This summer, a small group of Penn State students and faculty are traveling to Jamaica to immerse themselves in Jamaican culture. Along the way, we – the Lions of Jamaica – are going to share our experiences with you.
Over the next few weeks we will experience a lot: travel to a different culture, we will visit organic farms, see traditional tourist sites, witness inequality of incredible proportions, see brilliant wildlife, see the results of natural resource exploitation and its effects on the society, economy, and environment, and of course meet incredible people. All along the way, we hope to share with you, whoever you are.
Today, Jamaica’s culture and natural environment is nested in a global political and economic system. Through agencies like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (formerly GATS), the “developed” nations of the global North have refashioned Jamaica since its independence from Britain 40 years ago. Almost no part of Jamaica’s land and biosphere, human culture, or services and institutions, are untouched by globalization. Jamaica is undergoing the effects of the Anthropocene age too – the age of humans. Understanding its massive scope, we will investigate global management’s possibilities, limitations, and dilemmas by exploring sustainability within Jamaica’s context.
We will explore many questions on journey. Some of these might include: What are ethics and morality? What are progress, the environment, economic growth, happiness, education, and globalization? What is sustainability and how can we use it? Sustainable what? Sustainable for whose advantage? What are development and sustainable development? What are resilience and how does it connect with sustainability and development? In light of the UNCED Rio +20 summit this summer and our hopes for thoughtful responses to the interconnected problems of climate change, biological diversity impoverishment, deforestation, the continued human population boom, and barely calculable human suffering, we believe we are called to examine and move away from the business as usual plans.
Why wait for the powers that be to do it? So we are starting with us.
In the next several weeks we will be doing a lot. First, we will do our best to understand ourselves and understanding Jamaica and our relationships in the global systems. Second, we will be developing skills and strategies about and for sustainability that will entail developing a new vocabulary. Don’t worry, we’ll keep the jargon down and the clarity high. Communication is one of those skills! Third, no experience this rich would be worth it without some deep reflection on our total experience. So we will be sharing our own reflections with you in writing, video, photographs, and maybe interviews too. Finally, we hope that we can make good connections between our temporary home in Jamaica and our homes in the United States and work out ways to bring the best lessons home with us.
In the next few days, we will be introducing ourselves to you, students and faculty alike and explaining our inspiration for this class. As we get going, we will do our best to keep you up to date on what we are doing and share what we read, discuss, and experience with you.
Let the journey begin!
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