It seems like there are a lot of Whitties who want to change the world, and if I’m certain of anything, it’s that change: in the way we think, the way we do, the way we talk and the way things exist: is probably inevitable. But there are a lot of ways we can try to change the world and some of them are probably better or worse than others.
The United States has a long and sordid history of colonization and destruction of other people and other ways of life that we have deemed “inappropriate” and “savage.” The United States itself was founded through horrible acts of violence and required the genocide of an entire continent of people on which to establish the American Dream. The effects of this legacy on the policies of our government are still evident today in the execution of enormous imperial wars and ensuing occupations to control oil resources around the world.
This aggression does not exist divorced from the attitudes and preconceptions that engender it. That is to say, acts of destruction and killing are justified by the dominant value systems here that say we are “better” than foreigners’ and we have an obligation to spread the benefits of our society with them; by force if necessary.
Luckily for a lot of Whitties, force isn’t always necessary.
The Peace Corps was created by the Kennedy administration to export American values and infrastructure abroad. To further this end, Peace Corps volunteers help people in other countries (specifically “developing” countries) start businesses, build roads, and develop “modern” societies and economies.
I see the Peace Corps largely as modern-day missionaries, taking up the civilized man’s burden and traveling abroad to teach others precisely what’s wrong with their societies.
The problem of “underdevelopment” was created by the United States’ economic institutions. There was never any such thing as “poverty” before it was created to mask the very specific moral idea that acquiring more complex shit – Big Macs, iPods, and Methodman – means that a society is advancing.
The word “development” itself implies a temporality in which other countries are “behind” us, “backwards” in their ways and in need of “progress” that the United States is more than capable of providing.
In fact, not only do the international economic institutions that the United States created after World War II to run the global economy require other nations to “privatize” and “develop” their economies, there are a bunch of volunteers who will readily teach the unwashed masses exactly how Uncle Sam starts a business, studies American History and develops infrastructure.
Change may be inevitable, but certainly, some is better and worse than others. I am left desperately hoping that the Whitman College students who embark on these civilizing missions abroad will be prepared with the intellectual and moral fortitude to oppose the ways that empire desires you to think, talk and do.
Ross Szabo • Mar 15, 2009 at 9:31 am
If the Peace Corps was going into countries and telling them what to do as well as what was wrong with them, then I would agree with this article. However, some simple research would have helped Mr. Janyk understand that isn’t the process.
The process to get placed in a country defeats this argument. People who are accepted to the Peace Corps have to wait for a country to pick them. Each month countries assess what programs THEY want to develop and who THEY would like to help them. As the person above me pointed out, when you get to THEIR country THEY tell you what they would like you to do. To top that off when a volunteer leaves the NGO or business that brought you in continues to do the work that you were a part of.
This isn’t the US saying Oh poor little country let us send some Americans to fix your issues as much as it is countries who need or want help asking for volunteers to do that work. Also the US isn’t the only country that does this, and isn’t the only country that colonized others. To assume some countries don’t determine the issues they want to work on is really insulting to those countries.
Xhun • Mar 13, 2009 at 11:41 am
Oh, my dear mr. or mrs. Janyk,
I don’t get to use the internet too often, so i have to make this quick, as i have other important things to do.
While I was applying to be a Peace Corps volunteer i had much of the same apprehension you seem to have, and with the United State’s track record of international involvement it is an important question to ask- 1) What kind of involvement and voice do the people in the ‘host countries’ have to decide needed projects? 2) Are we exporting the ‘idea’ of poverty by introducing wealth? These are just a couple of the questions i feel deserve an answer, and i will answer them since i have more experience than a college office or classroom.
1) I currently teach organic agriculture in one of a many Peace Corps participating countries (i know organic is a ridiculously overused buzz word, but stick with me). The Peace Corps has relatively little involvement with my day to day operations. I was given 3 months of technical and language training, and was ‘given’ to a ‘host country’ NGO that had requested a volunteer with agricultural knowledge. The program i work under is a sustainable method of farming, that with time will slowly eliminate participation in international market systems (in limited areas: such as vegetables and some simply manufactured goods, like yogurt, milk, or spaghetti sauce (which i assure you the peace corps did not originally introduce)). The methods and projects are governed by a local NGO which, besides for your truly, is only ‘host country nationals’. The biggest problem i face is with international organizations, like USAID, who give away/ sell highly reduced market items that usually would be grown in the area and sold in the local open air market (it screws up prices for the local farmers).
2) The idea of wealth. This is a tough one to pin on the Peace Corps because this has been happening since the western world came into contact with ‘the other’. Do i think that people today ‘feel’ poorer because of my actions/ presence here? I would say: maybe a little. But its really their already formed stereotype of North Americans that make them think i have any money at all, which today i would blame on the exportation of our culture in movies and t.v. shows.
Just like the United State’s international involvement, Brad Pitt’s movie selection, and any guy’s list of x-girlfriends, the Peace Corps is not perfect, but we’re trying to do good, and we’re trying to do what the people HERE (host country) need. Examples: there are stove projects here designed to use less wood and produce less smoke because the people here KNOW deforestation and lung disease are problems. Others work in government transparency…. and while their government may have been introduced by the West, that’s the system they have and THEY want to fix the problems, and if they could think and implement another type of government that involves a democratic base, then I’m pretty sure we would help them do that too. there are others who teach children about washing their hands and brushing their teeth…. are these imperialistic tendencies? i guess making them think they Need toothpaste might be…. but come on guy, this is the reality they live in now, introduced by the west or not, and now its our job to try to help them fix some of the same problems we have, and help them avoid problems they haven’t yet arrived at or we just plain don’t have in the united states.