“What Have My Cocoa Beans Got To Do With Canada?” video

What Have My Cocoa Beans Got To Do With Canada? – Charles Quist-Adade

Paraphrastic

Summary

This video is an illustration of the global sociological imagination concept, which is an extension of sociological imagination, explained in the video as a link between  “personal biographies and societal histories” and “private problems and public issues.” Global sociological imagination “is based on the assumption that individual biographies are not written by us alone” and that our lives are affected by the actions or inactions of numerous people from far away places whom we may never meet in our lifetime. Having a global sociological imagination, it is said “helps us develop awareness that our actions have ramifications far beyond our immediate environment.”

In this video, Quist-Adade tells his story about growing up in Ghana planting cocoa beans and relates it to Canada and his later life here.

“Have you eaten chocolate or had a cup of cocoa drink or hot chocolate of late?” He asks in the video. “If you have, chances are that the chocolate that you ate or cocoa drink you had contained beans from cocoa trees I planted some 30 years ago.”

What happens at one corner of the world “affects us all almost instantaneously,” an illustration of the global village.

Paraphrase

• Money set aside from the Cocoa Marketing Board scholarship financed Quist-Adade’s education in Ghana. Cocoa planting provided him with the education that then allowed him to teach in Canada later in life.  His planting of cocoa in Ghana also helped people in Canada working in the chocolate industry.  But his life in Canada today would not be possible without Canadians buying chocolate bars, cocoa drinks, etc. Now it has come full circle, as he is teaching in Canada to help educate Canadian students.

- I chose this segment to paraphrase because I believe it illustrates the global sociological imagination concept well and it is the gist of the video.

Reflective Essay

Throughout this semester, a recurring concept that was particularly resonant was debunking. Debunking, as defined in the lecture notes, is “looking at both obvious and surface-level and the less obvious and deeper explanations for social behaviour.” The aim of debunking is “to challenge conventional truth.” It is to see the “familiar in the unfamiliar” and the “unfamiliar in the familiar.”

One way that I used this concept to better understand an issue was when reading about race and racism. The belief of the concept of “race” is so widespread and believed to be concrete fact that when first learning that “race” doesn’t genetically exist, it can be confusing. In order to grasp what I was learning, I used debunking to look beyond the surface level—  physical attributes such as skin colour, facial features, and hair types —  and look at the less obvious and deeper explanation. The deeper explanation is that race does not exist genetically.

This can be a hard pill to swallow for many, and it was for myself, since we all know that genetic traits, such as skin colour, do get passed on from parent to child. But upon learning more and listening with an open mind, it is evident that my preconceived notions had no concrete facts to fall back on. I found three main points that dispelled my previously held notion that race was real.

For one, if race truly exists then there should be a universal definition for what constitutes a race. Depending on which country you go to, you could be classified as a different race. What constitutes a black person in, say, Brazil is different from in the USA. Additionally, the definitive term to call someone who is an offspring of a white parent and a black parent, for example, is unknown. The offspring may want to identify as “white” or “black” or mixed race.

If race is so concrete and real, then why is it left up to merely social interpretation?

Secondly, race doesn’t exist because genetically there are no subspecies in humans. The differences between “races” are so minute that they cannot be called subspecies in comparison to animal subspecies in which there are far greater differences. Genetically, there are more differences within so-called “races” than between them.

Thirdly, there is no pure “race”, we are all mutts. If you go far enough along an American Caucasian’s lineage there may be an African American ancestor, and the same goes for other “races”: there may be another “race” found in any given person’s lineage.

Environmental factors are the causes for physical attributes such as hair texture and the range in skin colour for humans.

Because of the message that I, as long with millions of people around the world, have been indoctrinated with I was lead to believe that physical attributes carried much more importance and weight than they did. I have learned that they are superficial and that the sayings “we are all the same” and “our differences are only skin deep” are very true. However, although race doesn’t exist, the belief of race does and with that, so does racism.

Social Justice In Local and Global Contexts Post #3

Ch.7 Economic Theories of Social Justice – Charles Quist-Adade

Dialectic

What question did the text/chapter raise?	How did the text answer this question?	How does the answer match our own ideas and experiences?
What are the economic systems capitalism and socialism and what are they about?	Capitalism is an ideal based on people getting “what they deserve”. There is no government intervention and it is in pursuit of personal profit. However, it can be argued that it promotes inequality and it is efficient in producing but not distribution. Socialism is a system in which there is public ownership of the means of production, in contrast to capitalism ideal in which there is private ownership. It is in pursuit of collective goods, meaning that items that belong to everyone. In theory, it is well-meaning, as it aims to spread wealth and income, distribute goods according to needs, and is altruistic. However, criticism of the system has been that workers have a lack of incentiv because they are working for the state. Socialist countries have been found to have freeloaders who abuse the social safety network. Socialism has also been criticized because it limits the prosperity of citizens and has been accused of being a precursor to extreme government control and dictatorships, like the Soviet Union.	The definition of socialism that has been widely understood by many is one that is unjust and unfair. The assumption is that the government controls everything. While that is true to some extent, socialism is based on the right principles. It was created to help its citizens. I believe that the Welfare State, a.k.a. Welfare Capitalism, which contains some of the benefits of socialism while still letting citizens obtain private ownership, is the best system out of the three.

Social Justice In Local And Global Contexts Post #2

Social Justice And The Social Construction of Inequality and Indifference- Charles Quist-Adade

Affective

This reading is about how inequalities are made socially, the different types of inequalities and how those inequalities are perpetuated by society. The term hypodescent means that “race was never just a matter of how you look; it’s about how people assign meaning to how you look.” The terms that are defined include privilege, unearned advantage, conferred dominance, the matrix of domination, aggregation, dichotomization, authoritarian personality theory, and symbolic interactionist theory. In the reading, the author explains that everyone is capable of stereotyping: “It is a universal human impulse to use stereotypes to rationalize primitive fears and suspicions.” (p.48) However, not everyone has the means to carry out discrimination on others and be racist.

• I think that the reading was very informative.
• After reading it I feel more optimistic about the future because the complex social issues that very few people talk about casually in society are brought out in the open in this chapter. If everyone studied these concepts and understood their bias and the structures of society there would be more self-awareness and real changes can be made.
• I believe the matrix of domination to be a very true concept. It explains that different factors including race, gender, and social class are what effect a person’s life chances. Being an African-Canadian female, this hits home and I can relate to Patricia Hill Collins, who introduced it.
• I know that what was stated on p.48, that every culture stereotypes, is true. But as the author explains,  the real problem is the act of discrimination which not every race or ethnicity has the ability to do.

Social Justice In Local and Global Contexts Post #1

Ch.2 Social Reality Construction and Global Social Justice- Charles Quist-Adade
Paraphrastic

In this reading, the author reveals that much of what we believe to be reality are actually constructed by the elite in society. People interpret messages based on their “racial/ethnic, gender, religious and class backgrounds.” For example, in the case of the killing of Osama bin Laden, citizens of the USA where celebratory for the most part, while the rest of the world was less celebratory and Al Qaeda supporters were furious. The chapter also explains that what affects one part of the world, affects people everywhere because of globalization and the interdependence of nations across the globe. As Martin Luther King poignantly said, “injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere.” The chapter brought up the important concepts social constructionism, critical constructionism, hegemony, and counter hegemony.

Paraphrase from p.28, quote from Philip McMichael:

• In countries around the globe, many products that are used have been made in other nations. Sneakers are from either China or Indonesia and poultry in Japan comes from Thailand. Coltan (a type of metal required for computers, cell phones and nuclear reactors) comes mainly from the Congo. Coltan has caused 4 million deaths in the Congo due to conflict and mining has damaged the environment. Green beans eaten in France and Britian are from Kenya, and the cocoa in Swizz chocolate is from Ghana.

I selected this segment to paraphrase because it shows just how connected and interdependent nations across the globe really are. These bullet points are only a few examples. It is really true what Jon Donne said, that “no man is an island to himself” and MLK’s quote about injustice rings true after reading the conflicts over Coltan in the Congo.

Illustration 5

In the Lecture #11 Notes, the concepts glass ceiling and glass escalator are discussed. These terms stood out to me because its effects in today’s society are evident to most people.  Before Barack Obama was elected, the common question of many was why, out of all the presidents in 200 years, there has not been a black president and there is also the question of why there has never been a female president. All of them are white males. These queries can be answered by the glass ceiling and escalator concepts. Because of these two factors, it is easier for white males to rise higher in society than women and minorities. There is a limit to the success that women and minorities can achieve.  It is evident in business, where the top earners and highest in rank are by a great majority white males. Statistically, this doesn’t make sense; but these concepts explain the phenomenon and society’s structure.

Illustration 4

In the Lecture #8b Notes, the scapegoat theory is discussed. It is explained that “prejudice and discrimination originate in the frustrations of people who want to blame someone else for their problems.”

This was an interesting concept to me because it is widespread in culture. It is evident in the United States where citizens, particularly blue collar workers in the Southern states, blame immigrants for taking their jobs.