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OwlBot 2000 posted:But once again, whither corruption? Are certain cultures just naturally corrupt, or is there something else which can encourage people to be more or less corrupt? If you want a practical recommendation, start by empowering women. I know that Hofstede's framework has a lot of problems, but one thing it shows well is that its power distance (authoritarianism) and masculinity (status-seeking) dimensions are related, and further research on it showed that the masculinity dimension is positively correlated to corruption. India scores very high on both power distance and masculinity, men in India do very little homework, and so on. Colonial past is related to masculinity in addition to power distance, too - it served as a primer for the current generation to accept inequality as normal. So, if you want to know where to pour your money and/or time, it's to the women's organisations. It's like the people in microfinance discovered years ago: if you want to get results, empower women.
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Mar 11, 2014 09:24
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ronya posted:Duly note that if you can empower women, you would be doing a lot that is necessary to enact cultural transformation, like crippling traditional family law, granting property titles, and so forth. For some "fun" (and actually, I think, quite interesting and informative), stories, check No Longer Quivering (it's a community of people who escaped from the Quiverfull movement). quote:Much of rural India still has norms like "women are not allowed outside the house and farm once married". 'Empowering' here is tricky, because unilaterally leaving would result in being cut off from children and family, and regarded as tainted, immoral, et cetera. Seriously, I only pointed out the general trends - that research shows that, if you have such a very complex situation, with lots of corruption, poverty, inequality and so on, and you have to start somewhere, starting from women is a good idea. Bollywood is one interesting venue. Take English Vinglish, for example. It's a comedy, a very cute and heartwarming one. You also probably wouldn't find a more mainstream movie - it's not Astitva. It even stars Sridevi. But it's a movie about a traditional Indian housewife facing new challenges, and finding herself in them. And yes, I realise that films don't reach many of the worst places. Once again, I wasn't speaking of immediate effect - I think it would be unfair to demand that a complex situation like India's be resolved immediately.
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Mar 11, 2014 21:40
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down with slavery posted:If we want the legislators and judiciary in India to respect our cultural norms, we should use our economic leverage to do so. In fact, I'd argue that we should/could be doing this with a lot of other places than India. But I think it's foolhardy and absurd to place the blame for India's situation at the feet of India. They simply do not control the global socioeconomic system they are forced to participate in to continue existing as a country. You know, I'd argue that "we want them to respect our cultural norms, so let's use our government to force them to do so" is not a position made in particularly good faith. Any attempt at cultural change coming from the outside is going to be viewed as - well, external and foreign. Just a fodder for nationalists. I think that most people in the thread were looking at the issues from the perspective of "what are the solutions proven elsewhere that the local people in India who are interested in solving the issue can/do use to solve their many problems", not "what's the US gonna do about this to force the people to be more like it." e: basically, the original issue, as I looked at it, was, "where do we even start with this clusterfuck?" Because that's sort of an interesting problem, once viewed in an abstract way. Obviously, what happened in India was a self-reinforcing feedback loop: poverty/misogyny/corruption. Where one does break the loop? meristem fucked around with this message at 19:09 on Mar 12, 2014 |
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Mar 12, 2014 19:06
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Boogaleeboo posted:What you are saying is the same thing as any imperialist in the history of the time. My imperialism is ok because it's *my* imperialism, it's all those other imperialists that are wrong and destructive. I'm sorry you woke up today to realize you are a cultural imperialist but, well, here we are. Welcome to the human race, it's pretty awesome when you stop lying about who you are. How is it imperialism if you give your money to, let's say, a female education-oriented NGO in India whose stated purpose you agree with, and don't derive any gain from it yourself? Is Bill Gates also practicing imperialism if he's saying "I'm giving money to anyone who finds a better way to combat malaria"? Sure, as a woman I can say, "I'm for women's rights in other countries because strengthening them will also make me secure in mine" - but it's so divorced from any immediate gain (not to say, the cause may be so difficult to achieve that it may be impossible) that I think it's really arguing in bad faith to claim that I'd be giving the money for any sort of selfish purpose. The means are less important; the intent is.
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Mar 13, 2014 16:17
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Boogaleeboo posted:Because you are applying your western liberal values to the running of another, non-western non-liberal country and attempting to promote them there. This presumes that liberal values are western, though, and that's wrong - there is nothing in liberal values that makes them inherent to the Western thought. The case is not of introducing alien values, it's of supporting local people who already share them. Look, what's called 'values'/'cultural dimensions'/'personality traits' are, essentially, the same things, just on different scales - personal to societal. For example, American-style liberalism, i.e. egalitarianism+collectivism, is correlated to greater Openness in the Big Five personality model. And it translates to low power distance+collectivism (plus probably higher 'femininity') in the Hofstede dimensions. Hence, American liberals have a tendency to show, let's say, Sweden or Norway, in a positive light, because the cultures of these countries score lower on power distance and individualism than the US, and much higher on femininity. And, what's important, and my actual point, these things are also reflected in the structure of the brain. Authoritarians have stronger amygdala action, liberals have a stronger ACC action. Because these things are reflected in the structure of the brain/mind, they are not entirely culture-dependent - as usually in human biology, it's nature and nurture both. You can't really argue that Indian liberals don't exist. You can argue that an Indian liberal will perceive the same things differently than an American liberal, or a Norwegian liberal - but this person will still be more likely to be more open to experience and more egalitarian than an Indian authoritarian. And because these underlying things are the same for everyone, and not culture-dependent, I'd argue that it is possible to help an Indian egalitarian without being accused of imperialism. The fact that although people are raised in different cultures, they can have the same biologically determined tendencies, is also the reason for the emergence of a trend of global tribalism - people who have similar prevalent cognitive styles flock together, even if they are from different backgrounds, even different countries. Nationality is only one determinant of one's identity.
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Mar 13, 2014 17:58
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