Culture, Politics, and the Plight of Children: A Challenge to Researchers

Jay Moor
UN-HABITAT
Nairobi, Kenya

Citation: Moor, Jay. “Culture, Politics, and the Plight of Children: A Challenge to Researchers.” Children, Youth and Environments 13(2), 2003. Retrieved [date] from http://colorado.edu/journals/cye.

Having worked for the United Nations for over 13 years on both normative and operational issues, I have been as frustrated as Professor Dasberg with the veil of sovereignty that hides national bad habits. Prior to the mid-90s, good governance as a subject for international negotiation was taboo. The “C” word, corruption, was unmentionable. Over time, with the almost total failure of international development schemes, member states could no longer pretend that governance and leadership were sovereign matters, out of bounds. As all other avenues to development led to nearly naught, even the UN has come to recognize the root problems that can no longer be ignored. Issues of good governance and integrity are now fundamental to most development programs. I must say that research had little to do with it. Most of the change was brought about by a few international civil servants who could feel the damage that was caused by lack of accountability, lack of transparency and just plain bad leadership.

Even as openness and honesty have been thrust upon member states, we should not fool ourselves into believing that politicians will stand still for it. Beyond sovereignty, there is a great wall– culture– to hide behind. This is evident in a number of problem areas, not least of all in the worsening plight of children.

The child as innocent lamb is a hypocritical myth. In the real world, children are seen as factors of production; as future enemies; as commodities to be bought, sold and used; as sex objects; but not as the beatific lambs of the Bible. From the global vantage point of the United Nations, it is painfully obvious that human children are not universally accepted as gifts from God, little angels to be cherished and nurtured to adulthood. Evidence lies in the brick and carpet factories of South Asia; in the brothels of China; in the sculleries of Kuwait; in the crack houses of urban America; on the stoop labor farms of Mexico; on the urban streets of Africa; in locked and sealed cargo containers on the high seas; as well as in the bedrooms of many, many socially prominent men all over the world.

The Ten Commandments would have children honoring their fathers and mothers but they do not commit parents to care for their own children. What were the adult authors of the Decalogue thinking of? That children are always lovingly cared for but then become naturally ungrateful beyond reason? Or that we might really despise our parents for things they have done unto us? Certainly, physical and sexual abuse were not unknown 2,500 years ago. The dark-hearted among us might view the Fifth Commandment (Fourth for Catholics) as an instrument to assist these ancient perpetrators in covering up their crimes.

The commandment in Exodus 20:5 promises that the children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and great-great grandchildren will be punished for the misdeeds of their fathers. Where did this thought come from? And where does it take the human race except into a permanent hell of domination, caste and class? The point is that a globalized culture is no less human than many of the repressive rural cultures we have seen throughout history and, in many ways, is a device to harness the fears and frailties of those cultures. In doing so, globalization expands the scope and scale of man's inhumanity, but it did not invent it.

Corporate business, engaged in liberalized trade and finance, can squeeze the compassion from life. But so can traditional culture. It is usually the people who are marginalized and struggling economically that cannot afford to be human, as measured against today's norms. Stories of the truly good person abound precisely because they make good stories and in some way offer hope amidst the brutality of everyday life. In reality, among individuals, parents and corporations, those struggling to survive will “eat their own children.” Eventually, such behaviors simply become bad habits that are passed from one generation to the next and hidden in cultural closets.

Even the kindest, most gentle politician dare not open that door because of the dirty secrets that may be revealed– the economic or sexual horrors that may be brought out for public inspection and political reaction. But, without social and psychological exploration into the darkest corners of these cultural closets, humanity will continue to con itself with its own self-destructive myths, and the children will continue to suffer.

Good empirical research can add knowledge to the common pool but, because new knowledge may threaten someone's hidden interests, it can be very unwelcome. The terms practical , academic and ivory tower are commonly used by politicians, their sycophants and courtiers (addicted to reflected glory and indentured to pension) as a way of shunting aside unwelcome information before it reaches the main line of common and, therefore, politically useful knowledge.

In the dictionary of tactical politics, we can find the following definitions:

• Practical: razor wire used to restrain those who would test the boundaries of conventional wisdom.
• Academic: a verbally propelled grenade used to neutralize those that are in the process of leaping over the fence anyway.
• Ivory Tower: solitary confinement for those who attempt to escape from the conventional.

Jeremy Bentham is every politician's favorite social philosopher because his theory of Utilitarianism can be used to delay all sorts of critical decisions– while the greatest pain and pleasure for the greatest number is being calculated– and still appear to be scientific. In the end, unwelcome results can be fiddled by claiming that a decision of direct advantage to the rich will benefit everyone because of its gravitational inevitability. Utilitarianism and its bastard son, Trickle Down, justify deferred solutions. While we all know the plight of the child may be critical, it's just too big a problem to handle on a case-by-case basis. It is now part of our culture to let the economy deal with it. Let's reserve our resources for the really big macro-solutions like supply-side economics that will eventually improve everyone's lives. In the meantime children suffer and die, collateral damage during some indeterminate transition period.

The United Nations system subscribes to both Bentham's Utilitarianism and its arch-rival, the theory of Natural Rights. UN agencies are responsible for gathering national statistics that help us to know what the relative economic, social and environmental conditions are amongst countries of the world. This evidence of pain and pleasure, when compared among countries, has been useful in opening the eyes of politicians and their constituents. Even so, there has been fear of digging too deeply into any member state's pile of dirty linen, so UN reports are filled with aggregate numbers, not sub-national statistics. That the slums of a fairly livable city can be a much worse living environment than the worst rural slums cannot be known without research that disaggregates the data within cities. The aggregate average of pain and pleasure, however, is as close as we can currently get to a description of reality without ruffling political feathers. Only in a few spectacular cases (e.g., starving children in Ethiopia) have the micro-realities of poverty been revealed in the politically powerful way that Jacob Riis revealed them in the United States through his photos and essays ( How the Other Half Lives ) in the late nineteenth century.

To get around this proscription on too much of a good thing, the United Nations has held a remarkable series of global conferences over the past decade and a half, establishing a set of universal norms for “good behavior” in a variety of sectors, covering the environment, human settlements, food supply, health, children and governance, among others. The backlash to these negotiated “natural rights” from vested interests– disguised as cultural apologists– has been immediate, taking place even during the negotiations, when phrases like, “according to the needs of each country,” were added to neuter some powerful commitments and recommendations that would otherwise apply to all of humanity.

So, when vested interests are threatened, politicians at all levels can find ingenious ways to allay the threat. When the threat is posed by empirical research, both the research and researchers can be ridiculed or relegated to the 2 p.m. Sunday news. When outside actors set unwelcome standards, it can be effective just to ignore them.

Faced with this mighty stonewall, academic research must alter its approach to the pool of common knowledge. Research needs more advocates and innovative outlets. We don't need less research. But, when bread and circuses are the order of the day, certain principles of orderly and predictable behavior need to be altered and guerilla tactics adopted. In this battle for hearts and minds, shame and guilt can become quite effective political weapons, along with the pride that comes with acknowledgement of positive accomplishment.

Researchers, don't lock yourselves away and complain that no one listens. Once the research is done (according to your exacting standards), the main challenge is how to make people listen and then to offer them the tools to become politically engaged, using the new knowledge that you are supplying. Like nearly everything else in this interconnected world, social research must become more systemic and holistic, encompassing both ancient history and modern politics in order to knock down cultural bad habits.

Jay Moor is Chief of Strategic Planning for UN-HABITAT, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya (www.unhabitat.org). Since receiving his Ph.D. in urban planning from the University of Washington in Seattle in 1974, Dr. Moor has served as a planner and policy analyst within the USA and internationally. Joining UN-HABITAT in 1990, he has managed development projects in Asia, has headed both the Global Urban Observatory and the global Urban Indicators Programme, and was chief editor and author of the State of the World's Cities 2001 report.