Pieces of Our Lives

среда, 17 августа 2011 г.

Landing, view from "cab" - Very beautifull =)

When I put my headphones in, I'm in a completely different world.

Hey You! What Song are you Listening to? NEW YORK

Britney Spears Deleted Scene from Jackass 3

haha !!!!!! =)))

People play volleyball, instead of the grid - the border between the U.S. and Mexico. 1979

Borderlands have often been the locale of major folk cultural achievements, from the outlaw ballads of the Scottish-English border to the heroic "corridos" of south Texas. Energized by the lives of heroes and others, borderlands continue to spark themes of frontier lawlessness, national pride, rebellion against injustice, and a community hero's stand against all odds. What is it about a border that triggers these and other cultural forms, such as souvenirs, duty-free liquors, retaining walls made of automobile tires, and "maquiladora" assembly plants? Is the border a particular kind of region or social environment? If so, does the border tend to produce a particular kind of culture? And what is the relationship between this environment and its culture?

A line drawn in various ways, a border marks the place where adjacent jurisdictions meet. This combined conjunction and separation of national laws and customs creates a zone in which movements of people and goods are greatly regulated, examined, discussed, and hidden. Commerce attains a higher importance in border society as does dialogue about the identities of its peoples. Smuggling, the myriad signs in border towns, legal and illegal immigration, and the use of unneighborly names between neighbors are parts of this picture of accentuated concern with the trade in goods and the flow of people.

The border is an environment of opportunity. Individuals find work enforcing or avoiding the laws that regulate movement. Companies use national differences in labor and environmental regulations to pursue their advantage. Border society thrives on difference, and people and institutions come there to exploit niches in its environment.

Borders are artifacts of history and are subject to change over time. When borders shift, lands and peoples are subjected to different sets of rules; this creates opportunities for exploitation, conditions of hardship, and motivations for revolt.

An approach to describing a society constructed by difference is necessarily many-voiced. Rather than a central, authoritative perspective, we strive for a de-centered point of view, one with many authoritative speakers. Of course, this is more easily achieved in the Festival of American Folklife program, where citizens of the border region speak and perform for themselves and their communities. But even in this printed medium, through translation and transcription, a variety of authorities are represented.

Border society is an abstract concept compounded of ideas about the sovereignty of nation-states, the intensification of commerce and social discourse, and strategies of cultural representation. The U.S.-Mexico border can be understood in those terms; and in this it is similar to borders like those between the United States and Canada, East and West Germany, or Kenya and Tanzania. But a particular history of the U.S.-Mexico border is expressed in the images, sounds, discourse genres, and social formations discussed within this and other essays. This particular historical development has made the border the planet's longest between a country characterized by economic practices and achievements sometimes known as "first-world" and a country whose economy is sometimes characterized as"'third-world." The growth of a capitalist world economy provided the context for the development not only of U.S.-Mexico border culture, but also of other types of cultural processes that incorporate difference: acculturation, creolization, and the growth of various cultural diasporas.

Cultural processes which may be opaque and elusive elsewhere become clear at the border. This is the case, as Dr. Valenzuela points out, in the formation of cultural identity. The border offers a stark context of cultural difference, social inequality, and ever present reminders of governmental power to limit individual opportunity by ascribing national identity. The dominant discourse that assigns low social value to particular sectors of the population is answered by a creative flood of expressions of identity in music, graphic arts, poetry, and styles of clothing and self presentation.

People speak passionately and often artistically about themselves and others; they regulate exchange and avoid regulation; they struggle to survive in an environment often shaped by the practices of nation-states and a global economy. These human acts are not unique to borders but they occur there with a clarity and an urgency that commands our concern.