My reflection blog posts are now going to shift to this category because that is what I have been doing for the past few months! It was my first time being inside the fishbowl, and I had moments when I really wanted to speak, but I could not because of the flow of the discussion and also I was afraid if I was repeating people's points but changing it to my own words; which was not what I meant to do.
First of all, the question for the discussion: Are you wealthy?
I answered that I am not wealthy in the financial aspects. However, comparing to people within the Global Scholars Program, I might be more wealthy in terms of knowledge, experience, and perspective because I have a different background from everybody with a different perspective (I am not smart that is not the point). After finished answering the question above, I have came to a conclusion that in order to answer this question, we need the information of "what" field of wealth we are talking about and "who" we are comparing with. Therefore, I disagree with the idea that wealth can be determined by yourself, but we always need a comparison with others.
In terms of the article, I had a question when reading which was...
"The political economy inspired addition to the problem presented by the sovereignty dilemma highlights the difficulty of realizing concrete sovereignty when the wealth necessary for such expression is beyond the state's authority." (I am sorry I forgot to note the page number...) What does beyond the states's authority means in this context? I would appreciate if someone can answer this question by commenting on this post! :)
Reflecting the discussion overall, I felt it was more biased and relied on "wealthy" and the relationship between sovereignty and colonialism. If there were more time, we were definitely able to examine the effect of colonialism on developing the underdeveloped countries today. After the discussion, Shruthi mentioned about the "Past Dependency Theory", which made me think a lot. The current developing countries were colonized because of their resources, and if they were able to retain their resources, they could have developed much more as the western countries. International Development is definitely the field that I am interested for my future career, and I have realized that I was being too optimistic about this issue. Different theories and logics such as the parent-child theory which I do not agree, there are too many barriers for the developing countries in order to develop to catch up to the developed countries. Also, I agree with the logic of catch-22 in this article. When I first finished reading this article, I have realized that in order to have sovereignty, structural inequality and division of labor are necessary. Also, I cannot forget mentioning this, and y'all need to remember: A specific country in East Asia (which starts with a "C") does produce fake brand western products... but at least not in Japan...!!
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