Why I love social media

Other than a smattering of AIM and email throughout high school, I dropped headfirst into social media when I started college in 2005. Online blogs, Facebook, and the like helped me keep in touch with new and old friends.

When I started blogging about academic and environmental issues in 2008, I started following other blogs related to my interests. When I went to Bangladesh (also in 2008), I got more into blogging and found myself closely following several development-related blogs.

At some point I got on the Google Reader* and Twitter bandwagons, which are both more or less a constant stream of information. I miss Google Reader's more social functions (sharing posts and commenting on what others' posted), and I haven't really found an adequate replacement. Of course, no one can ever replace Arijit as my number one social and environmental justice-related news source. Arijit, as some of you know, was a huge proponent of social media and I miss him dearly for this and other reasons.

I feel that I've only recently begun to utilize Twitter as a networking tool in a more professional sense. The fun thing about Twitter is that you can tweet anyone, from professors to the secretary of state, and hope for a response. It's led to some interesting research connections for me, and it gives a more personal spin on professional networking! Twitter also functions as a mini newsfeed, although it can be overwhelming at times (the other night it was full of tweets on drones... thanks FutureTense).

But back to blogs! Although about half the blogs I follow are "fluff" related to recipes and whatnot, the other half are mostly academic blogs. Keeping up my my blog roll over the past few years has helped me tremendously with four main points:

1) I made my institutional contact with Bioversity International through a blog written by my supervisor in India. Remembering the pain I went through to find a research contact in India, I couldn't believe that Bioversity was working on my topic of interest and was willing to work with me. You never know what kind of opportunities might show up!

2) Keeping up with current news and publications regarding agricultural adaptation to climate change. Blogs are a million times faster than academic journals, so often you'll see research that's in progress. It helps me know who's working with who (in academia and out), what are the current paradigms, and even to download papers and news articles directly related to my research. Although I rely on a variety of blogs for this, the most info-packed and frequently updated is the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog.

3) Linking with people outside my field and getting a broader scope of academia. I follow a few blogs in agricultural economics, geography, and political science because although I'm a mostly qualitative researchers, these are the fields that often look at questions of development, climate change, and agriculture. It has broadened my horizons to get another perspective on these topics as well as to learn some particulars of each discipline.

4) Professional advice. Reading blogs by people currently in academia or with policy experience gives me a better perspective of the potential careers I am facing. In particular I've been following the posts from Duck of Minerva on the academic-policy nexus, general grad student advice from GradHacker, and lately this great blog on "alt-ac" careers, From PhD to life.

*In case you're wondering, I switched from Reader to Feedly and I'm liking it so far!

Delhi and harassment

I officially have less than 10 weeks left in Delhi. Things are not getting any easier, but at least they are not getting any harder, except for the heat. Although I still often think of how nice it would be to leave, every day that I can focus on my research I think about how excited I am to be studying this, and of course the great opportunity it is to have a Boren Fellowship.

It still doesn't make things easier. Delhi is an extremely tough place to live as a white woman, by myself (i.e. doing most things on my own, without a male to accompany me), and without a car. I wish I had known this before I came here; I somehow assumed that my 3-month experience in Dhaka would adequately prepare me for 6 months in another South Asian capitol city. I have all the advantages of being semi-fluent in the local language, living in a better part of town (though not in a gated neighborhood), and being fairly familiar with Indian social/cultural norms. But it is still hard.

Let me precede any further comments about being a white woman in Delhi to say that I'm not making any ridiculous charges of "reverse discrimination," but simply to say that my fair skin makes people treat me differently and it reinforces my feeling of foreignness and as an outsider. On a further race related note, discrimination against African immigrants is actually a big problem here too.

The hardest part of being here, by far, is feeling like I'm some sort of target for harassment. I know that all travelers to India have different experiences, but I am realizing that this feeling is not unique, and is perhaps something worth speaking out about. Coming across this blog today, I felt relief that someone else is speaking out about this. The author writes, "India has a sexual harassment problem. Big time. In particular lack of respect towards white female foreigners." From my experience in Bangladesh, I am used to the staring, I am used to the occasional over-eager man. But I have never felt like this before; having to be constantly on-guard for my own safety and facing almost-daily discomfort. The author more eloquently put into words much of what I am feeling. Fortunately, most of the discomforts that I face are relatively harmless; unwanted comments, lots of staring, street harassment (i.e. catcalls/following while I'm walking in my neighborhood), and feeling nervous in a crowd (such as when I take the metro). Although I agree with Erin (author of the Traveling while Female blog) and others that as a foreign women, I am less likely to experience violent assault, I shouldn't discount the impact of these everyday harassments. I feel very psychologically affected by it, and I'm not someone who would ever consider myself "weak" or "fearful."

I've heard from many people that Delhi is the worst, especially for foreign women, and that North India in general is a more hostile environment towards women. Since my only experience are in Delhi and North India, I can't really compare it. I've generally experienced much more harassment in Delhi, when I'm by myself, than when I was travelling with Indians. When Tim came to India we had a good time in Rajasthan but I faced a lewd/possibly malevolent (until I yelled at him in Hindi) rickshaw-wallah in Agra. My experiences in Delhi range from the most common comments from pedestrians/people in cars/motorcycles/balconies, to as I said, occasional "followers," to the recent incident of a man trying to pull me closer to him to hug me (my response). What made me the most uneasy were the days leading up to Holi where I had several water balloons thrown at me. While I realize that is normal for the Holi celebrations, clearly I was just walking and not celebrating Holi (nor was anyone in my vicinity; literally it happened once on an empty street), and at one point while I ran from my front door to a cab, a water balloon hit the roof of the cab. I stayed inside the next 2 days.

Now I am taking things one day at a time and trying to celebrate the positives, like becoming more fluent in Hindi, accomplishing my research goals, and meeting interesting people. It is still a daily struggle (which I often lose) to not get caught up in the horrifying media. I'd like to write more about my experience once I'm back, right now I'm just processing things. Here are some articles that contribute to a more productive and nuanced conversation around India and the "problem" it has with women:

Traveling while Female (blog)

Sharing The Urban: Why we need to construct broad responses to violence

Attributing Rapes To ‘Unique’ Indian Culture Reeks Of Bias – OpEd

Is environmentalism women's work?

Ellen Swallow Richards

In an Earth Day-themed op-ed, historian Nancy Unger writes for CNN a piece titled "When helping Earth was women's work." As a topic of interest for both academic interest, I had high expectations for an insightful piece connecting environmental history with contemporary debates. But after a first and subsequent reads, her point is lost and surprised at the lack of clarity in an article aimed at the public. I'd like to propose an alternative narrative about women's involvement in Progressive Era environmental and conservation movements and what it means for today's environmental science and politics.

Although today's most prominent climate change advocates are politically liberal men, women played an important role in the development modern environmental protection in America. At a time when the conservation and preservation of America's parks and wilderness was deemed a man's job due to the "frailty" of women, women became active in urban sanitation and environmental health projects. We now call this period the Progressive Era, the 1880s to 1920s, when a new set of social and scientific practices drastically changed America's urban landscapes for the improvement of human health.

Because I study the history of science, an important Progressive Era scientist was Ellen Swallow Richards (1842­­—1911), the first woman to attend MIT in 1871. Richards was a pragmatic-minded scientist, using science to improve public health issues from sanitation, nutrition, and the home and urban environment. This is a very different kind of "environmentalism" than we might ascribe to Teddy Roosevelt and Henry David Thoreau. Richards sharply focused on improving household efficiency and environmental sanitation, or in her words, “the larger household, the city” (Stage, 1997:30). Richards, however, is best known for founding the field of Home Economics.

Richards was also possibly the first scientist to introduce the word "ecology" into the American scientific discourse. She defined "Oekology" as “the science of teaching people how to live” safely in their environment, and specifically the built environment (Clarke, 1973:117). For most of her life she used science to advocate new ways of examine the environment and society, and to empower women as guardians of home health and practitioners of efficiency. Richards saw home efficiency as a way of bringing women out of their supposed frail health, as well as preventing the transmission of newly-discovered bacterial diseases. Among Richards' great scientific legacy include her training of Boston's first team of sanitary engineers and laying the groundwork for public health reform, as well as leading Boston's Pure Food Movement, nation's first laws in this area.

Her contemporary urban reformers of Richards included Jane Addams and Alice Hamilton, part of the Settlement House Movement for urban sanitation and workers’ rights. The echoes of Ellen Swallow Richards’ work can be seen in modern environmental leaders, such as Rachel Carson, Lois Gibbs, Majora Carter, Peggy Shephard, and Grace Lee Boggs. But despite Richards’ challenges as a woman scientist in a very male-dominate academy, she was no feminist, and would hardly describe protecting the environment as "women's work." Rather than falling back on stereotypes of Mother Earth, we should learn from Richards' pragmatic view of human and environmental health. While Richards was a Progressive Era reformer, she wasn’t a radical and was determined to improve human and environmental conditions through very practical means. Today's environmental leaders could learn from Richards' dedication to working within the system of existing societal values of efficiency, self-reliance, and protection of the home and urban environments.

Unfortunately, Unger's point about transcending partisan politics for environmental protection is lost in what many might view as a feminist view that essentially positions women as environmental protectors. I'm not sure if this was her point, but my argument here is that women do have a great legacy of environmental protection, and in particular we should consider the contributions of women like Ellen Swallow Richards to improving the public health of a great city like Boston. Richards wasn't a conservative and wasn't a radical, but she channeled her ideals into the pragmatic fields of sanitation science, nutrition, and home economics. Perhaps instead of arguing over climate models today, we could find a similar way of addressing our country's energy future and creating a new vision of sustainability.

Works cited:

Clarke, Robert, 1973. Ellen Swallow: The Woman Who Founded Ecology. Chicago: Follett Publishing Company.

Stage, Sarah, 1997. Ellen Richards and the Social Significance of the Home Economics Movement. In Rethinking Home Economics: Women and the History of a Profession. Sarah Stage and Virginia Vincenti, eds. Pp. 17-33. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Further reading:

Cravens, Hamilton, 1990. Establishing the Science of Nutrition at the USDA: Ellen Swallow Richards and Her Allies. Agricultural History 64(2):122-133.

Hunt, Caroline, 1918 [reprint]. The Life of Ellen H. Richards. Boston: Whitcomb & Barrows.

Hynes, H. Patricia, 1985. Ellen Swallow, Lois Gibbs, and Rachel Carson: Catalysts of the American Environmental Movement. Women’s Studies Int. Forum 8(4):291-298.

Melosi, Martin, 2008. The Sanitary City: Environmental Sciences in Urban America from Colonial Times to Present: Abridged Edition. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Mitman, Gregg, 2005. In Search of Health: Landscape and Disease in American Environmental History. Environmental History 10(2):184-210.

Rossiter, Margaret, 1982. Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins.

Taylor, Dorceta, 2002. Race, Class, Gender, and American Environmentalism. United States Department of Agriculture.

Great fieldwork experiences, not so great times in Delhi

Over the past few months I've been travelling on and off for my fieldwork, on three different 1-week trips to agricultural research sites in north India. I may take one more trip, and also do some interviews here in Delhi, but basically my interviews have reached a "saturation point" where I am not learning much new information. I feel satisfied with that front of my research, and I was very surprised by how easy my fieldwork went.

Unfortunately, for however easy my fieldwork was, life in Delhi is inversely difficult. It has gotten to the point where several days ago I thought I would leave India. But, after making that decision, I've realized that I do want to stick out the rest of my 12 weeks here. Much of my reason for wanting to leave is not feeling safe here. I feel that I'm not unjustified in saying that if I let down my guard in Delhi, there are bad things that could happen. And it's exhausting, being "on guard" all of the time and being told things like, "don't trust any men" and "you will get groped at some point." It's extremely frustrating, but I'm not going to let fear suppress my goals. Delhi sucks and I want to go home, but I can still accomplish some things here as well as see out the rest of my Hindi classes required for my fellowship.

Sometimes it's difficult for me to tell whether my fears are warranted or not. The Indian news cycle is very sensational and literally every day you can find something on the front page about rape. After two recent attacks on foreign women, I have almost constantly worried that something might happen to me. Is Delhi safe for women? Is India safe? Certainly not, but neither is any other city or country. Delhi is rough, but I am taking every precaution (except carrying pepper spray) such as not going out at night. And after a collective 6 months of experience in South Asia, I am more adapted to the local culture and have attuned my senses to know when my instincts are sending up red flags. The hard part is when those red flags sometimes go up and the situation is very ambigious; whether someone following me is just curious or whether I should worry; whether this crowded metro will result in wandering hands or whether it will be OK. One of the comments in this post on harassment at field sites reads exactly how I feel:

And self-protection takes so much mental energy – mental energy that I would normally have used to think about data and ideas. I was back in the US over a year before, one day, the veil lifted from my eyes and I realized that I did not need to constantly protect myself anymore.

Well, I hope it doesn't take me a year to readjust, but it's constantly emotionally and physically draining to be here. So as part of my decision to stay here, I have also decided that I need to take way better care of myself. For the past 3 months I've viewed myself as a data-collecting machine-- sure, I got a pedicure here and there-- but I didn't really take time to slow down, make friends, or get to know places where I can relax in the city. While I'm proud of what I have accomplished thus far, I need to seriously slow my roll and as I said in my last post, "Treat Yo Self." My research is at a point where I can do this, although I do have a few more goals to accomplish.

To give India some credit, the number of people helping me has by far exceeding the number of people that I suspect have wanted to con or harass me. During my visits to my fieldsites I have felt very safe, usually because someone will take on the role of my "father figure" (although it was nice, at my last field site, to have a woman scientist as my local host!). When I was in Haryana the two scientist who were my hosts said I was like a daughter to them, and this is why they were extremely vigilant about my safety. I also had great experiences at the guesthouses where I stayed. Knowing some Hindi, I could communicate with the kitchenstaff/managers who always took care that I was well fed. Feeling protected and looked out for by them made me really glad I could speak Hindi to express my appreciation!

In cute news today, puppies + baby cuddle.