Customer Reviews

I hate Hamlet: A play

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is a brilliant book that explains everyday confusions about the world. I highly recommend it. And I would like to counter the couple of comments below that suggest that this is a pro-white-Protestant polemic. It does not praise JUST western Protestant thought...there is PLENTY of praising of Eastern thought, such as Chinese Confucianism, and Japanese social attitudes, and of the the Jamaican blacks. These are obviously not white Protestant groups! So to suggest this book is some rash polemic is dead wrong. It's a real eye-opener and quite educational.

An excellent discussion of the influence of culture on a nation's economic performance. It should be no surprise to learn that beliefs lead to acts and acts can lead either to prosperity or poverty. But given the eagerness of many analysts to blame the industrialized countries for the problems of the developing world, Harrison's work provides an invaluable correction. The beliefs of a people regarding such matters as the role of women, attitude toward the future, circle of trust, moral virtue, frugality, fair play, community and whether or not gaining wealth is a zero-sum game have a great impact on the potential of a county to escape poverty.

This is a refreshing book. It's politically incorrect, so the knee-jerk liberals (like those here who gave it one star) won't like it. Reality is reality, whether you like it or not. And this book presents the reality of what works and what doesn't. I would recommend reading Eric Fromm's "ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM," too, because some points that are incorrect in this book, you can see corrected in that book. But most of the points made in this book are correct. Just as a child's parents can make or break his life emotionally, so can culture make or break a country's economic and political life. Harrison is dead wrong in some of the details, but his overall point is dead right, and it's refreshing to see someone make it. This book shows the importance of self-discipline, and, personally, inspired me to become more self-disciplined.

This is a brilliant book, that shows that what happens around you affects you. Anyone who doesn't think President Clinton's chronic infidelity, and cronyism, and draft dodging, and all his other scandals, won't result in corruption in other parts of society, should read this book. Corruption spreads like a cancer. When Peter sees Paul get away with something, Peter will try to get away with it, too. This will be an uncomfortable book for some, but should be read.

This one is worse than "Culture Matters" (same author).

Know the code before you dive in -- income is distributed, not earned. Japan is the pre-eminent business climate ( because the government is so closely involved, you see). Progress = leftism. Stagnation = conservatism. America is fundamentally weak because some people get rich here.

Now that you have the decoder key, give it a read.

Sets you up for a good dose of Milton Friedman -- the perfect antidote to this kind of balderdash.

If I had my choice I would re-title this book as follows:

"Who's Dysfuctional??? How Misassessments and Neo-Colonialism Gets Formulated Into U.S.-Foreign Policy" by Lawrence Harrison

As you read along you will see why.

Harrison is solidly within the school of development thought called cultural developmentalism. The theory in short asserts that cultures of given nations are inherently dysfunctional on a level that makes development and "modernization" improbable if not impossible for them. If development is ever to come to such cultures, it must first come at the level of fundamental cultural changes that will "fit" the people for "development." In this modernizing view, cultures must change to fit the development form, and not vice-versa.

At root, cultural developmentalism is little other than a revival of unilineal evolutionism (the theory used to help justify colonialism) except that it replaces biology with culture as its picking point.

Harrison was a long-time United States Agency for International Development (USAID) operative in the Western hemisphere who is now a professor of International Affairs at Harvard. During Harrison's tenure with USAID, mostly during the Cold War-era, he served for two years as the agency's director in Haiti under George Bush, Sr.

Harrison's experiences in Haiti lead him to believe that "there is something going on in the minds of the Haitians that impedes progress and facilitates the perpetuation of a stagnant, exploitive, repressive system." As for what that certain "something" is, he synopsizes it as "slave culture, sustained over the generations in substantial isolation."

According to Harrison, Haiti is underdeveloped because of its roots in its past, its maladaptive responses to that past as well as to modern events, and its inability to break away from both to "get with the larger world" and its standardized development plan. I find it almost stupifying that Harrison neglects to focus on Duvalierism (ideology in Haiti held by some formerly tied up with the dictator there, Duvalier, that says to move we need to gain access to and feed at the state n order to advance socially and economically) in Haiti in these regards, but instead appears to target the Haitian poor.

Harrison's seeks to bolster his arguments by replying to the idea of dependency. He takes on the easiest to critique theory of dependency, dependency theory, which Harrison rejects, as well as, apparently, any notion that lower income countries are the way they are because they have been historically exploited by industrialized countries-"that the rich are rich because the poor are poor," to use Harrison's own words. Harrison dismisses the idea with one phrase, calling it simply a "doctrine for Marxist-Leninists," and ingnores the theory as a useful analytical tool for understanding the underlying causes of underdevelopment in given places. Harrison instead states, "The almost exclusive focus on `imperialism' and `dependency' to explain underdevelopment has encouraged the evolution of a paralyzing, self-defeating mythology." While this assertion contains grains of truth, for Harrison it needs to be the full focus. For him, formerly colonized countries need to stop looking at the non-realities of notions of dependency, and instead look *inward*.

The praxis and outcomes of Harrison's cultural developmentalism is, first, a belief in the superior pattern of the West and reification and universalizing of neo-liberalism. Reminiscent of the underlying assumptions of both unilineal evolutionism and modernization theory, Harrison specifically forwards the notion that some cultures are inherently better or worse when compared to others. Harrison asserts that there is a prototype for underdeveloped countries to emulate to become "developed." Harrison both assumes and asserts that development means, in essence, helping formerly colonized states to become more like their former colonizers in world and life view. This includes having their cultures, governmental structures and policies, and economic and social behaviors conform to what he holds as the superior pattern of the West, importantly to include its current model of neo-liberal economics. Underlying this argument is Harrison's explicit rejection of anthropology's general adherence to an appropriate cultural relativism. The main of cultural relativism in anthropology asserts that, while there can still be moral universals that can be upheld, each culture makes significant sense when viewed on its own terms and from an understanding that can only be acquired from a stance of having been deeply within that culture for a time. Clearly, understanding Haitian culture like this is not something he did during his tenure in Haiti, probably because he speant too much time at the Olofson (elite hostel in Haiti).

Given this major lack of understanding cultures, it is not surprising therefore that, second, problematic assessments flow from Harrison's cultural developmentalism, and that these assessments then formulate into the policies of important state, international, and NGO decision makers: for example, USAID, with whom Harrison served in Haiti.

For example, Harrison targets Haiti's indigenous religion, Vodou. Harrison asserts that the religion is a key part of what he calls "Haiti's slave culture" that needs to be broken away from in order for the country to develop. He admits, first, that most Haitians are Vodousaints in one measure or another. From this admission, he goes on to maintain that the world and life view of Vodousaints causes them to focus not on the future, but on the ancestral past. Harrison asserts that "Voudon [...] is irrational," and that it "propagates the view that existence is essentially static and the world unchangeable" (sic). Consequently, for Harrison, Vodou "tends to lock the Haitian into the status quo" to impede Haitian development.

In this, Harrison quite transparently misses the fact that Vodou was central to the Haitian people making their break from "the status quo" (slavery) under colonial domination. Today the religion's ritual replays of the Haitian Revolution bolster Vodousaints against future slavery forms -forms that, to most Vodousaints, would seem tied to what Harrison, USAID, and the U.S. advocates for.

Beyond this obvious historical fact, Harrison misses the fact of Aristide's past mass concientizacíon (consciousness raising) efforts among Haitians, which has led popular Haitians to question things, to demand change. Harrison completey misses the fact that many Vodousaints and their "clergy" are progressive and socially and politically active, and that they work within Haiti's popular movements for a just Haiti. In other words, while spiritual elements of Vodou do focus on the past, as is the case with most if not all religions, when it comes to the socio-political realm, most Vodousaints are, in fact, future-oriented. While perhaps fearing the outcomes concientizacíon, Harrison apparently misses this important dualism.

As well, many Vodousaints were highly politically conscious and future-oriented well before Aristide's mass concientizacíon effort. During the end of the Jean-Claude Duvaliér years in the late 1980s, the intensely popular Haitian rasin ["roots music"] and openly Vodouist band Boukman Eksperyans, sharply criticized Jean-Claude in their music and became targets of the regime. Like Vodousaint Boukman Dutty, who helped spark the Haitian Revolution, many (recall that most Haitians are also at least nominally Vodousaints), attribute the pointed music of Boukman Eksperyans with sparking initial fomentation against the Jean-Claude dictatorship. More recently (1992), one of the band's politicized songs, Vodou Adjae, expresses shock over problems related to capitalism, communism, ...egotism, expansionism, imperialism, racism, fanaticism, corrupt money, war, and orphans.

Aristide's mass concientizacíon and the music of Boukman Eksperyans indicate Harrison's problematic assessments of Haiti to be truly extensive. Harrison misses even main currents within the Haitian political climate and popular culture! Having to labor under the stigmatizations and constraining of sight stemming from Harrison's cultural developmentalist praxis would seem to impede Haitians' development far more than Vodou itself.

Even so, with one eye targeted on Vodou, Harrison summarizes his remedy for Haiti as, "The Haitian people need to break with their past" to emulate the universally applicable prototype for "development," the West.

The recent and current stream of U.S. policy toward Haiti evidently concurs with Harrison's overall assessments concerning the underlying causes of Haitian underdevelopment and the need for an exogenous neo-liberal remedy for it. What is more, as the U.S. has done in the past, it directly ties that assessment to its power. Problem is, the assessments of Haiti have been misformulated based in part upon the constraining of site and, frankly neo-colonialism, that becoming a cultural developmentalist can cause.

So if you want to either become a neo-colonialist, or understand why U.S. policy takes on neo-colonialism far too often, or undrestand why USAID is so often hated around the world, buy Harrison's book.

If I had my choice I would re-title this book as follows:

"Who's Dysfuctional??? How Misassessments and Neo-Colonialism Gets Formulated Into U.S.-Foreign Policy" by Lawrence Harrison

As you read along you will see why.

Harrison is solidly within the school of development thought called cultural developmentalism. The theory in short asserts that cultures of given nations are inherently dysfunctional on a level that makes development and modernization improbable if not impossible for them. If development is ever to come to such cultures, it must first come at the level of fundamental cultural changes that will fit the people for development. In this modernizing view, cultures must change to fit the development form, and not vice-versa.

At root, cultural developmentalism is little other than a revival of unilineal evolutionism (the theory used to help justify colonialism) except that it replaces biology with culture as its picking point.

Harrison was a long-time United States Agency for International Development (USAID) operative in the Western hemisphere who is now a professor of International Affairs at Harvard. During Harrisons tenure with USAID, mostly during the Cold War-era, he served for two years as the agencys director in Haiti under George Bush, Sr.

Harrisons experiences in Haiti lead him to believe that there is something going on in the minds of the Haitians that impedes progress and facilitates the perpetuation of a stagnant, exploitive, repressive system. As for what that certain something is, he synopsizes it as slave culture, sustained over the generations in substantial isolation.

According to Harrison, Haiti is underdeveloped because of its roots in its past, its maladaptive responses to that past as well as to modern events, and its inability to break away from both to get with the larger world and its standardized development plan. I find it almost stupifying that Harrison neglects to focus on Duvalierism (ideology in Haiti held by some formerly tied up with the dictator there, Duvalier, that says to move we need to gain access to and feed at the state n order to advance socially and economically) in Haiti in these regards, but instead appears to target the Haitian poor.

Harrisons seeks to bolster his arguments by replying to the idea of dependency. He takes on the easiest to critique theory of dependency, dependency theory, which Harrison rejects, as well as, apparently, any notion that lower income countries are the way they are because they have been historically exploited by industrialized countriesthat the rich are rich because the poor are poor, to use Harrisons own words. Harrison dismisses the idea with one phrase, calling it simply a doctrine for Marxist-Leninists, and ingnores the theory as a useful analytical tool for understanding the underlying causes of underdevelopment in given places. Harrison instead states, The almost exclusive focus on imperialism and dependency to explain underdevelopment has encouraged the evolution of a paralyzing, self-defeating mythology. While this assertion contains grains of truth, for Harrison it needs to be the full focus. For him, formerly colonized countries need to stop looking at the non-realities of notions of dependency, and instead look *inward*.

The praxis and outcomes of Harrisons cultural developmentalism is, first, a belief in the superior pattern of the West and reification and universalizing of neo-liberalism. Reminiscent of the underlying assumptions of both unilineal evolutionism and modernization theory, Harrison specifically forwards the notion that some cultures are inherently better or worse when compared to others. Harrison asserts that there is a prototype for underdeveloped countries to emulate to become developed. Harrison both assumes and asserts that development means, in essence, helping formerly colonized states to become more like their former colonizers in world and life view. This includes having their cultures, governmental structures and policies, and economic and social behaviors conform to what he holds as the superior pattern of the West, importantly to include its current model of neo-liberal economics. Underlying this argument is Harrisons explicit rejection of anthropologys general adherence to an appropriate cultural relativism. The main of cultural relativism in anthropology asserts that, while there can still be moral universals that can be upheld, each culture makes significant sense when viewed on its own terms and from an understanding that can only be acquired from a stance of having been deeply within that culture for a time. Clearly, understanding Haitian culture like this is not something he did during his tenure in Haiti, probably because he speant too much time at the Olofson (elite hostel in Haiti).

Given this major lack of understanding cultures, it is not surprising therefore that, second, problematic assessments flow from Harrison's cultural developmentalism, and that these assessments then formulate into the policies of important state, international, and NGO decision makers: for example, USAID, with whom Harrison served in Haiti.

For example, Harrison targets Haitis indigenous religion, Vodou. Harrison asserts that the religion is a key part of what he calls Haitis slave culture that needs to be broken away from in order for the country to develop. He admits, first, that most Haitians are Vodousaints in one measure or another. From this admission, he goes on to maintain that the world and life view of Vodousaints causes them to focus not on the future, but on the ancestral past. Harrison asserts that Voudon [] is irrational, and that it propagates the view that existence is essentially static and the world unchangeable (sic). Consequently, for Harrison, Vodou tends to lock the Haitian into the status quo to impede Haitian development.

In this, Harrison quite transparently misses the fact that Vodou was central to the Haitian people making their break from the status quo (slavery) under colonial domination. Today the religions ritual replays of the Haitian Revolution bolster Vodousaints against future slavery forms forms that, to most Vodousaints, would seem tied to what Harrison, USAID, and the U.S. advocates for.

Beyond this obvious historical fact, Harrison misses the fact of Aristides past mass concientizacíon (consciousness raising) efforts among Haitians, which has led popular Haitians to question things, to demand change. Harrison completely misses the fact that many Vodousaints and their clergy are progressive and socially and politically active, and that they work within Haitis popular movements for a just Haiti. In other words, while spiritual elements of Vodou do focus on the past, as is the case with most if not all religions, when it comes to the socio-political realm, most Vodousaints are, in fact, future-oriented. While perhaps fearing the outcomes of concientizacíon (!), Harrison apparently misses this important dualism.

As well, many Vodousaints were highly politically conscious and future-oriented well before Aristides mass concientizacíon effort. During the end of the Jean-Claude Duvaliér years in the late 1980s, the intensely popular Haitian rasin [roots music] and openly Vodouist band Boukman Eksperyans, sharply criticized Jean-Claude in their music and became targets of the regime. Like Vodousaint Boukman Dutty, who helped spark the Haitian Revolution, many (recall that most Haitians are also at least nominally Vodousaints), attribute the pointed music of Boukman Eksperyans with sparking initial fomentation against the Jean-Claude dictatorship. More recently (1992), one of the bands politicized songs, Vodou Adjae, expresses shock over problems related to capitalism, communism, bullshitism, egotism, expansionism, imperialism, racism, fanaticism, corrupt money, war, and orphans.

Aristide's mass concientizacíon and the music of Boukman Eksperyans indicate Harrisons problematic assessments of Haiti to be truly extensive. Harrison misses even main currents within the Haitian political climate and popular culture! Having to labor under the stigmatizations and constraining of sight stemming from Harrison's cultural developmentalist praxis would seem to impede Haitians development far more than Vodou itself.

Even so, with one eye targeted on Vodou, Harrison summarizes his remedy for Haiti as, The Haitian people need to break with their past to emulate the universally applicable prototype for development, the West.

The recent and current stream of U.S. policy toward Haiti evidently concurs with Harrisons overall assessments concerning the underlying causes of Haitian underdevelopment and the need for an exogenous neo-liberal remedy for it. What is more, as the U.S. has done in the past, it directly ties that assessment to its power. Problem is, the assessments of Haiti have been misformulated based in part upon the constraining of site and, frankly neo-colonialism, that becoming a cultural developmentalist can cause.

So if you want to either become a neo-colonialist, or understand why U.S. policy takes on neo-colonialism far too often, or undrestand why USAID is so often hated around the world, or understand who it is that is the actual most dysfuctional ones in development efforts, buy Harrison's book.

This book attributes the ills in our and other societies to theloss of the ideals of Calvinism. It is ethnocentric in that it positsthat the best culture is the WASP culture, ignoring the fact that a belief that grace manifests itself in material gain has rationalized greed and ruthless economic exploitation. The book fits in perfectly with the current efforts at economic globalization which is concentrating wealth of the world in the hands of the few.

If we look at the protestants we find that they are educated versions of Catholics. The foreign policy of the `enlightened and progressive' Protestants is exactly the same as the Catholics, namely the slavery, genocide, theft, Christianisation of non-white, non-Western, non-Christian people, but at increased levels of magnitude and efficiency. With the emergence of Protestantism, educated Europeans could design and build machines, fight wars using mechanised armaments, obey complex orders given by factory managers and military leaders; seize and `cultivate' resources including people (slavery-application of European serfdom overseas); land and commodities (colonialism), and distribute them around the world as inputs to the factories of the Industrial Revolution (Industrial Slavery) or as finished products to the colonies. The globalisation of trade in 'stolen goods' was sanitised by the term, Capitalism. The trade was financed by the largest owners of capital, namely the Church, and underpinned by Usury, sanitised by the term, Interest. Catholics were taught that indulging in usury was akin to sodomy but the Protestant order was taught no such thing, thereby enabling its quick global implemention, causing so much misery for the masses today. Little wonder that the capitalistic theories of Adam Smith are still popular under neo-colonialism. The phenomenal economic success that followed was attributed to the 'Protestant Work Ethic' but in reality there is nothing ethical about contravening two of the Ten Commandments: Thou Shalt not Steal and Thou Shalt not Kill. The Protestant Work Ethic is a myth and a lie.