Commitment, Community, Cooperation

Archive for 2011|Yearly archive page

2011 American Anthropological Association in Montreal

In Refugees & Immigration on December 13, 2011 at 10:09 am

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. Steve Pavey traveled to Montreal, QC, Canada to present a paper at the 110th annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association.  The paper presentation was part of a SUNTA (Society for Urban, National and Transnational/Global Anthropology) sponsored session entitled “’Coming Out’: Traces, Tidemarks and Legacies of LGBT Politics in the DREAM Movement.”  In this paper Steve continues to build theoretically on his ethnographic research and activism with undocumented youth for immigrant rights.

The Undocumented Immigrant Youth Movement:  Coming Out of the Shadows of Fear and Shame, Into the Light of their own Story and Community

This paper is based on activism with and ethnography of the dream activist movement.   It seeks to capture the diversity within this movement out the shadows, a movement searching for and claiming rights of “dreamers” to live, work and go to school in the United States.  The ethnographic description is built around the central themes of story and community while exploring theoretical questions of subjectivity, agency, and structural power.  The paper privileges the voice of the dreamers who are coming out of the shadows, declaring their status as, “Undocumented, Unafraid, and Unapologetic.”  Nationally, the focus of both research and media reports has been largely on the barriers and access to education, while often missing the broader socio-political context of the lived experiences of undocumented youth.  Our ongoing research projects hope to fill a gap by intentionally using the light of those who are stepping out of the shadows to illuminate the majority of undocumented youth who remain in the shadows.

http://www.aaanet.org/meetings/2011-AAA-Annual-Meeting.cfm

Book Published by Steve Pavey in the The American Society of Missiology Series

In Uncategorized on December 1, 2011 at 1:30 pm

In July 2011, Dr. Steve Pavey published a book based on his ethnographic research of Hong Kong theologies embodied within the political-economic context of the Hong Kong transition from British to Chinese power.

Theologies of Power and Crisis: Envisioning / Embodying Christianity in Hong Kong
By Stephen Pavey

Book Description

Theologies of Power and Crisis provides a case study for Eric Wolf’s research directive to better comprehend the interplay of cultural (webs of meaning) and material (webs of power) forms of social life. More specifically, the book demonstrates how theological discourse and practice engage with historical and material relations of power. It has been normative to speak of power in terms of political and economic processes and theology in terms of interpretive and symbolic experiences. This work breaks new ground by linking theological ideas with political-economic processes in terms of the structural relations of power.

Ethnographically, this research investigates the theological processes of Hong Kong Chinese Christians during a period of significant social change and crisis, precipitated by the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997. It shows how local Christians and Christian institutions mediated the significant regional, national, and transnational forces of political-economic change by connecting theological practice to the structural relations of power. The Christian response was a contested process closely intertwined with the broader contested processes of social organization.

This study develops an understanding of Christianity that goes beyond ecclesiastical hegemony to encompass struggles over human practice, meaning, and representation in relation to the changing political-economic context. These findings implicate religious ideas and practice as significant to an understanding of social inequalities and powerlessness by connecting ideologies to material conditions. Christian ideas may be used to legitimize an oppressive social order or they may be used to liberate those who are oppressed. Issues related to the policies and practice of development should take seriously the role of religious beliefs and practices.

Endorsements & Review

“I was drawn to anthropology in the early 1980s through the work of such cutting-edge anthropologists/missiologists as Charles Kraft, Jacob Loewen, Charles Tabor, Alan Tippett, and Ralph Winter. While obviously influenced by these early innovators, Stephen Pavey is part of a new era of younger missiologically informed anthropologists. His ethnographic study of the church in Hong Kong is both anthropologically sound and missiologically important, and is a great addition to the small yet growing literature on the anthropology of Christianity.”

-Steven Ybarrola
Professor of Cultural Anthropology
Asbury Theological Seminary

“With Theologies of Power and Crisis Pavey successfully extends anthropological analysis to new realms as he contributes to our understanding of Christian Asia. He demonstrates the intellectual value of ethnography in our quest to understand the world around us. It is an excellent example of anthropology engaged in the world. Perhaps this work will teach and influence those involved with cross-cultural practices in a variety of settings.”

-from the afterword by John van Willigen
Professor Emeritus of Anthropology
University of Kentucky

Learn more or purchase at:

https://wipfandstock.com/store/Theologies_of_Power_and_Crisis_Envisioning__Embodying_Christianity_in_Hong_Kong

http://www.amazon.com/

Undocumented & Unafraid Youth Visit Historic Montgomery, Alabama to Fight for their Human Dignity!

In Refugees & Immigration on November 15, 2011 at 10:43 am

This video created by Felipe Vargas uses the photography of Steve Pavey to capture a window into the growing immigrant rights movement for justice.

When:  November 15, 2011

Who: Immigrant Youth Justice League, The Alabama Youth Collective and the National Immigrant Youth Alliance

Where: Alabama State Legislature, 11 South Union Street, Montgomery, Ala. 36130

What: 15 undocumented immigrants, 2 undercover, 13 public


Facilitating School for Conversion at Koinonia Partners

In Uncategorized on November 6, 2011 at 1:08 pm

Last November Koinonia Partners hosted its sixth School for Conversion, a weekend course centered on Christianity as a way of life, based on radical discipleship and community. This SFC was facilitated by Steve Pavey of Communality in Lexington, Kentucky, and also featured a session led by Anton Flores of Alterna in La Grange, Georgia. Both Steve and Anton wove the theme of immigration and the need for hospitality to and solidarity with migrants into the discussion of following Jesus.  Not only did the participants gain inspiration, but they also gave us life with joy and eagerness to pursue the Kingdom in our communities. You can join this conversation by reading School(s) for Conversion: 12 Marks of a New Monasticism edited by our friends at Rutba House.

Learn more at:

http://www.newmonasticism.org/index.php

http://www.koinoniapartners.org/index.html

“Out of the Shadows and Into the Light” – Article Published in PRISM Magazine

In Uncategorized on November 1, 2011 at 1:51 pm

Dr. Steve Pavey published a theological reflection on the immigrant youth right’s movement in the May/June 2011 issue of ESA’s PRISM magazine.  The article, “Out of the Shadows and Into the Light,” begins with a question asked by Howard Thurman in 1948:

What do the teachings of Jesus have to say “to those who stand with their backs against the wall?” asked Howard Thurman when addressing the African American experience of racism and violence of the 1940s. His answer and challenge, in his Jesus and the Disinherited, shaped the civil rights movement. The good news revealed in the teachings and life of Jesus is, wrote Thurman, “that fear, deception, and hatred, the three hounds of hell that track the trail of the disinherited, need have no dominion over them.” Jesus reveals the power of love, for self and others, that enables us to overcome relations of inequality that are perpetuated by fear, deception, and hate.

Fast forward 60 years to today’s growing nativism, xenophobia, and violence surrounding the presence of immigrants in the United States, and Thurman’s analysis of the lives of the disinherited is equally compelling here and now to those who have their backs against the wall. The experience of inequality and violence among immigrants is exacerbated for the 11.8 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. Nearly 20 years ago anthropologist Leo Chavez described the “shadowed lives” of undocumented immigrants. With the growing public antipathy and the media construction of the “Latino threat,” living in the shadows remains an apt description and continues to be marked by the same fears and survival techniques of deception described by Thurman.

Steve ends the article with this missiological challenge:

“For us, the privileged and powerful, a radical conversion will mean discerning Jesus in the disinherited undocumented immigrants in our midst. We must repent of our anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy, seek a conversion of the broken immigration system that persecutes the immigrant community (in whom Jesus himself dwells), and begin to walk with our marginalized brothers and sisters, joining them in the light–– even as they experience a conversion from fear to freedom.”

2011 PRISM – May.June.2011

http://www.evangelicalsforsocialaction.org/page.aspx?pid=310

Participatory Action Research Project with Latino/a Youth in Kentucky

In Community, Culture, Refugees & Immigration, Uncategorized on October 1, 2011 at 1:33 pm

In partnership with the Bluegrass Community and Technical College & the University of Kentucky, Dr. Steve Pavey facilitated a week long participatory action research project at the LLCEC (Latino Leadership College Experience Camp).  The youth called their project,  “Walk a Mile in Our Chanclas:  Nuestra Lucha as Undocumented Students in Kentucky.”  Dr. Pavey hopes this pilot project will be the seed that grows into a regular program he is calling the Artivism Research Collective.

A.R.C. – Artivism Research Collective

Artist + Activist + Researcher = Bending Towards Justice

 “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
-  Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The artivist (artist +activist) uses her artistic talents to fight and struggle against injustice and oppression—by any medium necessary.  The artivist merges commitment to freedom and justice with the pen, the lens, the brush, the voice, the body, and the imagination.  The artivist knows that to make an observation is to have an obligation.”
-  M.K. Asante, Jr. (Its Bigger than Hip Hop)

“The silenced are not just incidental to the curiosity of the researcher but are the masters of inquiry into the underlying causes of the events in their world. In this context research becomes a means of moving them beyond silence into a quest to proclaim the world.”
-  Paulo Freire 

Creative Exchange

In Refugees & Immigration on September 23, 2011 at 12:28 pm

Building Community with Refugees through the Arts

 Creative Exchange aims:

To offer an opportunity for refugees to share artistic expressions of their experiences and feelings.

  • To create a supportive community for refugee youth.
  • To use the arts to help them tell their stories of conflict and resettlement.
  • To use these artistic products to educate the public about the effects of conflict and resettlement on young people.
  • To offer the broader Lexington community opportunities to discover more about the many assets refugees bring with them.

Partners

Kentucky Refugee Ministries; EnterChange Clinical Counseling; Fayette County Schools

Therapeutic Art Project

Since 1990, Kentucky Refugee Ministries (KRM) has placed over 5,300 political refugees in various Kentucky communities. In 2009, the Lexington office of KRM settled 230 refugees in the Lexington area. With the current political instability in many countries, there is every reason to believe the number of refugees arriving in Lexington will not decrease any time soon.

Before coming to live in Lexington, most refugees have experienced horrific trauma and are still dealing with the aftermath. Upon arrival, they are still in survival mode, scrambling to secure housing, food, clothing, employment, etc.

When fleeing the country in which they were persecuted, refugees also left behind the only social, emotional, and cultural support they have ever known. And because most do not know English, there is no means of reaching out for support here in their new country. Through translators, gesturing, and intermittent concrete grasps of American English, refugees eventually make known their most basic survival needs.

However, there are limited means by which to express the less concrete thoughts of their emotional trauma.  There are limited ways of reaching out for help for dealing with the piercing ache of seeing their fathers and brothers gunned down before their very eyes. No second-hand translation which can adequately convey the overwhelming sense of terror/rage/helplessness that refuses to leave after watching their mothers and daughters raped. No elementary word in a bilingual dictionary to express the constant longing for the time before the trouble began, for a home which does not exist anymore, for people who are not alive anymore.

There is an incredible need for refugees in Lexington to express their past and present experiences of displacement, conflict, and trauma through a non-threatening, therapeutic outlet. Artistic expression provides such an outlet. Helping refugees express themselves through artistic media would not only provide a means of conveying/coping with their traumatic experiences, it would also build a bridge of communication between refugees and their new community, allowing them to forge a new means of social and emotional support.

A picture really is worth a thousand words.  Artistic expression allows the refugees to immediately communicate, to themselves and to their new community, the question of “Who I Am.” The high level of communication and cultural understanding required to communicate this verbally normally takes years to master, bypassing the crucial bonding time with the new community and creating a situation in which the refugees live among-but-separately from their new community.

Debt: The Movie

In Economics on September 22, 2011 at 2:50 pm

 

“an INCONVENIENT TRUTH for the debt crisis . . . “— Michelle Orange / The Village Voice

Omaha’s Holland Center for the Performing Arts hosted a sold out crowd of 2,000 gathered to watch the live national premiere of Agora Entertainment’s documentary film I.O.U.S.A.  Directed by Patrick Creadon (director of the critically acclaimed documentary Wordplay), the film examines the topic of America’s national debt and its implications for the current and future generations of Americans. The film was simultaneously broadcast by satellite to 400 theatres across the country and followed by a live panel discussion hosted by CNBC’s Squawk Box co-anchor Rebecca Quick. The five person panel included Omaha’s own Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway; Pete Peterson, senior chairman of Blackstone Group; David Walker, chairman of The Peter G. Peterson Foundation and former Comptroller General of the United States; Bill Niskanen, Cato Institute Chairman; and Bill Novelli, AARP CEO.

One Horizon initiated production for I.O.U.S.A., brokering the partnership between Agora Entertainment, Open Sky Entertainment and producer Sarah Gibson that led to the production of the film. One Horizon also provided initial funding for the film and assisted in the selection of Patrick Creadon as director. The film, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival, was ultimately bought by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation who sponsored the live premiere and will be overseeing circulation of the film in a limited general theatrical release along with separate TV and DVD releases.

Not On Our Watch

In Human Rights on September 22, 2011 at 2:39 pm


“This is a prophetic and powerful book that deserves our attention and support.” —Cornel West, Princeton University

One Horizon teams up with Washington-based ENOUGH Project and the General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church to create a faith-based mobilization guide on Darfur. The Not on Our Watch Christian Companion: Biblical Reflections on the Movement to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond connects churches, fellowships, and individual Christians to the global movement to end genocide in Darfur and other crimes against humanity in Africa.

Co-authored by One Horizon president Greg Leffel and GBCS Civil and Human Rights Director Bill Mefford, the Companion expands on New York Times bestseller Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond by actor Don Cheadle (Hotel Rwanda) and Africa expert John Prendergast, co-founder of the ENOUGH Project. An important link in the growing Darfur coalition of secular and religious organizations the Companion was initiated at the invitation of ENOUGH Project’s Prendergast.

Drawing from the rich Christian humanitarian tradition as well as from traditions of public political involvement, the Companion provides biblical reflections on ethical issues as well as practical guidance for action to create change in Darfur. Each chapter constitutes a weekly study session—eight in all—designed to guide group discussion and reflection about Darfur and the movement to end genocide. Each session includes a biblical passage for reflection, a lesson applying the passage to Darfur, a weekly action step, and vignettes by refugees and people from many walks of life who have awakened to the problem of genocide and become active in the Darfur movement. 

 

KEF Energy Conservation Study

In Environmental on September 22, 2011 at 2:16 pm

Blue skies over Lexington mask its high “carbon footprint” produced by coal-fired energy production throughout the region.

[Originally posted February 20, 2008]

A Brookings Institution report ranks Kentucky’s two largest cities—Lexington and Louisville—respectively the first and fifth worst urban “carbon footprints” in the United States. And close-by Indianapolis and Cincinnati ranked second and third. The enormous challenge to policy makers, businesses, and citizens in this region is quite clear.

Brookings analyst and study co-author Andrea Sarzynski says, “These areas tend to use a lot of relatively dirty fuels for their electricity . . . [Relying] fairly heavily on coal,” which, she adds, produces more carbon than other energy sources. The study clarifies two important problems facing the region: First, that this is a regional problem that requires a regional solution. Second, that the region’s dependence upon “dirty fuels,” specifically coal, is a major contributor to the problem and is therefore something that needs to be closely examined.

This is the background behind a One Horizon grant in support of an important energy study jointly commissioned by the Kentucky Environmental Foundation (KEF), The Sierra Club, and Kentuckians for the Commonwealth.

The KEF Report

Released on February 20, 2008, A Portfolio of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Options for East Kentucky Power Cooperative, is a study designed to “steer EKPC away from dirty energy and down a path to a clean energy future for Kentucky,” says KEF’s Elizabeth Crowe. The study outlines a combination of energy efficiency and renewable energy options that can meet the energy demand that EKPC projects without EKPC having to build its proposed “Smith 1” coal fired power plant in Clark County. “While coal-fired power plants are fraught with economic, environmental and health risks, energy efficiency and renewable energy programs such as those highlighted in this portfolio are a wise investment in Kentucky’s future,” says Crowe.

The study, authored by nationally known analyst Susan Zinga, was delivered to board members and representatives of East Kentucky Power Cooperative and its member cooperatives as an alternative to the proposed plant, and an important step in the direction of developing a more progressive regional energy policy. One Horizon has also worked with the same coalition to help organize and fund a CFL (Compact Fluorescent Light Bulb) distribution program intended to further promote and enact the principles outlined in the study.

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