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Subsistence and Status:
Utilization and Conceptualization of the Environment
by Bill Geddes
2nd January 2010 XPS Version: PDF Version: MOBI Version:
Introduction
James Speth, Administrator of the United Nations Development
Program 1, in 1994, outlined some of the massive problems
confronting the world a decade ago,
Today, the average person among the 4 billion in the developing
countries consumes about 2,500 calories of food each day. The average person
consumes 3,400 calories per day in Western Europe and more than 3,600 in the
United States… according to recent estimates by the world's leading soil
scientists, an area of about 1.2 billion hectares - about the size of China and
India combined - has experienced moderate to extreme soil deterioration since
World War II as a result of human activities. Over three-fourths of that
deterioration has occurred in the developing regions, most of it in arid and
semi-arid regions. When combined with other environmental threats to the
agricultural resource base - loss of water and generic resources, loss of
cultural resources, and climate change, both local and global - the situation is
disturbing indeed. (Speth, 1994)
Paul Ehrlich, in 1997, expanded on this description of the
environmental problems facing the world:
Exploitation is a complex subject, but in a world in which huge
international disparities in wealth and power persist, the rich-poor gap is
increasing. In 1960 the ratio of the income of the richest 20 percent of
humanity to that of the poorest 20 percent was 30:1; according to the United
Nations Human Development Report 1997, it was nearly 80:1 in 1994. And the
rich show pathetically little interest in closing that gap. Since 1950 the
richest fifth of humankind has doubled its per capita consumption of energy,
meat, timber, steel, and copper, and quadrupled its car ownership, greatly
increasing global emissions of CFCs and greenhouse gases, accelerating tropical
deforestation, and intensifying other environmental impacts. The poorest fifth
of humankind has increased its per capita consumption hardly at all. Indeed,
those in the poorest fifth average a cash income of less than a dollar a day,
and those in the next fifth average only three dollars a day. This means that 40
percent of humankind accounts for a mere 6.5 percent of the world's income. (Ehrlich, 2 1997 p. 98)
The problems outlined by Speth and Ehrlich have grown
steadily worse over the last ten years. Those problems have seriously affected
people in almost every non-Western country, for it is in those countries that
the environmental degradation has been most pronounced, and it is in those
countries that poverty has become widespread and endemic. Deterioration of soil
quality is more than matched by an erosion of communities around the world and
the human cost of the disintegration of communities has been borne by the poor
of non-Western countries. Hundreds of millions, right now, are severely
malnourished. Far more are daily exposed to the despotism, brutality and
corruption which always appear when communities break down and the structures
and processes of interpersonal support and law and order become less and less
effective.
Lyla Mehta, in 1999, wrote a short essay in which she
examined a new orientation announced by the World Bank. Not only would it fund
‘development’ activities, it would, in future, provide people in ‘developing’
countries with the knowledge they need to improve their social, political and
economic lives. As she puts it,
In its new role, the Bank will not only transfer capital to
developing countries but also seeks to close the gaps that exist in the level of
knowledge in the north and south. (1999 p. 151)
But, she asks, whose knowledge will the Bank be using? As she
says,
The foundations of the assumptions linking knowledge with one
universal truth have been rejected by a growing confluence of diverse
disciplinary perspectives…” (1999 p. 153)
Over the past twenty years scholars in Western countries have
become increasingly aware that there are many different ways of seeing and
interacting with the world. The dominant understandings of the West are not
understandings of an objective reality which have previously eluded humanity.
They are the understandings one needs to live successfully in Western
communities. The understanding needed to live successfully in other communities
is usually very different. Not until one focuses on one’s own understandings and
then examines them in the light of understandings which exist in other
communities, can one begin to appreciate the importance of this insight.
This is an introductory study of the ways in which human
beings, in a range of communities, with widely different ways of categorising
and understanding their worlds, conceptualise and interact with their
environments. It is also, inevitably at the start of the 21st
century, an introduction to the ways in which Western capitalism set about
changing the rest of the world to serve its own purposes. We will start by
examining the understandings of ‘Western industrialised’(that is, ‘capitalist’)
people, which drive life and interaction in their communities. Armed with that
information, we will then examine non-Western ways of conceptualising and
interacting with the environment.
Of course, the term ‘Western capitalism’ covers a wide array
of nations and communities with diverse sets of understandings and forms of
organisation. Yet, if pushed to it, I’m sure that you could quickly identify
most of the nations to which the term is usually applied, as Speth (1994) did in
the quotation at the start of this discussion.
Although it is true that the term covers a wide array of
communities, the fundamental presumptions which drive Western capitalism
are remarkably similar across communities and countries of ‘The Western World’.
They are spelt out and continually reinforced through the dominant systems of
education, government and subsistence which are extant in those communities.
There is a constant interchange of information, expertise, commentary and
commerce between these countries. There is also continual, detailed comparison
of the ‘performance’ of the various Western capitalist countries through a
continual stream of charters, accords, agreements and studies enabled through
such organizations as the OECD. Commentaries on these, along with comparative
sets of ‘performance indicators’, are regularly presented in Western news
bulletins and ‘current affairs’ programs to keep the population ‘informed’. As
the Home Page of The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development explained in 2001,
The OECD groups 30 member countries in an organization that, most importantly,
provides governments a setting in which to discuss, develop and perfect economic
and social policy. They compare experiences, seek answers to common problems and
work to co-ordinate domestic and international policies that increasingly in
today's globalized world must form a web of even practice across nations. Their
exchanges may lead to agreements to act in a formal way - for example, by
establishing legally-binding codes for free flow of capital and services,
agreements to crack down on bribery or to end subsidies for shipbuilding. But
more often, their discussion makes for better informed work within their own
governments on the spectrum of public policy and clarifies the impact of
national policies on the international community. And it offers a chance to
reflect and exchange perspectives with other countries similar to their own.
(5/7/01)
While the OECD statement of intent has been altered over
succeeding years, the import of the latest incarnation is very similar.
Actual practice in Western capitalist countries and
communities is continuously measured against the ideals of the current dominant
version of capitalism. The dominant version of capitalism is promulgated and
protected by a cadre of ‘specialists’ trained in Western universities and
colleges. They are employed by Governments, private enterprise, and a range of
‘think tanks’ (such as the American Enterprise Institute and the
Hoover Institution in the United States) to provide direction to
governments and comment on how well practice is conforming to expectations,
often on a daily basis. Practice in each country is continuously adjusted
to conform to currently fashionable economic models. A wide range of
‘foundations’ (such as the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the Ford
Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Rockefeller
Brothers Fund, the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, and the
Benton Foundation) provide research funding, tailored to developing and
promoting the economic models of capitalism, not only in Western countries, but
around the world.
That is, there is a continuous ideological management of
reality, ensuring that Western capitalist communities maintain the most
important forms of organisation and understanding held by those who control the
important institutions of both government and the economy.
Of course, not everyone who lives in a Western country holds
capitalist understandings equally clearly or organises life by them. This is one
of the reasons why it is so necessary to have close scrutiny of community and
individual performance by specialists. But, to be ‘successful’ one must master
them, and to be acceptable in a Western country one must organise one’s life (at
least outwardly) by them.
Although Western countries consist of an
increasing agglomeration of ethnic communities (communities which
come from ‘non-Western’ regions of the world) the dominant groups, which
control both government and commerce, are committed to these central Western
capitalist understandings. Those who control the central institutions of Western
communities simply assume that the ways in which they perceive their world, and
the forms of direction and interaction which they take for granted, are
universals. They are the only conceivable, reasonable ways in
which life can successfully be organised and lived. And, the vast majority of
people living in such communities, even if they feel uncomfortable with the
consequences of capitalist systems of control and direction, can conceive of no
viable, rational alternative forms of organisation and understanding.
For our purposes here, this is the meaning of the term
hegemony – control by an elite which promotes and protects the
dominant ideology (in Western communities, capitalism) as the only
reasonable approach to community organisation and action. All strong, cohesive
communities have such hegemonic processes which promote and protect what
dominant members of the community see as central to life in their communities.
This is not just a feature of ‘Western capitalist’ communities. As a community
member, you might not like them, you might feel discriminated against by them,
but you can’t muster convincing arguments against the ideological demands of the
dominant groups in your community. Because the fundamental acculturative,
organisational and governmental structures of Western communities are built on
the basic presumptions of capitalism, it is a truism that to be successful in a
Western community one must order one’s life in terms of the fundamental
understandings of capitalism.
Acculturative processes and structures, in any community,
ensure that people are brought up knowing how they should behave, how society
should be organised, what the truly important goals of life are. They also
ensure that people conform to what they have learned. In Western communities
they include such institutions and processes as the education system; the
systems of law making, legal commentary and law enforcement (such as the
legislative arm of government, legal experts, police and courts); a wide range
of processes of social appraisal and instructional programs designed to help
community members to be ‘successful’ in their various undertakings; and various
regulatory bodies set up to ensure that particular forms of organisation and
action are both understood and adhered to.
All these acculturative forms focus, usually without
consciously recognising that they do, on ensuring that people in Western
communities organise their lives in ways best suited to the demands of life in a
capitalist world. So, if one criticises capitalism, one attacks, not simply
particular aspects of life, but the fundamental presumptions upon which life in
Western communities is built. Those presumptions are continuously reinforced and
protected by the acculturative agencies of Western communities. Inevitably,
people who have been enculturated in Western capitalist communities feel deeply
threatened by any attempts to attack such basic understandings because, not only
do they order their lives by them, they order their thinking by them as
well. So, if the presumptions are attacked, people who hold them and organise
life by them feel personally emotionally and cognitively threatened. During the
Cold War between Western capitalism and Soviet communism, this was expressed in
the heart-felt belief of the majority of Western people that it would be ‘better
to be dead than red’ and that ‘the only good red is a dead one’.
Below are some of the basic understandings (relevant to this
discussion) which drive capitalism and drive those communities in which
capitalism is central to daily life for well enculturated community members. A
prime characteristic of hegemonic control is that neither those who hold
the reins, nor those who are subject to the controls and acculturative agencies,
normally see themselves as involved in a hegemony. It is simply obvious to all
involved that there are certain forms of behaviour, attitude, interaction and
understanding to which community members ought to conform if the community is to
remain strong and directed. Normally, those involved in a hegemony see the
ideas, processes and structures of their community as universally valid, the
ways in which any rational community should be organised. To the extent that
they can convince people in other communities of this, those communities become
involved in the same hegemonic processes.
Those terms which take their force from the underlying
presumptions of a community are, as Raiklin (1995) has described, often poorly
defined. They are, in the words of the United States Constitution, held ‘to be
self-evident’, intuitively recognised as valid, needing little explanation, and
little or no justification. The presumptions are, of course, culturally
determined assertions: postulations, not ‘facts’. Because
well-enculturated Western people see these as attributes common to all members
of the human species, they assume that models of communal organisation and
interaction constructed from them are universally valid in any
community and in any culture. However, these ways of behaving have not
always existed. They have emerged as central in Western countries over the past
500 years.
What, then, are the fundamental postulations which underpin
life in Western capitalist communities?
1. Individual human beings are born as pre-social, independent,
self-interested, competitive, acquisitive beings with very similar wants and
aptitudes. That is:
a. Individual human beings want similar things (and the more
the better);
b. they are all more or less equally capable of getting what
they want;
c. they compete with each other to get them;
d. they develop personal, individualised accumulations of
possessions;
e. having competed with each other to get their wants, they
compare themselves against each other to see who has the most;
f. on the basis of comparison they can produce a rank order
of success in economic activity which (with a lot of ancillary
fine-tuning) provides the basis for status 3
and prestige in human communities 4;
g. in the process of getting what they want they form groups
in which they remain involved so long as they perceive it to be to their
advantage;
h. communities emerge out of the self-interested
interactions of individuals. They ‘join’ groups because they see personal
advantage in doing so and leave them when the advantage is no longer there. If
individuals change their wants and needs and the ways in which they get them,
community structures will alter, reflecting the changed aims and ambitions of
individuals, and altered means of achieving them;
i. the best community will be one which emerges out of the
self-interested, competitive activities of individuals in pursuit of their own
needs and wants. It will ensure that individuals are ‘free’ from social,
political, religious and any other non-economic constraints on their
ability to pursue their own needs and wants.
Attempts at ‘social engineering’
should, therefore, be based on changing people’s wants and needs and ‘freeing’
individuals from social, political and other constraints so that they can pursue
their own acquisitive interests. Successfully change their wants and remove
community constraints on individual acquisitiveness, and communities will emerge
reflecting the best ways in which individuals can attain their new wants. These
presumptions have been the driving presuppositions of nearly all forms of ‘Third
World Development’ over the past 50 years.
If any individual fails to achieve
material well-being in a ‘free’ community, it is possible to blame that person
for his or her failure. Since all human beings have similar aptitudes, those who
are successful in accumulating possessions must have applied themselves
more diligently than others to the important activities of life. Right wing
politicians in Western countries often blame the poor for their own parlous
economic position, since, if they applied themselves more diligently and did not
‘waste’ their resources, they too would be successful.
2. Life, for people well enculturated in Western communities,
is divided into a set of domains or environments including:
a. the material environment,
b. the social environment,
c. the spiritual environment,
d. the economic environment, and
e. the political environment.
(Can you think of any other inclusive
environments that should be in this list?)
Each of these environments is presumed
to be more or less self-contained so that somebody can act in the
‘economic environment’ without that activity affecting the ‘spiritual
environment’, the ‘social environment’ or any of the other environments. One can
therefore assert that economic activity does not have social or political or
religious consequences and can assume, for example, that economic activity is
not responsible for ‘material environmental degradation’. By narrowly focusing
on behavior within each domain, excluding the others, it can be argued that one
should not ‘confuse’ economic activity with social activity, or make ‘social’
demands on ‘economic’ agencies. When individuals are engaged in ‘economic’
activity, focused on the accumulation of possessions, they should not be
constrained by social, political, religious, or other non-economic
restraints and restrictions on their acquisitive activity. Because of the
overwhelming emphasis placed on ‘economic’ activity in Western communities, the
driving centre of life in such communities turns out to be ‘economic’, with
activity in the other environments of secondary importance, geared, where
possible, to ensuring better economic performance.
Because this set of categories is so
fundamental to the way Western communities are organized and their people
interact and think, most people in Western communities believe that everyone in
the world divides reality into this set of environments. This is, of course, not
true. Other cultural communities divide reality into sometimes very different
sets of categories and then organize their communities, interact with each
other, and explain life in terms of those categories. We will examine one such
set of communities, the Wixarika, with a very different set of basic categories
and resulting understandings, later.
3. The material environment is the arena for Western
individualized, self-interested, self-promotional activity. The possessions
which are accumulated are obtained from that environment. So, while it might be
a lot of other things as well, the material environment is a set of resources
to be manipulated and used in competitive self-promotion. Since the material
environment is a set of resources it can also be seen to be a set of
‘things’ which can be accumulated and used for self-promotion. Human beings can,
and should, individually (privately) own land and material
resources. And, since competitive self-interest is the driving force behind this
ownership, other individuals should be excluded from the resources lest they
gain a ranking advantage from something they do not ‘own’. So, all private
ownership is exclusive, the property of the individual who has
acquired it. The material environment becomes divided up into exclusively held
parcels and the concept of ‘common’ land and environment no longer makes
sense.
4. If anybody claims to ‘own’ a part of the material
environment, but does not use it efficiently (to increase personal
accumulation and to make its ‘resources’ available to others who ‘need’ them for
their own self-interested accumulative activity), then they do not ‘deserve’
that ownership. The state should either compel them to use those resources
‘responsibly’, or should make them available to other people who will do so. The
material environment should be used to its full potential.
The state has the right to compel such
use because all private ownership is guaranteed by the state, and all resources
not privately owned are, by definition, publicly owned by the government.
Common ownership (where no particular individual, group or communal
institution can claim exclusive possession) has been converted, over the past
500 years, in Western capitalist countries, into public ownership
(where whatever is not held by private individuals is, by definition, owned
by the state). These understandings have produced very serious consequences for
people living in non-Western communities, where common ownership has usually
been the norm and economic efficiency has not been considered
important.
5. All interaction between individual human beings is based on
and driven by competitive self-interest between people of roughly
equal aptitude. So, provided all individuals have access to the same
information and are free to engage in any interactions they wish, all exchanges
between human beings will be positive. That is, any free exchange
(any exchange not hampered by social, political, or religious constraints aimed
at limiting and directing possibilities of individual accumulation) will benefit
both parties. After all, the reasoning goes, why would they enter the exchange
if it didn’t? So laws should be focused on guaranteeing individual human beings
freedom to engage in self-interested, acquisitive exchange (aimed at
private accumulation of ‘assets’), without coercion from anyone, and without
interference by anyone (especially social, political or religious agents)
There are many other basic presumptions which underwrite life
in Western capitalist communities (see History of the Emergence of Capitalism for an
examination of their historical emergence). However, these will be useful in
comparing the ways in which non-Western communities and Western ones understand
land ownership and utilization, approach their material environment, and subsist
in their environments. ‘Subsistence’ refers to the ways in which communities and
the individuals within them go about obtaining the basic material necessities of
life. As we will see, what is ‘necessary’ to any community is not merely a
consequence of the need to survive. That is the tip of an iceberg whose bulk is
determined by the needs and wants of members of communities as they strive to
live up to the expectations of people around them, and strive to affirm and
reaffirm their self-worth.
The presumptions spelt out above will help us in unravelling
the culturally specific nature of the demands made on other communities
by Western governments and agencies. Western communities, wanting to make the
world a ‘better’ place, have, over the past century, been determined to ensure
that non-Western communities become ‘democratic’ (where individuals of similar
aptitude are ‘free’ to indulge in self-interested accumulation and other
self-promotional activities), and ‘efficient’ users of their resources. And,
additionally, they will help us to understand why Western ‘experts’ have been so
willing to disrupt non-Western communities, certain that the disorder which
results is not, in fact, disruption, but a transitional phase between
non-Western and Western community organisation. C. B. Macpherson (1975)
describes how the concept of property historically changed in Western
communities. As he claims, “the now dominant concept of property was, in its
three leading characteristics, a creation of the capitalist market society.”
As Macpherson (1975) has suggested, the forms of property
holding and utilization in any community are reflected in the organisational
forms of the community and the dominant forms of interaction between community
members. One of the ways of understanding the dominant organisational and
interactional forms of any community is through an examination of its various
land, and other resource, tenure and utilization practices.
A little needs to be said about some of the inevitable
consequences of organising life by Western capitalist assumptions. It is in the
nature of human beings to insist that the ways in which they divide up their
world and the strongly held beliefs which are based on that way of seeing
reality are features of the real world, not merely existing in their
minds, but ‘out there’, features of an objective reality. All other ways
of dividing up the world and all sets of beliefs stemming from those ways are,
therefore, to one extent or another, delusional. Western people are no less
prone to this projection of their own presumptions onto ‘reality’ than any other
people, and no less willing to pronounce other ways of seeing the world as
‘mistaken’, ‘ignorant’, ‘superstitious’, and ‘misinformed’.
The first outcome of Western ways of organising life, and the
most far-reaching in its consequences, is the effect on the material environment
of the Western drive to use it in establishing competitively acquired
rank. There is no upper limit to the goods and services community
members require, since the more any individual has or conspicuously utilises
(consumes) the higher the rank to which the person can aspire. Not only do
Western people accumulate possessions, they also ‘consume’ goods and services in
such a way that other people know they are doing so (that is,
conspicuously). This often becomes the preferred means of self-promotion
since it can easily be manipulated by an individual to suggest greater economic
success than has actually been achieved. This is the ‘how on earth can he afford
that!’ syndrome.
Every time that you obtain something more than I have, you
affect my standing in relation to you. In order to preserve my social position I
feel the need to also acquire or consume that thing, or, preferably,
something just a little better than it. Advertisers rely on this drive to sell
their wares. It is not by accident that advertising has emerged in Western
communities. It has not existed as the promotion of consumption in any others.
Advertising is driven by the desire of the advertisers to ‘make money’ and so
enhance their status and prestige. It relies on competition between Western
people to acquire and consume more and better goods and services than those of
similar rank around them. This drive for more and better means that Western
capitalist ‘economies’ are expansionary. They, by definition, require a
constantly expanding material environment from which they can obtain
resources for the products required by people who are, competitively, constantly
expanding private ownership and conspicuous consumption. This is what
Paul Ehrlich (1997, p. 98)) was referring to when he pointed out that “since
1950 the richest fifth of humankind has doubled its per capita consumption of
energy, meat, timber, steel, and copper, and quadrupled its car ownership”. Over
time, as the demands of Western community members grow, there is no option
but to expand into the environments of other, non-Western communities.
Status, or rank, is very important to human beings. People in
Western communities determine rank by scrutinising individualised, competitive
material accumulation and consumption. They have ordered their communities to
ensure that only responsible people get access to the means by which they
can acquire the necessary possessions and consumables. That means is, of
course, primarily money. The most important way in which money is
acquired in Western communities has been through work. In order to access the means for obtaining the
things through which individuals affect their ranking, and therefore their own
self-esteem, people have to become involved in productive enterprise.
People, more or less willingly, spend most of their waking hours involved in
activity which will ensure them an income. Most Western people are agreed
that if a person won’t work, won’t get involved in consistent productive
enterprise, he or she should be poor, should not be supported by any
other means, and is certainly not entitled to respect.
Once communities become organised in this way, individuals no
longer have a choice in the matter. They either do whatever is required to
ensure subsistence or they starve. But, much worse than merely starving, they
lose status, respect, and a feeling of ‘self-worth’ when they cannot access the
means for subsistence and status. Individuals don’t determine how they
will acquire status, communities have the means built into their
structures, and people see the structures and requirements of their
communities as ‘rational’, ‘logical’ and very necessary. They engage in the
necessary activities ‘automatically’, often not seeming to consciously recognise
what they are doing. So, it becomes irrational and illogical that people should
engage in any other kinds of status attaining and maintaining behaviour. In
Western communities the rational way to ensure subsistence and status is wage
labour or private enterprise. This is simply not the way in which
people in most other communities ensure either status or subsistence. Their ways
are equally entrenched in their communities, and appear equally rational,
logical and necessary to them, but they differ widely from the requirements of
Western communities.
Western communities, by definition, cannot sustain their
requirements from a static resource base (they become very worried when
their economies fail to ‘grow’, or even when they grow too slowly!). The concept
of ‘sustainable development’, if it requires a non-expanding resource base,
makes no sense in Western communities. It is because the resource base (from
which Western communities produce the goods and services they require for both
subsistence and status) must constantly expand, that Western nations are so
concerned about gaining access to the resources of ‘non-Western’ countries. One
of the consequences of Western presumptions about the meaning and purpose of
life, is that they impose demands on non-Western communities, not for the sake
of those communities, but in order to meet their own constantly expanding
needs and wants. Western peoples are, for perfectly rational and logical
reasons (in Western minds), convinced that the environments of people everywhere
should be fully ‘developed’ and that access to those environments should be
guaranteed to Western people. That is the fundamental driving force behind
the globalisation push of the past thirty years in Western countries.
Many non-Western communities are under threat. Western
nations are determined to reorganise other communities, whether they like it
or not, to contribute to the snowballing resource requirements of Western
communities. As the World Trade Organisation explains,
… liberal trade policies — policies that allow the unrestricted
flow of goods and services — sharpen competition, motivate innovation and breed
success. They multiply the rewards that result from producing the best products,
with the best design, at the best price.
http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/fact3_e.htm
(2 Jan 2010)
Reflecting the dominance of capitalism in the international
arena, the statement takes it for granted that the status aims and ambitions of
people in capitalist communities are universal aims and ambitions. There are
‘rewards’ to be had “from producing the best products, with the best design, at
the best price”. Communities and countries which attempt to inhibit the
“unrestricted flow of goods and services” should be penalised and brought into
line with what is, after all, only their own best interest.
But, don’t make the mistake made by those who believe that
the West’s concerns are universal concerns and that the West’s forms of
understanding and social organisation are the only universally rational ones.
While other communities might be being reorganised, they don’t, automatically,
accept or live by the West’s understandings. Their understandings and their
forms of organisation are just as deeply ingrained in their minds and in their
hearts as those of the West are for Western communities and individuals. And
when they are forced to live by other understandings and accept other forms of
organisation, they do so with a deep, difficult to express, sense of
helplessness, disorientation and, often, despair.
A second outcome of Western understandings of reality, and
activity based on those understandings, relates to Western perceptions of the
ways in which human beings ought to behave and be organised. I have
suggested that Western capitalist communities see their environments as sets of
resources which ought to be fully exploited. What we have not yet
examined is how those in positions of authority in Western communities view
human beings.
It comes as no surprise, I’m sure, that human beings in
territories under the control of Western capitalism are seen as a
resource. If you work in almost any corporation or government institution
or agency in a Western country you already know that the department responsible
for your personal files and for hiring and firing has a name like ‘Human
Resources Division’. Since Western capitalist communities are focussed on
individual self-promotion, utilising any means (within the legislative
guidelines) in order to make a profit (the term used in Western
communities for the end result of successful accumulation - and, therefore,
status - activities), it should come as no surprise that people are also seen as
a resource to be exploited for that end. And they also should be used to their
full potential. Bernard Magubane (1975) describes the ways in which southern
Africans were dispossessed of their lands and then forced into labour for those
who knew how to make use of the resources which Africans had so profligately
neglected to utilise, or had not even realised existed.
Before they were physically subdued, African traditional
societies with plenty of land confronted the requirements of capitalism with
difficult problems. The wants of an African living within his subsistence
agriculture, cultivating his mealies (corn), were confined to a
kaross (skin cloak) and some home-made pieces of cotton cloth. The
prospects of leaving his family to work in a mine, in order to earn wages with
which he could buy things he had no use for, did not at once appeal to
him. James Bryce observed that,
The white men, anxious to get to work on the goldreefs, are
annoyed at what they call the stupidity and laziness of the native, and usually
clamour for legislation to compel the native to come to work, adding of course
that regular labor would be the best thing in the world for natives. Some go as
far as to wish to compel them to work at fixed rate of wages, sufficient to
leave good profit for the employer. (1969:23)
... By force and coercion Africans were divorced from their
former means of subsistence in a most frightful manner. The record... is stained
with pages almost as dark as those which disfigure the early records of
imperialism in India and America... In time the African would learn the bitter
lesson that labouring in the mines at wages that made fortunes for the mining
capitalist had become an unavoidable necessity...
(Magubane 1975
pp.238-242)
The experiences described by Magubane have been common
throughout the world during the period of the colonial expansion of Western
European nations. They remain common in the new ‘globalisation’ version of that
expansion.
Of course, as I have already suggested, this attitude toward
human beings has not only been displayed in Western activities in non-Western
countries. It has been equally fully displayed in Western communities toward
those who seemed unwilling to take productive enterprise seriously over the past
seven or eight centuries. John Hatcher (1998) traces the attitudes of those in
charge in Western European countries over the past eight centuries to the
‘labouring poor’. As he says,
When labour was plentiful and cheap the market exercised its own
harsh discipline on those who struggled for subsistence, urging them to industry
and subservience. However, when labour became scarce the very fabric of society
could be threatened, not just by rising wages and costs, but by a swelling
independence among the working masses, which commonly manifested itself in a
refusal to engage wholeheartedly in unremitting toil.(1998, p. 64)
Hatcher’s essay, as he acknowledges, is built on the writing
of an earlier historian, E. P. Thompson, who documented The Making of the
English Working Class in a book of that name in the 1960s.
Not everyone in a Western capitalist community subscribes to
the central presumptions of capitalism, but those in hegemonic control require
community members, whether they assent to the presumptions or not, to live by
them. Both Thompson and Hatcher outline the ways in which this has occurred over
past centuries of western European history.
In Western communities the idea of class, broken down
into three groupings – upper, middle, and lower – referred historically to the
three orders of European feudalism – the aristocracy, the gentry and clergy (or
nobility), and the peasantry. The presumptions of Western capitalism took hold
in the middle group, which gained increasing political clout over several
centuries. They then set about reorganising the ‘lower classes’ to conform to
those presumptions. That is largely what both Thompson’s (1967) and Hatcher’s
(1998) essays are about.
The ‘middle classes’ have been very successful in educating
the ‘working classes’ to live by capitalist presumptions, though it took about
800 years of ‘work-discipline’. Most people who were included in the ‘lower
classes’ in the 18th to 20th centuries in Western
capitalist communities now order their lives by capitalist presumptions
themselves. This has been reflected in the persistent movement of ‘workers’
parties’ from the left to the centre and now to the ‘centre-right’ of politics
in most Western capitalist communities. What is ‘left’, ‘right’ and ‘centre’ in
Western politics is currently being redefined to fit the new realities.
In order to comprehend the difference between the
postulations underpinning Western capitalist communal organisation and
interaction and the forms of organisation and interaction in non-Western
communities, we need to look more closely at how such communities were organised
before capitalist intrusion. This is, of course, how they still would be
organised - with inevitable accommodations to outside influences - if left to
their own devices.
Parker Shipton (1984) in an essay titled ‘East African
Systems of Land Tenure’, provides a description of how two sets of communities,
the Sukuma-Nyamwezi of north-western Tanzania and the Luo of south-eastern
Kenya, organised life and related to their material environments before Western
capitalist intrusion and reorganisation of their environments. He also outlines
some of the ways in which the communities have had to reorganise in the face of
Western pressure for change.
It is common to all human beings that they believe that their
ways are the best ways and that where other people deviate from their ways they
are less than ‘civilised’. Western Europeans are not exceptions to this rule.
They demanded change from all these groups, not because the practices they
opposed were inherently bad or evil (if there is a universally valid set of
criteria in terms of which such judgments can be made) but because they
conflicted with their own understandings.
The Sukuma, Nyamwezi and Luo were not passive. They reacted
to the changes brought into their communities by the expansion of capitalist
activity into their environments by altering land tenure to accommodate the
changed demands. Yet they ensured that the fundamental presumptions in terms of
which they related to their environments were maintained. This has always been
the response of non-Western communities to Western demands for change. Human
beings are not able to simply drop their own understandings and live by the
understandings of others. They will always try to accommodate changes they can’t
resist, while retaining their own understandings of the world and of
themselves.
When changes forced upon them become more than they can
accommodate within their own understanding of the world, then they begin to lose
a sense of communal identity and their communities begin to unravel. Luo, Sukuma
and Nyamwezi communities have experienced these consequences over the past forty
years in Kenya and Tanzania. Throughout the world, non-Western communities,
subjected to unrelenting demands for massive change in their interaction with
their material environments, have experienced similar loss of identity, with
rapidly escalating crime and violence and out-of-control population growth.
All stable communities (both historically and in the present)
have both direct and indirect means of limiting population growth. As
communities disintegrate, the means of population control become decreasingly
effective and population begins to grow. Many non-Western communities have
experienced rapidly increasing population growth as their communities have
unravelled. The current average annual rate of population increase throughout
the continent of Africa is 3 percent. At this rate of increase, populations
double every 24 years. Through all of the non-Western regions of the world the
average annual rate of increase is 1.8 percent, with populations doubling every
39 years. The pressures put on both material and social environments by these
rates of increase are enormous. Through the Western world, the average rate of
increase is a mere 0.6 percent, with populations doubling over 116 years. Given
that there are always natural events over such a period which impact on growth,
Western populations have either stabilised in countries like the United States
or, as in Western Europe, with a 0.3 percent annual growth rate, are in
decline. 5 Population increase in Western countries comes
through immigration.
People like the Luo, Sukuma and Nyamwezi, don’t simply
reinvent themselves as Western capitalists when they are subjected to Western
capitalist demands for change. They lose their sense of identity and self-worth
as their indigenous status and prestige systems break down and their
understanding of their environment and of themselves in terms of their
environment decreasingly ‘makes sense’.
In examining the East African land tenure systems, focus was
directed to their systems of land tenure and the political processes which
sustained those systems. The Iban of Sarawak on the island of Borneo (Indonesian
Kalimantan) relate to their material and non-material environments in terms of
adat. As Cramb (1989) puts it, “the good man is the man who observes the
rituals, recognises the restrictions, and honours the Iban adat”. The
focus is on observance of the moral rules and metaphysical understandings of the
community and, in the process, interacting with one’s material environment to
meet the requirements of subsistence and communally ascertained needs and
wants.
People in many non-Western communities
determine relative status through
competitive and/or cooperative involvement in non-material forms of
activity (e. g. ritual events, festivals, religious activities and any
combination of these and involvement in the material environment). They, then,
very often, require people who attain particular statuses to demonstrate their
fitness for the statuses attained by obtaining the material possessions
deemed correct for the status positions. If they cannot obtain the necessary
possessions, their statuses come under threat. If, on the other hand, they
accumulate more possessions than they should, or obtain inappropriate
possessions, then the rest of the community reacts, wanting to know who they
think they are. People who get more than they should have are very often
pressured into giving the surpluses away. In doing so they can strengthen ties
with other community members.
There are, of course, communities which do not tie
possessions to status in this way. In such communities (e. g. the !Kung Bushmen
of the Kalahari Desert or Aboriginal Australian communities) status is not
clearly linked to the accumulation of possessions and owning things does little
or nothing for either status or prestige. See Sahlins (1972) for a discussion of
such communities.
The ways in which communities are organised and the ways in
which they interact with their material environments are two sides of a coin. If
the organisation of the community changes, interaction with their material
environment will also change. Equally, if interaction with the material
environment changes, so does the structure of the community. When those changes
are forced from outside, based on understandings of which community members are
often not even aware, then community members find it increasingly difficult to
make sense of their experiences. The changes forced upon them often require
forms of interaction which directly contradict the basic forms of interaction of
the community. Attack the systems of land tenure and utilization in a community
and you attack the organisation and interactions of the community. You cannot
force change in land tenure and utilization without directly attacking the
cohesion of the community which reflects and incorporates those systems in its
organisation.
One of the saddest features of the ‘Third World Development’
drive in which Western capitalist nations have engaged over the past fifty years
is that in the process of reorganising utilization of their environments,
non-Western communities have been disrupted. Many of them are in various stages
of disintegration, victims of the well-meaning ‘development’ activities of
Western experts. As the consequences of disruption have become increasingly
apparent, in a classic ‘blame the victim’ response to the problems created,
those same experts have urged further, deeper change to address the problems of
social disintegration which their policies have induced. Because they have been
well trained as Western specialists, they take it for granted that their
understanding of the world, and their forms of land tenure and utilization are
the only ‘reasonable’ ones, and they force change upon those who don’t see the
world as they do or relate to the material environment as they do. As a leader
in the magazine The Economist, entitled ‘Hopeless Africa’, says,
No one can blame Africans for the weather, but most of the
continent’s shortcomings owe less to acts of God than to acts of man. These acts
are not exclusively African—brutality, despotism and corruption exist
everywhere—but African societies, for reasons buried in their cultures, seem
especially susceptible to them. (The Economist May 13th-19th 2000 )
Brutality, despotism and corruption in communities are
evidences of communal disintegration, not features of ‘traditional
cultures’ as the Economist writer suggests. Western capitalist developers
have intruded into communities and changed the face of the material environments
of peoples. They have forced new land tenure and utilization practices upon
them, extracted huge ‘surpluses’ from their environments and now blame them for
the ensuing social, political, and material environmental disintegration.
We need to understand the single
most important difference between almost all non-Western orientations to the
material environment and that of Western capitalism. Whereas Western capitalist
utilization of the material environment is open-ended, with no upper limit to
its use and a built in inflation of demand for natural resources, most
non-Western forms of utilization are closed, with a built in upper
limit to demand. This is not because non-Western people are ‘more
attuned’ to their environments or because they are ‘natural conservationists’ or
‘closer to the environment’ than Western people.
As many studies have shown, non-Western people have shaped
and moulded their environments to their needs. Their aim has not been to ‘live
in harmony with nature’, as sometimes suggested by environmental activists in
Western countries, but to utilise their environments to supply their needs and
wants. However, because their status and prestige systems have not been anchored
in the accumulation of material goods and services but in some other form of
activity and organisation, there has been no inbuilt pressure to over-use their
material environments. Where they have done so (and this has often happened), it
was the growth in population living in a region which produced problems, not a
constantly escalating demand from a stable population for more and more material
possessions and ever-increasing levels of consumption, as in Western
communities.
Most human activity is related not to subsistence but
to the promotion and maintenance of social position and self-esteem. People in
communities like those of the Iban, Sukuma, Nyamwezi and Luo are focused on
something other than ‘private enterprise’ and competitive individual material
accumulation and consumption as the basis of status. So, they spend less time
in material production activities and more time in what Western
capitalist people would consider ‘waste’ activity, in religious, ritual,
social and kin-based activity of various kinds. If they are being
‘productive’ what they are producing is not material goods and services but
various forms of ritual, religious and social activity and organisation –
whatever is required of the status system which is built into the structure of
their communities and into their forms of interaction with each other. So, in
many non-Western communities such activities seem extravagantly elaborated to
Western people.
The upshot of this focus away from the material environment
is that, in the past, they more or less matched their material needs and wants
to what was available in their own environments or could be traded for goods
from their environments without needing to expand into the territory of
neighbouring groups. Sahlins (1972) argues that many communities
underused the resources available in their material environments. Since
they matched their material needs and wants to the usual productive capacity of
their environments, in good years they had surpluses and in bad years they had
less than they required, but things averaged out over the years.
When Western people arrived in their regions, they demanded
that those communities produce a ‘surplus’ from their material environments for
export to Western countries. This required local inhabitants to use their
material environments not only to supply their own needs and wants, but to
supply, additionally, a range of products sought by Western traders and
‘developers’. Utilization of their environment was, therefore, almost
immediately, raised to long-run unsustainable levels. Inevitably, the
environments of communities where these demands were made became progressively
more degraded as the years passed. As Speth (1994) has claimed, most of the soil
and other environmental deterioration of the past fifty years has occurred in
non-Western regions of the world. Westerners use their own environments to the
limits of sustainability, but readily, and unthinkingly, push the environments
of other communities over the edge.
In the jargon of Western capitalism, non-Western communities,
prior to Western intrusion, were naturally oriented to ‘sustainable
development’, to living within their environmental means. This is why
such advanced material cultures as those of Han China, Korea and Japan, although
well aware of the existence of other lands and peoples, and although placing
neighbouring peoples into tributary relationships, did not greatly expand their
accumulative and productive activities into their environments.
For the Chinese, Koreans and Japanese, throughout thousands
of years of elaborate political organisation and advanced material culture,
North America was less than a week’s sailing time away. And they had the
sophisticated craft necessary to make such journeys with ease on a regular
basis. Yet, when Western Europeans invaded and subjugated the indigenous
inhabitants of the North American continent there were no communities of
Chinese, Koreans or Japanese to deal with. Why not? Because, despite their
elaborate material cultures, status and prestige were not primarily determined
by competitive individual material accumulation and consumption. They, more or
less, lived within their environmental means.
This is equally true of Aboriginal Australians. Of course
they reshaped their environment to better suit their requirements, and of course
that meant that Australia, after their arrival, was a different land to
Australia before their arrival. But they did not utilise their material
environment to, and beyond, its limits. They did not, in Western capitalist
terms, ‘realise the potential’ of their material environments. As Tonkinson
(1978, p.18) put it, Aboriginal people stressed, not the mundane skills and
techniques for surviving in harsh surroundings, but “the imperative of
conformity to Dreamtime laws… it is spiritual rather than ecological imperatives
that have primacy in guaranteeing their way of life”. The Aboriginal people of
Australia, like non-Western peoples in most parts of the world, understood
reality, and interacted with the world in ways which are difficult for Western peoples to understand.
Paul Liffman (2000) introduces us to the world of the
Wixarika, in his words, a “resilient but hard-pressed mountain people in the
southern Sierra Madre Occidental of western Mexico” (2000, p.129). You will need
to read this article two or three times. Read it the first time just to begin to
understand how the Wixarika interact with their environments, order their
communities and perceive ‘reality’. You won’t find this easy!! It is always
extremely difficult for anyone to begin to see the world from a perspective that
has so little in common with their own. This is why most people simply don’t
attempt it, convinced that, even if the Wixarika do see their world and interact
with it in such a radically different way, their way must be foolish, riddled
with superstition and highly illogical. So, it should rightly be dismissed and,
if possible, Wixarika forms of activity should be reorganised to fit Western
capitalist understandings of the world. Concepts such as private property and
public property, economic activity and political activity, fit very poorly into
an understanding of the Wixarika world. If we try to rewrite the story in such
terms we lose most of the meaning which they consider inherent in the
real world, objective reality for the Wixarika.
Liffman and his colleagues have explored the world of a
people who see their surroundings and interact with each other in ways
completely foreign to people living in Western capitalist communities. If you
found their world strange, imagine how strange they find your world! Yet, they
have been required to accommodate the demands of capitalism. Many of the
Wixarika have found themselves in Mexican and United States sweat shops, working
long hours for little pay, and trying to understand what this strange,
exploitative capitalist world is all about. Even in their home territory, they
have been forced to interact not only with capitalist land ownership and
utilization practices but with mining companies and other multinational
corporations keen to exploit the resources of the country. Can you imagine
trying to negotiate mining agreements with the Wixarika while trying to
accommodate their understanding of the world? Is it reasonable to require
companies to do so? In the main, companies working in Mexico don’t have to
worry. The Government doesn’t require them to take the sensibilities of
indigenous people into account in pursuing their business interests.
In an article which comes from the Multinational Monitor 6,
John Ross paints the political scene in Mexico in the early 21st
century. This is the political climate within which the Wixarika will have to
negotiate their future. The political leaders in Mexico in 2001 are Western
capitalists, trained in Western universities, closely tied to Western
multinational companies, wedded to the privatisation agenda of the World Bank
and International Monetary Fund, and seeing the environments of indigenous
people as resources to be developed for economic gain.
Like so many other Third World countries, the Government of
Mexico has been taken over by Western capitalists, convinced that everyone is
driven by the same agendas as themselves and that if the poor are destitute it
is because they are unwilling to work hard and improve their own lot. But,
indigenous communities like the Wixarika usually do not remain passive victims
of capitalist intrusion into their environments. The Zapatistas of Chiapas (see
Collier, 1999), in the mountains of the Mexican southeast, have shown how much
can be achieved by indigenous people determined to protect their way of life.
The cost, however, both physically and culturally, can be enormous, as the
Zapatistas (and Bouganvilleans in the Solomon Islands) have discovered. An
editorial in the Multinational Monitor emotively summarises the
situation,
Indigenous challenges to power in Mexico… make clear that even
the most marginalized populations can stand up to prevailing hegemonic economic
and political forces, if they are united, organized, determined, spirited and
persistent.
Their inspirational resistance to everyday violence, projected by
military forces, paramilitary gangs and political and financial thugs from
outfits like the International Monetary Fund, should issue a clarion call to
allies in rich countries both to intensify their solidarity campaigns and to
challenge directly the core institutions of corporate globalization…
(Multinational Monitor, March 2001 - Volume 22 - Number 3)
So, to conclude where we started: Are the problems outlined
by James Speth (1994) and Paul Ehrlich (1997) real? Who is responsible for them?
What should be done about it?
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Journal of Law & Public Policy, Summer, Vol. 13 Issue 3, p.
775
Clausen, Christopher, 1993, ‘How to Join the Middle Classes’,
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Collier George A., with Elizabeth Lowery Quaratiello, 1999,
Basta! Land & The Zapatista Rebellion in Chiapas, Food First Books,
Oakland, California
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Delellis, Anthony J., 2000, ‘Clarifying the Concept of
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Spring Vol. 7 Issue 2 p. 35
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The Atlantic Monthly; December Volume 280, No. 6; pages 98 - 104
Fallon, Kathleen M., 1999, ‘Education and Perceptions of
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46. Issue 2 Pp. 67-91
Geddes W. H., 1995, ‘Economy, Environment, Ideology and
Marginalisation’ in Perry J. and Hughes J. (eds) Anthropology: Voices from the Margins,
Deakin University Press, 1995, Pp. 61-128
Guyer, Jane I., 1995, ‘Wealth in People, Wealth in
Things-Introduction’, The Journal of African History January Vol. 36
Issue 1 p. 83 8 Pages
Hatcher, John, 1998, ‘Labour, Leisure and Economic Thought
Before the Nineteenth Century’, Past & Present August, Issue 160 p.
64 52 Pages
Hemerijck, Anton, 1999, ‘Prospects for Inclusive Social
Citizenship’, Mpifg: Working Paper 1999/1
Liffman, Paul M., 2000, ‘Gourdvines, Fires, and Wixarika
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129
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Beyond, Australian National University Press, Canberra pp. 105-14
Magubane, Bernard, 1975, ‘The “Native Reserves” (Bantustans)
and the Role of the Migrant Labor System in the Political Economy of South
Africa’ in H. I. Safa and B. M. du Toit (eds) Migration and Development,
Mouton, The Hague, Pp. 233-249
Mehta, Lyla, 1999, From Darkness to Light? Critical
Reflections on the World Development Report 1998/99, Journal of Development
Studies, October, Vol. 36 Issue 1 p. 151
Nader, Laura; Alicia Barabas; Miguel Alberto Bartolome; John
H. Bodley; Guita Grin Debert; Susan Drucker, 1997, Controlling Processes:
Tracing the Dynamic Components of Power, Current Anthropology, Dec Vol.
38 No. 5 p. 711, 28 pages
Pfaff, William., 2001, The Question of Hegemony,
Foreign Affairs, Jan-Feb Vol. 80 No. 1 p. 221
Raiklin, Ernest, 1995, ‘Remarks on What Seems to be Obvious.
(Meaning of Economic Concepts)’, International Journal of Social
Economics, January, Vol. 22 Issue 1 p. 41, 15 pages
Ross, John, 2001, ‘Fox, Inc. Takes over Mexico‘,
Multinational Monitor, March Vol. 22 Issue 3
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Publishing Co , New York
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Desertification United Nations 17th January, New York
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Class Vintage Books, New York
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Capitalism’, Past & Present No. 38 Pp.56-97
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Dream in Australia’s Desert, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York.
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 End Notes
1 The internet address for UNDP is: http://www.undp.org/
2 To access Ehrlich’s article on line use the
following internet address: http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97dec/enviro.htm.
3 For a description of ways in which people in
Victorian Britain achieved status see Clausen (1993) or Corfield (1992).
For comment on ways in which status and prestige requirements might be changing
in the present in Western capitalist communities see Hemerijck
(1999)
4 Fallon (1999) provides an examination
of the ways in which the subjects of ‘status’ and ‘power’ have been approached
by theorists. Be careful about her loose correlation of status with power –
status is usually associated with authority, power is usually wielded when
status and recognised authority are in doubt. For a discussion on the nature of
respect and leadership – recognised authority and the need for expressions of
overt power - see Delellis (2000) .
5 The following internet address provides access
to international population statistics: http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/.
6 You can access this journal through the
following address: http://www.essential.org/monitor/ |
