Syllabus: Thailand

Thailand 2008

Global Partnerships for Activism & Cross-cultural Training

Enclosed

Pre-departure assignment
Daily program calendar
Course syllabus

Pre-departure assignments
Please complete the following assignments before arriving in Thailand.

1.      Required reading and videos

Read the following book chapters. NB: We will email these to all of you as a Zip file. Rutgers students, they are available on eReserve under course “Global PACT-Thailand”.

Thailand

B.J. Terwiel, Thailand’s Political History: From the Fall of Ayutthaya in 1767 to Recent Times, chapter 11.

Peter Warr and Isra Sarntisart, “Poverty Targeting in Thailand,” in Poverty Targeting in Asia, John Weiss, ed., chapter 5.

Bruce D. Missingham, The Assembly of the Poor in Thailand: From Local Struggles to National Protest Movement, chapters 2 and 9.

Siroj Sorajjakool, Child Prostitution in Thailand: Listening to Rahab, chapters 1-4.

Watch the following films. NB: They should be readily available from Netflix and other, similar services. Rutgers students can view them that the Media Library, Kilmer Area Library.

Thailand

“Dharma Rivers: journey of a thousand Buddhas : Laos, Thailand, Burma,” Direct Pictures ; created, written & produced by John Bush, 2003.

Trafficking

“Stop the traffick,” directed by Emily Marlow ; TVE. Publication info: Oley, PA : Bullfrog Films, 2001.

2.      Expectations essay

Write a two-page essay on what you expect to learn and experience. Incorporate previous knowledge, as well as the readings and films. Write about your expectations of the other participants and about how you expect to be perceived and received. Feel free to include your expectations of what will be the most difficult and rewarding parts of this experience. Most important, write about the expectations and goals you have for yourself. NB: This is due on May 16, the first day of the training! Why not write it before you leave?

3.      Personal interview project preparation

Pack personal and family photographs, documents, and mementos to share with your personal interview project partner from another country. Do not bring anything valuable or irreplaceable! For example, bring photocopies of family photographs and documents rather than the originals, and leave family heirlooms at home.

4. Cultural share preparation

Pack a single item that represents your cultural background, such as a Celtic cross, traditional recipe, or cultural garment. Again, do not bring anything valuable or irreplaceable!

Political Science 369 and 389
Global PACT -- Partnerships for Activism & Cross-cultural Training: www.globalpact.org
Professor D. Michael Shafer, Rutgers University: mshafer@rci.rutgers.edu
Professor Denise Horn, Northeastern University: d.horn@neu.edu

Senior Trainer – Carole Ketnourath: Carla.banee@gmail.com
Trainer – Dan Christopher: crodan2@eden.rutgers.edu
Trainer – Yasmine Habash: habash.y@neu.edu

We take a great deal for granted. We take the obvious stuff for granted – a roof over our head, a meal on the table, money in our pocket, a hospital when we get sick. We take the less obvious for granted, too – that the water will run when we turn the tap on, that the garbage will be collected, that the schools will open in September and that the mail will be delivered. We never even consider to unthinkable – that our little sisters might be sold as sex slaves, that our little brothers might be kidnapped to be child soldiers, that our mothers might be forced to be drug mules and that our fathers might be dying of AIDS.

What is the common thread here? All of these expectations are born of the happy fact that we live in healthy communities. In our communities we can mind our own business, be quite certain that others will mind theirs, and be safe in the knowledge that bad things will not happen. Why? Politics. And not, of course, just national politics – it is not the federal government that provides pom-poms for the cheerleaders and serves hotdogs at the high school football games; it is the PTO.

Politics – small “p” – is the art of living together. From the original Greek philosophers’ efforts to define the proper form of the republic to contemporary efforts to frame constitutions for newly independent states, the problem is the same: how to establish rules by which people can interact in reasonably predictable ways that permit them to lead safe, productive and fulfilling lives. If we consider the modern period, that is, from Machiavelli on, politics is truly front and center. From the end of the Greeks until Machiavelli, God always figured in the story as the ultimate arbiter of right, justice and authority. From Machiavelli on, the issue has clearly been man. There is no ultimate arbiter, no final authority. All there is and all there can be are rules made and agreed to by men in the full knowledge that they can be broken at any time; for there is no ultimate truth and no ultimate authority to back them up. So politics—the means by which the actual “rules of the game” are forged—are all important. And so, too, we ask, what is that political process like? Is it the domination of the strong over the weak—Thomas Hobbes’ famous state of nature in which life is “nasty, brutish and short”? Or is it a creative process by which humans come together in compromise not only to survive but to thrive?

This course teaches the knowledge, skills and attitudes citizens need to create thriving communities. Who are citizens? Individuals active in the lives of their communities. What distinguishes the “citizens” from the “residents” of a community? Residents are merely born into a community. Citizens are not born; they are educated, just as successful political communities are not “born” but are created through hard, sustained effort on the part of their citizens. What does it take to be a good citizen? Alexis de Tocqueville had a great phrase: Citizens must be masters of the “arts of association.” They must understand the issues that confront their communities; they must know how to organize and act to resolve those issues; and perhaps most important, they must believe that they can and indeed they must act because it is their personal responsibility to do so. This course is about how citizens – you – can mobilize and act for social change.

What does all of this have to do with Thailand? In the borderlands between Thailand and Myanmar, our basic notion of the state is of limited use. Many of the people living in the region are nomadic hill peoples who have never taken a national identity and have no “legal” citizenship as understood in international law. These people are thus subject to all of the forces of warring factions within states, borders, and trade and travel restrictions, but have no recourse to international organizations for help since they are not the citizens of any nation. Many others in the border zone are refugees, whether officially recognized as such or not. At the furthest edge of the Thai state and under the press of so many who are not in any legal sense “Thai”, however, the authority and resources of the Thai government are not always fully exerted and are not available to those who are not Thai. And we must not forget that Thailand itself is a developing country and that northern Thailand is, by every measure, by far the poorest, least well served part of the country. Here a large portion of the officially “Thai” population lives in families subsisting on annual incomes of less than 24,000 baht – about $725 for a family of four or about 50 cents per person per day.

Under these conditions, how are communities created? Can communities be created to provide the predictability and comfort and security that communities everywhere are meant to provide? To put it bluntly, there is a tremendous amount of evidence of the failure of community along the border – sex trafficking, drug trafficking, trafficking in endangered species, malnourished kids, miserable refugee camps. But there is also evidence of community – micro-enterprises, camp schools, and NGOs.

Here is where you come in. For the next four weeks you will be working in a large team and in small working teams with your local counterparts to learn how to identify, break down and solve community problems and to engage young people in the process, thus building community where there was none. It is going to be the most difficult thing you have ever done in your life – and not only because doing everything in translation is incredibly hard. Learning to be an organizer and learning to function in an entirely different cultural setting and learning how to live under conditions you have never even imagined before are going to wear you out. It is going to be worth it.

Welcome to Global PACT.

Required reading and videos

Please complete the following assignments before arriving in Thailand.

Read the following book chapters. NB: We will email these to all of you as a Zip file. Rutgers students, they are available on eReserve under course “Global PACT-Thailand”.

Thailand

B.J. Terwiel, Thailand’s Political History: From the Fall of Ayutthaya in 1767 to Recent Times, chapter 11.

Peter Warr and Isra Sarntisart, “Poverty Targeting in Thailand,” in Poverty Targeting in Asia, John Weiss, ed., chapter 5.

Bruce D. Missingham, The Assembly of the Poor in Thailand: From Local Struggles to National Protest Movement, chapters 2 and 9.

Siroj Sorajjakool, Child Prostitution in Thailand: Listening to Rahab, chapters 1-4.

Thailand

“Dharma Rivers: journey of a thousand Buddhas : Laos, Thailand, Burma,” Direct Pictures ; created, written & produced by John Bush, 2003.

Trafficking

“Stop the traffick,” directed by Emily Marlow ; TVE. Publication info: Oley, PA : Bullfrog Films, 2001.

The Global PACT manual will be provided on the first day.

Grades and assignments

Your grade will be divided into two parts: 60% will consist of academic work and writing, and 40% will consist of Global PACT practical writing and presentations to prepare you to be an engaged citizen.

Culture, History, and Politics Assignments (60%, individual grade)

Wednesday, May 16 – Expectations essay (10%)

Write a two-page essay on what you expect to learn and experience. Incorporate previous knowledge, as well as the readings and films. Write about your expectations of the other participants and about how you expect to be perceived and received. Feel free to include your expectations of what will be the most difficult and rewarding parts of this experience. Most important, write about the expectations and goals you have for yourself.

Monday, May 28 – Expert response I (10%)

Twice while we are in Thailand, we will have a session devoted to expert visitors and local NGO staff. Following each session, you will be required to write a two-page reflection about the visit. These essays should not be mere reports on what the speaker said. Rather, they should be reflections on how the speaker’s organization or experiences relate to or illustrate the principles and techniques of organizing that you are learning.

Friday, June 8 – Expert response II (10%)

Friday, June 8 – Personal interview project (30%)

Your major assignment is a cultural and historical personal interview project. While you are in Thailand, you will have many opportunities to get to know the other participants. This assignment is meant to push you to go further. You will be expected to interview another member of your team from another country. The starting point of the project will be an exchange of personal and family stories and histories. Where do your families come from and how did they get to where they are? What are the big events in family history? Who are the great characters? In the process of collecting each other’s family stories, you will also seek out information about the history, politics and culture of northern Thailand and the surrounding countries from which many of your classmate’s families originate – as well as about the history of the United States’ deep involvement in the history of this region and their family’s lives. Your completed Personal Interview Project is due on June 8. To keep you on schedule, however, you must meet the following milestones – or lose 1% with every missed deadline:

·         Friday, May 18 – Turn in written questions for a preliminary interview.

·         Wednesday, May 23 – Turn in notes of your preliminary interviews and new written questions for a follow-up interview.

·         Monday, May 28 – Turn in notes from follow-up interview; show trainer collected family photographs, documents, and mementos; begin writing major personal and family dates and events on the class timeline that will run around the walls of our training room.

·         Friday, June 8 –Relate your partner’s story and family story to a broader historical context through a presentation and share your partner’s family photographs, documents, and mementos alongside the posted class timeline. Your presentation of your partner’s personal history and of facts should be informed by your deeper understanding of complicated and interwoven issues that confront our countries.

Global PACT assignments (40%, group grade)

Your grade for this section will depend on the work you complete with your group, all of which will be impossible without effective and committed collaboration among all members of your team. Everything you need to know about these assignments will be discussed during our workshop sessions. The Global PACT manual will guide you through the entire process. The following constitute the assignments that you will complete with your group. You will be given either oral feed-back (for presentations) or written feedback (for hard copy assignments). At the time of the final press conference at the end of the program, each group will submit a packet that contains both the original of all hard copy assignments and revised versions that reflect the feedback that the group received. All group members receive the same grade.

·         Thursday, May 17 – Presentation I: Issue breakdown

·         Friday, May 18 – Presentation II: Action research plan

·         Tuesday, May 22 – Presentation III: Project ideas

·         Wednesday, May 23 – Presentation IV: Resources and networks

·         Monday, May 28 – Budget

·         Tuesday, May 29 – Presentation V: Mission, vision, goals; Project goals, mission and vision

·         Wednesday, May 30 – Talking points

·         Sunday, June 10 – Press release

·         Monday, June 11 – Press conference, press packet, final Global PACT group packet

Attendance

In Global PACT, you are not a student; you are a citizen of a community that cannot function without your active participation. Your attendance and punctuality is as much a reflection of yourselves as individuals and team members as a component of your grade. For this reason, team members who arrive more than 15 minutes late for workshop sessions will be assigned special “group service” duties such as packing up supplies or carrying materials. You will of course receive zero credit for any assignments due on days you are not present, and you will not pass the course if you miss 3 or more classes. Arriving more than an hour late will be considered equivalent to missing a day, and late time will accrue in 15 minute intervals adding up to day(s) absent (that is, four equal one day).

Class expectations

This will be an intense course in which we will make high demands on you. First, of course, like you, your Thai and Hill Tribe classmates have never before collaborated with distant foreigners in truly multicultural teams. As you know from personal experience, group work is always hard. It is much harder across cultural barriers. We will be here to help, but we need you to be self-aware and ready to confront and work through your own, natural culture shock frustrations. Second, we need you to be aware that others, too, suffer the same culture shock frustrations that you do and that what you take as dumb, inefficient or offensive may simply be a reflection of their discomfort. We all need to cut each other some slack. Finally, as a course, this course will be different. It requires constant, graded group work and active participation, often in the form of required public presentations. It also requires that you actually practice the skills and knowledge you have acquired in a live setting. Because we all have to learn by doing in public, we – not just you – we are all going to look like idiots at some point. You need to be brave enough to try everything, and you need to be supportive of others, even when they look really, really stupid.

This is a course about activism and advocacy, about grassroots organizing. Activists agitate, advocates advocate and organizers organize. So that is what you are going to do, since there is no way to learn how to do any of these things except by doing them. And since the only real test of anything is the real thing, your final test will be the real thing: an actual press conference for the national and regional Thai press. (When you stand in front of that real TV camera, you will be very thankful for all of the times we stuck microphones and camcorders in your face and demanded a perfect, off-the-cuff 15 second sound bites!)

Schedule

            Arrival and welcome

Wednesday, May 16

Training 1:

Introductions
Goals and ground rules
Issue brainstorm

Due today: (Individual) Expectations essay

Thursday, May 17

Training 2:

Issue breakdown
Presentation I: issue breakdown

Due today: (Group) Presentation I: issue breakdown

Friday, May 18

Training 3:

Group contracts
Action research
Presentation II: action research plan

Due today: (Individual) Written questions for the preliminary interview of personal interview project
(Group) Presentation II: action research plan

Saturday, May 19

Local excursion

Sunday, May 20

Free day

Monday, May 21

Training 4:

Action research (network expansion, meeting preparation)

Due today: None

Tuesday, May 22

Training 5:

Action research
Presentation III: project ideas
Define projects

Due today: (Group) Presentation III: project ideas

Wednesday, May 23

Training 6:

Resources and networks
Presentation IV: resources and networks

Due today:

(Individual) Notes of preliminary interview and new written questions for ollow-up interview of personal interview project
(Group) Presentation IV: resources and networking

Thursday, May 24

Training 7:

Action research

Due today: None

Friday, May 25

Training 8:

Budgets
Teams and teamwork

Due today: None

Saturday, May 26

Local excursion

Sunday, May 27

Free day

Monday, May 28

Training 9:

Project goals

Due today: (Individual) Expert response I
(Individual) Notes of follow-up interview of personal interview project
(Group) Budget

Tuesday, May 29

Training 10:

Mission and vision
Presentation V: mission, vision and goals
Metrics

Due today: (Group) Presentation V: mission, vision and goals
(Group) Mission, vision, and goals

Wednesday, May 30

Training 11:

Talking points
Audiences
Project preparation

Due today: (Group) Talking points

Thursday, May 31

Project 1: On project days, each group will work on organizing its project. What it does and where it goes will depend on the state of the project. Trainers will be available to advise and local transportation will be available for research and other trips

Friday, June 1

Project  2

Saturday, June 2

Local excursion

Sunday, June 3

Free day

Monday, June 4

Project  3

Tuesday, June 5

Project 4

Wednesday, June 6

Project 5

Thursday, June 7

Free day

Friday, June 8

Training 12:

Public relations

Due today: (Individual) Expert response II
(Individual) Final personal interview project

Saturday, June 9

Training 13:

Press releases
Press conferences

Due today:        None

Sunday, June 10

Training 14:

Sound bites
Press conferences

Due today: (Group) Press release

Monday, June 11

Training 15:

REAL press conference

Tuesday, June 12

 
Wednesday, June 13 – Saturday, June 16

Cultural immersion in Bangkok