Page 40 RAIN Summer 1986 ACCESS: International "Development" The condition of "underdevelopment" was coined by Har.ry Truman in 1949. From this spouted the stream of development vocabulary used to describe categories of nations: countries were either "developed" or "underdeveloped," then "developed" or "lesser developed," then "developed" or "developing," and now II industrialized" or II industrializing." Coming up with further, euphemisms ·only masks the problem of placing a higher value on industrial, capita/- intensive technology than on labor- . intensive technology. John Timberlake, Susan George, Frances Moore Lappe, and Gustavo Esteva recognize this problem and suggest ways to overcome it. The AT Reader seeks appropriate middle ground between capital-intensive and labor-intensive technologies. For more on this subject, see "The Do-Gooder Dilemma: Inappropriate Technology Transfer," by Laura Stuchinsky, in RAIN Vl/:2. -Jeff Strang Jeff St~ang, former Rainmaker, has a degree in international studies, has served with the Peace Corps in Ghana, and has worked with Southeast Asians in Portland. The AT Reader: Theory andPractice io Appropriate Technology, edited by Marilyn Carr, 1985, 468 pp., $19.50 from: Intermediate Technology Development Group of North America PO Box 337 Croton-on-Hudson, NY 10520 Twenty years after E.F. Schumacher founde,d the Intermediate Technology Development Grqup comes the publication of The AT Reader, a substantial collection of some of the best thinking and down-to-earth experiences in appropriate technology. The more than 200 selections range ftom excerpts of Jacques Ellul's The Technological Society to lessons learned from banana chip production in Papua New Guinea, from Rachel Carson's Silent Spring to cycle rickshaws in India. They cover society and environment, food production, health, water, housing construction, recycling, small-scale mining, arid many more concerns. While the pieces are interesting and cover a lot of grQtind, it seems that Banana chip production in Papua New Guinea (FROM: The AT Reader) appropriate technology is still mostly thought about in the North and done in the South. The Reade; would make an excellent handbook for those involved with social development projects. For the rest of us, it make.s for some fascinating ·reading. -JS Africa in Crisis: The Causes, the Cures of Environmental Bankruptcy, by Lloyd Timberlake, 232 pp., 1986, $9.95 from: New Society Publishers 4722 Baltimore Ave. Philadelphia, PA 19143 Africa in Crisis is a broad yet thorough study of the environment, the people, and the issue of development in Africa. It begins with some good (?) news: government-affiliated development groups are finally beginning to recognize their failures. Even a senior World Bank official admits, "We . . . have failed in Africa, along with everybody else. We have not fully understood the prob- . lems. We have not identified the priorities. We have not always designed our projects to fit. ... " Then comes the bad news: the famine, the poverty, the environmental degradation. These conditions are inter-· conn~cted~ as are their causes, among which are warfare, over-reliance on cash crop production, disease, overpopulation, climate, the international economic system, and inappropriate development assistance. (For some reason, examples of the latter hit me particularly hard in the gut: "Advising Afric~ has become a major industry, with European and North American consulting firms charging as much as $180,000 [per] year of an expert's time. More than half of the $7-8 billion spent yearly by donors goes to finance these people.") Timberlake does a superb job in weaving all thei;e factors .together to present a well-balanced tapestry of the ecology of the African crisis. He devotes sections to important aspects of life in Africa: health, overcultivation, cash crops, food crops, irrigation, overgrazing, forests, firewood, energy, soil, fish, war, aid, development, and project scale. Case studies abound. As with other Earthscan books, a vast amount of information is brought together and boiled down into a digestable jam. I appreciate Africa in Crisis for the sense it gives us of how little we in the industrialized North have known about the situation in Africa and how to help. But "at precisely the same time that agency officials and academics are admitting their own ignorance, there is a growing insistence on tying longterm development aid to sweeping political changes recommended by donors. It is .called conditionality, and it is
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