Before taking this course, whenever the word “terrorism” takes place, I immediately think of the 9/11 issue that I saw in the news ten years ago. It was the first time I knew something about terrorism. Since I knew very little about terrorism, I wanted to learn more about it so that I would not be misleading by the media or other inaccurate information.
Throughout the semester, we learned several key concepts to help us understand globalization, social justice and terrorism. For example: ignorance, obvious, debunking, bracketing, etc. The concept that speaks to me the most is the concept of ignorance. According to Dr. Charles Quist-Adade (2011), ignorance is usually explained with “stupid” or “dumb” in common usage (P. 13). In fact, it means “not being made aware of by others or lack of desire to know about, not paying attention to, not being aware of and simply not knowing” (Quist-Adade, 2011, P. 13-14). In terms of terrorism, I think many people are ignorant. Same as myself, I did not know anything about terrorism; therefore, I would automatically associate it with negative ideas and discriminate a specific group of people. I think it is a thought and behaviour that being ignorant cause people are not paying attention to why they are doing that or what believes they are having so that they have the terror behaviours. By listening to the lectures, presentations, and reading the textbook, I understand that most of the terrorists have a strong religious or political believe to backup their actions. They believe that what they do can make the world and the people better.
Other than that, through reading the textbooks, I learned about the social inequality in the world. Such as the critical cronstructivist would claims that corporation create twisted ideologies to the society. Also, the unequal income distribution over the world makes the rich is getting richer while the poor is getting poorer. Another inspiring example I learned in class was the comparison of ice cream and water. United Nations Annual World Report of 1999 showed that Europeans spend $11 billion on ice cream per year. However, people only need around $2 billion to have clean and safe water for the world’s population. In this example, I can see that in the developed countries, people are spending a lot of money on unnecessary things while some people don’t even have enough clean and safe water to survive.
All in all, I have learned a lot about terrorism by the group presentations and social justice and globalization by all the readings. The content of this course was totally new and unique information to me. I’m glad that I learned about terrorism in another perspective that does not involve discrimination.
The video is an official trailer of a documentary called “Flow”. Water is a necessity to human being; however, many people are taken it for granted. Water should be a public asset not a private property. But the social phenomenon is that only people who have money can buy water while some people are too poor to have clean water for survival. Also, it mentioned that the water supply is limited which means that it is possible that one day we don’t have water anymore.
It is really shocked to me cause I thought it is “normal” that we have water everyday to drink. The fact is that the raw material in the world would run out some day. It is important for us to treasure all the raw materials that we have especially water cause we can’t live without it.
The video is called “Burka Woman”, which showed the beauty of an Islamic woman with a black burka. Her whole body is covered by the black burka and only her eyes are visible.
I feel awkward when I was watching this video cause I did not understand the humor of this video wanted to bring out. I felt like they were not respecting the women by creating this parody on the song “pretty woman”. Although I am a minority woman, I don’t have the same experience with the Islamic women since at least I can wear whatever I want. At the same time, I believe that they are experiencing oppression
The video is about a terrorist group called the Army of God. It is a extreme right wing Christian terrorist in the United States which claims that their behaviours are justified by the Bible. They believe that abortion is unacceptable in the eye of God; therefore, their targets are doctors or clinics that provide abortion services. In the video, we can see how they put the bombs at the abortion clinics or kill the doctors.
As a Christian, I agree that abortion is unacceptable since we should treasure every single life. However, I don’t agree that killing the abortion providers is the will of God since every single life is important in the eyes of God, including the abortion providers. We do not have the right to judge who should be killed or punished.
In the class discussion, we were asked that what has water got to do with ice cream? According to the United Nations Annual World Report of 1999 showed that Europeans spend $11 billion on ice cream per year while $2 billion more than the estimated annual total needed to provide clean water and safe sewers for the world’s population.
By knowing this statistic, I found out that globalization created a economic and social inequality to the world. Some people are spending a lot of money on not necessary thing such as ice cream; however, some people don’t even have enough clean and safe water to survive. Therefore, less people are paying attention on the social justice in the world. As a sociology student, my education acknowledge me to understand the social issue and hopefully I can do something to raise the awareness of the people.
In the class discussion, we talked about the concept of “one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter.” Different students have different opinions on this saying. Some students that that violence is not an effective way to solve any problems. Terrorists are hurting innocent people in order to achieve what they believe in right. On the other hand, some students pointed out that terrorist is just fighting for their believes which can bring something good to the world and the society.
All in all, I believe that there are always both sides of story. For me, I don’t agree on using violence to bring out your believes. There are always other alternatives to point out the opinion, such as protest.
In the presentation, I learned about the International Terrorism. It is the terrorism that “spills over” onto the world’s stage. Usually the targets are selected based on their value as symbols of international interests and the impact that attacks will have on a global audience. One of the example of International Terrorism is the 9-11 attacks. The terrorists attacked the World Trade Centre in New York City which is the symbol of international interests. Also, since a lot of innocent people were died in this attack, it created the impact that the attack will bring to the global world.
