Research Project - Same-Sex Marriage

My research project is about same-sex marriage.  I am going to interview my co-work.  She is legally married to her long-term partner during the window when proposition 8 first past in San Francisco.  They both married to man before, have children and ended up divorced.  I will ask her the following questions:

Background personal history.  Where did she grow up? go to school? get married? # of children? get divorced?  When did the two of them meet?  how did they meet?  when did they fall in love? What was it like? Did they know they were gay? Was that a surprise to them?  How did they tell their children?  Was that a problem when they tell their Children?  How did they tell their family?  Did they feel accepted by their family or they feel rejected.

Relationship as a gay couple.  What made them to decide to get married?  Why was it important to them?  What was it like to be a gay couple?  Were they accepted by people or they hide it from people?  Did they tell people?  How did they make them feel if they need to hide it from people?  Was there any time they were afraid for themselves because people can be really violence and mean.

Their Religion.  How did they deal with the conflict between their faith and their sexuality?  Did it shake their belief in their religion?  It this make the disbelieve or question about their religion?

Once I know the background and their history, the questions come more naturally, then the questions about what they live through and how they felt about it.  Because once I know who they are I will be able to describe and figure out what happened to them and how they felt.

Journal #3

Chapter 11 - By the start of the twenty-first century, Islam had acquired a significant presence in the United States.  They have more than 12,000 mosques and about 8 million Muslims.  Islam had already been prominent in the world between 600 and 1600.  They encompassed parts of Africa, Europe, Middle East and Asia and created a new and innovative civilization.  Islam was the largest and most influential of the third-wave civilizations.  This chapter stated that the fundamental differences between births of Islam and Christianity were Islam did not grow up as persecuted minority religion and they didn’t separate “church” and state.   Islam was associated from the beginning with a powerful state suggested that Allah was a good god to have on your side.  Islam offered new religious outlets for women especially as Sufis.  Islamic modernizers see later achievements of Islamic science and technology as foundation for more open engagement with modern western culture.  The great diversity and debate evident throughout the history of Islam reminds us that all Muslims cannot be tagged with a single label.  Study of the many cultural encounters spawned by the spread of Islam reveals considerable variation in the interaction of Muslims and others.  In particular, conflict and violence have sometimes accompanied such encounters (the Crusades, Turkic invasions of India and Anatolia) but at other times Muslims and non-Muslims have coexisted peacefully in Spain, West Africa, India and the Ottoman Empire.

Chapter 12 - The pastoral societies developed in grasslands of Eurasia and sub-Saharan Africa.  The economies focused on livestock, horse, camels, goats, sheep.  The standard features of pastoral societies generally less productive than agricultural societies and the populations are much smaller than in agricultural societies.  They are more egalitarian than sedentary societies, but sometime distinguished between nobles and commoners.  Pastoral women usually had higher status than women in sedentary societies.  Mongol conquest of China was difficult.  It began in northern China (ruled by dynasties of nomadic origin) was vastly destructive then conquest for southern China (ruled by Sung dynasty) was far less violent.  Mongols unified a divided China and made many believe that the Mongols had been granted the Mandate of Heaven.  Mongols did not become Chinese and few Mongols learned Chinese.  Mongols were transformed far more in Persia than in China.  Mongol devastation of Russia but they did not occupy Russia.  

Chapter 13 - The fifteenth century was a major turning point in the world history.  Zheng He's voyages did not have world-historical consequences but Columbus's voyages did.  This chapter's purpose is to review the human story up to the sixteenth century and to establish a baseline against which to measure the transformations of the period 1500-2000.  In 1500, the world still had all types of societies, from bands of gatherers and hunters to empires, but the balance between them was difficult than it had been in 500.  Gathering and hunting societies still existed throughout all of Australia, much of Siberia.  They had changed over time interacted with their neighbors.  Agricultural village societies existed in much of North America and Southeast Asia, their societies mostly avoided oppressive authority, class inequalities and seclusion of women typical of other civilizations.

Journal 2

Chapters 4-7 cover ancient civilization to classical era.  The earliest empires developed in era of Fist Civilizations.  Empire are political systems with coercive power.  They are larger, more aggressive states which conquer other states and include multiple people and cultures under a single political system.  Eurasian empires of the classical era include Persian Empire; Greek Empire, Roman Empire, Chinese Empire and Mauryan and Gupta Empires.  In the period around 500 B.C.E, there was a great emergence of durable cultural traditions that have shaped the world ever since (China, India, Middle East and Greece).  The major social changes include iron-age technology led to higher productivity and deadlier war, growing cities, increasing commerce, emergence of new states and empires and new contracts between civilizations.  Classical civilization were hierarchical and patriarchal, but they varied in how they organized their societies.  Chinese society was shaped more by state actions than were other societies.

There are a lot of material and reading in Part 2 and I need more time to read.  It it is not easy for me to write this blog.

Journal (Chapter 1-3)

It is interesting to learn the history of the planet.  Per the book, our solar system emerged around 4.7 billion year ago and life first appeared on earth about 600 million years after the earth itself was formed.  Each species has it own history but history books focus on our own species, Homo sapiens.  Homo sapiens only appeared in the last few minutes of December 31 on the cosmic calendar.

Most world historian agree on 3 major issues that define their field of study -- comparison, world history is comparative, comparison is a recurring theme throughout the book.  Connections, cross-cultural connections has existed for a very long time.  Changes is a central theme in all historical study and serves to challenge "essentialist" descriptions of particular cultures or peoples.  It is too easy to define particular groups of people as having unchanging characteristics, but in reality, every category of people has endless divisions and conflicts.

For 95% of human history, the means of life was gathering and hunting, people based on food collection. This period has been labeled "Paleolithic" (old stone age) era.  These people settled the planet and created the earliest human societies.  These societies were small, bands of 25-50 people, they had clearly rules that men hunted and women gathered.  Paleolithic people has a rich ceremonial life.

Agricultural is the second great human process after settlement of the globe.  It started about 13,000 years ago and called the "Neolithic" (new stone age) or Agricultural Revolution.  People shaping the land and selective breeding of animals.  They lost gathering and hunting skills.  The Neolithic happened in several regions (China and Eastern North America) and it all happened about 12,000 - 4,000 years ago.

Global warming cycle started around 16,000 years ago, Neolithic coincided with the end of the last ice age.  Gathering and hunting people had already learned some ways to manage the natural wold.  People had learned to cut back some plants to encourage growth of the ones they wanted.  They started to establish more permanent villages.  Neolithic is a recent development in world history.  It has radically transformed human life and life on the planet more generally.