Course Syllabus for Social Science 112
SOCIETY AND CULTURE WITH EMPHASIS ON CULTURES OF MINDANAO
2nd Semester, SY: 2010-2011
Faculty: Florie Jane M. Tamon Class Email Address:
fjtamon@gmail.com socioandphilos@gmail.com
Consultation Hours: Class Blogspot:
MWF 11am-12nn http://socioandphilos.blogspot.com
TTh 1-2pm
Course Title:
SOCIETY AND CULTURE WITH EMPHASIS ON CULTURES OF MINDANAO
Course Description:
The course will introduce to the students concepts, theories, and perspectives vital in the understanding of society and culture. An explanation on why people of different groups or societies have different cultures and behave differently will also be tackled. In so doing, the students are expected to recognize the different elements that make up ones culture, identify those that are distinctly his (being a Filipino) and choose those that are worth perpetuating.
Corollary to the understanding of society and culture is the ability to identify issues and concerns affecting the society. The students are expected to have an increased level of awareness of oneself and other significant factors around him. To help him develop his awareness, an emphasis of the diverse cultures of Mindanao will be taken as an additional topic.
Course Objectives: At the end of the semester, the students are expected to:
1. Discuss the varied concepts related to the study of society and culture.
2. Compare cultural practices of people from different ethnic origins.
3. Appreciate Filipino society and culture.
4. Explain the roles of social institutions as bases of order in the society.
5. Comprehend the factors which lead to social change.
Chart of Activities
TOPIC METHOD OUTPUT DATE
INTRODUCTION
I. History of USM
a. Conversion of MIT to USM
b. Founder and pioneers of USM:
Biography
II. VGMO and Core Values of USM
III. Nature and Beginnings of Sociology and Anthropology
IV. Significance of Understanding Society and Culture
Class discussion and participation
QIP-Question, Issue, Problem
Identifying the indigenous groups to be researched by groups formed. Week 1 and 2
THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES IN SOCIOLOGY
I. What is a theory?
What is a theoretical paradigm?
Levels of analysis:
a. Macro-level analysis
b. Micro-level analysis
II. Three (3) Major Theories
a. Symbolic-Interactionism
b. Structural-Functionalism
c. Conflict Theory
Class discussion
QIP-Question, Issue, Problem
Group dynamics: Playing detective Short Paper: Theoretical analysis on a specific social issue
1st draft of research on indigenous people: Description of indigenous group’s culture. Week 3
SOCIO-CULTURAL EVOLUTION OF SOCIETIES
I. What is a society?
II. Types of Societies
a. Hunting and Gathering Society
b. Horticultural Society
c. Pastoral Society
d. Agrarian Society
e. Industrial Society
f. Post-Industrial Society
III. Range and Limits of Technology
Class discussion and presentation
QIP-Question, Issue, Problem
Comparative analysis
Short paper: The factors that contributed to socio-cultural evolution of societies. Week 4
GROUPS AND ORGANIZATIONS
I. What is a social group?
What is a category?
What is a crowd?
What is an aggregate?
How are the above-named collections of people different from each other?
What are the characteristics of a social group?
II. Types of Social Groups
a. Groups according to social ties
b. Groups according to self-
identification
c. Groups according to purpose
d. Groups according to geographical
location and degree or quality of
relationship
e. Groups according to form of
organization
III. Group Size
a. Dyad
b. Triad
c. Social Network
IV. Group Leadership
a. 2 Kinds of Leadership
b. 3 Leadership Styles
V. Group Conformity
a. Asch’s Research
b. Milgram’s Research
c. Janis’s Research
d. Stouffer’s Research
VI. Formal Organizations
a. Types of Formal Organizations
b. Origins of Bureaucracy
c. Characteristics of Bureaucracy
d. Organizational Environment
e. The Informal Side of Bureaucracy
f. The Problems of Bureaucracy
Topic presentation
Class discussion
QIP-Question, Issue, Problem
Demonstration of researches on group conformity
Research work and presentation Short Paper: A research on an organization, their structure, organizational environment, and leadership. Week 5 and 6
SOCIALIZATION
I. What is socialization?
What is personality?
II. Nature vs. Nurture
a. Charles Darwin: The Role of
Nature
b. Social Sciences: The Role of
Nurture
III. Understanding Socialization
a. The Elements of Personality:
Sigmund Freud
b. Cognitive Development:
Jean Piaget
c. Moral Development:
Lawrence Kohlberg
d. Bringing in Gender: Carol Gilligan
e. The Social Self:
George Herbert Mead
f. Eight Stages of Development:
Erick Erikson
IV. Agents of Socialization
a. Family
b. School
c. Peer Groups
d. Mass Media
e. Religious Organizations
f. Workplace
V. Resocializations and Total
Institution
Class discussion
QIP-Question, Issue, Problem
Group sharing: The agent of socialization that contributed greatly to the group member’s personality.
Measuring the level of moral development Short Paper: Human beings captives of the society?
2nd draft of research on indigenous people: Issues confronting the indigenous group researched on. Week 7
CULTURE
I. What is culture?
II. Components of Culture
a. Symbols
b. Values
c. Beliefs
d. Norms (Mores, Folkways, Laws)
III. Characteristics of Culture
a. Learned
b. Shared
c. Symbolic
d. All-encompassing
e. Stable yet Dynamic
f. Integrated
g. Transmitted
h. Adaptive and Maladaptive
i. Patterned
j. Compulsory
k. Essential for Life
l. A Social Product
m. Accumulated
IV. Levels of Culture
a. National Culture
b. International Culture
c. Subculture
V. Culture Change
a. Mechanisms of Cultural Change
b. Causes of Change
VI. Issues in understanding Culture
a. Gender
b. Peace
c. Sustainable Development
Class discussion
QIP-Question, Issue, Problem
Cultural presentation
Film-viewing 3rd draft of research on indigenous people: Theoretical analysis of the issues confronted by the indigenous group researched on.
Reaction Paper: “Sometimes in April” or
“Hotel Rwanda”
Week 8 and 9
CULTURES OF MINDANAO
I. History of Mindanao
a. Different name given to Mindanao
b. Regions and Provinces of
Mindanao
c. The tri-people of Mindanao
d. Migration in Mindanao
II. Situations of the Tri-people in
Mindanao
III. Indigenous People of Mindanao
Classroom presentation
Class discussion
QIP-Question, Issue, Problem
Final written draft: The indigenous group researched on.
Video Documentary: The indigenous group researched on.
Cultural Presentation Week 10 and 11
Grade Requirement:
Midterm and Final Grade Semestral Grade
Class Participation/ 30% Midterm Grade 50%
Oral recitation Final Grade 50%
Short Papers 20% 100%
Quizzes 10%
Project 20%
Midterm/Final Exam 20%
100%
References:
1. Broom, L. and Selznick, P. (1995). Sociology: A Text with Adapted Readings. 2nd Edition. Row, Peterson, and Company. USA.
2. Farganis, James. (2000). Readings in Social Theory: The Classic Tradition to Post Modernism. Mc Graw-Hill, Inc. USA.
3. Hebding, D. and Glick, L. (1992). Introduction to Sociology: A Text with Adapted Readings. McGraw-Hill, Inc. USA.
4. Henslin, J. (2001). Sociology: A Down-to-Earth Approach. 5th Edition. A Pearson Education Company. Massachusetts.
5. Kottak, C. (2004). Anthropology: The Exploration of Human Diversity. 10th Edition. McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. USA.
6. Lawrence, R. (1963). Perspectives on the Social Order: Readings in Sociology. McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. USA.
7. Macionis, J. (2001). Sociology. 8th Edition. Prentice Hall, Inc. USA.
8. Mangune, S.(2001).Tagabawa and Bagobo: Katutubo Profiles of Philippine Cultural Communities.Manila.
9. Mercedes, A. et al. (2001). Mindanao Ethnic Communiries: Patterns of Growth and Change.University of the Philippines Center for Integrative and Development Studies.Diliman, Quezon City.
10. Ompang, M.(2001).Mandaya: Katutubo Profiles of Philippine Cultural Communities.Manila.
11. Panopio, I. and Rolda, R. S. (2000). Society and Culture: Introduction to Sociology and Anthropology. JMC Press, Inc. Quezon City.
12. Ritzer, G. (2000). Sociological Theory. 5th Edition. McGraw-Hill Companies. USA.
13. San Juan, W. et al.(2007). Sociology, Culture, and Family Planning. Unlad Publishing. Pasay City.
Miyerkules, Nobyembre 17, 2010
PHILOS 124 Course Syllabus
Course Syllabus for Philosophy 124
SOCIO-CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
2st Semester, SY: 2010-2011
Faculty: Florie Jane M. Tamon Class Email Address:
fjtamon@gmail.com socioandphilos@gmail.com
Consultation Hours: Class Blogspot:
MWF 11am-12nn http://socioandphilos.blogspot.com
TTh 1-2pm
Course Title:
SOCIO-CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Course Description:
The course will introduce to the students concepts, fundamental theories, and perspectives vital in understanding human beings as biological and social entities. Concentration will be made on cultural diversity as distinct among societies, as well as the cultural changes that they have gone through. In so doing, the students are expected to describe their local culture and understand its social significance.
Course Objectives: At the end of the semester, the students are expected to:
1. Discuss the varied concepts related to the study of man.
2. Compare and contrast cultures among existing societies.
3. Describe and appreciate their local cultures.
Course Outline:
I. THE BASICS OF ANTHROPOLOGY
A. What is Anthropology?
B. The subdisciplines of Anthropology
C. Anthropology and other academic fields
D. Applied Anthropology
E. Ethnology and Ethnography
II. PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY: A Brief Background
A. Primates
B. Hominid Evolution
III. CULTURAL DIVERSITY
A. What is culture?
Components, Characteristics, and Levels of Culture
Universal, Particular, and General Culture
Issues in understanding Culture
Mechanisms of Cultural Change
B. Human Diversity and Race
Race: A discredited concept in Biology
Social Race
C. Ethnicity
Ethnic Groups and Ethnicity
Ethnic Relations
D. Language and Communication
Animal Communication
Nonverbal Communication
Structure of Language
Sociolinguistics
E. Making a Living
Adaptive strategies and Transformation of societies
F. Families, Kinship, and Descent
G. Marriage
H. Political Systems
Bands and Tribes
Chiefdoms
States
I. Gender
J. Religion
Origin, Functions, and Expressions of Religion
Kinds of Religion
Religion and Change
Social Control
IV. THE MODERN WORLD
A. Modern World System
Industrialization
Stratification
World System Today
B. Colonialism and Development
C. Cultural Exchange and Survival
D. Applied Anthropology
Class Activities:
Participatory Class Discussion
Film-Viewing
Topical Discussion
Research Works
Class Presentations
QIP (Question, Issue, Problem)
Grade Requirement:
Midterm and Final Grade Semestral Grade
Class Participation/ 30%
Oral recitation Midterm Grade 50%
Short Papers 20% Final Grade 50%
Quizzes 10% 100%
Project 20%
Midterm/Final Exam 20%
100%
References:
1. Borker, R. and Maltz, D. (2001). Applying Cultural Anthropology: An Introductory Reader. Mayfield Publishing Company. USA
2. Kottak, C. (2002). Cultural Anthropology. 9th Edition. McGraw-Hill, Inc.USA.
3. Kottak, C. (2004). Anthropology: The Exploration of Human Diversity. 10th Edition. McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. USA.
4. Kottak, C. (2005). Mirror for Humanity: A Concise Introduction to Cultural Anthropology. 2nd Edition. McGraw-Hill, Inc. USA.
5. Lenkeit, R. E. (2004). Introducing Cultural Anthropology. 2nd Edition. McGraw-Hill, Inc. USA.
6. http://www.indiana.edu/~wanthro/theory.htm
7. http://www.anthro.mankato.msus.edu/information/biography/index.pl
8. http://www.wsu.edu/gened/learn-modules/top_culture
9. http://www.tamu.edu/anthropology/news.html
SOCIO-CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
2st Semester, SY: 2010-2011
Faculty: Florie Jane M. Tamon Class Email Address:
fjtamon@gmail.com socioandphilos@gmail.com
Consultation Hours: Class Blogspot:
MWF 11am-12nn http://socioandphilos.blogspot.com
TTh 1-2pm
Course Title:
SOCIO-CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Course Description:
The course will introduce to the students concepts, fundamental theories, and perspectives vital in understanding human beings as biological and social entities. Concentration will be made on cultural diversity as distinct among societies, as well as the cultural changes that they have gone through. In so doing, the students are expected to describe their local culture and understand its social significance.
Course Objectives: At the end of the semester, the students are expected to:
1. Discuss the varied concepts related to the study of man.
2. Compare and contrast cultures among existing societies.
3. Describe and appreciate their local cultures.
Course Outline:
I. THE BASICS OF ANTHROPOLOGY
A. What is Anthropology?
B. The subdisciplines of Anthropology
C. Anthropology and other academic fields
D. Applied Anthropology
E. Ethnology and Ethnography
II. PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY: A Brief Background
A. Primates
B. Hominid Evolution
III. CULTURAL DIVERSITY
A. What is culture?
Components, Characteristics, and Levels of Culture
Universal, Particular, and General Culture
Issues in understanding Culture
Mechanisms of Cultural Change
B. Human Diversity and Race
Race: A discredited concept in Biology
Social Race
C. Ethnicity
Ethnic Groups and Ethnicity
Ethnic Relations
D. Language and Communication
Animal Communication
Nonverbal Communication
Structure of Language
Sociolinguistics
E. Making a Living
Adaptive strategies and Transformation of societies
F. Families, Kinship, and Descent
G. Marriage
H. Political Systems
Bands and Tribes
Chiefdoms
States
I. Gender
J. Religion
Origin, Functions, and Expressions of Religion
Kinds of Religion
Religion and Change
Social Control
IV. THE MODERN WORLD
A. Modern World System
Industrialization
Stratification
World System Today
B. Colonialism and Development
C. Cultural Exchange and Survival
D. Applied Anthropology
Class Activities:
Participatory Class Discussion
Film-Viewing
Topical Discussion
Research Works
Class Presentations
QIP (Question, Issue, Problem)
Grade Requirement:
Midterm and Final Grade Semestral Grade
Class Participation/ 30%
Oral recitation Midterm Grade 50%
Short Papers 20% Final Grade 50%
Quizzes 10% 100%
Project 20%
Midterm/Final Exam 20%
100%
References:
1. Borker, R. and Maltz, D. (2001). Applying Cultural Anthropology: An Introductory Reader. Mayfield Publishing Company. USA
2. Kottak, C. (2002). Cultural Anthropology. 9th Edition. McGraw-Hill, Inc.USA.
3. Kottak, C. (2004). Anthropology: The Exploration of Human Diversity. 10th Edition. McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. USA.
4. Kottak, C. (2005). Mirror for Humanity: A Concise Introduction to Cultural Anthropology. 2nd Edition. McGraw-Hill, Inc. USA.
5. Lenkeit, R. E. (2004). Introducing Cultural Anthropology. 2nd Edition. McGraw-Hill, Inc. USA.
6. http://www.indiana.edu/~wanthro/theory.htm
7. http://www.anthro.mankato.msus.edu/information/biography/index.pl
8. http://www.wsu.edu/gened/learn-modules/top_culture
9. http://www.tamu.edu/anthropology/news.html
Huwebes, Oktubre 28, 2010
FINAL GRADE- 3BSN-A
FINAL GRADE
SUBJECT: Sociology and Anthropology
CLASS: 3BSN-A
ID No. FINAL GRADE REMARKS
08-00007 2.5 P
08-00181 2.75 P
08-00199 3 P
08-00271 2 P
08-00288 2.5 P
08-04651 2.25 P
08-04990 2.5 P
07-00406 5 F
05-00197 3 P
08-00529 NA NA
08-00530 2.25 P
08-00607 1.5 P
08-00615 3 P
08-00767 2.25 P
08-00782 3 P
08-00808 2.75 P
08-00936 2 P
08-00975 2.25 P
08-01094 2.75 P
08-01186 2.5 P
08-01305 2.75 P
08-01308 2.25 P
08-01395 2.25 P
08-03803 3 P
09-01645 2.75 P
08-05818 2.25 P
08-01657 2 P
08-06059 2.75 P
08-01721 3 P
08-01750 2.5 P
08-01920 2.75 P
08-01925 3 P
08-05915 3 P
09-04790 3 P
08-02103 1.75 P
08-02389 2.5 P
08-02430 1.75 P
08-02471 2.5 P
08-02474 1.75 P
08-04951 2.25 P
10-07014 3 P
08-02778 2.75 P
08-02833 2 P
08-02915 2 P
08-03903 2.25 P
08-04284 2 P
08-05890 2 P
08-03217 2.25 P
08-03307 2.5 P
08-03560 2.25 P
08-03613 2.75 P
08-03662 1.75 P
SUBJECT: Sociology and Anthropology
CLASS: 3BSN-A
ID No. FINAL GRADE REMARKS
08-00007 2.5 P
08-00181 2.75 P
08-00199 3 P
08-00271 2 P
08-00288 2.5 P
08-04651 2.25 P
08-04990 2.5 P
07-00406 5 F
05-00197 3 P
08-00529 NA NA
08-00530 2.25 P
08-00607 1.5 P
08-00615 3 P
08-00767 2.25 P
08-00782 3 P
08-00808 2.75 P
08-00936 2 P
08-00975 2.25 P
08-01094 2.75 P
08-01186 2.5 P
08-01305 2.75 P
08-01308 2.25 P
08-01395 2.25 P
08-03803 3 P
09-01645 2.75 P
08-05818 2.25 P
08-01657 2 P
08-06059 2.75 P
08-01721 3 P
08-01750 2.5 P
08-01920 2.75 P
08-01925 3 P
08-05915 3 P
09-04790 3 P
08-02103 1.75 P
08-02389 2.5 P
08-02430 1.75 P
08-02471 2.5 P
08-02474 1.75 P
08-04951 2.25 P
10-07014 3 P
08-02778 2.75 P
08-02833 2 P
08-02915 2 P
08-03903 2.25 P
08-04284 2 P
08-05890 2 P
08-03217 2.25 P
08-03307 2.5 P
08-03560 2.25 P
08-03613 2.75 P
08-03662 1.75 P
FINAL GRADE-3BSTrM
FINAL GRADE
SUBJECT: Socio-cultural Anthropology
CLASS: 3BSTrM-A
ID NO. FINAL GRADE REMARKS
08-04701 3 P
08-00186 3 P
08-00267 5 F
05-02264 2.75 P
07-05272 2.5 P
07-00984 5 F
08-04549 3 P
06-02638 3 P
08-01365 3 P
07-04650 2.75 P
08-06213 NA NA
06-00344 2.5 P
07-02134 NA NA
08-06095 2 P
08-02910 1.75 P
SUBJECT: Socio-cultural Anthropology
CLASS: 3BSTrM-A
ID NO. FINAL GRADE REMARKS
08-04701 3 P
08-00186 3 P
08-00267 5 F
05-02264 2.75 P
07-05272 2.5 P
07-00984 5 F
08-04549 3 P
06-02638 3 P
08-01365 3 P
07-04650 2.75 P
08-06213 NA NA
06-00344 2.5 P
07-02134 NA NA
08-06095 2 P
08-02910 1.75 P
FINAL GRADE- 2BSND-B
FINAL GRADE
SUBJECT: Socio-cultural Anthropology
CLASS: 2BSND-B
ID NUMBER FINAL GRADE REMARKS
08-00005 2.5 P
09-00204 2.75 P
09-06485 2.75 P
09-04281 2.75 P
09-04291 3 P
09-00348 3 P
09-00836 2.25 P
09-04956 3 P
09-04956
09-00944 2.75 P
09-00958 2.5 P
05-96091 2.75 P
08-06107 2.5 P
09-01108 NA
09-01265 2 P
09-01431 2 P
08-06064 5 F
09-06470 2 P
09-01850 2.25 P
08-04472 2.5 P
09-01998 2.75 P
08-01965 2.25 P
09-02248 2.25 P
08-06083 2.5 P
09-04814 2.75 P
09-02458 3 P
09-02626 2.25 P
08-02367 2.25 P
09-05215 2.75 P
09-03222 2.75 P
09-03421 2.5 P
09-03458 2.5 P
09-03460 2.5 P
09-06144 3 P
08-03214 2.5 P
07-03118 2 P
09-03731 2.25 P
08-04907 2.25 P
08-03602 2.25 P
09-06469 2.25 P
SUBJECT: Socio-cultural Anthropology
CLASS: 2BSND-B
ID NUMBER FINAL GRADE REMARKS
08-00005 2.5 P
09-00204 2.75 P
09-06485 2.75 P
09-04281 2.75 P
09-04291 3 P
09-00348 3 P
09-00836 2.25 P
09-04956 3 P
09-04956
09-00944 2.75 P
09-00958 2.5 P
05-96091 2.75 P
08-06107 2.5 P
09-01108 NA
09-01265 2 P
09-01431 2 P
08-06064 5 F
09-06470 2 P
09-01850 2.25 P
08-04472 2.5 P
09-01998 2.75 P
08-01965 2.25 P
09-02248 2.25 P
08-06083 2.5 P
09-04814 2.75 P
09-02458 3 P
09-02626 2.25 P
08-02367 2.25 P
09-05215 2.75 P
09-03222 2.75 P
09-03421 2.5 P
09-03458 2.5 P
09-03460 2.5 P
09-06144 3 P
08-03214 2.5 P
07-03118 2 P
09-03731 2.25 P
08-04907 2.25 P
08-03602 2.25 P
09-06469 2.25 P
FINAL GRADE- 2BSND-A
FINAL GRADE
SUBJECT: Socio-cuotural Anthroppology
CLASS: 2BSND-A
ID No. FINAL GRADE REMARKS
09-00072 2 P
09-00127 2.5 P
09-00160 2.75 P
09-00173 2.5 P
09-00222 3 P
05-00966 2.25 P
09-00548 2.5 P
09-04364 3 P
08-04982 2.75 P
09-00062 2 P
09-01183 2.5 P
09-04434 2.5 P
09-01269 2.75 P
09-06451 2.5 P
09-01366 2.75 P
09-01425 2.75 P
09-04528 2 P
09-01531 2 P
09-01622 2.5 P
09-06613 2.75 P
09-01687 2.75 P
08-01549 2 P
09-01707 2.5 P
09-01802 3 P
09-01879 2.75 P
09-01920 2.5 P
09-02299 3 P
09-02331 3 P
09-04825 2.25 P
09-02360 2 P
09-04838 2.25 P
09-02420 3 P
09-02524 2.5 P
09-02681 2.5 P
09-02689 2.25 P
09-02714 2.5 P
09-02772 2 P
09-02790 2.75 P
08-04930 3 P
09-02958 3 P
09-03058 3 P
05-05526 2.25 P
09-03595 2.25 P
09-03594 2.25 P
09-06264 3 P
09-06564 2.75 P
09-03888 3 P
09-03902 3 P
08-04244 3 P
09-06330 2 P
09-04041 2 P
09-04154 5 F
SUBJECT: Socio-cuotural Anthroppology
CLASS: 2BSND-A
ID No. FINAL GRADE REMARKS
09-00072 2 P
09-00127 2.5 P
09-00160 2.75 P
09-00173 2.5 P
09-00222 3 P
05-00966 2.25 P
09-00548 2.5 P
09-04364 3 P
08-04982 2.75 P
09-00062 2 P
09-01183 2.5 P
09-04434 2.5 P
09-01269 2.75 P
09-06451 2.5 P
09-01366 2.75 P
09-01425 2.75 P
09-04528 2 P
09-01531 2 P
09-01622 2.5 P
09-06613 2.75 P
09-01687 2.75 P
08-01549 2 P
09-01707 2.5 P
09-01802 3 P
09-01879 2.75 P
09-01920 2.5 P
09-02299 3 P
09-02331 3 P
09-04825 2.25 P
09-02360 2 P
09-04838 2.25 P
09-02420 3 P
09-02524 2.5 P
09-02681 2.5 P
09-02689 2.25 P
09-02714 2.5 P
09-02772 2 P
09-02790 2.75 P
08-04930 3 P
09-02958 3 P
09-03058 3 P
05-05526 2.25 P
09-03595 2.25 P
09-03594 2.25 P
09-06264 3 P
09-06564 2.75 P
09-03888 3 P
09-03902 3 P
08-04244 3 P
09-06330 2 P
09-04041 2 P
09-04154 5 F
FINAL GRADE- 2BSAB-D
FINAL GRADE
SUBJECT: Social Science 112
CLASS: 2BSAB-A
ID NUMBER FINAL GRADE REMARKS
09-00017 3 P
09-00042 NA NA
09-00088 3 P
09-00183 5 F
09-00377 5 F
09-00437 5 F
09-00468 5 F
09-00502 5 F
08-00401 2.5 P
08-00452 3 P
08-00584 2.75 P
09-04913 5 F
09-00827 5 F
09-00850 DROPPED
08-00918 3 P
09-01031 5 F
08-03813 5 F
09-04453 2.75 P
09-01408 3 P
09-01464 3 P
09-06458 2.75 P
09-01546 5 F
09-01586 3 P
09-04668 5 F
09-01841 2.75 P
08-01682 5 F
09-04728 5 F
09-04743 5 F
09-02122 3 P
09-02157 5 F
09-02232 3 P
08-01977 5 F
09-02617 5 F
08-04377 2.75 P
09-05155 3 P
09-02801 2.75 P
09-05202 3 P
09-02930 3 P
09-03110 5 F
09-03146 3 P
09-03218 2.5 P
09-06700 3 P
09-07069 5 F
09-06395 2.75 P
09-03624 5 F
09-03674 2.75 P
09-03782 5 F
06-01788 3 P
05-03014 5 F
09-04182 3 P
09-06612 5 F
SUBJECT: Social Science 112
CLASS: 2BSAB-A
ID NUMBER FINAL GRADE REMARKS
09-00017 3 P
09-00042 NA NA
09-00088 3 P
09-00183 5 F
09-00377 5 F
09-00437 5 F
09-00468 5 F
09-00502 5 F
08-00401 2.5 P
08-00452 3 P
08-00584 2.75 P
09-04913 5 F
09-00827 5 F
09-00850 DROPPED
08-00918 3 P
09-01031 5 F
08-03813 5 F
09-04453 2.75 P
09-01408 3 P
09-01464 3 P
09-06458 2.75 P
09-01546 5 F
09-01586 3 P
09-04668 5 F
09-01841 2.75 P
08-01682 5 F
09-04728 5 F
09-04743 5 F
09-02122 3 P
09-02157 5 F
09-02232 3 P
08-01977 5 F
09-02617 5 F
08-04377 2.75 P
09-05155 3 P
09-02801 2.75 P
09-05202 3 P
09-02930 3 P
09-03110 5 F
09-03146 3 P
09-03218 2.5 P
09-06700 3 P
09-07069 5 F
09-06395 2.75 P
09-03624 5 F
09-03674 2.75 P
09-03782 5 F
06-01788 3 P
05-03014 5 F
09-04182 3 P
09-06612 5 F
Miyerkules, Oktubre 27, 2010
FINAL GRADE-= 1BSBA-D
FINAL GRADE
SUBJECT: Social Science 112
CLASS: 1BSBA-D
ID No. FINAL GRADE REMARKS
10-05232 2.75 P
10-00301 2.75 P
10-06710 2.5 P
10-06717 2.25 P
08-00479 3 P
10-00701 2.75 P
10-04680 3 P
10-0056 3 P
10-04687 DROPPED DROPPED
10-00574 DROPPED DROPPED
10-06236 NA NA
10-01120 2.75 P
10-04613 5 F
10-05838 3 P
10-01377 3 P
10-06756 5 F
10-04748 2.5 P
10-01677 3 P
10-05260 3 P
09-04565 3 P
10-00625 5 F
10-00629 2.75 P
10-00844 2.5 P
10-00728 3 P
10-02041 3 P
10-01870 3 P
10-01886 3 P
10-06233 5 F
10-01687 3 P
10-01732 3 P
10-05740 DROPPED DROPPED
10-06068 3 P
10-02361 2.25 P
10-02392 3 P
10-02440 3 P
09-05238 2.5 P
10-05535 2.75 P
10-04970 3 P
10-04994 5 F
10-06736 2.75 P
10-06708 5 F
10-03151 5 F
10-05050 5 F
10-03261 3 P
10-05215 2.75 P
10-06709 2.5 P
10-07179 NA NA
10-03361 3 P
10-05095 NA NA
10-03635 2.25 P
SUBJECT: Social Science 112
CLASS: 1BSBA-D
ID No. FINAL GRADE REMARKS
10-05232 2.75 P
10-00301 2.75 P
10-06710 2.5 P
10-06717 2.25 P
08-00479 3 P
10-00701 2.75 P
10-04680 3 P
10-0056 3 P
10-04687 DROPPED DROPPED
10-00574 DROPPED DROPPED
10-06236 NA NA
10-01120 2.75 P
10-04613 5 F
10-05838 3 P
10-01377 3 P
10-06756 5 F
10-04748 2.5 P
10-01677 3 P
10-05260 3 P
09-04565 3 P
10-00625 5 F
10-00629 2.75 P
10-00844 2.5 P
10-00728 3 P
10-02041 3 P
10-01870 3 P
10-01886 3 P
10-06233 5 F
10-01687 3 P
10-01732 3 P
10-05740 DROPPED DROPPED
10-06068 3 P
10-02361 2.25 P
10-02392 3 P
10-02440 3 P
09-05238 2.5 P
10-05535 2.75 P
10-04970 3 P
10-04994 5 F
10-06736 2.75 P
10-06708 5 F
10-03151 5 F
10-05050 5 F
10-03261 3 P
10-05215 2.75 P
10-06709 2.5 P
10-07179 NA NA
10-03361 3 P
10-05095 NA NA
10-03635 2.25 P
FINAL GRADE- 1BSAccty-C
SOCSCI 112 1BSAccty-C
ID NO. FINAL GRADE REMARKS
10-07109 2.5 P
10-00021 2.5 P
07-00070 3 P
10-06902 2.25 P
10-07110 3 P
10-06809 2.25 P
10-00528 2.25 P
10-06818 NA NA
06-00534 5 F
10-00600 2 P
10-05984 2.5 P
10-06701 1.75 P
10-05872 2.5 P
10-01178 1.5 P
10-00655 2.5 P
08-01734 3 P
05-01698 5 F
06-00992 3 P
10-04565 2.75 P
10-06950 2.75 P
10-01853 3 P
10-04313 1.75 P
10-07004 2.75 P
10-07100 3 P
05-01822 5 F
10-02629 2.5 P
08-02704 5 F
10-04976 2.75 P
10-06856 NA NA
10-06796 3 P
10-03012 2 P
10-03127 2.75 P
10-05049 2.5 P
10-06174 2.5 P
10-06218 1.75 P
10-03359 2.25 P
10-03419 2.75 P
10-05086 2.75 P
10-03532 2.75 P
06-02234 2.5 P
10-05111 2.5 P
10-06278 3 P
10-03657 2.5 P
ID NO. FINAL GRADE REMARKS
10-07109 2.5 P
10-00021 2.5 P
07-00070 3 P
10-06902 2.25 P
10-07110 3 P
10-06809 2.25 P
10-00528 2.25 P
10-06818 NA NA
06-00534 5 F
10-00600 2 P
10-05984 2.5 P
10-06701 1.75 P
10-05872 2.5 P
10-01178 1.5 P
10-00655 2.5 P
08-01734 3 P
05-01698 5 F
06-00992 3 P
10-04565 2.75 P
10-06950 2.75 P
10-01853 3 P
10-04313 1.75 P
10-07004 2.75 P
10-07100 3 P
05-01822 5 F
10-02629 2.5 P
08-02704 5 F
10-04976 2.75 P
10-06856 NA NA
10-06796 3 P
10-03012 2 P
10-03127 2.75 P
10-05049 2.5 P
10-06174 2.5 P
10-06218 1.75 P
10-03359 2.25 P
10-03419 2.75 P
10-05086 2.75 P
10-03532 2.75 P
06-02234 2.5 P
10-05111 2.5 P
10-06278 3 P
10-03657 2.5 P
FINAL GRADE- 1BSAccty-A
SOCSCI 112
1BSAccountancy-A
ID No. FINAL GRADE REMARKS
10-06566 2.5 P
10-00243 2.25 P
10-00260 2.5 P
10-00404 2.5 P
10-00534 2.25 P
10-00690 2.5 P
10-00597 2.5 P
10-01029 2.25 P
10-01147 2 P
10-06537 2 P
10-04070 2.75 P
10-01532 2.5 P
10-01407 2.25 P
10-01182 2.5 P
10-01188 2.5 P
10-01118 2.25 P
10-06457 2.75 P
10-04015 2.25 P
10-01791 2.25 P
10-02175 2.5 P
10-04573 2.5 P
10-01951 1.5 P
10-02032 2.5 P
10-04007 2.25 P
10-01859 2.25 P
10-01875 2.25 P
10-01831 2.75 P
10-02134 1.75 P
10-02279 2.5 P
10-02313 2.5 P
10-02327 NA NA
10-04061 2.75 P
10-04201 2.5 P
10-02417 2 P
10-05411 2 P
10-02569 2.5 P
10-02630 2.5 P
10-02702 2.75 P
10-04566 1.75 P
10-04083 2.25 P
10-02859 2.25 P
10-04261 2 P
10-02950 2.5 P
09-03445 NA NA
10-03028 2.5 P
10-04174 2.5 P
10-03405 2 P
10-03414 2.5 P
10-04017 2.5 P
10-03551 2.5 P
1BSAccountancy-A
ID No. FINAL GRADE REMARKS
10-06566 2.5 P
10-00243 2.25 P
10-00260 2.5 P
10-00404 2.5 P
10-00534 2.25 P
10-00690 2.5 P
10-00597 2.5 P
10-01029 2.25 P
10-01147 2 P
10-06537 2 P
10-04070 2.75 P
10-01532 2.5 P
10-01407 2.25 P
10-01182 2.5 P
10-01188 2.5 P
10-01118 2.25 P
10-06457 2.75 P
10-04015 2.25 P
10-01791 2.25 P
10-02175 2.5 P
10-04573 2.5 P
10-01951 1.5 P
10-02032 2.5 P
10-04007 2.25 P
10-01859 2.25 P
10-01875 2.25 P
10-01831 2.75 P
10-02134 1.75 P
10-02279 2.5 P
10-02313 2.5 P
10-02327 NA NA
10-04061 2.75 P
10-04201 2.5 P
10-02417 2 P
10-05411 2 P
10-02569 2.5 P
10-02630 2.5 P
10-02702 2.75 P
10-04566 1.75 P
10-04083 2.25 P
10-02859 2.25 P
10-04261 2 P
10-02950 2.5 P
09-03445 NA NA
10-03028 2.5 P
10-04174 2.5 P
10-03405 2 P
10-03414 2.5 P
10-04017 2.5 P
10-03551 2.5 P
Martes, Hulyo 20, 2010
RWANDAN GENOCIDE
BEFORE THE GENOCIDE
Rwanda has been called 'a tropical Switzerland in the heart of Africa'. It's about a third the size of Belgium, who administered it from 1919 under a League of Nations mandate (by which it ceased to be part of German East Africa) until independence in 1962. Visitors think it's a beautiful country. ('Beautiful?' said one Rwandan. 'After the things that have happened here?')
Most of the Rwandan population belongs to the Hutu ethnic group, traditionally crop-growers. For many centuries Rwanda attracted Tutsis - traditionally herdsmen - from northern Africa. For 600 years the two groups shared the business of farming, essential for survival, between them. They have also shared their language, their culture, and their nationality. There has been much intermarriage.
Because of the nature of their historical pastoral or agricultural roles, Tutsis tended to be landowners and Hutus the people who worked the land; and this division of labor perpetuated a population balance in which Hutus naturally outnumbered Tutsis. A wedge was driven between them when the European colonists moved in. It was the practice of colonial administrators to select a group to be privileged and educated 'intermediaries' between governor and governed. The Belgians chose the Tutsis: landowners, tall, and to European eyes the more aristocratic in appearance. This thoughtless introduction of class consciousness unsettled the stability of Rwandan society. Some Tutsis began to behave like aristocrats, and the Hutu to feel treated like peasants. An alien political divide was born.
European colonial powers also introduced modern weapons and modern methods of waging war. Missionaries, too, came from Europe, bringing a new political twist: the church taught the Hutu to see themselves as oppressed, and so helped to inspire revolution. With the European example before them, and European backing behind them, it was armed resistance that the Hutus chose. In 1956 their rebellion began (it would cost over 100,000 lives). By 1959 they had seized power and were stripping Tutsi communities of their lands. Many Tutsis retreated to exile in neighboring countries, where they formed the Front Patriotique Rwandais, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), trained their soldiers, and waited.
After their first delight in gaining power - and, in 1962, independence for Rwanda - a politically inexperienced Hutu government began to face internal conflicts as well. Tensions grew between communities and provincial factions. Tutsi resistance was continually nurtured by repressive measures against them (in 1973, for example, they were excluded from secondary schools and the university). In 1990 RPF rebels seized the moment and attacked: civil war began.
A ceasefire was achieved in 1993, followed by UN-backed efforts to negotiate a new multi-party constitution; but Hutu leaders and extremists fiercely opposed any Tutsi involvement in government. On April 6 1994 the plane carrying Rwanda's president was shot down, almost certainly the work of an extremist. This was the trigger needed for the Hutus' planned 'Final Solution' to go into operation. The Tutsis were accused of killing the president, and Hutu civilians were told, by radio and word of mouth, that it was their duty to wipe the Tutsis out. First, though, moderate Hutus who weren't anti-Tutsi should be killed. So should Tutsi wives or husbands. Genocide began.
THE GENOCIDE
Up to a million people died before the RPF (some of whose personnel are Hutu) was able to take full control. Unlike the instigators of the killings of Armenians in 1915, and of Jews and Roma in 1941-5, no-one tried to keep the genocide in Rwanda a secret. Journalists and television cameras reported what they saw, or what they found when the genocide was over. There was even a UN force (UNAMIR) in place, monitoring the ceasefire and now obliged to watch as people were killed in the street by grenades, guns and machetes. ('We have no mandate to intervene.' UNAMIR did their best to protect trapped foreigners, until they were pulled out of Rwanda altogether.) But the genocide organizers were conscious of the risks of international scrutiny: over the radio the killers were constantly incited to continue, but 'No more corpses on the roads, please'. Corpses in the countryside were covered with banana leaves to screen them from aerial photography.
Although on a large scale, this genocide was carried out entirely by hand, often using machetes and clubs. The men who'd been trained to massacre were members of civilian death squads, the Interahamwe ('those who fight together'). Transport and fuel supplies were laid on for the Interahamwe - even remote areas were catered for. Where the killers encountered opposition, the Army backed them up with manpower and weapons. The State provided Hutu Power's supporting organization; politicians, officials, intellectuals and professional soldiers deliberately incited (and where necessary bribed) the killers to do their work.
Local officials assisted in rounding up victims and making suitable places available for their slaughter. Tutsi men, women, children and babies were killed in thousands in schools. They were also killed in churches: some clergy colluded in the crime. The victims, in their last moments alive, were also faced by another appalling fact: their cold-blooded killers were people they knew - neighbours, work-mates, former friends, sometimes even relatives through marriage. Even aid agencies were helpless; having let into compound or hospital people injured or in flight, they were forced to leave them there. Few survived.
Cold blood, with a shot of motivating fear, was what the planners wanted: the Interahamwe weren't fuelled by drink, drugs or mindless violence, but by fanatic dedication to a political cause. There were indeed people stoked-up on drink or hysteria or a manic wish to show they were 'on the right side' ; but when these mavericks began to join in and kill on whim, local administrators called for police assistance: such 'disorderly elements' might derail the genocide programme.
The definition of 'genocide' was an international sticking-point. There'd been at least 10 clear warnings to the UN of the 'Hutu power' action, including an anxious telegram from the UNAMIR commander to the then UN Secretary- General (Boutros Boutros Ghali) three months before the event. The UN Security Council met in secret after the start of the violence. At this meeting Britain urged that UNAMIR should pull out (and later blocked an American proposal to send in a fact-finding mission when the death toll had reached six figures). Council members resisted admitting 'that the mass murder being pursued in front of the global media was in fact genocide': genocide involved action no-one wanted to take. Once it was inescapably clear that genocide was indeed going on, it was too late. (The USA had actually banned its officials from using the term. Finally, in June, Secretary of State Warren Christopher grumpily conceded 'If there's any particular magic in calling it genocide, I've no hesitancy in saying that'.)
The USA, asked to send 50 armoured personnel carriers to help UNAMIR save what and whom it could before its departure, marked time and then sent the APCs to Uganda. Asked to use its hi-tech skills to get the génocidaire radio off the air, America replied, 'the traditional US commitment to free speech cannot be reconciled with such a measure', on this occasion. France, a backer of most French-speaking African governments, had been backing the genocidal government: it was one of their generals who advised the Hutus to 'improve their image' (hence, perhaps, the order to keep corpses out of the sight of cameras).
AFTER THE GENOCIDE
Around 2m Hutu perpetrators, their families and supporters, and anyone else who feared reprisals, even simply for being Hutu, fled over the borders, at least half of them to Congo (then called Zaire). At first it wasn't hard to find Hutu men in the Zaire refugee camps who admitted to their part in the killings, or even boasted of it. But within a year they'd realized such admissions were risky. By the end of 1995 it was hard to find anyone who would admit there'd been genocide at all. Civil war, yes; some massacres, possibly; but no genocide.
In the West, events in Rwanda were presented as 'tribal violence', 'ancient ethnic hatreds', 'breakdown of existing ceasefire', or a 'failed State'. No-one seemed able to accept that deliberate extermination had been carried out for political reasons, to hold and keep power - a process that had been used before elsewhere and could be recognized. In fact the genocide wasn't over yet.
For a time the Hutus found that exile in the Congo camps, run and stocked by aid agencies, was tolerable. Hutu Power extremists there had time and opportunity to set up a new power base, recruit new militias, makes new plans. Aid workers could not and would not separate those involved in the massacres from innocent refugees. This angered the new Tutsi-led government in Rwanda, who wanted to bring the guilty to trial. Congo, too, wanted to clear the camps; in 1996 the refugees were forced out. Many returned home - a long and ragged procession, watched in profound silence by Rwandan Tutsis as it crossed the border - but others continued a nomadic, fugitive existence in Congo, especially harsh for the many Hutu women and children with nowhere to go.
The government of Rwanda surprised everyone by declaring a moratorium on arrests of suspected génocidaires. This was a practical move aimed at dealing with an impossible situation; like all such solutions, it was both well-intentioned and double-edged. Nearly a million suspects were already in prison awaiting trial; thousands more - the most wanted - were known to be among the returning refugees, still eager to fight for the Hutu cause.
No-one expected, either, the speed with which the prevailing génocidaire mind-set seemed to be displaced by the government's order to resume communal life. Only two years after the genocide, killers and survivors found themselves living side by side - sometimes, for lack of choice, in the same house. Radio stations broadcast exhortations once more; but this time Rwandans were urged to welcome the returnees as brothers and sisters. The new President's message was endlessly repeated: 'The Rwandan people were able to live together peacefully for six hundred years and there is no reason why they can't live together in peace again. Let me appeal to those who have chosen the murderous and confrontational path, by reminding them that they, too, are Rwandans: abandon your genocidal and destructive ways, join hands with other Rwandans, and put that energy to better use.'
Vice-President Paul Kagame said: 'People can be changed. Some people can even benefit from being forgiven, from being given another chance.' There were and are people in Rwanda capable of forgiving: for example, the survivors among those who in 1994 had helped others to escape, saving lives at the risk of their own. One particular group - orphaned girls - has shown a particular readiness to forgive, in the interests of the future. But there are also survivors, impoverished and scarred, who are being asked for tolerance but not given the moral, psychological and practical support they need. 'We were beginning to forget, but now the wound is opened again.'
For some génocidaires freedom has meant another chance to kill: they have sustained Hutu-Tutsi confrontation in Rwanda's northern hills, and across its borders (where the RPF's army had got caught up in the Congo conflict). In the months after the genocide they also murdered many of the witnesses whose evidence could have convicted them. For many of the remaining Interahamwe war is their only skill, their only available way of life, their only escape from punishment. For some the political struggle is still on.
An International War Crimes Tribunal has been set up in Arusha, Tanzania, to try leaders of the genocide. At this tribunal the former prime minister of Rwanda confessed to genocide and conspiracy to commit it, and by 2001 a few more people had been tried and convicted (no death sentences can be given). Nearly 50 high ranking Hutu men still await trial. The court has also established that rape is a tool of genocide. In Rwanda itself local courts have tried several thousand cases; there have been 400 death sentences (intended as 'a lesson'. At the end of 2001 around 125,000 prisoners, crammed into desperately overcrowded jails, still remained to be tried. To ease the situation there is a move to revive and revise a traditional law by which people are tried in their own communities.
The present UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, commissioned an independent report to look into UN failures during the genocide. It was published in December 1999. It condemned the UN leadership for ignoring the evidence that a slaughter was planned, for failing to act when the killing began, and for removing the UN staff and so abandoning the victims when they most needed help. The report also criticized the USA and other major powers for 'deplorable inaction' and a 'lack of political commitment'. Kofi Annan responded by admitting a 'systematic failure', and his own deep remorse.
WITNESSES
'The river Kagera flows into a steep ravine that forms the natural border between Tanzania and Rwanda. There is a small waterfall where the river narrows before entering the gorge. In the rainy season the river swells. As it sweeps down from the highlands, it gathers into its currents huge clumps of elephant grass and numerous small trees. In the late spring of 1994 it was much the same with human corpses. They, too, twisted and turned, rose and dropped and came bouncing over the falls before they found the still water which would carry them down to Lake Victoria. They did not look dead. They looked like swimmers, because the strong currents invested them with powers of movement. So lifelike did they appear that for a few moments I winced as I watched them thrown against the rocks, imagining the pain they must be feeling. It was only beyond the falls, where they floated lifeless among the trees and grass, that one could accept the certainty of death. The border guards told me people had been floating through in their hundreds, every day for weeks. Many had their hands tied behind their backs. They had been shot, hacked, clubbed, burned, and drowned.'
'Those victims who escaped death carry on as best they can, often not very well. What they say today is what they said yesterday and what they will go on saying: for them time came to a halt and they can find no peace of mind. They complain that they have been abandoned. They are the ones who have to face all the grievances, sometimes compassion, sometimes others' shame for what they have done. At first sight they seem to be enclosed in a silence so profound it's frightening. Then sometimes, just a word, just a look, just a few moments' wait will turn a victim into an eyewitness. In a feeble but clear monotone they will tell you, as they stare at the ground, how they escaped the worst fate; they're alive, they're lucky. And one of the first things they tell you is that they are one of those whom death refused. Then they describe what they witnessed, acts of unbearable horror.'
'In the schoolrooms and church halls where they were slaughtered, many of the dead have been left unburied, to form their own memorial. The rooms are empty except for trestle tables on which collected bodies and bones have been laid, entangled. In one room the faded, shapeless clothes of the dead have been strung on motionless lines: curiously beautiful. In another it's the floor that supports the barely recognizable decomposed remains, lost in a sleep more fast than most of us get to know. There is no smell, there are no flies. The atmosphere is, in fact, intensely peaceful; the scene is deeply moving. It is also full of unspeakable sorrow.'
ISSUES
This is how Rwandan local radio incited the Hutus to violence (an act against international law):
'You have to kill the Tutsis, they're cockroaches.'
'All those who are listening, rise so we can fight for our Rwanda. Fight with the weapons you have at your disposal: those who have arrows, with arrows, those who have spears, with spears. We must all fight.'
'We must all fight the Tutsis. We must finish with them, exterminate them, and sweep them from the whole country. There must be no refuge for them.'
'They must be exterminated. There is no other way.'
Does hearing instructions via the media make them harder to ignore?
This is how a war correspondent saw the Rwandan genocide in retrospect: 'Scratch below the surface of this genocide and you will find not a simple issue of tribal hatreds but a complex web of politics, economics, history, psychology, and a struggle for identity. What happened in Rwanda was the result of cynical manipulation by powerful political and military leaders. Faced with the choice of sharing their power with the Rwandan Patriotic Front, they chose to vilify the RPF's main support group, the Tutsis. The authorities told the Hutus that the Tutsis planned to take their land. They summoned up memories of the colonial days when the Tutsi overlordship had guaranteed second-class citizenship for the Hutus. "Remember your shame. Remember how they humiliated us. Be proud of your Hutu blood." Intellectuals were recruited into the cause of creating a pan-Hutu consciousness, and they traveled the country spreading the propaganda of hate. "Mercy is a sign of weakness. Show them any mercy and they will make slaves of you again." There were powerful echoes of Hitler's Germany and the demonisation of the Jews....What kind of man can kill a child? A man not born to hate but who has learned hatred. A man like you or me.'
What do you think?
Rwanda has been called 'a tropical Switzerland in the heart of Africa'. It's about a third the size of Belgium, who administered it from 1919 under a League of Nations mandate (by which it ceased to be part of German East Africa) until independence in 1962. Visitors think it's a beautiful country. ('Beautiful?' said one Rwandan. 'After the things that have happened here?')
Most of the Rwandan population belongs to the Hutu ethnic group, traditionally crop-growers. For many centuries Rwanda attracted Tutsis - traditionally herdsmen - from northern Africa. For 600 years the two groups shared the business of farming, essential for survival, between them. They have also shared their language, their culture, and their nationality. There has been much intermarriage.
Because of the nature of their historical pastoral or agricultural roles, Tutsis tended to be landowners and Hutus the people who worked the land; and this division of labor perpetuated a population balance in which Hutus naturally outnumbered Tutsis. A wedge was driven between them when the European colonists moved in. It was the practice of colonial administrators to select a group to be privileged and educated 'intermediaries' between governor and governed. The Belgians chose the Tutsis: landowners, tall, and to European eyes the more aristocratic in appearance. This thoughtless introduction of class consciousness unsettled the stability of Rwandan society. Some Tutsis began to behave like aristocrats, and the Hutu to feel treated like peasants. An alien political divide was born.
European colonial powers also introduced modern weapons and modern methods of waging war. Missionaries, too, came from Europe, bringing a new political twist: the church taught the Hutu to see themselves as oppressed, and so helped to inspire revolution. With the European example before them, and European backing behind them, it was armed resistance that the Hutus chose. In 1956 their rebellion began (it would cost over 100,000 lives). By 1959 they had seized power and were stripping Tutsi communities of their lands. Many Tutsis retreated to exile in neighboring countries, where they formed the Front Patriotique Rwandais, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), trained their soldiers, and waited.
After their first delight in gaining power - and, in 1962, independence for Rwanda - a politically inexperienced Hutu government began to face internal conflicts as well. Tensions grew between communities and provincial factions. Tutsi resistance was continually nurtured by repressive measures against them (in 1973, for example, they were excluded from secondary schools and the university). In 1990 RPF rebels seized the moment and attacked: civil war began.
A ceasefire was achieved in 1993, followed by UN-backed efforts to negotiate a new multi-party constitution; but Hutu leaders and extremists fiercely opposed any Tutsi involvement in government. On April 6 1994 the plane carrying Rwanda's president was shot down, almost certainly the work of an extremist. This was the trigger needed for the Hutus' planned 'Final Solution' to go into operation. The Tutsis were accused of killing the president, and Hutu civilians were told, by radio and word of mouth, that it was their duty to wipe the Tutsis out. First, though, moderate Hutus who weren't anti-Tutsi should be killed. So should Tutsi wives or husbands. Genocide began.
THE GENOCIDE
Up to a million people died before the RPF (some of whose personnel are Hutu) was able to take full control. Unlike the instigators of the killings of Armenians in 1915, and of Jews and Roma in 1941-5, no-one tried to keep the genocide in Rwanda a secret. Journalists and television cameras reported what they saw, or what they found when the genocide was over. There was even a UN force (UNAMIR) in place, monitoring the ceasefire and now obliged to watch as people were killed in the street by grenades, guns and machetes. ('We have no mandate to intervene.' UNAMIR did their best to protect trapped foreigners, until they were pulled out of Rwanda altogether.) But the genocide organizers were conscious of the risks of international scrutiny: over the radio the killers were constantly incited to continue, but 'No more corpses on the roads, please'. Corpses in the countryside were covered with banana leaves to screen them from aerial photography.
Although on a large scale, this genocide was carried out entirely by hand, often using machetes and clubs. The men who'd been trained to massacre were members of civilian death squads, the Interahamwe ('those who fight together'). Transport and fuel supplies were laid on for the Interahamwe - even remote areas were catered for. Where the killers encountered opposition, the Army backed them up with manpower and weapons. The State provided Hutu Power's supporting organization; politicians, officials, intellectuals and professional soldiers deliberately incited (and where necessary bribed) the killers to do their work.
Local officials assisted in rounding up victims and making suitable places available for their slaughter. Tutsi men, women, children and babies were killed in thousands in schools. They were also killed in churches: some clergy colluded in the crime. The victims, in their last moments alive, were also faced by another appalling fact: their cold-blooded killers were people they knew - neighbours, work-mates, former friends, sometimes even relatives through marriage. Even aid agencies were helpless; having let into compound or hospital people injured or in flight, they were forced to leave them there. Few survived.
Cold blood, with a shot of motivating fear, was what the planners wanted: the Interahamwe weren't fuelled by drink, drugs or mindless violence, but by fanatic dedication to a political cause. There were indeed people stoked-up on drink or hysteria or a manic wish to show they were 'on the right side' ; but when these mavericks began to join in and kill on whim, local administrators called for police assistance: such 'disorderly elements' might derail the genocide programme.
The definition of 'genocide' was an international sticking-point. There'd been at least 10 clear warnings to the UN of the 'Hutu power' action, including an anxious telegram from the UNAMIR commander to the then UN Secretary- General (Boutros Boutros Ghali) three months before the event. The UN Security Council met in secret after the start of the violence. At this meeting Britain urged that UNAMIR should pull out (and later blocked an American proposal to send in a fact-finding mission when the death toll had reached six figures). Council members resisted admitting 'that the mass murder being pursued in front of the global media was in fact genocide': genocide involved action no-one wanted to take. Once it was inescapably clear that genocide was indeed going on, it was too late. (The USA had actually banned its officials from using the term. Finally, in June, Secretary of State Warren Christopher grumpily conceded 'If there's any particular magic in calling it genocide, I've no hesitancy in saying that'.)
The USA, asked to send 50 armoured personnel carriers to help UNAMIR save what and whom it could before its departure, marked time and then sent the APCs to Uganda. Asked to use its hi-tech skills to get the génocidaire radio off the air, America replied, 'the traditional US commitment to free speech cannot be reconciled with such a measure', on this occasion. France, a backer of most French-speaking African governments, had been backing the genocidal government: it was one of their generals who advised the Hutus to 'improve their image' (hence, perhaps, the order to keep corpses out of the sight of cameras).
AFTER THE GENOCIDE
Around 2m Hutu perpetrators, their families and supporters, and anyone else who feared reprisals, even simply for being Hutu, fled over the borders, at least half of them to Congo (then called Zaire). At first it wasn't hard to find Hutu men in the Zaire refugee camps who admitted to their part in the killings, or even boasted of it. But within a year they'd realized such admissions were risky. By the end of 1995 it was hard to find anyone who would admit there'd been genocide at all. Civil war, yes; some massacres, possibly; but no genocide.
In the West, events in Rwanda were presented as 'tribal violence', 'ancient ethnic hatreds', 'breakdown of existing ceasefire', or a 'failed State'. No-one seemed able to accept that deliberate extermination had been carried out for political reasons, to hold and keep power - a process that had been used before elsewhere and could be recognized. In fact the genocide wasn't over yet.
For a time the Hutus found that exile in the Congo camps, run and stocked by aid agencies, was tolerable. Hutu Power extremists there had time and opportunity to set up a new power base, recruit new militias, makes new plans. Aid workers could not and would not separate those involved in the massacres from innocent refugees. This angered the new Tutsi-led government in Rwanda, who wanted to bring the guilty to trial. Congo, too, wanted to clear the camps; in 1996 the refugees were forced out. Many returned home - a long and ragged procession, watched in profound silence by Rwandan Tutsis as it crossed the border - but others continued a nomadic, fugitive existence in Congo, especially harsh for the many Hutu women and children with nowhere to go.
The government of Rwanda surprised everyone by declaring a moratorium on arrests of suspected génocidaires. This was a practical move aimed at dealing with an impossible situation; like all such solutions, it was both well-intentioned and double-edged. Nearly a million suspects were already in prison awaiting trial; thousands more - the most wanted - were known to be among the returning refugees, still eager to fight for the Hutu cause.
No-one expected, either, the speed with which the prevailing génocidaire mind-set seemed to be displaced by the government's order to resume communal life. Only two years after the genocide, killers and survivors found themselves living side by side - sometimes, for lack of choice, in the same house. Radio stations broadcast exhortations once more; but this time Rwandans were urged to welcome the returnees as brothers and sisters. The new President's message was endlessly repeated: 'The Rwandan people were able to live together peacefully for six hundred years and there is no reason why they can't live together in peace again. Let me appeal to those who have chosen the murderous and confrontational path, by reminding them that they, too, are Rwandans: abandon your genocidal and destructive ways, join hands with other Rwandans, and put that energy to better use.'
Vice-President Paul Kagame said: 'People can be changed. Some people can even benefit from being forgiven, from being given another chance.' There were and are people in Rwanda capable of forgiving: for example, the survivors among those who in 1994 had helped others to escape, saving lives at the risk of their own. One particular group - orphaned girls - has shown a particular readiness to forgive, in the interests of the future. But there are also survivors, impoverished and scarred, who are being asked for tolerance but not given the moral, psychological and practical support they need. 'We were beginning to forget, but now the wound is opened again.'
For some génocidaires freedom has meant another chance to kill: they have sustained Hutu-Tutsi confrontation in Rwanda's northern hills, and across its borders (where the RPF's army had got caught up in the Congo conflict). In the months after the genocide they also murdered many of the witnesses whose evidence could have convicted them. For many of the remaining Interahamwe war is their only skill, their only available way of life, their only escape from punishment. For some the political struggle is still on.
An International War Crimes Tribunal has been set up in Arusha, Tanzania, to try leaders of the genocide. At this tribunal the former prime minister of Rwanda confessed to genocide and conspiracy to commit it, and by 2001 a few more people had been tried and convicted (no death sentences can be given). Nearly 50 high ranking Hutu men still await trial. The court has also established that rape is a tool of genocide. In Rwanda itself local courts have tried several thousand cases; there have been 400 death sentences (intended as 'a lesson'. At the end of 2001 around 125,000 prisoners, crammed into desperately overcrowded jails, still remained to be tried. To ease the situation there is a move to revive and revise a traditional law by which people are tried in their own communities.
The present UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, commissioned an independent report to look into UN failures during the genocide. It was published in December 1999. It condemned the UN leadership for ignoring the evidence that a slaughter was planned, for failing to act when the killing began, and for removing the UN staff and so abandoning the victims when they most needed help. The report also criticized the USA and other major powers for 'deplorable inaction' and a 'lack of political commitment'. Kofi Annan responded by admitting a 'systematic failure', and his own deep remorse.
WITNESSES
'The river Kagera flows into a steep ravine that forms the natural border between Tanzania and Rwanda. There is a small waterfall where the river narrows before entering the gorge. In the rainy season the river swells. As it sweeps down from the highlands, it gathers into its currents huge clumps of elephant grass and numerous small trees. In the late spring of 1994 it was much the same with human corpses. They, too, twisted and turned, rose and dropped and came bouncing over the falls before they found the still water which would carry them down to Lake Victoria. They did not look dead. They looked like swimmers, because the strong currents invested them with powers of movement. So lifelike did they appear that for a few moments I winced as I watched them thrown against the rocks, imagining the pain they must be feeling. It was only beyond the falls, where they floated lifeless among the trees and grass, that one could accept the certainty of death. The border guards told me people had been floating through in their hundreds, every day for weeks. Many had their hands tied behind their backs. They had been shot, hacked, clubbed, burned, and drowned.'
'Those victims who escaped death carry on as best they can, often not very well. What they say today is what they said yesterday and what they will go on saying: for them time came to a halt and they can find no peace of mind. They complain that they have been abandoned. They are the ones who have to face all the grievances, sometimes compassion, sometimes others' shame for what they have done. At first sight they seem to be enclosed in a silence so profound it's frightening. Then sometimes, just a word, just a look, just a few moments' wait will turn a victim into an eyewitness. In a feeble but clear monotone they will tell you, as they stare at the ground, how they escaped the worst fate; they're alive, they're lucky. And one of the first things they tell you is that they are one of those whom death refused. Then they describe what they witnessed, acts of unbearable horror.'
'In the schoolrooms and church halls where they were slaughtered, many of the dead have been left unburied, to form their own memorial. The rooms are empty except for trestle tables on which collected bodies and bones have been laid, entangled. In one room the faded, shapeless clothes of the dead have been strung on motionless lines: curiously beautiful. In another it's the floor that supports the barely recognizable decomposed remains, lost in a sleep more fast than most of us get to know. There is no smell, there are no flies. The atmosphere is, in fact, intensely peaceful; the scene is deeply moving. It is also full of unspeakable sorrow.'
ISSUES
This is how Rwandan local radio incited the Hutus to violence (an act against international law):
'You have to kill the Tutsis, they're cockroaches.'
'All those who are listening, rise so we can fight for our Rwanda. Fight with the weapons you have at your disposal: those who have arrows, with arrows, those who have spears, with spears. We must all fight.'
'We must all fight the Tutsis. We must finish with them, exterminate them, and sweep them from the whole country. There must be no refuge for them.'
'They must be exterminated. There is no other way.'
Does hearing instructions via the media make them harder to ignore?
This is how a war correspondent saw the Rwandan genocide in retrospect: 'Scratch below the surface of this genocide and you will find not a simple issue of tribal hatreds but a complex web of politics, economics, history, psychology, and a struggle for identity. What happened in Rwanda was the result of cynical manipulation by powerful political and military leaders. Faced with the choice of sharing their power with the Rwandan Patriotic Front, they chose to vilify the RPF's main support group, the Tutsis. The authorities told the Hutus that the Tutsis planned to take their land. They summoned up memories of the colonial days when the Tutsi overlordship had guaranteed second-class citizenship for the Hutus. "Remember your shame. Remember how they humiliated us. Be proud of your Hutu blood." Intellectuals were recruited into the cause of creating a pan-Hutu consciousness, and they traveled the country spreading the propaganda of hate. "Mercy is a sign of weakness. Show them any mercy and they will make slaves of you again." There were powerful echoes of Hitler's Germany and the demonisation of the Jews....What kind of man can kill a child? A man not born to hate but who has learned hatred. A man like you or me.'
What do you think?
Huwebes, Hulyo 1, 2010
MALNUTRITION: A disease of development
IMPORTANT!!!! FOR 2BSND-A/B, 3BSTrM-A ONLY.
THE PRICE OF PROGRESS
MALNUTRITION: A Disease of development
Malnutrition, particularly in the form of protein deficiency, has become a critical problem for tribal peoples who must adopt new economic patterns. Population pressures, cash cropping, and government programs all have tended to encourage the replacement of traditional crops and other food sources that were rich in protein with substitutes, high in calories but low in protein. In Africa, for example, protein-rich staples such as millet and sorghum are being replaced systematically by high-yielding manioc and plantains, which have insignificant amounts of protein. The problem is increased for cash croppers and wage laborers whose earnings are too low and unpredictable to allow purchase of adequate amounts of protein. In some rural areas, agricultural laborers have been forced systematically to deprive nonproductive members (principally children) of their households of their minimal nutritional requirements to satisfy the need of the productive members. This process has been documented in northeastern Brazil following the introduction of large-scale sisal plantations. In urban centers the difficulties of obtaining nutritionally adequate diets are even more serious for tribal immigrants, because costs are higher and poor quality foods are more tempting.
One of the most tragic, and largely overlooked, aspects of chronic malnutrition is that it can lead to abnormally undersized brain development and apparently irreversible brain damage; it has been associated with various forms of mental impairment or retardation. Malnutrition has been linked clinically with mental retardation in both Africa and Latin America, and this appears to be a worldwide phenomenon with serious implications.
Optimistic supporters of progress will surely say that all of these new health problems are being overstressed and that the introduction of hospitals, clinics, and the other modern health institutions will overcome or at least compensate for all of these difficulties. However, it appears uncontrolled population growth and economic impoverishment probably will keep most of these benefits out of reach for many tribal peoples, and the intervention of modern medicine has at least partly contributed to the problem in the first place.
The generalization that civilization frequently has a broad negative impact on tribal health has found broad empirical support, but these conclusions have gone unchallenged. Some critics argue that tribal health was often poor before modernization, and they point specifically to tribals’ low life expectancy and high infant mortality rates. Demographic statistics on tribal populations are often problematic because precise data are scarce, but they do show a less favorable profile than that enjoyed by many industrial societies. However, it should be remembered that our present life expectancy is a recent phenomenon that has been very costly in terms of medical research and technological advances. Furthermore, the benefits of our health system are not enjoyed equally by all members of our society. High infant mortality could be viewed as a relatively expensive and egalitarian tribal public health program that offered the reasonable expectation of a healthy and productive life for those surviving to age fifteen.
Some critics also suggest that certain tribal populations, such as the New Guinea highlanders, were “stunted” by nutritional deficiencies created by tribal culture and are “improved” by “acculturation” and cash cropping. Although this argument does suggest that the health question requires careful evaluation, t does not invalidate the empirical generalizations already established. Nutritional deficiencies undoubtedly occurred in densely populated zones in the central New Guinea highlands. However, the specific case cited above may not be widely representative of other tribal groups even in new Guinea, and it does not address the facts of outside intrusion or the inequities inherent in the contemporary development process.
THE PRICE OF PROGRESS
MALNUTRITION: A Disease of development
Malnutrition, particularly in the form of protein deficiency, has become a critical problem for tribal peoples who must adopt new economic patterns. Population pressures, cash cropping, and government programs all have tended to encourage the replacement of traditional crops and other food sources that were rich in protein with substitutes, high in calories but low in protein. In Africa, for example, protein-rich staples such as millet and sorghum are being replaced systematically by high-yielding manioc and plantains, which have insignificant amounts of protein. The problem is increased for cash croppers and wage laborers whose earnings are too low and unpredictable to allow purchase of adequate amounts of protein. In some rural areas, agricultural laborers have been forced systematically to deprive nonproductive members (principally children) of their households of their minimal nutritional requirements to satisfy the need of the productive members. This process has been documented in northeastern Brazil following the introduction of large-scale sisal plantations. In urban centers the difficulties of obtaining nutritionally adequate diets are even more serious for tribal immigrants, because costs are higher and poor quality foods are more tempting.
One of the most tragic, and largely overlooked, aspects of chronic malnutrition is that it can lead to abnormally undersized brain development and apparently irreversible brain damage; it has been associated with various forms of mental impairment or retardation. Malnutrition has been linked clinically with mental retardation in both Africa and Latin America, and this appears to be a worldwide phenomenon with serious implications.
Optimistic supporters of progress will surely say that all of these new health problems are being overstressed and that the introduction of hospitals, clinics, and the other modern health institutions will overcome or at least compensate for all of these difficulties. However, it appears uncontrolled population growth and economic impoverishment probably will keep most of these benefits out of reach for many tribal peoples, and the intervention of modern medicine has at least partly contributed to the problem in the first place.
The generalization that civilization frequently has a broad negative impact on tribal health has found broad empirical support, but these conclusions have gone unchallenged. Some critics argue that tribal health was often poor before modernization, and they point specifically to tribals’ low life expectancy and high infant mortality rates. Demographic statistics on tribal populations are often problematic because precise data are scarce, but they do show a less favorable profile than that enjoyed by many industrial societies. However, it should be remembered that our present life expectancy is a recent phenomenon that has been very costly in terms of medical research and technological advances. Furthermore, the benefits of our health system are not enjoyed equally by all members of our society. High infant mortality could be viewed as a relatively expensive and egalitarian tribal public health program that offered the reasonable expectation of a healthy and productive life for those surviving to age fifteen.
Some critics also suggest that certain tribal populations, such as the New Guinea highlanders, were “stunted” by nutritional deficiencies created by tribal culture and are “improved” by “acculturation” and cash cropping. Although this argument does suggest that the health question requires careful evaluation, t does not invalidate the empirical generalizations already established. Nutritional deficiencies undoubtedly occurred in densely populated zones in the central New Guinea highlands. However, the specific case cited above may not be widely representative of other tribal groups even in new Guinea, and it does not address the facts of outside intrusion or the inequities inherent in the contemporary development process.
ECOCIDE: A disease of development
IMPORTANT!!!! FOR 4BSBio-A ONLY.
THE PRICE OF PROGRESS
ECOCIDE: A disease of development
“How is it,” asked a herdsman…“how is it that these hills can no longer give pasture to my cattle? In my father’s day they were green and cattle thrived there; today there is no grass and my cattle starve.” As one looked one saw that what had once been a green hill had become a raw red rock. Jones, 1934
Progress imposes new strains on the ecosystems upon which they must depend for their ultimate survival. The introduction of new technology, increased consumption, lowered mortality, and the eradication of all traditional controls have combined to replace what for most tribal peoples was a relatively stable balance between population and natural resources, with a new system that is imbalanced. Economic development is forcing ecocide on peoples who were once careful stewards of their resources. There is already a trend toward widespread environmental deterioration in tribal areas, involving resource depletion, erosion, plant and animal extinction, and a disturbing series of other previously unforeseen changes.
After the initial depopulation suffered by most tribal peoples during their engulfment by frontiers of national expansion, most tribal populations began to experience rapid growth. Authorities generally attribute this growth to the introduction of modern medicine and new health measures and the termination of intertribal warfare, which lowered mortality rates, as well as to new technology, which increased food production. Certainly all of these factors played a part, but merely lowering mortality rates would not have produced the rapid population growth that most tribal areas have experienced if traditional birth-spacing mechanisms had not been eliminated at the same time. Regardless of which factors were most important, it is clear that all of the natural and cultural checks on population growth have suddenly been pushed aside by culture change, while tribal lands have been steadily reduced and consumption levels have risen. In many tribal areas, environmental deterioration due to overuse of resources has set in, and in other areas such deteriorations is imminent as resources continue to dwindle relative to the expanding population and increased use. Of course, population expansion by tribal peoples may have positive political consequences, because where tribals can retain or regain their status as local majorities they may be in a more favorable position to defend their resources against intruders.
Swidden systems and pastoralism, both highly successful economic systems under traditional conditions, have proved particularly vulnerable to increased population pressures and outside efforts to raise productivity beyond its natural limits. Research in Amazonia demonstrates that population pressures and related resource depletion can be created indirectly by official policies that restrict swidden peoples to smaller territories. Resource depletion itself can then become a powerful means of forcing the tribal people into participating in the world-market economy—thus leading to further resource depletion. For example, Bodley and Benson (1979) showed how the Shipibo Indians in Peru were forced to further deplete their forest resources by cash cropping in the forest area to replace the resources that had been destroyed earlier by the intensive cash cropping necessitated by the narrow confines of their reserves. In this case, certain species of palm trees that had provided critical housing materials were destroyed by forest clearing and had to be replaced by costly purchased materials. Research by Gross (1979) and other showed similar processes at work among four tribal groups in Brazil and demonstrated that the degree of market involvement increases directly with increases in resource depletion.
The settling of nomadic herders and the removal of prior controls on herd size have often led to serious overgrazing and erosion problems where these had not previously occurred. There are indications that the desertification problem in the Sahel region of Africa was aggravated by programs designed to settle nomads. The first sign of imbalance in a swidden system appears when the planting cycles are shortened to the point that garden plots are reused before sufficient forest regrowth can occur. If reclearing and planting continue in the same area, the natural patterns of forest succession may be distiurbed irreversibly and the soil can be impaired permanently. An extensive tract of tropical rainforest in the lower Amazon of Brazil was reduced to a semiarid desert in just fifty years through such a process. The soils in the Azande area are also now seriously threatened with laterization and other problems as a result of the government-promoted cotton development scheme.
The dangers of overdevelopment and the vulnerability of local resource systems have long been recognized by both anthropologists and tribal peoples themselves. But the pressures for change have been overwhelming. In 1948 the Maya villagers of Chan Kom complained to Redfield (1962) about the shortening of the swidden cycles, which they correctly attributed to increasing population pressures. Redfield told them, however, that they had no choice but to go “forward with technology”. In Assam, swidden cycles were shortened from an average of twelve years to only two or three within just twenty years, and anthropologists warned that the limits of swiddening would soon be reached. In the Pacific, anthropologists warned of population pressures on limited resources as early as the 1930s. These warning seemed fully justified, considering the fact that the crowded Tikopians were prompted by population pressures on their tiny island to suggest that infanticide be legalized. The warnings have been dramatically reinforced since then by the doubling of Micronesia’s population in just the fourteen years between 1958 and 1972, from 70,600 to 114,645, while consumption levels have soared. By 1985 Micronesia’s population had reached 162,321.
The environmental hazards of economic development and rapid population growth have become generally recognized only since worldwide concerns over environmental issues began in the early 1970s. Unfortunately, there is as yet little indication that the leaders of the new developing nations are sufficiently concerned with environmental limitations. On the contrary, governments are forcing tribal peoples into a self-reinforcing spiral of population growth and intensified resource exploitation, which may be stopped only by environmental disaster or the total impoverishment of the tribals.
The reality of ecocide certainly focuses attention on the fundamental contrasts between tribal and industrial systems in their use of natural resources, who controls them, and how they are managed. Tribal peoples are victimized because they control resources that outsiders demand. The resources exist because tribals managed them conservatively. However, as with the issue of the health consequences of detribalization, some anthropologists minimize the adaptive achievements of tribal groups and seem unwilling to concede that ecocide might be a consequence of cultural change. Critics attack an exaggerated “noble savage” image of tribals living in perfect harmony with nature and having no visible impact on their surroundings. They then show that tribals do in fact modify the environment, and they conclude that there is no significant difference between how tribals and industrial societies treat their environments.
Anthropologist Terry Rambo demonstrated that the Semang of the Malaysian rain forests have a measurable impact on their environment. In his monograph Primitive Polluters, Rambo reported that the Semang live in smoke-filled houses. They sneeze and spread germs, breathe, and thus emit carbon dixide. The clear small gardens, contributing “particulate matter” to the air and disturbing the local climate because cleared areas proved measurably warmer and drier than the shady forest. Rambo concluded that his research “demonstrates the essential functional similarity of the environmental interactions of primitive and civilized societies” in contrast to a “noble savage” view which, according to Rambo mistakenly “claims that traditional peoples almost always live in essential harmony with their environment.”
This is surely a false issue. To stress, as I do, that tribals tend to manage their resources for sustained yield within relatively self-sufficient subsistence economies is not to make them either innocent children or natural men. Nor is it to deny that tribals “disrupt” their environment and may never be in absolute “balance” with nature.
The ecocide issue is perhaps most dramatically illustrated by two sets of satellite photos taken over the Brazilian rain forests of Rondonia. Photos taken in 1973, when Rondonia was still a tribal domain, show virtually unbroken rain forest. The 1987 satellite photos, taken after just fifteen years of highway construction and “development” by outsiders, show more than 20 percent of the forest destroyed. The surviving Indians were being concentrated by FUNAI (Brazil’s national Indian foundation) into what would soon become mere islands of forest in a ravaged landscape. It is irrelevant to quibble about whether tribals are noble, childlike, or innocent, or about the precise meaning of balance with nature, carrying capacity, or adaptation, to recognize that for the past 200 years rapid environmental deterioration on an unprecedented global scale has followed the wresting of control of vast areas of the world from tribal groups by resource-hungry industrial societies.
THE PRICE OF PROGRESS
ECOCIDE: A disease of development
“How is it,” asked a herdsman…“how is it that these hills can no longer give pasture to my cattle? In my father’s day they were green and cattle thrived there; today there is no grass and my cattle starve.” As one looked one saw that what had once been a green hill had become a raw red rock. Jones, 1934
Progress imposes new strains on the ecosystems upon which they must depend for their ultimate survival. The introduction of new technology, increased consumption, lowered mortality, and the eradication of all traditional controls have combined to replace what for most tribal peoples was a relatively stable balance between population and natural resources, with a new system that is imbalanced. Economic development is forcing ecocide on peoples who were once careful stewards of their resources. There is already a trend toward widespread environmental deterioration in tribal areas, involving resource depletion, erosion, plant and animal extinction, and a disturbing series of other previously unforeseen changes.
After the initial depopulation suffered by most tribal peoples during their engulfment by frontiers of national expansion, most tribal populations began to experience rapid growth. Authorities generally attribute this growth to the introduction of modern medicine and new health measures and the termination of intertribal warfare, which lowered mortality rates, as well as to new technology, which increased food production. Certainly all of these factors played a part, but merely lowering mortality rates would not have produced the rapid population growth that most tribal areas have experienced if traditional birth-spacing mechanisms had not been eliminated at the same time. Regardless of which factors were most important, it is clear that all of the natural and cultural checks on population growth have suddenly been pushed aside by culture change, while tribal lands have been steadily reduced and consumption levels have risen. In many tribal areas, environmental deterioration due to overuse of resources has set in, and in other areas such deteriorations is imminent as resources continue to dwindle relative to the expanding population and increased use. Of course, population expansion by tribal peoples may have positive political consequences, because where tribals can retain or regain their status as local majorities they may be in a more favorable position to defend their resources against intruders.
Swidden systems and pastoralism, both highly successful economic systems under traditional conditions, have proved particularly vulnerable to increased population pressures and outside efforts to raise productivity beyond its natural limits. Research in Amazonia demonstrates that population pressures and related resource depletion can be created indirectly by official policies that restrict swidden peoples to smaller territories. Resource depletion itself can then become a powerful means of forcing the tribal people into participating in the world-market economy—thus leading to further resource depletion. For example, Bodley and Benson (1979) showed how the Shipibo Indians in Peru were forced to further deplete their forest resources by cash cropping in the forest area to replace the resources that had been destroyed earlier by the intensive cash cropping necessitated by the narrow confines of their reserves. In this case, certain species of palm trees that had provided critical housing materials were destroyed by forest clearing and had to be replaced by costly purchased materials. Research by Gross (1979) and other showed similar processes at work among four tribal groups in Brazil and demonstrated that the degree of market involvement increases directly with increases in resource depletion.
The settling of nomadic herders and the removal of prior controls on herd size have often led to serious overgrazing and erosion problems where these had not previously occurred. There are indications that the desertification problem in the Sahel region of Africa was aggravated by programs designed to settle nomads. The first sign of imbalance in a swidden system appears when the planting cycles are shortened to the point that garden plots are reused before sufficient forest regrowth can occur. If reclearing and planting continue in the same area, the natural patterns of forest succession may be distiurbed irreversibly and the soil can be impaired permanently. An extensive tract of tropical rainforest in the lower Amazon of Brazil was reduced to a semiarid desert in just fifty years through such a process. The soils in the Azande area are also now seriously threatened with laterization and other problems as a result of the government-promoted cotton development scheme.
The dangers of overdevelopment and the vulnerability of local resource systems have long been recognized by both anthropologists and tribal peoples themselves. But the pressures for change have been overwhelming. In 1948 the Maya villagers of Chan Kom complained to Redfield (1962) about the shortening of the swidden cycles, which they correctly attributed to increasing population pressures. Redfield told them, however, that they had no choice but to go “forward with technology”. In Assam, swidden cycles were shortened from an average of twelve years to only two or three within just twenty years, and anthropologists warned that the limits of swiddening would soon be reached. In the Pacific, anthropologists warned of population pressures on limited resources as early as the 1930s. These warning seemed fully justified, considering the fact that the crowded Tikopians were prompted by population pressures on their tiny island to suggest that infanticide be legalized. The warnings have been dramatically reinforced since then by the doubling of Micronesia’s population in just the fourteen years between 1958 and 1972, from 70,600 to 114,645, while consumption levels have soared. By 1985 Micronesia’s population had reached 162,321.
The environmental hazards of economic development and rapid population growth have become generally recognized only since worldwide concerns over environmental issues began in the early 1970s. Unfortunately, there is as yet little indication that the leaders of the new developing nations are sufficiently concerned with environmental limitations. On the contrary, governments are forcing tribal peoples into a self-reinforcing spiral of population growth and intensified resource exploitation, which may be stopped only by environmental disaster or the total impoverishment of the tribals.
The reality of ecocide certainly focuses attention on the fundamental contrasts between tribal and industrial systems in their use of natural resources, who controls them, and how they are managed. Tribal peoples are victimized because they control resources that outsiders demand. The resources exist because tribals managed them conservatively. However, as with the issue of the health consequences of detribalization, some anthropologists minimize the adaptive achievements of tribal groups and seem unwilling to concede that ecocide might be a consequence of cultural change. Critics attack an exaggerated “noble savage” image of tribals living in perfect harmony with nature and having no visible impact on their surroundings. They then show that tribals do in fact modify the environment, and they conclude that there is no significant difference between how tribals and industrial societies treat their environments.
Anthropologist Terry Rambo demonstrated that the Semang of the Malaysian rain forests have a measurable impact on their environment. In his monograph Primitive Polluters, Rambo reported that the Semang live in smoke-filled houses. They sneeze and spread germs, breathe, and thus emit carbon dixide. The clear small gardens, contributing “particulate matter” to the air and disturbing the local climate because cleared areas proved measurably warmer and drier than the shady forest. Rambo concluded that his research “demonstrates the essential functional similarity of the environmental interactions of primitive and civilized societies” in contrast to a “noble savage” view which, according to Rambo mistakenly “claims that traditional peoples almost always live in essential harmony with their environment.”
This is surely a false issue. To stress, as I do, that tribals tend to manage their resources for sustained yield within relatively self-sufficient subsistence economies is not to make them either innocent children or natural men. Nor is it to deny that tribals “disrupt” their environment and may never be in absolute “balance” with nature.
The ecocide issue is perhaps most dramatically illustrated by two sets of satellite photos taken over the Brazilian rain forests of Rondonia. Photos taken in 1973, when Rondonia was still a tribal domain, show virtually unbroken rain forest. The 1987 satellite photos, taken after just fifteen years of highway construction and “development” by outsiders, show more than 20 percent of the forest destroyed. The surviving Indians were being concentrated by FUNAI (Brazil’s national Indian foundation) into what would soon become mere islands of forest in a ravaged landscape. It is irrelevant to quibble about whether tribals are noble, childlike, or innocent, or about the precise meaning of balance with nature, carrying capacity, or adaptation, to recognize that for the past 200 years rapid environmental deterioration on an unprecedented global scale has followed the wresting of control of vast areas of the world from tribal groups by resource-hungry industrial societies.
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