Blog Posts

WRITTEN BY Linda Sundqvist

 

Tel Aviv, Israel’s economic and technological centre situated on the Mediterranean coastline, emerges as the world’s costliest city to live in (according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Worldwide Cost of Living index of 2021). Meanwhile, the Gaza strip is still densely populated and impoverished with a rapidly increasing population (the area’s growth rate is one of the highest globally).[1] We hear so much good about Tel Aviv and so much wrong about Gaza, yet we are supposed to consider these two to be a part of the same country.

 

Personally, I have never visited the area. From the few Jews in my life, I have heard mostly good about Israel, a country they have visited quite extensively. That which made me look into this status quo was an introductive course in public international law, which only briefly mentioned Palestine-Israel, but changed my view of the situation quite a lot. You see, the picture I had of the area differs a lot from what I heard on the course, and so I felt like I had to open my gullible eyes.

 

In May 2021, another wave of violence flooded the Gaza strip with rockets and other artillery being fired on both sides – Gaza and Israel. The violence between Gaza and Israel is one you do not hear as much about these days, or you simply hear too much and do not really know what it is about. The United Nations said that they fear a “full-scale war” breaking out between Gaza and Israel if the tension keeps building up the way it has in recent years.

 

According to the United Nations, Gaza has been a part of Israel since 1967, even though Israel withdrew its military and all its settlers from the area back in 2005. In 2007 the militant Islamist group Hamsa came to control Gaza after ejecting all forces loyal to the then governing Palestinian Authority (PA). Now I do not know about you guys, but personally, when I think of Israel, the first city to come to mind would be the previously mentioned Tel Aviv. At first glance, I could not fathom that Tel Aviv is situated in “the same country” as Gaza, the home to about two million people, being only 41 km long and 10 km wide.

 

Gaza an area badly overcrowded with homes too damaged to live in. The place where power cuts are an everyday occurrence. Before last May, Gaza was receiving power on 8-hour rotations – this has now been cut down to 3-4 hours a day due to the power lines being damaged in the fighting. According to the UN, about 80% of the population of Gaza depends on international aid, and about one million people rely on daily food aid. Gaza is surrounded by no-go border areas and blockades at the crossings being imposed by Israel have gravely restricted their ability to trade. Their ability to move in or out of the area, as well as aid convoys not getting through, has also made the quality of life significantly worse.

 

Almost 65% of Gaza’s population is under the age of 25, and with youth unemployment running at 70%, the lives of the people in the Gaza strip are short, and lacking good health[4]. They cannot move freely or safely due to the surrounding border and the imminent armed conflict. Feeling attachment to one’s surroundings or planning one’s life is hard with the uncertainty of what is yet to come. Through the living standards in which these people live, it is clear that their identities and values as human beings are not being seen as legitimate or respected. Being deprived of these capabilities, let alone all enable one to thrive in the categories relevant to social exclusion: the economic, social, political, and cultural aspects of society.[5]

 

I hope I have shown that this situation is very much non Liquet; this is a conflict that simple legal terms cannot resolve. This conflict has been going on for decades, and there is no simple answer to it, even though efforts have been made previously. The ones suffering the most are the civilians. The civilians living in the Gaza strip are cut off from the rest of Israel by a border that excludes them even further from society. There is no one systematic institution behind social exclusion. Still, when it comes to Gaza and the Palestine-Israel borders, it feels like all aspects of social exclusion (and more) have been at play, excluding the people in Gaza from society.

 

REFERENCES:

[1] https://www.britannica.com/place/Gaza-Strip

[2] Picture showing Palestine-Israel, the red area being Gaza. Gaza Strip region, credits for original to NordNordWest, credits for retouched picture to ויקיג’אנקי, CC BY-SA 3.0:  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WV_Gaza_Strip_region.png

[3] Destruction of Gaza, credits to author gloucester2gaza, CC BY-SA 2.0: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Destruction_of_Gaza_1.jpg

[4] Israel-Palestinian conflict: Life in the Gaza Strip (2021) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-20415675

[5] The Normative theory of social exclusion: perspective from political philosophy (2013) Zuzana Palovicova https://www.researchgate.net/publication/298415307_Social_Exclusion_from_the_Perspective_of_Normative_Theory

WRITTEN BY Linda Sundqvist

 

So, I started my journey with this blog post by googling, of course, and to my surprise, this headline was the first thing to pop up on my screen. This was the slogan for a site called the world Jewish travels, suggesting the ten places I need to visit when exploring Israel – the Holy Land.[1] This list, of course, included places like Jerusalem, “the world-known historical epicentre”, and the oh-so-trendy Tel Aviv “, the vegan capital of the world”[2]. Now, these places in central Israel are beautiful, so beautiful that I almost got lost in my travel fever, forgetting what I was trying to research.

 

This was worrisome. You see, I am white and from Finland, which means I am privileged and have never witnessed anyone living in the circumstances like the ones in Palestine-Israel. The only way for me to get information about something happening outside of Europe is by searching for it. So, for me to actively be searching for information about what is happening only to find some travel agency really puts the problem into perspective.

 

There is an ongoing conflict between Palestine and Israel; this much I feel you could call common knowledge. Now what that conflict is about and why it seems it cannot be resolved takes a lot more than a few hours on google. To understand why the situation is so dire in Palestine-Israel, one must first know how these arrangements came to be and why these two states are clumped into one name in the first place. Another thing one must become familiar with is social exclusion. You see, social exclusion describes a situation where not everyone has equal access to the opportunities and services that would allow them to lead a decent, happy life, which is the case in Palestine-Israel[3].

 

Looking into the history of this conflict, one could go back as far as time. Where you start telling the story also really matters. For the sake of this post, I feel like we could start about 100 years ago with the fall of the Ottoman Empire in WWI, leaving Britain to take control of the Palestine area. Back then, Palestine had a majority of Arabs and a minority of Jews. This came to change with growing tension when Britain was “tasked” (I find this an ironic choice of words) by Europe (no surprise there) to establish a national home for Jewish people.[4]

 

 

The years after WWI had European Jews leaving Europe seeking a home in Palestine, culminating in a flood of Jewish refugees fleeing the horrors of WWII. For these people to go through all they did to find a new home where they could live in peace sounds like a silver lining to sorrows. What that point of view on this story forgets though is that there already were people with their own culture living there. As expected, this British “task” backfired, and when this Europe-induced mess got even bigger, Britain backed out and left the people in Palestine to their own devices.

 

After this, we have numerous other states getting into this conflict, thinking they would know how to fix centuries of sorrow or just wanting to take advantage of a shattered country to expand their own. The country’s civilian people are refugees or caught in the middle of it all. They are left without a home, without peace, which is what they were seeking in the first place. Today the whole area previously known as Palestine is officially Israel, according to the UN.[6] The irony of it all is that Europe appointed the area as a home for the Jews they were persecuting, only for the Arabs living there to then be persecuted.

 

Social exclusion is a relatively new theory on a multidimensional phenomenon. It is a process as well as a state in which individuals are unable to fully participate in different societal aspects of life, like economic, social, political, and cultural. Participation might be hindered by a lack of material and resources like education or income. Social exclusion can also result from alienation and oppression, when an individual cannot exercise their voice or when their rights and dignity are not respected and protected in the way that they should be.[7]

 

The Palestinian people are clumped into the West Bank and the Gaza strip, which are the only areas still referred to as Palestine. They are being separated from the rest of Israel by hard, physical borders that are not easily passed. They do not have the same health care, education, or economic resources. A lot of the resources they had have been taken away because of the borders, making trading almost impossible. The lack of education and integration into the rest of society leaves them without any of the necessary tools to get out of the deprived life induced by social exclusion.

 

As I am sure, you have noticed, something is very wrong with the status quo in Palestine-Israel. In no way do I feel it would be of any use pointing fingers and playing the blame game, discussing who did what to whom, and so on. I feel like we need to focus on the situation at hand and the people suffering. No people in Palestine-Israel are strangers to suffering. Still, with this post, I would like to point out that borders, disdain, and deprivation socially exclude Palestine’s people. They are being excluded from a society on the verge of flourishing where exclusion serves no other purpose than that of hate.

 

REFERENCES:

[1] https://www.worldjewishtravel.org/virtual-tours?utm_source=Google&utm_medium=CPC&utm_campaign=Virtual-Tours-Israel&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=10526386025&utm_content=104436524112&utm_term=israel%20tourism&gclid=Cj0KCQiAu62QBhC7ARIsALXijXTWphCrrubd34seJOlSS1PKKGErLlBEUTxpuyBnOdiBWRTZaGtIINoaAolgEALw_wcB

[2] https://curlytales.com/israels-tel-aviv-becomes-vegan-capital-of-the-world/

[3] https://www.liberties.eu/en/stories/social-exclusion/43579

[4] https://www.britannica.com/place/Palestine

[5] Palestine loss of land, Credits to Noorrovers, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Palestinian-loss-of-land-1946-2010.jpg

[6] https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-44124396

[7] https://www.un.org/esa/socdev/rwss/2016/chapter1.pdf

Written by Sandis Sitton

 

In my last blog, I discussed how the border of Puerto Rico can be understood as an institutional tool that transfers various kinds of power over the lands of the territory to those in the mainland United States and how inclusion in the United States under those conditions means exclusion for local Puerto Ricans from other institutions of power which other states are guaranteed under the Constitution. This time, I’d like to look at how migration off the islands and into the United States is motivated not just by local conditions but also by exclusionary policies like those already explored, which obstruct locals from political power and their local markets and economic policy as well.

 

Is Puerto Rico a Fragile State?

One reason migrants will often travel to a country is to improve on their material conditions, find work, and/or transition out of areas of hardship or shortage¹. This is undoubtedly a component of Puerto Ricans’ reasons for migrating to the mainland states. The islands in 2017 suffered immense devastation at the hands of two subsequent hurricanes, leading to lives lost in the thousands and catastrophic infrastructural damage, conditions which were directly credited for the emigration of over 200,000 locals to the mainland states².  These situations certainly contribute to the fragility of the state, a known motivator for emigration to places of greater stability³.

States can be called fragile for several reasons. They can lack the full capacity to govern their populations and territory or cannot provide security and economic opportunity⁴. However, the economic, environmental, and political conditions in Puerto Rico prompt migration to the mainland states do not extend to everyone involved. For some, the fragility of Puerto Rico is not a reason for emigration, but immigration, as attempts to rebuild it, has instead created a new opportunity. In this space where there is an opportunity for some but continued fragility for others, we find new processes of exclusion unfolding in the territory.

 

Fragility for Some, Opportunities for Others

While conditions for the locals have indeed been difficult, especially in comparison to the rest of the U.S., that is not to say there are no opportunities there at all, only that there are none for them. The main island of Puerto Rico has, in recent years, seen massive growth in its housing market. Thousands of mainland Americans have moved or applied to move their place of residence to the commonwealth because of policies made by the local government to attract outside investment⁵. For example, policies like Act 60 create tax breaks for people moving to the island as a way to revitalize the local housing market. Still, the tax breaks offered to newcomers are unavailable to those who already live there⁶. This has been something of a success; in 2021, house sales rose 84% from the previous years⁷. At the same time, however, new housing construction has remained stagnant or even fallen⁸. Because of this, locals, 43% of whom live under the federal poverty level are being priced out of neighborhoods they could once afford to live in. Many have had to leave the island entirely, searching for work and affordable housing, while new investors buy and repurpose properties as vacation housing⁹. Some decry the often-wealthy newcomers as colonizers and say their country is being sold out from under them¹⁰.

 

Not Poverty, but Exclusion from Opportunity

These circumstances create a situation of exclusion for locals, whose towns are being invested in, while they are kept apart from the benefits of that growth. Exclusion often comes in situations wherein there are obstacles to upward mobility, which are not always direct or evident because their effects are only seen in overlapping structures and institutions¹¹.

For this reason, it is not always solely an issue of poverty, or any such condition, even in cases where they do create significant problems¹². Puerto Ricans who endured several natural disasters in succession, under an economy and government that were heavily restricted under restructuring plans, often had to pay for the reconstruction of their neighborhoods with their labor¹³. Sometimes they waited years, if not still to this day, for the government to step in and take on this burden for them¹⁴. Now, though, the territory is shifting to accommodate new markets, prices change, and the cost of living with it. Puerto Ricans are not only poor but excluded from the same policies that attract people to these markets; they are experiencing states of fragility that others are not.

 

References:

¹ Anke Hoeffler, “Out of the Frying Pan into the Fire? Migration from Fragile States to Fragile    States,” OECD Development Co-Operation Working Papers, (2013),        https://doi.org/10.1787/5k49dffmjpmv-en, 4.

² Nicole Acevedo, “Puerto Rico Sees More Pain and Little Progress Three Years after Hurricane Maria,” NBCNews.com (NBCUniversal News Group, September 20, 2020), https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/puerto-rico-sees-more-pain-little-progress-three-   years-after-n1240513.

³ Anke Hoeffler, (2013), 6.

⁴ Ibid.

⁵ Coral Murphy Marcos, Patricia Mazzei, and Erika P. Rodriguez, “The Rush for a Slice of          Paradise in Puerto Rico,” The New York Times (The New York Times, January 31,   2022), https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/31/us/puerto-rico-gentrification.html.

⁶ Ibid.

⁷ Lelaine C Delmendo, “Puerto Rico’s Housing Market Gaining Momentum,” Global Property     Guide (Global Property Guide, October 16, 2021), https://www.globalpropertyguide.com/Caribbean/Puerto-Rico/Price-History.

⁸ Ibid.

⁹ Coral Murphy Marcos et al., (2022).

¹⁰ Ibid.

¹¹ Andrew M. Fischer, “Reconceiving Social Exclusion,” BWPI Working Paper, no. 146 (April    2011), https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1805685, 23.

¹² Ibid.

¹³ Nicole Acevedo, (2020).

¹⁴ Ibid.

Written by Sandis Sitton

 

Borders are a complicated concept. What they are, how they look, are enforced, or what they have been called has changed throughout history¹. Research has shown that even the conventional concepts of national borders resulted from very specific evolutions in notions of territoriality and the relationships between power, land, and people². Today they are geographical and institutional together, inclusionary in one sense while necessarily exclusionary as a cost, and how changes depending on where these lines are drawn, how, and for whom.

 

Enter Puerto Rico, U.S. Territory

 

Under the control of the United States, Puerto Rico has been the center of several controversies involving the rights and powers of the locals there over Puerto Rico itself. These range from the decades-long military occupation of its islands, their exploitation and pollution, and the forced relocation of their inhabitants³, to the mitigation of its local government’s power to self-govern and direct seizure of its control over its own financial policies ⁴. All of this has happened under the facilitation of the very law of the land, the institutions and policies which define Puerto Rico as a place. Instrumental to this, of course, is the border.

 

What Kind of Border Does Puerto Rico Have?

The archipelago was first a colony under Spain following Columbus’ discovery of the Americas in 1492. They traded hands into the possession of the United States in 1898 due to the Spanish American War, at which time ownership of the land and the national status of its people was changed, and the border around it and its meaning changed with it.

 

Today Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory, one of five the United States owns, including the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and the Northern Marianas Islands, although it does have other territories without permanent populations and relationships with the Free Associated States which it does not directly govern⁵. However, Puerto Rico and the other unincorporated territories are still governed by the United States federal government above their own. Though like the Northern Marianas Islands, Puerto Rico is also considered a Commonwealth, with its own constitution and elected local governments, the Puerto Rican government must still uphold the U.S Constitution as well as its own⁶.

 

This relationship originates back to the Jones Act of 1917, the first written legislation to define Puerto Rico’s involvement with the United States⁷. Under the act, Puerto Rico was defined as unincorporated, meaning not a part of the United States or, consequently, not represented in the U.S. Constitution⁸. This was allowed based on the reasoning in a 1900 Supreme Court case titled Downes v Bidwell, where the court determined that some territories could be incompatible with the U.S. Constitution, saying this:

“[For] possessions inhabited by alien races differing from [the people of United States] in religion, customs, laws, methods of taxation, and modes of thought, the administration of government and justice according to Anglo-Saxon principles may for a time be impossible.”⁹

As such, the role and rights of citizens in Puerto Rico and why they are different from those in the states themselves are directly connected to the perception of difference, legally tied to the land of the territory itself.

 

What does this make Puerto Ricans?

Residents of Puerto Rico are still U.S. citizens and do have access to the other states, even to move there and integrate as any other citizens could. 5.83 million Puerto Ricans were estimated to live in the United States proper (the 50 states themselves), steadily rising¹⁰. Puerto Ricans living in the states have all the rights of other citizens; they can vote for federal representatives in the federal government, including the President, Senators, and members of the House of Representatives¹¹. In this respect, Puerto Ricans are not excluded from the rights established in the Constitution because there are institutional obstacles that obstruct them from its guarantees¹².

 

Locals still pay federal taxes like people of any of the states, though some do not need to pay income tax, and they are still subject to all federal laws and obligations, like military service in the form of the draft¹³. They still serve voluntarily in the military, like any other citizen of the United States, however, despite these similarities, they cannot vote in federal elections and have no voting representatives in Congress for long as they remain residents in Puerto Rico¹³. They bear the duties of full citizenship, but their membership is contingent on their place within its borders.

 

Puerto Ricans, then, are not Americans, not in all of the ways that matter. Because the land they live on is governed by different rules than the States, so are the people themselves. They may inhabit the islands, but they do not share equally in their ownership, their governance, or in the rewards to the society that does.

References:

1 Brunet‐Jailly, E., 2009. The State of Borders and Borderlands Studies 2009: A Historical View and a View from the Journal of Borderlands Studies. Eurasia Border Review Part I < Current Trends in Border Analysis >.

2 Ibid.

3 Lawrence Wittner, “Breaking the Grip of Militarism: The Story of Vieques,” History News ​Network, February 28, 2019, https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/171839.

4 Nick Brown, “Puerto Rico Authorizes Debt Payment Suspension; Obama Signs Rescue Bill,” ​Reuters (Thomson Reuters, June 30, 2016), https://www.reuters.com/article/us-​puertorico-debt-idUSKCN0ZG09Y.

5 Francisco H. Vázquez, Latino/a Thought Culture, Politics, and Society (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009), 374-375.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid.

9 Henry Billings Brown and Supreme Court Of The United States. U.S. Reports: Downes v. ​Bidwell, 182 U.S. 244. 1900. Periodical. https://www.loc.gov/item/usrep182244/, 287.

10 U.S. Census Bureau , “B03001 HISPANIC OR LATINO ORIGIN BY SPECIFIC ORIGIN,” ​United States Census Bureau (United States Census Bureau, 2019), ​https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?q=B03001%3A+HISPANIC+OR+LATINO+ORIGI​N+BY+SPECIFIC+ORIGIN&tid=ACSDT1Y2019.B03001&hidePreview=true.

11 Tom C.W. Lin, “Americans, Almost and Forgotten,” California Law Review 107, no. 4 ​(August 2019), https://doi.org/https://www.californialawreview.org/print/americans- ​almost-and- forgotten/#:~:text=There%20are%20millions %20of %20Americans,and ​%20die%20defending%20our%20Constitution.

12 Andrew M. Fischer, “Reconceiving Social Exclusion,” BWPI Working Paper, no. 146 (April ​2011), https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1805685, 17.

13 Tom C.W. Lin, 2019.

14 Ibid.

Written by Valentina Frank

 

Have you ever seen a photo of a beautiful person and ended up in front of a mirror unconsciously comparing yourself with the photo? The more you look at yourself, the more flaws you find in your appearance, and your self-esteem can easily be affected. In today’s world, you constantly get brainwashed into thinking that you are not enough the way you are and should change your looks to become a “better person”. I recently wrote a blog post regarding the issues of beauty standards, but I feel there is so much more to research and study on the subject. This time, I didn’t have an aim for where I was going with my post; I just started surfing the internet on beauty standards and looks. With the help of photos and images, I want to analyze and give my thoughts on this subject.

 

I started by simply googling “beautiful woman”, and in just the blink of an eye, my screen was filled with dozens and dozens of beautiful women. Most of the women that popped up as the definition of a beautiful woman were white. I noticed only a handful of “genuinely” colored women when scrolling through the images. Many women probably have different ethnic backgrounds, but with the help of makeup, hairstyling, and heavy photoshop, they were whitewashed to fit the norm of the beauty standards. I made a quick google search on what the biggest ethnic group in the world is; Han-Chinese. What stunned me was that I had to scroll through the pictures of the beautiful women for quite a while until I came across a picture of a woman who could fit the standards of a Han-Chinese. It is very odd that only one picture could represent the biggest ethnic group in the world amongst the hundreds of photos. However, it is an eye-opener to how Eurocentric our beauty standards are.

 

“Beautiful woman”

 

I then went on to type “handsome man” in my google search, and I was shocked. Several handsome men popped up on my screen, but all of them were white! It took me quite a few scrolls to find a man with a different ethnic background than a Caucasian white, and when I finally found one, he was heavily whitewashed. I scrolled through the whole first page of “handsome men” and was shocked to notice that I didn’t come across a single black man; keep in mind that I went through several hundreds of different photos. The lack of representation of people of color in our society is unfortunate and there is no wonder that non-white people feel excluded when it comes to beauty standards.

“Handsome man”

 

People with disabilities in our society are another group of people who face constant exclusion, and the risk of them being marginalized is significant. About 15% of the world population experience some sort of disability, yet the representation of people with disabilities in the context of beauty is almost non-existent. Recently I came across an article about the first girl with down syndrome to become Victoria’s Secret model. Victoria’s Secret as a brand feeds off people’s insecurities and their desire of looking like runway models. It’s no surprise that people would like to look like the beautiful women representing the brand; I mean they are some of the most beautiful women we’ve ever seen. The issue is that the life behind the scenes of the runway models is not glamorous at all. Starvation, invasion of privacy, and unrealistic expectations of their looks are just the iceberg tip. The fact that a girl with a visual disability has been accepted to represent a brand as heavily concentrated on looks as Victoria’s secret is a sign that we are slowly moving in the right direction. People who suffer from disabilities- or anyone who feels they can’t fit the norm of beauty, can now refer to a supermodel, gain confidence, and truly understand that they are as beautiful as anyone, despite their imperfections.

 

“Victoria’s Secret models”

 

“Sofia Jirau, the first Victoria’s Secret model with down syndrome”

 

In my previous blog post, I explained how we become limited and exclude ourselves from society due to our insecurities. We feel anxious that our imperfections will define us as human beings, and therefore we want to protect ourselves by hiding them. The issue is that these so-called “imperfections” most often are only in our heads. It would help if you did not exclude yourself from society because you feel you don’t fit perfectly to beauty standards. I mean, who really fits? Almost everybody has insecurities, meaning most people think they can’t define themselves as “perfect”. So why even strive for perfection? It is such an unrealistic aim. What you can do instead is to think about what you define as beautiful. Not what the media or the society thinks. What does the definition of beautiful mean to you? Then you try to change your aim and strive for that without caring about what’s important to others.

 

Because at the end of it all, why do we even care about looks? What matters is the way we act towards one another, and everyone should be able to enjoy their life without being limited by the way they look.

 

References:

Fleming, E. (2021) “What is the most common race in the world?”, Sidmartinibio.org Available: https://www.sidmartinbio.org/what-is-the-most-common-race-in-the-world/

Infogram. “Race of the world population” Available:

https://infogram.com/race-of-the-world-population-1go502yg18k62jd

Basaninyenzi, U.(2021) “Disabilitiy inclusion”, Worldbank.org Available: https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/disability#1

Weigel, M. (2019) “What Life Is Really Like For A Victoria’s Secret Model”

Ranker.com Available:

https://www.ranker.com/list/daily-life-of-a-victorias-secret-model/mason-weigel

Acevedo, N. (2022) “First Victoria’s Secret model with Down syndrome is Latina” Nbcnews.com, Available:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/first-victorias-secret-model-syndrome-latina-rc na16533

Photo by Zoey Grossman, published by glamour.com (2022)

Available: https://www.glamour.com/story/sofia-jirau-makes-history-as-the-first-victorias-secretmodel-with-down-syndrome

Photo by Evan Agostini, published by wbur.org (2020) Available:

https://www.wbur.org/news/2020/01/03/victorias-secret-models-thinner

Written by Valentina Frank

 

The world circles around appearances and the idea of what beauty constantly changes, far more quickly than one should be expected to change oneself. Yet, people continuously want to live up to those standards. Why, though? Why is it so important to be “beautiful” in society’s eyes?

 

If we take Finland as an example, it is immediately an advantage if you are attractive. It is easier for you to find a job, friends, partners, or to get by in your everyday life. The Finnish beauty standards are, for instance, being slim, tall, blonde, fit, healthy-looking, etc. The most significant beauty standard of them all, even though it can only be read between the lines, is being white. And that is a big issue. If you are not white, you are instantly in a lower position compared to a typical scandi. This is naturally something that is not only an issue in Finland but also a problem that occurs in the whole western world. Since I am white, meaning I have never experienced any prejudices due to my skin color, I don’t feel I am in a position to present the issue of racial injustice as I can’t in any way relate to the problems of color. I recently got the opportunity to participate in a lecture by Jasmin Slimani about the lack of representation of Afro-Finnish women in the Finnish beauty standards. It was eye-opening, and she explained well the issues she and other Afro-Finnish women have had to experience living in an all-white country. Her lecture got me thinking about what experiences I have regarding the issues of beauty standards, and since this world is far from perfect, I found plenty.

 

In the world we live in today, the power social media has on beauty and how it impacts people is, to be honest, quite frightening. Overnight, a new trend pops up, and suddenly you are expected to look a certain way. People, especially young girls, can get a malformed idea of beauty. And why not young boys, too. They think that to be attractive; they will have to be perfect-skinned, fit, athletic, feminine, or masculine, you name it! These are very unrealistic expectations of what a beautiful person should look like. Yet we constantly strive for looking like the photo-shopped supermodels on the internet. We are manipulated into thinking that we are better and become more successful by being beautiful in terms of beauty standards. And yes, it is true that “attractive” people have more advantages in life, but why does it have to be that way?

 

As a young woman in my early 20s, I can most definitely say I’ve experienced the pressures of social media. I remember feeling anxiety about not having that many followers on Instagram from my early teens compared to the “popular girls”. Why were my selfies not pretty enough? Why was I not cool enough? The constant comparison to other girls was never-ending. Fortunately, in my early teens, social media did not have quite the impact as it has these days. Today the constant reminder to change yourself for the better is exhausting. I could not even imagine going through my most fragile teenage years with society’s “ demands “ on young girls. For example, the amount of advertisements for cosmetic surgery is alarming. Young people are encouraged to get procedures on their bodies to make themselves pretty. Romanticizing cosmetic surgery is something common, and it is everyday life in today’s society for teens to talk about what procedures they want to get done when they are adults. In other words, children fantasize about going under the knife to look beautiful, and it is unfortunate.

 

There are different ways to fit the beauty standards portrayed in social media into a question of social exclusion. Social media platforms are widely used worldwide, and beauty standards differ from country to country. That being said, prejudices towards “wrong” looking people are unfortunately widespread. Biases often lead people, who stand out from the norms, to be excluded or left out of different opportunities. When you meet someone new, you often categorize them by how they look; you give them a gender, race, ethnicity, etc. This often happens unconsciously and makes people with prejudices treat those they find differently. This causes a form of social exclusion. For example, people who wear garments that imply a different religion than the norm are often having a more challenging time finding employment or lodging since their way of looking is not what is considered the standard of beauty.

 

Beauty standards are not something that excludes people only on, e.g. social media. For instance, many children and teenagers are pressured to look a certain way to fit in the school environment. A significant majority of children have access to social media and have access to be affected by beauty standards. The issue is that there are no beauty standards “for children,” which leads to children wanting to look like adults. Many young girls try to dress more revealingly, use heavy makeup and enhance certain body parts to look more like their adult idols on Instagram. As a result, even more, children are trying to act and look like adults, and the children who are not (yet) affected by these beauty standards, are getting left out and bullied simply for looking like children. As a solution, some schools have introduced school uniforms to minimize the inequality between students and the risks of someone getting excluded by how they look. Naturally, school uniforms cause many other issues, but that is another discussion.

 

I find it very interesting that people’s insecurity often excludes them from social situations regarding beauty standards. Most people have some issues with their appearances. Still, usually, those insecurities are only in their heads, meaning that others won’t necessarily even notice them, and therefore people are unlikely to be excluded from society due to them. You will not (or at least I hope so) get declined service for not having a small nose or not having a thigh gap, but what is common is that you might limit yourself from doing things because of such thoughts. For instance, some people don’t like going to the beach because they are insecure about their bodies that may not present the current “bikini body” shape. They feel left out because they refuse to show their perfectly normal body, only because they don’t fit in the image of a stereotype. The problem is that only a small percentage of people fill up the expectations social media portrays. Despite knowing that, we constantly strive to change ourselves into the twisted ideals of these photo-shopped beauty standards. People who suffer from visible disabilities might not want to participate in social events because they are ashamed or feel uneasy due to their disabilities. Hence, they are socially excluded by these beauty standards. It is important not to blame these people for being left out. Instead, we should blame society for accepting that beauty standards are twisted and malformed and for not making an active effort to make a change.

 

The existing beauty standards persist due to our relations with other people. We constantly compare ourselves with others, and we always feel that somebody else is better looking, more intelligent, funnier or more successful than we are. Beauty standards would not exist without the never-ending comparison. Due to social media, we are exposed to the standards daily, and we maintain the feeling of not being enough by comparing our lives with other people. We exclude ourselves from others by thinking that we are odd with our imperfections, while every other person is perfect. We forget that all of us have our issues, everyone has insecurities, and you are the definition of perfect for someone else. And that’s not the way it should be because your definition of perfect should be you. Exactly the way you are.

 

References:

Roets, A.(2011) Research States That Prejudice Comes From a Basic Human Need and Way of Thinking

PsychologicalScience.org, Available: https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/research-states-that-prejudice-c omes-from-a-basic-human-need-and-way-of-thinking.html

Silver, H. (2015) Social exclusion, Brown University.

Researchgate.net, Available: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319557578_Social_Exclusion

Treacy, S. (2018) Social Media Users Negatively Affected by Social Media Posts

That Make Them Feel Excluded

Electronics360.globalspec.com, Available: https://electronics360.globalspec.com/article/12905/social-media-users-negatively-af fected-by-social-media-posts-that-make-them-feel-excluded

Fetto, F. (2019) The beauty industry is still failing black women Theguardian.com, Available: https://www.theguardian.com/global/2019/sep/29/funmi-fetto-happy-in-my-skin-beaut y-industry-diversity

Slimani, J. (2021) Mirror, mirror on the wall, why am I not the fairest? – an

Afrocentric approach to the lack of representation of Afro-Finnish women within the

Finnish beauty standard, Åbo Akademi University, Faculty of Arts, Psychology, and

Theology Available:

https://www.doria.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/182709/slimani_jasmin.pdf?sequence=2

&isAllowed=y

Pagtakhan, A. (2021) Beauty standards create fear of exclusion for young girls Riversideeddy.ca, Available: https://riversideeddy.ca/beauty-standards-create-fear-of-exclusion-for-young-girls/.

Procon.org (2020) Pro and con: School uniforms, Available: https://www.britannica.com/story/pro-and-con-school-uniforms

Written by Steve Huerta Raygoza

 

In the last blog, I discussed how research conducted in higher education in the U.S. had been co-opted to benefit corporate interests. I also discussed that the cost of education is rising in public universities and, the recently more numerous, private for-profit universities. These aspects of the privatization of higher education are crucial to understanding when analyzing how these conceptual borders are created and maintained. It is essential to, at this time, discuss one of the significant events that led to this shift in the purpose of higher education. In the late Twentieth Century, the World Bank set the worldwide plan for higher education. It issued a report that said there needs to shift from the “basic needs approach” to one that called for universal primary education, the progressive privatization of secondary and higher education.[1, 2] This shift continues today as the World Bank continues to push for the expansion of Public-Private Partnerships in Ghana and Nepal[3]. To understand the goals for this shift, we need to continue building on the analytical framework from the previous blog.

 

Within this context, we need to understand that this new stage of globalized capitalism has distinct needs for the global labour supply, particularly those coming from higher education. It needs organic intellectuals that will strategize for the system, and it needs a vast group of people doing routine deskilled labour intended to support the development of transnational capital.[4] The overwhelming majority of the world’s population that does not pursue higher education is seen as surplus humanity. Their resources are to be extracted, and their labour is exploited to generate value for the transnational elite. This is the World Bank’s vision for education, and it is why we are observing these systems of Social Exclusion and perpetuation of conceptual borders today.

 

Crushing Debt and Credit

In the United States, the total student debt is $1,61 Trillion, accumulated from 43,4 million borrowers. In 2004, that number was a mere $345 billion.[5] That is an increase of 467% in less than two decades. This debt that 43 million people have accumulated is, perhaps, one of the most extensive methods of social control, and it works to perpetuate Social Exclusion by creating several conceptual borders. Firstly, it is essential to understand that high-impact loans disproportionately affect the poorest, sub-employed, ethnically/racially oppressed, and precarious dimensions of the working class. This massive amount of debt serves as an enormous claim on the future wages of the working class, and it also works to make sure that they have the most challenging time earning enough even to begin paying it off.

Figure from “Forbes”[6]

 

In the U.S., credit reports have become an effective mechanism of Social Exclusion. Private companies and government positions sometimes require credit checks, and some discriminate based on bad credit, particularly for those in “sensitive positions.”[7] This prevents a significant portion of the population from working in specific careers. As wages stagnate over time[8], paying off these loans becomes impossible. One of the most critical aspects of this credit system is creating these conceptual borders around homeownership. Bad credit will not allow someone to purchase a home, making it challenging to accumulate generational wealth and forcing them to rent instead. In many cases, a bad credit score can prompt a landlord to look elsewhere when looking for a tenant. To begin with, conceptual borders like bad credit that prevent someone from accumulating wealth and tuition hikes that deter people from attending college have been built to lock out this surplus labour from pursuing meaningful upward mobility.

 

Content of Education

The final aspect that I wish to look at in this blog is, perhaps, the most abstract way of understanding the existence of these conceptual borders. I think it is essential to know how the content of contemporary education serves to create those that gatekeep these borders and motivate students to develop conceptual borders for themselves. Please bear with me because this is undoubtedly a confusing statement.

 

Firstly, it is essential to discuss how particular ideologies have invaded university campuses. There has been an incredible increase in so-called criminal justice programs and the glorification of the military and security careers within the content of many social studies programs in universities. According to the American Council on Education, “62 percent of responding institutions currently provide programs and services specifically designed for military service members and veterans, up from 57 percent in 2009. Seventy-one percent reported including such programs and services in their long-term strategic plan, a notable gain from 57 percent in 2009.”[9] Ironically, the people in these programs become literal gatekeepers that enforce non-abstract and very tangible borders when they join Homeland Security, the DEA, ICE, and Border Patrol.

 

Secondly, I want to discuss the commoditized conception of education itself. Many students have developed a consumer mentality of education, believing that they are purchasing a commodity. Brad J. Porfilio, in his article “Student as a Consumer,” states that

“… Recent far-flung and aggressive capitalist development [that is] driven to secure economic and ideological control is permeating education and schooling… corporate culture, market principles, and commercial values are rapidly intruding and affecting teacher education programs.”[10]

 

Unfortunately, the idea that the pursuit of higher education is akin to purchasing a commodity is becoming increasingly common among students. Returning to Phenomenology of Exclusion, Lems writes about developing an ethnography that focuses less on asking people directly about their lives and more on understanding their human experiences by creating a phenomenology that looks at everyday aspects that make people feel unwanted or undeserving of inclusion.[11] The negative outcome for students in the US is that they forget to acknowledge a truth that has been considered in many other comparably wealthy nations; that education is a fundamental human right – not a commodity. This unfortunate reality leads people to feel they deserve a higher status because they’ve been educated and invested a lot of time and money into their studies or that they are undeserving of education simply because they cannot afford it. The latter of these two outcomes formulates the final conceptual borders. People begin internalizing this ideology and fall into accepting the fact that they are being excluded. Until we can nationalize education and make it an inalienable human right, education under globalized capitalism will only further socially exclude the broader population.

Footnotes/Resources:

1. Puiggrós, Adriana. 1997. “World Bank Education Policy: Market Liberalism Meets Ideological Conservatism.” International Journal of Health Services 27(2):217–26.
2. Daugela, Margarete. 2012. “Understanding the World Bank’s Education for All Policy as Neoliberal Governmentality.” Canadian Education: Governing Practices & Producing Subjects 77–100.
3. Malouf Bous, Katie and Jason Farr. 2019. “False Promises: How Delivering Education through Private Schools and Public-Private Partnerships Risks Fueling Inequality Instead of Achieving Quality Education for All.” Oxfam International.
4. Robinson, William I. 2016. “Global Capitalism and the Restructuring of Education: The Transnational Capitalist Class’ Quest to Suppress Critical Thinking.” Social Justice 43(3):1–24.
5. Helhoski, Anna and Ryan lane. 2022. “Student Loan Debt Statistics: 2022.” NerdWallet.
6. McCarthy, Niall. 2018. “How U.S. Education Has Become ‘a Debt Sentence’ [Infographic].” Forbes.
7. Dye, Felicia. 2017. “Can You Get a Government Job with Bad Credit?” Houston Chronicle.
8. Anon. 2021. “The Productivity–Pay Gap.” Economic Policy Institute.
9. Anon. 2012. “Many colleges and Universities Ramping Up Programs for Military and Veteran Students.” American Council on Education.
10. Porfilio, Brad J. and Tian Yu. 2006. “‘Student as Consumer’: A Critical Narrative of the Commercialization of Teacher Education.” Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies4(1):225–43.
11. Lems, Annika. 2020. “Phenomenology of Exclusion: Capturing the Everyday Thresholds of Belonging.” Social Inclusion 8(4):116–25.

Written by Steve Huerta Raygoza

Image from “Mississippi Center for Justice” [1]

Analytical Framework

When addressing topics within the Social Exclusion program, I often attempt to understand them through a historical materialist perspective [2]. Specifically, I try to understand these issues by applying an understanding of the overlying systems that have some use for the labour and resources of the people observed as being socially excluded. I want to establish an analytical framework to show my perspective better. When referring to Social Exclusion, I will be most closely tying it to the definition proposed by Andrew M. Fischer, which describes it as both the process and the outcome of “repulsion or obstruction” that leads people to experience inequality[3]. I will also be abstractly using the term border as, for this case, there are no barriers that can be touched in person or seen on a map. I certainly took some liberties while discussing borders, as many of my classmates discuss tangible borders. Instead, drawing on Anikka Lems’ article Phenomenology of Exclusion, I describe these conceptual borders as being similar to “interior frontiers” that “work to delegate who is allowed in and who is to be [excluded]” and are delegated “by unarticulated and inaccessible conventions.”[4] Additionally, using Lems’ article, I intend to explore the perspectives of the students who experience exclusion and the views of those doing the excluding; in this case, institutions such as the World Bank.

 

Introduction

I decided to write about how the U.S. University Education System manufactures intangible borders around individuals’ ability to pursue upward mobility. This blog will focus on the policies that work to create said borders, and the next blog will discuss the outcome and consequences of this border creation. To understand how modern higher education within the U.S. makes these conceptual borders, we must first develop an understanding of how this system operates. The premise for these blogs is that the contemporary US higher education model involves:

1. The creation of public-private partnerships
2. The destruction of subsidized education
3. The creation of debt as a mechanism of social control
4. The creation of a system to indoctrinate each new generation into the existing social hierarchy

 

These outcomes are maintained by the exclusionary policies that construct these conceptual borders. I will explore these crucial features over the following two blogs.

 

The Private Brain Trust of Capital

When discussing the purpose of contemporary U.S. higher education, we must understand the corporate elite’s material interest in university research and how this research is used. I believe that in a functioning society, students would conduct research funded at any given university to better the human condition. Under the U.S. model of higher education, however, the state subsidizes research done at public universities and puts the results of said research in the hands of private corporations. These public-private partnerships create private brain trusts[5] that work to benefit the interest of corporations. Pharmaceutical companies (J&J, Pfizer, Novartis)[6], energy corporations (B.P., Chevron)[7], and the military-industrial complex benefit from research completed at public universities. As such, biochemistry, engineering, and other fields of study become appendages of corporate research. Understanding this dynamic is crucial to understanding the role universities play when maintaining corporate interests; these corporate entities maintain a vested interest in making sure that these universities continue to produce research that helps boost their bottom line. However, this is not the only way capital is created through higher education.

 

The Decline of Subsidized Education

Often, when discussing education in the U.S. with my mates in the Social Exclusion program, we end up on just how expensive it is to attend college – in this context, I am fortunate enough to have been unfortunate enough. By this, I mean to say that the state of California almost entirely subsidized my bachelor’s degree because my parents fell into a low-income bracket. This was at U.C. Santa Barbara, a Public University. I make the distinction to call it public because, to the surprise of some people I have spoken to during my time in Finland, many universities in the U.S. are privately run. These private universities have seen exponential growth in their attendance over the last few years. According to the National Center for Education Statistics:

“From 2000 to 2010, enrollment in private for-profit institutions increased by 329 percent (from 403,000 to 1.7 million students). In comparison, enrollment increased by 30 percent at public institutions (from 10.5 million to 13.7 million students) and by 20 percent at private nonprofit institutions (from 2.2 million to 2.7 million students) during this period”[8]

 

What we see here is the result of the ongoing commodification of education. The most unfortunate aspect of this commodification is the massive cost of attending these universities.

 

Although many students fall into this same income bracket that I did, most students across the U.S. end up having to pay tuition, and the cost of said tuition has been steadily increasing for the last few decades. In 1980, a four-year degree at a public university cost $9,438 on average, adjusted for inflation. In 2019, that cost increased to $23,872.[9] This is undoubtedly a significant increase; however, for private for-profit universities, the average tuition increased from $15,160 in 1988 to $34,740 in 2018.[10] You might be asking how these students manage to pay for such incredibly high tuition. Well, many simply don’t. This is where we see the first conceptual border that works to exclude massive portions of the population. The incredibly high cost of attending a university makes it so that up to 18.6% of college-ready students choose not to participate because they believe it costs too much.[11] This boundary locks out the poorest portions of the population, excluding them from the opportunity to receive higher education and accumulate their wealth.

 

Because a massive portion of students cannot afford to attend higher education on their own, many choose to rely on accumulating debt. In the next blog, I will discuss this debt accumulation, the exclusionary effects, and the ultimate way that this perpetuates the existing social hierarchy.

 

Footnotes/Resources:

1. Anon. 2021. “HB 1029 Allows Mississippi’s IHL Board to Create New Questionable Student Debt Product.” Mississippi Center for Justice.
2. Historical Materialism – A philosophical understanding of political conflict that recognizes material needs as the primary source of friction.
3. Fischer, Andrew M. 2011. “Reconceiving Social Exclusion.” Brooks World Poverty Institute 146:1–27.
4. Lems, Annika. 2020. “Phenomenology of Exclusion: Capturing the Everyday Thresholds of Belonging.” Social Inclusion 8(4):116–25.
5. Brain Trusts – Experts advisors, usually for politicians, that serve as advisors on a given subject
6. Bagley, Constance E., and Christina Tvarnoe. 2013. “Pharmaceutical Public-Private Partnerships in the United States and Europe: Moving from the Bench to the Bedside.” Harvard Business Law Review 4:373–401.
7. Hofferberth, Matthias. 2011. “The Binding Dynamics of Non-Binding Governance Arrangements. the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights and the Cases of B.P. and Chevron.” Business and Politics 13(4):1–30.
8. Anon. 2019. “Undergraduate Enrollment.” National Center for Education Statistics.
9. Jackson, Abby. 2015. “This Chart Shows How Quickly College Tuition Has Skyrocketed since 1980.” Business Insider.
10. Martin, Emmie. 2017. “Here’s How Much More Expensive It Is for You to Go to College than It Was for Your Parents.” CNBC.
11. Seltzer, Rick. 2017. Study Shows How Price Sensitive Students Are in Selecting Colleges.

Written by Elna-Annina Kanerva

 

Two main matters should be focused on: the effectiveness of integration practices – mainly through the housing policies of Helsinki city – and the exclusionary behaviour these people face when they try to break free from this kind of “circle” many feel stuck in. I think these matters should be focused on because they both seem to have a critical role in maintaining the vicious circle mentioned previously. The city’s housing practices contribute to the formation of closed communities, and the exclusionary behaviour discourages people from breaking free from them.

 

So why do we need to solve this issue and stop this development? Why is it such a bad thing?

 

It is important to remember that immigrant families living in the same neighbourhood aren’t a problem, but this systematic concentration of immigrants is harmful and a form of segregation. Having other immigrants with the same kind of background creates a feeling of safety and belonging to many, which isn’t bad. There are both negative and positive aspects to the formation of these clusters. Clustering hurts integration; in clusters, immigrants can have fewer opportunities and motivation to learn a new language, and ethnic clusters tend to get stigmatised (which is happening in Helsinki).[1] The segregation, stigmatization, and low-quality housing are shown to impact immigrants’ physical and mental well-being negatively.[2]

 

This pattern in housing policies can’t continue; however, completely separating those with immigrant roots from one another and removing their safety nets isn’t beneficial either. Concentrating on the same areas can enable minorities to maintain their language and cultural heritage and provide a feeling of security. We do not want these people to lose their sense of security.[3]

 

As a concluding answer to this question: this development needs to be stopped since it’s proven to have more negative than positive impacts; however, completely separating immigrants from one another and thereby splitting communities also isn’t a good solution.

 

A good solution could therefore be to change the housing policies of the city of Helsinki simply. The city does have dwellings elsewhere; it just needs to be more persistent in locating people with different backgrounds into a variety of different neighbourhoods. At this moment, there aren’t clear instructions by which city officials decide on where to locate people. City officials describe the logic behind the decisions as a notion of “common sense”. In this context, “common sense” could mean not locating many big families in the same building and spreading people with similar ethnic or cultural backgrounds into more expansive areas. However, trusting city officials to make arbitrary decisions on where to allocate families isn’t very sustainable, which we have seen in eastern Helsinki. Therefore, there must be clear policies and instructions on how council housing should be distributed and how allocating too many people with the same backgrounds into the same areas should be avoided. Policies such as these are likely to significantly impact the geographical division of people in need of housing.[4]

 

The avoidance of ethnic clustering can naturally help the integration process since it would force those of immigrant background to maybe form connections to the so-called native population. It could also contribute to immigrants meeting Finns who represent a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds and so-called “normal” families, and therefore widen their perception of the native population. However, integration is a two-way process. It is up to the native population to make sure that immigrants don’t have to fear harassment and racism outside their communities and homes. Having to face discriminatory behavior shouldn’t be something people expect or take for granted.[5]

 

———————————————————————————————–

[1] Article: Housing policy and the ethnic mix in Helsinki, Finland: perceptions of city officials and Somali immigrants (Hanna Dahlmann, Katja Vilkama)

[2] Article: Residential mobility, mental health, and community violence exposure among Somali refugees and immigrants in North America (Sarah Gillespie, Emma Cardeli, Georgios Sideridis, Osob Issa, B. Heidi Ellis)

[3] Article: Housing policy and the ethnic mix in Helsinki, Finland: perceptions of city officials and Somali immigrants (Hanna Dahlmann, Katja Vilkama)

 

[4] Article: Housing policy and the ethnic mix in Helsinki, Finland: perceptions of city officials and Somali immigrants (Hanna Dahlmann, Katja Vilkama)

[5] Article: Phenomenology of Exclusion: Capturing the Everyday Thresholds of Belonging (Annika Lems)