Posted 1 year, 6 months ago at around evening time by oso
When I travel to a foreign country I want to meet local people, taste local food, listen to local music, and read the local newspapers. When I meet people in another country from a different culture who speak a different language then – over time – I begin to understand what distinguishes us as well as what unites us in similarity.
One of my friends prefers to travel in a foreign country with fellow foreigners. It’s all part of the experience – sharing and comparing the exploration and discovery with fellow explorers and discoverers.
So he’ll schedule one- and two-day trips with fellow backpackers, and at night over beers back at the hostel he will tell me what they saw and learned. Admittedly, it is often more interesting than what I learned in my newspapers and erratic conversations in Pidgin English with random folk on the street and in cafes.
Neither way of traveling is more right or more righteous than the other, and he often learns more from foreign guides than I do talking to locals who haven’t given much thought about where their community fits in the larger world. Still, when it comes to understanding a foreign place, culture, issue, or community, I prefer to go to the source.
When Global Voices first began in June 2005 it was little more than a single blog with a single author – Paul Frankenstein – who published daily link-logs (like this one) to what bloggers around the world were writing about. A few weeks later I joined Paul in the daily “global blog roundup”, with a specific focus on the Latin American blogosphere. I was the first of what we would come to call “regional editors”. We now have 10 regional editors, 10 language editors, three subject editors, and a daily digest editor. We also have 130 active authors and even more active translators based all around the world:
But back in 2005 when we were still trying to set an editorial policy (not to mention a tone), a contentious discussion arose over whether or not we should be linking to posts and photographs by bloggers who were not from the country they were writing about. The discussion arose after Paul published a photograph of a Bhutanese child which was taken by a Western traveler and uploaded to Flickr. Rebecca objected. Global Voices was to be a site which amplified the analysis, opinion, and observations of local voices from around the non-Western world, she argued. It was not meant to amplify the writing and photography of Western travelers to those places.
It now surprises me that I disagreed with her. At the time there were no Bhutanese bloggers. (Today there are.) I argued that we should focus on content over who produced the content and I tried to complicate the issue by pointing out that we frequently linked to diaspora bloggers as well as immigrants to non-Western countries. (There was no issue, for example, when I linked to a Mexican blogger living in Argentina.)
Over the years Global Voices authors have pointed to plenty of bloggers who write about – but are not from – non-Western countries. Like Peace Corps volunteers and foreign correspondents. They tend to write for a Western audience or at least through a lens that a Western (and to some extent, international) audience can easily relate to.
Today David Evan Harris of Global Lives pointed me to Glimpse.org, a new blog platform sponsored by the National Geographic Society which, in the words of a press release, “features written stories, photography, insider tips, and blogs created by young Americans living overseas.” It is a pretty sexy website with headlines like “A Hipster’s Adventures in Swaziland” “My Chinese Girlfriend Really Wants to Come to America“, and “The Three Rules of Spanish Courtship (For American Women).”
Glimpse’s mission is to share stories from abroad that encourage readers to understand and care about other cultures, changing the way young Americans think about the overseas experience and
challenging them to explore the world. Supported in part by National Geographic Society, Glimpse looks beneath the surface of everyday life abroad by providing a forum where internationally minded youth can share their experiences and connect. 1
In other words, it provides a platform for Americans to learn about the rest of the world from other Americans. Which is great. I mean, there is never reason to complain about more information when we can so easily ignore it. But isn’t one of the most amazing qualities of the internet that – at least hypothetically – we can learn about other countries from their own countrymen and women? It takes a lot of work – translation, attention, and intention – but the possibilities are out there and many of us have now developed as many friendships outside of our country as within its borders.
It’s not that I’m against travel writing. Many of my friends and favorite wordsmiths are travel writers. In fact, I sometimes dabble in it myself. It’s just that these days, isn’t time that we stop talking about foreign places and people and start talking with them?
*This post will surely add “Onbehalfism” to my Feeling Lucky list. The term (I believe) was coined by Georgia.
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This is an interesting topic. I live and blog from and about Slovenia even though I am an American (of Ghanaian parentage). When I first met my partner (we were both working in New York), I asked him to tell me about Slovenia and he had NO idea what to say. He told me he had no real view of it since he’d lived here all of his life, so he gave me the email address of an American girl living here and she gave me a lot of great insight.
Now that I’ve lived here for a year and a half, I find that I too have a lot more to say about the place than my partner ever does. His days flow as they usually flow and he rarely takes time to explore new places here or observe his surroundings much. I think effective and interesting blogging from and about a location requires the ability to “stand away” from it a bit and give insightful observation from a privileged vantage, and that is something that seems to be much easier to do if you are always already on the outside/marginalised — like foreigners are.
Still thinking….
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You write as if the two views are mutually exclusive. Isn’t the ideal to get a sense of a place from both insiders and outsiders? Echoing Camille, you get a special sort of flavor of a place or culture when it’s observed through an outsider’s prism. It’s not a better or worse view, just different and oftentimes more insightful.
There’s also something to be said for leaving the place you’re from in order to get a better sense of it. Every time I travel I come back with a different perspective of “home,” and that, for me, is what I really value about traveling.
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Camille,
I completely agree. When you want a basic introduction to a country, it is often outsiders (especially outsiders from the same country) who are able to frame it in a way that makes sense. That’s what good travel writing does. But I bet that you’ve picked up more subtleties about Slovenian habits and culture from your partner and his family and friends than you could have ever understood from 100 Americans living there. Please don’t stop writing. I like your observations about life in Slovenia (not to mention Slovenians in Ghana). I also like seeing Slovenia through the eyes of a Peruvian. But I especially appreciate local bloggers like Pengovsky and the extra context he is able to provide. If only I understood Slovene.
CB,
What I meant to write is that the two are complementary. I’m learning more about South Africa right now from American Leonard Thompson than I ever have from any South African. But, although he is able to explain away the country’s unique qualities and idiosyncrasies, he can’t reveal and communicate them himself. For that you have to actually interact with South Africans.
I’m thinking back to our dinner with Kaeb and Shamita and company. Kaeb’s stories about Ethiopia didn’t really tell us much about Ethiopia at all and yet they were the kind of stories that show a glimpse of what books and travel writing never quite can.
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Oso
I think (at least in the case of South Africa, dunno about anywhere else) that when you live in a complex society, with the divisions along class and racial and language and religious and ethnic lines that we have, you’re never truly going to get a comprehensive sense of what “the South African” psyche is, no matter how many people you speak to.
Perhaps that’s why Leonard Thompson can give you the clear picture he does, becuase it is in the nature of academic writing to zoom out, and see the bigger picture; while us mere mortals scrabble around, mired in the issues. We live it daily, so sometimes we don’t see the wood for the trees. What a visitor sees as unique or idiosyncratic is actually just my daily life.
That said, though, I think one of the joys of living for an extended time in another country could be that there are things about your adopted country that never cease to make you smile. Living in Mexico , I loved that the joy I got from being able to buy most of my food on the street never dulled. I know tamales do not a national psyche make, but it did give my time there a measure of authenticity that I could never have found if I’d only lived in a walled ex-pat community, or read it in a book.
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Yeah, SA was a bad example – it just happens to be what I’m reading right now. I’m headed to Mexico soon and can’t wait for the street food and tamales!
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Agreed. I think complementarity is key–having both the micro and the macro gives you a better picture than either on their own. It just sounded to me like you were coming down in favor of one over the other. Glad you clarified.
This post dovetails nicely with a talk Pippa Norris gave at Berkman yesterday about the affect exposure to foreign news media has on populations. Not completely on the same topic, but still fascinating stuff:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/events/luncheon/2009/02/norris
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Nice post. In defense of quoting Peace Corps Volunteers, since I’m totally guilty of that…
I do believe that they are talking WITH people, at least in Morocco, which is my only first-hand experience with PCVs. The PCVs blogging from Morocco are, in fact, often the only person in their town with access to a computer, nevermind a blog. Sure, the Moroccan blogosphere is good-sized, but the vast majority of its bloggers are from Casa, or Rabat, or Marrakesh. You will not hear a Moroccan voice online from Ifrane d’Anti Atlas for years to come, unless someone takes Rising Voices to the Maghreb.
I do think, of course, that PCVs and other Western bloggers do need to think carefully about the picture they’re presenting. When I was blogging from Morocco (GV quoting me was how I learned of it, incidentally), I chose to make my blog a news report, rather than a personal one. I never felt comfortable discussing my friends, or my students, or my family. That said, if someone else does, more power to them.
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CB,
I’ll be honest, I am coming down in favor of conversation with people from other communities rather than conversation about them. I think that both are complementary and useful, but that it’s so much easier to talk about a foreign group than to engage them directly. I think that’s why so many Americans travel abroad and end up hanging out only in expat circles. It’s also true that many international students studying in the US only hang out with each other.
Jillian,
I’ve come to realize that the tone of this post must betray the point I was trying to make. I’m in favor of including links to peace corps blogs for the very reasons you point out. I’m not as insistent about it as when I debated the issue with Rmack years ago, but I still think it’s good to show inside and outside perspectives of a country (and to show rural areas where there are no other bloggers).