In Which I Vent My Spleen

I am at the end of my tether with these fucks at Vodafone. They've been promising me 3G for the past 4 months, and every time I call ir’s been: next month sir, for sure. It’s only had no reception a few times. Most of the time it works fine but the speed is really bloody slow, which means that I can barely use Skype.

I was quite pissed off last weekend, because my sister and several friends finally had the time to get on Skype. And I couldn't even chat to them because the data transfer ground to a halt over Saturday and Sunday. Apparently 3G is coming out tomorrow, but right now I don’t trust anything that comes from Vodafone, and I’m all Sunk-costs biased up, and averse to the fumduckery of other service providers to jump ship. 

It amazes me that they’re allowing their name to be put to the fiasco that is the Indian operation. How is it that in a country that exports thousands of engineers, this company can’t sort reliable connections for people in its so-called Silicon Valley?

Update: 3G has apparently been rolled out and - surprise surprise - I still have no access to it. I fear what might happen if I pay a visit to the local Vodafone office.

Their Tears Are Sweet to Behold

Somebody call the fucking Waaahmbulance for the editors at the Wall Street Journal. Those dirty little commie bastards at The Guardian are taking baseball bats to kneecaps and they don't like it one bit:

We also trust that readers can see through the commercial and ideological motives of our competitor-critics. The Schadenfreude is so thick you can't cut it with a chainsaw. Especially redolent are lectures about journalistic standards from publications that give Julian Assange and WikiLeaks their moral imprimatur. They want their readers to believe, based on no evidence, that the tabloid excesses of one publication somehow tarnish thousands of other News Corp. journalists across the world.

"Competitor-critics"? Spare me. 

Of course, those meanies at The Guardian couldn't help but clap back. If those clowns in Congress get their act together on the whole debt ceiling thing, I might actually be able to enjoy the schadenfreude.

The Market Unleashed

I’ve been here a few months and I’ve gotta tell you folks. I am schizophrenic on the issue of auto drivers and their dad-burned idiosyncracies. I have rants – I say, rants in me about these fellows!

Job Creation

“The wheels turn slower in India, you’ll have to take the time to get used to this.” – Rahu 

When you have a population of over a billy, how do you keep as much of it as you can in employment? Some will point to India’s vast informal economy. Fools! After nearly two weeks in the country I am supremely qualified to ask that we consider the Indian civil service – To the peeps at the shiyakusho: all is forgiven! 

Every foreigner who will be residing in India for 180 days or longer has to register at their local Foreign Residents Registry Office within 14 days of their arrival. Without a foreigner registry card you can’t do much of anything that requires some kind of contract: bank accounts, phone lines, home internet, and the like. Needless to say that without these it would be very difficult to do my thing. 

My experience of Indian bureaucracy to date has convinced me – for the moment – that the whole thing is one giant middle-class growing perpetunator™. Lawd knows what use there was, apart from the salaries, for the layers that stood between me and my foreigner card.

Fell deeds await

My last full day of work at the org today. I hand in my report to the chief and the directors tomorrow - basically a set of recommendations on strategic and methodological issues. The report is very short, only about four pages, as I want it to be read. Since after I leave Japan I'll have some responsibility for disseminating a recent publication, the org is likely to be in frequent contact with me. I figure if there's anything they need clarification on they can ask me. Who knows, it might even lead to a paid consulting gig in the future.

Tonight is my farewell party, and I managed to convince my colleagues to broaden their horizons and have it at an African restaurant. Fell deeds await.

"Mistakes were made" pt.2

The chief and I talked it out this morning. We're cool.

Though it turns out that the office lady also remembers the chief pretty much putting me in charge of sorting out the org's site. Guess he forgot. I don't automatically impute differing accounts of events to dishonesty, so I'll leave it at that, and get over my hurt feelings.

I'm happy that I could at least generate some discussion about what purpose the site is to serve and what needs to be done to make it congruent with organisational strategy. What still leaves me feeling some kind of way however is the niggling suspicion that nothing will happen with the site. Nothing was actually decided at the meeting. Moreover since it is only the office lady who will have to deal with the site's functionality issues, and the directors all do their own thing, they have little reason to feel an overhaul is a priority.

Working my way back to you

I've been a little light on the work related posts lately, as I've been very busy trying to knock out a working draft of my final report -and that's just the English version. The chief is also looking to publish some of my work before I complete my assignment, so the pressure is on to dot the "I"s and cross the "T"s on my manuscript. Getting this all done within the next three weeks will be no mean feat. I will also be presenting at the next board meeting which will be held on Friday, after I have a meeting with the Secretary-general of one of the big Japanese human/minority rights NGOs.

Anyway, I thought I'd fill you in on a little of what I've been up to. I've hashed out a general idea of the organisational theory of change. Now, the process of a theory of change based evaluation basically involves conducting a context analysis, constructing organisation theories of change, identifying assumptions and testing validity by seeing how well it fits the context.

Tracking down information to test the theory of change has been quite a challenge so far. It's been good work for the noggin though. The basic theory of the organisation seems to be that a transformative change in the opinions and attitudes of a critical mass of the Japanese population will lead to a transformative change in the immigration policy framework. More specifically a change in key individuals in the media (mainly national newspapers) who act as gatekeepers to the dissemination of information can be leveraged (in addition to direct lobbying, or nemawashi as the chief prefers to call it) to change the attitudes and opinions of elites, policymakers, and the population at large. Pressure from elites and members of the public, will lead to transformation on the socio-political level, which in turn will lead to synthesis of new policy framework.

I test the theory basically by asking myself, what needs to be true for B to come as a result of A. For example that articles in national newspapers will lead to a change in thinking about immigration. One of the main assumptions would have to be that newspapers are considered a credible source of information in Japan. Another would be that information and opinion in newspapers have influence.

There is some evidence to support those notions. The mass media remains a powerful institution in the Japanese context. Numerous researchers (Russell 1991, Murphy-Shigematsu 1993; Yamashita 1996; Tsuda 2003; Shipper 2005, Hyung Gu 2006; Maeshima 2009) present information that points to the influence of the mass media over Japanese public opinion.

According to a 2005 survey carried by the Japanese public broadcaster NHK 93% of the population watches television at least once a day, (a 2007 poll by the Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association (NSK) puts the figure at 91.3%) while the nation on average watches 3 hours and 43 minutes of television every day. Japanese newspapers have an extraordinarily high diffusion rate, with a per capita circulation of at least 528 newspapers per 1000 people according to the latest data from the NSK. Information from the same organisation provided good evidence that a solid majority of Japanese (60.7%) see newspapers as having influence over society. Though only 36.8% think they can trust the information provided by this medium, newspapers are the single most trusted form of media after NHK which 38.5% of respondents saw as providing trustworthy information.

Coexistence and Complexity

I ought to be writing a paper, but right now I'm much too depressed and demotivated to even look at my draft.

I think that because I initially set out to write out my thoughts on my experiences here for close friends and classmates that I did not realise that there are some people who may actually look to be informed, and want to be able to read what I post here and be confident that I actually know what I'm talking about. For the same reason, I believe I have been writing with the assumption that the terms I am using would be easily understood by anyone reading this blog.

In being a champion for coexistence, what I hope to be doing in my role at the organisation is pull my colleagues to a place where they can view the context in which they work, and on which they work from a coexistence perspective.

A coexistence perspective is to me one that queries to what extent ideas, initiatives, policies and contexts embrace diversity for its positive potential, pursue equality, recognise interdependence between different groups, and eschew the use of weapons to address conflict. It examines if  there is, as Oxfam GB put it, recognition of all people's status and rights as human beings, and a just and inclusive vision for each community’s future.

It is my perception that in order to design initiatives and policies for coexistence,  that is to say a society with positive relationships across social differences, practitioners must endeavour to practice the values they seek to encourage. Practioners I think have to be prepared to "jump out of their skins", and attempt to assist others to make that leap. I think very basically that that leap is empathy, but it's very hard to empathise when you are firmly part of a context that does not readily facilitate it.

A societies "others" are not synonymous with the normative. As such their representation, over which they have little control, is generally unbalanced and dehumanising. What I mean by that is the complexity, diversity, and value of their lives -the same complexity, diversity, and value we give to "our" own-  is often poorly conveyed, if at all. I think Chimamanda Adichie expresses the concept beautifully in this speech

(I have a ridiculous girl-crush on Adichie... and Rachel Maddow.)

I attempt to get my co-workers to combat the privilege they have in facing little if any penalty for being satisfied with a single story about the groups whose interests they ostensibly represent. At the same time, it behooves me to make sure that I don't fall into the same trap. It's hard, but hopefully you guys can help keep me honest.

Policy Jiu-jitsu

The chief writes that Japan must thoroughly crack down on illegal immigrants, and that Japan must take a stance of zero tolerance towards them. His rationale is basically that in order to maintain support for the policy framework he is calling for, immigrants cannot be percieved as being connected to criminality or terrorism. In fact, I would argue that the words "immigrant" and "immigration" already to some extent evoke criminality and the risk of social unrest in the Japanese social context.

My instinct then is to point out that the policy the chief recommends, and the rhetoric he uses to sell it may end up unnecessarily bolstering negative social perceptions of undocumented migrants as a sort of dangerous, monolithic, criminal element; and suggest the focus should be on the demand for their labour that brings undocumented workers here, the companies that hire them, and adding complexity the concept of illegal immigration so it isn't simply imputed to desires to predate Japanese people.

That being said I wonder if it's that simple. Now I doubt that this is the chief's thinking - as he is unquestionably anti-illegal immigration and I daresay anti-illegal immigrant. (During his career in officialdom, a fair few of the undocumented migrants he came into contact with were gulity of crimes more serious than illegal entry into Japan) - but presumably such policy could be a way of aligning the practical interests of the Japanese minority groups that will grow if the doors to immigration are opened to the interests of "native" Japanese. Even if it plays on prejudiced thinking.

If what it takes to get the policies the chief believes will benefit Japanese and non-Japanese alike adopted and implemented is for significant numbers of Japanese people to believe that the people the new policies would bring in are "a different kind of foreigner" -nothing like the kind that risk causing social unrest, nor the criminal illegals- then I can't say I'm sure about whether or not I ought to recommend that that part of the paper be changed.

On the other hand it's precisely this kind of prejudiced, and in some cases racist thinking that can get in the way of policy adoption and implementation, even when it is recognised that the policy would benefit the vast majority of the population. For example all it might take is for the issue to be framed as, "our taxes going to pay for programmes for those people", for the policy to be derailed (just look at the U.S. War on Poverty, and the current rhetoric surrounding the health care debate). So perhaps it behooves us to point out thinking or language surrounding policy that is at odds with coexistence whenever we encounter it.

よほどを知れ

There's been a little something that I've found a little perplexing about the writings I've been working with thus far. Basically I've been a little concerned about the dearth of citations and sourced statistics. This is something quite alien to me, and a little disconcerting in light of the work I had to put in with regards to citations in order to get myself published.

My good mate, who lives here in Tokyo, made a very interesting observation about my impressions. He argued that it's merely indicative of the fact that Japan is a high context culture. The fact that my boss is who he is, a man with a long history in the bureaucratic officialdom, gives him a level of credibility that makes citations unecessary.  His message is viewed in its context. Who is giving the message? What organisation does this person represent? What is this person's academic credentials? He also said that a lot of business and academic practices, coming from this cultural background, fall short of international standards.

I've been mulling this over a bit, first I wonder if this is in fact an accurate analysis of the cause of my observations. Second I've thinking a little bit about what I can bring to the organisation. As far as I know, my name will on the work I've produced. As I need the exposure to make this internship a beneficial investment, it is certainly not in my interests to put something out there that isn't ready for prime-time. More imporantly though, and what I think I'll have to argue is that it isn't in my boss' best interests either. I believe that I am correct in my belief that without sources, the English version of the chief's book I've written will be viewed with some interest, but that it will lack the gravitas that the chief will need if he hopes to influence the appropriate movers and shakers in the English-speaking world.

This has also made me think again about my role in the organisation. Am I wearing my evaluator hat when I make this observation? I just being myself, an enthusiastic employee? It's probably a mix of factors (complicates the idea of being a detached non-participant evaluator). Considering my context (young, less experience, non-Japanese) would my arguments be taken seriously? Can I even be seen as a qualified advisor and evaluator here?

Knowing my role

What exactly is my role here?  I do not believe that I'm in a position to answer that question fully at this point in time. My brief was to contribute to the work of this organisation, at the same time as I evaluate their activities. Right now I’ve just been more formally recognised as a researcher in the institute. My business cards have been printed, I’m to write a presentation for the executive director, and I’ve been asked to help improve the office lady’s English. My identity here is rather fluid. I am not merely a non-participant observer many times because I’m working both in and on the organisation. I'm asked to complete tasks, directly solicited with questions, or comments about my appearance are made as openings for conversation. The office can be quite chatty, and I am encouraged to join in. Moreover everyone was very supportive during my earlier troubles.

It’s almost as if the fact that I’m here also to evaluate the organisation is on a complete backburner in people’s minds. There doesn’t seem to be any hesitation to tell me things. No announcements of news or tidbits of information intended to give me a favourable impression, or reach the ears of funders etc. Maybe this is a reflection of my status within the organisation. Perhaps their understanding  is that I am not connected to any actors whose approval or disapproval could affect their operations.What could I really do to them if I came away with an unfavourable impression of their work? 

At the same time at least one of my informants reacted to what might have been an incongruence with his perception of my identity. The tone of the conversation certainly felt more formal once he saw me wield my pen to make a note of his comments. Also I can’t help but think I am granted privileges due to my sex and my academic credentials, as the organisational structure I've perceived thus far tends to align with structural inequalities in wider Japanese society. However as I've yet to fathom exactly where I fit in within the organisational structure, I can't be sure that my sense is at all correct. As I am by far the youngest person working in the organisation, a total newcomer, and have no coercive or resource based power over the organisation; I wonder how the final product of my research will be received, and what benefit others, especially the executive director, derive from my presence.