Geography Education

The article leaves me with more questions than answers.  What do the residents think about the tons of tourists wondering through their winding streets?  The very idea of tourism to see poverty in situ in an authentic slum is riddled with power and cultural imbalances.  Why would wealthy tourists from the developed world want to more fully explore the slums in the developing world?  What do you see as the 'wrong' and the 'right' within this situation?   Is slum tourism ethical?

This is yet another example of the uneven impacts of globalization. 

The recent resurgence of this issue had me looking through the archives and stumbled upon this 2011 article.  As urban expansion is booming in many Indian cities, the modern city expands into the countryside.  The cultural values of these two demographic groups are quite distinct.  Young, educated women are part of the modern cities' workforce but in many conservative, traditional Indian villages, women working outside the home are seen as "lacking in virtue."  In many of the recent gang rape cases, the perpetrators are less educated young men from surrounding villages and the victims are well-educated young working women that are a part of the new city.    

Public spaces, especially at night, are seen as masculine spaces in most traditional societies.  One of the mothers of an accused rapist succinctly explained this mindset thusly: "If these girls roam around openly like this, then the boys will make mistakes."  This is seen as 'Eve teasing,' where women are perceived as responsible for the violence committed against them to maintain social order.  As another article hints, the outrage that this incident ignited could lead towards long-term change in Indian society.   

This other NY Times article op-ed states, "India must work on changing a culture in which women are routinely devalued. Many are betrothed against their will as child brides, and many suffer cruelly, including acid attacks and burning, at the hands of husbands and family members.  India, a rising economic power and the world’s largest democracy, can never reach its full potential if half its population lives in fear of unspeakable violence."

Tags: India, migration, South Asia, culture, urban, folk culture, megacities.

Teaching about human trafficking and child slavery can be very disconcerting and uncomfortable.  How much of the details regarding these horrific situations is age-appropriate and suitable for the classroom?  The BBC is reporting on events with sensitive stories to both give a human face to the story, while protecting the identity of under-aged victims (to read about the production of this comic, read Drawing the News.)  I encourage you to use your own discretion, but I find this comicbook format an accessible, informative and tasteful way to teach about human trafficking in South Asia to minors.  It is a powerful way to teach about some hard (but important) aspects of globalization and economics. 

As geographer Shaunna Barnhart says concerning this comic, "It moves from trafficking to child labor to pressures for migration for wage labor and the resulting injustices that occur. There's differential access to education, gender inequality, land, jobs, and monetary resources that leads to inter- and intra-country trafficking of the vulnerable. In the search for improved quality of life, individuals become part of a global flow of indentured servitude which serves to exploit their vulnerabilities and exacerbate inequalities and injustice. Nepali children 'paid' in food and cell phones that play Hindi music in 'exchange' for work in textile factories - cell phones that are themselves a nexus of global resource chains and textiles which in turn enter a global market - colliding at the site of child labor which remains largely hidden and ignored by those in the Global North who may benefit from such labor."

Tags: Nepal, labor, industry, economic, poverty, globalization, India.

Hindu pilgrims from all over India flock to bathe where it the Yamuna Saraswati Rivers join with the Ganges River for a religious experience.  This is a massive undertaking where the cultural practices create migratory patterns that reshape cities because of a sacred physical geography.