Trust, Slavery and the African School of Economics

https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2020/05/21/trust-slavery-and-the-african-school-of-economics

by gauravsc • 6 years ago

85 83 6 years ago

roenxi• 6 years ago

Articles like this break my heart. The thing that stops ideas like the ones in this article taking root are, ultimately, the beliefs of ordinary people.

The real secret of education is it is the only method humanity has discovered to stop people making the same stupid mistakes every single generation like all the other animals.

There is a remarkable strategy for being very successful: identify and stop doing things that cause failure. It isn't the silver bullet but as strategies go more people should try it. Instead, everyone goes along with joining personality cults.

artsyca2• 6 years ago

It's not only personality cults. There are all sorts of false cultures. The only one that works is the family model but that one is widely misunderstood and in practice it is hardly ever done right except perhaps by a professional military or sports team.

lazyjones• 6 years ago

The real secret of education is it is the only method humanity has discovered to stop people making the same stupid mistakes every single generation like all the other animals.

Strongly disagree. There are plenty of educated people doing stupid, evil, destructive things. What would have saved them is a proper upbringing in a healthy community. Some colleges are now toxic institutions that achieve the opposite.

artsyca2• 6 years ago

Slavery and branding are two things which predate recorded history.

We pretend like anything has changed but in actual fact the same rules apply as always.

Money alone is enough to set the world in motion. If you value peace prepare for war. The only way to make any money is to sell the fruits of someone else's labour. You can't buy loyalty.

noworriesnate• 6 years ago

A trip to Albania ended his blind affection for socialism.

Traveling the world is probably the best way of educating people about human issues. I wonder if we replaced the first two years of college in America (general education stuff) with a trip around the world, what would happen?

I was talking to a friend from a third world country about this and I mentioned that VR has the potential to open people's eyes about human conditions around the world. And he said, "Nope. That's a terrible idea." I asked why and he said, "VR can't convey suffering."

Let's say, for sake of argument, that it costs $50,000 to send one student around the world. That's within an order of magnitude for most colleges for the first two years. Plus, it would drop due to economies of scale (also since we're talking about huge numbers of students, we could use boats instead).

Robotbeat3• 6 years ago

Airplanes are cheaper than boats.

To go on a freighter from the US to mainland Europe takes about 18 days and costs $100/day including meals. $3600 two-way. To make the same trip in an airplane if booked in advance is around $600 (can be just $300 at times, though).

pbhjpbhj3• 6 years ago

Now factor in environmental costs, and add benefits of the journey?

FalconSensei2• 6 years ago

I moved from Brazil to Canada 2 years ago. It was kind of interesting to see what their perception of 'dangerous place', and other stuff was.

Not saying that we should send students to bad places. But going to any other country would teach them that the world is bigger than the place they were born, and different cultures are... well... different. Even if someone travels to a place that's more developed than where they live, that could also help, teaching them what they can do better.

zozbot2346• 6 years ago

Yup, this is a very sensible guy. Another important point from the OP:

His school is not part of efforts to “decolonise” the African academy. Any student of politics must read Rousseau and Madison, he argues. The aim is to add to the sum of human knowledge, not subtract from it.

Efforts to "decolonise" academia, particularly in the humanities and social sciences where the "decolonisation" meme is most relevant, have backfired horribly. And here we have a sensible scholar from Africa telling it like it is and not mincing his words.

ccsnags• 6 years ago

Decolonization seems to be a Trojan horse for a different type of Western colonization. It’s one thing to take western ideas and make them your own (Botswana). It’s another thing entirely when western influences try to attach themselves to peoples history and culture in order to change them into faithful subjects without a voice of their own.

Nasrudith• 6 years ago

Decolonization is really just blind nationalism and xenophobia combined with special pleading essentially to dress it up as something intrinsically noble.

The smart thing to do in terms of decolonization in the literal "no longer a colony, time to reform" is to go through the imposed institutions and sort through what has value and what should be thrown out.

simias• 6 years ago

There's the Erasmus Programme within the EU[1]. I think it's one of the greatest ideas the EU has ever had.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasmus_Programme

Klinky2• 6 years ago

This seems to assume there is no suffering in the US, so we have to import our suffering from elsewhere by going on a fancy suffering safaris. How decadent and gaudy.

Where exactly would they go that would dissuade them of socialist ideals? Maybe some sweatshops run by multinationals? Some cobalt mines? Non-fair-trade coffee farms? Countries harassed by aerial drones?

FalconSensei2• 6 years ago

I think your comment just proves the parent's point

pjc502• 6 years ago

Yes and no. It's definitely beneficial to travel, and the more different the place you're going to is and the more "embedded" you are there the better (e.g. staying with a host family). But you can only lead the horse to water, you can't make them drink. If you're not careful they'll just produce a little "expat" cluster of Westerners passing through without really looking at the unfamiliar.

This often shows up as "voluntourism", or things like the Peace Corps.

I agree that a trip to Eastern Europe would be hugely valuable for any actual communists, especially actual "tankies", but for fairness you should also include a western european "social democrat" country which is not at all the same thing.

notahacker• 6 years ago

If you're not careful they'll just produce a little "expat" cluster of Westerners passing through without really looking at the unfamiliar.

I think stage managing the environments is the rule for overseas escapades for young adults rather than the exception, and for good reason. That doesn't mean people with deep preconceptions about absolute poverty can't see them shattered or that the trivia shared by tour guides is without interest, but people are probably still going to need to pick up university-type books to understand why a country is the way it is and achieve fluency in the local language to have real conversations with the average local.

I agree that a trip to Eastern Europe would be hugely valuable for any actual communists, especially actual "tankies"

Would it though? Some Eastern European cities are rather nice, don't seem nearly as poor as GDP figures might suggest, and "tankies" aren't going to have any problems writing off any evidence of social problems as the product of three decades of capitalism. By all accounts Transnistria with its hammer and sickle flag is a fun day trip involving posing with Lenin statues and tanks rather than a shocking expose, and you'll probably get to speak with more critics of the government in Poland or Czechia! The cracks in 1980s Albania are likely to have been easier to spot, especially for someone whose cynicism was hardened by campaigning against autocracy and despotism in his own country. But also as you said before, people have to be willing to look.

pbhjpbhj3• 6 years ago

Why Eastern Europe, is there any country operating communism there?

Surely a Kibbutz, other intentional community, or maybe take work experience in a cooperative - actual communist things?

pradn• 6 years ago

Meta: I don't know why you're getting downvoted. You're clearly thinking out loud; just because an idea may not be 100% "practical" doesn't mean it's not worth discussing, and it should not be downvoted. It's impoverishing discussion on HN.

edoo• 6 years ago

This is very prescient as right now the radical leftists are busy destroying the icons of anti-slavery and black success. Marxist's always destroy the good history when they take control. If you don't know where you are from you can be led anywhere. We'll see slavery again in this country if we forget our past.

rayiner4• 6 years ago

Another result of Mr Wantchekon’s political past is a preference for empiricism over ideology. A trip to Albania ended his blind affection for socialism. His school is not part of efforts to “decolonise” the African academy. Any student of politics must read Rousseau and Madison, he argues. The aim is to add to the sum of human knowledge, not subtract from it. “Be angry but also be thoughtful,” he says.

This is something that should be impressed upon all the Americans who throw around the term “decolonization.” What would “decolonizing” say Bangladesh (where I am from) mean? Should we abandon the use of English? Dismantle our Supreme Court, an institution we inherited from the British? Dismantle our legal system built on British common law, or our constitution built on the American constitution and the Magna Carta? Abandon capitalism and free markets (which 80%+ of the population support because it has revolutionized the country)? Abandon western ideas like religious freedom, secularism, feminism, individualism, etc? What would we replace those things with?

zozbot2346• 6 years ago

What would we replace those things with?

Religious freedom is also an Indian idea, not just a Western one. And Indians are also exporting new progressive ideas to the West, such as the animal rights activism struggle of India's cow protection movement.

jimbob45• 6 years ago

Pretty sure PETA already has that covered pretty well.

fastball3• 6 years ago

Ah yes, the Hindu model of caring more about cows than untouchables. Definitely ideology worth emulating.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/08/13/4898834...

godelzilla• 6 years ago

Why not look at decolonization as a step forward instead? Why not collect restitution from the colonial/imperial powers that have been extracting wealth from South Asia for centuries? Why not use natural resources for the local population?

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00472336.2018.15...

https://www.dandc.eu/en/article/contemporary-bangladeshi-law...

rayiner4• 6 years ago

“Decolonization” is, as the article observes, usually an attempt to eliminate the influence of western institutions, culture, and thought. That would be a huge step backward. It would be cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Restitution is a separate issue. I think it would be fair for the British to return wealth they expropriated, but I’m not holding my breath. More to the point: I wouldn’t trust anyone who advocates “decolonization” to do what’s the best thing for the country going forward. I’ll stick with the British colonial legacy rather than invite a new wave of intellectual colonization from western left-wing universities. If the developed world wants to destroy itself with those ideas, let that be their problem.

SuoDuanDao• 6 years ago

People I respect use the term decolonisation so I'm trying to keep an open mind about it, but I'm unclear what it means and suspect there may be a motte-and-bailey strategy at play around it.

Could you explain where the dividing line is between decolonisation and cultural segregationism?

pphysch5• 6 years ago

Escaping (neo)colonialism generally means focusing on domestic ownership of domestic infrastructure, labor, markets, and supply chains, and untangling oneself from debt traps like the IMF.

It's not some crazy, scary ideological idea, unlike what elite Western propagandists have been saying.

Just don't advocate it too strongly or you might get got by paid goons, like Sankara and many other victims of foreign-influenced regime change.

zozbot2346• 6 years ago

untangling oneself from debt traps like the IMF.

If the IMF is involved with your country, you were in a debt trap already and they're working on untangling you from it. See e.g. Greece, which is now working on their debt problem after the late-2000s economic crisis. "Domestic ownership of supply chains" has also been a disaster historically, because it involves closing down your economy to foreign trade and restricting competitive dynamics: it's better to exploit global supply chains by specializing on the parts that you can be best on, and incrementally working your way up the value ladder.

rayiner4• 6 years ago

That is not the sense in which “decolonization” is used by the gentleman quoted in the article (which is the sense in which social science uses the term).

pjc502• 6 years ago

This is a straw man with an easy answer: you've made up lots of things and called them "decolonization", but you've not actually asked what the people in the countries calling for decolonization want.

fastball3• 6 years ago

What do you think the list is then?

graeme• 6 years ago

I believe their argument is that there is no coherent, practical position that can be described as decolonization in this modern sense. Both the dictionary and wikipedia only define decolonization in a conventional, imperial power withdrawing sense.

Are you aware of a clear, practical definition which a society or state could implement? And does it have no overlap with OP’s concerns.

Absent there being any clear definition of the concept I am not sure the onus is on OP to define it.

rayiner4• 6 years ago

Here is a good paper by a Bangladeshi art historian: https://www.collegeart.org/pdf/programs/international/haque....

Decolonization, as we call it, is rather a modern phenomenon that has been bubbling up since the late twentieth century. There are calls for decolonizing everything, art history included.
The concept of decolonization is twofold. First, it means the end of colonization—being independent politically and administratively... The more important aspect began after that point, that of countering the influences of colonization that remained in the society and culture.
If that is so, looking for answers in past glory, or only rectifying the purity that was denounced or distorted by the imperialistic process, is not sustainable. We need to create new vocabularies and new understandings, but not running in only one direction, rejecting everything that is Eurocentric.

Then there is the question of: where do you stop decolonizing? Before the British there were the Mughals, who introduced much of the basic culture, food, etc. Before that the Sena, who introduced Islam. Before that, the Pala, who where Buddhists.)

AnimalMuppet• 6 years ago

Did you miss the part where the person you're replying to is from Bangladesh? I suspect that he knows better than most "what the people in the countries calling for decolonization want".

UncleMeat11• 6 years ago

Have you had conversations with academics who are interested in decolonizing their fields? People are interested in decolonizing history aren't saying that we should throw away all study of european history. They are saying that we should add more voices. This has been a project for decades, with more voices of women and poc being represented in historical analysis.

Necessarily, this means reducing the amount of time spent on "traditional western civilization" in the classroom, since there is only so much time. But go check out a renaissance history course taught by a young faculty member. White men continue to dominate the discourse. We've just added some more voices alongside them.

marcosdumay3• 6 years ago

Brazilian here. Around here, it usually means adding low quality voices to the discussion.

Although there are a few pushing for recognition of good local work, those few tends to be attacked from both sides of the discussion.

free_rms3• 6 years ago

The Renaissance happened in Europe. What non-white voices are you adding to that? The Turks?

There definitely was history happening in other places at that time, some of it very noteworthy, but it wasn't the Renaissance.

gotoeleven• 6 years ago

In practice this usually turns into affirmative action for ideas, where marginal scholarship is promoted for no reason other than the color of the author. Is it too much to simply ask that ideas stand on their own and be judged on their own merits, divorced from the identity of the author? I do not think humanity will be better off going down this path. It seems like in a lot of cases just a cynical way to needlessly inject politics into some arena.

int_19h2• 6 years ago

It really depends on which field, and who you ask.

The biggest problem is that a lot of the "decolonize" crowd intersects with post-modernists - and the latter, rather than providing more perspectives on facts, seek to push the idea that perspectives should replace facts (since facts are "not really a thing"). From there, it quickly descends into "mathematx" [1], "feminist glaciology" [2] etc.

[1] https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7fe5/558eff8e24f1b3824df5c3...

[2] https://aquadoc.typepad.com/files/prog_hum_geogr-2016_.pdf

AnthonBerg2• 6 years ago

"The words struck a chord with Mr Wantchekon. Now a professor at Princeton University, he was born in Zagnanado in central Benin. Some of the music he listened to in his youth—such as that of Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou—had songs that warned against trusting those close to you."

I checked; The music is ... astoundingly beautiful. Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2hzzC6W1jnkn6x6RyutlB3?si=Zd...

detritus• 6 years ago

Thank you for this - my first music recommendation from HN!

Particularly of interest to me is the 'slightly slippery' beat it appears to have. It seems slightly off in places, but pleasingly so.

AnthonBerg2• 6 years ago

Yes! I know next to nothing about African music - just starting to learn about it - but I’m certain that these incredibly subtle wrinkles in time are on purpose. Willful. Being celebrated. In some songs there are beautiful little rhythmic foreshadowing events - the last note of a bassline let slip almost imperceptibly two, three times, in preparation for hitting the listener with a twist or impact. All on a barely noticeable level, interwoven.

I also feel an incredibly strong sense of collaboration in African music. Which is - I guess ironic?, in the context of the article. Painfully and poignantly. It’s interesting.

I’m going to mention Pamelo Mounk’a, M’Pongo Love, Franco, Coupé Cloué, Docteur Nico, Tabu Ley Rochereau, and Simba Wanyika/Les Wanyika, in case their music brings as rich a reward to others as it has to me. From there it goes all over the place – and Africa is big! And old! And beautiful and full of joy and subtlety and craft.

madballster• 6 years ago

"data-mining skills" -- I cringed at this phrase used by the journalist. Data mining is not a worthwhile skill, in fact its more of an insult. It's a curse any scientist worth his salt tries to avoid.

neonate• 6 years ago

https://archive.vn/LefC3

Trust, Slavery and the African School of Economics

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