feyjiashyr0

The "Man with a Bicycle" [a Yoruba scupture of a man on the way to market standing beside his bicycle] is produced by someone who does not care that the bicycle is the white man's invention--it is not there to be Other to the Yoruba self; it is there because someone cared for its solidity; it is there because it will take us further than out feet will take us; it is there because machines are now as African as novelists... (Appiah, In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture)


I highly suggest "You Shall Know Our Velocity" by Dave Eggers. If you've ever travelled abroad, or if you loved "Catcher in the Rye" I'm convinced that Eggers is the modern day Salinger (though a bit more eloquent than Holden Caulfield). I loved the book, and I'm dying to talk to someone about it. it made me think of this quote from a great Africanist ethnography (above). It's one of those really powerful issues that one deals with when working in development...that fatal americanization that even the most well-meaning buy. or, as marshall sahlins talks about, "The Chinese Restaurant Syndrome"--that so many are concerned about the opening of a McDonalds in Beijing signifies the end of Chinese Culture. Yet we have had Chinese restaurants in America for over a century, and it has not yet made us Chinese. On the contrary, we obliged the Chinese to invent chop suey. What could be more American than that? French fries?

=)