“Development,” I’ve discovered, operates as a flagrantly racist discourse in some guises. Scrambling to explain the reasons for Africa’s perpetual poverty and apparently incurable misery, laypersons in the West point to Africans’ “savagery” and alleged incapacity for civilisation. This is not just a fringe opinion; even among putatively educated individuals such nonsense recurs with disturbing […]
Jason Hickel
Having spent the first half of his life in Swaziland, Jason earned a doctorate at the University of Virginia and now holds a fellowship at the London School of Economics. His research focuses on development, globalisation and labor, with an emphasis on Southern Africa. He lives in constant fear of being sniffed out for his counter-revolutionary penchant for bourgeois wine and jazz. Follow him on Twitter @jasonhickel.
Posted inNews/Politics
Prosperity or plunder? Nigeria slipping at an oily crossroads
“Disaster” doesn’t begin to describe the troubled oil scene in Nigeria. Last June, in the immediate wake of the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the New York Times ran an article exposing a crisis in Nigeria that should have been capable of piquing the conscience of even the most hardened oil barons. It […]
Posted inGeneral
The end of poverty: An alternative paradigm
Jeffrey Sachs has become something of a force in international development circles over the past decade. As special advisor to the UN’s Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, former director of the UN’s Millennium Development Project, and a decorated economist at Columbia University, Sachs certainly has much to commend him. And his recognition has been no less […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Invictus: Hollywood pretends to learn from Mandela
Since its release last December Invictus has caused quite a stir among American movie-goers, garnering relatively high reviews from critics, bagging third place among box-office openers, taking home a series of award nominations, and — perhaps most importantly — winning airtime on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show. But while director Clint Eastwood’s successes with this […]
Posted inNews/Politics
We can’t eat rights!
By Jason Hickel “But we can’t eat rights, hawu!” Those five words of protest that usher from the lips of South Africa’s underclass sting like a slap in the face. Good liberals will always take offence. We find ourselves scrambling desperately to battle the mad claim that “things were better under apartheid”. “But of what […]