Survivor: a book review
Survivor: a book review Getting my hands on Survivor This past August I was able to secure several copies of Ziaur Rahman’s stunning memoir Survivor: My Life as A Rohingya Refugee. I had gotten to know Ziaur two years ago through numerous online conversations and was honored to be among the many who assisted him in the process of getting his story published. Holding the book in my hands for the first time felt like a dream coming true. As I began my fall semester, I shared with my sociology classes details of my summer travel to Bangladesh and what I had learned about the Rohingya. My most intense learning took place by meeting with many Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar in southern Bangladesh, not far from the Myanmar border. Though most of the Rohingya diaspora is located in Cox’s Bazar, those fleeing the genocidal Myanmar military now live all…
Read More
FollowSecond Edition of Confronting Toxic Othering available now!
Second Edition of Confronting Toxic Othering available now! The journey continues My journey understanding and taming the Hydra has been ongoing since I published the first edition in 2021. This new edition contains many chapters I have written over the last two years based on classroom experiences both at Elon University, in Bangladesh, and online with refugees from Myanmar, Somalia, and Syria. Several useful classroom exercises have been added and the final section of the book now deepens explanation of the basic tenets of Critical Hydra Theory. I will be using the book in all my classes for the remainder of the school year, making these classes fulfill all the requirements for Elon University’s Advancing Equity Requirement (AER). Overview of the Second Edition Confronting Toxic Othering embarks on an ambitious quest to interrogate the root causes of all global social and environmental problems. Drawing upon the myth of the Hydra,…
Read MoreCHT: A theoretical perspective for the 21st Century
CHT: A theoretical perspective for the 21st Century A new theory for a new century Being a 21st-century social scientist is a perhaps Sisyphean task; so much happens in such an unclear way, and trying to stay current with local, national, and international social and political news is akin to drinking from a firehose. Modern social scientists cannot ignore the fact that we live in a globalized, intricately, and infinitely interconnected social world made ever more seamless by increasingly ‘smart’ technologies that make national boundaries irrelevant. The increasing presence of artificial intelligence (AI) makes the future of humanity ever more complex and unpredictable. At their core, all critical theories begin with the assumption that power and privilege asymmetries are at the root of most global social problems. Critical Hydra Theory (CHT) offers an explicitly pan-disciplinary and globally applicable approach capable of addressing 21st-century questions about the myriad social and, importantly,…
Read MoreExploring the canon inspiring Critical Hydra Theory
“It would be advisable to think of progress in the crudest, most basic terms: that no one should go hungry anymore, that there should be no more torture, no more Auschwitz [or Gaza or Cox’s Bazar]. Only then will the idea of progress be free from lies.” -Theodor Adorno Critical theory, Critical Race Theory, and Critical Hydra Theory Though I could not have described it as such, I began my journey confronting toxic othering many decades ago0. It was the mid 1970’s in a graduate level sociological theory course when I was first exposed to critical theory. Our professor was passionate about sociologists Theodore Adorno and Antonio Gramsci, both associated with the Institute for Social Research at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, founded in the early 1920’s. I too was attracted to these sociologists and the Frankfort School because I found reinforcement for my urge to understand and address…
Read MoreOpen letter to Women’s Peace Cafe attendees, Dhaka, Bangladesh 8 August 2023
Open letter to Women’s Peace Cafe attendees, Dhaka, Bangladesh 8 August 2023 Esteemed students, staff, faculty, and friends, I have very pleasant and vivid memories of our short time together at the Women’s Peace Café last week. I found your attentiveness extraordinary, your questions on point and challenging, and your hospitality warming. Here is the article in The Business Standard reviewing our event. During our conversation I believe several points I made resonated with many of you and also I gave you a couple assignments or challenges. Below I review and extend some of my main points. Additionally, you are welcome to read this which I wrote when I was in Cox’s Bazar at a three day workshop focusing on power, justice, and how to use the Hydra model to better understand global issues. Listen to those who are marginalized One of the first challenges I gave you was creating…
Read MoreThoughts on the denormalization of marginalization
[This was written the morning after I had been honored to participate in a certificate awarding ceremony hosted by the Centre for Peace and Justice at the home offices of their Refugee Studies Unit located 1km from the Ukhiya Rohingya refugee camps south of Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. This is a partial draft of what I plan to say to the Women’s Peace Cafe attendees in a couple days from now in Dhaka.] Thoughts on the denormalization of marginalization I want to use an example to facilitate our understanding of the denormalization of marginalization in action, and that example is on the logo behind me, the Centre for Peace and Justice (CPJ), and the way that this organization is functioning. Every day CPJ is a perfect example of allyship1. Not only is it a great example of organizational allyship, every individual within the organization functions as a positive ally. What…
Read MoreImagining life before the Hydra: The Nole Exercise
“The better angel is a man right fair…” -William Shakespeare, Sonnet 144 (1599) “So do the shadows of our own desires stand between us and our better angels, and thus their brightness is eclipsed”. -Charles Dickens in Barnaby Rudge, 1841 Imagining life before the Hydra: The Nole1 Exercise A time before the Hydra? In a previous blog post [chapter] I sketch out a history of the eight privileging forces represented by the heads of the Hydra. Based on anthropological and archeological evidence, I argue that if one goes back in human history far enough, back to pre-agricultural times, the Hydra is non existent and social life is largely characterized by a marked lack of socially structured inequalities. All the privileging forces are muted by an egalitarian ethos necessary for the survival of the group. Hunting and gathering life is not perfect, but all evidence indicates that beyond age and…
Read MoreAn overview of colonialism/paternalism
DRAFT An overview of colonialism/paternalism A synergy of privileging forces The essay below will discuss the colonialism/paternalism head of the Hydra and argue how classism and racism are linked to colonialism/paternalism. Entire books have been written about the legacies of colonialism, so what appears below is only a primer. This essay (chapter) extends and reinforces the previous post (chapter) “Beginning a genealogy of privileging forces: racism, classism, and colonialism/paternalism”. Virtually every global social problem is tied at least indirectly to the many legacies of colonialism. We do not live in a postcolonial era (in the same way that the post-racial era is a myth). Until all formerly colonized peoples are free of the effects of colonialism, we still live in the colonial era despite the practice itself not occurring anymore, at least in its most overt forms. Can there be a reversal of the negative impacts of colonialism? That remains…
Read MoreElon University students consider Critical Hydra Theory
Elon University students consider Critical Hydra Theory (CHT) Introducing CHT in a 100 minute class Recently I presented the concept of Critical Hydra Theory to 4 classes of Elon University students. Included were three sections of our first year seminar The Global Experience taught by my colleague Dr. Karen Wirth and the fourth my Introduction to Sociology class. The vast majority of these students are first year’s and none had heard of CHT before this class. Dr. Wirth and I had our students write an essay about what they took away from the session. Below are the five best submissions. Each of these exceptional students will have a modest donation made on their behalf to a humanitarian cause of their choosing. Critical Hydra Theory By Emma Hash On a globe scale, true equality is not something that we have obtained since the beginning of agriculture. Once there was…
Read MoreBasic tenets of Critical Hydra Theory
[Updated 8-4-23] ‘…the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world…’ -from the first sentence of the Preamble to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights Critical Hydra Theory ‘Critical Hydra Theory’ (CHT) is similar to but broadly expands on ‘Critical Race Theory’ (CRT). It is more comprehensive, interrogating not just race and ethnicity but all of the privileging forces which have historically served to marginalize the majority of humans, both past and present. Perhaps the biggest difference is that CHT includes anthropocentrism, an ‘othering’ of non-human life on our Earth. CHT has a demonstratively global perspective and seeks to provide a framework of analysis interrogating all social forces which have contributed to systemic marginalization of non-privileged status groups throughout history. Like Critical Race Theory, this new perspective has a…
Read More