Pablo Martin Carbajal
An African myth pictures relations between blacks and whites as a
dialogue between two masks. The mask of the white man has tiny ears and a
huge mouth, while the black man’s mask has a small mouth and big ears.
This is one of the ideas that Serge Latouche tries to convey in his
fascinating essay L'Autre Afrique, entre don et marché (The Other
Africa, between the gift and the market) in which he proposes a complete
reframing of relations between Africa and the West.
It’s not easy to understand Latouche. To do so, Europeans should carry
out a kind of metaphysical exercise that would isolate in some region of
our brains a series of existential concepts with which we have
organized ourselves from birth. For example, perhaps wealth does not
mean material or capital accumulation, but the quality of social
relations. This is at least the case in Africa (the word for ‘poverty’
in many African languages simply means ‘orphan’) and it is for this
reason that westerners who visit Africa are so surprised. ‘How little
they have and yet how happy they are’ we comment upon our return. We do
not understand (and do not even think to pose the question) that their
happiness does not come from, nor is produced by the possession or
accumulation of material goods, but from their fundamental belonging to a
group and from the quality of the group’s social relations.
Serge
Latouche attacks the official Africa. He attacks the concept of
State-building being imposed upon cultures in which the State, according
to the author, does not work—the effort to create the State in Africa
has not been successful. The whole book is an attack upon Westernization
as a universal economic, political project—the western model of
development is reproducible, but not universal. And from this
perspective, he critiques all that is official: the African Sates, their
ruling classes, the Western institutions that attempt to impose their
model upon Africa, the economists that attempt to quantify everything
—when in Africa so many things are unquantifiable in economic
parameters— he criticizes Western-educated Africans, as well as NGOs and
all of the people and institutions who would impose Western criteria
upon a continent in which these do not function (thus leading to the
dramatic consequences of African reality which Latouche has labeled
‘Afropessimism’ and with which he begins the book).
And within this expansion of Westernization, the concept of “the
castaways of development” appears: those who, excluded from
Westernization, nevertheless get on ahead, and not only do not disappear
but multiply, forced to organise themselves according to another logic,
and another way—the "informal economy". This is an economy which, in
Africa, is based on social and familial relations, on friendships, on
neighbours, on religion, with the obligation of giving and sharing,
receiving and returning, between men and gods, living and dead, between
fathers and sons, between young and old. And amongst all of these, the
millenarian practices of negotiation, haggling, donation and barter. In
order to show us how these informal economies work, Latouche carries out
an interesting research project, analyzing three different communities:
a blacksmiths’ village in the city of Kaedi (Mauritania ), the
influence of witchcraft in Douala (Cameroon ) and the aeconomy of the
Grand-Yoff neighbourhood in Dakar (Senegal).
Here I will attempt the difficult task of summarizing the case of Dakar
in a single paragraph. Latouche analyzes the successful results of this
informal economy, which he doesn’t define as an economy, but as a
society. Each merchant has his groups, which could be hundreds of
people, amongst children, relatives, people owing favours etc. The small
merchants (hairdressers, drivers, mobile street vendors, bakers,
untaxed petrol, clothes smuggled in from abroad, pirated tapes, recycled
stolen goods, intercepted cargoes) know their client base and the
personal history of each one (this being the true capital that social
commerce works with), and in this way things can be sold and paid for
when the client is able, things can be borrowed and returned when
possible, all in a market with a specific group clientele and not a
market subject to the law of supply and demand. In negotiation, social
importance is taken into account; the price agreed upon includes the
value of the goods and the favours returned. Additionally, prices are
incredibly low, which guarantees that people with minimal resources can
pay them, because Grand-Yoff’s development castaways in Dakar are not
driven by profit calculations, but by what Latouche calls “the affective
economy” in which encounters, visits, receptions, and discussions all
take up considerable time; lending, owing, giving, receiving, helping,
putting in requests and delivering take up an important part of the day,
in addition to parties, dancing, weddings, baptisms, Ramadan... It is
an economy (or aeconomy) that is not quantifiable from a Western point
of view, but which, according to the author, actually works in the
suburbs of Dakar . But Latouche reminds us that this aeconomy is not a
first step on the road to development, that is, a type of economy that
will evolve when the formal economy is installed. The kinds of actions
carried out by NGOs and other institutions in their attempt to
professionalize the sector and provide greater economic efficiency and
rationality usually fail. It is simply an African way of working, which,
from a Western perspective of course, is irrational.
Latouche ends by questioning if Africa should be helped. By this, he
means “looked after” this being a typically Western trait with many
ambiguities. The author claims that the aid that Africa currently
receives simultaneously drowns it and helps it stay afloat, definitively
prolonging its agony and corrupting the other, non-official Africa
(perhaps it is too late? The rafts keep arriving along with many who
probably belong to that aeconomy). Rather than humanitarian
interference, continues Latouche, helping Africa would require that our
societies of the North limit themselves, and would require a profound
change in our models and a questioning of development. Helping Africa
would also require asking it for help, help for example in resolving our
material, social and cultural problems. If we consider Africa poor,
it’s because we are rich, whereas the African continent is rich in what
we are poor. That is why helping the other Africa (aside from being a
hypercomplex question in itself) means establishing a dialogue in which
the participants act with mouths and ears of the same size.
Original version: http://www.pablomar tincarbajal.com/blog.php
Translation: David Montoute
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