Live 8: Naughty or Nice?

So I’d like to put a general theme of discussion here on SM to a concrete test: Live 8, naughty or nice?

I don’t work in Africa, but I do work in a HIPC (Highly Indebted Poor Country), Bolivia. And many Savage Minds readers and participants obviously work on and think about issues of global inequality & the forms of mutual, ahem, recognition made possible and impossible by global inequality.

Over the weekend I watched a bit of TV coverage from the show in London (a city that has had quite a week…), and wasn’t at all sure how to feel about it. Or, to be more transparently honest, it’s the kind of thing for which I am a complete sucker but know I oughtn’t be.

Given the indubitably necessary and yet insufferably snarky anthropological literature of the past two decades, I know how to take Live 8 apart in a critical spirit. The trope of hapless Africa rescued by salvific Euroamerica. The unwarranted catharsis provided to a privileged audience by the spectacle itself. The cover given to the nasty machinations of the Man, recently manifested by G-8 leaders pretending their association exists only to help poor people and to watch out for the environment. Etc. etc.

On the other hand… well, I don’t guess I have to outline the “pro” side of the equation for anyone. Everyone involved vociferously and repeatedly made the case for the worthiness of the undertaking.

There are, of course, multiple other possibilities. One that comes to mind is that the whole thing was the last hurrah of anglophone imperialism, soon to be displaced by some combo of China/India/Brazil, so that Live 8 was a spectacle of another kind, ironically headlined by an (ex-colonial) Irishman, showily insisting upon the mighty benevolent potential of (mostly) England-and-the-United States just as they begin to slide under the domestic burden of their foreign adventures and have only to look forward to days ahead when they’ll be wanting a little external debt forgiveness of their own.

Who is to say. But to return to the point, I’ll state my position on Live 8: naughty AND nice. Does this make me a fatuous booby? Don’t hold back.

13 thoughts on “Live 8: Naughty or Nice?

  1. I judge Live8 as misleading event, raising rather cynism than bringing forward what it intended to.
    I might be wrong, anyway: naughty.

  2. Ozma, in your post you elaborated on why Live8 is naughty but not why it’s nice. What is the “pro” side saying in defense of Live8? That it’s better than doing nothing?

  3. Ozma wrote:

    I’ll state my position on Live 8: naughty AND nice. Does this make me a fatuous booby? Don’t hold back.

    Nah, I think you’ve got it absolutely right. Inevitable criticisms: those about the African music for example, do look insufferably snarky, especially since they’ve been coming out of the mouths of UK right-wingers like John Redwood.

    Does the headlining by an ‘(ex-colonial) Irishman’ and also the importance of another ex-colonial Irishman, Bono, in all of this really reflect the “irony” in that interpretation? It seems to me like the sort of cheeky self-validation that structuralism used to get away with.

    So. Naughty and nice.

  4. Sahib, it is important to look at why aid has failed and why it has succeeded (for, indeed, it often has). For instance, traditional aid was not really aid at all, but bribes intended to buy loyalty during the cold war. Saying that such funds were “ineffective” at fighting poverty is quite misleading. Similarly, much development money was intended to be spent on buying technology and expertise from the donor nations. However, there has been significant research which shows that money spent on malaria prevention, digging wells, providing universal education (which includes at least one solid meal a day for many children), are all tremendously effective at preventing starvation and disease – even lifting people out of poverty.

    Moreover, considering how little people complain about the trillions of dollars wasted on failed military programs, like the missile defense shield, it seems strange to worry that some portion of the small amount of money spent on aid might be wasted.

  5. I invite SMers to do a little google searching on James Shikwati, the Kenyan economist whose Spiegel interview Sahib urges us to read. Avid proponent of free markets, entrepreneurialism, and the soothing balm of property rights. Member of the “International Society for Individual Liberty”. And on and on. One of the interesting things about opposition to Live 8 is that it seems to align the cranky left with the grinchy right. (Tigerbear’s commentary, about how UK right wingers are all of a sudden concerned about African pop stars receiving equal stage time, seems also to confirm this).

    Kerim, your points about aid struck me as right on.

    Tak — the main messages of Live 8 are trade justice, debt relief, and increased aid spent in better ways. This falls short of a world-transforming agenda, to be sure. But even so it seems like a lot better than nothing.

    the argument against Live 8 would have to be, I think, that it is actively pernicious. I guess I just don’t see it as actively pernicious, unless I view it through “anything-forestalling-the-inevitable-global-revolution-is-gradualism-and-must-be-opposed” lenses.

    rather, it seems like a positive harnessing of the insane energy of celebrity culture and an extra-electoral way for not-so-politically-active members of rich-country publics to exert pressure vis-a-vis issues that never figure crucially in electoral contests. As far as domestic politics in different African nations goes, I wonder if there is even much journalistic coverage or popular interest in the event and campaign at all. I do think it is much more about Euroamerican-internal politics than African politics.

  6. Kerim, even if the funds were to be spent in an appriopriate manner, I seriously doubt they could be effective. People, and countries, cannot be lifted out of poverty by simply throwing money at them.

    As mentioned in the interview, such aid is often extremely harmful to a country’s long term economic growth so it is inaccurate to view it as merely “a small waste”.

    But, I do agree that modern millitary expenditures are pointlessly wasteful.

    Ozma, you talk as if his economic orientation was a bad thing. Perhaps you would prefer the soothing balm of .. no property rights and extreme violence and opression.

  7. Sahib, in fact, some countries in Africa have been lifted out of poverty. Botswana and Mozambique are two success stories. The problem is that people tend to avoid looking at the complex reality that is Africa, and get muddled by the devastation caused by AIDS and wars in various regions, overlooking the tremendous advances that have been made.

    And, just as it is important to look at the complexity of the story across African nations, it is also important to look at the various different types of aid programs. Some work, some don’t. Rather than lumping them all under the heading of “throwing money at the problem,” it is more useful to explain why some programs work and others fail. Unless you are just out to score ideological points…

  8. Sahib — a GREAT way of ending poverty is by throwing money at it. the very best way, the absolute nonpareil method. One that is nevertheless very little tried — because people with money are so verah verah dubious about its effectiveness.

    as for property rights, I defy you to search the cross-cultural literature and come up with a single documented case of any society anywhere, anytime, that had no property rights. So the counter proposition you offer is nonsensical (unless you meant it rhetorically, in which case it’s just a poor form of argument). What I was referring to, of course, was the current deployment of the catchphrase “property rights” as a deceptively simple code for a massive and bloody-minded policy apparatus. In that sense, yes, the economic orientation of the interviewee to whom you referred us *is* a bad thing.

  9. Kerim,
    you seem well informed to me. Could you or anyone recommend a source for an outsider to begin with getting informed on different kinds of Africa Aid and on their success or failure you`ve mentioned ?
    (I won`t be able to read whole books on this topic this summer, but perhaps theres some article you`d recommend to get started?)

    “a GREAT way of ending poverty is by throwing money at it.”

    No, Ozma. I seriously disagree.
    Please everyone, leave polemics out.
    Poverty for simple reasons can not be ended by throwing money, because when throwing money on it ends, poverty will still be there.
    “Throwing money” means symptom therapy, not focussing on causalities.

Comments are closed.