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Poverty With Prestige Is Better Than Affluent Disgrace
"Gifts make slaves."
Claude Levi-Strauss
We Americans have attempted to use every one of the old
Chinese techniques to establish peace. Since the 1890's, we have
repeatedly toyed with disarmament. (In the 1920's, we actually
achieved disarmament in a limited form. The dramatic international
scaling back of military forces helped set the stage for Hitler.132) We
have extolled the virtues of diplomacy. And, when it comes to our
own barbarians, we have used the third weapon in the Chinese arsenal
of pacification--tribute. We justify our payoffs to backward nations
with a new philosophy, one that probably never occurred to the
bureaucratic sages of the Chinese Empire. We explain that our gifts are
development funds, designed to bring peace by uprooting the very
causes of discontent and war. We call our new form of tribute "foreign
aid."
But in many cultures, giving things to people is a way of humil-
iating them. It is a sneaky technique for drawing attention to the
recipient's lowliness on the hierarchical ladder. Take, for example, the
"big men" of Melanesia and New Guinea. In the days before traditional
practices were supplanted by western ways, a young New Guinean
would work like a maniac to raise himself in the eyes of his peers. He
would strain feverishly to boost his yield of pigs, yams and coconuts.
He would recruit his wives, children and relatives to join in the frantic
race for agricultural productivity. If all went well, he would take the
profits and plow them into building a men's clubhouse. When the
neighbors--pleased with the clubhouse food and entertainment--were
sufficiently impressed, the struggling entrepreneur would ask them to
join his growing army of pig, yam and coconut growers.
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