10.7.04

Feeding Africa

No Quick Fix To Africa's Food Problems If United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan had expected a simple answer when he asked scientists two years ago what they could do about the food crisis in Africa, he will have been disappointed when he received their reply last week. The implication behind the way that Annan's question was phrased — how can a 'green revolution' be achieved in Africa? — is that the solution might be found in a set of relatively straightforward scientific and technical innovations in plant breeding. After all, it was the development of new, high-yielding strains of rice and wheat that lay behind the original 'green revolution' that was achieved in Asia and Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s. Perhaps Africa could benefit in a similar way? ... One of the main virtues of the IAC report is the extent to which it underlines that, unlike Asia and Latin America, there are no technical fixes to Africa's food problems (a particularly refreshing conclusion at a time when proponents of genetically-modified foods are claiming to offer one). Rather, it emphasises that creating a situation in which the continent is able to provide enough food for its population requires action at many levels. Some of these are scientific; new, high-yielding crop varieties are certainly needed, and GM foods are likely to have their place, alongside new varieties produced by more conventional breeding techniques. Others range from the need to stem the brain drain of the best and brightest graduates in agricultural sciences, to the political measures required to ensure an adequate 'enabling environment'. ... It also means ensuring that the potential benefits of agricultural science are genuinely moulded to the needs of local farmers (hence the insistence in the report that farmers organisations become directly involved in research priority setting). Which in turn means concentrated efforts at using modern communications technology to provide information on the range of choices that are available; M. S. Swaminathan, the 'father' of the Green Revolution in India, and one of the co-chairs of the IAC panel, speaks of the way that such technology can be used for the important task of 'demystification' of modern science and technology (for example, in the techniques of tissue culture).

I was a bit worried by the subhead blurb on this article, which claimed that the report found that Africa needed a "cultural revolution" and "belief in science-based innovation." I was prepared to read old stereotypes about how Africa is mired in tribalism and superstition, and how big science on the model of the green revolution is the key. And maybe the report does say that -- I haven't read it yet. But the body of the article went some way toward alleviating my fears. It gives some attention to the need for political and economic reforms in Africa and elsewhere, though I have little faith that the UN can do much on that front (the virtue of emphasizing technical fixes is that you don't offend anyone powerful). It also points out the need to be sensitive to the diversity of ecological and social conditions in different parts of the continent, working with local farmers to improve things rather than bringing them a pre-concocted package of technology. In a best-case scenario we would see international aid agencies pushing adaptive management, in which research and practice are closely knit together, and giving local people real power in order to make the process effective, sustainable, and responsive to self-defined local needs.

The lesson of adaptive management in food security is not, however, something to be learned from the special diversity of Africa's environments and people. It's something to be learned from the mixed record of the green revolution in Latin America and Asia, two equally diverse continents. The article presents the green revolution as an unmitigated success. In certain respects it was, staving off starvation for millions of people. But political ecologists have documented numerous ways that the green revolution fell short. It damaged the environment by promoting monocropping and heavy chemical use, increased the level of risk and uncertainty faced by farmers by exposing them to the vicissitudes of the global market, socially and economically disempowered them by making them beholden to agro corporations, and disrupted social systems that provided for a range of people's needs.

If it's combined with the larger-scale reforms needed to enable it, an adaptive management approach could offer the benefits of agricultural science to Africa (and other parts of the world) without destroying what's useful in current local practice. The original green revolution meant well, but we can do better.
Stentor Danielson, 20:48,

Is Polygamy The Problem?

Hunting Bountiful They like to think they do a good job protecting women's rights and fighting paedophilia. Canadians would not be so smug if they knew of the dirty little secret in the Creston Valley, in south-eastern British Columbia. For half a century, a hotbed of polygamy has quietly flourished there in a commune called Bountiful. It is run by a breakaway sect of the Mormon Church, in successful defiance of the law. Bountiful is no secret to local people, some of whom enjoy its business. Nor is it to the province's police and social workers. It is known to British Columbia's top law-enforcement officer, the attorney-general. His office was first made aware of concerns about Bountiful more than a decade ago. But the provincial government has felt constrained by an untested legal opinion that Canada's law banning polygamy was unconstitutional. Bountiful claims allegiance to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Based in Utah, this dissenting Mormon sect teaches that men must have three or more wives and as many children as possible to enter heaven. The role of women and girls is to serve men. If women disobey men, their souls will burn in hell for eternity. ... Both groups run schools. These receive grants from the provincial government totalling more than C$600,000 ($450,000) a year. Yet critics say they provide minimal education, preparing boys only to work on Bountiful's farms and forests and girls to be "young brides and mothers". Women who have fled tell of girls as young as 13 being married off to polygamous men three times their age; of babies born to girls of 14 and 15; and of under-age girls being brought in from similar American communes for arranged marriages and to serve as "breeding stock".

Now, perhaps this is non-lawyer naievete speaking, but it seems to me that when you're not sure whether a law is constitutional, the thing to do is not to ignore it, effectively endorsing the view that it's unconstitutional. The thing to do is to charge someone and see whether the court allows it. Then you'd know where you stood, and you could either get on with enforcing it, or do the opposite with a clear conscience.

It also seems that even if polygamy is unconstitutional in Canada, that shouldn't stop the police from cracking down on Bountiful. Indeed, the fact that one man has multiple wives seems to be the least of the injustices -- if it even is one at all -- when set next to coercion into marrying someone, underage marriage, severe inequality between partners, and restrictions on children's educational and mental development. If the polygamy law is upheld and allows them to prosecute the people of Bountiful, that's all well and good, but it seems to be more a proxy solution than a direct attack on the main problem.
Stentor Danielson, 15:03,

9.7.04

A Frivolous Post

With all the excitement about the Kerry-Edwards ticket (particularly regarding Edwards' reputed good looks), I thought I'd offer a bit of contrarianism. Obviously this has no bearing on their fitness for office, but I sometimes find the Democrats a bit creepy. I've rarely seen a picture of Kerry in which he doesn't have his fist in the air. He's like some sort of reverse Bob Dole who can't hold his arms below his shoulders. And then there's Edwards, who smiles all the time. He's the Cheshire Candidate.
Stentor Danielson, 11:58,

Homophobia In The Service Of Gay Rights

It's Outing Season! As the July 12 date nears for a vote on the federal marriage amendment, an outing panic has gripped Washington's political and media circles. Some gay activists have vowed to expose those closeted members of Congress who are supporting the amendment, as well as the closeted gay staffers of any member backing it. And it's not only right-wing Republicans who should be on notice. After initially indicating that she would vote against the constitutional amendment that would make gays and lesbians into second-class citizens, Sen. Barbara Mikulski's opposition to the amendment appears to have gone into the closet: Now that a vote is near, the Maryland Democrat—who is up for reelection in November—is suddenly not returning reporters' phone calls seeking her intentions on the vote, nor is she issuing any statements on the matter. Mikulski's position on same-sex marriage isn't the only thing in her closet: The sexual orientation of the forever-unmarried 67-year-old has been an open secret for many years. But Mikulski has apparently always worried about what her working-class Democratic base in Maryland might think of her sexual orientation, making her irrationally petrified of ever discussing it (except to make heterosexual allusions). -- via Joe Carter

I've made no secret of my opposition to the FMA. But I can't condone this sort of strongarm tactic for bringing it down. What's being proposed is to subject someone to homophobia in order to prevent the passage of homophobic legislation. It's like burning a cross on someone's lawn because they oppose affirmative action.

And what happens once you've used up your "focrible outing" weapon (or once the other side has used it up)? Mikulski may be out of office, replaced by someone who probably won't have anything to hide. If the FMA goes down this year, it will be back. It will keep coming back as long as the kind of homophobia that keeps people like Mikulski in the closet persists. It will keep coming back until we learn to respect people's sexual choices, rather than using them as a weapon.

And I hate the charge of hypocrisy -- that a lesbian has a special duty to support gay rights. If voting against the FMA puts Mikulski in electoral danger, then it means that voting for it would be representing the wishes of her constituents. The real problem is that the people of Maryland don't support gay rights. To call Mikulski a hypocrite feeds the notion that gay rights is something selfish, like a bit of pork-barrel spending, rather than a matter of justice. People like Mikulski can make their own peace with who they are and what they should vote for, without other people telling them that some personal characteristic should dictate their vote.
Stentor Danielson, 11:16,

8.7.04

Colorblind Hunter-Gatherers

Evidence That Men And Women Literally See The World Differently It's long been known that color blindness is caused, usually in men, by changes in the red and green opsin genes, the genes that enable humans to perceive color. But a new study of randomly selected people from geographically diverse populations shows that normal variation in the red opsin gene may have been maintained by natural selection to give humans, especially women, a better perception of color. ... Those variations may have been especially important, Verrelli and Tishkoff speculate, in a time when humans were hunter-gatherers. Enhanced color perception would have allowed women, who were traditionally gatherers, to better discriminate among colored fruits, insects and background foliage. ... The chromosomal difference between women and men is the key to why variation of the OPN1LW gene may have different results in women and men. Women have two X-chromosomes; men have only one X-chromosome and one Y-chromosome. Because this color vision gene resides on the X-chromosome, rare detrimental changes at this gene cause color-blindness in males, whereas females are likely to have at least one good copy of the gene. -- via Feministing

The headline to this article is a nice example of what happens when people try too hard to make science interesting to the lay public -- a subtle difference in color perception with a great deal of intra-sex variability is inflated into a men-are-from-mars-women-are-from-venus issue. The substance incorporates a nice bit of reverse sociobiology, in which a just-so-story about human society is used to explain something biological.

On the one hand, I'm glad that the issue of gender roles in hunter-gatherer society, and the contribution of women to their subsistence, has become part of the public consciousness. On the other hand, it's frequently misused, as we see here.

The problem is that it's too simple to say that hunter-gatherer men hunt while the women gather. It would be more accurate to say* that adult hunter-gatherer men are the sole hunters of big game, while hunter-gatherer women and children of both sexes do most of the socially-shared gathering. Hunter-gatherer males do quite a bit of the fruit gathering that the authors claim requires better color vision. They do it all the time when they're children (when selection pressure would seem to be the greatest, since death as a child prevents you from ever having any offspring). And they gather extensively to feed themselves while out on the hunt, since big game would only be killed once a week or so.

I'm no geneticist, but it seems to me that the sex difference in color perception is not an adaptation. It's just a side-effect of the fact that color perception is controlled by the X chromosome, and men only happen to have one of those.

*Insofar as contemporary tropical hunter-gatherers give us any indication of how our ancestors lived.
Stentor Danielson, 19:31,

7.7.04

Mason And Dixon Are Spinning In Their Graves

I caught this ad on TAPPED this morning:



It seems Maryland has decided to annex Amish country while we weren't looking.
Stentor Danielson, 09:15,

Uh-Oh

Fire Fight: Prepare For Worst Fire authorities across eastern Australia are bracing for a devastating bushfire season as the drought forces crucial hazard reduction programs to be cancelled. NSW and Victorian volunteer firefighters have so far completed about half of the prescribed burning planned for autumn and winter, leaving large tracts of land laden with bushfire fuel.

Stentor Danielson, 00:58,

Non-Anthropocentric Intuitionism

Systems of environmental ethics are typically classified into two camps -- the anthropocentric and the non-anthropocentric, depending on whether they attribute intrinsic value to non-humans. In theory, one would establish a correct ethical system, then derive prescriptions for action from that system. But arguments for non-anthropocentric ethics tend to take an intuitionist path. Proponents take as given a certain level of desire to protect the environment. They then claim that that level of protection can't be justified on anthropocentric principles. In this they agree with anti-environmentalists. The difference is that anti-environmentalists conclude that therefore the desire is misplaced, and ought to be abandoned in light of a more rigorous calculation of human interests. Non-anthropocentrists, on the other hand, conclude that therefore the anthropocentric theory is wrong -- it stands refuted by its inability to justify wide-ranging environmental protections. It's supposed inability, anyway -- non-anthropocentrists seem at times to have a remarkably rosy view of how degraded a landscape humans could live comfortably in. Non-anthropocentrists then turn around and challenge our intuitions as not being radical enough. Having appealed to our desires to get us to accept non-anthropocentrism, we then find that non-anthropocentrism demands we go beyond our initial desires in terms of how much we protect nature. Indeed, this radicalism is often cited as non-anthropocentrism's greatest virtue.
Stentor Danielson, 00:46,

6.7.04

Community Involvement Eventually

Indians Upset About Ancient Find in Utah Some of Utah's Indian leaders are upset that state and federal officials said nothing to them about a canyon filled with nearly untouched ancient settlements, even though the inhabitants could be their ancestors. Officials have known about the remarkable string of hundreds of sites in a remote canyon southeast of Salt Lake City since 2002, but tribal leaders found out about it through news reports beginning last month. Archaeologists showed reporters part of the area in the Book Cliffs region on Wednesday. ... State archaeologist Kevin Jones said American Indians haven't been notified because archaeologists haven't started digging yet for artifacts or human remains. He said he planned to notify tribes when that as-yet-unscheduled work begins. ... "I do support scientific study that leads to better understanding of humanity, but you have to do it in a diplomatic way," said [Utah Division of Indian Affairs director and Ute tribe member Forrest] Cuch, who plans to visit Range Creek in August.

Jones is exhibiting an awfully narrow view of what interest Indians might have in the site. It seems that to him, the only reason they'd care is if graves might be desecrated -- despite his statement that digging hasn't started, the article makes clear that there has been a good deal of survey work and even some radiocarbon dating done at the site. Jones seems inclined to only give the tribe what Native Americans have been typically successful in demanding, i.e., oversight of the excavation of human remains.

What's especially frustrating is that Jones' attitude appears so unwarranted in this case. I could understand his desire to move ahead as if archaeology were the only possible use of the site, and to grant the tribe only what he had to, if there was a reasonable expectation that the Utes would be hostile to any archaeology whatsoever. But if Cuch's statements are any indication, this was a case ripe for productive cooperation between archaeologists and a tribe with an interest in archaeology.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that it's worth being a little skeptical of how archaeology-friendly the Utes would be. It's easy for Cuch to take the high ground now. The real test will be whether he (and other Utes who would concur with him) takes an adversarial stance toward the whole excavation while claiming to be outraged not over the dig but over the principle of not being informed early enough.
Stentor Danielson, 17:25,

It's "John-John" After All

Displaying the sort of media savvy that will propel him to the White House, John Kerry acted quickly to put an end to excuses to use the word "Veepstakes."

I think the importance of picking Edwards is not so much that picking him will bost the Kerry campaign, as that not picking him would have sunk the campaign. The clamor from the masses for a Kerry-Edwards ticket, and against a Kerry-Gephardt ticket, was overwhelming. Insofar as Kerry is trying to feed off of the energetic grassroots he inherited from Howard Dean, picking someone other than Edwards would have represented a remarkable deafness to his supporters.
Stentor Danielson, 10:07,

5.7.04

The Postmodern Bogeyman

I'm not much of a postmodernist. Certainly some postmodern writers have some interesting things to say, and they act as a useful corrective to modernist hubris. On the other hand, they have many things to say that are either wrong or incomprehensible, and often suffer from not a little hubris of their own. What I don't understand, though, is the way many people seem to fear the insidious influence of postmodernism. Or rather, they fear a strawman version of total relativism, making it out to be the greatest threat to our society.

Take Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies. The book is basically an argument against the totalitarian tendencies of Plato and Marx. The basic problem with their political theories, Popper says, is their conviction that they have found an essential and eternal truth that must be served and imposed on the world. The "open society," by contrast, is one governed by the scientific commitment to freedom of thought and recognizes only provisional, falsifiable truths. It seems, then, that Popper is the more postmodern thinker here. His critique of Marx is broadly parallel to postmodernists' denunciations of the grand historical narratives in Marxism. Yet Popper feels the need to use his last chapter to point out that the real threat comes from relativism.

Or consider this paragraph from a review of Big Sister: How Extreme Feminism Has Betrayed the Fight for Sexual Equality. The book is about the totalitarian tactics used by extreme feminists to silence and punish those they deem guilty. The reviewer says:

Boyd is writing about academics, but he does not write like one. That, combined with a certain acerbity, makes Big Sister a good read. (It also helps that it is short.) The book is free of the usual jargon, and it even includes a well-deserved swipe at postmodernism and its pernicious effects on critical thinking. Postmodernism, we read, "encourages a mushy-headed kind of moral relativism," in which "subjective interpretations of reality are preferable to objective interpretations." From this it follows, "If you think you are a victim, you are." Too true.

The language of "it even includes" suggests that, as seems logical, the "swipe at postmodernism" is not central to the book's thesis. Yet it's in there, and the reviewer saw fit to use up some of her limited space to gleefully point it out.

Why does postmodernism seem so threatening? Part of it is an overestimation of the size of the postmodernist contingent, arising from the "this particular order, or chaos" fallacy. My suspicion is that it's because it seems resistant to argument. We like to think that we can intellectually engage with our interlocutors, and demonstrate to our satisfaction (if not to theirs) which is the better case. But between the opacity of the language and the depth of its disagreement with non-postmodern thinking, it's hard for the non-postmodernist to even grasp the argument he's facing. "God told me to blow up this building" and "the free market will solve everything" are nice clear ideologies, which aid us in deciding what line of attack to take to refute them. Understanding postmodernism, on the other hand, requires so much work and such a feat of stepping outside of our established thought patterns that we're at a loss as to how to respond. Indeed, we're at a loss for whether we should respond -- maybe, once you manage to figure him out, Derrida is right after all. It's perhaps not surprising, then, that many people come to the conclusion that the postmodern emperor has no clothes -- that they're all just faking it, stringing together a bunch of blather and buzzwords that don't have any actual content at all. It's a relief to be able to believe that your opponents don't actully believe what they're arguing.
Stentor Danielson, 21:22,

Fodder For Comedy Hacks

Watching the left side of the blogosphere go through the 5 stages of grief about John Kerry's iminent selection of Dick Gephardt as his running mate (I'm seeing signs of stage 5, acceptance, already), I feel I should point out a corollary to my criticism of the much-desired pick of John Edwards. The two vice-presidential candidates will be Dick Gephardt and Dick Cheney. I'm already tired of the lame jokes about that.
Stentor Danielson, 15:52,

4.7.04

Opinions On Climate

Eight In Ten Support McCain-Lieberman Climate Change Legislation Eighty-one percent of Americans polled said that they support the targets of the legislation, commonly known as the McCain-Lieberman legislation or the Climate Stewardship Act, which calls for large companies to reduce their emissions to year 2000 levels by 2010 and to 1990 levels by 2020. When told it has been estimated that this would increase costs to the average American household by about $15 a month, 67% still said they would support it. If a candidate would support the legislation, 52% said this would increase their likelihood of voting for him or her, while just 14% said that it would decrease the likelihood (no effect: 32%). These are some of the findings of a new PIPA-Knowledge Networks poll of 753 Americans nationwide conducted June 8-14 (margin of error plus or minus 3.6%). ... Watching the recent blockbuster film The Day After Tomorrow did not significantly affect attitudes. Support for taking steps is high even though only 43% believe there is a consensus among the scientific community about the reality and danger of global warming. Fifty percent assume that scientists are divided on the question, and another 4% assume a scientific consensus that it is not a real problem. Steven Kull, director of PIPA, comments: "It is interesting that two out of three are willing to accept costs of $15 a month to address the problem of climate change, even though there is not a majority perception that the scientific community has come to consensus that climate change is a real problem. If there was a broader perception of scientific consensus, support for action could be even higher." -- via Quark Soup

On first glance, the fact that people are willing to support climate action despite a perception that there is a lack of scientific consensus seems strange. The most obvious explanation is that people are employing the precautionary principle. It's not unreasonable to think that $15 a month isn't all that much to spend "just in case." But the survey also found that 76% of people thought climate change was a real problem. Assuming that there aren't a lot of people who think it's a problem but aren't willing to fix it or who don't think it's a problem but like wasting money, support for McCain-Lieberman seems to be based in confidence about the status of global climate. This seems to show that people are unwilling to take a technocratic view, supporting action only when scientists give the green light. They're willing to make a judgement on scientific matters that are relevant to life and policy. We got lucky, since the public's has a true conclusion despite being misinformed about the issue. I wonder, though, if this willingness to hold an opinion is the outcome of conservatives' stress on the scientific uncertainties, rather than their desired outcome of throwing up their hands and saying "if the scientists haven't agreed yet, why should we bother doing anything?" The latter response requires the maintenance of a basically technocratic attitude.
Stentor Danielson, 12:50,

A Cartoon

Heh.
Stentor Danielson, 12:38,