Lately, I have noticed several of the scholarly articles we read throughout CAP generally convey similar messages. Messages pertaining to how we view the world we live in and the people within it, ultimately allowing us to do so with a more empathetic and open mind.

CAP Law & Society introduces us to historical and contemporary instances when ideas of legality and humanity come into conflict. Critically and thoroughly studying the topics we do then leads us to think about our own personal places in a much larger context.

This week we read Carrie Dawson’s “On Thinking Like a State and Reading (about) Refugees” I found this article to be quite similar to an article we covered in History 105 prior to this week. Danika Medak-Saltzman’s, “Transnational Indigenous Exchange: Rethinking Global Interactions…”(link to article) likewise discusses how scholarly portrayals of a minority group often lead to misconceptions of them that we believe to be true. Dawson confers about how literary works invite us to read refugees while Saltzman discusses how the historical archival materials we study are all from the colonial vantage point and generally go unchallenged. Both argue that because of this we do not allow such “minorities” to have agency. Saltzman states “we must read with the goal of revealing rather than obscuring Natives” and Dawson correspondingly states we must adopt the perspective of “We Refugees” rather than thinking like a state which allows for an “othering” of migrants.

Essentially, both articles suggest we must scrutinize our instrumentalized reading practices and their utter failure to account for the humanity of their subjects.  Saltzman particularly raising the possibility of exploring the minority consciousness, while Dawson additionally agrees stating “such forms of representation deny the very particulars that make people something other than anonymous bodies.”

What we study in CAP plays off one another in the scholarly community, which intrigues me. In high school I  loved when I learned similar concepts through the lens of different, and distinct subjects. I had no idea what CAP really was upon registering, so again being able to study major issues through a historical, anthropological, political and legal lens is something I genuinely enjoy.  8 months into studying in CAP and I feel as though I see and understand society with a new heightened awareness. I can’t wait to become more educated and see where that takes me.  One of my favorite concepts “sonder” is something I often see within the coordination of our classes.

Sonder – n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.