Asia Times Online, Hong Kong
16 Sep 2006
BOOK REVIEW
In-Sen!
Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny by
Amartya Sen
Reviewed by Chan Akya
I finally managed to finish reading Amartya Sen’s Identity and
Violence: The Illusion of Destiny, having had to put the book down out
of sheer tedium more than once in the past few weeks. This article is
not only a book review, though; having had enough time to work on the
arguments, my attempt will be to define the illusion of illusions. As
in previous posts, I will highlight the economic underpinnings of
today’s conflicts, which have long since crossed
over from a sociological phenomenon.
Given the number of world events that have occurred during recent
years, including the daily bloodbath in Iraq, the Israel-Lebanon
situation, a foiled terrorist attack in the United Kingdom, terrorist
outrages in India and a hardening of US rhetoric, it would be fair to
say that my attention was drawn back to this book a multitude of
times. Hoping against experience, I expected later parts of the tome
to put forward more cogent arguments than the "can’t we all just get
along" rhetoric that populates the first few pages.
UK examples
Sen’s basic premise, repeated ad nauseam throughout the book, is that
narrow definitions of identity help to foment violence. Using
Jean-Paul Sartre’s quote that "the anti-Semite makes the Jew", Sen
goes on to explain that the prejudicial treatment of Muslims is the
main cause of their turning to violence. That argument, which is
specious on many counts prima facie, fails Sen in the most mundane
fashion – by homogenizing the causes for Muslims to adopt violent
means, Sen himself falls into an identity trap of tarring all the
"oppressors" of Muslims with the same brush. Implicitly, he assumes
that everyone treats Muslims badly, thereby eliciting a necessary
backlash.
That argument falls flat when you consider the relative freedoms
offered in the West for Muslims to practice their religion. Using the
UK as an example, Muslims enjoy substantial religious freedom, and can
claim the protection offered to everyone else by the courts and the
bureaucracy. Yet this is the same community that has been polarized
and indeed galvanized into extremism over the past few years. Based
in Cambridge, Sen had a singular opportunity to demonstrate the
underlying frustrations that have pushed British Muslim youth toward
extremism; it is quite sad that he misses the opportunity in the book.
In study after study, [1, 2] British education authorities have
pointed out that students from Caribbean, Pakistani and Bangladeshi
backgrounds lag their peers from Indian and "white" backgrounds. The
lagging communities have turned away from society as a result, with
people from a Caribbean background more likely to commit petty crimes
such as theft, and therefore 10 times as likely to be subjected to
random stop and search. [3] The response from the other two
communities has been jarringly different, with Bangladeshis more
likely to become business people, particularly in sectors such as
hotels and restaurants.
While many British businesses are successfully managed by Pakistanis,
that community also appears to contribute the greatest proportion of
cannon fodder to extremist causes. One of the reasons given for
Pakistanis to join extremist causes, by Sen and others, is that the
British police are more likely to stop and search Asians than white
people – even though the same statistics show that people of Caribbean
descent have a worse experience.
Unlike Sen, I believe the answer lies in assessing the opportunities
for advancement and the sense of entitlement that people possess. Even
if the UK (apparently) provides all ethnic groups with opportunities
for advancement, some groups such as Armenians and Bangladeshis take
these up better than other groups such as Pakistanis. This leaves us
with the other part of the paradigm, namely entitlement and needs.
Saudi Arabia and the need for Islamic reform Looking at Saudi society
as a parallel example, basic needs of the population are well
fulfilled. However, social structures do not allow for mobility, as
the ruling family controls most physical wealth, access to capital and
even the informational infrastructure. In essence, there is no upside
for young people, and nothing to gain through hard work or innovation.
To say that Saudi Arabia missed the greatest opportunity for
development in recent decades would be trite, but also true. The
ruling family’s overarching greed to control all wealth restricted it
from venturing into various business areas that could have easily been
funded with oil wealth. Instead, the family may have allowed itself to
be persuaded by economic "hitmen", [4] paying for projects that in
essence repatriated oil profits to the United States.
The result is that despite oil wealth, Saudi Arabia has neither the
hardware talents of China nor the software exports of India that could
supplement its oil revenues. Its population stands around, rich on oil
wealth but poor in human-development terms. [5] Comparisons to the
Spanish Empire, which plundered the world’s gold without creating any
industry to sustain its wealth and therefore imploded, seem too
obvious from this point.
Attempts to circumvent social strictures have put Saudis against both
the ruling family and religious institutions. This mixture of
feudalism with ecclesiastical orthodoxy disallows social reforms in
the most violent fashion. Thus an attempt to provide democracy within
traditional Bedouin society is bound to fail, while railing against
the world’s Jews conforms to the establishment’s policy of channeling
anger externally.
Here then is a case where people could define themselves as any number
of things – Saudi citizen, Arab, Sunni Muslim, religious worker,
government employee, etc – but choose instead the label of
anti-Semite. After the events of September 11, 2001, provided Arabs
with a sense of the possibility to wage asymmetric warfare on the
West, other targets such as the United States and Europe have been
added to the list. It is my contention that Arabs have chosen the
label of "anti-West", rather than having had it foisted on them.
Going back to the British example, the unemployed Pakistani is likely
to hail from an economically backward area. Poverty, rather than
ethnic background, acts as the key incitement of race hatred. [6] When
you mix people with nothing to lose (British Pakistanis) and those
with nothing to gain (Saudi youth), the result is such tragedies as
the London transit-system bombings in July last year, and the (foiled)
plot to blow up airliners this year. The common thread to the misery
is unfortunately provided by the shared religion, hence the phrase
"Islamic extremists".
My points in a previous article [7] about Islam failing its followers
centered on extremists hijacking the moderate agenda. Instead of
focusing on measures that could free pent-up social frustrations, the
extremist agenda of focusing on external threats has taken center
stage, with disastrous consequences. Religious reform would remove
the link, which is why extremists target moderates more aggressively.
What about Garfield?
All that about Sen’s putative victim to one side, where does the
United States fit into all this?
As I wrote in a previous article, [8] the US has lost its competitive
edge in manufacturing. Ford contemplates dismembering itself, while
General Motors mulls an alliance with the French (mon Dieu!). The
simple fact is that after the Cold War ended, US innovation stopped
dead in its tracks. Evaluate the engineering aspects of any American
car, and you are likely to walk away completely unimpressed. A
six-liter engine used by US car companies produces the same power as
an engine half that size from the Germans, and one-third of the size
by the Japanese (tuned, admittedly). Leave out engineering, and simple
design dynamics don’t work either – Detroit has not produced a single
desirable car in the past decade.
The United States came to the forefront of righting human-rights
wrongs such as racism, but only when its economic prosperity was
threatened by the status quo. Now, America’s lost competitiveness in
manufacturing come alongside its declining demographics (when keeping
immigrants out of calculations), and rising threats from the likes of
India and China in all areas of the global economy that it currently
dominates. In this high-pressure economic environment, rising
geopolitical risks argue for an unwelcome acceleration of the
country’s transition. Much like a worker who becomes a wife-beater
when threatened with losing his job, the US lashes out, with its anger
directed toward garnering any resource advantage that it can to
lengthen its reign at the top.
Sen’s book fails because he refuses to evaluate the impact of
underlying economic imperatives on social behavior, instead looking at
prejudices as a "given". The United States is fated to relinquish its
position as an economic superpower sooner rather than later. The
Middle East has no institutions to support the transition of its
society from oil-based wealth to that derived from competitive
products and services. The countries that have the skills to become
the next economic superpowers, namely China and India, should stay on
the sidelines as the tragedy unfolds.
Notes
[1] "Educational Inequality" by David Gillborn and
Heidi Safia Mirza, November 2000.
[2] "Ethnic Segregation and Educational Performance at
Secondary School in Bradford and Leicester" by Ron
Johnston et al, March 2006.
[3] British Crime Survey 2002/03.
[4] Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John
Perkins; see also Usinfo.state.gov for the US
government’s denial.
[5] United Nations Development Program Human
Development Report, 2005. [6] The Economist, December
13, 2001. [7] See Islam and the absence of Chinese
terrorists, Asia Times Online, August 26, 2006.
[8] Garfield with guns, Asia Times Online, September
2, 2006.
Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny by
Amartya Sen. W W Norton (March 27, 2006). ISBN:
0393060071. Price US$24.95, 224 pages.
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