But this is how we've always done it

So, how about that microcredit, huh? Bradford Plumer (incidentally: is there any better name for a policy wonk than "Bradford"?) has a response here, which ends with:

That [starting a small rock-smashing business] may help her stave off extreme deprivation, but it won't turn Malawi into a developed country. That's certainly not how Europe or Asia became industrialized. Without massive state-driven investments in, among other things, infrastructure, legal institutions, health, and education, the markets in these countries will be too stunted for "entrepreneurs" with microloans to do much more than set up rock-smashing businesses or sell bananas on the side of the road. I really don't want to denigrate that, but as a poverty-reduction strategy, it's no substitute for proper economic development.

Now, to a certain extent, this is obviously true. The history of 'proper economic development' has, by and large, been the story of massive state investments in things like that. But the history of failed development has also largely been a history of massive state investment. And one central reason for this is that while massive state investment, in any given case, may or may not be good for the area as a whole, it is almost always good for somebody, and that somebody usually has some say in the matter.

That's not to deny that there's something compelling about the "big push" idea of virtuous circles of development and the multiple equilibria available to a given economy; there obviously is. But if getting from here to there were remotely easy, we wouldn't have people like Bill Easterly making a career out of pointing how badly we've fucked it up for half a century.

One reason why bottom-up development has never 'worked' could simply be that any time you get a reasonably strong state, you're going to have very strong incentives to have that state Do Something. Exactly how much of the resulting development (in the good case) is a result of the Something that gets Done, and how much is from the industrious rock-smashers going about their business, is difficult to say; it's made still more difficult by the fact that state intervention will naturally divert entrepreneurial energy towards those things that the state is pushing forward or propping up.

So, three points. First, the way things have been done in the past might not be the best model to follow; we don't want to encourage others to duplicate what were, at the time, maybe-not-even-necessary evils (enclosure is the obvious bogeyman here, with intellectual property its contemporary heir). Second, microcredit has one clear advantage over massive state investment: it is unlikely to further entrench wretched political-economic equilibria. Third, the sort of growth microcredit is likely to encourage is likely to be the sort least well-tracked by standard national-income accounting, and we should recognize this in our assessments of it.

Appropriation without expropriation

Over at Feministe, Piny criticizes cultural appropriators in general and one shallow-sounding one, Lynn Andrews, in particular. I'm not about to rush off to partake in the "ancient ceremony of the Pleiades" or anything, but I don't quite see what justifies the opprobrium attached to the idea of, as Piny puts it, "picking through traditions from cultures other than your own so that you can glean the safest, easiest, most comfortable bits while leaving all the dangerous and difficult stuff to its owners." Or rather: put like that, yes, such conduct is hardly admirable. But it's contemptible in a rather straightforward way: putting together the set of rituals, practices, and beliefs that will collectively give one's life meaning and significance is not something that ought to be done on the basis of safety, comfort, and ease. Doing so is like constructing one's causal theory of the universe on the basis of what one would like to be true; it misses the very point of the endeavor.

Of course, the question of how one ought to go about creating meaning for one's life is hardly an easy one. And I'm willing to acknowledge that there's a real role to play for authenticity. But I don't think this sort of authenticity can or ought to be tied too tightly to blood, soil, or upbringing. My sympathies lie somewhere in the neighborhood of a coherentist account; this draft chapter (the second one, p. 31) by Ronald Dworkin strikes a chord with me. Suppose we have someone who, for one reason or another, has trouble finding meaning in her life through the rituals and practices that make up the more popular cultural repertoires in America. Suppose even that, reacting in a somewhat Orientalist way to the evils of western colonialism, she decides to investigate Buddhism as an alternative. But suppose that, having started out with fairly naive and even perhaps problematic motives, she comes to take seriously the task of examining and reflecting over various strands of Buddhist thought and practice. She now sees herself as no longer fleeing from traditions that repulse her, but as constructing for herself an identity that she can live with, out of what materials she can find.

I don't think there's anything wrong with this sort of cultural appropriation, even if she ends up with a bricolage of materials from a half-dozen traditional sources in her quest for horizons of meaning and significance that feel authentically hers. And should she fall far short of this ideal, I still think we should hold off on too sharp a critique, for how many of us subject our own cultural baggage to the level of scrutiny we demand of the cross-cultural interloper? The unreflective cosmopolitan may seem ridiculous in her performances of Buddhist spirituality or Kabbalah mysticism, but ridiculousness does not imply moral wrongfulness.

I think in the end it really comes down to beliefs of cultural ownership. Piny, it seems, buys into this: he talks of "stealing" from the source culture. I think this is a dangerous and mistaken view to hold: dangerous because it reinforces deeply harmful ideas about intellectual property and because it implicitly acknowledges that there must be some authoritative way (perhaps through certain authoritative persons) of defining, using, and changing culture, and mistaken because it presents culture as something static or at least controllable, rather than the always-contested interpretive practice it is.

Now, I know from reading Feministe that Piny obviously doesn't think of culture as static or controlled; he's always struck me as very thoughtful about these things, probably moreso than me. Which is one reason I find the post worrisome; I once took a class on "indigenous intellectual property rights," and I think Piny's view is quite common, even (perhaps especially) among thoughtful and concerned sorts. There is no denying that indigenous groups and non-Western nations have been and continue to be treated unjustly, often appallingly so. And because so much of this unjust treatment has been in the form of blatant and bloody expropriation, it is very, very easy to see every case where the West benefits from the "rest" as fitting the same mold: just another case of taking what's not ours. But I think this intuition gets it wrong, very wrong, with cultural materials. "We" don't own the Mona Lisa; "they" don't own sweat-lodges.

(I think Russell Arben Fox's critique of Kwame Anthony Appiah's "Cosmopolitanism" has real weight to them, but even here, the importance is ensuring that communities have the capacity to shape their own culture for themselves, not that outsiders can't incorporate fragments into their own outsider-cultures.)

Pseudonymity is the new black

Most likely this will go nowhere. But my, looking at this clean and attractive interface, how could I not blog? So blog I shall.

I'm not, in fact, a connoisseur of literature; I read Powell's Dance to the Music of Time because I felt I had to read some Serious Fiction and the jacket blurbs compared it favorably to Proust, which I sure as hell wasn't going to read.

Stay tuned for exciting stories!