What Shall We Make of This?

This is admittedly a bit late in coming, but this project like all others should and must evolve over time. I've settled in thoroughly in Amman at this point. As we go forward I think you'd like to know some basics about my daily life, then I can build on that with stories about interesting encounters, travel, or thought provoking ideas. In addition to this kind of narrative I will frequently write brief papers examining some facet of economics, development, or international relations (anything that takes my fancy really). I may link to these on the blog or post them directly.

Above all, I would like to hear from you what questions you may have. Please post comments on the blog, email me, or get in contact through Facebook. Share this blog with anyone you want to. Tell me what you want to hear and let me know if I've lost my way. This project's value comes from both sides, the writer and the readers. We'll all get more out of it if there is dialog rather than a droning monologue.

Until now, I've mostly written narratives of events and weekends. I can imagine this gets rather old, you may glean some details of daily life, but its wrapped up in how I liked the food or what the rocks at Petra looked like. I've recently started reading Live from Jordan, a fascinating example of what correspondence from Amman can be. Written by a grad student around the start of the Iraq war, Benjamin Orbach does a great job of tying daily tales into larger issues. I'd love to imitate him to some extent, but I'd also like to share a more scholarly look at the topics here I find so fascinating. For now, I'll paint an outline of my days and weeks, so we're all on relatively the same page.

I live on roughly 2 Jordanian Dinars a day. The Dinar is pegged to the US Dollar at .7 JD to 1 USD. I'll write more about this in the future, but for now I'm just spelling out how things feel on the ground. I eat breakfast with Muna and Samira most mornings at around 7:00. I'm usually out the door by 8:00. I've figured out the bus and will tell you all about it, suffice to say that I now spend JD.50 per day rather than up to JD4 for taxis both ways.

I eat lunch at the university cafeteria. A still daily struggle to articulate my veganism typically results in a bowl of hummus, a small salad, and a large bowl of some vegetable soup for under JD1. I bring a whole wheat pita and a banana or apple from home. I have three to four hours of class a day and return home by 7:30 at the latest. Dinner follows a particularly popular Turkish soap at around 8:00. Then its study, surf, or read until bedtime between 9:30 and 11:00.

I'm really glad to be able not only to record my thoughts and feelings during this exciting time but to get to share them with all of you as well. I hope this blog, my work with RTW and inner-city students, and private journals will help me capture, digest, and relate the impact of things that happen to me, the city I now call home, and the region as a whole. Thank you very much for joining me in this conversation.

I Find Myself on a British Isle

Books don't work the same way in Jordan. Intellectual property rights have been a moving issue for me over the past few years. I've evolved from a juvenile profligate user of bit-torrents, to a model of minimal long-term possession, and now a profound respect for the need to protect and reward creators of ideas. This transformation took place as I matured from a very narrowly focused consumer of content to a voracious reader with a much broader sense of the media and cultural environment.

I imagine most of you have heard of piracy in China where DVDs and CDs go for the price of a disc plus fifty cents. I knew these stories and others. I followed controversy and combat between producers, publishers, and media magnates over combating the scourge of piracy. I still believe that the media environment must evolve dramatically in a world where knowledge is essentially anywhere, anytime, anyhow, but I have been stunned by the lack of respect for all types of intellectual production that I find in Jordan.

Piracy in America is a private and illicit activity taking place before the screens of a hundred million savvy technophiles. Here it is brazen, universal, and tragic. Everywhere are stores, vans, and stalls offering the latest films (Avatar, It's Complicated, etc.), software, and music. Beyond this, the bookstores surrounding the university function largely as copy centers, selling cheaply bound packets replacing actual textbooks.

The option to buy my international relations textbook fro JD10 was distasteful to me on a number of levels. I resolved to obtain my academic literature by other means. This necessarily drove me on a frustrating quest to understand the public lending library of Amman. Websites throughout the region are largely incomplete, in Arabic only, and laced with dead links and broken promises. 

I ultimately settled on a set of international scholarly institutions near the university: The American Center of Oriental Research (ACOR) and the Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL). Both are primarily focused on archeology, supported by foundations and partnerships, host students and fellows in hostels, and have free reference libraries with wireless Internet. With my sights set on The Middle East in International Relations by Fred Halliday I headed u the hill to CBRL where the library was open just that crucial bit later.

Several hundred feet higher I found myself outside a walled compound with military police protection nestled amongst upscale condos and apartments along streets with the occasional Porsche and Jaguar leaving an otherwise peaceful atmosphere rare in Amman. I buzzed my way in and was greeted by the blatantly obvious and yet still surprising, a charming and rather worn British woman who gave me a brief tour of the library and office before imploring me to return the following morning when they were open.

This morning I made CBRL my first stop off the bus. After a brief hike up I had been issued with a library card and was nestled in a corner of the otherwise empty library reading about the different theories of international relations and their specific failings when confronting the complexities of the Middle East. An experience I look forward eagerly to repeating.