This is why I gave up the foreign aid biz:
(the amount of influence you feel you have in a foreign society) > (the amount of influence you actually have over your own society) > (the influence that successful activ
i
ties at home have over similar efforts in other countries) > [(the amount of influence you actually have over a foreign society)-(the negative consequences of participation in the structures of power that make it feel like you have a lot of influence in a foreign society)]
Wait, let me doodle that for you:
As a well-paid foreigner, sporting the nice passport, good salary, access to powerful people, control of budgets, etc. you feel like you have a huge influence on the foreign societies where you work. That’s the first bar on the left. But in fact social change is an internal process and a political process, and there really isn’t much lasting change that an outsider can do. So for the actual influence in foreign societies you have to go all the way to the right. There is a good positive bar there. The problem is that participating in the structures of inequality that give you the feelings you had over in the left bar is harmful: enjoying and replicating the unequal privileges of citizenship, class, race, and income digs a deep hole. That downside is big, and might actually be bigger than the upside of whatever modest positive change you are making! At any rate, the net effect is much, much smaller than how it feels.
In between there are two other bars. The second bar from the left is your actual influence in your own society. It’s small. Except for the very charismatic among us, we’re just little fish in big ponds. Still, what we think and do changes how our society thinks and acts, if only because we each represent some small portion of that society. Influence here is hard-won, but it is real.
Then you have the third bar from the left: the influence that our actions at home have over the situation in foreign societies. This bar is very very small! I would have made it smaller but I have the shakes. Instead, we’ll just put that whole graph on a logarithmic scale, like for earthquakes. When Americans promote women’s’ rights in America, women’s rights activists in other countries are — in a very minor but real way — supported in their own work. Activists are inspired by them; not so much by the program administrators.
So there’s two shockers here. First: work done at home has more impact than work done abroad, certainly once you factor in the negative consequences of adventurism. It doesn’t feel that way, but that’s just because the illusion of consequence is very powerful for someone in that position. Second, work done at home has more benefit to societies abroad than work done abroad! If you want to promote something abroad, the best thing you can do is promote that thing at home. I really think that this is true.
Today I came across two illustrations of this. First, I came across the Ryan Gosling “Hey Girl” meme as applied to international development.
Which gave me the opportunity to retell this story:
True story: I was once schooled in foreign aid by a guy who turned out to be Ryan Gosling.
I met a filmmaker in Kampala who wanted to make a movie about northern uganda. He had brought from the us two friends. At one point one of these friends, a guy, asked me if my organization wanted to purchase a machine that his friend had invented that could extract water from the air. He thought that it could be useful in refugee camps. I said that we needed tens of thousands of liters of water a day, and that handpumps were very good solutions. But didn’t I even want to try? No. He looked at me crosswise, like I didn’t really care about the people of Uganda. I looked at him crosswise, like he was a fucking tool.
Later I met a friend at her house for dinner. I told her about this tool I’d just met. It was 2006 and she had just received a copy of rolling stone. I was flipping through it when I saw in an Oscars recap article a picture of the guy I’d just been talking to: best actor nominee Ryan Gosling. “That’s the guy!” I told my friend, “that’s the tool who got angry at me for not wanting to import a massive dehumidifier for the poor children of Uganda!” She was just pissed that I hadn’t invited her along.
Now here’s what I’d like to say: I don’t think that my presence in Uganda did very much for Uganda that Ugandans couldn’t have done themselves. And I think that there was a downside to my participation in this weird system where foreigners have special access to supervisory positions (“expat jobs”) and where they recreate deliberately fucking impenetrable systems of administration. I’ll give myslef the benefit of the doubt and say that my net influence on Uganda was positive, although it was very modest indeed. But here’s what’s certain: being able to tell stories like that Ryan Gosling tale feels damn fucking good. Plus being in charge, being able to dramatically fly home from Africa for friends’ weddings, etc. I mean, how cool was I! Too cool, perhaps, for anyone’s good, because it’s hard to seriously evaluate that bar on the right of the doodle when you’re admiring that nice big bar on the left.
Exhibit 2, via James Fallows, is a Chinese blogger’s take on the Occupy movement.
Democracy clearly has its flaws, but OWS shows not the defects of democracy but its advantages. That protestors do not “go missing” [as they have this year in China] is thanks to the benefits of democracy, and the lack of violent conflict or loss of social order is an example of its accomplishments. The US government has not condemned, suppressed or sympathized with the movement, nor have the crowds challenged the legitimacy of the government or the democratic system itself. Rather, OWS is happening precisely within that democratic framework.
In other words: we must change our perspective and see this demonstration as a rational expression of democracy, and the normal activity of a healthy society rather than the upheaval of it.
Now, my input into the Occupy Movement has been really, really small. And our impact so far has been tiny. But it has been real. And the impact of the Occupy Movement on the democratization movement in China is really small. Miniscule. But it exists. So here is my conjecture: that my minor participation in Occupy Boston has had a minor effect on democratization in China, but that my contribution to democratization in China via the Occupy Movement is greater than the influence on the democratization movement in China of the “expat civil society development program manager” working in Beijing for a foreign state-funded agency.
So what I’m doing now feels much better than the foreign aid business I was in before. Not because it is a better way to help Chinese democracy activists, but because I’d rather be in the company of activsts than in a company that gets paid to pay activists. Who wants that?
Quick poll here.
If you had been one of the spectators at the UC Davis pepper-spray incident, what would you have done? I mean, if you had been one of the people standing a
round in a circle watching the scene. Let’s say that it was a friend who was sitting down there, but you were just standing and watching.
1) Filmed it on camera. Letting the scene play out, and documenting it all, has been really useful, so thanks to all the people who chose to do that.
2) Did something passive to stop the cop from spraying your friend in the face. Maybe go and stand next to the policeman to challenge him to spray you also. Maybe he’d stop.
3) Did something assertive to stop the policeman from spraying your friend in the face. Maybe you’d go ahead and tackle him, like this guy in New York.
4) Something else.
Your move, guys.
I really don’t know the right answer. Nobody confronted the policeman by methods 2 or 3, and the results have been pretty powerful. On the other hand, is it admirable to just stand there and watch that kind of violence take place against someone? Of course, I’m such a coward that I’d probably just to #1 and justify it. But …
… what should I have done?
This came up for me at yesterday’s General Assembly. Some people wanted to modify the “Statement of Purpose” with the following apparently innocuous statement:
In the spirit of nonviolence, Occupy Boston affirms the dignity inherent in every person. We have learned over 100 years that nonviolent discipline builds powerful, respectful and inclusive movements. When we act in the collective name of Occupy Boston we will do so nonviolently.
It was hugely controversial. So controversial that it didn’t get passed. I can’t really explain why, but I have to note that several people whom I respect a lot really didn’t like it. So there must be some problem with it. Apparently there is a difference between “peaceful” (which everone could support) and “non-violent” (which not everyone could support), and my political sensibilities can’t pick up on that difference.
As I was listening to the long discussion, trying to understand what the deal was, I thought about the UC Davis incident as a sort of test. What would that “non-violence” statement counsel me to do if I were a bystander in that situation? And is that the reaction I would want to have?
David Brooks undertook the task of declaring what kinds of inequality are ok in this society. Clara observed that what one thinks of as “acceptable” inequalit
y probably depends on who you are — and, in particular, which inequalities you benefit from. Or, more precisely, if you think that a certain inequality is accepted by society, what you’re probably saying is that you want society to accept a certain inequality because you want to preserve it; if not, you probably don’t.
So here are Brooks’ judgments, point by point from his column, with some biographical information that indicates whether he might be on the winning end of that inequality.
|
Kind of inequality |
Does Brooks think that society endorses this kind of inequality? |
Would Brooks benefit from it? |
|
Academic |
Yes. “Perfectly fine.” |
Yes. University of Chicago ’83. |
|
Ancestor |
No. Can’t “go around bragging that your family came over on the Mayflower.” |
No. First-generation immigrant. |
|
Fitness |
Yes. “Welcomed as evidence of self-discipline and reproductive merit.” |
I don’t know if Brooks is athletic. |
|
Moral fitness |
No. Can’t “boast of superior chastity, integrity, honor or honesty.” |
I don’t know about Brooks’ moral character. |
|
Sports |
Yes. “Normal to wear a Yankees jersey.” |
Yes. A Mets fan, and “the history of the Mets teaches that miracles happen and the universe is a happy place.” |
|
Church |
No. “It is wrong to look down on other faiths on the grounds that their creeds are erroneous.” |
No. He is Jewish in a mostly Christian society. |
|
Income |
Yes. |
Yes. NYT columnist and NYT best-selling author: not shabby. |
|
Spending |
No. “It helps to live in Omaha and eat in diners.” |
Not really. Chose to live in Bethesda rather than Manhattan. |
|
Technological |
Yes. |
Not sure. |
|
Cultural |
No. |
Yes. He likes to poo-poo high culture but he quotes Tolstoy. He’s notoriously conflicted on this point. |
|
Status |
Depends on the profession. (Yes for college teachers, no for high school teachers.) |
Yes. Columnist for the Gray Lady. |
|
Travel |
Yes. “Perfectly acceptable” to have shorter lines for people with Gold cards. |
Not sure if Brooks travels Business Class. But probably Yes. |
|
Ethnic |
No. |
Yes and No. Historically, the Jewish community in the country has been treated as an ethnicity and has been subjugated. But the Jewish community has now “become white.” |
He also addresses beer, cupcake, supermarket, and vocation inequality, but I think he got loose here and was talking about whether inequality exists, not whether it is acceptable.
So there seems to be a very high correlation between the kinds of inequality that Brooks enjoys and the kinds of inequality that he thinks society accepts. I recognize that Brooks is not saying that society should accept these inequalities, merely that it does. But that is probably a circular situation: when we enjoy the benefit of certain inequalities we surround ourselves by people who also enjoy those inequalities, we collectively accept those inequalities and make the mistake of thinking everyone else does, too.
I bet that there are lots of people who have very different experiences of inequality than Brooks does — both on the having end and the not-having end — and that their ideas of what society accepts is different as a result.
It is also interesting that the ethnic inequality issue was slipped in at the end, without even getting its own paragraph as cupcake inequality did. Ethnic inequality is huge, and it seems to be only formally unacceptable while being accepted in practice.
I credit Brooks for going through this exercise. It certainly makes me think about it more. But it’s an invitation for simply validating one’s own experience, and that’s something to be watchful for.
The Occupy movement is forcing the state to tolerate conduct that the state has power to prevent. It operates in a zone of conduct that is both permitted and prohibited. The conduct is permitted because there are Constitution
al rights to assemble, petition, and speak. But it is also prohibited because the state has power to regulate all of those things on private property, or to avoid violent conduct, or to enable circulation of traffic,
or for a variety of other purposes. So there is a twilight area where conduct is both permitted and prohibited. Where the line of accepted conduct falls in practice is usually determined by the state. The Occupy movement is trying to define that limit on its terms.
It has been surprising to me to see how this twilight area operates.* Massachusetts has a law against “unlawful assembly” where people may exercise Constitutional rights of assembly unless they have a common violent purpose. However, Massachusetts also has a law that authorizes police to ask any group of 3 or more people to disburse, and if they refuse to do so then they may be arrested. So when Occupy Boston is holding a planning meeting in a T station, and a Transit Police officer walks up and says that they can’t hold the meeting there, who is right? They both are. Ultimately, if the people refuse to disperse and the police arrest them and the people decide to challenge the allegations, then a judge will decide whether that assembly was lawful. But that determination hasn’t taken place yet
and, more importantly, a determination that the assembly was lawful does not make the arrests unlawful. The arrests were lawful. The police said to disburse, and the people didn’t do it. The assembly was lawful, and yet the arrests were also lawful.
Sotto voce: “I could totally arrest you people … but I won’t.”
These situations exist all over the place.* It’s permitted for a car to stop on a city street. It’s prohibited to block traffic. So are you allowed to stop the car to unload groceries? More to the point: what happens when a policeman walks up as you are unloading groceries? Well, maybe the policeman will lawfully arrest you, or maybe he’ll let you continue to lawfully unload your groceries.
It turns out that some people expect that these situations will be resolved in their favor, and other people do not. Some peoples’ experience is that their right will prevail; others’ experience is that the prohibition will prevail; and I suppose others have even worse experiences whereby a pretext would be found for even further investigation into conduct unrelated to stopping in the street. People whose experience gives them the expectation that their right will prevail generally think that this experience is based on the strength of the right. But this isn’t true. That experience of benefitting from the twilight zone of legality is evidence of — perhaps even the definition of — privilege. The experience of not benefitting from that twilight zone is the condition of lacking privilege.
So, for example, a few days ago an occupier came to the Legal tent and said that vehicles coming into the camp to deliver food are getting pestered by the police who tell them they can’t stop there, etc. He asked if we could find out whether vehicles are allowed there or not. After he left, a lawyer with our group pointed out that even asking this question shows an experience of privilege. Yes the car can go there, but yes the police can ask you to leave. Only a person with a habit of having their lawful rights prevail over lawful arrest powers would expect that finding some statute somewhere would make the police leave you alone.
Two observations about this.
First, it’s really interesting to see how the variety of people at Occupy Boston are experiencing this month-old effort in constantly pushing the limit of their privilege. There are people present who are not accustomed to being able to assert rights in the face of contrary police powers and who are now occupying Quincy Market and the middle of a five-lane thoroughfare. That empowerment is awesome. On the other hand, some people were outraged that, when the Transit Police ordered that the planning meeting break up, the majority decided to capitulate and find another spot — some of these were people unaccustomed to being told what to do by policemen. (There is also an inter-city comparison: occupiers in Boston are generally more privileged than those in Oakland, Denver, and New York.)
![Occupy Boston [OWS]](http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6234/6287238914_c3137644dd.jpg)
Second, it’s interesting to think about the size of this overlapping space generally. I have a feeling that it is large and growing. Police are being granted increased statutory powers and material capabilities. Our rights to privacy and freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures and not being limited, strictly speaking, but the overlapping powers to lawfully infringe upon them is increasing. In a broader sense, the statutory and material empowerment of security services is increasing their willingness to use those powers. They enjoy an increase in power that is greater than the sum of the increases in their resources. The inverse is occurring with respect to people who are privileged. Whereas the benefit of the twilight zone is less frequently enjoyed by people without privilege, it is more frequently enjoyed by those witih privilege. In the financial realm, there are a large number of regulations on the books but limited effective power to enforce them, resulting in a growing zone where conduct is prohibited but is effectively permitted.
To the extent that this is true — to the extent that the zone of overlapping permission and prohibition is expanding — then privilege becomes an increasingly important coin of the realm. So to speak.
* It is interesting to compare this with other kinds of legal twilight. It is not an area of “uncertainty.” There are lots of areas of uncertainty in the law. But the word “uncertainty” implies that there is, ultimately, a line between prohibited and permitted conduct, we just don’t know what that line is yet. It is also not a question of “lawlessness”. It is not a space of conduct where there is no law. Central African Republic was lawless. In that case there was no line between permitted and prohibited conduct. But case is different. Here we are looking at overlapping areas where conduct is both permitted and prohibited.
A friend asked recently why the current wars haven’t produced any great images or documentary films. There have been great images and great films, of course. What he meant, he went on, was that we haven’t seen iconic images like the ones that were produced in the Vietnam War, grainy images of exhausted men smoking, that kind of thing. These wars have producted that kind of image, too. But he has a point.
The difference, I think, is that the perception of soldiers was defined then by the draft and is defined now by the volunteer army. A soldier in Veitnam is a victim of fate. A soldier in Afghanistan has taken agency in the events of the day. That difference shifts subtly how similar situations are percieved. Enduring hardship against one’s will shows grit; enduring hardship by choice takes pluck.
True Pluck: John and Zalmai extracting a Hilux during a problematic nighttime river crossing.
This isn’t an accurate characterization of the two wars, though. Lots of soldiers in the Vietnam War were volunteers, lots of soldiers at war today have limited alternatives. But the facts don’t really matter here, because the difference in how the two are percieved is a refelction of the viewer’s assumptions, not a difference in the subjects themsleves. The American public doesn’t want to think that its soldiers are victims of fate, and this desire shapes the kind of photographs that are taken and distributed, and the way that they are percieved.
Does the presumption of agency that we have with respect to soldiers in the current wars do those soldiers any good? If it is a more dignified presentation, then it is a dignity that is oddly self-serving to the viewer: don’t worry, you are neither responsible for this situation nor expected to live up to that conduct yourself. Does it make it harder for soldiers to get care that they need, when it is presumed that they are up to the task? Does it make it more or less likely that they will be deployed responsibly?
A recent interview of Richard Engel suggested a different path. Here’s a transcript of the interview by Terry Gross.
GROSS: Engel and Rachel Maddow report on the aftermath of 9/11 in a new documentary called “Day of Destruction, Decade of War” … Included in the documentary is a clip from one of Engel’s reports from Afghanistan while embedded with the 82nd Airborne Division. He’s interviewing Sergeant Louis Loftus, the point man on patrols, who would be the first to spot or step on an IED. Shortly before this interview, his buddy was killed by an IED. Loftus tries to stay stoic.
[FILM CLIP]
Sergeant LOUIS LOFTUS (82 Airborne Division): Right now, I’m kind of numb to it. Like to be honest, I just don’t really feel much. I pray for his family. I pray for his soul that it, you know… [crying] I try not to think about it because when you think about it, then I get like this, and it’s not – you know, I don’t – yeah, so yeah, you know, everyone deals with it their own way. I try to hide it. I try not to think about it because I’ve got to stay 100 percent. You know, I’ve got to keep a good example in front of the other soldiers.
GROSS: I can’t help but wonder, whenever I see it, if Sergeant Loftus ever asked you to not use that clip because he didn’t want to be seen breaking down because that wasn’t his idea of setting a good example, he wanted to just maintain, you know, a more stoic posture?
ENGEL: It’s funny that you asked that because when you’re living on a little base, and impressions are everything, you know, what you – how you’re perceived with the other soldiers, the chain of command within the particular company that you’re with, staying strong, staying loyal, and I asked him. I said, you know – because, I mean, we were doing this interview on the base. There were other soldiers around.
You know, whenever you set up a camera and start interviewing people, a small little crowd tends to form.
So other soldiers did see him get very emotional in this interview. And I asked him afterwards, I said, you know, this could be embarrassing for you if we put this on television. And he said no, you know, it’s OK, I get it. We were talking about his friend who had just died, and he said: Look, I feel very emotional about this incident, and even soldiers can cry when they lose a friend. And so he decided that it was important because he was expressing a sincere emotion about a friend.
What is important here, I think, is that it was a depiction of a soldier where he was not defined by that role. His depiction wasn’t about his relationship to that identity, it was about other parts of his life — his relationship to a friend, and his relationship to his colleagues. Backing away from the limited choice between grit or pluck creates space for the individual to be a bit more human. But that deipction is narrative — it requires that the viewer know some of the context — so it might not be conducive an “iconic” photographs.
I can’t go this far into the post without sharing the following anecdote, which is so relevant that it feels dishonest not to include it. In 2003 my friend Zalmai was killed and we had a memorial service in our compound that night. I gave a eulogy, and in the middle I got emotional and started crying. (I was cut off after a little while because I had forgotten to pause while the words were translated into Pashto for the other Afghans there — which, now that I think about it, is sort of telling, as Zalmai had been our interpreter.) After it was over, an older officer who we all respected and enjoyed came over to me and thanked me for being willing to let people see me cry. He might have done that because it was the nicest possible way to console me. But maybe said that because he, being much more experienced at soldiering than I was, knew that it’s important to be able to cut through our own stereotypes of how
we are supposed to behave.
This vision is almost anti-iconic: while the circumstances may be extraordinary, the participants sometimes want to be able to experience common emotions in a common way. That turns out to be quite a struggle, but maybe not a photogenic one.
Two videos about combat photography that jibe
in a funny way. First, an expose of how combat photojournalists engineer dramatic scenes for their audience. (Online Working From Home
conflict-photos-are-staged/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+PetaPixel+%28PetaPixel%29″>via)
Second, a trailer for a videogame called “WarCo” in which the player is a combat photojournalist who gets points for engineering dramatic scenes for their audience, without irony. (via)
I don’t mean to endorse the level of cynicism about photojournalism (or Palestinian activism) that the first video
implies. What’s interesting to me about both of them is the degree of public voyeurism about conflict (as opposed to professional voyeurism by photojournalists) that they imply. The market for dramatic war photographs may be explained away as a desire to know about current events and to have an eye for refreshing images. That seems fine, I appreciate the people who take on that job and I understand that some games may sometimes get played while doing it because it is, after all, a job. But the market to pretend you are a war photographer … that feels different. What is this drive to feel inovled in conflicts that we aren’t invested in?
Actually, I’m not all that interested in the subject of photography. Once the picture is in the box, I’m not all that interested in what happens next. Hunters, after all, aren’t cooks.
– Henri Cartier-Bresson
The NYT today published a photo in its online edition that seems to
have
been taken using tilt-shift tecnhiques, this thing that you can do where it makes the scene look like a bunch of toy soldiers. Has this technique been used in news before?
And what gets read into this editorial decision to depict the President’s speech
as a little dollhouse tea party? It’s more interesting to look at, I guess. Maybe that’s enough.
Ok, I take it back, it’s all good fun:
Previously, on Hard Consonant:
I just learned about The Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania.
What a name!
In art, as elsewhere, we torture language in the service of preserving our prejudices while appearing to dispense with them. Art v. Craft, “Naive Art”, ethnography, outsider art, decorative arts, industrial art and design, etc, are all terms that try to value creative work without letting it into the temple. The Quai Branly in Paris is a particularly ham-handed effort to value but not too much the creative work of non-Europeans and non-European-descended Americans. And then, aside from those loaded questions of insider v. outsider, there are the somtimes-murky subdivisions of insider art: modern, contemporary, classical, etc.
Well some reasonable Tasmanians have dispensed with all of that and just call it like they see it: this is a museum of art, some of it is old. Well done!
Previously, on Hard Consonant:
- Sorry, I can't see anything with your preconceptions in my face: a review of that silly museum in Paris
- Yeah, what she said: someone else is obsessed with the sociology of this business, too
- Poor judges of character
- Too important to be left to the professionals
- The city is their canvas (stretched too thin): the Hypothetical Development Organization paints a pretty picture
