fucktoyprincess
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quote:
ORIGINAL: thompsonx
quote:
Poverty is not going to ever go away (when in human history has poverty not existed?).
There are societies in which poverty does not exist.
The mbuti of central africa have not known poverty in the 6000 years of their recorded existance. Poverty will exist in any society that allows one group to control the means of production.
The Mbuti are a nomadic pygmy tribe in the Congo. I would define the overall geo-political unit there as the Congo, and not simply the forest where the Mbuti thrive. I would liken the Mbuti to a society like the Amish - i.e., a self-sufficient society within a broader political unit. But the existence of the Amish in the U.S. does not mean poverty does not exist in the U.S. And the Amish exist only because the U.S. protects their right to their religion and their way of life. So they are highly dependent on those policies for their very existence.
The Mbuti also face other challenges from other people in the Congo. Challenges that cannot be met without appropriate policies and protections in place. And certainly extreme poverty exists in other parts of the Congo. I would not cite the Mbuti as evidence that the Congo has eradicated poverty.
I attach the following which to me presents a slightly different perspective on the Mbuti. It seems to me that they still require policies to protect them. Again, without policy designed to prevent poverty, poverty, and its associated ills like female exploitation, disease, etc. does often result. It is very difficult in today's world for people to live completely independently unless they have some protections in place (like the Amish in the U.S.)
The following is from Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmy_peoples
Systematic discrimination
Raja James Sheshardi of the American University conducted a case study on the Pygmies of Africa and concluded that deforestation has greatly affected their everyday lives. Pygmy culture is threatened today by the forces of political and economic change. In recent times, this has manifested itself into an open conflict over the resources of the tropical rain-forest, it is a conflict that the Pygmy are losing.
Historically, the Pygmy have always been viewed as inferior by both colonial authorities and the village dwelling Bantu tribes.[28] This has translated into systematic discrimination. One early example was the capture of Pygmy children under the auspices of the Belgian colonial authorities, who exported Pygmy children to zoos throughout Europe, including the world's fair in the United States in 1907.[28] Pygmies are often evicted from their land and given the lowest paying jobs. At a state level, Pygmies are not considered citizens by most African states and are refused identity cards, deeds to land, health care and proper schooling. Government policies and multinational corporations involved in massive deforestation have exacerbated this problem by forcing more Pygmies out of their traditional homelands and into villages and cities where they often are marginalized, impoverished and abused by the dominant culture.
Today there are roughly 500,000 Pygmies left in the rain-forest of Central Africa.[28] This population is rapidly decreasing as poverty, intermarriage with Bantu peoples, Westernization, and deforestation all gradually destroy their way of life and culture along with their genetic uniqueness.
The greatest environmental problem the Pygmies seem to be facing is the loss of their traditional homeland, the tropical forests of Central Africa. In several countries such as Cameroon, Gabon, Central African Republic and the Republic of Congo this is due to deforestation and the desire of several governments in Central Africa to evict the Pygmies from their forest habitat in order to cash in on quick profits from the sale of hardwood and the resettlement of farmers onto the cleared land. In some cases, as in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this conflict is violent. Certain groups, such as the Hutus of the Interahamwe, wish to eliminate the Pygmy and take the resources of the forest as a military conquest, using the resources of the forest for military as well as economic advancement.[28] Since the Pygmies rely on the forest for their physical as well as cultural survival, as these forests disappear, so do the Pygmy.
Along with Raja Sheshardi, the fPcN-Global.org website had conducted research on the pygmies. The human rights organization states that as the forest has receded under logging activities, its original inhabitants have been pushed into populated areas to join the formal economy, working as casual laborers or on commercial farms and being exposed to new diseases.[29] This shift has brought them into closer contact with neighboring ethnic communities whose HIV levels are generally higher. This has led to the spread of HIV/AIDS into the pygmy group.
Since poverty has become very prevalent in the Pygmy communities, sexual exploitation of indigenous women has become a common practice. Commercial sex has been bolstered by logging, which often places large groups of male laborers in camps which are set up in close contact with the Pygmy communities.
Human rights groups have also reported widespread sexual abuse of indigenous women in the conflict-ridden eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Despite these risks, Pygmy populations generally have poor access to health services and information about HIV. The British medical journal, The Lancet, published a review showing that Pygmy populations often had worse access to health care than neighboring communities.[30] According to the report, even where health care facilities exist, many people do not use them because they cannot pay for consultations and medicines, they do not have the documents and identity cards needed to travel or obtain hospital treatment, and they are subjected to humiliating and discriminatory treatment.[29]
Studies in Cameroon and ROC in the 1980s and 1990s showed a lower prevalence of HIV in pygmy populations than among neighboring ones, but recent increases have been recorded. One study found that the HIV prevalence among the Baka pygmies in eastern Cameroon went from 0.7 percent in 1993 to 4 percent in 2003.[29]
p.s. I stand by my statement that poverty is not going to ever go away and that how a society chooses to redistribute wealth will start to matter a lot. We can be enlightened about our approach or stick our heads in the sand. Without policies in place to prevent expatiation, without policies in place to redistribute, you will always have people who are marginalized.
< Message edited by fucktoyprincess -- 3/8/2012 1:19:49 PM >
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