Some 20 years ago, Amartya Sen addressed the question 'How does Culture matter?' in the context of Development Econ. The answer was already know to be- 'it doesn't at all.' Any culture can be supported by any type of economic regime or level of National Income. This is because any guy who says 'This can't be done. It is against our Culture/Religion/Ideology/Morality/Psychology' etc. can be made to change his mind if beaten or bribed sufficiently.
Connections
It is particularly important to identify the different ways
in which culture can matter to development.
Why? No country which actually developed ever bothered to do so. Some third rate pedants may have gassed on about how the superiority/inferiority of our culture makes it inevitable that we will prevail/fail. But they cancelled each other out as noise.
The following
categories would seem to have some immediacy as well as far reaching relevance.
(1) Culture as a constitutive part of development:
But Culture is equally a constitutive part of no fucking development occurring and everybody just quietly dying of starvation or getting eaten by tigers.
We can
begin with the basic question: what is development for?
Why not begin with the more basic question: what are questions for? The answer is, questions are asked so as to elicit useful information- unless they are being asked by a stupid pedant in which case questions are asked just to waste everybody's time.
The
furtherance of well-being and freedoms that we seek in development
cannot but include the enrichment of human lives through
literature, music, fine arts, and other forms of cultural
expression and practice, which we have reason to value.
The opposite is the case. Development means less leisure and thus lower per capita provision of positional leisure goods unless there is an export market for it
Julius Caesar said of Cassius, "He hears no music: seldom he
smiles," this was not meant to be high praise for Cassius’s
quality of life.
It had nothing to do with the dude's 'quality of life'. Caesar is saying 'that guy is a murderous bastard'.
To have a high GNP per head but little music,
arts, literature, etc., would not amount to a major developmental
success.
Yes it would. Most music, art, literature etc is horrible. If a country works hard and becomes wealthy its people can play the best music in the world on their state of the art hi fi.
In one form or another, culture engulfs our lives, our
desires, our frustrations, our ambitions, and the freedoms that we
seek.
Only in the sense that culture eludes us even when our engagement with it is most intense.
The freedom and opportunity for cultural activities are
among the basic freedoms the enhancement of which can be seen to
be constitutive of development.
Quite false. There is no connection between the two whatsoever. Much cultural activity is a Giffen good- i.e. has negative income elasticity of demand. If we become poorer we'd go into more public art galleries or free madrigal concerts in Churches or Scientific lectures at the Pedagogic Institute so as to get out of the cold. When we get richer we pay for the best American blockbuster or Russian soprano on BluRay. In other words we substitute a smaller amount of higher Income elasticity leisure products for a larger amount of low quality 'cultural' shite.
Economically remunerative cultural activities and
objects: Various activities that are economically remunerative may
be directly or indirectly dependent on cultural facilities and
more generally on the cultural environment.
But even more remunerative activities are directly dependent on bulldozing any fucking 'cultural facility' which nobody would pay a penny to keep going. As for the 'cultural environment' which produced Homer or Rap Music- we want to get the fuck away from it because life there is nasty, brutal, and short.
The linkage of
tourism with cultural sites (including historical ones) is obvious
enough.
Las Vegas is very cultural. So are brothels.
The presence or absence of crime
is important
or welcoming traditions
which are a fucking nuisance. The thing screams 'tourist trap'.
may also be critical to tourism and in general to domestic as well
as cross-boundary interactions. Music, dancing and other cultural
activities may also have a large commercial - often global -
market.
Only if they are best in class. India kept trying to push Kathakali. The truth is even Keralites hate the thing. Naughty kids were sent to watch that shite. Good kids were rewarded with Disney movies.
(3) Cultural factors influence economic behaviour:
only if they are economically reinforced
Even
though some economists have been tempted by the idea that all
human beings behave in much the same way (for example,
relentlessly maximize their self-interest defined in a thoroughly
insulated way), there is plenty of evidence to indicate that this
is not in general so.
But everybody 'minimizes regret' according to their own 'Gentzen calculus' founded in the 'uncorrelated asymmetries' which define their 'oikeiosis'. But this does not matter at all because people quickly adjust their economic behavior to the prevailing mechanism. Since economic development is about economic behavior, culture is irrelevant. Tadean mimetics- imitating the more successful- is what obtains.
Cultural influences can make a major
difference
if they are economically reinforced
to work ethics, responsible conduct, spirited
motivation, dynamic management, entrepreneurial initiatives,
willingness to take risks, and a variety of other aspects of human
behaviour which can be critical to economic success.
or the reverse if the work done is stupid work or responsible conduct consists in doing stupid shite or dynamic management bankrupts the enterprise etc, etc.
Also, successful operation of an exchange economy depends on
mutual trust and implicit norms.
Nonsense! Only the mechanism matters. That's why I buy stuff from blokes in China or wherever on Ebay. They have a good conflict resolution method. That's all that matters.
When these behavioural modes are
plentifully there, it is easy to overlook their role. But when
they have to be cultivated, that lacuna can be a major barrier to
economic success.
This is simply a human capital deficit. Culture is irrelevant. The Brits ran a huge Empire by getting every type of wog or nigger to turn up for work on time and not steal everything in sight by using purely economic sanctions. This did not mean the good people of Calcutta had the same culture as the good people of Hong Kong or Lagos or Cyprus or Palestine.
There are plenty of example of the problems
faced in precapitalist economies because of the underdevelopment
of basic virtues of commerce and business.
But the Brits and Dutch and so forth had no difficulty overcoming these problems.
The culture of behaviour relates to many other features of
economic success. It relates, for example, to the prevalence or
absence of economic corruption and its linkages with organized
crime. In Italian discussions on this subject, in which I was
privileged to take part through advising the Anti-Mafia Commission
of the Italian parliament, the role and reach of implicit values
was much discussed.
Amartya Sen stars in Godfather IV! Cool! Still, you have to hand it to the Italians. When they don't want to take needful action they are smart enough to consult a Bengali mathematical economist. Those dudes can be trusted to waste everybody's time till the cows come home.
(4) Culture and political participation: Participation in
civil interactions and political activities is influenced by
cultural conditions.
India has lots of different cultures. This does not affect political participation at all. Back in the Fifties, some foreign scholars were puzzled by this. Then they got dysentery and returned home.
The tradition of public discussion and
participatory interactions can be very critical to the process of politics, and can be important for the establishment, preservation
and practice of democracy.
There is no evidence for this whatsoever. Sen is from East Bengal which hasn't always been a democracy (indeed Biden didn't invite Sheikh Hasina to his summit) but it isn't that culturally different from West Bengal which, however, has more gangsterism than Gujarat.
The culture of participation can be a
critical civic virtue,
except in Bengal where it is a critical civic vice
as was extensively discussed by Condorcet,
whose head was chopped off because of a culture of excessive political participation.
Political participation is
critically important for development,
provided there is a One Party State which shoots dissidents and massacres minorities- sure.
both through its effects on
the assessment of ways and means, and even through its role in the
formation and consolidation of values in terms of which
development has to be assessed.
'Assessment' does not matter. People want to have sex. They don't want to receive failing grade from their partner. I'm not saying that's what happens to me. I'm thinking of this other bloke I know. I can't tell you his name because we were in the SAS together.
Social solidarity and association: Aside from economic
interactions and political participation, even the operation of
social solidarity and mutual support can be strongly influenced by
culture.
But that supposed influence can go either way. Furthermore, it is never the case that a change in culture- e.g. everybody deciding to dance the hokey kokey- leads to a change in economic interaction, political participation, the operation of social solidarity, everybody offering everybody else gratuitous rape counselling while braiding their hair, or environmental sustainability within a context of social inclusivity and increased provision of sodomy for senior citizens.
The success of social living is greatly dependent on
what people may spontaneously do for each other.
I once found myself in a small elevator with Amartya Sen at the London School of Economics. I spontaneously farted as I exited the lift. This represented a great success for social living. At least it would have done if Amartya Sen had actually been on the lift. It turned out to be Lord Meghnad Desai. The smell make his hair stand up on end.
This can
profoundly influence the working of the society, including the
care of its less fortunate members as well as preservation and
guardianship of common assets.
This is economic behavior because scarce resources are involved. My farts are a free good. They represent 'culture' in that they are non-rival and non-excludable though, sadly, nobody is greatly enthused by them.
The sense of closeness to others
in the community can be a major asset for that community.
Till COVID strikes- sure.
The
advantages flowing from solidarity and supportive interactions
have received much attention recently through the literature on
"social capital." This is an important new area of social investigation.
Especially in very poor countries. Why spend money on digging wells or growing food? Just investigate social capital preferably on an Ivy League campus or else with the aid of a tax free UN salary.
There
is, however, a need to scrutinize the nature of "social capital"
as "capital" - in the sense of a general purpose resource (as
capital is taken to be). The same sentiments and inclinations can
actually work in opposite directions, depending on the nature of
the group involved. For example, solidarity within a particular
group (for example, long-term residents of a region) can go with a
less than friendly view of non-members of that group (such as new
immigrants).
This non-friendly view may result in more vigilant policing- or a culture of passersby catching and kicking in the heads of muggers- which in turn may attract higher skilled migrants who don't want to be mugged every twenty minutes.
it may be a mistake to treat
"social capital" as a general-purpose asset (as capital is, in
general, taken to be), rather than as an asset for some relations
and a liability for others
This is also true of physical capital. You have to spend a lot of money to knock down this factory which can no longer make a profit to make room for a shopping mall. The cost of de-toxifying a 'brown field' site may be prohibitive which is why greenfield sites are so much in demand. But this is also true of the 'human capital' that has built up in industrial districts which involves Trade Union militancy, racial grievances, and criminal gangs stealing everything not guarded by attack dogs 24/7.
There is, thus, room for some
searching scrutiny of the nature and operation of the important,
but in some ways problematic, concept of "social capital."
Nope. I've said all that can usefully said on the topic.
(6) Cultural sites and recollection of past heritage:
This cretin thought setting up an international University at Nalanda was a good idea purely because some such thing had existed hundreds of years ago. He writes ' there has been only partial excavation of the ruins of the ancient Buddhist university of Nalanda in India, which had come to its end in the twelfth century about the time when Oxford University was being founded (after having flourished for many hundreds of years, and having attracted scholars from abroad as well as within India - Hsuan Tsang from China in the 7th century was one of the most prominent alumnus of Nalanda). Further investment in Nalanda’s excavation, accessibility and facilities will not only encourage tourism, and generate income in one of the poorest parts of India, but can also help to generate a fuller understanding of the diversity of India’s historical traditions.
Have the people of Bihar benefited from Sen's obsession with Nalanda? Nope. The thing is a money pit. Good farm land was taken away from peasants and now they are stuck with a White Elephant which won't educated their sons and daughters or provide them with anything save menial work.
Another
constructive possibility is the furtherance of a clearer and
broader understanding of a country’s or community’s past through
systematic exploration of its cultural history, For example, by
supporting historical excavations, explorations and related
research, development programmes can help to facilitate a fuller
appreciation of the breadth of - and internal variations within -
particular cultures and traditions.
Furthermore, the presence of Western archaeologists can provide potential victims for dudes from ISIS who want to post a Youtube video of themselves decapitating White peeps.
History often includes much
greater variety of cultural influences and traditions than tends
to be allowed by intensely political - and frequently ahistorical
- interpretations of the present.
Very true. History shows that Hindus like Sen were living happily in East Bengal till...urm... they suddenly decided to run away. Archaeology may help explain why this happened.
When this is the case,
historical objects, sites and records can help to offset some of
the frictions of confrontational modern politics.
Very true. Jews and Palestinians are now constantly kissing and cuddling each other because of all the archaeological work which is being done in Jerusalem.
For example, Arab history includes a long tradition of
peaceful relation with Jewish populations.
The UAE is now building synagogues and welcoming Israelis. I wonder why?
Similarly, Indonesian
past carries powerful records of simultaneous flourishing of
Hindu, Buddhist and Confucian cultures, side by side with the
Islamic traditions.
Hindus and Muslims came together to slaughter Communists fifty years ago.
Butrint in Albania as a historical site shows
flourishing presence of Greek, Roman and later Christian cultures,
as well as Islamic history.
Which is how come Albania is such an economically advanced country.
The highlighting of a diverse past
that may go with the excavation, preservation and accessability of
historical objects and sites can, thus, have a possible role in
promoting toleration of diversity in contemporary settings, and in
countering confrontational use of "monocultural" readings of a
nation’s past.
Why does Sen not return to Dacca if that is the case?
For example, the recent attempt by Hindu activists to see
India as just a "Hindu country," in which practitioners of other
religions must have a less privileged position, clashes with the
great diversity of Indian history.
i.e. India getting conquered by foreigners who had no interest in embracing the indigenous religion. However, it was Mahatma Gandhi who described the Congress as only appealing to High Caste Hindus. That is why, in 1948, non-Hindu refugees who had fled were prevented from returning and barred from citizenship. Two years later, cow protection was made a Directive Principle of the Constitution. Guess which religion holds the cow sacred?
This includes a thousand years
of Buddhist predominance (with sites all over India),
This is nonsense. There were some Buddhist Emperors but they also employed Brahmin purohits. Indeed, the Thai and Cambodian monarchs still do. One may say Buddhism predominated only if the Emperor was persecuting some other Shraman religion- e.g. Ashoka's persecution of Jains.
a long
history of Jain culture, conspicuous presence of Christians from
the fourth century
The thing was not conspicuous anywhere except parts of Kerala. But Jews got there first.
and of Parsees from the eighth,
They only gained visibility under the British. Armenians, however, were conspicuous at an earlier date. Then India became free and they left.
Muslim
settlements of Arab traders in South India from about the same
time, massive interactions between Muslims and Hindus all over the
country (including new departures in painting, music, literature
and architecture), the birth and flourishing of Sikhism (as a new
Indian religion that drew on but departed from previous ones), and
so on. The recollection of history can be a major ally in the
cultivation of toleration and celebration of diversity,
Has this guy really not heard of Pakistan for Muslims and Khalistan for Sikhs? Why is it he only objects to Hinduism? Is it because of the peculiar politics of West Bengal where the Muslim minority has increased from 20 percent to 30 percent?
and these
are - directly and indirectly - among important features of
development.
No. They are completely unrelated to development.
Cultural influences on value formation and evolution:
Why not speak of the influence of value formation on Culture? What about the value of influence in Cultural formation? How about the influence of culture on the value of formation? One can just switch around words in a meaningless sentence to get the same vacuous result.
Not
only is it the case that cultural factors figure among the ends
and means of development,
it is also the case that ends figure in the development of cultural factors and this sentence means shit.
they can also have a central role even
in the formation of values.
and formation is central to the value of a role.
This in turn can be influential in
the identification of our ends and the recognition of plausible
and acceptable instruments to achieve those ends.
Very true. Culture is influential in our identification of suitable instruments to get our end away.
For example,
open public discussion - itself a cultural achievement of
significance - can be powerfully influential in the emergence of
new norms and fresh priorities.
Very true. Contribute a fart to an open public discussion and people discover their priority is to get the fuck away.
Does Sen say anything not utterly vacuous in this paper? Yes he comments on Huntingdon's comparison of Ghana and South Korea-
In the early 1990s, I happened to come across economic data
on Ghana and South Korea in the early 1960s, and I was astonished to see how similar their economies were then.
....Thirty years later, South Korea had become an industrial
giant with the fourteenth largest economy in the world,
multinational corporations, major exports of automobiles,
electronic equipment, and other sophisticated manufactures,
and per capital income approximately that of Greece,
Moreover it was on its way to the consolidation of democratic
institutions.No such changes had occurred in Ghana, whose
per capita income was now about one-fifteenth that of South
Korea’s. How could this extraordinary difference in
development be explained? Undoubtedly, many factors played a
role, but it seemed to me that culture had to be a large part
of the explanation. South Koreans valued thrift, investment,
hard work, education, organization, and discipline. Ghanians
had different values. In short, cultures count.
Korea has a single language and ethnicity. Ghana has 11 official languages. It was soldered together from various British possessions in the region. Still, about half were Akan- considered a highly entrepreneurial people with a storied history of state formation and international trade.
Ghana is a lush tropical paradise which produces cocoa whose price was high in the Fifties thus creating a substantial budget surplus. South Korea was barely getting by on American aid. Ghana should have industrialized after independence on the basis of free enterprise and light industry focused on 'wage goods'. Sadly, Nkrumah chose Soviet style planned development. I suppose you could say he was implementing the Sen-Dobb thesis- i.e. squeeze the farmers so as to have an investible surplus in a capital intensive State sector. Unlike the two Koreas, Ghana faced no military threat and had a popular leader. Sadly, like India, it pursued foolish economic policies- indeed, it had greater leeway to do so because the handsome and robust appearance of the people suggested a degree of ease and affluence. Bhagwati's 1958 paper 'Immeserizing growth' explained why the terms of trade would turn against primary producers precisely because the people were hardworking and thrifty. There is alternative to industrialization and demographic transition is Malthusian poverty and involution.
Sen won't quote Bhagwati. Instead he says-
There may well be something of interest in this engaging
comparison (perhaps even a quarter-truth torn out of context), and
the contrast does call for probing examination. And yet, as used
in the explanation just cited, the causal story is extremely
deceptive. There were many important differences - other than
their cultural predispositions - between Ghana and Korea in the
1960s when they appeared to Huntington to be much the same, except
for culture.
There was only one difference. Ghana was taking the Communist path- like North Korea- but the people were freer to get rid of their leader. But it was too late in the day because the budget surplus had been squandered and the country was deeply in debt.
First, the class structures in the two countries
were quite different, with a very much bigger - and pro-active -
role of business classes in South Korea.
Sen is ignorant of the strong entrepreneurial tradition of the Akan people.
Second, the politics
were very different too, with the government in South Korea
willing and eager to play a prime-moving role in initiating a
business-centred economic development in a way that did not apply
to Ghana.
Because Nkrumah- who had spent 10 years getting higher degrees in America- chose the North Korean path.
Third, the close relationship between the Korean
economy and the Japanese economy, on the one hand, and the United
States, on the other, made a big difference, at least in the early
stages of Korean development.
But Ghana had been trading with Europe and America from before the time of Columbus! Incidentally, its original name was 'the Gold Coast'. We aren't speaking of some remote place in the jungle.
Fourth - and perhaps most important
- by the 1960s South Korea had acquired a much higher literacy
rate and much more expanded school system than Ghana had.
Nkrumah, to his credit, did invest in education. But a country can be very well educated and still as poor as shit. Look at the Cubans. However, it would be wiser to consider school enrollment in Ghana at that period as a function of the demand for skilled labor. This meant there were big regional and gender disparities. However, there was no supply side constraint and so enrollment could be increased very quickly if parents could see that more and more skilled work was becoming available.
The
Korean changes had been brought about in the post-second-world-war
period, largely through resolute public policy,
regarding what? A military and internal political threat whose solution required rapid economic growth of a type that might reassure America it hadn't been saddled with a money pit. South Korea sent a lot of troops- who performed well- to Vietnam for the same reason.
and it could not
be seen just as a reflection of age-old Korean culture.
Sen is being charitable to Huntingdon. The dude meant that Koreans were cold adapted peeps, not guys with ginormous cocks who spent their days eating water-melon in between pleasuring your wife.
On the basis of the slender scrutiny offered, it is hard to
justify either the cultural triumphalism in favour of Korean
culture, or the radical pessimism about Ghana’s future that the
reliance on cultural determinism would tend to suggest.
North Korea suffered a big famine in the Nineties. Ghana did not.
Neither
can be derived from the over-rapid and underanalyzed comparison
that accompanies the heroic diagnostics. As it happens, South
Korea did not rely just on its traditional culture. From the
1940s onwards, it deliberately followed lessons from abroad to use
public policy to advance its backward school education.
So did North Korea. In 1960, North Korea was considered more successful in eliminating illiteracy and making primary schooling compulsory.
Culture could be considered to represent 'Social Capital'. One way in which Capital of any sort can operate is to create 'barriers to entry or exit' which increases economic rent. Sen warns that it may be 'a mistake to treat
"social capital" as a general-purpose asset (as capital is, in
general, taken to be), rather than as an asset for some relations
and a liability for others.
If cultural signals are 'costly to acquire', then they can solve an information asymmetry problem by serving as a screening device. Thus the kid who excelled in Rabbinical school, or Vedic or Confucian or Islamic school may have developed 'general purpose' cognitive skills. As a matter of fact, there is a lot of evidence that such young people can do well when they switch to 'modern' or technocratic education and training.
There is, thus, room for some
searching scrutiny of the nature and operation of the important,
but in some ways problematic, concept of "social capital."
But that 'searching scrutiny' has to be evidence based. Moreover, if 'traditional culture' is seen as neglecting mathematics or physical science, then there is an indigenous way to correct the problem. After all, all the great 'High Cultures' had their own mathematical and scientific traditions.
What Sen is really getting at is that immersion in one's own culture may increase xenophobia. What he forgets is that an illiterate lout can be even more xenophobic.
Cultural sites and recollection of past heritage: Another
constructive possibility is the furtherance of a clearer and
broader understanding of a country’s or community’s past through
systematic exploration of its cultural history, For example, by
supporting historical excavations, explorations and related
research, development programmes can help to facilitate a fuller
appreciation of the breadth of - and internal variations within -
particular cultures and traditions. History often includes much
greater variety of cultural influences and traditions than tends
to be allowed by intensely political - and frequently ahistorical
- interpretations of the present.
But such History or Archaeology has had zero political effect. The Egyptians won't worship Osiris or return to building Pyramids. Pakistan isn't going to give up Islam if they find cities even more ancient than Mohenjo Daro.
When this is the case,
historical objects, sites and records can help to offset some of
the frictions of confrontational modern politics.
There is zero evidence for this view.
For example, Arab history includes a long tradition of
peaceful relation with Jewish populations.
So what? The Jews were still expelled. Every time there is some new archaeological find in Israel, you don't find Palestinians saying 'Cool! Let's all be friends with the Jews. Indeed, lets invite more of them to come and settle here.'
Similarly, Indonesian
past carries powerful records of simultaneous flourishing of
Hindu, Buddhist and Confucian cultures, side by side with the
Islamic traditions.
Muslims and Hindus got together to kill Communists in the mid-Sixties. That turned out to be a sensible thing to do.
Butrint in Albania as a historical site shows
flourishing presence of Greek, Roman and later Christian cultures,
as well as Islamic history.
What happened to that Greek and Roman culture? It disappeared. Islam has recovered quickly from suppression under Communist rule.
The highlighting of a diverse past
that may go with the excavation, preservation and accessability of
historical objects and sites can, thus, have a possible role in
promoting toleration of diversity in contemporary settings, and in
countering confrontational use of "monocultural" readings of a
nation’s past.
There is no evidence for this at all. If a country has a lot of antiquities, there will be a lot of archaeologcial excavations there. But the recent history of Egypt and Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan doesn't seem to show any positive correlation between 'the accessibility of historical objects' and pluralism or tolerance.
For example, the recent attempt by Hindu activists to see
India as just a "Hindu country," in which practitioners of other
religions must have a less privileged position, clashes with the
great diversity of Indian history.
The country was conquered by foreign invaders of various sorts. We get it. Tagore warned the Hindus that they needed to unite against the Christians and Muslims a dozen years before Sen was born in Tagore's Shantiniketan. His own family had to flee his ancestral East Bengal.
Currently, the BJP Government at the Centre is pushing for education in the State language and a bigger role for religious texts chosen by the State itself. Sen may see this as bigotry. It is a fact that Congress Governments were formed in 1937, the Wardha model of Basic Education proved controversial because it was seen as promoting Hinduism. But failure to embrace mother tongue instruction and the teaching of religious texts discouraged attendance because jobs requiring literacy were few and far between. In other words, education was not offering any psychic benefit.
Sen himself notes that Buddhism had encouraged literacy. Why should Hinduism not do so by the same means?
To be sure, the post-war public policies on education were
also influenced by antecedent cultural features. It would be
surprising had there been no such connection. In a two-way
relation, just as education influences culture, so does antecedent
culture have an effect on educational policies. It is, for
example, remarkable that nearly every country in the world with a powerful presence of Buddhist tradition has tended to embrace
widespread schooling and literacy with some eagerness.
The same was true of the Protestant religion in Western Europe. Ordinary people valued being able to read Scripture in their own mother tongue. Why should Hindus be denied this facility just because minorities feel uncomfortable with it? I understand that the second or third generation immigrant to Bangalore or Mumbai may not want to burden his child with having to learn Kanadda or Marathi. Yet, if the thing were made compulsory, then no particular child is disadvantaged. The pay-off is that they have better life-chances because they feel they belong to the State in which they were born.
This
applies not only to Japan and Korea, but also to China, and
Thailand, and Sri Lanka.
British rule meant that Buddhists fell behind the Christians. This was a contributing factor in the ethnic and other conflict which overwhelmed that beautiful island.
Indeed, even miserable Burma, with a
dreadful record of political oppression and social neglect, still
has a higher rate of literacy than its neighbours in the
subcontinent.
Sri Lanka and Burma saw bigger gains in female literacy during the colonial period. Much of the sub-continent was still stuck with 'purdah'.
Seen in a broader framework, there is probably
something here to investigate and learn from.
Parents want their kids to be able to read and understand Scripture translated into the mother tongue. They prize virtue in their offspring and want them to go to the Good Place when they die.
It is, however, important to see the interactive nature of
the process in which contact with other countries and the
knowledge of their experiences can make a big difference in
practice. There is every evidence that when Korea decided to move
briskly forward with school education at the end of the second
world war, it was influenced not just by its cultural interest in
education, but also by a new understanding of the role and
significance of education, based on the experiences of Japan and
the West, including the United States.
Japan had imposed a highly discriminatory educational system on the Koreans. They were determined to rise up by emulating or outdoing their former rulers. Initially, people thought North Korea, with Soviet help, would rise faster.
There is a similar story, earlier on, of interaction and
response in Japan’s own history of educational development. When
Japan emerged from its self-imposed isolation from the world from
the beginning of the seventeenth century, under the Tokugawa
regime, it already had a relatively well developed school system,
and in this Japan’s traditional interest in education would have
played a significant part.
The state had a cozy relationship with the Buddhist religion whereby the latter ran its household passport system.
Indeed, at the time of Meiji
restoration in 1868, Japan had a higher rate of literacy than
Europe, despite being economically quite underdeveloped. And yet
the rate of literacy in Japan was still low (as indeed it was in
Europe too), and no less importantly the Japanese education system
was quite out of touch with knowledge and learning in the
industrializing West.
But many Japanese risked their lives to translate and disseminate European scientific and other texts.
When, in 1852,
June 1853
Commodore Mathew Perry
chugged into the Edo Bay, puffing black smoke from the newly
designed steamship, the Japanese were not only impressed - and
somewhat terrified -
they were familiar with Dutch steamships and had been warned of Perry's visit. By 1855, the Japanese had built their own steam-ship and had acquired a war-ship with Dutch help. By 1860, Japan was able to send a mission to the US on a screw driven steamship built by the Dutch. By 1863, Japan had launched its first indigenous was-ship. By 1869 it had an iron-clad war ship. Still it wasn't till 1910 that the Japanese could build warships that were 80 percent indigenous.
and were driven to accept diplomatic and
trade relations with the USA, they also had to re-examine and reassess their intellectual isolation from the world. This
contributed to the political process that led to the Meiji
restoration, and along with that came a determination to change
the face of Japanese education. In the so-called "Charter Oath,"
proclaimed also in 1868, there is a firm declaration on the need
to "seek knowledge widely throughout the world."38
The Fundamental Code of Education issued three years later,
Clearly, some Japanese people had already embraced 'foreign learning'. It appears that indoctrination in their own mother tongue and traditional religion had not disabled them from intellectual activity. It didn't matter what laws the Government passed, what mattered was that Japanese people were patriotic and quick to learn anything beneficial to their country.
Incidentally, the first steam ship built in India, by the Wadia family, launched in 1829. Today Japan and South Korea have 25 percent each of the world ship building market while Indian has 0.045 percent! This has nothing to do with 'culture' and everything to do with Sen-tentious Socialist ideas.
The plain fact is Japan had adopted isolationism so as to keep the Christians out. Korea, too, was known as the 'Hermit Kingdom'. Once Japan had no choice but to modernize, it did so with a view to achieving naval and military hegemony in its neighborhood. This is what enthused Japanese parents. They saw their country was winning wars against first China and then even Russia. School enrollment shot up. Moreover, educated people had plenty of scope to use their skills building ships and submarines and fighter jets.
Sen, of course, is against patriotism and religion and wanting your country to get richer and stronger.
It might be asked, in praising inter-country interactions and the
positive influence of learning from elsewhere,
which, can cause savants from less developed countries to just become parasites importing a foreign product in a slavish and uncritical manner.
am I not
overlooking the threat that global interrelations pose to
integrity and survival of local culture? In a world that is so
dominated by the "imperialism" of the culture of the Western
metropolis, surely the basic need is, it can be argued, to
strengthen resistance, rather than to welcome global influence.
Let me first say that there is no contradiction here.
Learning from elsewhere involves freedom and judgment,
no it doesn't, unless you are a patriot or are motivated by religious zeal. You pay your money and get a credential and then spend the rest of your life as a parasite.
not being
overwhelmed and dominated by outside influence without choice,
without scope for one’s volitional agency.
You can choose to be a useless parasite.
The threat of being
overwhelmed by the superior market power of an affluent West,
is what Indian economists succumbed to. Why bother trying to get Govt. of India to do sensible things? Just emigrate to some Western campus and demand intellectual affirmative action.
which has asymmetric influence over nearly all the media, raises a
different type of issue altogether. In particular, it does not
contradict in any way the importance of learning from elsewhere.
Why bother learning stuff that actually works if you get the same pay for regurgitating worthless shite about Freedom and Democracy and why the BJP is the Devil?
But how should we think about global cultural invasion itself
as a threat to local cultures?
If kids can't speak their own language properly and know nothing of their own ancestral religion or culture or history, then we need to think about the price we are paying for 'global cultural invasion'. Chances are we will have a corrupt and useless administration while enemies start gobbling up more and more of our territory.
There are two issues of particular
concern here. The first relates to the nature of market culture
in general, since that is part and parcel of economic
globalization. Those who find the values and priorities of a
market-related culture vulgar and impoverishing (many who take
this view belong to the West itself) tend to find economic
globalization to be objectionable at a very basic level.
What matters is the 'terms of trade'. Is globalization leading to your people doing low value adding stuff while high value adding activities are concentrated elsewhere?
The
second issue concerns the asymmetry of power between the West and
the other countries, and the possibility that this asymmetry may
translate into destruction of local cultures - a loss that may
culturally impoverish non-Western societies. Given the constant
cultural bombardment that tends to come from the Western
metropolis (through MTV to Kentucky Fried Chicken), there are
genuine fears that native traditions may get drowned in that loud
din.
But MTV and KFC hire smart people to promote themselves around the globe. We could do the same.
Sen asks 'how to
increase the real options - the substantive freedoms - that people
have, by providing support for cultural traditions that they may
want to preserve.
The answer is to find ways to make those 'traditions' add greater value and then to promote them so that there is a virtuous circle whereby greater profits are made and reinvested.
This is an ideographic matter. It is foolish to pretend that we are sitting on a big pile of money and that we can hand that money over to 'cultural traditions' that we like.
This cannot but be an important concern in any
development effort that brings about radical changes in the ways
of living of people.
Indeed, a natural response to the problem of asymmetry must
take the form of strengthening the opportunities that local
culture can have, to be able to hold its own against an
overpowered invasion.
This would require lots and lots of money. Where is it to come from?
If foreign imports dominate because of
greater control over the media, surely one counteracting policy
must involve expanding the facilities that local culture gets, to
present its own ware, both locally and beyond it.
We can ban foreign movies, but they will still be smuggled in while the local cinema turns to shite because of lack of competition. All India Radio once banned film songs and cricket commentary and other things which people liked. They re-tuned their sets to Radio Ceylon which made a lot of money from advertisements.
This is a
positive response, rather than the temptation - a very negative
temptation - to ban foreign influence.
Ultimately, for both the concerns, the deciding issue must be
one of democracy.
Democracy in Sen's East Bengal meant famine and ethnic cleansing.
An overarching value must be the need for
participatory decision-making on the kind of society people want
to live in, based on open discussion, with adequate opportunity
for the expression of minority positions.
Sen's people decided it wasn't safe to 'express minority opinions' in East Pakistan. Apparently, he had a cousin who, as a Communist, stayed on there. That story did not have a happy ending.
We cannot both want
democracy, on the one hand, and yet, on the other, rule out
certain choices, on traditionalist grounds, because of their
"foreignness" (irrespective of what people decide to choose, in an
informed and reflected way).
Yes we can if that is what the majority wants.
Democracy is not consistent with
options of citizens being banished by political authorities, or by
religious establishments, or by grand guardians of taste, no
matter how unbecoming they find the new predilection to be.
This simply isn't true. Democracies can do ethnic cleansing and religious persecution and homophobia and so forth.
Local
culture may indeed need positive assistance to compete in even
terms, and support for minority tastes against foreign onslaught
may also be a part of the enabling role of a democratic society,
but the prohibition of cultural influences from abroad is not
consistent with a commitment to democracy and liberty.
The voters in a democratic country can restrict any liberty they like. Indeed, this is a condition for the survival of the country as a democracy.
Related to this question there is also a more subtle issue
that takes us beyond the immediate worry about bombardment of mass
Western culture.
It is worth worrying about this only if you have the technological resources and the political power to prevent this 'bombardment'.
This concerns the way we see ourselves in the
world - a world that is asymmetrically dominated by Western
preeminence and power.
Sadly, that preeminence and power appears to be in decline.
Through a dialectic process, this can, in
fact, lead to a powerful inclination to be aggressively "local" in
culture, as a kind of "brave" resistance to Western dominance.
No kidding. That's why Gandhi took to wearing a dhoti.
In
an important paper, called "What Is a Muslim?", Akeel Bilgrami
an avowed atheist
has
argued that the confrontational relations often lead people to see
themselves as "the other" - defining their identity as being
emphatically different from that of Western people.
Western people may have had a problem with a believing Muslim- or Hindu for that matter- they don't see an atheistic analytical philosopher as 'the other'.
Something
of this "otherness" can be seen in the emergence of various self- definitions that characterize cultural or political nationalism
and religious assertiveness or even fundamentalism. While
belligerently anti-Western, these developments are, in fact,
deeply foreign-dependent - in a negative and contrary form.
Indeed, seeing oneself as "the other" does less than justice to
one’s free and deliberative agency.
Very true. A girl can use her free and deliberative agency to become an elderly man and vice versa. I'm actually a beautiful teen-aged supermodel from Siberia.
This problem too has to be
dealt with in way that is consistent with democratic values and
practice, if that is taken to be a priority. Indeed, the
"solution" to the problem that Bilgrami diagnoses cannot lie in
"prohibiting" any particular outlook, but in public discussion
that clarifies and illuminates the possibility of being alienated
from one’s own independent agency.
Bilgrami says he was asked about his religion by a potential landlord. He surprised himself by saying 'I am Muslim'. He hadn't thought of himself in those terms before. However, the landlord was not really concerned with religion. Suppose Bilgrami had said 'I am vegetarian and follower of Shirdi Sai Baba', that would have conveyed one meaning. As a matter of fact, since the name Aqeel is Islamic, there was little reason to ask his religion.
Would 'public discussion' make a vegetarian tolerant of a non-veg neighbor? Perhaps. But that has not been my experience.
Finally, I should mention that one particular concern I have
not yet discussed arises from the belief - often implicit - that
each country or collectivity must stick to its "own culture," no
matter how attracted people are to "foreign cultures." This
fundamentalist position not only involves the need to reject
importing Macdonalds and beauty contests to the non-Western world,
but also the enjoyment there of Shakespeare or ballets or even
cricket matches.
Bhutan is one such country. It considers itself the happiest on Earth. It is very Buddhist. Sen should approve.
Obviously enough, this highly conservative
position must be in some tension with the role and acceptability
of democratic decisions, and I need not repeat what I have already
said about the conflict between democracy and the arbitrary
privileging of any practice.
There is no such conflict. The majority in a democracy can arbitrarily privilege anything it likes.
But it also involves am additional
philosophical issue about the labelling of cultures on which
Rabindranath Tagore, the poet, had warned.
Tagore was crazy. He thought India had a Race problem, like America. It had a religion problem, like Ireland.
This concerns the issue whether one’s culture is to be
defined by the geographical origin of a practice, rather than by
its manifest use and enjoyment.
In a democracy, it is defined by the majority.
Tagore (1928) put his argument
against regional labelling with great force: 'Whatever we understand and enjoy in human products instantly
becomes ours, wherever they might have their origin.
Which is why you become Chinese when eating Chinese food and French when drinking French Wine.
I am
proud of my humanity when I can acknowledge the poets and
artists of other countries as my own.
I am proud of having written 'Hamlet' a play supposedly written by some White dude named Shakespeare.
Let me feel with
unalloyed gladness that the all the great glories of man are
mine.'
What about the great glories of woman? Did Tagore feel unalloyed gladness that he'd gotten pregnant by a succession of losers and delivered a fine brood of bastards?
In the old days, the Punjabis would joke that the only type of culture they had was agriculture. Bengal had wealthy landlords who cultivated the arts. But you can't have a healthy cultural life if people keep dropping dead of starvation. Getting 'mechanism design' right- i.e. ensuring people have incentives to raise productivity and allocative efficiency- is necessary for Development which in turn permits Culture and Refinement and Niceness to burgeon. Democracy does not necessarily mean that a country will get mechanism design right. But it might be the cheapest way to run a shit-show. Meanwhile cultured people can emigrate somewhere they will be appreciated- if only under the rubric of intellectual or aesthetic affirmative action.
