Three Degrees of Separation
Channel: LIVING SOCIOLOGY
Date: 2019-12-17

First Person, Plural on CFUV-fm, Victoria, BC 
Originally aired January 23, 2003

Canada is a small world in many ways.  Here is a case in point.  A new Canadian friend we met in December started telling us of her time in Grenada as an intern with the Canadian International Development Agency (also known as CIDA) youth program.  Upon introducing her to another friend whom we knew had spent time in Panama, we discovered that the Panama internship was also sponsored by CIDA.  We then discovered that a third friend, a filmmaker, produced a film about a Guatemalan activist that was funded by CIDA.  These three experiences by our Canadian friends got us thinking this week about the role Canadians and Americans play in the larger global picture.  Understanding the global village as a place where people can help people rather than where markets are developed and exploited is the kind of globalization that can lead to peace and tolerance rather than war and endless cycles of rumours of war.  It is that kind of globalization that we are examining this week. 

Heather MacAndrew's film, The Man We Called Juan Carlos, is a beautiful meditation on how the subject of her first documentary, Wenceslao Armira, and her own life intertwined for 25 years.  It is political and personal. In a simple and understandable way, it takes the viewer through the complexities of development in countries where simply helping the poor is a radical, political act. We reviewed this film, examining the implications of it for development, globalization and peacemaking in the contemporary world that seems to be on the brink of war. 

CIDA’s International Youth Internship Program was created in 1997 to send college graduates to developing countries for meaningful employment in working towards a development project. The purpose is twofold:  First, to enable young adults to have the opportunity to learn more about sustainable development within their field of training, and second, to encourage sustainable development in impoverished countries.  The internships are created in partnership with a number of businesses and not-for-profit organisations that provide the money and the security to keep interns in a country for six months.  It was one of these internships that led our friend Sara Mimick to Grenada to provide training in eco-tourism. Sara shares her stories of Grenada and her impressions of CIDA’s internship program. 

The delineation of who is "in" our group and who is "out" is one of the ways people define themselves and their social connections.  However, this in/out delineation can lead to violence if it carried to extremes.  It has always been easier for people to go to war if they regarded those whom they were fighting as carriers of ideologies rather than human beings who have families, have livelihoods and struggle with the same kinds of issues that "we" do.  Political leaders and military personnel have understood this for some time.  They depend upon people to forget that the enemy are human.  We discuss this week how this might change if we come to understand how small a world it really is.  We are supposed to be just six introductions away from anyone else on earth.  Perhaps this six degrees of separation will allow us to live more peacefully if given a chance.

copyright: Carl Wilkerson and Pattie Thomas

http://sociologylegacy.pbworks.com/w/page/93416624/Episode%2032%20Three%20Degrees%20of%20Separation