Yoshie writes:
>What do you mean by "third worldist"? You mean that Kanth's alternative
>is akin to, say, Maria Mies & Vandana Shiva's?
I can't comment on the opinions of the latter authors, since I haven't had
the time to read their works. In fact, I can't talk about "third worldism"
in general, since there's a lot of variety in that school. (I have a large
soft spot for Samir Amin.) But Kanth takes a reasonable critique of
Eurocentrism and the Enlightenment and instead of trying to find if there's
anything valid in those ideologies (such as that capitalism did in fact
start its world-wide rampage in Europe), simply turns Eurocentrism and the
Enlightenment upside down to praise Third-World village culture (in a very
abstract way) and anti-Enlightenment thinking. He also praises feminism,
but there don't seem to be any real-world women in the book.
Here's a couple of quotes from Kanth, from my recent [Spring 2000] review
of his book in SCIENCE & SOCIETY:
He rejects the "'law and order' ... fetish of the west" and the
"constitutional fetish," preferring instead the "'creative anarchy' visible
perhaps in the congenial workings of an Indian bazaar, or ordinary street
traffic in Rome."
He rejects Marx's assertion that there exists an "idiocy of rural life": "I
have never met, despite extensive travels amongst the peasantry of many
continents, a village idiot; but the robotized cretins of industry are
almost impossible to avoid no matter where you travel" in the rich world.
(This misses Marx's point, BTW.)
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
