My goal for this project is to seek out at least one blog in a language I can understand (probably English - or possibly a language Google does a decent job of translating) in each country or territory in the world. Language is obviously an immense challenge. I wish I spoke/read every language on earth. For languages I can read, my French is O.K., my Spanish is pretty awful, and my Tamil is slow.
As for blog/page organization, I have created a "By Region" listing tab, which lists every country and territory in the world (utilizing the lists from Wikipedia and my own geography from middle school). I will also tag each blog/link with Country, Region, Language, and subjects/topics. In addition, I was trying to figure out how to tag something to do with the perspective of the writer, and I decided to go with the tags: "Emic" and "Etic". These terms come from anthropology, and the concept of the insider or outsider perspective. But the concept is maybe more nuanced than just insider versus outsider. It encompasses the idea of identity, and self-identification, as well as cultural frames of reference. Emic is the perspective of one writing or talking about their own culture, and about a place or people they identify with. Etic is the perspective of an outsider, even a very knowledgeable outsider, but one who identifies as belonging to or coming from someplace else. A good example would be my own blog. Mostly I have written about my experiences in India. Although I love India, and I consider it my home at the moment, I have studied about it extensively in, but my perspective is still an etic one.
These are not perfect categories. There are no perfect categories. This isn't an attempt to categorize the world, to fit people or their ideas and writing into boxes. Tagging is a nice way to on the one hand categorize, but on the other hand allow overlap. A blog can be multi-regional, multi-cultural, and multi-lingual. It can be both emic and etic at the same time.
So here are the first three to go on my list. Getting one in every, or even most of the countries is going to be a slow process. In a way, I guess this is like my grown-up version of stamp collecting. A way to connect me to far-flung places I may never visit, to learn something about the people, culture, history, politics, that I might not otherwise learn.
Pass the Roti: Also known as "Pass the Roti on the Left Side, Beta!" is a blog with several contributors on many issues relating to South Asia, politics, and also diaspora. I know one of the bloggers personally, and the others by their posts. The blog is often insightful, and because it is a collaborative effort, it often sparks a fascinating discussion. (Tags: English, South Asia, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Emic, Etic, Politics)
Karachiwali: I just discovered this blog because a friend was recently profiled on it. It is the writings (some of which are based on paper publications) of Rumana Husain, a writer based in the city of Karachi, Pakistan. She writes beautifully on the people, history and richness of her city. (Tags: English, South Asia, Pakistan, Emic, People, History, Politics, Women)
Sepia Mutiny: Sepia Mutiny is another collaborative blog relating to many aspects of South Asia, and the South Asian diaspora on a wide range of subjects including religion, politics, economy, terrorism. It's really too long a list to try to fill out here, you should just check it out. It's also a lively discussion forum, and they occasionally have some live events.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
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Thursday, August 26, 2010
Why?
It might seem a bit pretentious to call a blog "Blog of Nations", so I guess I should explain why I've decided to start this thing. Actually I don't intend to post much content of my own, rather I want to have a location where I can store and share links to the best blogs around the world.
I was watching a TED talk by Ethan Zuckerman, called "Listening to Global Voices" and it really inspired me to think about the global media, and who is connected to whom, who listens to whom, etc. We have an extremely biased media, and frequently we don't try to hard to look for sources outside of that.
Ethan showed the image above, by Alisa Miller - from a previous TED talk: a Cartogram of American Television news over the period of a month.
What he had to say about it really rings true: "And you can see when you distort a map based on attention the world within American television news, it's basically reduced to this giant bloated U.S. and a couple of other countries which we've invaded. And that's basically what our media is about."
What Ethan Zuckerman has done - with some other folks - is to start Global Voices, - a program to get people blogging, and talking to each other all over the world.
This blog is an attempt to mirror some of that effort, and to contribute to it, by creating a place to talk about world media, and link to great blogs all over the world.
I was watching a TED talk by Ethan Zuckerman, called "Listening to Global Voices" and it really inspired me to think about the global media, and who is connected to whom, who listens to whom, etc. We have an extremely biased media, and frequently we don't try to hard to look for sources outside of that.
Ethan showed the image above, by Alisa Miller - from a previous TED talk: a Cartogram of American Television news over the period of a month.
What he had to say about it really rings true: "And you can see when you distort a map based on attention the world within American television news, it's basically reduced to this giant bloated U.S. and a couple of other countries which we've invaded. And that's basically what our media is about."
What Ethan Zuckerman has done - with some other folks - is to start Global Voices, - a program to get people blogging, and talking to each other all over the world.
This blog is an attempt to mirror some of that effort, and to contribute to it, by creating a place to talk about world media, and link to great blogs all over the world.
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