Class 3 A historical approaches to contemporary problems. Poverty, Genocide, and the Environment.

1)As a democratic society we have a responsibility to use our knowledge to support others not increase our own position. We are interdedendent and are only as strong as our weakest link. Vulnerability is a risk to us all. Poor economic conditions and environmental risk makes for potential conflict with dire consequences for human life and costs.

Both texts are written for an educated, upper income, western audience. Appeal to economics.

Both writers are trying to create an inscription of your past as a species. All social scientists eliminated nature from their work. Nature was thought of as a constant renewing neutral. Built on goods exchange (reciprocity), then money and economy. Now need to represent earth as part of our thought.

How do people deal with local knowledge? Judgment needs to rise from the surface not from the sky. People at the bottom have to have agency but the ones in power have to create opportunity for that agency.

Must look at what prevents that opportunity and enact change in policy to create the conditions. How do you structure circumstances?

Research in statistical models is severely limiting. Individuals who act are the agents of change.

2) I think about these ideas in relationship to my participation in the educational equity symposiums at TC every year. How to eliminate the achievement gap by imporving the opportunities and involving the most important local decision makers.