Term Tests

I will be on campus tomorrow afternoon from 3-4 if anyone would like to pick up their term tests. Please come to Sidney Smith, room 561 A (it's in the basement). After this, you may pick up any course assignments from Josie Alaimo, the anthropology undergraduate coordinator, in the Anthropology Department (Sidney Smith, first floor).

Lost Graffiti Survives Online

Graffiti art is constantly emerging, filling up space, being blotted out, and emerging again. Often the mass erasure of graffiti from a given cityscape accompanies preparations for events that are meant to showcase the city on the world stage: the visit of the head of state, foreign dignitaries, or crowds of tourists. City officials imagine the gaze of powerful outsiders and anticipate a sense of shame or embarassment. While such beautification may just be part of the ebb and flow of city life, there are times when it can mean the death of an entire art scene. This is what happened in Melbourne recently as the city prepared to host the Commonwealth Games. According to the Guardian:

"Melbourne is the proud capital of street painting with stencils. Its large, colonial-era walls and labyrinth of back alleys drip with graffiti that is more diverse and original than any other city in the world. Well, that was until a few weeks ago, when preparations for the Commonwealth games brought a tidal wave of grey paint, obliterating years of unique and vibrant culture overnight..."

Some of the stencil works lost in this cleansing, as well as links to other sources on this issue are available here on the blog of Space and Culture: The International Journal for of Social Spaces.

Metropolis Alumnus on Miller's Vision for Toronto

Although Mayor Miller's performance at the recent Keith Davey Lecture was somewhat lacklustre, there was one point that he drove home very effectively. Torontoians must learn to see their city as having its own unique identity and they should see their university as being equally unique. Toronto should not be seen as 'New York run by the Swiss' and the University of Toronto should no longer strive to be a Harvard of the north. Neither Toronto nor the U of T are copies of other places: they have their own identities and their own power.

Miller's vision of how Toronto can realize this potential--and the steps it has already taken to do so--is now available to the public on a website called Building a Great City. On his blog Wholesome Goodness, Metropolis 347 alumnus and long-time blogger Sameer Vasta (2005) provides a very useful summary of the main points of Miller's report and offers some insights into where the city should go from here.

Hot Docs

The "Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival" runs from April 28th through May 7th and has loads of interesting films on offer (www.hotdocs.ca). "Marianne" looks at a hotdog vender outside of a Toronto hospital who has become a true public figure. Another one that caught my attention is a 2006 American/Mexican production called "Maquilapolis: City of Factories". The description goes as follows:

"On the US-Mexican border, factory workers employed in maquiladoras are routinely exploited as multinationals take advantage of cheap labour, lax environmental standards and a government that turns a blind eye to labour law violations. Fed up, an intrepid band of women become promotoras (community activists), educating themselves and their fellow workers about their rights. In a unique collaboration, directors Vicky Funari and Sergio De La Torre trained a group of Tijuana-based promotoras in video production. Among them is Carmen, a single mom who works the graveyard shift six days a week and comes home to a shack constructed from recycled garage doors. At 29, she suffers kidney damage from prolonged chemical exposure and is immersed in a legal battle with Sanyo, which failed to pay severance owed when it relocated to Asia. Her pal Lourdes, who lives alongside a stream contaminated by toxic waste, is engaged in an equally heated fight for justice. Shouldering cameras, these and other activistas offer an impassioned plea against globalization and corporate interests that put efficiency before the environment and profits before people". The doc runs a little over an hour and plays on May 5th and May 7th.

"I Eat Grits, You Eat Tacos"

There have now been demonstrations in numerous cities across the USA, drawing hundreds of thousands of immigrants into the streets. It's always interesting to see what slogans people are using. One of the common ones, according to this article in the New York Times, is: "We are not criminals". In her study of Sao Paulo, Caldeira shows how fear of crime emerges when class hierarchies break down. Here an emergent category of workers--many in the informal sector and wanting to be allowed into the formal economy--are resisting their classification as criminal and the underlying discrimination it implies.

Another form of resistance to symbolic means of dividing the city was evident in Atlanta. A sign read: "I eat grits, you eat tacos." This got me to thinking: what would a Toronto version of this slogan be?

21st Century Industrial City

Chongqing is China's fastest growing city, absorbing half a million rural migrants every year. It is also emerging as an important industrial city with all the attendant problems that characterized 19th century industrial cities in Europe. It even has its own Henry Ford, a car industrialist who dreams of raising the standard of living of China's rural population so that more people will be able to afford to buy the cars rolling off his assembly line. At the same time, Chongqing differs from 19th century industrial cities as it is growing in an age of globalization and glitter. Soon it will have some of the highest towers in the world. Check out this very short (9 min) video documentary about Chongqing produced by Jonathan Watts.