Back in the U.S. of A.

Well, I arrived at the Memphis International Airport after midnight on Tuesday (which was actually Wednesday morning) after a long day. With the time changes, my Tuesday lasted something like 36 hours, in locations including Shanghai and Beijing in China, and then San Francisco and Houston in the US, before getting to Memphis. Larry Troy and I traveled together as far as San Francisco, and then Elle (my wonderful wife) met me in Memphis. On Wednesday, we drove back to Cleveland.

It took me a few days to get over the jet lag, but based on good advice from Lisa Long (my sister-in-law who works with Save the Children and travels internationally), I was able to beat it without too much pain. The trouble really started when I attacked the pile of work on my desk and the long list of emails that accumulated during my brief international sabbatical (that term sounds better to me than just a trip to China).

Now it is time to think through all of things I learned about in China, and all of the questions I have. Here are some though sketches from the sociologist in me...

--China offers us an important case study for trying to understand the connections between economic growth, environment and health. On the one hand, with the rapid economic growth in the country, people's material living standards have increased (on average that is) which is good for health in terms of access to better housing and caloric intake. On the other hand, the pace of growth has outstripped the willingness and ability of government to deal with the darker side of problems caused by heavy air and water pollution. As one of the world's quickly rising economic powers, these are important issues not just for China but the rest of us as well. Who knows, in thinking through them, maybe those of us in the U.S. can learn something to take corrective action here at home.

--Transportation is an issue of immense importance in all societies, yet sociologists and other social scientists seem to be behind the curve in studying this issue. I know there are some people doing this work, but they are clearly not dominant within our fields. The importance of this really came to me while looking at the model of Shanghai and then reading a book about the environment in China on the plane ride home. Typically, the concern is with cars - the cost, needed infrastructure, congestion, time away from home, and the pollution. Also in need of attention are buses, trains and airplanes. Maybe most important to civilization is how we go about designing where education, work and services are provided in relation to where people live. We seem to take transportation as a given, but there are costs involved. These don't just impact our pocketbooks as with the current gas price problems, but the environment and our health as well.

(The irony of reading a book about pollution on a plane burning thousands of gallons of fuel was not lost on me.)

--The massive rural to urban migration and associated dislocation and vulnerability of people in the lower socioeconomic spheres is an area of great importance. Luckily, many of the professors and students we met in China are concerned about this and directing their attention this way. We all need to be considering the patterns, forces at work and implications of these changes. We went through some of this in the U.S., and have learned somethings worth sharing. Now, of course, there are differences as population movements take place internally, internationally and even globally. How does this impact education, the workforce and provisioning of social and health services?

--All in all, these issues beg us to give more attention to concepts of social development and sustainable development.--