Week 3 Assignment: Map 2

This week my project group went to a newly-developed, upper-class section of Hanoi. We mapped out the prices and locations of the same daily necessities that we did last week. The apartment complexes in our area towered above an overgrown field that contained straw huts for the construction laborers. The buildings that were completed were depressing, grey, concrete rectangles. The residents only left the buildings on motorbike and all were obviously wealthy. We could not locate a single item on our list in this new area so we had to walk about 10 minutes away into an older section of town to complete our map.

While I had a good time with my friends picking flowers and enjoying the overgrown plantlife, the area was disturbingly eerie. It had residents, but felt like a ghost town. Once we traveled into the older area I felt at home again. These new areas that are being built are secluded, sterile, and lifeless emulations of Western lifestyle. Living in such a place would be a nightmare for me. The lively yet comfortable street that we mapped the first week felt far more real than the staged “communities” that have been constructed for rich Hanoians and foreigners.

These sorts of Western sanctuaries are a bizarre new chapter in the [mal]“development” of Hanoi, but also a reflection of the process that many other Third World population centers will face if the First World’s economic imperialism continues. Third World cities will be polarized between rich and poor communities. There will exist two separate worlds within one population center. I experienced a taste of such a dichotomy, and I never want to again.

Week 2 Assignment: Map

Last Saturday, my project group mapped out the area around Hồ Đắc Di Street. We were tasked with cataloguing the locations and prices of various social and economic necessities that locals utilize in their daily lives. When we arrived, the bustling intersection seemed to be indistinguishable from others that I had been to. However, as we pressed deeper into the neighborhood I became aware of the many unique qualities of the Hồ Đắc Di area. The old Soviet-era apartment buildings with their improvised balcony-extensions lined the local lake of Hô Xã Đàn while looming in the background were the newly-constructed, extremely decadent, capitalist-era apartment buildings. The contradiction between the rich and the poor was very salient. Numerous modern cafes and tourist-oriented shops seemed to surround and conceal the impoverished slums that make up the core of the neighborhood. Opposing the newer buildings on the other side of the lake stood old French buildings left behind from the colonial-era. I realized that this neighborhood is more than just a place to live; it is a museum spanning hundreds of years of Vietnamese history. However, musing about such academic matters is not often a high priority for average Hồ Đắc Di residents who are just trying to make ends meet.

I believe the most important aspect of our assignment was capturing, if only in a crude way, the essence of daily life for a resident of Hồ Đắc Di. Being that we are only amateur social cartographers, the map is not as accurate as it could be. Nevertheless, I learned a lot from our experiences last Saturday. At first, I thought that the apartment buildings overlooking the lake were in a very serine and peaceful location. However, it’s only a quiet peace for the minority that can afford it. I personally would not want to live in an area with such a large gap between the rich and the poor. I would feel like I was looking down from some sort of Ivory Tower in those apartments. I know living elsewhere just hides that contradiction and that no matter how we First Worlders live it is at the expense of the world’s poor. Still, I wouldn’t be able to take seeing it day after day despite how enjoyable the lake and coffee shops are.

Week 1 Assignment: Gig

Even though I have no interest in ever working for any segment of the police force, I chose the homicide detective story to write about because when I was very young I romanticized the idea of being a detective. I read many of detective books and watched some detective animes. I was interested to know if a typical American homicide detective was as clever as the mystery detectives that I thought were so cool as a child.

The protagonist in this particular story from Gig is a female homicide detective named Monica. I hated the reasoning she gives for joining the police. She says that when she was young she thought all police were confrontational, condescending, “gangs of hoodlums” (Gig 531)… and yet she joined because she wanted to somehow change the system from the inside. Monica declared, “…you can’t complain about a system, a group of people, and then not try to do somethin’ about it… I never advocated burning down a system or blowing up a system” (Gig 531). I am not inspired by small-minded thinking.

Monica goes on to describe her vulgar behavior as a member of the “morality crew”. After detailing the underhanded tactics she used to lure people into traps and arrest them, she snidely comments, “Man, we had good times on vice” (Gig 533).
It seems that Monica quickly became the type of cop she once hated.

Monica always wanted to work on homicide cases because to her, pursuing a murderer is “just like an emotional high” (Gig 532). She then attempts to justify her bizarre obsession with murder by claiming she does what she does to “give closure to a family who’s lost someone” (Gig 532). The old Monica would have found such a statement ironic and cruel coming from a cop.

Monica says her passion in detective work lies in “interrogations”. She goes on to describe the mind games she uses to manipulate suspects into giving “confessions”. Monica boasts, “It’s an [sic] art form… [and ]I got the psychological edge” (Gig 533). Monica truly enjoys toying with people’s lives like a game. She also describes conversations with suspects in which she spoke condescending. Given power, she acts just like the cops she hated when she was younger.

After I read the next paragraph about Monica’s experience solving a murder case, I realized that detectives are not like Sherlock Holmes or Conan Edogawa. They are mechanical and vulgar, rather than heroic and romantic. They are people who can nonchalantly walk into a room full of blood and bullets, crack a joke about the crime or suspect, laugh, and arrest the criminal without a second thought. There is nothing romantic about this occupation. Despite her naïve attempt to uphold some notion of “justice” in the workplace, Monica failed to differentiate herself from the police she used to hate.

I think it is great that Monica has a passion for her work, but my conception of a detective is much different from reality. While I no longer have any interest in mystery detectives, this story was intriguing because it allowed me to see the reality behind one of my childhood dreams.

Assignment 0: Autobiography

My name is Andrew Marvin. I was born on April 21, 1989 in Denver, Colorado. Due to my father's occupation, I've lived all across the United States. In order: Colorado, Michigan, Washington, Pennsylvania, Sacramento CA, Utah, Los Angeles CA, Santa Barbara CA. I consider Moorpark (near LA) my hometown because I lived there the longest over the past 8 years. During high school I didn’t have anything that I wanted to "do" when I got out. Disillusioned, I was drifting along only going through the motions of living. I decided to go to UC Santa Barbara to study political science because it was my biggest interest at the time. About halfway through college I developed an even bigger interest in history but it was too late to complete anything more than a minor. Around my third year of college, I decided I wanted to intensify my study of history and political science so I started looking into the EAP program. This fit perfectly with my lifelong dream to leave the West. At first I considered Sweden and Germany because I was fascinated by many aspects of old-world European culture. I decided that studying in a cushy, white-washed First World country did not fit well with my field of interest (the Third World, global poverty, neo-liberal economics, etc). I also abandoned my plan to study in Japan for similar reasons. Though I've been a major Japanese history and culture fanatic for years, it didn't fit well with study. I finally chose Vietnam to study in because it was a perfect match with my education and because I've always been interested in Vietnamese history and culture. I want to know why capitalism was ultimately restored in Vietnam by the same party that started out to destroy it forever. I want to understand the class divisions within Vietnam and how the poor are kept chained to a life of abject poverty. Though I believe I know the answers to these questions and more already, I came to witness firsthand what I've only read about. I came to test theory against reality. I came to be a historian and a political scientist.