“The White Man’s Burden: excessive self-confidence of bureaucrats, coercive top-down planning, desultory knowledge of local conditions, and little feedback from the locals on what worked” (281). That statement seems to define most aid efforts today. There is an overwhelming imperialistic and condescending feel to it all.
This reading was a refreshing contrast to Sach's The End of Poverty. Unlike the utopian and unrealistic perspective that Sach presents, Easterly's argument is believable and inclusive. As Easterly puts it, Sach's approach to aid is condescending and somewhat imperialistic. He places most of the responsibility on rich Western nations. Easterly, on the other hands, has more trust in the capabilities of the poorer nations. While describing the differences between Planners and Searchers, Easterly argues that, “the most infuriating thing about the Planners is how patronizing they are” (26). He says that poor individuals are capable of progressing; they aren’t just helpless children. “Poor people,” Easterly states, “have already accomplished far more for themselves than the Planners have accomplished for them” (28). Later on Easterly points out that, “dynamism of the poor at the bottom can sometimes lead to emergence out of stagnation of the wider society” (107).
The base of Easterly’s approach is addressing the actual needs of the people. Too often, aid is controlled by a detached administrator who is unable to efficiently assess the needs of the people. The following quote expresses this idea:
"The difficulty of foreign aid agencies is that a bureaucrat is controlling the thermostat to the distant blanket of some poor person, who has little ability to communicate whether she is too hot or too cold. The bureaucratic Planners get little or no feedback from the poor. So the poor foreign aid recipients get some things they never wanted, and don’t get things they urgently need" (169).
Easterly’s approach is to specialize. As each aid agency focuses in on a few specialized responsibilities, things will get done. More focus will be put on assessing the actual needs of the people, and true change and progress will be accomplished. I definitely support this approach. It seems to empower developing nations instead of demoralizing them through free giveaways.
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I know that you probably have already thought of this and it is kinda nit-picky but I would say be careful to say how easy it would be for specialized aid organizations to provide for their "actual needs",after all how well and why would smaller organizations actually know their recipients actual needs(redundant I know). We have already established in this class how difficult it is to nail that down. I think it could be said that privatization of aid could help because then the funds are divorced from national interests. But to say that smaller organizations are more immune to beurocratic break downs isnt a guarantee.
ReplyDeleteI like what you say: "Easterly's argument is believable and inclusive." It's inconclusive. Easterly does not see what the solution looks like. It's out there somewhere, but I'll be damned if I know what it is.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Porter, I thought that this was a really refreshing read compared to Sach's. I think that Easterly does a really good job of laying out the problem and admitting that there is not a golden answer that will make everything better. It lies within the seekers and the actual developing nations and people.
ReplyDeleteJesse brought up the point of how well and why would smaller organizations actually know their recipients actual needs. I personally think that smaller organzations perhaps wouldn't understand the needs better than a big organization..but I do think that they would be able to implement the aid better because they have to answer to less people, and most of their work is done at the grass-roots level.