The other day, a member of this forum forwarded a story about KFC's opening in Lagos, Nigeria. On the surface it can be read as a classic example of global capitalist expansion--another Chicken sweat shop in the Third World, the extension of the exploitative hand of global capital. But don't we have to go beyond this default mode and look at mitigating variables such as the jobs it might create, the support it might give to local chicken farmers and producers of other locally made ingredients? For the staff who would be recruited, any talk of "slave wage" and exploitative labor practice is elitist talk because the job is infinitely preferable to their previous condition and has the potential to lift them out of poverty and lay a sounder foundation for the next generation in their families. For the Nigerian consumers of KFC products, KFC represents another Middle Class indulgence and a quality family experience (never mind what it will do to their arteries).
On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 11:24 AM, kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:
hi pius
on point 1
victims are not all equal at all. the losses incurred by outsourcing to u.s.workers does not leave them in anything like the conditions of african farmers or fishermen whose livelihoods have been unsettled by global neoliberalism. i think the only fair way to measure the effects of a megalith like Walmart, the largest corporation in the world, the bringer of cheap goods to the american public, is not by asking simply whether walmart offers adequate salaries or benefits to its workers, but what the impact it has on the workers abroad who fabricate goods at their command. some years ago i saw a report on clothing manufacturing in bangalesh where a factory owner, perfectly happy to put in fire extinguishing systems in his factory, explained that the cost would make him uncompetitive with his competitors, and as walmart insisted on the cheapest price possible he could not comply with safety measures.
i offer this as an example of how we cannot understand the global economic system on the basis of nation states any more.
to be sure there is local production controlled by national policies, but they are increasingly superseded by larger than national forces. it is most obvious in things like car manufacturing or the film industry, and gets messier when food is involved. but everyone knows the story about rice production or chicken production globally and its impact on african food production.
i would appeal to the older members of this list to remember conditions of production and distribution when they were younger and compare them with now. it would be interesting to ask all the above questions and find answers from a period of late colonialism, early independence and neocolonialism, then the passage through the 80s till now.
have the disparities in wealthy grown or shrunk? is life harder for the average, the poor senegalese or nigerian now compared with then?
2.on race i don't quite know how to respond. i would love your thoughts on it. i feel competent to speak of how racism still marks things in the u.s., or france, but am less certain how to understand it as a factor in global terms.
except for one thing: i am convinced that the genocide in rwanda would not have happened in a white country (e.g.bosnia), and that the deaths in the drc are a matter of supreme disinterest to the west.
ken
On 12/21/10 11:12 AM, Pius Adesanmi wrote:
Ken:
I see your point and agree with you to a great extent but I still see two potential problems that you are overlooking or not addressing:
1) Your victimography (apologies for that coinage) of neoliberalism is becoming more ambitious with every post. It is covering and leveling up every part of the globe too tidily for my liking. I am beginning to see a victimography in which the Agatu farmer in Moses's neck of the woods in Benue state is being levelled up with the New York factory worker as an equal victim of neoliberalism. Is it possible for some victims to be more equal than others?
2) Is neo-liberalism blind to race? Does race have a place in the victimography of neoliberalism?
Pius
--- On Tue, 21/12/10, kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:
From: kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why is Africa in such a mess?
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Date: Tuesday, 21 December, 2010, 14:58
pius
outside of maybe north korea, what country's economy and social structure does not obey the logic introduced by neoliberal capitalism. to a lesser degree in one location, to a greater in another?
for instance, neoliberalism dictates free trade and enforces it by imf rules. so it is built around a worldwide system of financial exchanges that dictate conditions for lending and borrowing. those that provide the funding are not subject to tariff rules; that that borrow are subject to tariff rules. both operate within the same system, although the impact is felt differently. the borrowers run enormous risks, as we have seen with the rules for borrowing stifling the ability of local african farmers to compete. when malawi chose to forgo the loans in order to support their own crops, things improved.
maybe the loans worked better for ghana than for mali. again, there is room within the system, as everyone has been loudly and correctly arguing, to maneuver, so that some states do better than others. but all are maneuvering within the same systemic constraints.
consider iceland's vertiginous fall, along with ireland's, before you tell me that europe stands outside the system. all are vulnerable to its effects, but not all are positioned in the same way within the system. thus germany emerges relatively unscathed; but english university students are completely screwed.
finally, it dispirits me to see moses cite approvingly the ascension of new states like india or china within this system, as proof that it accommodates positive change. there is not a shred of concern over the vast numbers of people whose impoverished conditions are exploited by the constraints of neoliberal capitalism, as though there were no price to be paid in capitalism's workings, as though there were no labor to be exploited, as though there were no police actions in china to repress workers' rights, as though the advances for the very rich offset any abuses of the working class
how far we have come from a notion of progressive politics in africa when the idea of fighting for freedom did not mean freedom to become as rich as possible, never mind who suffers as a consequence.
moses and others are right to say we are here, we can't go back to older days with socialist ideals. but there i a huge difference between those like david brooks whose admiration for the rich and their ways is unstinted, and those like bob herbert who aligns himself with the poor and continues to fight for their rights.
now in dakar as in new york it isn't a question of simply the rich and the poor, it is the superrich, the obscenely rich, the don't-ever-dare-to-try-to-tax-me rich, the this-country=belongs-to-me-i-own-it-and-everything-in-it, and the poor whose life is marked by struggle, unemployment, and the sight of a fortress's wall, always from the outside.
whose voice am i hearing? is it gbagbo, or limbaugh?
ken
On 12/20/10 10:42 PM, Pius Adesanmi wrote:
"i stated, as clearly as i could, that africa does not stand in a different position vis-a-vis neoliberal capitalism or globalization than any other country" - Ken
Ken, Ken, Ken:
You mean "any other continent?" If our enemies rush for your jugular because of this dangerous slip up, remember to tell them that I denied ever knowing you three times before the cock crowed.
Pius
--- On Tue, 21/12/10, kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:
From: kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why is Africa in such a mess?
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Date: Tuesday, 21 December, 2010, 2:46
chikwendu
i have two problems with your argument
first, you, and others, have constructed a straw man, or refuse to hear or accept the argument i advanced.
i stated, as clearly as i could, that africa does not stand in a different position vis-a-vis neoliberal capitalism or globalization than any other country; that the effects of today's capitalism is to generate enormous disparities in wealth, to generate a reliance on minimal state social services in the faith that corporate development will take care of social needs, and that the increasing size of the empoverished populations, in countries i listed from every continent, follow that pattern. i also acknowledge that there are disparities in power, which contribute to the weaker or poorer states and populations suffering more. but there is no more agency as such for any state, no matter how wealthy, to escape these forces. i don't know how many examples i need to give: i offered russia at one point. how about ireland and spain, portugal, the miracle states of the eu. now the catastrophe states, with enormous problems of unemployment and poverty, debt, anger in the streets, you name it.
secondly, pace pius's picture, it isn't a question of "academic arguments," but simply intellectual arguments. how much anti-intellectualism do we have to bear in these arguments. first it is foucault, misspelled to boot, then the academy or western thinkers. it is incredible that we can't have an intelligent discussion on questions of economic growth or political structures without seeking to establish some formula for authenticity as a basis for thought.
let me see...i don't like the fact that freud came from austria, as did hitler, so the unconscious must be a nazi invention
or should we ask where newton came from before we board a plane?
is the academy in which gravity's law in taught somehow less capable of understanding the forces involved than the engineer who builds the plane or the captain who flies it?? did the engineer validate f=ma? discover f=ma?
if this path of reasoning bothers you, i suggest you ignore it since it is emerging from my computer in east lansing, no doubt a very remote location from the hard realities of life.
so my question is, what is the use of thought? where is thought's home validated?
"the academy" is, in fact, yet another straw man in this argument, deflecting us from the issues at hand which are oversimplified into notions of agency that are never really given meaningful definition.
ken
On 12/20/10 3:05 PM, Chikwendu Ukaegbu wrote:
> Academic arguments that continue to paint the African as slave to structure do a disservice to the continent because the commanding heights of the global economy will not and cannot philanthropically plant national development in African countries.
-- kenneth w. harrow
distinguished professor of english
michigan state university
department of english
east lansing, mi 48824-1036
ph. 517 803 8839
harrow@msu.edu
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---Mohandas Gandhi
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