Savage Minds is dead! Long live anthro{dendum}!
7 years ago
Friday, January 15, 2010
Haiti and the culture of poverty explanation
There are many recent interesting pieces of writing on Haiti out there, in particular on how there is no such thing as "natural disaster," but human-made vulnerability to natural events (poverty, lack of infrastructure, deforestation). Here's another one. The one that really drew my attention was also the one that made me the angriest, an op-ed piece by the conservative commentator David Brooks in the NYT. I encourage you to read it and identify the culture of poverty explanation (for those of you who took intro with me), and then reflect onto how similar explanations are employed to explain away global poverty in other situations. Arghh.
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I read the David Brooks article. It was disturbing how well it met the "culture of poverty explanation"- like a textbook example.
ReplyDeleteArticles like his make me wonder if major aid programs ever work. As expressed in a speech, "To Hell with Good Intentions", the speaker proposes that traditional aid abroad is dangerous for the culture being "helped". Until a more culturally-aware system can be produced, it does not seem that throwing money at any problem is not going to help much and may just cause more problems.
Partners in Health is a good model of international aid, no? Though I think Paul Farmer's set up seems culturally sensitive, I am not sure if anyone has any qualms with PIH.