unprecedented. 'In a sense, we are talking about a kind of recolonisation -about sending smart white boys in to· tell them how to run their countries,' said one unnamed Northern aid official." What's needed? "Grassroots, commu- , nity-participation rural development." How can we help? "The main bodies involved in this sort of aid are the nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).... The African crisis, while it has highlighted the failures of the government and multilateral aid agencies, has also highlighted the success of the NGO approach." And, finally, what should we keep in mind? "...[l]t is the African peasant who best understands how and why he or she has been forced to damage the environment on which they depend, and it is he or she who is the key to rebuilding their continent." -JS Ill Fares the Land: Essays on Food, Hunger, and Power, by Susan George, 102 pp., 1984, $5.95 fronr Institute for Policy Studies ·1901 Q Street, NW WashiI)gton, DC 20009 Susan George, author of How the Other Half Dies: The Real Reasons for Hunger, continues to focus the spotlight on the rich and powerful as the primary reason for world hunger in Ill Fares the Land, a collection of six of her papers and talks. As she bluntly puts it, "Hunger will never be vanquished unless we can strengthen the weak and weaken the strong." Concerning the strong, George notes: "That all governments are concerned for, and representative of, the majority of their people is patent nonsense. Plenty of governments are most concerned with enriching those who keep them in power: Human rights, including the right to food, run a poor second." The strong in the industrialized North provide heavily biased aid to the South. Food aid alters consumption patterns and destabilizes a society by fostering dependence. Agricultural aid carries with it the Northern bias of maximizing yields per person, rather than per land uµit. Development aid mainly benefits businesses of the grantor country and urban elites of the grantee. To weaken the influence of the strong, George advocates measures ranging from wiping clean the Third World debt slate ("Without relief, countries can't even make a choice between food crops and cash crops.") to supporting "alternative agronomic and ecological reasearch" rooted in a local context. To strengthen the weak, George has more general recommendations. Southern nations should develop "a food system which (a) is environment enhancing and ecologically sustainable, (b) provides enough ,[culturally and nutritionally appropriate] foodstuffs at reasonable cost to the entire population ... and (c) provides great enough quantities to ensure national food self-sufficiency...." In essays on research and technology "transfer," George highlights the Northern biases and recommends ways to neutralize them. Purchasers of Western technology need to understand that they are "not just buying a product, but rather a distinct .set of social relationships which have now become so embedded in the technology that they are nearly inv·isible." George has heavily rese·arched, the wealth and power structures lying behind the global food system. Her criticisms are forceful and to the point. Suggestions ' for improvement, however, tend to be idealistic, dependent on a change of heart on the part of elites. -JS "Deve.Iopment is Dangerous," by Gustavo Esteva, in Resurgence, Jan/Feb 1986, $3 from: Rodale Press 33 East Minor Street Emmaus, PA 18049 This article, written by Mexican "de- . professionalized intellectual" Gustavo Esteva, criticizes the past three "development decades" for what they have done to the vast majority of Mexico's people. Esteva, an economist and coordinator of a national network of Making rammed-earth blocks in Nigeria. (FROM: The AT Reader) Summer 1986 RAIN Page 41 400 grassroots organizations, notes that "for the Mexican poor, the term 'development' now appears mainly in jokes.... Most peasants are aware that development has undermined their subsistence on centuries-old diversified crops. Slum dwellers know that it has made their skills redundant and their education inadequate." Esteva also disparages the "new establishment" that has come about in recent years under the name "alternative development." He sees this as a perfume which tries "to mask the stench of 'development."' He would rather "dismantle development as a goal" and allow the indigenous people to be free to improve their conditions on their own terms. Esteva relates the following as an example of the opportunity emerging from Mexico's economic crisis with its wide- - spread unemployment ·and bankruptcy of development institutions: "Production cooperatives are springing up and thriving in the very heart of Mexico City, thanks to the decreasing purchasing power of those formerly employed. Shops now exist in the slums that reconstruct electrical appliances.... Neighborhoods have ~ome back to life, along with a phenomenal increase in next-door catering. Street stands and tiny markets have returned to the corners from where they disappeared years ago. In the midst of inflation, devaluation, so-called unemployment and a decline in the economically-defined national product,..the majority of the people among whom I dwell are much better off than they have been for years." The conclusion Esteva reaches is that "development" is heavily laden with the values of those who consider themselves "developec;l." "Development means to have started on a road that others know better, to be on the way towards a goal that others have reached, to race up a one-way street. Development means the sacrifice of environments, solidarities,, traditional interpretations and customs to ever-changing expert advice." -JS Towards a Politics of Hope: Lessons From a Hungry World, by Frances Moore Lappe, 1985, 32 pp., $3 from: · E.F. Schumacher S.ociety Box 76A, RD 3 Great Barrington, MA 01230 This transcript of Lappe's October 1985 E.F. Schumacher Lecture summarizes her position on hunger and its roots. A short excerpt of a similar speech was published in RAIN XI:5. -JS
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