21 Apr Dissertation Proposal #3

Today’s goal is to rewrite my third dissertation proposal. A few weeks ago, i was told that i may not travel to Haiti. While there was always a chance i may not make it, trying to reframe the entire thing so soon has been a bit daunting.

There is one piece that i know i’d like to work out: the rise of ‘ethical’ capitalism that is supposedly somehow a kinder and gentler capitalism. I get the sense that the more we insist there is a possibility of an ethical capitalism that in fact we’ve come to conflate the assuagement of our own guilt and shame with ethics in general. Three scales come to mind:

1. the individual consumer who can buy his or her conscience back with buying carbon off-sets, eco-friendly, slave-labor-free, animal bits-free products. But does that mean that only elite classes can afford to have a guilty conscience? Does that then position those who are ill-able to afford the cost of off-setting as un-ethical people? As consumers massage the guilt out of their tired consumption muscles, they can, again, be left to the sugar-high daze that is their sweetness. (and a special thank you to Colin Cremin for articulating so beautifully – or at least tantalizingly – his thoughts on something similar [i daren’t say the same for his obvious eloquence and depth] at the AAG’s this year!)

2. the global health and development industry which represents the circulation of billions (if not trillions – especially when taken in tandem with humanitarianism) of dollars, always sending money back home.  Of the $14.7 billion known to the project level ( of a total $21.8 billion overall) in global health dollars, less than $.9 billion went to health system strengthening – the rest went to GHIs, NGOs, and other global health projects – in 2007. This year, we learned that in Haiti, 1,500 contracts for rebuilding have been doled out to American companies to the tune of $267 million while a mere 20 have gone to Haitian companies, for a total of $4.3 million.

3.  country’s position themselves as particular kinds of humanitarian actors through projects like USAID. USAID, by some accounts, is not much more than a contracting agency. In Palestine, a significant amount of USAID dollars that are funneled to projects return directly back to the U.S. economy (thank you Lisa Bhungalia for that tidbit from her panel discussion at the AAGs). Contractors must spend down or risk being able to get their hands on less money, and spend they do – on whatever they can.

These three points of departure, when taken together point to a kind of philanthropic stop-gap against which restless capital can again find its flow. As the US (particularly) moves out of industrial capitalism and is beginning to shift out of service capitalism, the focus is shifting toward a global health / development industry that serves a triple purpose – keep capital flowing, create an air of the US as goodwill ambassador of the world, and to respond to and assuage the guilt that is arising in a consumerist society that is every day confronted with the messy realities that exist beyond the gently crushing embrace of its borders.

That’s it. That’s all i’ve managed today, after six hours…