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Bezig met laden... The Hungry World: America's Cold War Battle against Poverty in Asiadoor Nick Cullather
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 Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek.  aijmiller | Apr 2, 2017 |  geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
Cullather has written an engrossing history of how the United States government, along with private philanthropies like the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, aimed to win the hearts and bodies of rural Asia in the post World War II decades by crafting strategies to develop and modernize agriculture and the peasant ́s way of life. He explains how America used foreign aid, modernization theory, nutrition, statistics, and technology, to try to reconstruct the social and political order of the decolonized and disadvantaged countries in the region. Initially the issue of how best to intervene in Asia ́s rural countryside was contentious, with clashing visions of development and humanitarian aid being argued throughout the 50 ́s and 60 ́s. Ultimately, one strategy displaced all the others ́the ́Green Revolution ́ and the ability to feed millions through the miracle of genetically designed dwarf strains of grain and rice. Cullather provides a detailed explanation of how this policy of feeding Asian peasants became the single strategy of ́progress ́ adopted by the US rather than industrialization or land reform. As current controversy swirls about how best to aid Africa in the crisis of nation-building, famine, and a poverty-stricken peasantry, the story of the U.S. interventions in Asia become starkly relevant. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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 Google Books — Bezig met laden...GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)338.1Social sciences Economics Production Agricultural productsLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde: (3)
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Things I struggled with in this book: it feels like it bounces all over the place geographically and to some extent temporally, at least in the latter half of the book? There were some historical figures who I really struggled to keep straight even as they appeared again and again. Also I read the e-book which comes with zero pictures, which is annoying. Also the conclusion struck me as very weird (there's a bit where he was like "PEOPLE DON'T CARE ABOUT FOOD-RELATED DEVELOPMENT ANY MORE BECAUSE OF 24-HOUR NEWS ON TV" and I was like 'that's not what your book is about but ok') and really jolted me out of the book in general. Also it just isn't generally the kind of book I find very interesting in the first place, so that was something that is my fault, not the book's.
All that being said, again, I would actually recommend this book because I think it has some important things to say about the ways that food-related development projects have been run historically (it stupidly had never occurred to me that 'there are starving children in China!' was a phrase more to do with defeating Communism than about actual children...) and I think that is really important in the politics around development today. (