James - Response Paper - Week 3

Carly James
African Poverty & Western Aid
F. James
February 7, 2011

Response Paper

Week 3

I found the Sokoloff article to be especially interesting, because I had never really heard the colonial period in the New World discussed in these terms, meaning, in terms of human capital and state formation as they relate to demography and power dynamics. I wish Sokoloff could have extrapolated his three-pronged theory of New World factor endowments to the rest of the colonial empire (British, Spanish, French). Also, Sokoloff continued to note that the Southern region of the United States lagged in making several of these transitions (e.g. full suffrage, compulsory/free education) due to its population heterogeneity and inequality. This made me think about how we often talk about “the Global South,” as an entity distinct from “the Global North” which has different needs, a different climate, sometimes a different demographic make-up, etc. It has been said that the North of any country is always starkly different than the South. Anyway, this gives more credit to the idea that appears in many of the readings this week which maintains that geography plays an important role in determining the productive activities of an area, and that it is important to bear this in mind when thinking about how to work within these environments and work with the forces of nature rather than against it in order to maximize social and economic profit.

Diamond’s emphasis on geography and natural resources reappear in the Sachs, Mellinger, and Gallup article. I took a course on race last semester, which really enlightened me on the origins of race as a social construct and its invalidity as a biological concept. In that class, we referenced Jared Diamond’s book as a key work which counters the notion of racial superiority. Diamond exposes the fact that some parts of the world are simply more suitable to certain plants and animals, some are less inviting to infectious diseases, and some are uniquely equipped to support strong trade networks. Who knew manure was so instrumental in the evolution of crop production? As societies become more complex and perhaps start forming state institutions, trading becomes ever important. Foraging and hunting are not extremely efficient, but they certainly have implications for population control and more egalitarian social structures. State societies, however, are often built on the notion of social and/or economic inequality so as to further competition (domestically and between nations). In the Sachs, Mellinger, and Gallup article, they explain how economies differ in their ease of transporting goods. The map of navigable rivers worldwide provided at the end of the article was the one that I found most intriguing--and most surprising. It helped me understand just how important ready access to market really is, and has been for centuries. When I was working in Washington, DC two summers ago, I attended this event entitled “Aid, Trade, and Security: America’s Role in Global Development.” One of the panel discussions was focused on market access, and there was a representative from the office of the US Trade Representative who was stressing not only the importance infrastructure, but specifically the benefits of free trade so that all countries have corridors, avenues, and pathways to financial sharing. This, she remarked, should be the crux of economic development today. Also, at the conference on African development that Apwonjo attended in New York City last fall, there was a presenter who showed a revamped map of Sub-Saharan Africa in which countries would be divided up into regional trading blocs. Think of the way that NAFTA works, and apply this to the developing world. She stressed the need for African reliance on Africa, and internal trade so that countries could embrace their unique productive capacities and move away from single product-dependent economies that rely on non-African foreign buyers. Anyway, in all of this, I find geography and natural resources to be an interesting component because these are non-changeable factors in development. Thus, it is not a question of changing existing institutions or behaviors or methods of doing things--it is about working with these forces in order to maximize potential in a way that is relevant to the society in question.