I’ve been telling everyone that this is my first time in Latin America, but it’s not quite true, since I’ve gone with my family a few times to gringo-filled destinations in Mexico. Without a doubt, our family vacations inevitably found us staying in places with some borderline-catastrophic flaw. There was, for example, the apartment in… Continue reading Good Intentions and Unneeded Courtyard Fountains*
Kristof has an interesting column in the New York Times today, subtly entitled “Moonshine or the Kids.” In it, he describes a “politically incorrect, heartbreaking, frustrating, and ubiquitous” truth: poor people do stupid things with their money. He cites two MIT economists—Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo (who is totally hot right now)—that calculated that even… Continue reading We’re all dumb
It’s finally decided: I’m spending the summer in Ecuador. This is not exactly news. I settled on doing my research on environmental justice movements in Latin America in the fall, narrowed it to the Andes by Christmas, and zeroed in on Yasuní National Park in Ecuador by the beginning of this term. Still, though, it… Continue reading On my way to save the world
It’s a weird paradox of academia that sometimes you are too busy studying something to actually spend any time learning about it. One of the joys of having a six week break from my Development Studies program has been that I’ve had a little time to actually think about development. The result is this bit… Continue reading Zero Sum Development
The following is a brief excursus on the social science disciplines which should be of interest to absolutely no one. It should not be confused with the similarly titled article by Emily Sands ’09, who is brilliant. I’ve already many times registered my frustration with much of the criticism of development coming from the academy. … Continue reading Sexy-Nomics
Have you heard the news? Uganda is no longer a civilized nation! At least, that’s the take of the Washington Post, which (rightly) denounced a bill in front of Uganda’s parliament that would give a life sentence to “serial” homosexuals, imprison people who “aid and abet” homosexuality, and require citizens to report homosexual activity to… Continue reading Un-civilized, Un-democratic, Un-relativist
I have been following the news from Chile mostly from an inability to look away. This morning, the official number of displaced persons went up a half-million just in the time it took me to refresh the New York Times homepage. There are times when I wish I were the type who prays, since then… Continue reading Natural Disasters
Make no mistake. We do not study development at Oxford in order to help people. The job of development studies scholars is to attack and dismantle the well-intentioned ideas of others who (naively) actually think they can help people. This week, in my history and politics course, we discussed Mahmood Mamdami’s Saviours and Survivors, which… Continue reading In Defense of Clowning (as a development strategy, that is)
The ideas in this post were mostly bouncing around in my head at Christmastime, but with today being the one month anniversary of the quake in Haiti—and having just attended a panel on the international community’s response to said disaster—these things seemed suddenly relevant again. – – – – – The first proper summer job… Continue reading Giving Well
In general, I try to make sure that most of the posts I write for my blog have at least least some “value-added” behind them. That is, if I’m not reporting on things I’ve done in my life, I at least try to provide my own original spin on things happening elsewhere. Tonight, though, I’m… Continue reading PIRATES; or, irrational enthusiasm about ongoing tragedy in Somalia
Alex V. Barnard - Sociology 