Investigating the geographies of the Arab Spring

The Arab uprisings in Southwest Asia/Middle East and North Africa offer an excellent example in lower division undergraduate Geography courses for modeling the investigation of geographic context and processes.  There have been many exceptional sources covering the so-called, “Arab Spring” that provide relatively simple and direct explanations of various background geographies.  Reviewing these sources along with the textbook is an exemplary exercise for ‘doing’ geography.

An introductory exercise can be completed by analyzing an outstanding graphic from Slate Magazine.  The flash media graphic marries time and space by chronicling events in various countries of the region as a timeline in the format of a choropleth map with labeled boxes.  By either navigating by clicking day-by-day or as an automatic animation, each country that had a major event is highlighted and labeled with a brief explanation of the event.  By moving from December to April (and perhaps beyond, as the map is occasionally updated), we “relived” the events.  It became an exercise when the students were asked to identify context themes by using simple investigation questions, like Who, Where and Why.  They collected context information about who was protesting (youth, women, etc.), who was being protested against (dictators, presidents, kings/princes, etc.).  They collected context information about where protests were located (i.e. urban, universities, public squares).  They collected context information about why people were protesting (i.e. unemployment, rising food prices, political oppression, etc.).  This information can be used in a variety of ways: as content for exams or papers; as information to connect to other news sources; or as discussion points that can take the class to a variety of ‘places’.

Another exercise combined assigned current event articles with a World Regional textbook to fill out some of the geographies behind the events.  Students used their textbooks to investigate the human-environment background by connecting the geographies of climate/aridity, water resources, and resulting human settlement.  By understanding the patterns of settlement as an overlapping of climate and hydro- geographies, students can then further discuss resulting patterns of urban geographies.  Students can review the terms and statistics for the region of urbanization, urbanized population, and population density.  These urban dynamics are described in an article titled, “How Cities Stir Revolution” in the Atlantic Monthly.  The article does begin to speak broadly about cities as the historical site of revolution, but it offers specific statistics, maps and graphics about the urban character of the region; tying in nicely to population and urban geography concepts from World Regional textbooks.  Another topic that students investigate is the population geographies that have contributed to the Arab Spring.  NPR’s All Things Considered provides an audio interview and transcript that describes the “youth bulge” that exists in many Arab countries.  This “youth bulge” concept can then be connected to the tenants of the demographic transition model and further evaluated using demographic indicators.  A Guardian graphic is also helpful in the investigation of the demographic background of the region’s countries, as it provides visual comparisons of the total population, percent under 30 years of age (effectively, the “youth bulge”), and the total unemployment.  The role of unemployment is also discussed in a Guardian article, titled “Young Arabs who can’t wait to throw off shackles of tradition.” The article provides some powerful anecdotes for the political economy geographies in the region as the major catalysts for protest, namely the intersection of un- and under- employment, political oppression and ‘traditional’ political-economic cultures.  Further, this article creates a moment of reflexivity for students in the United States (and other similar societies) as it narrates more accounts of Arab Youth and Facebook, rap music, and managing idleness.

These events not only illustrate the fairly simple, introductory-level application of key terms, but it also provides students with an opportunity to think critically about contemporary, “21st century” politics.  They are able to internalize and reflect on the concerns that these youth from thousands of miles away have and to connect them to their own.  They are able to evaluate the current state of affairs in the United States (and, again, in other developed/affluent societies) by using the Arab Spring as a lens from which to compare and contrast.  Reflecting on the event by this way left my students feeling empowered and activated.

Daylight Saving Time: Why it took nearly two weeks for this post

There are many things in life that our students often taken for granted; they accept without understanding, or just asking “Why?”  It is in our Geography courses that we can inspire students to think critically and consider options thoughtfully.  Daylight saving time (DST) is of these ubiquitous, yet unquestioned practices.  DST is an unwelcome change for many; literally, a loss of our most important asset.  The adjustment is more difficult for all those who are not morning people, and is compounded for those with small children and others with sensitive body clocks.  While we are forced to adjust, not many of us question why we have to set our clocks forward anyway.  A recent National Geographic article has provided some interesting DST background to aid our understanding.  DST has inherently spatial relationships that engage our individual and societal dependence on the rhythms of the Earth-Sun relationship.  Studying this method reveals underlying geographies in its implementation, execution and implications.  More importantly, however, studying DST has also helped to understand why this post took two weeks to complete.

The creation of DST schemes was centered on saving valued resources.  These resources, like today, were the energy commodities essential to productivity, allowing people to work after dark and indoors.  The National Geographic article sites a book by David Prerau, Seize the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time, that tells the stories of DST.  It was the need for war-time conservation of coal that actually saw DST implemented during World War I, again in World War II, and again during the Oil Embargo of 1973-4.  In 2007, a U.S. energy bill was implemented starting DST earlier and ending it later, adding an extra month to DST.  The same arguments about energy saving were reiterated.  Other benefits were also claimed, like reduced crime and traffic fatalities, and increased productivity, recreation and “smiles.”

Beyond states of emergency, DST has not been mandatory, with U.S. states like Arizona and Hawaii choosing not to observe it.  Such optional geographies of DST provide an unexpected opportunity for studying the cost-benefit of DST schemes.  A study of three different Australian states’ power-use data during the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games found that ultimately any power-saving was cancelled out as energy demand in the mornings cancelled out any savings from the evenings.  A U.S. study in Indiana had similar findings, which saw that energy-consumption from not just lighting, but also air conditioning contributed to increased afternoon demand.  The study found that consumers’ electric bills were actually higher during DST, as people used their air conditioners more during the warmer spring and summer evenings.  Yet, the spatial analysis of DST seems to also offer evidence to the contrary.  Another study of the entire U.S., commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy, shows that at the national scale there were small reductions in overall energy consumption, which still added up to significant energy savings.  The study also found that DST had uneven benefits.  For example, California benefits the most from DST because of its mild weather, not requiring year ‘round climate control appliances.  Northern states also benefit more during DST months relative to Southern states because they do not necessarily need as much air conditioning, which is a major energy consumer.  These studies reveal some of the flaws within such standardized time schemes.

The National Geographic article also describes some of the interesting connections to DST and lifestyles.  As mentioned in the 2007 energy bill, one group argues that the daylight shuffling in DST encourages lifestyles that are more active.  A study mentioned in the article does support that view; during DST people were more likely to include more active outdoor activities, rather than more languid indoor activities.  However, a “chronobiologist” argues that our body clocks never adjust to DST.  A result of that is decreased productivity, increased susceptibility to illness and being frequently tired, all symptoms of “social jet lag.”  He argues that the shift in daylight toward the evening only serves to delay the body clock, affecting sleep schedules and leading to overtiredness.  This overtiredness could also have more serious consequences.  A 2008 Swedish study showed that the risk of heart attack actually increased following the switch to DST.  The study’s author found the most likely explanation for the findings were again related to body clocks and sleep rhythm.

In the end, DST works for some and not for others.  Body clocks or sundials, it is nearly impossible to standardize savings uniformly, whether they are of day light or of resources.  However, to this author, DST is now a fitting seasonal scapegoat for procrastination or listlessness.

 

Regional Politics in East Asia: the Koreas, China and Beyond

East Asia is a region of contrasts: political, economic, social, and cultural.  Today such contrasts weave a complicated web of linkages and alliances between states in the region and beyond.  Within the region, competition and cooperation are balanced alongside periodic conflict and contention.  Nowhere is this more evident than on the Korean Peninsula, with its long history as an East Asian crossroads between Chinese and Japanese influence, but also as a pivot point between global geopolitical maneuvers.  The story begins in the post-World War II period that deteriorated into the bipolar Cold War world that specifically shaped the Koreas.  Today, the Korean Peninsula is just as affected by global powers as ever.  The events of 2010 provide a case in point.  In March, a South Korean warship was sunk allegedly by the North, although they denied responsibility.  In November, the disputed South Korean island of Yeonpyeong was shelled by the North.  Reviewing the diplomatic interactions between the Koreas and their allies following that latest incident reveals the touchy nature of current global and regional politics.

A political geography perspective investigates the spatiality of political activities and can be applied to the background of the peninsula.  Following the end of World War II, the peninsula was administratively divided between the United States in the South and the Soviet Union in the North.   The division lasted into the Cold War and effectively split Korea into a communist North and non-communist South.  War broke out when the communist North sought to unify the peninsula by invading the South in 1950.  After three years of war the agreed cease-fire line, known on land as the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and over the ocean as the Northern Limit Line (NLL) both near the 38^th parallel, has continued to mark the current political boundaries between North and South Korea.  Both of these boundaries have been disputed by the North and served as a pretext for military action, especially the NLL recently. The NLL as maritime boundary was set by the United Nations, a supranational organization, in 1953 and gave control of several offshore islands to South Korea despite their being dangerously adjacent to the North Korean mainland.  The North was forced to relinquish the islands during the war because it lacked capable naval power to retain them.

These boundaries continue to represent global ideological and political divisions, as today’s regional alliances link up North Korea with its contemporary communist ally, China, and South Korea with the democratic, capitalist United States, outside the region, as well as Japan in East Asia.  Beginning in 2003, these players together with Russia convened the Six Party Talks to address concerns over the threat of North Korea’s nuclear program.  Although the talks led to little agreement, the Six Party format became the de facto forum for East Asian stability in 2010.  However, the six parties did not actually sit down to talk, instead they were making public statements and symbolic acts without actually sitting down together.  First, hostile rhetoric was exchanged between North and South and many feared that war was inevitable.  Then, in support of South Korea, a “tri-lateral” meeting in Washington was convened between the United States and South Korea, symbolizing their “mutual defense” alliance from the end of the Korean War, but also with Japan.  They also demonstrated the strength of the alliance as the US-South Korean “war games” and the US-Japanese military drills that were observed by South Korea.  On the side of North Korea, however, the strength of the alliance with China was not so clear.  Their support was gleaned more from what its diplomats chose not to say: the Chinese government preferred not to publicly denounce the shelling.  Some understood this as China effort to maintain the façade of support for its ally because of the strategic importance of North Korea as a buffer state protecting China from the democratic, American-leaning South.  Lately, however, Wikileak documents revealed that their alliance has been tested as China is unhappy with North Korea’s actions and has considered the possible reunification of the Koreas, which would likely manifest as a larger South Korea.

Regardless, much of the diplomatic international community, led by US influence in the United Nations, was unsatisfied with China’s lackluster response.  Many have called for the Chinese to act more like the rising regional and international power that it is.  In particular, this reflects the 21^st century world system and the subtle tensions between two of its powers, United States and China.  China’s strongest symbolic statement following the shelling of Yeonpyeong was to caution the US against participating in the South Korean military drills.  From China’s perspective they clearly took place within its sovereignty sphere.  Regardless of the various boundaries of that sphere, being its territorial waters or the wider exclusive economic zone (EEZ).  Ultimately, beyond the rising tensions between the Koreas, the recent diplomatic events reveal a possible degradation of US-Chinese relations.

A geopolitical perspective examines the relationships of geography, global politics and actors, and helps to understand some of the political motivations behind the six party diplomatic interactions.  Back at the regional scale, North Korea has consistently kept the international community guessing.  Whether it is about its nuclear program, succession or just about its society, the North has been consistently secretive and its motives elusive.  For example, the North had made threats that if the South carried out its planned military drills that it would retaliate with “brutal consequences beyond imagination.”  And yet, when the South went ahead, the North answered that it was “not worth reacting.” An interesting possible reason behind North Korean military flexing over disputed borders or nuclear programs is their desperate need for foreign aid and investment.  There are drastic differences in the levels of economic and social development between North Korea and its East Asian neighbors.  The North Korean society is characterized by inequality, isolation, famine and general economic backwardness.  It is completely reliant on China for aid and investment.  The military provocation could also be seen as a strategic ploy to get the US and South Korea into talks where they might make concessions, like easing sanctions or providing food aid. On New Year’s Eve, the North requested “dialogue” with the South “as soon as possible”. Although being rejected by South Korea, the US did seem to come around to making the talks happen.

The regional politics in East Asia reveal much about global geopolitics and diplomacy today.  The Cold War history of the two Koreas shaped the contemporary world system, in which diplomatic actions take place.  Expected proximity geographies of regional neighbors are expanded beyond the East Asia realm with mutual defense alliances and ideological allies.  Diplomacy in today’s post-Cold War system, which is more about rhetorical combat than armed battles, is still as careful and coded as it was in the days of spies and the threat of nuclear annihilation.

Geography Directions: Brave New World for Egypt

From our Geography Directions site reviewing Wiley-Blackwell’s Geography Compass review journal covering the entire discipline.  Keep up with cutting edge academic geography.  These articles may be useful for introducing students to the discipline or may be appropriate for upper division Geography classes.

As the dust begins to settle in Cairo the people of Egypt are jubilant at the success of their 18 day revolution in effecting regime change and toppling the government led by Hosni Mubarak for 3 decades.   Now, as they prepare to play the long game waiting for free elections in September, the people, the revolutionary council and the ruling military must walk the tightrope of civic peace. Throughout the peaceful protests, distinctly multicultural and bursting with references to gender equality, poverty, religion, state-led violence and political freedom the activists displayed visual representations of the state through the lens of the working classes.  Why do I mention this? Amidst the macro-scale geopolitik at play and the roar of the oppressed and unheard there is also subtle resistance at work here. The use of imagery on banners and placards and voices on facebook became the ‘weapons of the weak’ (Hammett 2010:6) , weapons that became available in the face of unequal access to public resources, corrupted state-owned t.v./radio/newspapers. The script and symbolism in the banners, facebook pages and tweets began the process of self-assertion of nation and in the interim, this meant a disconnect with the previous regime. It is a media that can reach beyond borders and through societal strata, one that the ageing clunky oppressor was ill-equipped to outrun. Increasingly there is a call for a more critical reading of the role of visual metaphors in the construction of ‘nation’ and the sentiment behind national identities (Dittmer 2005:628). In the image below, the use of comic book imagery is clearly anything but innocent or child-like, indeed it is a powerful and effective political tool in it’s cause of freedom from tyranny.

Throughout the protests, the activists have repeatedly expressed their unity, Christians protecting Muslims as they prayed from pro-Mubarak forces and clearly chanting ‘Egypt for the Egyptians’.  There are many accounts of people watching events unfold around the world on T.V.’s, computers and listening to radios choked by the solidarity of this multicultural society overcoming everyday, that which so often divides and disables cohesion in the western world.

Indeed there is no doubt that these events have been an outstanding victory for the people of Egypt, for human dignity in the Arab world and for freedom of expression more widely. However, in time the ousting of the autocratic leader may prove to have been the easy part. The vision of Egypt as portrayed by the government was one of submission and secularism, there was no room for dissent or protest and public displays of religiosity were banned, all under the state of emergency since 1981 (but periodically dating back to 1967). With two thirds of the nation under the age of 30 for many this is the only Egypt in living memory, an Egypt ruled by a military government whose hand reaches into every area of governance, commerce (from petroleum to bakeries), media and education. It is difficult therefore to imagine the magnitude of the economic and political loss in status to the military if it is replaced by a civic democratic system of governance based on merit and a public mandate. Whilst these concerns are bound to dominate in future months, we will remember for some time, the courage of the Egyptian people, oppressed and thwarted for too long, circling in squares and squaring the circle.

By Michelle Brooks

To view the original article please visit the Geography Directions Blog.

Yemeni Geographies and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula

Yemen has emerged as a significant node in global terrorist networks since its connection to the 2009 “underwear bomber” and the 2010 printer bomb plots.  However, it has long been a terrorist hotbed, as the bombing of a U.S. warship in 2000 and subsequent attacks would attest.  Yemen is the center for the group known as “al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula.” This offshoot group has a surprising level of cunning shown in the printer bomb plot and organizational sophistication and egregiousness, as evidence in their newsletter Inspire and the.  Understanding why this little known country has become such a focal point in world security discourse is to the task of Geography.  Yemen has all the unfortunate qualities of a terrorist breeding ground.  A Time Magazine video report reveals some of geographic context for this during a road trip from North to South Yemen.  The Time video, along with BBC and Reuters articles, provide some evidence for Yemen’s historical and present-day social, economic and political geographies as necessary background for analyzing this Southwest Asian country’s long propensity for terrorist activity.

As the poorest country in the Arab world, just about 45% of Yemenis live on less than $2 a day.  Not only does that widespread poverty sow discontent, but Yemenis are also nearly equally divided among Shi’ites and Sunnis; itself a troublesome rift that is seen elsewhere in the region.  As a result, the country has been struggling for political stability.  Yemen was once two separate countries, the Yemen Arab Republic or North Yemen and the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen or South Yemen.  Both were united into the present state of Yemen in 1990.  The current government is widely seen to be ineffective by many Yemenis.  Some see it as corrupt and useless; unable to provide basic services for its citizens or support its flailing economy.  Some even see it as an illegitimate Western sell out, taking money and orders from outside interests.  The governments’ authority is also weakened by the continuing centrifugal forces that act within the country: the Shi’ite rebellion being waged in the North; the secessionist movement in the South; and the ongoing arms market and terrorism activities among fundamentalist and disaffected Yemenis.  In this context, political instability begets economic stagnation and collapse of authority.  Northern Yemenis have little to nothing in the way of development or an actual economy to provide jobs or services.  Southern Yemenis have some promise that comes from oil fields, tourism, and global shipping networks; however, this limited prosperity is what fuels their calls for secession.  In addition to all this is Yemen’s location as a well positioned country for terrorist activity.  It is located on the edge of Saudi Arabia – al Qaeda’s Arab enemy.  It controls half of one of the world’s most important geographic choke points, the Bab-el-Mandeb connecting the Red and Arabian Seas.  And, it is adjacent to another terrorist haven and failed state, Somalia.

A confluence of site and situation, Yemen has now captured the world’s attention as the latest terrorist stronghold.  What has magnified this further is the release of US diplomatic cables, or communications, on the site Wikileaks.  Without getting into the Wikileaks story on its own, the release of these relatively secret documents has revealed a surprisingly detailed underside of global diplomacy.  Not many places in the world were left unaffected by this event.  For Yemen, the Wikileaks cables revealed the strategies, alliances and troubles of the “war” against al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula.  Available for all to see are the connections between the Yemeni government and the United States and the role of the Saudis in fighting al Qaeda at the expense of the Yemeni government.  What is more is the unfortunate side effect of also exposing these connections for al Qaeda operatives, themselves, who may take the information as a propaganda opportunity to further delegitimize the government and enlist more recruits, in Yemen and beyond.

Yemen’s designation as a source of terrorism can certainly be explained by its regional geographic context.  However, it is merely one spoke in a global network of terrorism groups.  Like the other terrorism hotbeds in the world, globalization itself provides the tools and the targets for such extremist activities.  Terrorist groups rely on the same networks of global communications and transportation that they seek to disrupt with bomb plots.  And now, courtesy of Julian Assange, the globalization of political transparency in Wikileaks provides another tool for terrorists to potentially exploit.

Concept Caching: Moscow

From our Concept Caching image cache that hopes to promote student spatial awareness by relating specific features on the Earth’s surface with their visual character and GPS coordinates. Through the site photographs and GPS coordinates demonstrate core concepts in geography.  Images are “cached” for viewing by core concept and by region.  Images are certainly useful for introducing visual content to students in all Geography classes.

Moscow has long been the center of Russian politics, whether it was the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, or the Russian state of today.  In fact, Russian governments and politicians are often referred to simply as Moscow.  As mentioned in the post A Russian re-turn?, there seems to some political momentum among the former territories of the Russian Empire and of the former Soviet Republics to make a re-turn back toward Moscow since their abrupt Western turns made in the 1990s.

A Russian re-turn?

Russia has been a significant global and Eurasian presence for much longer than many contemporary Western perspectives give credit to.  This may be because the Russian Realm has existed, and at times prospered, as ideologically distinct from the rest of the world system.  Some historical similarities aside (like, colonialism, imperialism, and empire), autocracy and communism separate this ideological set from the democratic and capitalist nearly everywhere else.  The subtle power of memory and history has begun to reassert themselves as some of the former Soviet territories and Republics reverse their primary political associations from west to east.  Yet, what is seen as a contemporary “turn to Russia” today would not be so much a “turn”, but perhaps a “re”-turn for some Eastern European states.

A brief look at Russian historical and territorial geography provides an insight into the recurring, although contentious, allegiance and memory across, now “independent,” territorial borders.  The ties that unite places like Ukraine, Belarus and the Russian core, are quite deep-rooted as they define significant parts of the shared “historical heartland” between these Slavic peoples.  Such memories are often revisited earnestly, despite their temporal distance of thousands of years back.  In more recent memory, the legacy of the Soviet system and its tenuous, federal “union” of diverse nationalities have also left an imprint.  The cultural organization of the Soviet system represented a fine line between political subordinance and cultural independence.   In the early 1990s, the appeal of cultural and political independence certainly won out.  However, the Soviet political and economic system, although globally judged as a failure, was somewhat a success on the ground as it provided a tangible safety net for people.  Communist-style support is now missed as capitalist alternatives have proven uneven and ultimately dissatisfactory.  In terms of global alliances, even former Republics that made the quickest turn to the West, are now rethinking such strategies as they find themselves increasingly peripheralized in complicated Western supra-national systems.  This geopolitical disillusionment has found a new opportunity as the Russian state has recently been making its own global resurgence, riding the wave of favorable global energy prices, reasserting its “need” for autocratic-style democracy, and reemerging as a global power in this multipolar world.

The strongest return has been that of Ukraine.  In 2004, the Orange Revolution was hoped to bring democracy and stronger ties to Europe.  However, since then, disenchantment has reigned and in February 2010 a pro-Moscow president was elected.  President Viktor Yanukovich ingratiated Ukraine with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, negotiating and signing some significant treaties and agreements that will have lasting effects.  This “re-turn” was not unilaterally endorsed, and some of the most comical political machinations resulted during the Ukrainian Parliament’s debate over these treaties.  Going even a step further, the new pro-Russian government is also rewriting its history books and erasing references to the pro-democracy interlude of the Orange Revolution.

In Latvia, economic troubles have contributed to the near return to Russian influence.  Historically, Latvia was one of the three Baltic States that declared their independence from the Soviet Union and made the quickest about face turn to the West.  However, following a recent economic collapse which associated blame with the West, the country nearly turned power over to a political party that is backed by the significant ethnic Russian population, itself a legacy of Soviet Russification.   Interestingly, there is an increasingly Latvian contingent that seems to view Russia as a lesser evil than Western Europe.

As Russia reemerges on the world political stage, there may be more former satellites that choose to return to its influence.  Especially as economic and governing politics in the European Union become increasingly uneven and contentious, perhaps even the most unexpected reversals may take place.

Concept Caching: The Flag of the European Union

From our Concept Caching image cache that hopes to promote student spatial awareness by relating specific features on the Earth’s surface with their visual character and GPS coordinates. Through the site photographs and GPS coordinates demonstrate core concepts in geography.  Images are “cached” for viewing by core concept and by region.  Images are certainly useful for introducing visual content to students in all Geography classes.

The European Union is truly a grand political, economic, social and cultural experiment.  Quite revolutionary for even a region of revolutions, the EU marks a fine line between inter-governmental and supra-national.  Complexity and compromise are what define the diplomatic-style interactions and the creation of cross-national policy.  Member states in the EU are entangled with one another across diverse policy areas and across scales.  Never has this been more apparent than with the 2010 Debt Crisis in Europe as discussed in the post Political Economy and Global Europe: A two-part spatial saga.  This image shows the nested and connected nature of various scales in the EU, and how certain cities and localities are directly connected to the European scale.

Political Economy and Global Europe: A two-part spatial saga

Part One

Economic Geography and the Global Recession:  The uneven geographies of economic and financial globalization

The 2008 global recession both revealed and complicated many existing notions of the interconnections and interdependencies that make up the web of the world economy.  Focusing on the European world region provides a very interesting, and at times mind-boggling, example of this web and how it links people, institutions, and futures across all geographical scales.  The global recession began in the United States, but it has undermined the established, overarching economic theories of Western, capitalist institutions as well as institutionalized lifestyles of European peoples.  Part One will focus on the unevenness of the world economy and how a select few, speculating on local markets caused a global recession.

Economic Geography and Uneven Globalization

In order to understand these complexities, one must turn to some kind of theory of the world economy.  Economic geography provides an excellent approach for its focus on the spatial patterns of economic activity and the economic processes that shape and change those patterns.  Economic geographers see that the contemporary, globalized economy has emerged along with technological advancements in communication and transportation, which have engendered a truly global financial system and have necessitated the creation of global governance structures to “coordinate” trade and development.  Yet, economic globalization is a very spatially uneven phenomenon.  That if anything, some economic geographers have argued that it is ‘regionalized’, as the actual geographies of trading, production and consumption, finance, and development convey.  This unevenness is most significant in the concentration of power that qualifies globalized networks, especially in finance.  It is the decisions of a few, concentrated in specific locales that can influence sweeping global trends.  The consequences of this unevenness are best seen in the 2008 global recession.

The Local Making of a Global Recession

True to the unevenness and complexities of the global financial system, the story of Europe’s Debt Crisis does not actually begin in Europe.  Instead, the 2008 global recession was set up as a house of cards built on rampant spending and loose lending in the US housing market.  The big players of the global financial system were wooed by seemingly lucrative investments in the mortgages and rising home prices of select local contexts in specific US-states, notably California.  Both European and American investment banks fueled the frenzy by crafting complicated bundles of these mortgages into their investment portfolios.  As long as home values and borrowers were buoyant, these portfolios were literally money in the bank.  However, this buoyancy was illusory; much of these mortgages were predatory and the loans were undersigned with doubtful prospect for repayment.  Further, the overconfidence in the market led to an oversupply of homes which eventually slowed the housing market, instituting a downward spiral of home prices, foreclosures and more empty homes.  This hit directly at the inflated portfolios of US and European investment banks, which were loaded up with convoluted packages of these insolvent mortgages.  When home values tanked and loans defaulted, these portfolios were rife with toxic assets and significantly devalued.  In these banks, assets and capital vanished, leading to the first ripple of a financial crisis.  Ultimately, this crumbling of the major global investment banks (nearly all concentrated in the US and Europe), triggered the dwindling of available capital for lending and borrowing at all scales, now commonly recognized as a “credit crunch.”  Further investing was limited by the credit crunch, but also by a reversal in lending ideology that saw many ventures as increasingly risky even to those banks not initially affected.  This had far reaching impacts in places like India, Asia, Latin America and beyond.

From Private to Public:  the European Debt Crisis

Ultimately, the insolvency of private lending institutions made its way onto public balance sheets, as US and European governments sought to stabilize their markets through bank bailouts and the purchase of toxic assets.  Following the bailouts and the decline in global lending, global economic activity overall slowed or crashed into a global recession, and local tax bases in the US and Europe subsequently dwindled.  In Europe, national governments found themselves with significant budget shortfalls which overextended their current debt obligations.  In Europe, united by the political and economic structures of the European Union (EU), this would reveal another pattern and scale of unevenness.  The “convergence criteria” for the eurozone, the EU’s economic space, dictated the approved debt levels of member states.  In prosperous times, these debt levels were not rigidly enforced and were veiled by dubious accounting and statistics of some member states.  However, with the reality of global economic downturn, these national governments were no longer able to hide their massive national deficits that grossly surpassed EU limits.  The first, and most desperate, of these debt-laden member states was Greece.  Greece’s national debt was seen to overshadow the value of its entire economy.  The deficits in Spain, Portugal and Ireland were next to come under scrutiny.  Fears were then directed at the euro, its threatened credibility and devaluing, and the European Debt Crisis was in full swing.  The New York Times created a series of maps to illustrate the changing geographies of European Debt.  The situation in Europe has also influenced other centers of the world economy: some argued the Europe’s crisis could aid the U.S. recovery, others hinder it; for China, the situation complicated changing currency policy and boosted its share in international aid agencies, like the International Monetary Fund.  The European Debt Crisis shows the same uneven, concentrated economic and financial system at work.  Even more so, it illustrates hierarchical diffusion as troubles erupt at economic epicenters, ripple outward, and trigger new economic aftershocks and financial tremors.

Upcoming:  Part Two will dive into the local and national effects of the European Debt Crisis by investigating the turn to austerity, the reactions of  European citizenry and the social and political implications.

Behind the Millennium Development Goals

Last month the United Nations General Assembly met in New York to discuss the progress of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) created in 2000.  The MDGs are an excellent geographic case study as well as an appropriate lens for viewing geographic areas and relationships in world regions.  They can be investigated from the context of the late 1990s.  Global power dynamics can be traced among the structures of international governance and the world economy.  Assumptions and expectations can be unraveled from the focus on social indicators and development, rather than economic development alone.  The interconnections and impacts of local realities can be woven together among the abstract semantics of these aims.

The creation of the MDGs was an outcome of several decades’ worth of United Nations (UN) conferences and summits.  In 2000, the UN Millennium Declaration was signed by all 189 of the member countries, which had the overarching goal of combating global poverty.  At that time, two underlying reasons informed the creation of these eight goals.  First, there had been an overall decrease in the levels of international aid committed by wealthier countries.  Second, the overall increasing pace of globalization was feared to spread global ills, like terrorism, crime, and disease into the developed world.  Moreover, the 2010 Millennium Development Summit has been plagued by similar setbacks: the continuing indolence of developed world donations over the last decade, worsened by the impacts of the recent global recession.  There have also been some echoes of the role of development and poverty in combating global terrorism.

The MDGs, and the UN from which they originate from, can be investigated for their traces of global power.  Studying development often begins with classifying the world into a continuum of more developed vs. less developed or developing.  Ultimately, behind this binary is a division of the world into rich and poor, power-full and power-less.  Global political and economic structures have emerged from the developed, rich, power-full world, and exhibit the assumptions and expectations from those privileged positions.

The 2000 UN Millennium Declaration does exhibit a slightly different perspective on development than previous theories.  First, it may be seen as recognition of the limits of economic development alone as a path to providing greater welfare for all global peoples.  Typically, economic development theories, which rely on economic development indicators like Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Gross National Income (GNI), undervalue the contributions of subsistence and informal activities, as well as underestimate the impact of accounted economic activities on the environment.  These oversights may have contributed to a view of economic re-structuring and trade policies as ineffective in combating and mitigating social problems in the developing world.  Second, it may also be a rejection of another path to greater welfare – the theory of “teaching” less developed peoples how to generate their own wealth at home.  The complexities of such lessons combined with “culture of poverty” notions perhaps led to the abandoning of that path.  In the end, the paths to greater welfare are not so clear anyway, as shown in lack of progress of Goal Eight to develop a “global partnership for development.”  Whatever the notions behind the formation of the MDGs, they do exhibit two hopeful expectations of the developed world for what development through aid can accomplish: long, healthy, educated, quality lives; and a reduction of global ills.

This connection of scales, the lives of local people to the lives of global societies, exhibits the interconnections and impacts that have led to the creation of each of the MDGs.  Goal One aims to eliminate extreme poverty and hunger, both of which relate to ensuring that basic needs are met for all people.  Once basic needs are met, Goals Two and Three aim to make primary education universal, to promote gender equity and to empower women.  Educating people, especially women, has a clear correlation to economic progress, which adds to the human capital, productivity, and output of a country, or its development.  Goals Four, Five and Six seek to target the populations that are most vulnerable in poverty and to reduce, their often preventable, high mortality and disease rates.  Not combating preventable deaths of women and children would ultimately undermine the first three goals and the economic progress they would bring.  Goal Seven also factors into national progress by instilling ethnics and policies of environmental sustainability to improve the quality of life and to protect national assets.  In theory these goals are sound and reasonable; however, the last 10 years have shown the complexity to their implementation.

To lead class discussions about the MDGs, their complexities, and their progress, students can discuss one or more recent news articles on certain goals.  One focus has been on “energy poverty,” and the idea that access to clean energy will make the eradication of poverty possible.  It is also well known that most of poor people are women.  Accordingly, there has been much said about women’s development, women’s health, maternal mortality, equity and empowerment.  Also, there has been mention of the environmental sustainability, but with a new take on its significance.  Finally, there is an excellent interactive media created by the Guardian that visually presents the progress of three major indictors.

Discussion Questions:

1. What makes a more developed country?  What makes a less developed country?  Consider both economic and social development factors.
2. Why do you think the “eradication of poverty” is an important global goal?  What do you think about the role of developed countries in this cause?
3. Review the Guardian’s Millennium Goals interactive.  Why do you think hunger, primary education and infant mortality are considered “crucial indicators” by the Guardian?  Why do they compare these indicators to GDP?

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