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I'm doing a litle riff on some of the threads I see.

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Questions of ethnocentrism have been discussed many times on the board, in the anti-racism forum and several others. Is not ethnocentrism to some extent inevitable?

I thought the first poem about Québécois society you contributed to the writers' forum had more than a hint of ethnocentrism about it, but held off on that because I didn't like dumping on a new babbler, nor do I like attacking literature on political grounds without more background and examples, as it is so counter to the idea of free expression.

Many babblers are questioning our ethnocentric beliefs or outlooks. A good thing.

I too wish there were more topics beyond the Canadian State, the US, and a handful of "newsworthy" regions, but I think babble has greatly improved in that respect since its inception.

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I too wish there were more topics beyond the Canadian State, the US, and a handful of "newsworthy" regions, but I think babble has greatly improved in that respect since its inception.

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I've started several posts on Italy, because I lived there and am an "italianist" by training, but obviously not all babblers will share in my active loathing for Berlusconi...

Thanks for the feedback on the poem. We should discuss that. There's really nothing for me to defend there, though.

Whatever I post can be taken as an unfair this or that. I'm a newbie who does not like to lurk (though I was accussed of . . . oh, forget it I took THAT as pure static).

In fact, what I'm saying is that I am not up to speed. Not about Iran, not about Italy, not about Venezuela. It has not been on babble forum that I've felt my great frustration with essays and posts from basically ethnocentric individuals telling me 'how it is really coming down' in those places. So not being up to speed with babble is more a sort of disconnect due to my own formation and mode of interaction.

There's ethnocentric and then there is xenophobe. Philosophy, lit or babble discussion can, conceivably, be ethnocentric to an extreme and still retain Universal meaning. I would not hold out hopes for uncovering such significance for discussion that is unconsciously and narrowly focussed, but for examining closely one's little niche, yes. But the xenophobe (of whom babble has very few) is out to lunch.

Lagatta offers the possibility of babble opening up to world topics with more threads. That would be great and might involve more member participation.

In my case, though, I lack the scope and the energy right now to absorb let alone participate in all that interactively.

Offhand, I'd guess it's one part ignorance (ie same question applied to media generally) and one part low level of shared concerns -- for both, as compared to USA & Europe.

I spent some time posted around the globe with the armed forces and this included Egypt and an occupied part of Syria. I left the Middle East with less confidence as to what the reality was than before I ever went. Canada is a piece of cake with our issues that hardly seem more than intellectual banter at times. I like to be a passive observer of political and social issues elsewhere but have no feel for what the reality is. What's the reality of Canada..that expressed on Babble or Free Dominion? would Canadians agree?

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if there is little demand for say, South Asian topics, wouldn't it make more sense to discuss why? Which of course would be discussing Canada (or at least Babble).
Offhand, I'd guess it's one part ignorance (ie same question applied to media generally) and one part low level of shared concerns -- for both, as compared to USA & Europe.

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As you say, it does seem to be a pan-Canadian thing (ignoring regions other than North America, Europe or the Middle East), not just babblers. Outside of Europe or North America, the only region of the world most Canadians are interested in is the mid-east. I remember a "Third World Politics" course I took in University in 1992. The Prof. was well aware of this bias and decided to test the students. He asked the class about the nations of Africa, Asia and Latin America. EVERYONE knew the leaders of Israel and the PLO, most knew of Arab leaders like Mubarak, King Fahd, Khaddafy, etc. OTOH, very few knew the leaders of huge, important nations like India, China, Pakistan, Indonesia, Brazil, Argentina, Nigeria. Given that Canada was then negotiating NAFTA, the prof. was dumbfounded that so few 2nd year poli-sci students knew anything about Mexico.

As for the course tutorials we had every week, our TA must have felt something like babble's moderators refereeing the "mid-east forum": Every week she would ask us to comment on current (1992) Third World events... all anyone wanted to talk/argue about was Iraq and the Israel/Palestine dispute. If I remember correctly...her name was Michelle too, just like one of the mods here!

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Originally posted by lagatta:
Many babblers are questioning our ethnocentric beliefs or outlooks. A good thing.

I do hope that eventually babblers will volunteer to host, say, a Latin America forum, an Africa forum, a South Asia and East Asia forum, a Europe forum.

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[ 16 February 2006: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

(Though yes, WD, I too like hearing from Lake -)

It's not lack of information. It might have been in the Old Days, before the ubiquitous net, even in '92, but hey -- I'm in the middle of the Pacific, subscribe to no media, and I'm well up enough on Uganda, Mexico, Malaysai, and Nepal to have a few genuine opinions.

It's not lack of personal connection, at least if it's Canada we're wondering about. As mentioned there are plenty of people with ethnic associations with such places, let alone travel or other experiential links.

I have to figure that either it's media exposure, as opposed to mere accessibility (with a dubious sub-explanation that maybe it's TV), or it's cultural. The kind of people who babble on about places and situations foreign to them, with strangers, tend to be North American in culture, whose own links abroad tend to be with Europe if anywhere.

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Originally posted by Boarsbreath:
If you distrust mediated information, as seems customary among North American intellectuals, you might prefer to read stuff from the natives -- ie, from North America & Europe.

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If they're in India, yes. Most of Africa, yes. One of the problems getting first-hand stuff on Brasil is that there are a vast number of Brazilians, they speak and write Portuguese, they're fine with that, and they're the least bi-lingual web denizens I know of. You surf virtually any European website, and there's at least four flags for you to click on your language. Brasil? Good luck. I admire their linguistic self-sufficiency, but I can't read it. (If you think Google's French translation matrix is funny -- lawyers for avocados -- try their attempts to translate from Portuguese.) And Bolivia is about the same (in Spanish), and so on.

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Originally posted by lagatta:
What do you like to read, Rici? Pagina/12?

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Página/12 can be fun, although I always glance at Clarín, which has fuller coverage. I used to just read El País (the Spanish daily) but they started charging for internet access and I haven't gotten around to buying a subscription, although I really should. You can actually buy El País on the street in Buenos Aires, but I'm not in Argentina very often; in Perú, you can only get yesterday's news and then only if you're lucky; it's usually two days old.

Here in Perú, I read La República, which I like, and El Comercio, because it's the newspaper of record. I used to read, or at least glance through, half a dozen Peruvian newspapers in order to try to figure out what was really going on, but things have quietened down a lot, and I've learned to read between the lines better, too.

I almost always read the editorial columns of La Jornada (Mexico City); I'm particularly fond of Carlos Fernández-Vega's daily column "México SA" (Mexico, Inc.)

El Diario (La Paz) has been pretty pro-Evo, although it doesn't hesitate to criticize constructively.

The now-weekly now-Bogotá-based El Espectador (Spectator) still manages to attract good writing and good analysis; the former abounds in Colombia but the latter can be harder to find. For daily going's on, El Tiempo is OK.

OK, I admit it. I'm a newsprint junky. I always have been, and moving to South America hasn't changed me.

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I do hope that eventually babblers will volunteer to host, say, a Latin America forum

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It's a hard call, I love to read media too and have to keep on top of current vocabulary in languages I'm translating from, but can't spend all day doing that - it also prevents more "in-depth" reading of literature and history.

The fact that we have certain preestablished categories exacerbates the particular attention to certain regions of the world.

I would surmise to that rabble's membership is very white middle class progressive Canadian -- basically the NDP and adjunct social movements which really narrows the parameters of debate on this board. Rabble it seems hasn't solved the riddle that has befuddled progressive movements in this country for a very long time -- that is how to break out of various cliquish progressive pockets to reach a wider audience that includes the diversity found in this country.