Unblocked!

Well, for some reason or another, Blogspot has been unblocked by the Chinese government. It was blocked for a little under two weeks for reasons unknown. This is sort of a "hell week"-- with a 3 page paper for Globalization and Health, a 2-page "reflection" on our Case study, and a 1-hour presentation on our case study all due tomorrow (Friday). Last night I stayed up till three, getting lung cancer in this awful internet cafe with little ventilation and where everyone is smoking.

This past week has taken on a much different pace, where we students are given much more freedom to do research for our case study. I'm doing one on NGO/Gov't response to HIV/AIDS in China, and we've met representatives from the WHO, MSF (Doctors Without Borders, the Belgium branch, which is actually working illegally in China. Long story.), some GONGOs (Government-Organized NGOs, Chinese style), etc. Every morning we have classes in Globalization and Health, as well as Culture and Health, which frankly have been a bit disappointing. In the G&H course, my general feeling is that statistics and polemics are just being thrown at us, while in the C&H course, tons of questions and an obviously slanted (and in my opinion, poorly argued) view of medicine is given. I've found myself taking fewer notes and raising my hand in objection far more often, probably to the dismay of my classmates. It bothers me how so much of social science is simply the study of phenomenon, how we're not really supposed to have any interesting ideas or theories about what might be happening. For instance, in the C&H class, we were TOLD that biomedicine is hegemonic in systems of medicine. It bothers me how science is treated as a Western construct-- to me it seems dishonest and in fact insulting to other "traditions," that they aren't rational and are somehow more mystic and experiential. That is, other systems of medicine, such as TCM, only have "ancient knowledge" to legitimize it, as supposed to any sort of rational thought. Then the teacher said I was simply someone bound by my Western cultural mindset, a philosopher. This is of course inaccurate and an oversimplification, for many reasons not worth mentioning here. Alex (a philosophy major) joked that in that class, philosophy implies arguments, and I added "discursive and Western culture-bound" arguments. I'm not particularly a big fan of overly academic philosophy, but it's kind of ridiculous when someone tells you that making cohesive arguments is a culturally-bound syndrome.

In other news, I finally did meet with Joan Hinton last weekend. To refresh, Joan Hinton was an American nuclear physicist during WWII who worked on the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. Once they were used, however, she had a moral crisis and came to China in 1948, and has been here ever since. After meeting her, she seemed to be best described as a Maoist, someone who believed that someone who rose from the people should have power. It seems like her trust in authority is a bit contradictory, since to her, no one from Deng Xiaoping to Hu Jintao ("Who I have illusions about," she says) has been able to follow Mao's act. So what happens when a government gets hijacked? I just wrote a paper about state centralization, democracy and reform in post-Mao China. I'm beginning to think that democracy cannot exist with over-centralization; a government must be ruled by the people as opposed to a government ruling over the people. I'm not positioning capitalism over communism or vise versa, but merely thinking about the importance of a true democracy in the world today.
I'm strongly considering writing an article for the Concord Journal about the visit, or possibly one about local democracy in India. Ok, maybe I'll post some pictures later, but for now I must do work. In one week, I'll be off to South Africa.