Adjusting to Cultures

2020 ◽  
pp. 103-128
Author(s):  
Robert Klitgaard
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Development Program ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Positive Side ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Indigenous Nations ◽  
Rural Development Program

Cultures interact with policy choices in ways that produce unintended consequences (alas, often negative ones). On the positive side, better knowledge about the interactions between policies, cultures, and outcomes can lead to better outcomes. This chapter offers some exciting examples. The field of cultural ergonomics takes culture into account in the design of everything from stoves to truck interiors to housing for the poor. A successful agroforestry program in Haïti didn’t try to change local “cultures” but to include locals in culturally appropriate ways. Other inspiring examples of cultural knowledge in action include governance reforms among Indigenous nations in the United States, culturally attuned pedagogy in Hawai’i, and a remarkable rural development program in West Africa. They have in common the application of anthropological knowledge through processes that respect and empower local people.

Verán ustedes las chozas más humildes. El discurso de pobreza en la diplomacia pública cardenista dirigida a Estados Unidos

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-281
Author(s):  
Sylvia Dümmer Scheel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Government ◽  
Lazaro Cardenas ◽  
The New Deal

El artículo analiza la diplomacia pública del gobierno de Lázaro Cárdenas centrándose en su opción por publicitar la pobreza nacional en el extranjero, especialmente en Estados Unidos. Se plantea que se trató de una estrategia inédita, que accedió a poner en riesgo el “prestigio nacional” con el fin de justificar ante la opinión pública estadounidense la necesidad de implementar las reformas contenidas en el Plan Sexenal. Aprovechando la inusual empatía hacia los pobres en tiempos del New Deal, se construyó una imagen específica de pobreza que fuera higiénica y redimible. Ésta, sin embargo, no generó consenso entre los mexicanos. This article analyzes the public diplomacy of the government of Lázaro Cárdenas, focusing on the administration’s decision to publicize the nation’s poverty internationally, especially in the United States. This study suggests that this was an unprecedented strategy, putting “national prestige” at risk in order to explain the importance of implementing the reforms contained in the Six Year Plan, in the face of public opinion in the United States. Taking advantage of the increased empathy felt towards the poor during the New Deal, a specific image of hygienic and redeemable poverty was constructed. However, this strategy did not generate agreement among Mexicans.

Bringing the Real World of Science to Children: A Partnership of the American Museum of Natural History and the City University of New York

2008 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony G Picciano ◽  
Robert V. Steiner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Compulsory Education ◽  
Development Program ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Museum ◽  
The World ◽  
The City

Every child has a right to an education. In the United States, the issue is not necessarily about access to a school but access to a quality education. With strict compulsory education laws, more than 50 million students enrolled in primary and secondary schools, and billions of dollars spent annually on public and private education, American children surely have access to buildings and classrooms. However, because of a complex and competitive system of shared policymaking among national, state, and local governments, not all schools are created equal nor are equal education opportunities available for the poor, minorities, and underprivileged. One manifestation of this inequity is the lack of qualified teachers in many urban and rural schools to teach certain subjects such as science, mathematics, and technology. The purpose of this article is to describe a partnership model between two major institutions (The American Museum of Natural History and The City University of New York) and the program designed to improve the way teachers are trained and children are taught and introduced to the world of science. These two institutions have partnered on various projects over the years to expand educational opportunity especially in the teaching of science. One of the more successful projects is Seminars on Science (SoS), an online teacher education and professional development program, that connects teachers across the United States and around the world to cutting-edge research and provides them with powerful classroom resources. This article provides the institutional perspectives, the challenges and the strategies that fostered this partnership.

The Ethics of COVID-19 Vaccine Passports

2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Joseph Meaney ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World Health Organization ◽  
The United States ◽  
Scientific Data ◽  
World Health ◽  
Medical Decisions ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Divided Society ◽  
The World ◽  
Health Organization

COVID-19 vaccine passports run the risk of creating a divided society where social privileges or restrictions based on “fitness” lead to discrimination based on immunization status. Individuals have a strong right to be free of coercion to take a COVID-19 vaccine, and we should be very leery of further invasion of private medical decisions. These concerns are shared both internationally and in the United States, and the World Health Organization, the Biden administration, and many US governors oppose COVID-19 vaccine credentials. In addition, regulations for COVID-19 vaccine credentials face practical barriers, including lack of access globally, especially among the poor; and lack of scientific data on the efficacy of these vaccines.

The United States Congress and Africanist Scholars

1991 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 4-13
Author(s):  
David S. Wiley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
African Studies ◽  
United States Congress ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Low Levels ◽  
The U.S

Linking scholars to the Congress is difficult primarily because of the weakness of Congressional interest in Africa, but also due to the low levels of interest among academics in both Congress and its Africa foreign policy and the poor resources of African studies in the U.S. to build a foundation of knowledge useful to the Congress.

scholarly journals Healthy Birth Practice #4: Avoid Interventions Unless They Are Medically Necessary

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 94-103
Author(s):  
Judith A. Lothian
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Epidural Analgesia ◽  
Maternity Care ◽  
Fetal Monitoring ◽  
The United States ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Intravenous Fluids ◽  
Electronic Fetal Monitoring ◽  
Increase Risk ◽  
Continuous Electronic Fetal Monitoring

Maternity care in the United States continues to be intervention intensive. The routine use of intravenous fluids, restrictions on eating and drinking, continuous electronic fetal monitoring, epidural analgesia, and augmentation of labor characterize most U.S. births. The use of episiotomy has decreased but is still higher than it should be. These interventions disturb the normal physiology of labor and birth and restrict women's ability to cope with labor. The result is a cascade of interventions that increase risk, including the risk of cesarean surgery, for women and babies. This paper describes the use and effect of routine interventions on the physiologic process of labor and birth and identifies the unintended consequences resulting from the routine use of these interventions in labor and birth.

Brain Drain Controversy and African Scholars

1979 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 27-30
Author(s):  
Man Singh Das
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Resources ◽  
Brain Drain ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
The United States ◽  
Industrialized Countries ◽  
Asian Student ◽  
Poor Countries ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The World

The phenomenon popularly known as brain drain has attracted growing concern in the United States and abroad (Tulsa Daily World, 1967; Committee on Manpower... 1967; Asian Student, 1968a: 3; 1968b: 1; 1969: 3; Institute of Applied Manpower . . . 1968; U. S. Congress, 1968; Gardiner, 1968: 194-202; Bechhofer, 1969: 1-71; Committee on the International Migration . . . 1970). The notion has been expressed that the poor countries of the world are being deprived of their talent and robbed of their human resources by the exchange of scholars and students which goes on between nations (U.S. Congress, 1968: 16-25; Mondale, 1967a: 24-6; 1967b: 67-9). Implicit is the idea that many students from these less developed countries go to the more highly developed and industrialized countries for study and decide not to return to their homeland.

Introduction

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noel Maurer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin America ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Institutional Reform ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Government ◽  
Foreign Investors ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Over Time

This introductory chapter discusses the shift from politicized confrontations like the imbroglio of 1900 to legalized disputes like the more orderly affair of 2007. It advances four basic findings. First, American government intervention on behalf of U.S. foreign investors was astoundingly successful at extracting compensation through the 1980s. Second, American domestic interests trumped strategic concerns again and again, for small economic gains relative to the U.S. economy and the potential strategic losses. Third, the United States proved unable to impose institutional reform in Latin America and West Africa even while American agents were in place. Finally, the technology that the U.S. government used to protect American property rights overseas changed radically over time.

Planning or Improvisation

2020 ◽  
pp. 116-120
Author(s):  
Alasdair Roberts
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The United States ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Governance Strategies ◽  
The Face ◽  
Imperfect Knowledge

This chapter assesses the role of planning in the design of governance strategies. Enthusiasm for large-scale planning—also known as overall, comprehensive, long-term, economic, or social planning—boomed and collapsed in twentieth century. At the start of that century, progressive reformers seized on planning as the remedy for the United States' social and economic woes. By the end of the twentieth century, enthusiasm for large-scale planning had collapsed. Plans could be made, but they were unlikely to be obeyed, and even if they were obeyed, they were unlikely to work as predicted. The chapter then explains that leaders should make plans while being realistic about the limits of planning. It is necessary to exercise foresight, set priorities, and design policies that seem likely to accomplish those priorities. Simply by doing this, leaders encourage coordination among individuals and businesses, through conversation about goals and tactics. Neither is imperfect knowledge a total barrier to planning. There is no “law” of unintended consequences: it is not inevitable that government actions will produce entirely unexpected results. The more appropriate stance is modesty about what is known and what can be achieved. Plans that launch big schemes on brittle assumptions are more likely to fail. Plans that proceed more tentatively, that allow room for testing, learning, and adjustment, are less likely to collapse in the face of unexpected results.

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