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Chapter 3: Why do some people think they know what is good for others?

This chapter examines sixteenth-century Spanish colonialism in the Americas and twenty-first-century American intervention in Afghanistan to consider why some people think they know what is good for others and how this assumption can lead to coercive interventions that cause harm to the other. In doing so, the chapter raises other important questions about whether we can act responsibly towards others without undercutting their autonomy and freedom, and we can offer them democracy, wealth and an alternative social order without colonising them. At the same time, it considers whether recipients can receive these “gifts” whilst sustaining their own political, economic and cultural identity. The chapter outlines a response that recognises both the responsibilities of the donor and the legitimate suspicions of the recipient.

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Chapter Abstract

Why do some people think they know what is good for others? Giving and receiving are mundane elements in everyday life and in global politics.  However, a deeper look shows that these acts are entwined with the assumption that some people can know what is best for others.  This assumption leads easily to colonizing and imperializing postures. Drawing on historical and contemporary examples, this chapter explores the tension between a donor’s sense of duty in helping others and a receiver’s sense of feeling colonized.  While the chapter proposes a solution to this problem its primary concern is to show the problem’s complexity and its historical intractability.  Nevertheless, clarifying the problem can change our daily lives and alter global politics.

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Additional web content and audio-visual materials

Case Study 1: KONY 2012
The KONY 2012 campaign offers a prominent case in the politics of knowing and helping others. Established in 2004, Invisible Children are an advocacy group that aims to draw international attention to the conflict in Uganda. The group raise to prominence with their viral campaign KONY 2012 which focused upon the actions of Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The video drew criticism from a number of commentators who raised a series of questions about the limits of digital activism and an apparent underlying ‘white savior complex’. The videos below orbit the issue of helping others, offering different insights into the politics of such practices.

1. KONY 2012 by Invisible Children
This video is the original attempt by Invisible People to sway people to help Africans in needs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc

2. Kony 2012 Remix: A critical look at the white savior complex
This video is a direct critique of the original video and its world view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTi5GIYQcXE

3. Yes We KONY by Juice Rap News
This video is also a critique but through the mediums of comedy and satire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68GbzIkYdc8&feature=g-all-u&context=G2264933FAAAAAAAAAAA

Case Study 2: The Case of Afghan Women
The videos below provide an overview of Nancy Hatch Dupree’s relationship to Afghanistan. A prominent historian, campaigner and philanthropist, Dupree worked on a series of projects, including an effort to create a library on Afghan history and culture. Passing away in 2017, Dupree’s obituaries often made a point of referring to her as the ‘Grandmother of Afghanistan’. These three videos place the viewer in the position of asking if she has gone beyond the colonial posture in her relationship to Afghan women.

1. Dupree’s commitment to Afghan women
In this video Nancy Dupree is asked why she wishes to help Afghan women.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktFjzSLFSzo

2. Nancy Hatch Dupree’s work on Afghanistan Center at Kabul University
This video describes Dupree’s decades-long endeavour to establish the Afghanistan Centre at Kabul University (ACKU).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDaEBFkQL9w

3. More on Nancy Hatch Dupree’s project
In this video Dupree is interviewed about her experiences of, activities within, and hopes for Afghanistan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-4USqAcFYE

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Global Politics Film Club

Star Trek: The Next Generation, various episodes
These are all episodes in the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, each of which offers productive insights into the politics of cultural encounters.

1. Season 4, Episode 15: ‘First Contact’
This episode has members of the star ship helping aliens to enter the world of travel beyond the speed of light.

2. Season 5, Episode 2: ‘Darmok’
This episode is about the linguistic problems faced in alien contact.

3. Season 3, Episode 20: ‘Tin Man’
This episode shows the reciprocity that emerges in encounters.

4. Season 2, Episode 2: ‘Where Silence Has Lease’
This episode is about the dangers of encounter.

Arrival (2016), dir. Denis Villeneuve
This is a recent film about the ‘first contact’ encounter with alien life and focuses on the many ways an encounter might unfold.

Waterland (1992), dir. Stephen Gyllenhaal

This film is about how to overcome the colonial element in the pedagogical relationship.  It focuses on a teacher who starts telling stories instead of following lesson plans as a means to work out his own ghosts.
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Seminar room activities

Activity: There is a certain irony about providing guidance on a topic that calls into questions the foundations of uneven knowledge exchanges. The two case studies detailed above, however, provide the basis for insightful interactions with students about the politics of knowledge within the context of contemporary humanitarianism. These case studies raise important questions about the representation of others, the limits of inclusion and exclusion that define how particular issues are framed, the uneven distribution of voices that are heard within particular debates, and the modes of political action that are subsequently mobilised.

Contrasting these case study contexts with the history of beneficent colonial and imperial interventions may provide interesting insights into the colonial legacy of such knowledge encounters.

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Assessment Questions

Again, there is a clear and interesting tension in providing this kind of material which touches upon the intimate relationship between power and knowledge in pedagogical practice.

  1. Critically interrogate the ways of knowing that underpin contemporary humanitarianism.
  2. Who speaks in global politics?
  3. Is contemporary global politics defined by ‘exclusive knowledge’ exchanges?