Reframing the "Development" of the Third World?

Hi Andrew.

I'm sure if I were a part of that conversation my blood pressure would have gone off the charts.

I'm no expert, but I did work with non-profits in 9 African countries for about 9 years. I've heard plenty and decided that since I am not African and don't live there, I know next to nothing. It sort of the more I know, the more I don't know.

However, I will say that aid is given and received very, very differently depending on the organization and area and the only ones I trust anymore are ones that originate from an Africa community. Otherwise you tend to have a case of misdirected energy, poor communication and hurt feelings. If you've ever read the fiction Poisonwood Bible by Kingsolver, it illustrates the point well.

How could anyone not living in a community assess what is needed by that community?

Some sort of democratic process must be involved in providing any assistance. Whether you are providing clothing, food, equipment, or materials.

Who doesn't want a full belly, protected children, and to be as comfortable as possible? So, yes, humans, like Pavlovian dogs will behave a certain way for short term gain. It is our reptilian response to satisfy our most basic needs first. Whether you are talking about desperate people in Africa or Beverly Hills, you can get people to follow your plan in exchange for providing some need. You can train people to do things a certain way and then call yourself a success for implementing it. However, what really matters is what happens when you leave. What happens to that bit of community for the long term?

Let's say you provided a combine for farming - a huge investment/donation, and trained up people on how to use it and terrace their fields and water etc etc. but what you didn't know is the the straight lines in the field make it possible for creeper week to overtake the entire crop in one night (the traditional method of planting would have prevented this). Also the beans tended to sunburn because they did not have the corn shading them and the level of drought was underestimated and the furrows aided in additional runoff.

Perhaps if the organization first went to a collection of elders what they would've realized is that they needed to invest quality materials in the existing irrigation system and to look into providing some permanent employment to keep the elephants and baboons out of the gardens.

If the young generation gets foreign handouts or an education that does not apply to their traditional upbringing, then what else can they do but rely upon that pseudo parent/teacher of the new world they are entering.

I took a trip in Africa and had an extra few small cakes from a picnic leftover. I saw a collection of children across the street eyeballing our party due to the novelty. Thinking I would be the hero, I thought I'd give the cakes to the kids, but thought first to ask my local guide. He said, let me give them to this store owner here. He will then give the cakes to the teacher of that school when it is in session. That way, the cakes will be a reward for those children that will go to school. If you give them the cakes right now, those children will wait in that spot for another white person to come and give them a cake. It would probably be the most food they had all day.

So, if I wanted a fan club, I could stand around passing out cakes, but what good would it do? It would fill some empty bellies - which is good, but with what and for how long? That is the analogy I would answer the libertarian with.

The opposite of the SF frame in this case is acknowledging the African way of life being the longest civilized way of life on the planet and their incredible ability to live in symbiosis with nature instead of needing to dominate and exploit. (You can point out how OUTSIDE financial interests have thrown this totally out of whack). Yes there were certainly tribal wars and suffering, but you will finds millions of people throughout Africa living in peace and leaving a much smaller carbon footprint than any of their developed counterparts. What can we learn from them? That is also the question I would ask your friend.

Likewise you might ask if the aid wouldn't be better spent forcing the foreign corporations to follow strict standards on their environmental and societal impacts on the the Africa people and lands. In other words, let's stop the drunken rape of Africa for the sake of diamonds, SUVs, and cell phones before accusing the victims of becoming co-dependent.

One last thing when folks talks about "Africa". It is 52 or 54 countries last time I checked (depending on which map you consult). Making ANY generalized assumptions about anything shows a lack of credibility on knowing specifically what you are talking about.

This stranger was just a third-rate ideologue, not a foreign policy expert; I'm not really interested in collecting ammunition to return and harangue this unfortunate person. I am solely interested in assessing the relative usefulness of "integration" versus "development" in the framing of foreign trade/lending policy.

This woman I spoke with was not nearly bright enough to be driving any foreign policy discussion, she was not the originator of her ideas; she received her "wisdom" on the subject from the powers that be. The repetion of the "development" frame in the media and on the street made the strict father-immoral child model natural for understanding that interaction. I'm wondering if the progressive language professionals agree.

The approach you prescribe as the "opposite of the SF frame" here would, I'm sure, be rejected by this person as a starry eyed pean to Aftica's noble savages. That is just something that she can either agree or disagree with with. She will likely find it moot.

"Framing" is not deploying historical facts in counter argument, "framing" is developing concepts that force the opposition to accept some of your premises. To use Lakoff's primary example, "tax relief" forces the understanding of taxation as an affliction.

"Development" forces the understanding that 1) there is a natural process associated with the economic life of states 2) that this process inevitably leads to maturity and 3) economically underdeveloped states are immature.

I'm calling bull on all these assumptions.

I feel that "integration" forces the understanding that 1) our laws are responsible for Third World suffering, 2) we are responsible for the legal rememdy and 3) it will never get any better if left alone.

We have a moral responsibility to integrate Third World economies into the First World economy. A vague goal of "development" can authorize any and all economically productive activities, however immoral, since some production is a step up from no production. A goal of "integration" sets the standard at equality, which implies vigilance for their integrity and dignity as our own.

Hi Think4,

The fundamental questions are very simple: (1) What do the people of this specific clan-tribe-nation need? (2) How can we help them to meet those needs, if indeed we can help at all?

The answers to those questions will necessarily be as varied as the situations faced by the clans, tribes, and nations being asked. There is no "one size fits all" model for international "development"/"integration" assistance, nor is there a "one size fits all" model for economic systems.

The World Bank/IMF notion that "free market capitalism" will work everywhere, for everyone, is a misguided and dangerous myth. Indeed, economic historians would suggest that "free market capitalism" - as the U.S. is currently encouraging it elsewhere - has never lifted a single country out of poverty. It certainly wasn't the economic model that produced the stunning U.S. economic growth in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Most of our "assistance" to emerging economies has been focused on ensuring that those countries' resources and markets remain available for U.S. businesses and U.S. products, with almost no regard for whether U.S. businesses' buying those resources, or U.S. products dominating those markets, is good for the emerging country itself.

It's no accident that Wall Street and the CIA had a virtual revolving door for key personnel in the 1950s-1990s. The CIA's operational focus had almost nothing to do with developing information as to the capabilities and intentions of potential adversaries. The CIA's focus - and indeed U.S. foreign policy overall - had almost everything to do with ensuring U.S. corporate access to the resources and markets of selected countries: ensuring that our corporations could secure the resources at the lowest possible cost and dump surplus production into those markets at the greatest possible profit.

When U.S. government officials talk about employing our military and intelligence assets "to protect vital U.S. interests," they're talking about ECONOMIC interests. In essence, we've used our military and intelligence assets to as economic "risk management" tools ... ensuring that other countries' governments don't undermine the profitability of our corporate dealings in those countries ... with very little real regard for whether the country's government is representative or monarchal, open or totalitarian. What matters is that the subject country's governmental policies are predictably profitable for U.S. corporations.

Given this 60-year (really 160-year) history of exploitation, it shouldn't come as a big shock that many of the world's peoples distrust U.S. "assistance." It would be a greater shock if they didn't....

Crissie

I rather like the integration framing except for the hit of cultural imperialism that I got from it.

We want to express our empathy with their struggle to achieve a universal level of subsistence and also want to express our support for their ability to be responsible for themselves. We do not want to cultivate dependence or interfere with their autonomy as a culture.

If I take the concerns mentioned correctly, we currently we have a system that implies contempt for their inability to "succeed" and further reinforces their depenence by doling out aid in ways that ignore relevant cultural factors.

The path from where we are to where we want to be must rely on our recognizing that those who need aid are fully capable people who are looking for an oportunity to do the right thing and they resent hand-outs that put them to shame for their circumstances.

In my mind the development metaphor is appropriate, but that is because after over 15 years working with kids (elementary age and up) I assume they are fully capable, though inexperienced, and are looking for opportunities to do the right thing. Since I operated in a manner that was the polar opposite if the classroom I was able to act more as a learning facilitator rather than fulfilling the traditional teacher role of a delivery-person constantly stuffing knowledge skills and information into them.

In the context of the traditional classroom role of the teacher as autocratic dictator delivering knowledge, skill and information without regard to their individual needs, then the metaphoric extension of the needs of children is very defferent. When the children are assumed to be empty and unwilling to acquire what's necessary to succeed, then the role of an adult is one of doing stuff to the kids "for their own good" regardless of whether they like it or not. This sounds like the underlying attitude behind foriegn aid.

Perhaps the image of the people who need aid is a starting point for reframing the whole issue. I just found out about Kiva.org and Accion.org which are organizations that work with micro finance institutions. The ways that they portray people who are recieving help is about empowerment and dignity, not poverty.

That strikes me as the direction the reframing needs to take. The very image of the starving and hopelessly poverty stricken feeds into the negative SF framing. Can we emphasize the results of the aid, not the presenting symptoms that prompted the aid. I'm not saying we ignore the pre-aid condiditons, but only use those images briefly to tell the story of how the aid resulted in a more dignified and stable life for people.

Consider that alleviating the poverty in foriegn lands is not a story of the rich rescuing people from the evil poverty monster. I think it is a story about how the poor people rescue themselves from the evil poverty monster when they are able to get a little help from some friends who live in other places. We do not have the answers to their problems, they do, but we do have a few tools that would help them immensely if they had access to them. Our job as a rich nation is to facilitate their fight against difficult circumstances, not fight it for them.

We have made the mistake of throwing our answers at the problems and it didn't work. Let's try the strategy of asking them how they would like to solve the problem and how they would like us to help.

On a different line: As implied by my description of my teaching practice above, it is not accurate to say that "development" inherently invokes a SF interpretation, it invokes the process of development and whatever parenting style you favor, thus it can equally invoke nurturance. The challenge is to surround the term "development" with other ideas that automatically imply the nurturant model and negates the strict model.

A nurturant parent does not believe that a child must sink or swim, but a strict parent does. The strict parent is concerned with upholding the proper role that must be played and ignores the complexity of the actual relationships that result from how people play out their roles. A nurturing parent puts the relationship, in all it's complexity, at the center of their concern and will play out their "proper role" only as a means to developing a strong relationship. The logic of strict parenting is based on following the rules for being a "good" parent while the logic of nurturant parenting is based on developing strong relationships in the family.

If I were to extend these ideas to foriegn aid I would look for the best ways to develop strong international relationships. This is what really impressed me about the model that Kiva.org is using. It is a way of allowing individuals to make direct connections to the people who are benefiting from the financial resources being made available.

Enjoy,

Don

Site: http://www.Attitutor.com
Blog: http://donberg.blogspot.com

I did my undergraduate work in anthropology, and I'm less than a year out of school. I did pretty well. I feel I have a pretty good command of a lot of the most important discusssions currently contended in the discipline. I'd say, from this reasonably educated vista on the issue, that this matter has next to nothing to do with "Western" disregard for cultural practices in the "Global South".

The issue here is the fact that "Western" markets are CLOSED to African agricultural products. "Western" states largely have protective policies favoring their own agricultural producers. There is no other economic domain that African states can COMPETE in right off the bat. Agriculture is it. They are clearly able to be ROBBED in terms of labor and natural resources, but they are able to COMPETE only in agriculture. To "develop" the Third World CAN mean to engage in the common forms of theft, to "integrate" the Third World is something else.

I'm not talking about sending and kind of material aid anywhere, I am not talking about sending any kind cash infusion to anyone, I am not even talking about any kind of specialist swapping/agricultural mentorship between any governments. I'm talking about opening markets, pure and simple. That is the road to self-sufficiency. The vast majority of the individuals in Africa who are prepared to produce for the global economy right now are prepared to produce agricultural products. It is not a matter of capital, it is a matter of opportunity that is barring them from competing today.


When we talking about "developing" Africa, for example, we can understand that verb as implying an operation Western specialists perform on African patients. Western meddling, staus quo, is clearly not yielding great results. Rather than trying to mold Africa in the West's image, rather than "groom" them, "cultivate" them, "develop" them, the West should simply accomodate them as they are RIGHT NOW. Agriculturally, it could happen if the markets were there.