Darrell G. Moen, Ph.D.

THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE: 2000 (67 minutes)
Directed and Produced by: Jill Freidberg and Rick Rowley
An Independent Media Center and Big Noise Film
Narration: Michael Franti and Susan Sarandon
Transcript modified by Darrell Moen

(live audio)
I think in ten years from now (repeat from crowd) -
The thing that’s going to be written about Seattle (repeat from crowd) -
Is not what tear gas bomb went off on what street corner (repeat from crowd) -
But that the WTO in 1999 (repeat from crowd) -
Was the birth (repeat from crowd) -
Of a global citizen’s movement (repeat from crowd) -
For a democratic global economy (repeat from crowd).

(cheering) Our Streets! Who’s Streets? Our Streets! (crowd chanting 12 more times)
In this new global economy we lose our desire, our power, and our vision.
In any part of the world, there are men and women who choose the path of least resistance;
who accept lives of fear and isolation.
But we will respond to death with life.
We will respond to the nightmare with the dream.
We will fight and imagine and create. And we will resist.

(on-screen text)
The following film was shot by over 100 media activists (more…)

Due date for research proposals: to be announced

In the latter part of the semester you will, either in groups or individually, choose a particular organization (e.g. Polaris Project, Amnesty International, Japan Committee for Negros Campaign, Greenpeace, ECPAT (End Child Prostitution, Pornography, and Trafficking), JATAN (Japan Tropical Forest Action Network), Free the Children, Global Village, Sarawak Campaign Committee, Asian Women’s Association, World Peace Now etc.) to focus an in-class presentation on. In preparation for the presentation, you will do a minimum of four hours of participant-observation research on the topic of your choice in an accessible location, taking field notes. You are free, indeed encouraged, to choose grassroots-based organizations that reflect your particular interests. During the presentation, in addition to providing a brief introduction to the group you visited, you will provide a discussion of your fieldwork experience on the research topic and setting, methods used, and data gathered, and evaluate the field experience (noting successes, setbacks, surprises, and adaptations). The grade will not be based on English proficiency or the relative “success” of the fieldwork, but on your analysis of the fieldwork project and critical evaluation of the group studied. This fieldwork research experience is intended to give you an opportunity to see for yourself the ways in which concerned citizens are taking action to create a better future for all as well as provide you with the chance to present your research findings and introduce the group or organization you chose for your project to your classmates.

I will expect a carefully prepared research proposal (typed - to be handed in for my records) with specific information regarding the particulars of the fieldwork proposal: Why did you choose this organization? What is the focus of your research? Why did you choose this focus? When are you visiting the organization? What type of questions do you intend to ask? How do you intend to participate in the activities of the organization? If you are going to form a group, one research proposal for the entire group (with everyone’s name and email address listed) will suffice. Individual oral presentations should be 10-15 minutes in length; in the case of group presentations, each group member will be expected to present for 5-10 minutes. This will require careful coordination and preparation by the group as a whole. We will reserve the last two class periods (three hours) for presentations of fieldwork research.

(more…)

Transborder Citizens’ Movements: Challenging Pax Americana
Fall Semester
Tsuda College: Thursday 1:00-2:30,
English 3 Seminar in International Relations Faculty

Hitotsubashi University: Thursday 10:40-12:10,
Oral Skills 3 in Social Sciences Faculty

With increasing U.S. military interventions and continuing U.S. support for military/authoritarian regimes and opposition to democracy in the Third World, many American citizens began questioning the legitimacy of the postwar U.S. role as the world’s policeman, and started forming grassroots-based organizations in the 1960s as innovative responses to the frequently asked question, “What can I do?” This proliferation of citizens’ movements has recently coalesced in a mutual search for world peace, and an end to poverty and social injustice. Connections are being made by activists worldwide between local and international struggles as well as between the movements themselves, with a focus of attention on the interdependence of states and the power of people united at the grassroots to effect structural changes. We will see that these new social movements and grassroots-based organizations, with a transborder perspective, are one of the most promising developments of the current era. They recognize that the interests of the majority of people living in the Third World coincide with the interests of the majority of First World inhabitants. (more…)

Postwar U.S. Foreign Policy and the Third World: An Anthropological Perspective
Tsuda College: Thursday, 1:00-2:30
English 3 Seminar, 2 credits
Hitotsubashi University: Thursday, 10:40-12:10
English Oral Skills 3, 2 credits

Description: We will examine the postwar era of Pax Americana from the perspective of the Third World majority and discuss issues of racism and ethnocentrism, militarism and human rights, and development and modernization. We will look at specific examples of U.S. military interventions and support for military regimes in the Third World and relate those examples to Japan’s role in the postwar geo-political picture. We will reassess the notion of “Third World development” based on Western cultural and socio-political assumptions, and examine the associated environmental destruction and cultural disruptions, focusing on the U.S.-Japan-Southeast Asia nexus. (more…)