[Peace-discuss] A neoliberal account of Haiti?

[David Green]

The problem is that sometimes, for example, people take a notion like the culture of poverty and collapse into a stinking racist and morally judgmental mess. Race being a marginally scientific and often misused concept, it slipslides into culture, which in turn slipslides into moral nature, allegedly determined by race and culture. Pretty soon you end up with Charles Murray, etc.
 
DG

>________________________________
> From: ""E. Wayne Johnson 朱稳森"" <ewj at pigsqq.org>
>To: David Green <davegreen84 at yahoo.com> 
>Cc: C. G. Estabrook <carl at newsfromneptune.com>; Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at anti-war.net> 
>Sent: Saturday, January 12, 2013 6:22 PM
>Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] A neoliberal account of Haiti?
>  
>
> 
>I am only learning about what comprises the mindset of a neo-liberal.
>
>But I don't equate race with culture or morality.   
>
>By the definition that I am familiar with, Race indicates a genetic
factor, 
>specifically a genetic line that has developed due to the formation of 
>an inbreeding population that was formed due to geographic and
political factors.
>
>Culture can vary with race somewhat but is generally an independent
variable 
>that transcends race.  A culture can be shared by more than one racial
group
>or within a racial group there can be many different cultures.
>
>Morality can be personal or associated with a group and transcends
culture and race,
>although a certain set of moral values or moral codes or moral
tendencies can be
>part of what defines a particular culture.
>
>Race is immutable like the spots on a leopard.
>Cultures can be modified.
>Morality is a choice.
>
>
>On 01/11/13 23:05, David Green wrote: 
>When it is
convenient, neoliberals explain history by various kinds of
determinism--resources, technology, markets. When that doesn't work,
apologists can always fall back on cultural/moral determinants, which
amounts to racism. 
>>  
>>DG 
>>  
>>
>>
>>From: C. G. Estabrook mailto:carl at newsfromneptune.com
>>>To: Peace-discuss
List mailto:Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net 
>>>Sent: Thursday,
January 10, 2013 10:00 PM
>>>Subject: [Peace-discuss] A neoliberal account of Haiti?
>>> 
>>>
>>>'...[Jared] Diamond’s ... book, Collapse: How Societies
Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005), was a fitting companion to the
previous one. If Guns, Germs, and Steel played to the racial
liberalism of upper-class professionals, Collapse flattered
their environmental concerns. It purported to illuminate the dark side
of the story told in the earlier book. If the haves acquired wealth
through geographic accident, Diamond claimed, the have-nots lost it
by squandering their own natural resources. He told tales of
ecocide by indigenous people of the North American Southwest and of
Easter Island, of postemancipation Haiti and of modern China.
Here again the publicity machine clicked in, producing uncritical
review ... Civilizational collapse made a good story, especially if it
could be shown to be the fault of the native populations themselves.
>>>
>>>'In Collapse, the ignorance of history and the neglect of power
relations were even more apparent than in Guns, Germs, and Steel—so
apparent that it provoked a volume of critical essays by
anthropologists and historians called Questioning Collapse (2009).
The book made it clear that Diamond was out of his depth. A leading
historian of China, Kenneth Pomeranz, posed the question “What Chinese
collapse?” with respect to the fifteenth-century Chinese and answered
that there was none. Other critics took Diamond to task for ignoring
the role of Western conquest and its aftermath in bringing about
the catastrophes he described.
>>>
>>>'The case of Haiti provided the most egregious example. After a successful slave rebellion formally freed the Haitians from
their French masters, the French still managed to bully the Haitians
into paying them the huge indemnity for “lost property”—that is, freed
slaves—in exchange for diplomatic relations. By 1900, 80 percent of
Haiti’s annual budget was consumed by these payments, which did not
end until 1947. By then, Haiti had paid France about $21 billion in
contemporary US dollars. In explaining Haiti’s social collapse, Diamond
ignored 120 years of illegitimate debt payments as well as the
long history of US interference in Haitian affairs, including America’s
decades-long support of dictatorship under the Duvalier regime.
>>>
>>>'Diamond’s blindness to imperial power was of a piece with the
assumption embedded in his subtitle: Failed societies (a reified
abstraction) have somehow chosen to fail. In the wake of the
earthquake that devastated Haiti in 2010, the New York Times columnist
David Brooks revealed his attachment to the same point of view:
Haitians’ attachment to voodoo and other primitive superstitions,
Brooks believed, had immeasurably exacerbated their suffering in the
wake of the disaster. Once again, Diamond’s work revealed its
resonance with neoliberal conventional wisdom. As the anthropologist
Frederick K. Errington wrote, Diamond’s two books constituted a
“‘one-two punch.’ The haves prosper because of happenstance beyond
their control, while the have-nots are responsible for their own
demise.” One could hardly imagine a more comforting account of global
inequalities...' 
>>>
>>> 
>>>http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/019_04/10583   
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>Peace-discuss mailing list
>>>Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>>>https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss
>>>
>>>
>>>     
>>
_______________________________________________
Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss   
> 
>
>   
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20130113/c0f4a45e/attachment.html>