Cultural Imperialism, Technology, and OLPC
blog.ianbicking.org
blog.ianbicking.org
"The discourse of 'cultural imperialism' is a device by which Western academics reify the continued material subjugation of the Other to flatter their own epistemologies."
(That isn't meaningless twaddle, incidentally -- it is a serious critique phrased in academic English common to such critiques. The lay version is "Rich white academic liberals use poor people as human subjects in a petting zoo to provide the authenticity they think their own culture lacks, all the while blind to the fact that their own culture is in fact rich-white-academic-liberal and it depends on having a poor-people-petting-zoo.")
You want a quick sampling of various theories? (I should point out that I don't believe everything I've read, if it wasn't totally obvious from my first comment.)
Liberalism is a myth that the West uses when it needs a convenient excuse for a war and/or resource exploitation.
Cultural diversity is groovy. (Sometimes phrased as: cultural diversity, like ecological diversity, is imperative to the physical survival of the human race.) Introduction of "foreign" technology inevitably results in culture loss.
Technological advance sometimes results in taking the old evil things and making us much, much better at them. See: ultrasounds in China, radios in Rwanda, railroads in the United States, civil engineering in Iraq, the cotton gin in the American South, etc etc
On balance, I think most technological progress is a great thing. I might not be quite a booster if I had been kidnapped by a rival tribe to be sold across the ocean into slavery because some American inventor had figured out how to make cotton farming scale. And I don't think I would be that persuaded to change my mind just because a lot of people were finally able to purchase cotton shirts due to the deal.
Fortunately, in collaboration liberalism and technological advance avoid some of the pitfalls you talk about.
I agree that liberalism isn't practiced widely enough or honestly enough, but this isn't a fault with liberalism.
The cultural diversity argument is weak. From a pragmatic viewpoint, if this diversity was imperative to survival then it would itself survive the influence of other culture. Secondly, culture can and is incorporated (albeit selectively although this may be a good thing) into rapidly developing cultures. If cultural homogeneity means we lose cannibalism, ritual and religious mutilation and millions of children dying to smoke inhalation each year then I can live with that. I think the good and distinct components of undeveloped cultures will be embraced by developed cultures and cherished by the developing cultures themselves.
What's "liberalism"?
I ask because progressives in the early 1900s were pretty much all eugenicists. (I'm pro-abortion, but Margaret Sanger was a real piece of work.) Wilson, a progressive, segregated the US Army.
We could spend (and I just may) hours writing about liberalism but it comes down to freedom to do as you will provided it does not impinge upon the right of others to do the same.
In this sense the "veil of ignorance" is also useful as we should select those things that we would wish existed in society if we did not know our position (i.e. we would probably tend to maximise the overall quality of society, and raise the minimum level).
When Americans say liberal, they mean what we call "socialist".
I've noticed that folks who make that argument actually don't care about raising the minimum level but about minimizing the range. For example, they think that being poor in the US is bad because of the rich, but look at what the poor in the US have.
Nice thought, but do you object to me owning "naughty" synthetic images? How about a gun? Can I refuse to associate with "those" people? How about hire them, lend them money, or rent my property to them? Can I allow smoking (tobacco) at my biz?
Do you care which drugs I use in my own home?
I'm trying to parse this. Are you saying, "Everyone should believe everyone should desire liberalism and technological advances"?
> I am similarly confused (though interested) by the "prime directive" approach that academics often advocate in dealing with undeveloped cultures.
When it comes from academics today, it's usually a reaction of guilt to the imperialism of the past. That doesn't mean there aren't other reasons to take that approach, though. Even if your culture is more "developed" how you can be 100% sure that interfering is a good thing to do; i.e., that it won't lead to bad results?
I'm saying it surprises me that there are people who believe liberalism and technology are undesirable for a given set of people.
> When it comes from academics today, it's usually a reaction of guilt to the imperialism of the past. That doesn't mean there aren't other reasons to take that approach, though. Even if your culture is more "developed" how you can be 100% sure that interfering is a good thing to do; i.e., that it won't lead to bad results?
Yeah I think that's the problem. To me it seems guilt about past imperialism can stand in the way of improving the lives of those in need. I agree you can never be 100% sure but I think the potential benefit typically outweighs the potential loss.
As someone who knows the meanings of all of those words, I'm completely confused by the mixed metaphors. Meaningless twaddle is about right. Also, I believe the notion of cultural imperialism goes back to Marx, who was fairly clear about what he meant by it.
Discourse is a device in that talking about something is an action, which is one of the fundamental (useful) insights of all the pomo stuff. For example, talking about what type of content is suitable for HN is not just neutral, it actually moves the perception of what is suitable for HN, and thus influences what HN is. Similarly, talking about cultural imperialism influences policymakers to avoid policies which would materially improve the lives of pick-your-favorite-poor-people.
Reifying subjugation means that your discourse says that it is both the natural order of things, and morally praiseworthy, that pick-your-favorite-poor-people are trapped in a premodern nasty, brutish, and short existence. For example, their culture has medicine men instead of Western medicine. If you say "their traditional holistic understanding of the human body as being one with nature and the spirits of all living things" is more important than giving their sick children effective pills so that they'll live to the age of five, you're reifying subjugation.
Part of the reason we talk in jargon in our field and in my ex-field is that everyone is on the same page and it makes things very efficient. If you had been in the field, you wouldn't have needed a multi-paragraph explanation of the sentence, you would have gone straight to pissed. :)
If you don't like it, I suggest you change Human Nature. Good luck with that.
"For of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a law of their nature wherever they can rule, they will"