Out of touch

So I feel that for the past, oh, several months, I haven’t really been actively thinking about graduate school and my research interests. Sure, I’ve thought about them, but I haven’t done much by way of research and talking to professors. And since graduating and not really being part of an academic community any longer, I feel really out of touch with Anthropology right now—I don’t really know what’s going on, what people are writing about or researching. My fault, entirely, for not keeping up.

Reading an article in the paper today about the tainted milk that had come out of China, and about the current favoritism Chinese officials show towards producers rather than consumers—valuing profit and efficiency over quality—it reminded me of my earlier concerns about Vietnam’s roaring economy and how these rapid economic and technological changes are effecting Vietnamese society—not just in the cities, but in rural parts of Vietnam, as well. Fearing that Vietnamese companies, too, wouldn’t think twice about producing shoddy, harmful products and devastate local, finite environmental resources for economic gain.

I have a lot to think about, but this is a start.