Sarapen

Me to my supervisor: I should have most of a full draft to give to you by the end of March.

Me to myself 5 minutes after sending the email: Eeeeaaaagghh!!

But there's two weeks!  That's not so bad, right?  I would have killed for two weeks when I was writing my proposal.  I'm sure I have more finished than I think.  I've been keeping my writing in separate files because I'm incapable of seeing my thesis all at once, for fear that the hideous sight will turn me to stone.

Well, nothing for it but to do it.  See you all in April.

Posted by sarapen at 04:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It is important not to succumb to the “giddy presentism” inherent in many studies of globalization, but instead keep in mind that what can be called “globalization” has occurred in other historical moments (Graeber, 2002). However, one must also note that the expansion of global connection in the modern era often coincides with the expansion of imperial domination by new and already-existing empires. The last period of heightened global interconnection, the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, when massive numbers of people and goods crossed borders, was also the period of “high imperialism”, when the great powers such as England and France seized new colonies and when new powers such as Japan and Italy entered the race for colonies (Go, 2003, p. 17).

Go, J. (2003). Introduction: Global Perspectives on the U.S. Colonial State in the Philippines. In J. Go & A. L. Foster (Eds.), The American Colonial State in the Philippines: Global Perspectives (pp. 1-42). Durham NC: Duke University Press.

Graeber, D. (2002). The Anthropology of Globalization (with Notes on Neomedievalism, and the End of the Chinese Model of the Nation-State). American Anthropologist, 104(4), 1222-1227.

I just need to write 2000 more of these and I'll be done.

Posted by sarapen at 11:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As in, the opposite of deja vu, it's the feeling that something has never happened before.  I was just reading Stuart Hall's introduction to Questions of Cultural Identity when I got the feeling.  The introductory chapter is actually rather central to my thesis because it's here that Hall outlines his thinking on identification versus identity and I use his definition quite a lot.  It's been a few months since I've actually had to read the essay.  I've just now read it again and I got the distinct feeling that I'd never read it before.  There were entire parts that I didn't remember at all.  In fact, I may actually understand it better now.  I must say, the critical distance afforded by time is helpful in getting the most out of a meaty essay, especially when the first time around I had to read that meaty essay on the quick because my proposal was due the next week.  This is just like when I re-read Elizabeth Povinelli's "Radical Worlds: The Anthropology of Incommensurability and Inconceivability" and could actually appreciate what it was saying.

Anyway, that is all.  Please return to your regular lives.

Posted by sarapen at 06:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Actually, I've never gone fishing in my life.  Ever.  But I have been absent from this blog lately.

The biggest reason for my absence is that I'm actually writing up a storm right now on my thesis.   Well, perhaps a line a day isn't really a tempest of writing, but compared to what I was doing before it's a deluge.  Some days I write entire paragraphs, and on occasion whole pages.  I'm so close to finishing my first chapter I can almost taste it.  I even emailed what I had to my supervisor.  Mind you, this is the first actual piece of research-related writing I've ever given her.  Sure, she's seen drafts, but now she's gotten a glimpse of the real deal.  I can actually now imagine a finished thesis as a concrete object instead of some fantastic vision, an El Dorado never to be reached.  Frankly, it's rather deflating to realize that the thing that intimidated me so much wasn't so big in the first place.  I'll have to revise my schedule for the holidays, but my work from now on is reduced to nothing more than bare numbers: a couple of hours a day, so many days a week, the time accumulating until the work is done.  No more existential crises from here on out.

Before, I could not imagine a time when I'd be done; now, such a thing seems more than possible: it seems a foregone conclusion.  Because of my writing, I won't be posting as much.  I can only write so much in a day, after all.  But I'll still be coming back.

Posted by sarapen at 06:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)