Message-ID: <970101081638_577140105@emout07.mail.aol.com> Date: Wed, 1 Jan 1997 08:16:39 -0500 From: mailto:EUNSteve@AOL.COM> Subject: Re: [Fwd: Re: Escalating philosophising] To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
I would like help from Bob Diamond and others here in learning if Bob's account of the history and the motives of North/South "development" relations is widely believed by the development community .Below is what I believe is the core position that Bob takes:
<< Now that the looting of the third world is no longer *as* morally acceptable (I say *as* because it continues, just much more covertly) we have now focused on efforts on what I see as proselytizing the virtues of a cash-based economy over traditional subsistance, communitarian economies. Essentially, we (western societies) seek out converts to our economic system that gives us A) continued access to the raw materials we need via debt, envy, and corruption, and B) self-congratulatory justification that our way (unfettered capitalism) is truly the saving grace of humanity--the irony of course is that capitalism has at best weathered only 300 years or so of human history,(during which time environmental damage i.e. species extinction rates, toxicity levels, etc. have reached unparalleled levels) whereas the indigenous cultures we now destroy with our disease have proven their viability and sustainability over thousands of years. >>
I assume, subject to Bob's correction, that he is suggesting that if it were not for our capitalist conversion campaigns the indigenous cultures would not abandon their "subsistence, communitarian economies," and that he believes that it would be preferable for such cultures and economies to remain as they are.
My questions, then, are these:
1. Is Bob's account of Western villainy the common context of those engaged in development work?
2. Do many in "development" believe that it is possible for a Western nation to assist in the "development" of an "indigenous" culture without the very vocabulary and activities of development introducing into the indigenous culture the new logics and lifeworlds that will unsettle and transform that culture? That is: is there any way to teach illiterates to read without changing the nature of their consciousness?(I include Freiere's way of changing peasants into believing that they are "oppressed" as cultural destruction.) Is there any way to create schools in a culture without schooling changing the very conceptual foundations of that culture?
One possibility, of course, is that it is not capitalism and Western rapacity that is the villain that destroys the indigenous culture, but the benign development process itself: and that there is no way to keep the locals down on the farm after they've seen Paree.
(For the younger folks on the list: that last reference is to an American song, World War 1 vintage, that sings of all the returning US soldiers who no longer wanted the solid virtues of farm life after they had tasted the pleasures of Paris.)
Steve Eskow
Dr. Steve Eskow, President The Electronic University Network 288 Stone Island Road Enterprise, FL 32725 407.321.8770;Fax:407.321.4861 January 1, 1997