Reading Reaction #3: Mediterranean Food

As an American, I have a romantic view of the Mediterranean as a place of “sun kissed rurality” (Billiar). With the ICEX team’s flight to Malta quickly approaching, I am becoming more and more excited for the month we will be spending there. I am looking forward to the entire trip, but am most excited for the food as this is always the best part of international travel. With my stereotype of the Mediterranean, I thought I would be enjoying various pastas and soups filled with sundried tomatoes and flavorful herbs. Unfortunately, as is the case with Malta, stereotypes do not hold true for every member they are applied to. While Malta’s cuisine has significant traces and influences from traditional Mediterranean cuisines, it also has influences from many other cultures. This unique mixing of cuisines is due to Malta’s strategic geographic location. Malta’s location is a transition between Europe, western Asia, and Northern Africa. This has led it to be influenced by many different countries and cultures through interactions and colonization (this includes the Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Sicilians, Knights of St. John, and British). Upon learning that Malta’s cuisine was influenced by so many cultures, I became even more excited because I believed that they would just take the best parts of each culture’s cuisines and combine them into many amazing dishes that I have never tasted before. Loving food as much as I do, I naturally chose to read the recommended texts relating to Malta’s food culture. Unfortunately, these readings relate the current state of Malta’s cuisine. In When tradition becomes trendy: social distinction in Maltese food culture Elise Billiar states that “Malta’s young republic is … reproducing the Western romantic notion of the Mediterranean in its search for its own roots”. As a nation confused about its past, Malta is trying to become what is projected onto them by Western Nations. This is sad, because Malta has a diverse past and could be embracing all of the different cultures that have affected it over the years. By doing this, Malta would also be closer to finding its roots.

On a different note, the stereotype situation is quite interesting. At first I had a stereotype of what the food would be like, but I learned about Malta’s past and thought that it could be much more. With more research, I discovered that Malta is trying to adopt the stereotype that I originally had. It is important to note that although they are trying to adopt traditional Mediterranean cuisine, they still have influences from nations that have ruled the island. Also, I will describe some of the steps Malta has taken that are leading to more traditional Mediterranean cuisine. 100,000 olive trees were planted to produce olive oil when Malta has never had olive trees or olive oil. While this is done in part for money (Malta has a climate suitable for olive trees), it depicts Malta’s trend towards becoming the vision that we have of the surrounding region.

Reading Reaction #2: Engineering Engineers

While many teenagers think that they are choosing their career paths when they apply for college as juniors and seniors they do not realize that they have been tracked to specific fields. In The Engineering Student Pipeline Bowen states that “The preparation of American youth for careers in engineering starts in reality in kindergarten and ends, for entry, with an engineering baccalaureate degree over a decade and a half later”. While Bowen explains how this is true within engineering, he does not mention that it is the same across all professional fields. Students are pushed away from some fields and into others based on race, gender, stereotypes, perceived ability, and attitude. Tracking is done by both parents and teachers and in many cases is done unconsciously. One way in which tracking works is through verbal cues. If constantly told that you are good at math and science, but writing is just not your thing you will eventually start to believe this. This will cause you to care more about the work associated with what you are good at, and use excuses like I am just not a good writer as an explanation for your C+ in English. These verbal cues can also be compounded with grades you receive. As soon as children start to accept that they are better at math then they are at writing and begin to put less effort towards working on their writing skills they will begin to receive better grades in the subjects they are “better” at. Bad grades will reinforce the thought that they are not good at a subject and will cause a snowball effect. Eventually, they truly will not be good writers because they have ignored English for years while spending all of their time learning mathematics. This is important to note because of how stereotypes affect this tracking. As the Dean’s task force published in its findings and recommendations, “the fraction of engineering students who are women peaked at less than 20 percent and has declined”. With such a small proportion of women in engineering fields, there is a common stereotype of engineers as males. This stereotype is involved in the tracking of girls and boys from a young age. Stereotypes like these influence how teachers and parents track children. Unconsciously teachers and parents give praise and push children in certain directions based on stereotypes and cultural norms. As stated earlier, tracking is apparent across many groups including race, gender, and social class. Tracking leads many children to drop out of education pipelines before they can decide for themselves whether or not they like the field. In order to keep as many children in every education pipeline as long as possible, work needs to be done at every level of education. Increasing the number of children in all education pipelines will not only provide them with the opportunity to study a broader range of subjects, it will also increase the number of students attending college, as less students will be denied from college because they do not meet the standards. Tracking causes some of the imbalance we see in today’s careers, but are there factors with more influence on this imbalance?

Abstract: Current Challenges

As a country recently admitted to the EU (March 8, 2003), Malta is currently facing many challenges and opportunities. Since its admission to the EU, Malta has been working to meet the standards that the EU requires of all of its members, including a minimum of twenty percent RES by 2020. Also, with its strategic geographic location in the Mediterranean Sea, Malta plays an important role in terrorism prevention. This set of circumstances provides Malta with room for a surprising amount of political power for such a small nation. What is Malta doing to create RES, what have they done to prevent terrorism, and how has their recent situation affected their power in global politics since their admission to the EU.

Progress Report #1: Contemporary Controversies in Malta

As a member of the ICEX team my project will focus on Malta. I choose to research contemporary challenges and opportunities specifically related to the environment, power production, social/political controversies, role in European Nations (EU), role in counter-terrorism, and Malta’s vision of itself today.

Preliminary research has yielded some information that should make this project very interesting. While I have found many interesting facts and articles relating to my topic, most of them only scratch the surface of the issues and do not go into the depth of detail that I would like to see. Finding detailed information on the topics introduced above is proving to be quite a difficult task for a small country like Malta.

It is commonly said that Malta’s only natural resources are people and the sun. The people are the one and a half million tourists that travel to Malta each year, and the sun because it is sunny most of the year. I find this very odd because with sun as one of your only natural resources one would think that Malta would have an interest in renewable energy (such as solar power). However, Malta only produces 0.2 percent of its energy with renewable resources while the rest is produced with fossil fuels. Additionally, as part of the EU Malta is required to produce ten percent of its energy with renewable resources by the year 2020 - they do not seem to be making much progress. With limited natural resources, Malta should use what it has to its advantage and harness the power of the sun.

On a separate note, Malta became the smallest member of the EU in May 2004 which was a major partisan controversy at the time as the Nationalist party was in complete support while the Malta Labour Party opposed it. Since its admission to the EU, Malta has been enthusiastically involved with the EU and its decisions (except maybe renewable energy). In addition they have been quite involved in counter terrorism. With its strategic location in the Mediterranean Sea, Malta is a desired operating location for terrorists and counter terrorists alike. But, in 2005 Malta and the United States committed over six million dollars to secure Malta’s borders and general security. Malta also allowed the United States use its land and harbors to repair equipment and for use in emergency situations. This increased the United States effectiveness in fighting the terrorists because they had repair facilities and headquarters close to the action.

Above was a quick overview of what I have found interesting so far. As I move forward with my research I would like to learn more about what actions Malta is taking to create green energy sources to comply with the EU, and hopefully find some interesting current economic and political controversies.

Following is a list of facts that I found interesting and related to my topic (United States demographic statistic in parenthesis): Malta has the densest population in Europe with about 3400 people per square mile (55), is 98 percent Roman Catholic (22%), has two official languages, growth rate of .42 percent (.87%), 94 percent living in urban areas (82%), and an immigration rate of 2.03 migrants per 1000 citizens (2.92). I do not know how these demographics affect the politics, policies, and other aspects of society in Malta, but I feel that they may be an important key to understanding the internal and international affairs and controversies of Malta.