ABSTRACT
up learning more about certain European cultural tensions than one does about the non-European cultures which are supposedly under examination. Bauer, in particular, exhibits the tension between a dynamic utilitarianism and a romantic anti-industrialisation creed. This is evident in the way he uses the term ‘development’. On the one hand, he identifies it with material progress (and the alleged favourable attitudes to material progress), while on the other he persistently abstains on the question whether material progress is desirable [Bauer, 1972:149]. This ambivalence is deep-seated in European, and especially British, culture. This sets him somewhat at odds with the ultra-conservatives who are his current political allies. They have no doubts that industrialisation ought never to have been allowed to happen.What are the policy implications that emerge from this psycho-social account of the determinants of development? Something that looks like a policy implication would be an exhortation not to persecute or expel minority groups who possess the attitudes allegedly favouring material progress. Third World governments are certainly harshly condemned for doing the opposite [Bauer, 1981: 79, 84, 94, 106,112, 250]. The principle here is that one should not persecute anybody, whether their attitudes favour material progress or not. But, leaving that aside, the picture is usually infinitely more complex and tragic than the simple black comedy of Third World governments cutting off their noses to spite their faces, which Bauer presents to his audience.4The other policy implication which the ‘favourable-attitudes-of-groups’ theory carries is that external contacts should be expanded. This one seems merely confused and foolish. It derives directly from J. S. Mill’s views of the 1840s, which were formed before the major modern examples of the fatal impact of Europeans on aboriginals were fully understood [Hirschman, 1982: 1471, note 3]. Should external contacts be expanded regardless of whether they are good or bad, fortunate or unfortunate, or are all external contacts by definition good? To affirm the latter is self evidently not true. The sale of Nestle’s powdered baby milk to African mothers whose poor knowledge of hygiene made bottle-feeding deadly to their children is just one of many possible examples of the way in which external contacts can have dire consequences for those contacted.Large-scale tragedies that can occur through external contacts are littered through modern history, ranging from nineteenth-century Tahiti to twentieth-century Kampuchea. Other modern examples of virtual extermination or genocide are the aboriginal populations of North America and Australia. Bauer’s treatment of these two classic cases is so inconsistent as to be almost schizophrenic. On the one hand, he acknowledges the facts [1981: 45, 189, 192,194,196\. On the other hand, we are told, and presumably meant also to believe, that:
