It would be so much easier for economists and aid workers to sidestep discussions of the role of culture in economic development. It’s so hard to quantify, so slippery to define, and nearly impossible to graph. In this clip from the Development Research Institute’s recent conference, NYU Professor Leonard Wantchekon talks about a cultural challenge to development in the country where he grew up, Benin.
Leonard Wantchekon on the Lack of Intra-Community Trust in Benin from DRI on Vimeo.
Wantchekon has traced this lack of trust to the historical legacy of the slave trade, in a research paper he co-authored with Nathan Nunn.
Stories like these point to the importance of bottom-up approaches to development. One-size-fits-all grand plans inevitably lack the cultural specificity to tease out and cope with these potential barriers. Are there other examples of unexpected cultural challenges to development that you’ve come across?
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Here’s one cultural challenge: “don’t trust Africans who’ve stayed abroad “too long”: they’re *even more “gone” from our present reality than most (not all) of the foreigners who fund them!” There’s nothing more annoying than explaining yourself a million times to your “fellow-citizen” who insists on putting you in a tiny box of his or her dinky little theory-even when they know better deep down- just so they can publish it.
In Benin, the slave trade was especially brutal: if I recall my African studies classes at Legon during my undergrad days, it was called the “Slave Coast”. Before the French left during “independence”, they decimated their castles and people must’ve thought it was a progressive sort action at the time, but it allows them to deny the full extent of their involvement in slavery in Benin to this day, although the evidence is not hard to find. Good luck publishing that sort of thing, though.
But I digress. Issues like “trust” can only be overcome via “bottom-up” approaches like Easterly says. The top-down (?) ways used by aid agencies can be ridiculous since they’re trying to do so many things at once, so perhaps more attention should be drawn to small-scale businesses, etc.
In responding to Laura Freschi’s question about more “cultural challenges”, I worked with a Ghanaian research group in the Northern part of Ghana, and we came across an American girl working with a certain NGO I won’t name, who was trying hard to convince the elders of a traditional area to sell “iced tea” to attract tourists. She was an “eco-tourism expert”, I believe. I had no idea what iced tea was at the time, I feely admit, but it didn’t get much more culturally challenging than that! The elders were not very pleased, although it made for an interesting discussion, to say the least. She was really young, and probably fresh out of college, to be fair.
No disrespect meant to my fellow Africans who work primarily abroad like Professor Wantchekon, but I feel like such studies as his and the many others, while valuable in providing good insight to Westerners about Africa etc, are part of the “noise” that cancels out the bottom-up progress being made on the ground, WITH the cultural specificity intrinsic to it which is necessary. In coming from the outside in, it has “top-down” (more like across-the-ocean-down, but you get the point) written all over it, in that providing insight to the Los Angeles Times (?!?!?) should hardly be a priority for African development. Not if we can agree it’s supposed to happen IN AFRICA, that is. It’s not yet Monday, but I can smell the sensationalism already…hope I’m wrong, but it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary.
While it’s all well and good to hold aid accountable (it’s SO long overdue, although it may not be very feasible at this point in time) it might be noteworthy to do the same for academics coming from abroad, who do some valuable work, but tend to drown out the work of their contemporaries in the countries in question, in that they’re usually not on the same page in trying to implement results on the ground (since their motivation is just to publish in some esoteric journal–which with all due respect, only the “choir” reads) and pronounce their judgments with an authority which doesn’t always have the authenticity to back it…I’ve worked with my fair share, and although I’ve loved most of the experience and still do from time-to-time, we’ve had some interesting debates where we see someone trying to hurriedly configure their data to fit the neat tidy hypothesis they had in mind before even stepping on the plane….a minority to be sure, but a significant one nontheless. Again, I don’t mean to imply that all foreigners don’t know how to do research or anything like that, so hopefully you get my point.
Development seems to be overwhelmed by the economic aspect for some reason: “development economics” as specialized in by some PhD economics students in the USA, etc but a better understanding could be gained by training in development STUDIES, since as Prof Bill Easterly rightfully mentions, there are other aspects of development (like culture) which aren’t easily quantified and “rigorously” analyzed-although the notorious “core” of an Econ PhD (micro/macro/metrics) is especially valuable to have in one’s “tool-kit” as a researcher….(it BETTER be, because it would be a shame to go through all that for nothing;)
(At the risk of sounding like a broken record) I feel the old rigid borders of social science disciplines seems a little archaic in today’s world and more of a “hang-over from the 19th century” as someone said somewhere-especially when one sees the overlap these days in research-with other social sciences becoming more “rigorous”, and economists taking on/borrowing atypical research questions. I’m not saying specialization and “rigor” are bad, but there should be a little openness to other fields/viewpoints, etc.
Which is what I like about this blog. Keep up the good work, Freschi and Easterly and others!
Sorry about the length, apologies to any offended, all the best in everything and God bless all.
My (short) experience in Mongolia is that a sense of community (rather than necessarily a lack of trust) is absent – which means the ‘one-size-fits-all’ development approaches do not work well. Rather than being borne from slavery, the cultural landscape of Mongolia is linked to a traditionally nomadic culture which continues to grow and be redefined in a post-communist setting.
There are different age groups who still remember (and prefer) life under a communism, right through to youth who have grown up through the transition period. Nomadism is changing with the times as well, and with more migration (of the poor) to the city, as well as different money-making business opportunities available (e.g. ‘ninja’ mining – small-scale (illegal) artisanal mining), this is also influencing relationships and ‘looking out for yourself’ first. Perhaps these factors are influencing both a sense of community, and whom one could or would trust in working together for positive development outcomes.
For the wealthy in Mongolia, the connections (in business and politics) are incredibly strong – but I can’t comment on whether this is a relationship of trust or convenience or not.
A very interesting question you’ve posed – thanks!
economics are behavioural. The ability to take risk, plan or save for the future or invest in education is predicated upon the likelihood of a payoff at the individual level. Trust at the family, group and organizational level is vital for long term investments in education and capital improvement. The tragedy of the commons also functions in the trust behavioural level. It only takes a few participants corruption to mitigate the sensibility in risk taking. Rational participants in low trust environments don’t invest for the future.
Sorry this whole discussion seems to be just circular baloney.
Contrary to some of the comments I think the lack of trust in some African societies is THE developmental problem. People don’t trust their neighbors to share community responsibilities, they don’t trust their police and judicial systems to enforce the laws (or contracts) fairly, and they certainly don’t trust their leaders to do what’s best for the country. Indeed, in many countries where I have lived (Mali, Ivory Coast) people pretty much assume that their leaders will use government to advance their own cause and that of their family and tribe. I am glad some scholars are starting to look at this issue. It is very sensitive, but it is one of the brutal facts one cannot avoid noticing when working in Africa.