I found it very interesting in reading chapter 4; Robbins stated that to be less than a nation is a sign of backwardness. This is interesting to me because less than one-third of the states in the world are older than 30 years old. Before that people never referred to themselves as members of a nation and now it is second nature. The idea of a Nation-State was developed by nineteenth century Europe. I also found interesting that war is carried out by the state to show authority and power. The use of violence is not the only thing anthropologists use to identify a state. They also look to see if different people have different means to acquire wealth. The creation of states is part of the culture and origin of capitalism.
How did the nation come to existence? And how does it stay together and succeed with disagreeing and dissimilar groups? In Chapter four in Robbins, it talks about the creation of the nation-state and it’s construction and continuation of capitalism. The state has to build transportation, education, communication and legal systems all a part of the economy. It also play a huge role in conditions that encourage use, controls government, regulate corporations, money supply, and common policies. “It is the nation–state, as Eric Wolf suggested, that guarantees the ownership of private property and the means of production and provides support for disciplining the work force.” This is important because the world would be one big mess without ownership, discipline and means of production. Our country is blessed to have such good structure and seem to grow more and more into a powerful nation. However, some countries are not as lucky. In the introduction and chapter one of Guerrillas Journeys In The Insurgent World, it explains a very opposite topic to what was discussed in Robbins readings, a country that isn’t so organized in their nation-state.
Reading Chapter 4 in the textbook by Robbins makes me realize how much control the government has over our thoughts and opinions. Robbins discusses manufacturing consent, a term coined by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. Manufacturing consent is when the governments and corporations bias a certain event to make the viewers believe what the government and corporations want them to believe. Of course people can still think for themselves, but if they are fed certain biases of events, it is inevitable that their opinion will be swayed the desired way. An example Robbins gives of manufacturing consent is how the media persuades the viewers to go to war. For example, at the start of the first Gulf War, George H. W. Bush exaggerated about the amount of babies Iraqi Soldiers killed in a Kuwait hospital. By doing so, it helped Bush gain the acceptance of many Americans for the Gulf War.
Sadly, what the media says is what many viewers believe. That is why it is a good idea to have more than one news source because it’s hard to know what is exaggerated for certain reasons and what isn’t. In conclusion, the news isn’t necessarily wrong, but it is definitely biased.
I was intrigued by Gellner's claim (Robbins, p. 106) that a monopoly on education has become more important than a monopoly on violence. I've been reading lately about the FBI's murder, surveillance, and torture of political activists during COINTELPRO. The U.S. government is by no means above torturing or murdering people to protect the interests of the wealthy, but it's remarkable how infrequently they have to resort to this sort of thing (compared to Colombia, for instance). Mass media propaganda and education are such effective means of indoctrination that most people won't even resist in the first place (hence no need for Colombian-style death squads); worse -- they don't even know that there is something that should be resisted; worse still -- they actually like and approve of things that should be resisted.
I was also glad to see Robbins discussing the amazingly high amount of "news" that originates from public relations companies (p. 114): about 40% -- that's really mindblowing when you stop to think about it. Even after we've come out of our 12 years of indoctrination in primary/secondary school, we are still receiving the large majority of our information from the same corporations that are funding death squads, poisoning our bodies, and running sweatshops. As Chomsky and Herman put it (Robbins, p. 111), they are just "manufacturing consent" -- making sure that the manufactured interests of the average citizen coincide with corporate interests -- so that while people imagine that they live in a "democracy", they are really just semi-autonomous puppets choosing between a limited set of options, basing their choices on a limited information set provided to them by the corporate media.
In Robbins chpater 4 what I found to be the most interesting to me was starting on page 117, the bit about Energy and technology. This is the end of the chapter and focuses on something that was not only extremely important 3o years ago but is also very relevant and talked about daily today in America and that is oil. The most suprising statistic to me was that in 2006 more than 60 percent of oil used in America is foreign. TO think that more than half of our oil is from overseas is just unbelievable. It makes sense obviously, as other countries have vast amounts of oil, but it's just shocking that we get so much of our oil from foregin countries. This is especially bad because we consume over 20 million barrels of oil a day. So not only do we get the majority of our oil from somehwere else, but we also consume more oil than any other country. This also plays big into the fact that the United states uses more energy than every other country too, and oil, being a fossil fuel is the major source of global energy. So the more oil we use the more energy we use. The real surprising thing I noticed too was in the graph on page 119, it shows the projected energy consumption for the next 20 years. The United States and China are pretty close in terms of energy consumption. In 2010 the United states is a little ahead of china, and again in 2015, and they are ahead agian in 2020, but then China is projected to pass the U.S. as the leading country in energy consumption, and they continue to get farther and farther ahead. I find it strange that China isn't ahead of us right now, I thought they would be. But it makes sense that they would consume more in the future. This is probably why China is one of the leaders in trying to produce better, cleaner, greener energy. I know they are the leaders in trying to advance this technology and now I know why.
So I found pgs 117-121 very interesting. Robbins speaks about how much energy we use and the fact that we also somehow use oil in order to acquire meats faster. It's crazy how wasteful the american society has become! His steer example was just absolutely astonishing. The fact that we can get a steer out to be slaughtered in under two years seems just aweful. Not only is this wasting a lot of oil, it also seems like animal abuse of some sort. Forcing these steer to over eat this highly fattening and overly nutritious food even when they dont want to? Sickening.. Some of the statistics in this book really do make America look bad.
I found it interesting in Chapter 4 that Robbins mentions a lot about the media and the involvement the government has in what is published and not published in order to get the citizens to believe something. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if the citizens stop believing everything that is published because since the beginning of time we have been fed a bunch of lies. Another point that was an eye opener is that I have always known that we went into Iraq not to find weapons of mass destruction but because we needed to control the oil, but how come everyone was so quick to say "no way we went in to help give them democracy." Regardless if we went in for oil or democracy it is invading other peoples land that we don't have say in what they believe in or how their country is run. Who says democracy is the answer? Besides control over the Middle East oil reserves has ran the world for many many years. If the Americans were smart we would use the sum total of what we spend on trying to gain control back, or to simply gain control, on exploring alternative energy sources we could be out of wars and into helping rehabilitate the environment. It is fascinating how much oil has control over every "power" country. Like Robbins said, if we keep this up the world is going to run out of oil in the near future.
I agree with Katy Sloyer when she says she's "not surprised if citizens stopped believing everything that is published" by the corporate media. Having worked in the news industry for a number of years, I've seen the change in how and what stories are reported. Years ago, the prevailing question in newsrooms around the country was "how does this story affect people?" Later on due to ratings and the bottom line of most media companies, the question changed to "how many people does this story affect, and now to the current question of "can we get a live shot out of it?" Consider the implication of such questions. Are they driven to feed the 24/7 news machine? Yes, they are. Even in local newsrooms here, quantity is the rule, some stations will not run a story longer than :40 seconds due to what they think is the short attention span of the average viewer. The "news beast" must be fed, regardless of the quality of the story. This forces the public into the current confusion of trying to find an objective source for news, and sadly I believe there is no such thing anymore.
I found it interesting that before the 19th century, people didn't identify themselves as nation states but rather as kinship groups, villages, cities, and regions. Robbins states that agents of the state were looked down upon by the people because of demands for tribute, taxes, or army conscripts. However, today it is a sign of normalcy and progress to be defined as a nation. To be a tribe or ethnic group in the 20th century is a sign of backwardness or lack of modernity. It was also interesting to me that there's such a difference between what defines a nation and what defines a state. For example, a state can be defined as the federal buildings (the White House, federal courthouse, etc.) and it can include what the state requires of its people such as paying taxes and voting. However, if you were to ask someone what a nation requires of them, it would be more difficult to define.
In chapter four, on page 107 really hit me with the topic of Violence and Genocide. These topics have been going on for a very long time and are actually going on today. There genocides going on in Africa in Sudan Darfur. When Robbins talks about, "the modern nation-state is essentially an agent of genocide and ethnocide (the suppression and destruction of minority cultures). Given the glorification of the the nation-state as a vehicle of modernization, unity, and economic development, this seems a harsh accusation. Yet There exists ample evidence that one of the ways states have sought to create nations is to eliminate or terrorize into submission those within its borders who refuse to assimilate or who demand recognition of their status as distinct ethnic or national group" (Robbins 106).
In response to Ashley Olsen's post, I agree with her in its so surprising just how much the government controls. I knew that they controlled aspects of our economy, trade and etc, but I never think about the extent of their control in the media. In reading Ashley's response, I was disgusted that the president would exaggerate the number of babies killed in the war to gain popularity. And its getting ridiculous how the government has "ears" on the phone lines, cameras in almost every place and issuing more and more regulations on where we can go and who we can affiliate with. Its almost becoming the "Big Brother" in the novel 1984.
Nation-States are the reason that this world is deteriorating. The nation-state provides the base for Corporations to abuse and misuse their powers, it is making resources so easily accessible, which was Karl Wittfogel's theory of the building of a nation-state. These easily accessible resources however have created a society that earth can't provide for. The problems that have come out of a nation-state vastly outweigh the advantages....depending on how you look at it. Governments have way too much power over the civilians and the abstract idea of having a country as something to die for seems a bit out of hand as well.
In Robbins chapter 4 its all about the Nation-State and the creation of it. Robbins first tells us that the nation-state is here to provide infrastructure as well as regulate conflicts between competing capatilalist. Besides all of that there are many other things that a nation-state does, first of all they make us pay our taxes and follow the laws, all of that is involved in the nation-state, basically all of our social norms are based off of the creation of the nation-state in a way. For example, without the nation-state there would be no order, no right from wrong. There are many theories that Robbins tells us about of how the nation state was thought to become long ago, but i find it most interesting that before any of these theories had been thought of and long before the nation-state existed, there was something else that was similar to the idea. And that was, people identifying themselves as members of a kinship group, village, or regions. In most of these groups there was a leader or a chief, which was some sort of leader, kind of like the nation-state (government). The reason i found this part so interesting was because a nation-state system is so similar to what used to be called a village or kinship group, of course not as extreme. But not once in the chapter 4 did it relate the two as much as i thought they share a relationship. In these more non formal groups it talks about their "leaders" not being so much as to say "powerful" but more of that they set an example and were more like a role model, and thats how the rules got followed because people were trying to follow their leader. Now a days we have to have so many laws and rules that must be followed because society is exposed to so many more things that what used to be known. To me its just crazy how much we've grown as a whole, and to think that in 100 years things will be even more intense than they are right now.
Josh Murphy
ReplyDeleteI found it very interesting in reading chapter 4; Robbins stated that to be less than a nation is a sign of backwardness. This is interesting to me because less than one-third of the states in the world are older than 30 years old. Before that people never referred to themselves as members of a nation and now it is second nature. The idea of a Nation-State was developed by nineteenth century Europe. I also found interesting that war is carried out by the state to show authority and power. The use of violence is not the only thing anthropologists use to identify a state. They also look to see if different people have different means to acquire wealth. The creation of states is part of the culture and origin of capitalism.
Lauryn Gallagher
ReplyDelete11 October 2010
Anth. 366 10am
How did the nation come to existence? And how does it stay together and succeed with disagreeing and dissimilar groups? In Chapter four in Robbins, it talks about the creation of the nation-state and it’s construction and continuation of capitalism. The state has to build transportation, education, communication and legal systems all a part of the economy. It also play a huge role in conditions that encourage use, controls government, regulate corporations, money supply, and common policies. “It is the nation–state, as Eric Wolf suggested, that guarantees the ownership of private property and the means of production and provides support for disciplining the work force.” This is important because the world would be one big mess without ownership, discipline and means of production. Our country is blessed to have such good structure and seem to grow more and more into a powerful nation. However, some countries are not as lucky. In the introduction and chapter one of Guerrillas Journeys In The Insurgent World, it explains a very opposite topic to what was discussed in Robbins readings, a country that isn’t so organized in their nation-state.
Reading Chapter 4 in the textbook by Robbins makes me realize how much control the government has over our thoughts and opinions. Robbins discusses manufacturing consent, a term coined by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. Manufacturing consent is when the governments and corporations bias a certain event to make the viewers believe what the government and corporations want them to believe. Of course people can still think for themselves, but if they are fed certain biases of events, it is inevitable that their opinion will be swayed the desired way. An example Robbins gives of manufacturing consent is how the media persuades the viewers to go to war. For example, at the start of the first Gulf War, George H. W. Bush exaggerated about the amount of babies Iraqi Soldiers killed in a Kuwait hospital. By doing so, it helped Bush gain the acceptance of many Americans for the Gulf War.
ReplyDeleteSadly, what the media says is what many viewers believe. That is why it is a good idea to have more than one news source because it’s hard to know what is exaggerated for certain reasons and what isn’t. In conclusion, the news isn’t necessarily wrong, but it is definitely biased.
I was intrigued by Gellner's claim (Robbins, p. 106) that a monopoly on education has become more important than a monopoly on violence. I've been reading lately about the FBI's murder, surveillance, and torture of political activists during COINTELPRO. The U.S. government is by no means above torturing or murdering people to protect the interests of the wealthy, but it's remarkable how infrequently they have to resort to this sort of thing (compared to Colombia, for instance). Mass media propaganda and education are such effective means of indoctrination that most people won't even resist in the first place (hence no need for Colombian-style death squads); worse -- they don't even know that there is something that should be resisted; worse still -- they actually like and approve of things that should be resisted.
ReplyDeleteI was also glad to see Robbins discussing the amazingly high amount of "news" that originates from public relations companies (p. 114): about 40% -- that's really mindblowing when you stop to think about it. Even after we've come out of our 12 years of indoctrination in primary/secondary school, we are still receiving the large majority of our information from the same corporations that are funding death squads, poisoning our bodies, and running sweatshops. As Chomsky and Herman put it (Robbins, p. 111), they are just "manufacturing consent" -- making sure that the manufactured interests of the average citizen coincide with corporate interests -- so that while people imagine that they live in a "democracy", they are really just semi-autonomous puppets choosing between a limited set of options, basing their choices on a limited information set provided to them by the corporate media.
In Robbins chpater 4 what I found to be the most interesting to me was starting on page 117, the bit about Energy and technology. This is the end of the chapter and focuses on something that was not only extremely important 3o years ago but is also very relevant and talked about daily today in America and that is oil. The most suprising statistic to me was that in 2006 more than 60 percent of oil used in America is foreign. TO think that more than half of our oil is from overseas is just unbelievable. It makes sense obviously, as other countries have vast amounts of oil, but it's just shocking that we get so much of our oil from foregin countries. This is especially bad because we consume over 20 million barrels of oil a day. So not only do we get the majority of our oil from somehwere else, but we also consume more oil than any other country. This also plays big into the fact that the United states uses more energy than every other country too, and oil, being a fossil fuel is the major source of global energy. So the more oil we use the more energy we use. The real surprising thing I noticed too was in the graph on page 119, it shows the projected energy consumption for the next 20 years. The United States and China are pretty close in terms of energy consumption. In 2010 the United states is a little ahead of china, and again in 2015, and they are ahead agian in 2020, but then China is projected to pass the U.S. as the leading country in energy consumption, and they continue to get farther and farther ahead. I find it strange that China isn't ahead of us right now, I thought they would be. But it makes sense that they would consume more in the future. This is probably why China is one of the leaders in trying to produce better, cleaner, greener energy. I know they are the leaders in trying to advance this technology and now I know why.
ReplyDeleteChandra Millbauer
ReplyDeleteClass 10-10:50
So I found pgs 117-121 very interesting. Robbins speaks about how much energy we use and the fact that we also somehow use oil in order to acquire meats faster. It's crazy how wasteful the american society has become! His steer example was just absolutely astonishing. The fact that we can get a steer out to be slaughtered in under two years seems just aweful. Not only is this wasting a lot of oil, it also seems like animal abuse of some sort. Forcing these steer to over eat this highly fattening and overly nutritious food even when they dont want to? Sickening.. Some of the statistics in this book really do make America look bad.
I found it interesting in Chapter 4 that Robbins mentions a lot about the media and the involvement the government has in what is published and not published in order to get the citizens to believe something. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if the citizens stop believing everything that is published because since the beginning of time we have been fed a bunch of lies. Another point that was an eye opener is that I have always known that we went into Iraq not to find weapons of mass destruction but because we needed to control the oil, but how come everyone was so quick to say "no way we went in to help give them democracy." Regardless if we went in for oil or democracy it is invading other peoples land that we don't have say in what they believe in or how their country is run. Who says democracy is the answer? Besides control over the Middle East oil reserves has ran the world for many many years. If the Americans were smart we would use the sum total of what we spend on trying to gain control back, or to simply gain control, on exploring alternative energy sources we could be out of wars and into helping rehabilitate the environment. It is fascinating how much oil has control over every "power" country. Like Robbins said, if we keep this up the world is going to run out of oil in the near future.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Katy Sloyer when she says she's "not surprised if citizens stopped believing everything that is published" by the corporate media. Having worked in the news industry for a number of years, I've seen the change in how and what stories are reported. Years ago, the prevailing question in newsrooms around the country was "how does this story affect people?" Later on due to ratings and the bottom line of most media companies, the question changed to "how many people does this story affect, and now to the current question of "can we get a live shot out of it?" Consider the implication of such questions. Are they driven to feed the 24/7 news machine? Yes, they are. Even in local newsrooms here, quantity is the rule, some stations will not run a story longer than :40 seconds due to what they think is the short attention span of the average viewer. The "news beast" must be fed, regardless of the quality of the story. This forces the public into the current confusion of trying to find an objective source for news, and sadly I believe there is no such thing anymore.
ReplyDeleteI found it interesting that before the 19th century, people didn't identify themselves as nation states but rather as kinship groups, villages, cities, and regions. Robbins states that agents of the state were looked down upon by the people because of demands for tribute, taxes, or army conscripts. However, today it is a sign of normalcy and progress to be defined as a nation. To be a tribe or ethnic group in the 20th century is a sign of backwardness or lack of modernity. It was also interesting to me that there's such a difference between what defines a nation and what defines a state. For example, a state can be defined as the federal buildings (the White House, federal courthouse, etc.) and it can include what the state requires of its people such as paying taxes and voting. However, if you were to ask someone what a nation requires of them, it would be more difficult to define.
ReplyDeleteKevin Merkle
ReplyDeleteIn chapter four, on page 107 really hit me with the topic of Violence and Genocide. These topics have been going on for a very long time and are actually going on today. There genocides going on in Africa in Sudan Darfur. When Robbins talks about, "the modern nation-state is essentially an agent of genocide and ethnocide (the suppression and destruction of minority cultures). Given the glorification of the the nation-state as a vehicle of modernization, unity, and economic development, this seems a harsh accusation. Yet There exists ample evidence that one of the ways states have sought to create nations is to eliminate or terrorize into submission those within its borders who refuse to assimilate or who demand recognition of their status as distinct ethnic or national group" (Robbins 106).
In response to Ashley Olsen's post, I agree with her in its so surprising just how much the government controls. I knew that they controlled aspects of our economy, trade and etc, but I never think about the extent of their control in the media. In reading Ashley's response, I was disgusted that the president would exaggerate the number of babies killed in the war to gain popularity. And its getting ridiculous how the government has "ears" on the phone lines, cameras in almost every place and issuing more and more regulations on where we can go and who we can affiliate with. Its almost becoming the "Big Brother" in the novel 1984.
ReplyDeleteNation-States are the reason that this world is deteriorating. The nation-state provides the base for Corporations to abuse and misuse their powers, it is making resources so easily accessible, which was Karl Wittfogel's theory of the building of a nation-state. These easily accessible resources however have created a society that earth can't provide for. The problems that have come out of a nation-state vastly outweigh the advantages....depending on how you look at it. Governments have way too much power over the civilians and the abstract idea of having a country as something to die for seems a bit out of hand as well.
ReplyDeleteAmy Hart
ReplyDelete10:00 Class
In Robbins chapter 4 its all about the Nation-State and the creation of it. Robbins first tells us that the nation-state is here to provide infrastructure as well as regulate conflicts between competing capatilalist. Besides all of that there are many other things that a nation-state does, first of all they make us pay our taxes and follow the laws, all of that is involved in the nation-state, basically all of our social norms are based off of the creation of the nation-state in a way. For example, without the nation-state there would be no order, no right from wrong. There are many theories that Robbins tells us about of how the nation state was thought to become long ago, but i find it most interesting that before any of these theories had been thought of and long before the nation-state existed, there was something else that was similar to the idea. And that was, people identifying themselves as members of a kinship group, village, or regions. In most of these groups there was a leader or a chief, which was some sort of leader, kind of like the nation-state (government). The reason i found this part so interesting was because a nation-state system is so similar to what used to be called a village or kinship group, of course not as extreme. But not once in the chapter 4 did it relate the two as much as i thought they share a relationship. In these more non formal groups it talks about their "leaders" not being so much as to say "powerful" but more of that they set an example and were more like a role model, and thats how the rules got followed because people were trying to follow their leader. Now a days we have to have so many laws and rules that must be followed because society is exposed to so many more things that what used to be known. To me its just crazy how much we've grown as a whole, and to think that in 100 years things will be even more intense than they are right now.