Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

One of my first as­sign­ments as a jour­nal­ist 20-some­thing years ago was to cov­er the launch of a Best Vil­lage Ju­nior Queen event. Earl Lovelace was there and spoke about the need for the na­tion to cel­e­brate this cul­ture, and use it for sal­va­tion (I'm para­phras­ing, of course). I asked Lovelace af­ter­ward what the point of this was when the ob­vi­ous needs for tech­nol­o­gy, ed­u­ca­tion, and the com­ing cen­tu­ry had not been met. He re­spond­ed: "Isn't that a stu­pid ques­tion?" And I'm not para­phras­ing. I heard this sen­ti­ment at Car­ni­val launch­es, the 1992 Car­ifes­ta in Port-of-Spain, steel pan vex-con­fer­ences, echoed by sundry PNM fac­to­tums (In­do-cul­ture was in­vis­i­ble back then). It per­vad­ed gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy, NGO, and civ­il so­ci­ety state­ments-as econ­o­my and so­ci­ety sank (1991-1995). And when the UNC came in, the pro­po­nents re­al­ly got se­ri­ous. This was my first glimpse of the in­ter­con­nect­ed­ness of what peo­ple be­lieved was im­por­tant, how they act­ed on those be­liefs, and the na­tion­al po­lit­i­cal and de­vel­op­men­tal con­se­quences.

Oth­er peo­ple had known this long be­fore-it was a foun­da­tion­al ax­iom of cul­tur­al stud­ies. But the link be­tween this com­plex and a na­tion's suc­cess or fail­ure was al­so be­ing re­alised. In 1999, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty host­ed a con­fer­ence on "Cul­tur­al Val­ues and Hu­man Pro-gress." The cen­tral the­sis of the con­fer­ence, whose pro­ceed­ings were lat­er pub­lished as Cul­ture Mat­ters: How Val­ues Shape Hu-man Progress (2000), was that cul­ture is the mag­ic bul­let which de­ter­mines whether so­ci­eties suc­ceed or fail.

The con­trib­u­tors were some of the best minds in so­cial sci­ence. And in 2011 the book's ide­o­log­i­cal bias to­ward North Amer­i­can cap­i­tal­ism (whose smug su­pe­ri­or­i­ty would have tak­en a hit since 2008) is ev­i­dent, but much of the analy­sis is rock sol­id, and cru­cial to us here and now. Michael Porter's es­say, Val­ues, Be­liefs and the Mi­cro­eco­nom­ics of Pros­per­i­ty, out­lines a cru­cial ax­iom: "What peo­ple be­lieve about what it takes to be pros­per­ous af­fects the way they be­have." If you live in an econ­o­my where hard work does not bring re­wards, you won't work hard. Il­lus­tra­tion: the young per­son in a "hot spot" can work in KFC for min­i­mum wage, with no chance of ad­vance­ment, and en­dure bor­der­line pover­ty in­def­i­nite­ly. Or he can join a gang, get plen­ty mon­ey, apart­ment in One Wood­brook Place and room ser­vice and de­sir­able com­pan­ion­ship at the Hy­att when­ev­er he wants. In the mass, if peo­ple think the on­ly way to get mon­ey is for the State to give it to them-and the State re­in­forces this no­tion at every op­por­tu­ni­ty-then work be­comes a joke.

But there's more: no less than a so­ci­ol­o­gy of de­vel­op­men­tal suc­cess is out­lined by Jef­frey Sachs, and test­ed against em­pir­i­cal da­ta. Cap­i­tal­ist so­ci­eties with in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tions, high so­cial mo­bil­i­ty (ie, peo­ple are not locked in­to castes or class­es by birth), and which val­ue in­di­vid­u­al­ism tend to be suc­cess­ful. Tra­di­tion­al so­ci­eties which val­ue op­po­site traits are not suc­cess­ful. Var­i­ous au­thors note that these con­di­tions rarely evolve: they can be cre­at­ed, as in 19th cen­tu­ry and post-WWII Japan, or South Ko­rea. Mar­i­ano Gron­dona is spe­cif­ic on just what the key val­ues are. In "A Cul­tur­al Ty­pol­o­gy of Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment" he iden­ti­fied spe­cif­ic so­cial traits which seem to ac­com­pa­ny suc­cess: Protes­tant not Catholic; in­di­vid­u­al­ist not con­formist; a con­cep­tion of wealth as some­thing to be cre­at­ed and in­vent­ed, not some­thing that ex­ists (aka "na­tion­al pat­ri­mo­ny"); at­ten­tion to the "less­er virtues" of punc­tu­al­i­ty, clean­li­ness, and cour­tesy; and ra­tio­nal­i­ty, not su­per­sti­tion. Con­nect­ed to ra­tio­nal­i­ty is the idea of "world­view": cit­i­zens in suc­cess­ful coun­tries see the world as theirs to take and make. In "progress-re­sis­tant" coun­tries, the world is an ar­ray of mys­te­ri­ous forces stacked against you: de-mons, racial con­spir­a­cies, white peo­ple, ver­sions of a Godot­ian "Mr Big" who con­trols every­thing.

Lis­ten to Gron­dona's il­lus­tra­tion of ra­tio­nal con­cep­tions of pro-gress: "The ra­tio­nal per­son de­rives sat­is­fac­tion from achieve- ment, and progress...is a sum of small achieve­ments." But (and pay at­ten­tion here, PNM): "Progress-re­sis­tant coun­tries are lit­tered with un­fin­ished mon­u­ments, roads, in­dus­tries and ho­tels." This seems vague­ly fa­mil­iar. But the coup de grace for Tri­ni-dad is that these pos­i­tive val­ues must co­here in­to what Fran­cis Fukaya­ma calls "so­cial cap­i­tal." And this co­he­sion is en­abled by a mag­ic in­gre­di­ent: trust. (Giv­en what the PNM showed us in Par­lia­ment last week­end, it is clear they, and their sup­port­ers, have nev­er heard of it.) This is, of course, a dip in­to a hefty book of for­mi­da­ble con­trib­u­tors, in­clud­ing Sey­mour Lipset, Jef­frey Sachs, Fran­cis Fukaya­ma, Samuel P Hunt­ing­ton, Or­lan­do Pat­ter­son, and many oth­ers. But one or two is­sues arise: If there is one book that could make a re­al dif­fer­ence to our coun­try (giv­en its size, econ­o­my, de­mog­ra­phy and unique de­vel­op­men­tal po­si­tion) this is it. Sachs and Porter (and many oth­er dis­tin­guished econ­o­mists) have spo­ken in Trinidad, and their words echoed what is sketched here. Has any­one at UWI or in the gov­ern­ment, or "civ­il so­ci­ety" ac­tu­al­ly read this 10-year-old book?

A look at our val­ues, and their me­dia, sug­gests oth­er­wise. It sug­gests that Lovelace's ex­hor­ta­tions in 1991 were tak­en lit­er­al­ly. Of course, the UNC's temer­i­ty in form­ing the gov­ern­ment in 1996 put these pre­scrip­tions on the front burn­er, where they burned the coun­try down. The cen­tral rite of the cul­ture is now Car­ni­val. Its char­ac­ter? Ir­ra­tional con­sump­tion, vi­o­lent, un­con­trolled emo­tion­al­ism, and thin­ly dis­guised racial para­noia. Oth­er rites in­clude Eman­ci­pa­tion and In­di­an Ar­rival. As the col-umns pub­lished in the Ex­press to com­mem­o­rate the Year of African Peo­ple show, the Afro­cen­tric spokes­men are ob­sessed with slav­ery, re­venge and In­di­an gov­ern­ment con­spir­a­cies to im­prison black peo­ple. In­di­an ar­rival? In­den­ture was like slav­ery. As a re­sult of decades of this, the na- tion­al world­view is obeah, de-mons, and venge­ful gods. With all this, you ain't need a obeah­man to tell the fu­ture.