The Shore

The Shore

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Climate Change and North South Reparations

Originally written and posted for the Civicus World Assembly Blog 



One fifth of Pakistan is underwater, millions of people are homeless. . . the scale is so large that it is nearly impossible for me to fathom. (I feel a shift in the force, Luke) It is a large climate crisis.

In the event that you have any doubt that the Pakistan Floods (or Russian fires) are related to climate change see here (really, the jet stream has stalled!?) and here and here.

According to Dr. Jeff Masters,
The year 2010 now has the most national extreme heat records for a single year--eighteen. These nations comprise 19% of the total land area of Earth. This is the largest area of Earth's surface to experience all-time record high temperatures in any single year in the historical record. Looking back at the past decade, which was the hottest decade in the historical record, seventy-five counties set extreme hottest temperature records (33% of all countries.) For comparison, fifteen countries set extreme coldest temperature records over the past ten years (6% of all countries).
Huffington Post Slide show - 9 countries with record heat this year.



On the last morning of the 2010 Civicus World Assembly, Kumi Naidoo put it all in perspective for me. I cannot quote him exactly, but the important concept is that "aid" is not really aid - that's a misnomer. It should not be called aid, it is payment of a debt to the south from the north. We, in the north, have destroyed/warmed the climate, but the south pays the price, or at least they are going to pay it first,. They have, for the most part, the least economic resilience and ability, to save people from climate change - e.g floods and other environmental disasters, causing crop failure and wiping out homes. Over 300,000 people (before Pakistan) were already called "climate refugees". The north (it is very hard to say "we" when I have been fighting environmental and social justice issues for 35 years, but what else can I say?) warmed the earth (and continues to do so) by literally (and liberally) spewing green house gases, but we also bury our toxic waste in the south, and generally make garbage that others are expected to clean up, or put up with. At our rate of consumption in the north, we would need 5 planets to bring everyone to this northern standard of living. So we ALL need to change - but individual action, though laudable, is not enough.

Now, it is time to pay, to make reparations - as the south is going to pay the price first (we will all suffer eventually as record temperatures in Russia and Finland this summer demonstrate) and eventually there is little anyone can do. . .

So we all need to take individual actions to stop creating GHG's and decrease our own carbon footprints - get out of our cars, be careful about what we consume - want less. . . but, in addition, we have to come together to take collective action, to make sure that we make corporations and governments work together to save the planet, and we have to act quickly.

Things are clearly heating up. In the north, we have a debt to pay. It is not just climate of course, we owe a debt that we should/must repay - in Haiti for instance, among other countries of the Global South. Exploitation and outright theft of people, resources and labour have been rampant. The injustice is now on such a massive scale that it is hard for ordinary people to see. But it is important that the education and the action begin.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Global Food Prices - Food Crisis

This post was originally written and published on the blog for the Civicus Assembly

What causes rising food prices? And how do we stop it from outpacing inflation?
Some suggest that recent increases in global food prices are being driven by increases in the world's human population - that the increases, in both, are linked and inevitable. By their account our population simply outstrips the capacity of our environment to support sustainable food production. There are those who believe that mandated, legislated zero population growth is the only way we can ensure enough for all and keep the planet from being "used up".

While slowing or stopping population growth will likely assist in meeting the sustainability of the planet and people in the long term, it’s unlikely that long-term population growth is the driving factor of recent food price fluctuations. If population growth was the engine of inflation in food prices, one would expect a gradual increase rather than leaps and spikes.
Other explanations are more complex. They point to the role played in food price energy costs - e.g. fertilizer, farm equipment and food distribution. These links are the centre of a recent report by the World Bank. Energy does impact the price of food, no question, but is it the primary driver, given that prices took another big jump in the last 6 months, without similar changes in the cost of oil?
There is, as well, the contribution of issues at the supply end, related to poor harvests (which can cause hoarding by both farmers and consumers), or changes in crops grown. Those issues, are strongly dependent on environmental factors, including flood or drought, but also because choices about what to grow and where to grow it can be (sometimes unreasonably) influenced by national policies and subsidies. This is the narrative focused on by a recent story in the Financial Times detailing the poor grain harvest in Russia this year, and the subsequent global rise of grain prices, especially of flour. Russia’s decision to ban grain exports in response has resulted in shortages elsewhere. The Times suggests that:

Tight supplies, changing weather patterns and rising demand in emerging economies have all contributed to rising concerns about food security.
Not a word in these explanations, however, about what Civicus website visitors identified as the most likely culprit -- financial speculation. And, all of these explanations also ignore other dimensions of each of these issues including the contribution of climate change (as does a recent BBC report decreasing on rice harvests) monoculture, overuse of chemical fertilizers and herbicides and pesticides, not to mention GMO's . . . and a failure to develop agricultural policies that are going to meet the needs of those that farm - rather than far away consumers.


A July 2010 article in Harper's , entitled The Food Bubble: How Wall Street Starved Millions and Got Away with It, the author, Frederick Kaufman, argues pretty convincingly that the creation of a commodities index for grain helped fuel speculation, and that as food prices rose so did the index. The short version, which he presents in an interview with DemocracyNow, of his analysis is that massive investments by banks in wheat futures led to prices that were not 8%, but up to eight times higher than usual. The result? He says in part:
FREDERICK KAUFMAN: How did this work? Instead of a buy-and-sell order, like everybody does in these markets, they just started buying. It’s called "going long." They started going long on wheat futures. OK? And every time one of these contracts came due, they would do something called "rolling it over" into the next contract. So they would take all those buy promises they had made and say, "OK, we still—we’re just going to—we’ll buy more later. And plus we’re going to buy more now." And they kept on buying and buying and buying and buying and accumulating this unprecedented, this historically unprecedented pile of long-only wheat futures . . . Now, a lot of people are saying, "Oh, it was biofuel production. It was drought in Australia. It was floods in Kazakhstan." Let me tell you, hard red wheat generally trades between $3 and $6 per sixty-pound bushel. It went up to $12, then $15, then $18. Then it broke $20. And on February 25th, 2008, hard red spring futures settled at $25 per bushel. . .

. . .

And, of course, the irony here is that in 2008, it was the greatest wheat-producing year in world history. The world produced more wheat in 2008 than ever before.

. . .


JUAN GONZALEZ: And the result was, as the price went up, that there were food riots around the world.

FREDERICK KAUFMAN: Yeah.

You can watch the interview with Kaufman here. You can also read Goldman - Sach's letter defending themselves, and the author's response.
On addressing the contribution of speculation to 2008’s food price increases, and subsequent food riots, however, Kaufman is not alone. here’s an excerpt from the conclusions of another recent report from the World Bank, Placing the 2006/08 Commodity Price Boom into Perspective:

In this paper we examined three key factors whose role has been somewhat controversial: speculation, the growth of demand for food commodities by emerging economies and the role of biofuels. We conjecture that index fund activity (one type of “speculative” activity among the many that the literature refers to) played a key role during the 2008 price spike. Biofuels played some role too, but much less than initially thought. And we find no evidence that alleged stronger demand by emerging economies had any effect on world prices. Although tentative, these conclusions provide insights into the determinants of
the future path of commodity prices, which is still uncertain.


Food and markets - prices, sovereignty, security, availability - are all connected and all complex. Raj Patel briefly outlines some of the causes here. Speculation has contributed, surely, but Patel points that so too has the exposure to the volatility inherent in exposure to world markets as a result of liberalization of trade:

In 2009, Raj Patel and Eric Holt-Giménez, released a book, Food rebellions! Crisis and the Hunger for Justice. The precis of the book suggests that democratizing food systems and making society work for everyone is part of the answer:
Food Rebellions! suggests that to solve the food crisis, we must change the global food system — from the bottom up and from the top down. On one hand, farmers utilising sustainable approaches to production need to be supported, and farmer-to-farmer agroecological knowledge must be spread. At the same time, food and farm advocates need to work in local, national and international policy arenas to open dialogue, demand transparency and change the 'rules' currently holding back agroecological alternatives. The book frames the current food crisis as a unique opportunity to develop productive local food systems as engines for sustainable economic development. Hunger and poverty, the authors insist, can be eliminated by democratising food systems and respecting people's right to safe, nutritious and culturally appropriate food and to food-producing resources — in short, by advancing food sovereignty.

There are many other possible answers…what do you think? What is the most important cause of increasing food prices? What can we do to make sure that everyone can afford, and ultimately has enough, to eat?

Following publication of this blog I received this article: Food Commodities Speculation. . .   which does talk about the rise of food prices based on speculation.  It was written by:
Olivier De Schutter was appointed the UN Special Rapporteur on the
right to food in March 2008 by the United Nations Human Rights
Council. He is independent from any government or organization, and he
reports to the Human Rights Council and to the UN General Assembly.
All reports are available on http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/food/
annual.htm. See http://www.srfood.org for a thematic classification
of all reports and statements of the Special Rapporteur. The Special
Rapporteur can be contacted on srfood@ohchr.org

Friday, August 13, 2010

Reclaim the Gobal Commons

This blog was originally written and posted for the Civicus World Assembly.


There is a movement rising that seeks to organize the world in a new (and old) way. It involves two concepts - promoting "the commons" and fighting "enclosure".

According to "Another World is Possible":
The global commons is the set of natural resources, basic services, public spaces, cultural traditions, and other essentials of life and society that are, or should be, part of a public trust to be enjoyed by all people and cherished for the planet’s well-being. Another way to conceive of these assets is how it is said in Spanish: el bien comĂșn, the common good. Behind the commons is the fundamental idea that life, information, human relationships, popular culture, and the earth’s riches are sacrosanct and not for sale.

Today, all over the world, pieces of our commons are being commodified and/or privatized by the powerful and rich, in deals made possible by corporate trade accords and government. Being snapped up in the giant tag sale now underway is, well, pretty much everything: the creation of babies, health care, indigenous or shared knowledge, public radio and television, schools, human organs, genetic mapping, control of the use of plants and animals, water, and air. (Yes, air. Beyond the recent fad of oxygen bars, carbon trading is the buying and selling, effectively, of air). And that’s a limited list.
Naturally, people aren’t just taking this sitting down. They are inventing ways to ensure that society’s and nature’s wealth remains for the use of the community and for the sustenance of the earth. Collectively, the endeavors can be seen as the global commons movement.
In a book from 2008, called The Magna Carta Manifesto, Peter Linebaugh writes about the erosion of rights, once clearly established, for the many, mostly western societies, which are based on "common law." The book "blurb" as linked above says:
This remarkable book shines a fierce light on the current state of liberty and shows how longstanding restraints against tyranny—and the rights of habeas corpus, trial by jury, and due process of law, and the prohibition of torture—are being abridged. In providing a sweeping history of Magna Carta, the source of these protections since 1215, this powerful book demonstrates how these ancient rights are repeatedly laid aside when the greed of privatization, the lust for power, and the ambition of empire seize a state. Peter Linebaugh draws on primary sources to construct a wholly original history of the Great Charter and its scarcely-known companion, the Charter of the Forest, which was created at the same time to protect the subsistence rights of the poor.
You can see a rather lengthy, but fascinating, interview with Peter Linebaugh, about the book, and the concepts here:



Today, struggles to defend "the commons", range from First Nations, in Canada, fighting to protect the land from the oil sands exploitation, to the Adavasi people in India, or indigenous people in South America, having their land exploited by mines and dams, without compensation (because the land does not have a deed in the name of an individual, it is a commons for the people to use, as needed and not individually owned.) Unfortunately any "commons" is too often thought of as as just land, water, resources etc. that no one owns. . . yet.

The Commons though, conceptually, means that we all own the resources, feel that they are ours, and therefore we are all stewards of the resources, and have a need to look after them. So it is not just a way to get everyone's needs met, but is also a way to protect the earth. See: Earth Commons Rising and/or (warning direct link to english pdf) The Commons Manifesto

Just for fun, (and because it can be motivating) I include here a musical interlude -- Struggles against enclosure and to hold onto the commons spawned movements in Great Britain from the 12th-20th century in Britain. One 17th century movement called the Diggers or the True Levellers. . . who wanted to eliminate enclosure and work the land "in common" and on the commons - planting vegetables on so-called "wasteland", are well known.



There is also a (relatively) new organization called "On the Commons" that says of the idea of a commons based society:

A commons-based society refers to a shift in values and policies away from the market-based system that dominates modern society, especially over the past 30 years. The foundation of the market is narrowly focused on private wealth, while the commons is built upon what we all share—air, water, public spaces, public health, public services, the Internet, cultural endowments and much more.

One of the most compelling ideas being raised today is the possibility of evolving from a market-based society to a commons-based society. The commons has always been an element of human civilization. But its central role in sustaining all societies has recently been rediscovered, inspiring new lines of thinking in fields ranging from high technology to public health to business.

A commons-based society is one that values and protects commons assets, managing them for the benefit of everyone. Market-based solutions would be valuable tools in a commons-based society, as long as they do not undermine the workings of the commons itself.
Is "the commons" a useful concept? Can we return to, or create, a new world where there is a real "commons"? Combined with the elimination of enclosure (that is the increasing privatization or "ownership" of once free resources like water, but also corporate ownership of words and art,and the potential death of "net neutrality") development of non-monopoly markets, an unfettered civil society, and real democracy, it helps me envision a world that might be organized in a different way, and one in which civic engagement would be easy, necessary and effective. As, Jack Layton, a Canadian politician used to say: Don't let them tell you it can't be done."

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Women's Unpaid Work

This post was written for and was originally posted at:           http://citizenshift.org/blogs/civicus


Economics and Women's Unpaid Work. 

A few weeks ago, in India, the Supreme Court ruled that it was not just or fair for women, who are "housewives' (or their families), to be compensated, at a substantially lower rate than men and/or the "employed", when they are in a motor vehicle accident. But, more surprisingly, the justices said, that, seeing home-based work, as without economic value, was tantamount to gender bias and should not be tolerated. According to an article in Tehelka, an Indian magazine :

Seeing women’s home-based work as without economic value, the judges said, was tantamount to gender bias, and they suggested that not only the particular law in question (the Motor Vehicles Act) but also others should be changed, and the question of the value of women’s work should be taken up by Parliament. In a further radical step, they cited a report by an NGO that values Indian women’s homebased work at $612.8 billion per year!
http://www.tehelka.com/channels/Op-ed/2010/Aug/07/images/img.jpg
It was back in 1988 that Marilyn Waring wrote a book (If Women Counted: A New Feminist Economics) about how women's work was unpaid and uncounted, in the gross domestic product, of any country. You can see the original NFB video, "Who's Counting, Marilyn Waring on Sex, Lies and Global Economics", from 1995, at: http://www.nfb.ca/film/whos_counting/ or here:



15 years on, and her analysis is still true. We could debate her conclusions and suggestions for remedy, but there has not been much improvement in the counting of women's unpaid work in any country. There is also a good overview of the issue of women's unpaid work in Canada and around the world at: Women and the Economy.

At least the "amount" of unpaid (mostly women's) work is now being measured in the census of some countries - but that is about to change - perhaps for the better in India, but for the worse in Canada. It is a side note, but an interesting one, that a Google News India search reveals only the Tehelka story and one in the Economic Times (Times of India), about this judgement, at all. [later: found one more story, actually a "comment" written by an MP at - http://www.deccanchronicle.com/dc-comment/women-prejudice-823 - I wonder if there are more I missed?]
India is moving forward. Clarity about the work done by women, and all unpaid labour, is increasing; the analysis is increasing and, not surprisingly, action on the economic and ethical implications are increasing. In Canada, the clarity is being removed, the data won't be collected, the question won't even be asked.
There has been a public controversy raging in the last few weeks, over changing the so-called "long form" census, from a mandatory census form, to a voluntary “national household survey” that is NOT mandatory (for which there has been universal condemnation, including the resignation of the chief statistician, and yet the government has not changed their minds, and do not seem likely to do so.) But, lost in THAT controversy is another.

The question on the, now voluntary, “household SURVEY”, about unpaid work, is being eliminated. Antonia Zerbisias writes about the loss in the Toronto Star - She says in part:

All but lost in the controversy over the Conservatives’ impending elimination of the mandatory long-form census is how, in the proposed $30 million dollar replacement — the voluntary National Household Survey — Question 33 from the long form has been cut.

Question 33 (let’s call it Q.33) is a three-part query that has been in place since Canada made commitments at the 1995 UN World Conference on Women in Beijing. The question gathered data on how much time people spent on unpaid work: domestic chores, child care and attending to the needs of elderly relatives and friends. It helped make Canada a world leader in “time-use” data.

The results have also been showing how women are faring, socially and economically.

For example, the results indicate that despite a higher volume and percentage of women in the workforce over the past 20 years, changes between men and women in respective unpaid workloads have merely been “marginal.”

Based on information gathered in the 2006 census, StatsCan reports that, on average, “Women spend about an hour a day more on basic housework chores than their male counterparts. In 2005, women aged 25 to 54 averaged 2.4 hours daily cooking, cleaning and doing other basic unpaid household chores, compared with 1.4 hours per day for men in this age range.”

Two-thirds of Canada’s unpaid work is being performed by women. No matter how the value of that is evaluated —anywhere between 30 to 45 per cent of Canada’s $1.5 trillion GDP. That’s a heck of a lot of productivity that is being completely discounted.
Clearly women's work contributes to productive work and "the economy", everywhere, even if the numbers re participating in the formal economy are different. For example: Only 18% of women in India work "outside the home". But it is 2010 and time to count women's productivity, paid or unpaid, around the world, as part of what makes economies function smoothly. It is time that, looking after people, should be counted, around the world.

There are a lot of other things that should be counted as economically productive, and plenty that should not. See for example, Raj Patel on the BP oil spill. I will save those issues, however, for another blog.


Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Civil Disobedience - a useful tactic?

This post was originally written for the Civicus World Assembly and may be found there.


"If you're a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration," Al Gore to the Clinton Global Initiative gathering, 2008.

I wrote previously, broadly, about Economic Justice - but the themes of 2010 Civicus Assembly are also about advocating for, and implementing, solutions. Some solutions are positive, they build on our successes, and try and create the conditions for, and models of, the world that we would like to see - a more equitable and just world. Examples abound, and I could have chosen many others, in CIVICUS member groups, and around the world - including such projects as: increasing all aspects of the "Solidarity Economy", working on building housing and improving access to food and markets, finding sustainable ways of living - by creating sustainable agricultural, forestry and fishing practices, or in a myriad of ways available to build community, civil society participation, and sustainability.


But, sometimes we have to stop the attacks, the damage, the inequality, the injustice, and we are forced into a defensive or aggressive (but non-violent) posture - we cannot wait for a chance to join with others, globally or locally, to build the world that we want to see eventually - sometimes we have to act now and we have to STOP actions: be it, whaling, bulldozing homes in the West Bank and Gaza, ripping up the land and polluting the water like in the Canadian Tar Sands, or stealing land from peasant and/or indigenous peoples. And for that, we have a limited number of options - letter writing, protesting in the street, PR through social networks or earned media, lobbying governments, and internationally agencies, and working in elections . . . and, also, civil disobedience.

Kumi Naidoo - Executive Director of Greenpeace and author of a new book - Boiling Point : Can Citizen Action Save the World? - has a video posted on his blog, on the Greenpeace site.

In the video (see video below) Kumi says, in part, "At a time, when civil disobedience appears to be the only way we can actually push our governments, Greenpeace's methodology [of non-violent direct action] offers us the most promise. Because, right now, the only possibility that we have to get our governments to listen to us and to act with the urgency that the situation calls for is to ensure that they are constantly being pushed."



The Canadian Environmental law Centre at the University of Victoria, has a handbook for Canadians particularly for struggles in the forest industry, called: Civil Disobedience: a Legal Handbook for Activists. In it they define and contextualize civil disobedience:
Civil disobedience can be defined as deliberate disobedience of the law out of obedience to a higher authority such as religion, morality or an environmentalist ethic. Civil disobedience has existed in various forms for as long as people have lived in organized societies governed by the rule of law. Its primary purpose is usually to change the law or society's views on a particular issue. It is a public action intended to have a political effect. Civil disobedience can be defined by certain criteria:

  • it is employed only after other means have failed

  • it is non-violent

  • it is undertaken openly

  • its participants are willing to submit to prosecution and punishment for breaking the law

  • it is aimed at publicizing and challenging injustice

  • it is not employed for coercive or intimidating reasons


Civil disobedience is seen as morally justifiable if it contributes to the social good and is performed by someone who is well intentioned and well informed. Reasoned and thoughtful resistance through civil disobedience can often serve as a check on the political system and prevent serious departures from justice. The fact that one can engage in principled disobedience of the law is generally a sign of a nearly just society, for in an unjust society, dissenting voices may be simply crushed. In a relatively just society, the use of civil disobedience can be an effective and morally justifiable way to change laws or government policies.

So, do we need to agree with this definition? Do we need to have a debate about how and when civil disobedience is a useful and productive tactic? Lots of people being arrested and jailed (as in the G20 in Toronto June, 2010 - although they were not for the most part practicing civil disobedience but were legally protesting) is not much use, if all of the activists are simply imprisoned, and for many years. And, yet, being willing to accept the punishment that goes with the disobedience, was traditionally part of civil disobedience (as it demonstrates one's agreement with the rule of law, in general, just not the one you are protesting!) along with non-violence.

If we are using civil disobedience, what principles are important, and what - if you use it in a country which has no functioning "rule of law" or where inequality and or discrimination against certain groups is rampant - is the role of civil disobedience? Is it still a valid choice?

Some of these issues, and the increasing criminalization of any kind of dissent, will be explored in a workshop on Day 3 of the Assembly called W25: Activism is Not a Crime.

What do you think about Civil Disobedience? Have you used it? Are you willing to be arrested or jailed for your beliefs? To save the planet? To save a people? To save yourself and your family?

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Whorfian Hypothesis and gender

This post in the Economist got me thinking. . .

Do you know the whorfian hypothesis? I bought it hook, line and sinker in my first year at university (anthropology major) - it suggests that language that we speak, affects our thoughts in clear ways - it makes us how we are - that is, that what you speak is what/how you think. In the Whorf hypothesis, one cannot think outside the confines of one's language. Examples I remember from University, include that the Tibetans do not have nouns - the table is not a noun or thing in the way that we think of things as solid - but the table, in Tibetan, is tabling. . . and the Hopi have no tenses (complicated but this - no tenses in Hopi - turns out to not be entirely true)

I am not even sure that it is true about the Tibetan language - - and I am not sure that I want to propose what that might do to your thinking - pretty profound. . . but it would obviously make you see the world differently - everything in your world is in a state of being. . .
Now having said that - keep in mind that the wharfian hypothesis has become very controversial and not everyone even agrees that a language can restrict or bend your thought patterns.

So I was thinking about the whorfian hypothesis today, and about language - and language learning - because I am studying Hindi - and I realized that, in Hindi - lots of words (I don't know how many as I am still in "basic" Hindi . . . ) are pronounced differently if you are a man or a woman. So for instance a man says: "I understand" - he says: "Main somajthaha hoon." But a woman says "Main somajtahi hoon." I was wondering if that is true in Arabic, or in other languages where there is more gender separation than in English. I know it is true in Thai - any other languages? In what languages do men and women speak a different language? And does it affect the way that the culture/world sees gender - its importance or non-importance?
Blows my hypothesis out of the water if Arabic doesn't separate gender. . . although it could be the exception to the rule!

I may be onto something here (apparently not an original thought) Found an overview of the researcher's study - mentioned in the Economist article which says:
Does treating chairs as masculine and beds as feminine in the grammar make Russian speakers think of chairs as being more like men and beds as more like women in some way? It turns out that it does. In one study, we asked German and Spanish speakers to describe objects having opposite gender assignment in those two languages. The descriptions they gave differed in a way predicted by grammatical gender. For example, when asked to describe a "key" — a word that is masculine in German and feminine in Spanish — the German speakers were more likely to use words like "hard," "heavy," "jagged," "metal," "serrated," and "useful," whereas Spanish speakers were more likely to say "golden," "intricate," "little," "lovely," "shiny," and "tiny." To describe a "bridge," which is feminine in German and masculine in Spanish, the German speakers said "beautiful," "elegant," "fragile," "peaceful," "pretty," and "slender," and the Spanish speakers said "big," "dangerous," "long," "strong," "sturdy," and "towering." This was true even though all testing was done in English, a language without grammatical gender. The same pattern of results also emerged in entirely nonlinguistic tasks (e.g., rating similarity between pictures). And we can also show that it is aspects of language per se that shape how people think: teaching English speakers new grammatical gender systems influences mental representations of objects in the same way it does with German and Spanish speakers. Apparently even small flukes of grammar, like the seemingly arbitrary assignment of gender to a noun, can have an effect on people's ideas of concrete objects in the world.