This semester, in addition to KIPP, I took the following courses:
– Exclusion and Inequality
– Human Health in the Anthropocene
– Indigenous Futures
– Insights Through Data
– Interdisciplinary Futures
– New Paradigms in Ethics
Exclusion and Inequality:
I’d like to begin my reflection with this course, as it was our first class and introduced us to a significant conceptual toolbox that I can apply in future classes. This course also shaped the lens through which I approach other courses. During our group project on Exclusion and Inequality, I was in the Resource Flows team, where I focused primarily on the issue of land grabbing. My group members and I were particularly struck by how various existing interests and systemic structures recursively intersect across political, social, economic, and judicial dimensions, perpetuating inequality. In discussing data as a resource in this project, I was especially aware of the academic obsession with measurement, where large-scale, quantifiable studies often obscure the lived experiences of space and time, yet claim to capture the dynamics of social data.
For the individual assignment in this course, I considered a few possible topics. First: after the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the U.S., abortion rights have become a state-level decision, making pro-choice freedoms highly dependent on one’s intersectional identity. In this scenario, low-income women of color, for instance, are disproportionately disadvantaged compared to higher-income women who can afford to travel out of state for abortions, rendering them with minimal mobility and control over their own bodies. Second: Iran has begun using AI-based recognition systems to more effectively enforce restrictions on women not wearing headscarves or leaving home without permission. This relates to my concern with how technology, particularly AI, can exacerbate existing inequalities. (That said, I am not a feminist seeking to culturally impose Western ideals on Muslim women, and I have previously written about deconstructing the Qur’an to develop an Islamic feminism by and for Muslim women.) Third, which became my chosen topic: how Taiwan is systematically excluded from international organizations like the WHO due to its unresolved sovereign status, impacting the collective health of its people. History has shown that zoonotic global pandemics are increasingly accelerating, meaning future diseases will continue to transcend borders. In a planetary health framework, if any geographic area is excluded from global health governance—essentially redlined—it would not only render local populations as ‘bare life’ but also create a breach in global health defense.
I ultimately selected the third topic due to my situational standpoint. Taiwan’s marginalization is not as visually apparent as the racialization highlighted in Benton’s Risky Business: Race, Nonequivalence, and the Humanitarian Politics of Life. Without the visual presentation of vulnerability, Taiwan struggles to attract international humanitarian attention (although Benton critiques this rescuing-and-being-rescued mechanism). As a local, if I do not write about this issue, it is unlikely other groups will address the inequality affecting my people, which became my reason for finalizing this topic. However, after the recent U.S. election, the first topic now feels more urgent and timely than I initially anticipated, while the second topic continues to conflict with my relatively optimistic belief in techno-feminism. This tension is something I will need to address as I envision a more desirable AI-driven future. Therefore, I may explore the first and second topics further over time.
Human Health in the Anthropocene:
This course closely relates to my individual report topic from Exclusion and Inequality. It introduced two key concepts: first, that health is intersectional, and different identities—shaped by factors like environment, SES, and identity politics—can make people healthier or more vulnerable to illness. This strongly correlates with the discussions of inequality across various dimensions in Exclusion and Inequality, especially when addressing health inequities. Second, the course challenges the traditional public health approach, advocating for planetary health governance, as the Anthropocene’s environmental backlash impacts all of humanity on a global scale. This planetary health perspective underscores the need for global cooperation in health governance, as we all share a common fate on this planet. The course also stressed that we must understand global health issues politically, given that responsibility for the Anthropocene and vulnerability to its impacts are unequally distributed. This provides a further rationale for my report in Exclusion and Inequality, which advocates for Taiwan’s inclusion in global health governance.
Additionally, this course introduced us to numerous Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) trackers for monitoring global health. However, as these trackers largely use WHO-collected data, I noticed that Taiwan often appears as a data void on these platforms, highlighting the absence of Taiwan in global health statistics. This echoes both my individual report and the discussions in Resource Flows on data as a resource—sometimes overexploited, sometimes insufficiently collected.
Indigenous Futures:
For me, this course offered a perfect response to Human Health in the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene stems from humanity’s disregard for non-human species and the earth, exploiting them through anthropocentric logic until facing an environmental backlash, be it through zoonotic viruses or global climate change. Indigenous knowledge, with its de-centering of humans—like Australian Indigenous people treating wild dogs as kin, or Indigenous groups regarding salmon as family—presents a multi-species, non-Western perspective that may help prevent global collapse brought on by the Anthropocene.
Interdisciplinary Futures:
Languages that are vulnerable, facing extinction, or Indigenous are underrepresented in LLMs (Large Language Models), leading to not only cultural loss but also the forfeiture of alternative wisdom and knowledge needed to address Anthropocene issues beyond Western logic.
Points of Tension:
What is the definition of data?
Should data be collected extensively, or should limited collection be considered more equitable?
