Intro to Cultural Anthropology Notes 4/9/10

· Benefits of progress for indigenous peoples are often illusory and detrimental. · Progress (“development”) pushed on people as way of getting at their resources.

· Usual Means: GNP, per capita income, employment rates, literacy rates, consumption, doctors and hospital beds/1000, etc. · Who needs development who doesn’t? Those who score low are considered in need of development · Bodley – introduces argument by Goldschmidt: “Does progress or economic development increase or decrease a given culture’s ability to satisfy the physical and psychological needs of its population, or its stability?” (e.g., nutritional status, mental health, crime, family stability, relationship to natural resource base.)

• Plausible indicators of development rather than macroeconomic

*Work and dietary changes – (results in diabetes, hypertension, obesity) *Disrupting environmental balance – parasitic diseases due to water contamination *Overpopulation, urbanization and crowding – increase in bacterial and parasitic diseases Development can have negative affects however this does not mean that people throughout the world are worse off because of developmentLife expectancy has risen dramatically since 1950 (increased in least developed world from 30 years old to 60 years old)Nevertheless there is a price for progress

Voluntary Adopting prestige food (white rice) Involuntary More time devoted to earning cash, less time to growing/procuring traditional foods, increased consumption of processed foods Forced Elimination of traditional foods by powerful groups (e.g. forming National Parks) Negative impacts on nutrition Example - Nauru is fattest nation of earth – 94% of adult population classified as overweight (nation influenced by development)TeethModern diets are bad for teethTooth decay correlates with introduction of modern diets (processed foods, high in sugar)

Soviet Unions’ Transformation -Extensive irrigation system built -Shift from small farmers to state farming -Shift from varied crops to mono-cropped cotton Costs -Dependence on imported food -Dependence on international cotton market prices -Environmental pollution (pesticides, chemical fertilizers) Wither the Aral Sea? Lots of water evaporating, toxic dust – years of sedimentary deposits of fertilizer and pesticides

· Ignorance, arrogance, and ethnocentrism of aid officials causing harm to US interests abroad. · Creates hatred among those we want to “help” · Ethnocentrism of aid officials abroad hurts our chances of helping people abroad Issue: Vested Interests · “There is something in it for a lot of people.” · Tanzanian (Elites): free vehicles, salaried jobs (low level), new buildings, scholarships to USA – poor people of Tanzania are not the primary beneficiaries of the projects · Americans: 1. salaried jobs (high level) with many perks (housing allowance, servants) – make a good living, have a good lifestyle 2. contracts for US institutions (universities). The Ugly Americans · AID staff: · Live in mansions with servants and guards; never speak the local language; little, if any, understanding of local culture; social contacts = local government elites (NOT with the people they are supposedly helping); job is to envision and shepherd toward completion multi-million dollar projects. · Socioeconomic disconnect!

Not spectacular enough (US image issue) – wants to show people “look what we did for your country”· Small projects “too difficult to administer.”· No American institutions would make a profit – a lot of money going into development benefits US universities, companies, corporations Damn and Hydropower Generator, Nepal – don’t get involved in smaller projects – piping clean water into village, setting up inexpensive sanitation projects – little projects are more beneficial, the big project ultimately benefits the powerful

Offices larger than many embassies Signs only in English (for educated elite) American employees with local knowledge (e.g. Swahili speakers) transferred elsewhere (“too close to the natives”)

· Grant money as government subsidy to universities. · Creating “experts” who actually know very little about topic (farming) in target of intervention (Africa) – experts created based on Midwestern farming approach – don’t know much about local farming conditions in native country, ethnocentric assumptions about how farming works in a different country

· Vested political and economic interests · Make allies · Vested Interests – Economic

• Cash cows for those who get contracts (universities, corporations)
• Good jobs for USAID officials
• Benefits to powerful in recipient nations

Critique of Development Lesotho – small country in Africa Invention of “Isolation” – intervention philosophy, need to create rational for why development needs to occur · Portrayal of country as “untouched” by modern economic development. · Portrayal of people as traditional peasants who are overpopulating the land – huge problem of too many people, they are going to starve · Portrayal of economy as insufficient to provide for basic needs. · Ignoring colonial legacy and forces of globalization that lead to impoverishment. · Agenda: Justification for “development” (an intervention philosophy!) Problem · Developers’ Myth: Lesotho is nation of farmers. · Hence, development should focus on agriculture. · Reality: Lesotho is nation of wage laborers (labor migration to South Africa) – don’t consider their main economic activity as being farming · When locals don’t consider themselves to be farmers, development officials conclude “they are mistaken.”

· Large-scale development schemes view local governments as neutral agents for change. · Ignores realities of power, political interests, and corruption. Village of wage laborers, peacefully engaging in their lives Flow of money from center to periphery Development is a machine for reinforcing and expanding state bureaucratic power – way of controlling people’s lives from capital to hinterlands (involving police, military based, development project HQ)

Anthropologists critique development Goal of development = improve people’s lives Goal of development = increase equity Development can increase socioeconomic stratification (Brain’s Ugly American, USAID government graft creation of local development elite) Development as a machine for reinforcing power