Blogging Social Difference in L.A.: Last Week

This week, I commented on the Shmuel Nosrati's blog. This is his link.

http://shmuelnosrati1.blogspot.com/2012/12/blogging-social-difference-in-la-week-10.html

Hi,

I am Kei, taking the same class of "Cities and Social Differences".
I really enjoy to read your blogs, and through reading I found several interesting points to discuss with classmates.

Firstly, you mentioned that "it is our job to educate our friends and family members on the need to look beyond the neoliberal shell". What do mean to "look beyond the neoliberal shell". It is considered that neo-liberal thoughts are considered as the end of the history, and government-managed economy has been failed several times.

Secondly, when I heard that you argue that "Stuart Hall has suggested, let us examine our own cultural norms and stories, and do away with the vanities of self-centered (i.e. neoliberal) thinking, and replace it with an appreciation and respect for the differences we encounter on a daily basis", I thought that you want to focus more on the cultural equality in the society. If what Stuart Hall said is true that cultural symbols are just "floating signifier", then why do you think that the inequality cannot be easily removed? Furthermore, if we want to seek for the societies without "self-centered" thinking, we have to question the idea of neo-liberalism itself. However, my first argument comes here again that it is considered that the neo-liberalism is the end of the society that nothing new ideas have come up.

Thirdly, as my own opinion, I do not think that society can never achieve equality. However, we can support to deliver more voices of poor to the stage. The first step that we should do, I think, is bringing David Harvey's idea of "environmental justice" more to the spotlight. Although it is difficult to shift from the concept of regular environment management ($>environment) to the ecological view of environment management (environment>$), we have already seen the consequences of regular environment management, such as Hurricane Katrina, Tohoku Earthquake in Japan, etc. Since we have seen the results as the facts, we should notice that environmental equality is the thing that has higher possibility for us to bring into the modern community.