akbarnama?

My research led me to medieval Persian texts, imbued with tales of epic heroes and kings that were used as models for Timurid rulers of central Asia. The sultans of central Asia fashioned their biographies upon the lives and reigns of ancient heroes and kings narrated in Persian literature. Painted codices with portraits of Timurid sultans often had ruling sultans emulate figures of protagonists from ancient and medieval Persian texts.¹¹ The circulation of these ideas in the wider Persian-speaking world during the 1500s ensured that all kings who conquered and ruled over local or foreign territories were informed by ideas of kingship from ancient classical and epic tales written by great poets of Persian literature. Hence, I was able to connect several pieces of texts composed during medieval times with images painted during the Mughal dynasty, in which, like their Timurid ancestors, the Mughal emperors displayed themselves as heroes of ancient and medieval epics. The image of Akbar, categorized into different genres within one codex, was an amalgamation of several transcultural prototypes drawn from Persian, Indic, and European sources.¹²

Two manuscripts of the original illustrated Akbarnamas, one illustrated in 1590–95 and the second painted in 1600–05, are now preserved in institutions outside India; the main bulk of the folios are preserved in the UK. Hence, I was very keen to avail myself of the Sylff Research Abroad fellowship to travel to the UK and study the original manuscripts.

Summary of Major Findings

The Sylff Research Abroad award allowed me to realize a dream: to see and study sixteenth-century Persian manuscript illustrations produced during the reign of Akbar in India. The original manuscripts of the Akbarnama, of which 116 illustrations are preserved at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and 66 illustrations at the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, Ireland, contain several minute details that can only be gauged with the naked eye. The fellowship allowed me to travel to the UK and research primary material. In addition, I met several scholars of Mughal art, who shared their knowledge with me and discussed what is being currently researched on the subject.

Along with the original folios of the Akbarnama, I studied more than 400 illustrations painted during the Mughal period that are preserved in the archives of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Library, and the Chester Beatty Library. I also researched Persian manuscripts illustrated during the Timurid and the Safavid periods in central Asia, which were the precursor to Mughal painting, and studied stylistic commonalities and differences between the Persian and Mughal manuscripts.

Directly accessing primary material containing portrait images of Emperor Akbar helped me analyze how the portrait of Akbar functioned differently for each emperor. For Akbar, his own portrait imitated the model of Hero-King, Just-Ruler, Prophet-King, and God-King from Persian, Indic, and European sources. During the reign of Jahangir, however, Akbar’s portrait image underwent changes to suit the role of a divine Mughal ancestor on which Jahangir chose to shape his own portrait image.

Akbar wearing a halo.
An Equestrian Portrait of Akbar
The Late Shah Jahan Album
c. 1650, India
In 07B.21b
The Chester Beatty Library (visited February 1–11, 2016)

Akbar without a halo.
The Elderly Akbar Receives Murtaza Khan
Shuja' al-Dawla Album
Manohar
c. 1600, India, In 34.2
The Chester Beatty Library (visited February 1–11, 2016)

According to my research of the primary material preserved at the Chester Beatty Library and the Victoria and Albert Museum, functions of portraiture differed between father and son, due to three factors.

Firstly, the portrait image of Akbar developed during the emperor’s rule was carefully constructed to address a polity that would recognize and be familiar with the symbols of kingship that was in circulation. Thus, the portrait of Akbar as depicted in illustrated folios addressed his audience with the visual lexicon developed by his ancestors, the Timurids of central Asia. They relied heavily on Persian literary sources, which were in circulation throughout the Persian-speaking world.

Secondly, in the Persian tradition, the king had to display certain characteristics to project himself as a suitable ruler for his subjects. These characteristics were:

i) a great hero-king based on the personality of Rustam, the hero of Shahnama (Book of Kings) written by Firdausi in the tenth century;
ii) a humanist king based on Sufi literature developed by great poets like Jami writing in the Timurid courts during the fifteenth century;
iii) a prophet-king emulating the character of Iskander, Alexander the Great, in the Iskandernama (Romance of Alexander) written by Nizami in the twelfth century; and
iv) in Akbar’s case, a god-king based on Sanskrit texts that discussed several avatars of Lord Vishnu and considered the king, including a Muslim emperor like Akbar, to be an avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu.

Akbar’s personality as depicted in the Akbarnama displayed all these characteristics of an ideal ruler, gathered from several literary and transcultural sources.

Akbar as a brave hero(left), and Akbar as a just ruler(right).
Portraits of Akbar from the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Akbarnama
Mughal c. 1586–89
©Victoria and Albert Museum, London (visited January 14–30, 2016)

Akbar as a Sufi (left), and Akbar in a spiritual trance (right)
Portraits of Akbar from the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Akbarnama
Mughal c. 1586–89
©Victoria and Albert Museum, London (visited January 14–30, 2016)

Thirdly, when Akbar’s son and successor Jahangir ascended the throne, he needed to reimagine Akbar’s portrait to suit his own demand for an ancestral hero-king imbued with divine qualities. The reimagining of Akbar’s portrait was necessary to articulate an alternative politics that suited the newly announced emperor and help Jahangir project an image of himself as a world conqueror with divine attributes.

During my visit to the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, I was able to match text with image, which helped me locate certain alterations in Akbar’s portraits¹³ that were illustrated during the reign of his son. This finding helps me prove my argument that the portrait image of Akbar was remapped by Jahangir to suit a dynastic-ancestral image to legitimize his own rule.

Transcultural Distinctiveness at Akbar’s Court

Illustrated manuscripts can tell us many aspects of human societies and how social relations were hinged upon a keen understanding between a ruler and his subjects. During the reign of Akbar in India, the emperor followed a structure of protocol that included systems taken from many cultural sources and applied universally at the royal court. This transcultural homogeneity was the most unique aspect of Akbar’s reign that transferred traditional courtly culture informed by Persianate tradition, as well as shaping a new courtly culture based upon systems absorbed from Hindu traditions.

The medium of portraiture, which formed the bulk of the images in Mughal art during the reigns of Akbar, Jahangir, and Shah Jahan, allows us a window by which we can not only study the physiognomic particularities of men belonging to a particular region, but also glimpse the popular models that were in vogue and which helped shape the portrait images of Mughal emperors, their coterie, and their subjects. Furthermore, by studying the changes in the visual lexicon between portraits of emperors depicted during their lifetimes and those re-created during the reigns of their successors, we can trace the politics and ideology articulated by the ruling emperor through the medium of manuscript art.

Bibliography

Beach, Milo C., B.N. Goswamy, et al, eds., Masters of Indian Painting, 1100–1900 (New York: Artibus Asiae Publishers, 2011)

Crill, Rosemary and Kapil Jariwala, eds., The Indian Portrait, 1560–1860 (Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishing, 2010)

Dimand, S. Maurice, “Mughal Painting under Akbar the Great,” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, New Series, vol. 10, no. 2 (1953), pp. 46–51

Eraly, Abraham, The Mughal World: Life in India’s Golden Age (New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2007)

Koch, Ebba, Mughal Art and Imperial Ideology: Collected Essays (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001)

Losty, J., The Art of the Book in India (London: The British Library Publishing Division, 1982)

Sims, Eleanor, Peerless Images: Persian Painting and Its Sources (Mapin Publishing in association with Yale University Press, 2002)

Soucek, Priscilla, “Persian Artists in Mughal India: Influences and Transformations,” Muqarnas, vol. 4 (1987), pp. 166–181

¹The Mughals were the descendants of Turko-Mongol sultans of the Timurid dynasty who ruled in central Asia from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. The Mughals ruled in India from 1526, when Babur defeated the Lodhis and established the empire. The last emperor of the Mughal dynasty was Bahadur Shah II, who was exiled by the British empire in 1857.

²The Timurid dynasty began in 1370 under the reign of Shah Timur (r. 1370–1407) in central Asia. The Timurid princes were great patrons of Persian literature and patronized several brilliantly illustrated manuscripts during their reigns. Beatrice Forbes Manz notes that the cultural revival that began under Shahrukh (r. 1405–1447) reached its zenith under Sultan Husayn Bayqara (r. 1470–1506), who turned Herat into a “shining centre of cultural patronage” (Manz, “Temür and the Problem of a Conqueror's Legacy,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 8, iss. 1 [1998], p. 39). Also see Thomas W. Lentz and Glenn D. Lowry, Timur and the Princely Vision: Persian Art and Culture in the Fifteenth Century (Los Angeles: Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1989) and Beatrice Forbes Manz, “Tamerlane’s Career and Its Uses,” Journal of World History, vol. 13, no. 1 (2002), pp. 1–25.

³Babur was the first Mughal emperor in India. He conquered India in 1526 and reigned there until his death in 1530. Humayun, Babur’s son and successor, ruled India in 1531–40 and again in 1555–56.

⁴The men of Akbar’s court were Persian, Uzbeks, Afghans, Jesuits, and Rajputs belonging to Shia, Sunni, Christian, and Hindu faiths.

⁵Milo Cleveland Beach, The Imperial Image: Paintings for the Mughal Court (Washington, DC: Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1981), p. 19.

⁶Babur was the author of Baburnama, the first autobiography written by a Timurid prince.

⁷The official history of Akbar’s reign was begun in 1589 and completed in 1598, in the fifth and final decade of Akbar’s rule.

⁸Manuscript art, also known as miniature painting, originated in Persia during the reign of Mongol conquerors in the fourteenth century. Illustrations made on paper were accompanied by Persian calligraphy written in text boxes within the composition. They were usually assembled into albums and bound with a leather cover, decorated with gold inscriptions and intricate designs.

⁹J. Losty, The Art of the Book in India (London: The British Library Publishing Division, 1982).

¹⁰Susan Stronge, Painting for the Mughal Emperor: The Art of the Book, 1560–1660 (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 2002), pp. 68–84.

¹¹See Eleanor Sims, “The Illustrated Manuscripts of Firdausī’s Shāhnamā Commissioned by Princes of the House of Tīmūr,” Ars Orientalis, vol. 22 (1992), pp. 43–68. Discussing three illustrated manuscripts of the Shahnama produced for the three Timurid princes—Ibrahim Sultan (1435), Baysangur (1433), and Mohammad Juki (1444)—Sims notes that each contains at least one illustration that could be interpreted as a “portrait” of the prince who commissioned it (p. 44); as cited in Linda T. Darling, “’Do Justice, Do Justice, For That is Paradise’: Middle Eastern Advice for Muslim Rulers in India,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, vol. 22, nos. 1 and 2 (2002).

¹²See Catherine Asher, “Ray from the Sun: Mughal Ideology and the Visual Construction of the Divine,” in The Presence of Light: Divine Radiance and Religious Experience, ed. Matthew T. Kapstein (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Milo C. Beach, The Imperial Image: Paintings for the Mughal Court; and A. Azfar Moin, The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012).

¹³The use of the halo, a heavily jeweled Emperor Akbar, an older monarch than seen imaged in the first Akbarnama with gray hair and a slightly stooped body—these were some of the alterations in Akbar’s image made during the reign of Jahangir.

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Training for the Best and Brightest Students on Leadership and Character Building in Rwanda

July 28, 2016
By 19603

Chika Ezeanya, a Sylff fellow from Howard University in the United States, initiated and implemented a two-day “Workshop on Character Building and Preparing Young Rwandans for Leadership towards Societal Advancement” in May 2016 in Kigali, Rwanda, with the support of an SLI grant. The following article is her reflection on the workshop. The successful workshop greatly contributed to nurturing leadership in young Rwandans who will be leaders of the community, the country, and the world in the near future.

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Motivation behind the Workshop

The organizer, Ms. Chika Ezeanya, presents with passion at the workshop on character building and leadership development in Kigali, Rwanda.

On May 25 and 26, 2016, the University of Rwanda College of Business and Economics gathered 30 of its brightest 300-level male and female students (according to GPA) at Nobleza Hotel in Kicukiro for a two-day intensive workshop on leadership and character building for societal advancement. The workshop was supported by a Sylff Leadership Initiatives grant.

The motivation behind the workshop is that the burden of national advancement rests on the shoulders of young people below the age of 25, who comprise 67% of Rwanda’s population. The main objective of the leadership training was to introduce young Rwandans with leadership potential to the need for building character toward effective leadership. The overall aim is to prepare these promising young people to become well-developed individuals and citizens and ensure that Rwanda as a nation is able to leverage its human resources to meet its economic growth and social advancement goals at all levels.

What Lacks in Rwanda

Education has been established as a veritable tool for training young people so that they will be equipped to hold leadership positions across sectors as older adults. Not many young Rwandans, however, are able to complete secondary education. According to the World Bank, Rwanda’s secondary school gross enrollment rate stood at 33% in 2013. Even for the few Rwandans who are able to study up to the university level, the curricula are lacking in leadership training modules. Training on leadership therefore needs to be given to selected Western-educated and not-so-educated young people with leadership potential in Rwanda.

Rwandan students at the workshop.

The leadership training endeavored to instruct young Rwandans with leadership potential on the concept of effective leadership and its role in ensuring economic growth and social advancement at all administrative levels. It is hoped that beneficiaries will be more capable of effectively discharging their present duties as youth leaders, in addition to being prepared for higher leadership responsibilities as older adults in Rwanda.

Since the genocide, the government of Rwanda has placed emphasis on preventing a reoccurrence and has instituted several strategies for ensuring economic growth and social cohesion. Much has been achieved through numerous successful education policies, poverty alleviation programs, and agricultural and rural development projects. But these strategies lack adequate programs aimed at training the minds of young Rwandans on the need to imbibe certain character and behavioral traits necessary for effective leadership, which can firmly place the country on the path to economic growth and social advancement.

At the Workshop

Two international facilitators from the United States and Nigeria were present at the workshop to introduce certain concepts to participants and to assist them in individually and collectively thinking and working through the concepts over the course of two days. One local facilitator was also available.

Topics discussed during the workshop included “Character building as a prerequisite for societal advancement” and “Purpose-driven living, values, and principles: establishing a connection,” presented by Olumide Omojuyigbe from Nigeria, and “From self-leadership to leading others” and “Ethics and leadership,” presented by Edozie Esiobu. Meanwhile, Dr. Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu presented three courses including “Aligning personal goals with community development goals” and “Trust and economic development—a nexus.”

Also present during the workshop were three representatives from Sylff who traveled all the way from Tokyo, Japan, to show support for the workshop. Mari Suzuki, who is Sylff director for leadership development, gave a speech on the vision of Sylff and the importance of workshops of this nature to the organization. Keita Sugai, a Sylff program officer, gave the closing speech and also presented certificates of participation to all participants. Ms. Aya Oyamada, also a program officer, was at hand to ensure the success of the event. The three representatives also met with Professor Nelson Ijumba, the Deputy Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs and Research, who was acting on behalf of the Vice Chancellor Professor Phil Cotton, and with the Principal of the College of Business and Economics, Professor Satya Murty. During the meeting, areas for further collaboration between the University of Rwanda and Sylff were explored.

Feedback from the Participants

The audience participated actively in the question-and-answer segments as well as in the breakout sessions, where they were divided into groups and given questions to tackle related to the topics of the day. In an anonymous questionnaire at the end of the training sessions, student participants indicated their happiness and satisfaction with the workshop, citing the knowledge they had gained, and expressed their hope of forming an association across the University of Rwanda to promote the truths they had learned from the workshop. Most participants noted that they were being trained on character building for the first time ever and stated that they left the training on the final day with a transformed mindset.

A group photo of Mr. Edozie Esiobu, one of the speakers, Mr. Keita Sugai, Program Officer for Leadership Development for the Tokyo Foundation, and all participants, taken after the workshop.

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The Refugee Crisis on the Borders of Europe and the Role of the Czech Republic

May 16, 2016
By null

Věra Honusková and Martin Faix, Sylff fellows from Charles University in Prague, initiated and implemented a conference titled “Refugee Crisis on the Borders of Europe and the Role of the Czech Republic” in November 2015 with the support of a Sylff Leadership Initiatives (SLI) grant. The following article is their reflection on the conference. Having been written in December 2015, it does not take into account events that have transpired since that time. Although the nature of the problem is such that it is greatly affected by ongoing events, the article is nonetheless valuable as it deals with the fundamental aspects of the issue.

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Background

In an unprecedented migration crisis, we are currently facing the largest inflow of people into Europe in many decades. Hundreds of thousands of people are arriving on the shores of Greece and other states, many of whom are trying to reach Germany or Sweden. Europe is acting relatively slowly, and its proposals are not always welcomed by all.

The Czech Republic is neither a state on the external border of the European Union nor a transit or destination country for high numbers of migrants and refugees. The country is small, with only 10 million people, and relatively homogenous. There are approximately 450,000 foreigners in the Czech Republic, including several thousand refugees. The number of international protection (asylum) seekers has been very small thus far—only several hundred people yearly. The numbers are increasing now—still slowly, but the massive influx will impact the country without fail.

Within the EU, the Czech Republic often finds itself in the opposition. The EU, for instance, proposed a plan to “redistribute” migrants and refugees from those countries that have received too many (on the basis of EU asylum laws, mainly Dublin Regulation III) to other countries. The Czech Republic was one of four countries to oppose the plan.

Shifting Attitudes in Czech Society

This negative attitude toward the migrant and refugee issue is not only a matter of the Czech government’s position in the EU. The migrant—and especially refugee—issue has grown into a highly controversial one discussed at all levels of society.

Symptomatic of the debate is a surprising lack of awareness and understanding of the legal underpinnings of the current migrant issue, such as international and European legal obligations of the Czech Republic. This has resulted in resolutely foreigner-unfriendly positions on the issue, which have gained popular support and which, in the long run, have the potential to lead to a xenophobic atmosphere in Czech society. Such tendencies can be seen in the statements of political decision-makers, such as members of government, the office of the president, and parliament, and representatives of political parties. Moreover, they are widely shared by the public.

The language used in the speeches of politicians, in debates in the media, and on social networks has directly corresponded with the rise in xenophobic and anti-democratic sentiments. Heated debates arose in spring 2015, and people marched with model gallows for “traitors”—those who do not oppose refugees—at demonstrations held in June.

Law as a Corrective of the Views of Society

As academics and lawyers, we felt obliged to raise our voice and to speak about the obligations that the Czech Republic holds toward those in need of protection. While the law does not require states to accept all refugees, it still prescribes certain responsibilities toward them.

Furthermore, we live in the cradle of human rights. As such, we must stay human and strive to find solutions to help those in need. Perhaps they should live in countries neighboring their own, or perhaps in Europe, if only temporarily. But we need to talk about all this, about the role of international and European law in the refugee and migrant issue, about the question of a humanitarian approach to the issue, about how the negative attitude of policymakers toward refugees and migrants influences society. We believed that laying out the legal basis for the current debate may help to cultivate the debate, to calm the passions, and to help those in responsible positions to come up with a vision and possible solutions.

We therefore decided to work with the idea of a conference, and we sincerely thank the Tokyo Foundation for believing in our proposal.

The Conference

The conference “The Refugee Crisis on the Borders of Europe and the Role of the Czech Republic” took place on November 12, 2015, on the premises of the Charles University Faculty of Law. There were more than 150 participants, including those from politics, the media, government ministries, and NGOs, as well as students. Among the speakers at the conference were three international speakers who are well-known specialists on refugee law and are also involved in public debate on the issue. There were guests from the judiciary and from the Office of the Czech Ombudsperson, as well as speakers from academia representing different views.

The program of the conference consisted of three parts. The first part focused on legal and institutional foundations and introduced the legal basis for the debate with an overview of current hot topics. The second was aimed at giving a wider perspective by presenting the philosophical and sociological aspects of the issue and the human rights view. The third part sought possible legal answers to the mass influx of migrants and refugees, attempting to show the perspectives of EU law and the law in the Czech Republic.

The speakers presented many interesting facts, arguments, and possible solutions. They had different opinions, some very much in favor of human rights and others more traditional. But they all presented their views with arguments, and the debate was highly sophisticated. The conference provided a solid basis for understanding the role of law in the current situation, and some possible solutions were also discussed.

Impact of the Project

Several speakers mentioned the possibility of temporary protection. The idea seems very worthy of debate; it shows us that there are more approaches that we could take toward the current mass influx. As was also mentioned in the conference, we need to fight the smugglers, help people stay in countries near their countries of origin, and help solve the situation in their home countries by diplomatic means. But we can also offer homes to refugees, even if temporarily. One of the reasons for xenophobic reactions is the fear that an indefinite number of refugees and migrants will come into Europe and stay there for good. The law has a response to such situations as well, which those who are afraid may find acceptable.

The audience of the conference took active part in the debate. Many people told us or wrote us later that they found the conference to be very meaningful, and we daresay that it fulfilled its aims. Attendees had the opportunity to get an overall legal picture of the issues that are currently being debated. But those who were there are not the only ones to benefit from the conference; video recordings of the proceedings are available on the Prague faculty’s website for streaming.

*The report of the same conference by the Tokyo Foundation is available at https://www.sylff.org/16764.

Věra Honusková received a two-year Sylff fellowship in 2007–8 at Charles University. The fellowship enabled her to conduct research abroad and use it to finish her PhD thesis on the interpretation of the definition of a refugee. She is now a senior lecturer in public international law at the Faculty of Law, Charles University. Her areas of interest include migration, refugee law, and human rights. She is also a member of the Odysseus Network.

Martin Faix received a Sylff fellowship in 2009 at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, while conducting PhD studies in public international law. He is a senior lecturer in public international law at Palacký University in Olomouc and at Charles University. His areas of interest include human rights, international organizations, and use of force.

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Deliberative Polling® as a Means of Improving Public Knowledge

April 27, 2016
By 19648

Otgontuya Dorjkhuu, who received a Sylff fellowship in 2009 at National Academy of Governance, served as a moderator in Mongolia’s first deliberative poll. Drawing on this experience and on the results of deliberative polls conducted in six countries including Mongolia, Otgontuya discusses why the concept of Deliberative Polling® is crucial and how citizen participation plays a key role in public policy.

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Deliberative Polling® is a novel concept for most people, even though experiments have been conducted in many countries around the world, including the United States, Britain, other countries in the European Union, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and Ghana. A broad range of issues are discussed in a DP event, such as the economy, education, health, the environment, elections, and political reform. This method of polling is especially suitable for issues about which the public may have little knowledge or information or where the public may have failed to confront the trade-offs applying to public policy. It is a social science experiment and a form of public education in the broadest sense (Center for Deliberative Democracy, December 2003).

Mongolia’s First Deliberative Poll

Mongolia’s first deliberative poll was held on December 12–13, 2015, under the title of “Citizens’ Participation: Tomorrow’s City.”

On December 12–13, 2015, a scientific random sample of residents of Ulaanbaatar¹ gathered for two days of deliberation about major infrastructure projects proposed in the capital city’s master plan. The program consisted of small group discussions and plenary sessions exploring arguments for and against 14 large projects that would require borrowing, during which questions were posed to experts. All of the deliberative events were broadcast live on three television channels in Mongolia.

The 317 individuals who completed the two days of deliberation can be compared in both their attitudes and their demographics with the remaining 1,185 who took the initial survey. No significant differences were seen between the two groups in gender, education, age, employment status, marital status, or income (CDD, January 2016).

The three project proposals that received the highest ratings after deliberation share an environmental focus on clean energy, energy efficiency, and waste disposal. The top proposal, “improved heating for schools and kindergartens,” had a mean rating of 0.94 out of 1. It consisted of upgrading the insulation and technology used in public school heating systems. The runner-up proposal, “protection of Tuul and Selbe rivers,” featured preliminary efforts to improve water flow and rehabilitate the rivers. Although support for the project went down somewhat after deliberation, its rating was still the second highest at 0.93. The rating for the third most popular proposal, “an eco park with two waste recycling facilities,” was largely unchanged after deliberation at 0.92.

These results are consistent with the public’s strong environmental priorities expressed in other questions in the survey (CDD, January 2016). Both before and after deliberation, participants were highly focused on policy goals aimed at reducing air, water, and land pollution. Air pollution is the biggest issue for all citizens of Ulaanbaatar city, especially in winter.

Evaluating the Process

Evaluation is one of the most important aspects of the Deliberative Polling process. For comparison, I selected six countries in different regions (Asia, Africa, and North America) where deliberative polls had been conducted.

Participants in all of these countries rated the process highly. On average, 91.6% approved of “the overall process” in the six selected countries. Evaluations of the small group discussions and plenary sessions were similarly high, with anywhere from 86.7% to 93.0% of participants giving positive responses to all of the questions. An average of 91.3% felt that their group moderator “provided the opportunity for everyone to participate in the discussion,” while 90.3% thought that their group moderator “sometimes tried to influence the group with his or her own views.”

Participants in Mongolia, Britain, California (United States), and Ghana felt that they had learned a lot about people who were very different from them. Mongolian, British, and Ghanaian participants rated the process more highly than those of the other three countries .

Table 1. Evaluations of the Deliberative Polling Process by Country

Evaluations	Mongolia	Japan	South Korea	Britain	California	Ghana
The overall process	94.3%	85.6%	92.2%	99%	89%	90%
Participating in the small group discussions	95.0%	87.4%	94.8%	95%
Meeting and talking to delegates outside of the group discussions	93.4%		79.0%	94%
The large group plenary sessions	95.0%	78.6%	84.2%	89%
My group moderator provided the opportunity for everyone to participate in the discussion.	98.1%	82.4%		90%	91%	95%
The members of my group participated relatively equally in the discussions.	97.5%	61.0%		73%
My group moderator sometimes tried to influence the group with his or her own views.	90.9%	82.8%		95%	93%	90%
I learned a lot about people very different from me—about what they and their lives are like.	95.6%			91%	88%	99%

Notes: Figures in the table are collected from the reports on Deliberative Polling conducted in each country. With regard to the first four items in the list, respondents were asked to rate on a scale of 0 to 10 (where 0 is “a waste of time,” 10 is “extremely valuable,” and 5 is exactly in the middle) how valuable each component was in helping them clarify their positions on the issues. For the latter four items, they were asked how strongly they agreed or disagreed with each statement.

Knowledge Gains

The knowledge index can be used as an indicator to explain changes in opinion on policy goals. In most of the cases that I reviewed, the percentage of those who correctly answered questions rose significantly after deliberation. For instance, in the case of Mongolia, correct responses regarding the percentage of households in Ulaanbaatar city that live in apartments increased by 12 points from 47% before deliberation to 59% after (CDD, January 2016).

In Japan, the overall knowledge gains were substantial and statistically significant; an average knowledge gain of 7.4% was seen in the six questions that were asked. Participants who correctly answered what percentage of Japan’s electricity generation comes from nuclear power (about 30%) increased 13.7 points from 47.4% to 61.1% (CDD, September 2012).

In Ghana, only 21.6% of participants knew prior to deliberation that the percentage of the Tamale population with daily access to potable water was about 40%. After deliberation, the percentage rose significantly to 37.6%, an increase of 16 points (CDD and West Africa Resilience Innovation Lab, December 2015).

Among the California participants, correct responses to the eight questions asked increased substantially by 18 points overall (CDD, October 2011). The knowledge index clearly showed relevant and substantial knowledge gains among the participants.

The Moderator’s Role

The members of Group 10, which was moderated by Otgontuya Dorjkhuu (back row far right) with the mayor of Ulaanbaatar city and Professor James Fishkin of Stanford University seated at front row center.

Deliberative Polling is an attempt to use public opinion research in a new, constructive, and nonpolitical manner, and moderators play a key role in the process. They ensure fruitful and civil exchange between participants and let all points of view emerge. With their help and support the participants can find their voices, discover their views, and develop their own opinions (CDD, December 2003). In the Ulaanbaatar event, the 317 deliberators were randomly assigned to 20 small groups led by trained moderators². The moderators helped deliberators go through discussions of all projects according to the agenda presented in the briefing materials. The two-day process alternated between small group discussions and plenary sessions until all 14 projects were discussed.

The project proposals were rated³ on the same scale before and after deliberation. Citizen opinions both before and after indicated that all of the proposals were thought to be desirable.

In Conclusion

Deliberative Polling is a useful approach to increase citizens’ participation and voice in the policy making process. Following the deliberation in Ulaanbaatar, the participants changed their views in many statistically significant ways, had greater knowledge, and together identified specific policy solutions that could help address the country’s priority issues.

As a moderator for Mongolia’s first deliberative poll, I found that participants were very enthusiastic and exchanged their views without reservation. My observations from the event leads me to believe that, given an opportunity like this to participate in discussions on critical issues, people would be willing to express their opinions anytime on any topic. According to reports on Deliberative Polling events that have been conducted in other countries, the overall knowledge gains after deliberation were substantial and statistically significant.

Finally, it can be concluded that Deliberative Polling not only is a form of public consultation but can also serve as a means of improving public knowledge.

References

Center for Deliberative Democracy (December 2003). What is Deliberative Polling®? Retrieved December 13, 2015, from http://cdd.stanford.edu/what-is-deliberative-polling/
Center for Deliberative Democracy (January 2016). Mongolia's First Deliberative Poll: Initial Findings From "Tomorrow's City."
Center for Deliberative Democracy (January 2012). First Deliberative Polling in Korea: Issue of Korean Unification, Seoul, South Korea.
Center for Deliberative Democracy (January 2010). Final Report: Power 2010—Countdown to a New Politics.
Center for Deliberative Democracy (October 2011). What's Next California? A California Statewide Deliberative Poll for California's Future.
Ulaanbaatar City. Retrieved December 13, 2015, from ulaanbaatar.mn
Center for Deliberative Democracy and West Africa Resilience Innovation Lab (December 2015). Deliberative Polling in Ghana: First Deliberative Poll in Tamale, Ghana.
National Statistical Office of Mongolia (2015). Statistical Yearbook 2014.
Center for Deliberative Democracy (September 2012). The National Deliberative Poll in Japan, August 4–5, 2012 on Energy and Environmental Policy Options.

¹Ulaanbaatar city had 1,363,000 residents as of 2014 (National Statistical Office of Mongolia, 2015).
²Before the event, Professor James Fishkin of Stanford University delivered a day of training to all moderators. Moderators were trained not to give any hint of their own opinions. Their role was simply to facilitate an equal, mutually respectful discussion of the pros and cons of the various proposals.
³The final results provide a ranking of priorities from 0 (extremely undesirable) to 10 (extremely desirable), with 5 being exactly in the middle.

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Toward an Understanding of the Medieval Mediterranean World

April 15, 2016
By 19620

Gregory Williams received a two-year Sylff fellowship at the American University in Cairo for the academic years 2011-2012. He has been conducting a series of archaeological excavations in Aswan, Egypt, using an SRA grant. In this article, he argues that archaeological findings from the medieval Mediterranean world are often ignored, and suggests that the region’s Fhistory has much to teach today’s world about living in harmony and appreciating diverse cultures and religions.

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Map of Medieval Egypt and Nubia.

Since 1996, when Samuel Huntington first popularized the term “clash of civilizations,” much of our contemporary understanding of Islam and the Muslim world has centered on a dichotomous relationship between East and West. The international media ―and to some degree the academic community as well― has wholeheartedly accepted this ideology despite its inherently flawed nature. The acceptance of the idea that current political conflicts run along the religious and ideological lines of Islam and Western society greatly underrepresents the importance of historical and cultural factors when trying to understand and resolve those conflicts.

As a Sylff fellow I studied in Cairo, Egypt, and as a PhD student I was fortunate enough to receive a Sylff Research Abroad (SRA) award to continue my field research in Aswan, Egypt. During this time spent in the Middle East I was struck by what seems to be a major lack of understanding of premodern history among today’s policymakers, journalists, and pundits. The medieval history of the Mediterranean, which often helps to explain the diversity of cultures and languages in this part of the world, is often completely ignored. It is hard to read a newspaper, watch the news, or discuss political events without thinking in terms of Islam versus Christianity or East versus West. However, many historians have argued convincingly that Islam and Christianity developed as sibling traditions, with much more in common than we often appreciate or acknowledge. The Mediterranean region should be understood as a single, inter-cultural sphere.

View of the Nile at Aswan.

Archeology is a field that can make important contributions to our knowledge of daily life and the history of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish communities in the Mediterranean region. Unfortunately, for most of this discipline’s history, projects have focused on the ancient past, and artifacts from the more recent past have often been ignored—or even removed and destroyed! How can we build a more comprehensive historical and cultural understanding of our recent and medieval past? This effort must begin by making focused, concerted efforts at important multiethnic and multireligious archaeological sites where a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between different ethnic groups and religious communities can be conceived. The SRA award has allowed me to make a start on this kind of study in Aswan, Egypt, a site with a unique setting on the historical border between Christian and Muslim lands in Africa.

Hybrid material culture in the ninth to tenth century CE.

Hybrid material culture in the 9th-10th Century CE.

Fortunately, recent archaeological excavations in Aswan, run jointly by the Swiss Institute for Architectural and Archaeological Research on Ancient Egypt and the Egyptian Ministry of State for Antiquities, have presented a unique opportunity to explore this premodern past. Most previous excavation work in Egypt has disregarded the country’s medieval remains in search of its pharaonic past. In Aswan, the medieval city is treated as an important part of understanding Egypt’s history. While many cities and towns in Europe and the United States employ archaeologists to check that a new construction project will not destroy important cultural remains, this practice has only recently been introduced in Egypt. European and Egyptian archaeologists are working together on joint excavations to protect the city’s cultural heritage in spite of the illegal building and looting practices that sometimes plague Egyptian cities, and the results have made important contributions to our understanding of all periods of Egypt’s history.

During the ninth and tenth centuries CE, Aswan was home to various Arab tribal families, Coptic Christians, and Beja nomadic groups from the Eastern desert. Legal documents discovered elsewhere in Egypt in synagogue storerooms known as geniza suggest that a Jewish population also existed there for some time as well. Today, Aswan continues to be an important center for both Christians and Shi’a Muslims, although the vast majority of Egypt’s population is Sunni. The first cataract of the Nile became a major trading location for goods between Muslim Egypt and Christian Nubia. During this time, pilgrims passed through Aswan on their way to and from Mecca and Medina for the annual hajj, and merchants profited from the products of the Wadi al-‘Allaqi gold mines just to the southeast. Artifacts from excavations in Aswan have begun to highlight these kinds of interactions and the movement of peoples and products that were occurring inside and outside the Islamic world.

Mausoleums in the Aswan Cemetery.

In other words, Aswan was a highly diverse and “international” center in the medieval period. But this history is disregarded, as so often with medieval history in Egypt, as not ancient enough for the archaeologist and too long ago for the modern-day political scientist or economist. The reality is that these displays of multiculturalism and tolerance are important examples of how people can live together and have done so in the past. We can continue to treat people of other ethnicities and religions as coming from another civilization, or we can look to the not so distant past for a reminder of how “civilization” in the Mediterranean often meant complex, hybrid societies where people of different faiths lived together. Of course this coexistence was not always peaceful and without conflict. But unless we begin to incorporate cultural studies of the past into our modern conceptualizations of social conflict, we will be missing a very important piece of our shared human history.

It is easy to simply follow the national, institutional, and ideological lines that direct academic research in so many areas today. I believe that it is more important, though, to ask questions that transcend these dividing lines and investigate largely unexplored areas, such as the interaction between Muslim and Christian communities in North Africa and the Middle East. Perhaps by contributing to a more complete view of our history and the way in which people of different faiths and ethnicities interacted and lived together in the medieval world, research of this kind will give our current debates on the so-called “clash of civilizations” a much needed pause for reconsideration.

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Theories of Modernism in Cinema

March 31, 2016
By 19686

Miłosz Stelmach, a 2014 Sylff fellow at Jagiellonian University in Poland, conducted research at Columbia University in New York on cinematic modernism. In this article, he provides insight into two contradictory definitions of “modernism” in cinema.

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Modernism in painting - Picasso's Guernica.

As a medium conceived at the very end of the nineteenth century, cinema is contemporary with such technological inventions as X-rays, radio, and the diesel engine, and with scientific breakthroughs like the discovery of electrons and radioactivity. It is the child of an era when modern science and modern society were being formed. Cinema is not only a modern technological invention; it is also a modern social practice. As a radically democratic medium, it served as one of the foundations of the emerging mass society and popular culture. Moviegoing was to become one of the most popular leisure activities for millions of people in the decades to come as the movie industry became one of the vital economic and social forces that shaped the modern world.

But if all that makes cinema an inherently modern phenomenon and one of the staples of modernity, what is it relation to the “art of the modern”—that is, to modernism itself? This question bothered film historians and theorists for years. The answer is necessarily related to what we understand by “modernism” in general. Only once we understand how the word is defined in terms of art history or literature can we start thinking of appropriating it to cinema.

Columbia University

To explore this matter more thoroughly I used an SRA grant to visit Columbia University in New York. There I was able not only to access all the basic written and visual materials in the field but also to meet distinguished scholars whose academic work has investigated various problems related to modernism. My encounters with their expertise in different fields of the humanities (comparative literature, art history, culture studies, and film studies) and their various nuanced points of view enabled me to trace how our understanding of modernism has developed.

James Joyce, one of the most important figures of literary modernism.

The traditional and still dominant account of modernism, and the one with which I was primarily familiar before my visit to New York, developed in English-language scholarship in the 1950s and 1960s. It was during this period that a comprehensive theory of the subject was developed by scholars and critics like Clement Greenberg, Harold Rosenberg, and Raymond Williams, who defined modernism as an artistic movement that had developed in different fields of cultural production in the late nineteenth century and through the first half of the twentieth. Modernism marks a break with the conventions of nineteenth-century realism in favor of extensive experimentation with medium—subjectivity, fragmentation, and nonlinearity. As manifested in the surrealist paintings of Salvador Dalí, the 12-tone musical compositions of Arnold Schoenberg, and the stream-of-consciousness literature of James Joyce, modernism, as understood by Greenberg and others, employs a high level of self-consciousness and reflexivity, resulting in extensive efforts to explore the limits of a given medium and employ forms specific to it.

This definition of modernism, underlining formal innovation, self-referentiality, and medium specificity, was easily (and readily) transferred to the field of film studies. This wasn not difficult, especially given the self-evident link between developments in cinema and the other visual arts in the 1920s. Avant-garde artists like Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Hans Richter, and Salvador Dalí made movies themselves, and a number of cinematic movements were clearly inspired by the visual arts of the time, as reflected in names like German Expressionism and French Impressionism. Surrealism and constructivism also had a clear influence on the development of the esthetics of cinema.This understanding of modernism as a high-art tradition involving avant-garde experimentation with film language carried over to postwar international art cinema.

Ingmar Bergman, a chief modernist of cinema, working on the set.

Scholars like András Bálint Kovács (author of Screening Modernism: European Art Cinema 1950-1980) and John Orr (who wrote Cinema and Modernity) demonstrate how this type of cinema, best represented by the so-called New Waves and New Cinemas spreading all over the world in the 1960s and 1970s, ultimately stems from modernist traditions. We can call this definition “exclusive” because it refers to the rhetoric of innovation and auterism (as epitomized by figures like Ingmar Bergman, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Jean-Luc Godard, to name a few well-known examples) and sees these trends as marking a break with classical cinema realized in the elitist field of highly sophisticated artistry. Summarizing this point of view, Kovács identifies subjectivity, reflexivity, and abstraction as the basic characteristics of all modernist art and finds these qualities in the postwar films associated with the French New Wave, New German Cinema, and Soviet post-Thaw films, among others.

The “Modernity Thesis”

When I started my research on the concept of cinematic modernism, the standpoint described above seemed to me to be widely accepted and uncontroversial. But once I started digging deeper I realized that strong opposition to this view has emerged over the last two decades and that this understanding of the relationship between cinema and modernism has increasingly been challenged and reconfigured. From the 1990s on, many critics contradicted the traditional, Greenbergian theory of modernism as a drive toward formalist, artistic sophistication and medium specificity with their own, “inclusive” definition. These critics saw modernism simply as a cinematic reflection of modernity and its various aspects, one that did not focus on “high art” in particular but rather embraced mass culture in its entirety.

Probably the most emblematic and influential case made on behalf of this definition was an essay written by Miriam Bratu Hansen in 1999 entitled The Mass Production of the Senses: Classical Cinema as Vernacular Modernism. In the course of her argument, Hansen called classic Hollywood cinema “vernacular modernism.” In her words, “modernism encompasses a whole range of cultural and artistic practices that register, respond to, and reflect upon processes of modernization and the experience of modernity, including a paradigmatic transformation of the conditions under which art is produced, transmitted, and consumed.” In this sense, newspaper comic strips of the 1930s and Soviet socialist realism of the same period are just as modernist (if not more so) as the novels of Marcel Proust or the paintings of Jackson Pollock because they exploit the new possibilities of production, perception, and cultural engagement brought about by the modern world and transformed by the spirit of modernity. This theoretical standpoint was later dubbed the “modernity thesis.” One of its basic conceptions is that cinema as a whole is a modern art—an inherent product and consequence of modernity defined necessarily by its technological and industrial character.

The Gap

After studying the most important bibliographical materials and consulting with specialists in the field of modernism studies, I am coming to believe that the two theories of the same object (cinematic modernism) I have outlined above might not in fact be as distinct (and contradictory) as they appear. In my opinion, the difference between them is not that they approach the same phenomenon with different tools and conceptions, but that they are actually examining two different fields, and merely claiming the same name for them. The gap between the “exclusive” and the “inclusive” traditions is seen not only in the choice of material their proponents wish to analyze (“high” and “popular” culture) but also, more importantly, in the way they want to approach them.

The supporters of the “modernity thesis” and the idea of vernacular modernism are interested mostly in the context (as opposed to the text itself), focusing on the social, industrial, and cultural forces shaping the work. This is why Hansen and others look closely at the specific conditions that made the cinema an important part of modernity as experienced in the early years of the twentieth century. As she declares, her aim is to identify a certain historical point of “paradigmatic transformation of the conditions under which art is produced, transmitted, and consumed.” By contrast, the idea of modernism developed by Clement Greenberg and represented in the field of film studies by András Bálint Kovács concentrates more on the relationships within cinema history itself. It emphasizes such questions as aesthetic autonomy, along with the internal evolution of specific narrative and artistic forms and their characteristics. Political, social, and cultural contexts naturally still play a vital role in these lines of investigation, but they are usually seen as possible explanations for certain formal and stylistic features and are not the main point of interest.

This is why I would like to argue that the conflict between the two theoretical orientations is in fact only illusionary. They are intertwined and in some cases complementary to each other—but most of the time they constitute different areas of film and culture studies, revealing to us different contours of what we call modernity.

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Anti-immigrant Policies in Arizona and Their Impact on Mexican Families

March 23, 2016
By 19613

As media coverage of the 2016 US presidential election has shown, recent terrorist attacks and the ongoing influx of immigrants into Europe have caused an increase in xenophobia and related phenomena.

Eduardo Torre-Cantalapiedra, a Sylff fellow at El Colegio de México, used an SRA grant to research the impact on Mexican immigrants of the highly controversial anti-immigrant laws passed in Arizona in 2010. Can enforcing immigration laws decrease the number of undocumented immigrants? Should the living conditions of undocumented immigrants be ignored because their stay is illegal? This article reveals the true difficulties they face, as experienced by the immigrants themselves.

* * *

Introduction

In recent years, Arizona has passed some of the harshest anti-immigrant policies in the United States. The Republican Party has adhered strictly to its doctrine of “attrition through enforcement,” and Democrats have done little to stop them. This policy has caused serious damage to Mexican families and to the population in general in that state, (My own estimates based on the American Community Survey suggest that there were approximately 248,000 Mexican households in Arizona in 2010). The doctrine is based on the idea of making everyday life for undocumented migrants so difficult that they will be motivated to go back to their countries of origin. In response to Arizona's anti-immigrant policies and the hostile environment they have generated, Mexican families have developed a set of strategies to make the difficulties more bearable. Some families have also decided to migrate from Arizona to other parts of the United States.

Fieldwork Evidence

Sheriff Joe Arpaio in front of the federal courts in Phoenix.

The fieldwork I carried out in Phoenix, Arizona, has allowed me to make a diagnosis of the situation. I now have a clearer idea of the problems that these anti-immigration policies have caused for Mexican families and for the social environment in Arizona. The main results of my fieldwork will be incorporated into the central chapters of my dissertation. My basic finding is that these state policies have not achieved the goal of making immigrants "without papers" leave the state. However, they have meant the systematic violation of civil rights of the migrant families. The police have been one of the largest sources of abuses and violations. US District Judge G. Murray Snow issued a sweeping decision finding that that Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his agency (Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office) had relied on racial profiling and illegal detentions to target Latinos during immigration sweeps and traffic stops (ACLU, 2015). Most of the people I interviewed told me they had been stopped while driving simply because of their skin color and physical appearance. Most had been subjected to heavy fines or had had their vehicles confiscated for a month. Several were subjected to deportation proceedings, even though they had never been convicted of any crime.

Undocumented migrant workers have also been pushed into the informal economy and have been forced to take increasingly precarious jobs. Manuel¹ preferred to work as a day laborer rather than work without papers because he was afraid of being accused of identity theft if he used another person’s social security number. José was fired from the restaurant where he worked when the chef started to use the E-Verify system. (Arizona has required that most employers use the E-Verify system to verify the migration status of employees since 2007.) Because of this same system he could not find a new job in another restaurant. He now spends his time cleaning yards and does not earn enough money to support his family. Ramón spent two years unemployed, occasionally working small jobs for friends and acquaintances to get by.

In addition, family members are often afraid to contact the police to report crimes—even when they witness felonies, of which in many cases they are also victims. Marta's car was stolen in front of her house, but she never ventured to report the crime to the police. Manuel, an undocumented immigrant, was too afraid to go to the police to report an attempted rape of his daughter (still a minor) for fear that the police would ask about his immigration status. He was finally able to report the incident to the police with the support of a family member who is a US citizen.

Mural showing a Latina student, Phoenix.

The entire state has been affected by the implementation of the anti-immigrant policies. Underutilization of labor, strengthening of racist and xenophobic groups, the breakdown of the social fabric and severe economic losses are just some of the major problems that these policies against undocumented immigrants have caused.

Young people have also been affected by anti-immigrant policies. One law decided that undocumented immigrants must pay out-of-state tuition for their education. Some of the students I interviewed told me they were finding it very difficult to continue their studies because the tuition had increased by 300%. Others had already given up their studies. Only when President Barack Obama approved a new policy that deferred action for certain undocumented young people who came to the United States as children did some of them decide to continue their studies.

Protest against anti-immigrant policies, Phoenix, April 23th 2015

Protest against anti-immigrant policies, Phoenix, April 23, 2015.

My study also documented the adaptation and mobility strategies that families have developed to deal with the anti-immigrant policies in Arizona. These strategies have included staying away form public spaces to avoid the risk of deportation, using members with some kind of legal status to attain certain benefits, seeking measures that allow them to circumvent the prohibitions on driving and working in the state, and others. María was so afraid of being deported and separated from her family that for many months she refused to leave her house except when it was absolutely necessary. Some families decided to emigrate from Arizona to other part of the United States. Some of those who had emigrated told me that enforcement of immigration laws by police in other states is different: they do not stop your car in the street simply because you look Latino. Interstate migration of foreign-born migrants is therefore not motivated only by social networks and economic issues. The varying immigration policies of different states provide another powerful incentive for some families to move.

New Policies

To reverse these adverse effects, changes on two levels are necessary. The first step must be to get rid of all laws based on the doctrine of “attrition through enforcement.” The economic boycott, international and domestic pressure, protests against the unconstitutionality of these laws, and other measures, have been partially effective in fighting these laws in the medium and long term. While many local migration initiatives have been repealed, many remain in force today and continue to damage Mexican migrant families in the state. Second, the continuing daily struggle of families against the anti-immigrant policies is essential. Although this struggle stands a good chance of reversing the current policy framework in the long run, it is also needed as a means of empowering migrant families through information about their rights and participation in social movements and organizations that fight for the civil rights of migrants, regardless of their legal status in the United States. We must not forget that “undocumented” status does not mean that migrants have no rights according to United States laws. Among other constitutional rights, for example, an immigrant has the right to due process when he or she is arrested. An immigrant can be indemnified if he or she is a victim of a crime. Undocumented migrant children (K-12 or less) have the right to attend school according to the Supreme Court.

The logo of the Comités de defensa del Barrio.

During my stay in Phoenix I had the opportunity to participate in activities organized by the Barrio Defense Committees (Comités de defensa del Barrio, or CDB for short). I was able to observe the important work being done by this and similar organizations in mitigating the adverse effects of the policies against migrants "without papers" and their families. CDBs are a genuinely grassroots movement that emerged in response to the attack against resident Mexican families represented by the 2010 Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act, or Arizona SB 1070. The ongoing hard work of the CDB has allowed many Mexican families to move out of a position of isolated defense to take actions in defense of their rights along with other family units. As its members argue: Unity is strength ("la unión hace la fuerza").

In short, I am hopeful that the fieldwork I conducted with the support of Sylff Research Abroad will produce valuable information for policymaking in both Mexico and Arizona that will serve to defend the civil rights of Mexican families in Arizona and improve their living conditions, and to repair the broken social fabric by allowing closer links between Mexican and American families who live in the state.

References:
American Civil Liberties Union (March, 2015). Ortega Melendres, et al. V. Arpaio, et al. Retrieved from https://www.aclu.org/cases/ortega-melendres-et-al-v-arpaio-et-al

¹Names have been changed to preserve the anonymity of the people interviewed.