CHAPTER 9
Cultures of the Global North and South
In early 1998 a famine descended upon southern Sudan,1 despite a United Nations–led effort to monitor and alleviate food shortages in the region. Aid workers suspected that military and tribal chiefs had been hoarding the food, so they began delivering rations directly to the most vulnerable people: nursing mothers, children, the ill, and the elderly. To the workers’ dismay, however, these beneficiaries rerouted the rations right back to their leaders. The aid workers concluded that corruption and inequality were so ingrained in the local culture that the least powerful people were colluding in their own destruction.
Anthropologist Simon Harrigan was sent in to investigate. One day he followed an elderly woman after she had received her ration. She indeed secreted the food away to her chief, rather than eating it all by herself. But instead of digging in to his newly supersized supper, the chief added the woman’s contribution to a collective pot. He then split the pot equitably among his people, including the elderly woman. Harrigan discovered that these redistribution practices were the norm, while so-called resource capture by leaders and other elites was relatively rare.2
Indeed, the Sudanese chiefs did such a good job apportioning food that no individual suddenly starved. Instead, the entire group slowly starved together. This proved disastrous; because aid workers were trained to look for early and isolated cases of severe malnutrition, they missed the subtler signs of a gradual mass starvation. As a result, when the effects of malnutrition finally became apparent, they were widespread and catastrophic. In 1998 alone, the famine claimed more than seventy thousand lives.
Aid organizations eventually realized that the immediate cause of the food crisis was not inefficient resource distribution. Instead, the problem was not enough resources to begin with. The crisis halted when the agencies simply sent more food.3
Yet more food is only a temporary fix for a bigger problem. Every year, the wealthy nations of the Global North spend billions of dollars to save the poor nations of the Global South from starvation, infectious diseases, ethnic tensions, and inefficient markets. If headlines are to be believed, however, this aid decays into second helpings for corrupt leaders, fake drugs for sick customers, stolen arms for civil wars, and special privileges for sketchy companies.
The culprit? “Culture,” many experts say, although they seldom explain what culture is, how it works, or how it transforms aid into evil. We agree that culture is partly responsible for charity gone wrong. Unlike many of these experts, though, we lay the blame not on any one culture, but on the collision between the cultures of donors in the Global North and recipients in the Global South.
The Global North-South divide is mostly one of wealth, and is admittedly fuzzy. Nations with the highest gross domestic products (GDP), per capita incomes, levels of industrialization, standards of living, and development of infrastructure are called the Global North. Most, but not all, of these nations are in the Northern Hemisphere (notable exceptions include Australia and New Zealand). The remaining nations comprise the Global South, and include Mexico, Central America, and South America; the Middle East and North Africa (MENA); the rest of Africa; Southeast Asia;4 and India.5
Despite their amazing diversity, the people of the Global North have in common a sense of their selves as independent. For them, including the aid workers in Sudan, people are unique individuals, separate from their groups, in control of their fates, equal in rank, and free to act in their own self-interest. Indeed, for many economists in the Global North, the definition of being rational is acting in one’s own self-interest.
In contrast, the amazingly diverse people of the Global South have in common a sense of their selves as interdependent. For them, including the Sudanese famine victims, people live their lives through relationships, and see themselves as strands in a web, nodes in a network, or fingers on a hand. As a result, ties to kith and kin drive individual actions. For instance, in their analysis of the Sudanese aid fiasco, economists Vijayendra Rao and Michael Walton conclude, “Survival of the kinship system was considered almost as important as physical survival.” In other words, people would forgo food for themselves to preserve the ways of their group. “Even a cursory reading of the anthropological literature on southern Sudan [would have revealed this and] could have resulted in a more effective response,” the authors write.6
When the Global North attempts to help the Global South, the clash of independence and interdependence undermines many of its efforts. On the wealthier, northern side of the equation, scientists, policymakers, and aid workers assume that people everywhere operate according to the ground rules of the independent self. In the Sudanese famine, for instance, aid workers assumed that a person given food would keep it for herself, with no regard for the needs and practices of everyone else in her kinship group. Largely trained in the Global North, these workers strove to deliver their aid with efficiency, accountability, and transparency.
On the poorer, southern side of the equation, what donors call “irrationality,” “corruption,” and “inefficiency” are what many aid recipients call “sound operating principles.” The mistrust that pervades West Africa, the cronyism that besets India, the conflicts that pepper the Middle East, and the slow pace that hobbles Mexico are the flip sides of interdependent qualities, including a profound sense of history in West Africa, of duty in India, of honor in the MENA region, and of simpatía (Spanish for “pleasant and harmonious social relations”) in Mexico. The culture cycles supporting these different aspects of interdependence have brought meaning and order to the Global South for the past few millennia. And though the shape that interdependence takes in each of these regions is distinct, all versions promote and proceed from a notion of the self that is relational, similar, adjusting, rooted, and ranked.
The polite term for the poor countries of the Global South is developing nations. Many assume that once these interdependent cultures are all grown up, they will adopt independent culture cycles. Although GDP and independence are correlated,7 some of the most successful nations of the world (for example, Japan, Korea, and India) do not seem to be trading in their interdependence for independence. Indeed, to many Global Southerners, the efficiency and detachment of Global Northerners seem cold and soulless. Our best guess is that most of the Global South will embrace the parts of independence that are useful to them, and leave the others behind.
In this chapter, we predict which independent elements will migrate into the culture cycles of the Global South. We also suggest how the Global North can boost the interdependence in its culture cycles to quell and even avoid conflicts with its neighbors down south. By wisely wielding both independence and interdependence, selves on both sides of the economic equator can help bridge the differences between them and better leverage each other’s strengths.
In 1997 the Ghanaian newspaper People and Places ran an article with the headline “Fear Grips Accra.” The article read:
These so-called jujumen [i.e., witchcraft practitioners] who are operating under cover “infect” innocent people with mysterious “disease” through bodily contact, especially by shaking hands with their victims. Soon after this, the victims allegedly experience a burning and realize that their manhood has disappeared. According to the reports, whilst these innocent victims are going through this nightmarish experience, a member of the syndicate quickly approaches them claiming to know someone who could restore their manhood for an exorbitant fee.8
This was not the only article that summer about penis shrinking. Psychologist Glenn Adams, who was doing a Peace Corps stint in Sierra Leone at the time, was intrigued by the number and variety of these sensational stories, and by constant rumors of the evil eye, the invisible hand, and other unseen malevolent forces. He also knew that he was not living among primitive or paranoid people. So he wanted to find out, what is the local logic behind these beliefs that, to a Northern observer, seem so irrational?
Several years later, Adams returned to West Africa,9 this time to Ghana. He and his colleagues studied newspaper reports of penis shrinkings. They interviewed witnesses, victims, and skeptics. Some of their sources thought witchcraft, or juju, was the culprit, sent in by enemies to settle old scores. Others asserted that the accusers didn’t believe in witchcraft themselves, but were cynically exploiting other people’s beliefs to bring down enemies.
Noting the common theme of enemies, Adams settled in to study the social science literature on enemyship. His discovery? There was no literature. He found plenty of studies on friendship, and on romantic love and familial love. He also found plenty of studies on stereotyping, prejudice, and intergroup hostility. But an idea that was very real and prevalent in West Africa, the idea that enemies are everywhere, was nowhere to be found in Northern social sciences.10
So Adams established a new area of study. At first, he simply surveyed people from various walks of life (students, urban professionals, rural dwellers) in Ghana and the United States about their enemies. The results were dramatic: In Ghana, from 60 to 90 percent of people reported that they believed the world harbored “people who hate you, personally, to the extent of wishing for your downfall or trying to sabotage your progress.” Their belief in these enemies was emphatic: “Even Jesus Christ had enemies,” said one respondent. “Who are you? If you want to live in a fool’s paradise, fine. But as for me…I know I have enemies.”11
Yet in the San Francisco Bay Area, a hotbed of cut-throat entrepreneurialism and corporate intrigue, only 10 percent of respondents thought they had enemies. In the Midwest, that figure rose to 20 percent. (See chapter 6 for more about the interdependence of the Midwest.) Adams also found that who makes up the enemy pool differs. Ghanaian respondents thought that enemies came from close to home: family, friends, neighbors, and schoolmates. “Even your best friend, somebody who might be close, might be your enemy,” said one Ghanaian man. The few Americans who did perceive enemies, in contrast, saw them outside their own circles: business competitors and members of different social, ethnic, or political groups.12
Why would the supposedly interdependent selves of West Africa drive wedges of animosity between themselves and the people closest to them? The answer, ironically, lies in interdependence itself. West Africans see interdependence everywhere—between the self and others, mind and body, spirit and matter, past and future, long-gone ancestors and newborn children.13 Instead of “I think, therefore I am,” in West Africa they say, “I am because we are, and because we are, therefore I am.”14
With so many social ties, even the most conscientious interdependent self is bound to cause a tangle. So when bad things happen to themselves or others, many West Africans look first to the people close to them, seen and unseen, and try to understand what the bungle was. They then attempt to appease their tormentors or otherwise undo their influence.
In contrast, Americans with independent selves construct their worlds in terms of choice. If a partner doesn’t play nice, the offended can simply choose to end the relationship. Easy come, easy go. As one of Adams’s American respondents put it “I think [having enemies] is up to the individual. If someone dislikes me then they can, but that does not make them my enemy. That is up to me to decide, and I choose not.” An American woman likewise cited individual choice as the linchpin of enemyship: “I cannot quite understand how someone would make an enemy, or why one would continue to interact with somebody one did not like.”15
Yet in West Africa, as across the Global South, relationships are seldom voluntary. They cannot be unmade when they become troublesome. People do not choose relations based on their preferences. Instead, people work overtime to maintain balance in their networks. Interdependence is a full-time interpersonal housekeeping project, and failing to keep the lines of relationship clear can result in accusations, threats, and even bodily harm.
Why are West Africans so preoccupied with enemyship? A close look at the culture cycles in this region uncovers interactions and institutions that simultaneously nurture deep roots and distrust.
Songs, poems, painted slogans, and stickers everywhere warn, “No Man Is without Enemy,” “I Am Afraid of My Friends, Even YOU,” and “Let My Enemy Live Long and See What I Will Be in the Future.” Many people display amulets to ward off envy, sabotage, and juju. In a practice also common in the Mediterranean, families seclude newborns and their mothers to avoid the “evil eye” of envious observers. And lest anyone forget where the enemies live, a popular proverb advises, “If an insect bites you, it comes from inside your clothes.”16
Reflecting and reinforcing these interactions, in turn, are powerful institutions—and the powerful lack thereof—that sow mistrust throughout West Africa. The most powerful of these was the slave trade that plagued the region for more than four hundred years. From 1500 to 1900, slave traders forced between seven and twelve million Africans to undertake the infamous Middle Passage across the Atlantic. At least one million people died during this harrowing voyage, and unknown numbers more died during their capture.17
Interviews of slaves in the 1850s reveal the violence, deceit, and betrayal inherent in the practice of enslaving Africans. Many of the respondents told linguist Sigismund Koelle that they were kidnapped and forced into slavery. Others were taken during war. Some recounted being tricked onto a slave ship by a friend or relative. Still others were enslaved through a rigged judicial process that found them guilty of witchcraft and then bundled them and their families off to a slave ship.18
Although the slave trade in West Africa has been largely dormant for more than one hundred years, the institution fuels West African culture cycles to this day. Economists Nathan Nunn and Leonard Wantchekon used archival data to map the intensity of the slave trade in sub-Saharan Africa over five hundred years. They then compiled several contemporary studies on current attitudes in seventeen West African, East African, and South African countries, including measures of how much people trust their neighbors, relatives, and local government. They discovered that the more their ancestors encountered the slave trade in the past, the more modern-day residents mistrust each other in the present. An ugly history has left an ugly scar.19
The horrors of slavery are still palpable in contemporary interactions. In a local language of Benin, for instance, the definition of the word untrustworthy is “capable of tricking one’s friend or neighbor into slavery.” Similarly, many West African countries have proverbs such as “He will sell you and enjoy it.”20
European colonialism from the early nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century also did much to sow mistrust in the region. Pursuing a divide-and-conquer strategy, imperial powers manipulated existing tribal rivalries and created new conflicts. When the colonizers departed, the animosities remained. As a result, West African countries have had great difficulty establishing stable economic and legal institutions. Although Ghana and Nigeria score fairly well on the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index, other West African countries rank among the lowest in the world.21 Without strong institutions to keep them in check, civil wars and crime are widespread. And because police and courts are often corrupt, vigilante justice is rampant.22
When we examine West African culture cycles, we see that the mistrust and instability in the region are not irrational, and rumors of penis shrinking are not the result of paranoid delusions. Instead, they are the understandable responses of interdependent people to horrifying histories. “You’re not paranoid if they’re really following you,” the old saying goes. Moreover, if you have an interdependent self that is exquisitely sensitive to relationships, you more gravely bear the marks of a violent and treacherous past.
Interdependent in a different way, India inspires a different complaint from the Global North: you can’t get anything done for all the corruption. The form of corruption that gets the Global North’s goat is cronyism, the practice of appointing friends and family to positions of authority, regardless of their qualifications. Because of cronyism, families control businesses, and political parties control almost everything else. The results can be large and bad. An emerging view holds that the Asian economic crisis of 1997 came about because bank officers made too many loans to friends and family who could not repay them.23
At a more local level, cronyism makes life harder for the little guy, reports journalist Edward Luce in his book In Spite of the Gods: The Rise of Modern India. The political culture, he writes, includes “preferential access to a whole range of public goods, from free first-class plane and rail tickets, the opportunity to jump queues, the ability to pull strings, and the availability of free services for which the poor have to pay…. If you are rich and important, you rarely pay. If you are poor, you usually pay through the nose, and there is no guarantee you will get what you pay for.”24
India pleads guilty to these charges of cronyism, and has spawned its own dissenters and instituted its own reforms. At the same time, however, many Indians ask, how else could you run a business or government? Don’t organizations work best when people know and trust one another? And if you had the ability to lift an entire village out of poverty, why would you choose a village of strangers over a village of your own relatives?
A quick survey of the interdependent culture cycle of India reveals that cronyism is not always the result of greedy villains grabbing the fat of the land for their own people. Instead, it follows from a millennia-old moral code that stresses interpersonal duties over abstract notions of justice, law, and individual rights. In such a cycle, the Global North’s cry for impartiality rushes headlong into India’s understanding of morality.
Psychologist Joan Miller and her research teams have spent the past few decades documenting how European Americans and Hindu Indians solve dilemmas between relational duty, justice, and choice. To experience one of her studies, imagine this scenario: A man named Ben is on his way to his best friend’s wedding, bearing the bride and groom’s wedding rings. But then his wallet is stolen, leaving him without enough money for a train ticket. To arrive at the wedding on time, he must catch the very next train. While he is trying to figure out what to do, he notices that a well-dressed man sitting next to him in the train station has left his cashmere coat. Ben sees a train ticket sticking out of the pocket.25
Ben must think fast: should he break the law and steal the ticket so that he can get to the wedding in time and deliver the rings to his best friend, or should he leave the ticket alone, even though it means letting his best friend down? What would you decide?
If you are European American, you likely think that Ben should obey the law, as did the majority of European-American participants in this study. But if you are a Hindu Indian, you likely think that Ben should put his buddy’s needs first and nick the ticket. In the Hindu moral universe, obligations to people you know rank higher than obligations to such abstract principles as “justice,” “individual rights,” and “rule of law.”
With dozens of findings like this under her belt, Miller concludes that European Americans hew to a justice- or rights-based moral code, while Hindu Indians follow a duty- or caring-based moral code.26
Obligations to other people shape more mundane decisions in India, as well. Along with Hazel and Alana, psychologist Krishna Savani asked middle-class Indians and Americans how much they liked many types of shirts, shoes, watches, and other consumer goods shown to be equally desirable and familiar to both groups. We then asked these same participants to choose which of these items they would most like to have for themselves. Like good independent I’s, the Americans chose the items they liked the most. In other words, their preferences and their choices were tightly correlated. But for the Indians, personal liking was less closely linked to their choices.27 Savani explains: “Indians habitually consider what other people in their lives would choose for them before making their own selections. And so you often wind up choosing what you think your mom thinks you should have, or your sister or other people you know; not what you personally want.”
European Americans and Hindu Indians also put more weight on the welfare of others than on their personal druthers. Consider this classic parable:
A man and his wife lived with the husband’s elderly father. The daughter-in-law was always thinking of how they could get rid of the old man. One day she had an idea. She told her husband, let us carry Father to Puri [a Hindu pilgrimage site] in a basket. There we will leave him on the Great Road in front of the Temple of Jaganath…. The husband agreed to this plan. But their son had overheard everything. He first warned his grandfather of the plot. Then he went to his father and said, “Father, you leave Grandfather at Puri just as you have said. But please do not leave the basket. Bring the basket back. Otherwise, what shall I use to carry you to Puri when you become old?” The husband understood. He confessed everything to his father and begged his father’s forgiveness.
Anthropologist Richard Shweder first heard this story in rural Bhubaneswar, Orissa, India, and reported it in his book Why Do Men Barbecue?28 Shweder finds that India is awash in stories like this one—stories about putting duty above your own personal preferences.
Americans also tell stories about their duties to friends and family, and feel closely connected to the important people in their lives. But when the needs of family or friends conflict with their own personal needs and preferences, European Americans tend to opt for the latter.
For instance, imagine that you have a brother, and he has asked you to help him move to a new apartment. You share many interests with your brother and have a warm and affectionate relationship with him. How willing are you to help him?
Now imagine that you are not similar to your brother and do not feel close to him. How willing are you to help this brother?
If you are a European American, you are likely to feel more responsibility to help a brother you like than a brother you do not like, as did the European-American participants in a study from Joan Miller’s lab. Whether you help depends on your personal preferences. It is a matter of choice. But if you are a Hindu Indian, you are equally willing to help both brothers. A moral obligation is a moral obligation. Whether you like your brother or not, helping him is a matter of right and wrong.29
Examining the culture cycles in Hindu India, we see that daily interactions and institutions reinforce the idea that relationships with family and friends come first. Take a peek into the windows of many Hindu Indian homes at bedtime and you will see just how complete the weaving of individuals into families is. Most Hindu Indians live with three generations under the same roof. Parents wouldn’t think of letting their children sleep alone—even older children, and even in families wealthy enough for every member to have his or her own room. In contrast, recent American bestsellers include Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems, in which Robert Ferber details his famous method for training children to sleep by themselves; and Go the F**k to Sleep, a bedtime story for grown-ups whose children’s lack of sleep is impinging on the parents’ independence.30
To show how important it is to Indians to sleep next to their children, Shweder and his colleagues gave U.S. and Indian participants the task of arranging the following family members into two rooms for sleeping: father, mother, son (age fifteen), son (eleven), son (eight), daughter (fourteen), and daughter (three).
Among the Indians, 75 percent selected an arrangement in which the father slept with the three sons and the mother slept with the two daughters. Meanwhile, 44 percent of the Americans picked a sleeping solution that no Indians chose—the father and the mother sleeping with two daughters in one room, and the three sons sleeping together with no parent in another room. Many other Americans said the problem could not be solved; more rooms were needed.31
Because families, not individuals, are where the action is for Hindu Indians, whom to marry is a decision the whole family helps make. Even today, more than 80 percent of all marriages in India are arranged.32 Brides- and grooms-to-be usually guide the search, and the woman usually (although not always) has the power to veto candidates. Once Indian families arrange a match, the couple schedules multiple meetings in person or over the phone to see if they fulfill each other’s qualifications.
To find their son- or daughter-in-law, some pragmatic Hindu Indian parents advertise online and in publications, stressing their family’s origins, heritage, and social standing. One recent ad reads, “Patel parents invite professional for their U.S.-raised daughter, 26, (computer science); family owns construction firm.” Contrast this with the ad of a European-American woman searching for her own match: “Where shall I kiss thee? Across Sierra shoulder, skiing? Between acts of Aida, sharing? Forthright, funny, fiery, fit, seeking perceptive, profound, permanent partner.” Instead of the Indian goal of matching families, the American ad aims to match personal preferences and traits.33
Many Westerners are certain that arranged marriages are oppressive, especially for women. Yet studies of arranged marriages suggest that these couples are no less satisfied than couples in so-called love marriages.34 Many Indian women also disagree with the Western insistence that people choose their own partners. In her 2009 book, First Comes Marriage: Modern Relationship Advice from the Wisdom of Arranged Marriages, British journalist Reva Seth interviewed three hundred women whose parents chose their spouses. “Over the long term that takes a lot of pressure off a relationship,” she writes. When families get involved in a marriage from the beginning, they also bring with them a huge support network to help the couple work it out, she finds. And arranged marriages are not without love. “In India, they say first we marry, then we fall in love.”35
Bollywood, India’s film industry and one of the largest centers of film production in the world, does its part to support and reflect the importance of duty and obligation in relationships, just as America’s Hollywood does its part to support and reflect the importance of choice and self-actualization in relationships. In one Bollywood hit, Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (released in the English-speaking world as Straight from the Heart), a handsome man and beautiful woman fall in love, but the woman’s parents don’t approve of the marriage. The man leaves India for Italy, and the woman marries the man who received the parental okay.
The new husband feels so responsible for his wife’s needs and happiness that he takes her to Italy to find her lost “true” love. Not knowing of her marriage, the first love proposes again. At this instant, the woman recognizes that she has already found true love, as “true” love comes from fulfilling obligations to the family.36 She happily returns to India with her husband.
When European-American college students watch this film, many are perplexed. The husband’s denial of his own desires makes little sense to them. But in an Indian culture cycle that turns on duty and obligation, sacrificing for others is not tantamount to depriving the self. Instead, it is a way of strengthening the interdependent self and being a good, moral person.
Long before Bollywood blockbusters, Hindu stories institutionalized the core ideas of interdependence on the Indian subcontinent. Hinduism is the most widespread of India’s religions, and its themes, plots, and characters infuse everyone’s daily life—from children’s cartoons, to political campaigns, to the air fresheners swinging from rearview mirrors throughout the country.
One Hindu tale that drives home the centrality of familial duty is that of Ganesh and Karthik’s race around the world. Ganesh is the Hindu god of beginnings and the remover of obstacles. With a human body and an elephant’s head, he would seem less fleet than his younger brother, Karthik, who appears as a beautiful human boy.
Ganesh and Karthik set up a competition to find out who can complete a lap around the world the fastest. Karthik is confident that he will win, not only because of his grace and strength, but also because of his pet peacock. With a mouse as his sidekick, Ganesh’s victory seems highly improbable. What Ganesh lacks in aerodynamics and feathered friends, however, he makes up for in wisdom. Reasoning that his parents represent the entire universe, he folds his hands and, with great devotion, walks around them.
“What are you doing?” Ganesh’s father asks.
“I am your son,” explains Ganesh. “To me, you two make up my whole world.” When Karthik returns from his globetrotting, he accepts that Ganesh has won the competition. With a celebration that foreshadows Bollywood musical extravaganzas to come, everyone praises Ganesh.37
In the mind’s eye of the Global North, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region conjure images of rock throwing, grenade launching, and suicide bombing. Even before the attacks of 9/11 and the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Global North’s view of MENA was extremely negative. Recall, for instance, the opening song of the Disney film Aladdin, which portrays the Middle East as a barbaric, camel-ridden place where lopping off other people’s ears is a common pastime.38
MENA is not the world’s most violent region—that distinction belongs to Central America.39 Yet MENA violence has a distinctive quality that lands it on the front pages of newspapers and the ten o’clock news. Recall, for example, the autumn of 2005, when the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published several cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad in less-than-adulatory fashion. One frame showed Muhammad wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse. Another featured him in heaven, greeting a line of sooty suicide bombers with “Stop! Stop! We ran out of virgins!”40
To Western audiences, the cartoonists were just exercising their freedoms of speech and religion. But among some MENA audiences, the perception was decidedly different. Protestors took to the streets, calling the cartoons Islamophobic and racist. They burned European flags. They attacked Danish embassies, setting fire to several and bombing the compound in Pakistan. By the time the dust had settled, more than a hundred people were dead.41
Most people do not like caricatures of their religion’s leaders, but they seldom respond with murder and mayhem. Why did the cartoons provoke such a violent spasm in the Middle East and North Africa?
Part of the reason is that the cartoons were a direct assault on Islamic beliefs, which hold that depicting Muhammad is a sin. This affront to the traditions and values of Islam then ignited the form of interdependence unique to the region. Like the U.S. South, the Middle East harbors a culture of honor.42 You rely on other people to grant you status by showing you respect. But other people can also take away your status by insulting you. To restore your status, you must answer the insult, often with force. (See chapter 6 for more on the U.S. South’s culture of honor.)
More than selves in the U.S. South, MENA selves travel together. If you insult my honor, you also insult the honor of my parents, siblings, children, and cousins (and maybe also the honor of my grandparents, neighbors, and business partners). I must answer your insult on behalf of everyone in my network. The prime minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdog˘an, displayed the MENA brand of interdependence at the 2009 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Erdog˘an was in the middle of an angry rebuttal to a fellow panelist, Israeli president Shimon Peres, when the panel moderator cut him off. (The moderator was enforcing a time limit.) Erdog˘an abruptly left the stage. He later explained that his swift exit was necessary “to protect the honour of Turkey and Turkish people.” Upon his return to Turkey, he was given a hero’s welcome.43
When a Middle Easterner or North African does not adequately retaliate, the many people in his or her network may join in to help. Erdog˘an sufficiently countered the moderator’s seeming disrespect. But the public humiliation of the prophet Muhammad and, by extension, all Muslims could not be rectified by one or two people. So large swaths of MENA stepped up to settle the score against the Danish newspaper. For many of them, declaring neutrality in the matter would have been tantamount to harming the people in their networks and, thus, themselves.
Managing the honor of one’s entire social network is not just the business of prime ministers. In the Middle East, according to anthropologist Lawrence Rosen, “the defining feature of a man is that he has formed a web of indebtedness, a network of obligations that prove his capacity to maneuver in a world of relentless uncertainty.”44 Middle Easterners and North Africans of many stations and ranks keep close tabs on the relative standing of their friends, family members, and associates. From this interpersonal bookkeeping, they also derive their sense of their own social standing.
Batja Mesquita is one of the first psychologists to study interdependent selves in MENA. Comparing Turkish and Dutch college students she finds that many college students in MENA have stories like this one: “I was admitted to Turkey’s most competitive university…. My parents had invited all their relatives and neighbors over to their house to celebrate this success…. Without me knowing it, my mother had taken [my student ID] to show to them.” Other Turkish participants shared similar tales of family members basking in one another’s triumphs and agonizing over one another’s defeats.45 They describe events in terms of their impact on one’s relationships. Dutch respondents, in contrast, describe events in terms of their consequences for individual goals: “I felt relieved when I gave my final presentation at the university.”
Middle Eastern and North African selves do not just feel the joys and pains of the people in their social networks; they sometimes feel them more deeply than they experience their own emotions. Sociologist James Greenberg asked respondents in Yemen and in the United States to list instances when they felt an emotion. Not only did the Yemeni respondents list more events that involved others (a friend did well on an exam, many people died in an earthquake), they also reported that events that happened to other people hit them harder than events that happened to them personally. This helps explain why, say, college students in Syria would get so upset about a few cartoon panels in a Danish newspaper. They feel the offense of other Muslims at least as intensely as they feel their own.46
The solidarity that the interdependent selves of MENA feel is apparent even on subtler measures. In one study, researchers asked Omani and European-American participants to view several large shapes made up of smaller shapes. For every large shape, one of the smaller shapes was unique and the rest were the same—for example, a square made up of eight circles and one triangle. Omani participants disliked the unique shape and preferred the common shapes, while the European Americans showed the opposite pattern.
The culture cycles that reflect and reinforce MENA’s unique variety of interdependence include daily interactions and societal institutions that knit people into far-flung yet tightly knotted networks. One everyday practice, for example, is calling people not only by their proper names, but also by their ties to family and place. The president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, is addressed in both formal and informal settings as Abu Mazen (“Mazen’s father”), and Saddam Hussein’s full name included “al-Tikriti” (“from [the village of] Tikrit”).47
Another practice that keeps the networks connected is wasta, which roughly translates from the Arabic as “whom you know” or, more bluntly, “nepotism” or “cronyism.” Similar to Indians, Middle Easterners and North Africans tender wasta to accomplish everything from putting in a phone line to getting out of legal trouble. Despite considerable influence from the Global North, wasta is still the main currency in MENA. A recent Gallup poll finds that the majority of youth in the League of Arab States believe that wasta is critical to their future success.48 Their parents not only agree, but also lay the foundation for a wasta-enriched adulthood. Unlike their counterparts in the Global North, most Middle Eastern and North African parents do not endeavor to help their children leave home, choose a profession, and make their own independent lives. Instead they view their children as members of the family organization. These family organizations form the backbones of businesses, neighborhoods, religious orders, and political parties, many of which call their leaders “father.”
As was the case in India, Middle Easterners and North Africans do not view wasta only as a cause of mismanagement and corruption. Instead, they also see it as a source of ethical behavior. When you secure a phone line or a driver’s license, you must let your relatives use your phone and give your friends rides. If you have a good job, you should help your sister get a good job.
Imagine the following situation: Your sibling is getting bad grades in college and is having difficulty finding a summer internship. As it happens, you have a friend who is well placed in a consulting firm. Would you ask your friend to arrange an internship for your sibling without an interview?”
In a recent study, 42 percent of European-American college students answered “yes” to this question. But a full 70 percent of Turkish students agreed that they would try to arrange the internship for their sibling. Most of the European Americans who declined did so because they were worried about their own reputations. But many Turks who agreed to ask a friend to pull strings did so for interdependent reasons. As one Turkish participant said, “I would do it because I am not selfish.”49
For MENA interdependent selves, it is the failure to share the fruits of their labors or their good luck that is corrupt. “For most Arabs,” writes Lawrence Rosen, “it is only realistic to believe that society is better served by webs of obligation than impersonal roles, and that institutions are always defined by their occupants and not by depersonalized powers.”
“To grasp that,” he concludes, “is to enter a world of enormous decency, even if it is not our world.”50
To maintain that decency, the interdependent selves that erect and echo MENA’s culture cycles work hard to keep their networks balanced. When one person gives a little more than she receives, she can count on the recipient later to have her back. And the more people she has in her debt, the more insurance she has when times are lean. Yet she wants to avoid being too indebted to any one person, as this would disturb her relationships with the many other people in her social web.
The economist Simon Gächter and his colleagues recently captured the intricate machinations of reciprocity among Middle Easterners. In their study, participants in Oman, Saudi Arabia, the United States, Great Britain, and Australia played an economics game in groups of four people. In a first round, players could give too much, not enough, or just the right amount of rewards to the group. In subsequent rounds, participants could either punish or reward their fellow players. The researchers observed something strange they had not seen in other places: As expected, participants everywhere punished so-called freeloaders who did not contribute enough to the group. But the Middle Eastern participants from Oman and Saudi Arabia also punished the “pushovers” who created an imbalance by giving too much to the group.51
MENA is a tremendously diverse region. Yet many culture cycles there reflect and reinforce an honor-bound, networked style of interdependence. The Israeli film Footnote,52 for example, tells the story of a great rivalry between a father and son who are both professors of the Talmud. When the father is accidentally awarded a coveted national prize intended for the son, a heated debate ensues:
“There are a few things more important than truth,” says the son.
“Like what?” asks an incredulous colleague.
“Family,” he answers.
“Mañana, yes. Today, maybe no.”53
The sense that tomorrow is as good as today, and maybe even better, routinely frustrates relations between the Global North and Mexico. Why is Mexico so comfortable in the slow lane? And why does Mexico’s inefficiency and lateness so irritate Northerners? The answer: Mexicans have the time, but Northerners have the clock.
Mexicans need the time. Their particular form of interdependence revolves around the notion of simpatía, or pleasant relationships. Cultivating simpatía takes a lot of time, and putting relationships first means that many of the Global North’s highest priorities (profits, individual achievement, and punctuality) take a backseat. Some impatient observers in El Norte suspect that the Mexicans are just slacking off, lazing around, or refusing to understand how business works. Yet they could not be further from the truth. Mexicans are very busy putting the “human” back in human resources. Global Northerners who want to break into business in Mexico must learn how to work on Mexican time and with interdependent Mexican selves.
As is true for all regions of the Global South, research on how culture and the self make each other up in Mexico is just beginning. A combination of studies with Mexican, Mexican-American, and other Latino participants begins to shed light on the workings of interdependence, Mexican-style.
In the 1980s, for example, pioneering cultural psychologist Harry Triandis gave vignettes to Latino participants and asked them to predict the behavior of a set of characters. When the characters were Latinos, participants guessed that they would be more sociable, more agreeable, and less negative than when the characters were European Americans.54
Just because people with Latin heritage think they are brimming with simpatía doesn’t mean that they actually are. They could just be holding positive stereotypes of their own group. To test this possibility in a carefully controlled experiment, psychologist Renee Holloway and her colleagues joined European-American, African-American, and Latino students in either same-ethnicity or different-ethnicity pairs and asked them to have a conversation. Participants of all ethnicities rated their conversations with Latino partners as more involving and of higher quality than they rated conversations with non-Latinos. People with Latino partners wanted to have more future conversations than did people with African-American or European-American partners. So Latinos are not the only people who think they inspire harmonious and pleasant relations. European Americans and African Americans agree with them.
How do Latinos make their conversation partners feel so good? It doesn’t happen automatically. Holloway finds that Latinos put more effort into promoting smooth relations than do African Americans or European Americans. Latinos actively focus on their partners’ positive qualities; they try to feel good about their partners so that they can make them feel good. Latinos also smile and make more eye contact with their conversation partners than do European Americans and African Americans.55
Simpatía doesn’t just make for scintillating conversation; it also motivates better cognitive performance. Psychologist Krishna Savani and his colleagues asked Mexican and European-American college students to write about times when they experienced good feelings either toward another person or toward themselves. Next they asked the participants to solve word puzzles. While the European Americans solved an equal number of puzzles in both conditions, the Mexican students solved the most puzzles after recalling a time when they felt good about another person.56
In worlds where cooperation is in higher demand than competition, simpatía pays off. Psychologist Millard Madsen and his team invited children between the ages of seven and ten to learn to play a marble game that, unbeknownst to them, rewarded them for cooperating and punished them for competing. The Mexican children readily figured out how to cooperate and win more marbles. The European-American children seemed to have trouble keeping their competitive tendencies in check, and thus won fewer marbles.57
Simpatía can have its downsides. European Americans commonly complain that in Mexico many people will give directions for, say, a church or a road, even if they have no idea where it is. What the gringos don’t understand is that for these interdependent selves, the primary goal of the interaction is often to produce warm feelings, not to exchange information about objective reality.58
Mexican families give their children plenty of opportunities to practice simpatía in their daily interactions. Studies show that people with Latino backgrounds spend much more of their time socializing with family than do European Americans.59 And “family,” by the way, “means your mom and dad and brothers and sisters and cousins and second cousins and cousins of your aunt’s husband’s sister and aunts of your mom’s second cousin Dionisia from Veracruz,” says Juan Faura, a marketing expert who targets the growing Latino population in the United States.60
A basic law of the Hispanic universe, he says, is that “family is always first.”
Statements such as this elicit cries of “Stereotyping!” from many Latinos, who despair that their “pro-family attitudes” are the only thing that European Americans have ever noted about them. Yet central to understanding Mexican selves is that their devotion to family goes far beyond attitudes. People everywhere have pro-family attitudes. European Americans, for all their independent ways, cite “family” as the main reason their lives go well.61 But in Mexico, the individual requires the family not just to thrive, but also to be a complete self.
Consequently, many Mexican adolescents do not aim, once they grow up, to individuate and leave home. In fact, just the opposite is the case. As one highly qualified Latina admitted to a prestigious U.S. college asked, “Why would I want to leave my home and fly across the country to live in a small room with a person I have never met?” In surveys of American college students, those of Mexican heritage report the most frequent contact with their parents.62 Following college, many Latino graduates evaluate employment opportunities based on how they will affect the family. Families stick together even when they have the differences in activities, interests, and lifestyles that often drive European-American families apart. Both Mexicans and Mexican Americans rate their families as more cohesive than do European Americans.63
The quest for simpatía and family connection extends to other social relationships. When people become close in Mexico, they call each other by familial titles of “sister,” “brother,” or “cousin,” instead of “friend” or “partner.” When children are born, the family invites a man and woman to serve as godparents. These compadres (cofathers) and comadres (comothers) can be called upon for loans, jobs, and other types of support.64
As is the case in India and MENA, nepotism is widespread in Mexico. In an environment where many formal institutions are relatively new and impersonal, working in the family’s business is the preferred occupation. “You trust your blood, and that’s it,” says Gregorio Chedraui, a member of one of Mexico’s most successful business families, with interests ranging from retail to roads. Many of his countrymen feel the same way; 80 percent of Mexican respondents agree that “one should be cautious in relations outside the family.”65
Doing business in Mexico, in turn, requires plugging into existing family networks. Julio Garcia, an American-trained social psychologist, now runs his family’s avocado business in Mexico. “When you have a problem in the United States,” says Garcia, “you think, ‘How can I do this?’ In Mexico you say, ‘Who in my family can help me do this?’
“I needed to have [Mexican] government approval for a business project,” Garcia recalls. “When I discussed this with a friend, he was surprised that I had not talked to an uncle who has experience doing this kind of thing. So off I went to talk to my uncle. After hearing me out, he gave me the name and number of a person to call. Most importantly, he gave me his business card, and said, ‘When you talk to him, give him my card.’ On the back of the card, he had written, ‘Compadre, this is my nephew. Greetings.’”
Not long after meeting with the official, Garcia received the approval he needed.”66
We do not presume to have specific solutions to all the problems of West Africa, India, the Middle East and North Africa, and Mexico. Each of these topics commands the expertise of thousands of academic departments, government agencies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and corporations. Yet we do have a few general recommendations for how the Global North, by infusing more interdependence into its culture cycles, can alleviate suffering in the Global South. We also suggest a few independent tendencies that the Global South could adopt to partner more effectively with the Global North.
At the level of institutions, Global Northerners should make a greater effort to work with the laws, norms, policies, and social structures that are already in place in the Global South, rather than imposing their own. Two of the Global North’s hottest exports are free-market capitalism and democracy. Many economists in the Global North believe that free-market capitalism is the fastest path to economic growth, and that economic growth is the foundation of stable democracies. Yet the relationships between free markets, wealth, and democracy are much more complicated. Plenty of rich countries are not democracies (think Singapore, China, and Saudi Arabia).67 Plenty of rich democracies did not get that way because of their free markets (think Norway, Finland, and Japan). And plenty of democracies (including the United States) are finding that capitalism is eroding democracy, as weakened governments can no longer keep powerful corporations from trampling individual liberties.68
What stable, prosperous countries do have in common, contend economists Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, are strong institutions. By protecting the long-term well-being of their citizens, these institutions encourage individuals to invest in their communities. Many society-stabilizing institutions are obvious to the Northern eye: judiciaries that check executives, police departments that don’t accept bribes, food-protection agencies whose arbiters are not on the payroll of food companies. But many stabilizing institutions of the Global South are not immediately apparent to Northern observers: for example, village kinship structures in Sudan that equitably distribute food, or family networks in India that lift entire regions out of poverty.69
Many of the most successful NGOs work to strengthen these homegrown institutions, rather than sidestepping or undermining them. Seattle-based Rural Development Institute (RDI) is one of them. In much of the Global South, the difference between poverty and prosperity is land. But most poor tenant farmers cannot amass the wealth they need to purchase a plot.
Historically, the most popular solution to the problem of widespread poverty and landlessness was a revolution. But RDI takes a more interdependent approach. Since 1967, the nonprofit has helped more than 400 million rural farmers in 40 countries take ownership of some 270 million acres (about 7 percent of the world’s arable land). It has done so by working directly with governments to reform laws, and to develop programs that give old landowners a fair price for their property, and new landowners what they need to succeed. Although the organization’s mission (“to secure land rights for the world’s poorest people”) is rock-solid, its tactics are highly flexible so that it can meet the unique needs and strengths of each region.70
The Positive Deviance Initiative is another nonprofit that works with local networks to make change. Monique and Jerry Sternin, a husband-and-wife team, developed the positive deviance approach to solving problems in the late 1990s as they worked to reduce child malnutrition in Vietnamese villages. (Although we do not delve into the culture cycles of Southeast Asia here, this region is considered part of the Global South.) The Sternins first asked, which children in these villages are not malnourished? And what are their families doing that is different? The couple discovered that the parents of the better-nourished children fed them tiny shrimp and crabs they collected from the rice paddies, and sweet potato greens. Local wisdom held that these foods were not good for children, but the health of the children eating them suggested otherwise. The Sternins then asked these “deviant” parents to teach their cooking techniques to fellow villagers.
In other words, the Sternins assumed that the villagers already knew how to solve their own problems and were the best people to teach their solutions to one another. Through their organization, the Sternins have bottled their approach to helping people define and solve their own problems, and have successfully applied it all over the world, to issues ranging from female genital cutting in Egypt, to MRSA infections in Colombian hospitals, to child prostitution in Indonesia.71
To improve the interactions in its culture cycle, the Global North must also improve its media representations of the Global South. In his survey of more than nine hundred Hollywood films with Arab characters, film scholar Jack Shaheen found that only a dozen included positive portrayals. For interdependent MENA dwellers who are already sensitive to insults, these unflattering representations hurt.72 Hollywood also does a brisk trade in negative portrayals of Latinos as banditos, harlots, buffoons, and lovers, rather than as equal actors on the global stage.73
And though representations of African Americans in the U.S. media are numerous and negative (see chapter 4 for examples), representations of Africans are most notable for their absence. Stories about Africa comprised less than 5 percent of “Top News” or “Latest News” on the New York Times home page, and less than 2 percent on CNN’s home page.74
Even National Geographic magazine, the Global North’s beloved window on the rest of world, sullies the image of its subjects in the Global South. In their classic work, Reading National Geographic, anthropologists Catherine Lutz and Jane Collins analyzed more than six hundred photographs from across thirty-seven years of the magazine’s history, and the methods behind snapping and editing the shots. They learned that editors and photographers adopted many practices to make their subjects in the Global South seem more exotic, primitive, and sexual, including asking subjects to put on more traditional clothing, changing skin tones to make them appear darker, and featuring the naked bodies of women of color (never White women).75
Unflattering media portrayals of the Global South are reflected in the individual minds of Global Northerners. In 2011, for example, a cartoon map titled “The World according to Americans” went viral on the Internet. MENA was flagged with “Evil-doers!!” and “Bombs go here.” South America’s label read, “Coffee comes from here, I think,” and Mexico’s inglorious signage was “They do our laundry.” India was mostly absent, although some malformed portion of it was lumped in with China under “They make our stuff.”
And Africa? Africa was missing altogether. It wasn’t even on the map.76
Because media representations of the Global South are so flawed, Global Northerners who have the time and money should make the effort to travel to the Global South. Travel helps not only broaden their knowledge, but may also expand their creative powers. Psychologists Will Maddux and Adam Galinsky tested the creativity of two groups of MBA students at a large business school in the United States, some who had lived abroad and some who had not. They gave participants a picture of several objects on a table: a candle, a pack of matches, and a box of tacks, all of which were next to a cardboard wall. Their task was to figure out how to attach the candle to the wall so that, when lit, its wax would not fall on to the floor.
Can you figure out the solution? It’s difficult to conjure, but obvious when you see it: pin the tack box to the wall and use it to hold the candle. Sixty percent of the students who had lived abroad solved the problem, but only 42 percent of those who had never lived abroad were able to do so. And the longer students had been overseas, the more likely they were to come up with the right answer. The researchers explain that the creative problem-solving skills people develop when bridging cultural differences spill over to other domains. As Mark Twain observed, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness.”77
Upon alighting in the Global South, take the time to make and maintain relationships. This is especially true if you want to do business. In many parts of West Africa, MENA, India, and Mexico, the first order of business is sharing a meal, meeting family or friends, and discussing personal interests. Ignoring all that “soft stuff” and getting right down to business, as is the instinct of many Global Northerners, can seem rude.
Sidestepping relationships can also be counterproductive. Psychologist Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks and his colleagues trained one group of American MBA students to pay more attention to their own and other people’s relational styles and social needs. They gave a second control group a standard training in cultural differences. The students then spent six weeks consulting to firms in Santiago, Chile. The researchers found that students who had received the standard training were less successful at getting the information they needed to do their jobs than were the students who had received the relational training.78
Global Southerners can likewise take steps to work more effectively with their neighbors up north. By polishing their independent streak, for instance, they can leverage Northern institutions for Southern goals. Chief Almir Surui, leader of the Surui people of the Brazilian Amazon, did just this. Loggers, miners, and other developers were increasingly encroaching upon his people’s ancestral lands, arguing that the areas had no proven value and were therefore up for grabs. The Surui needed to inventory the many natural and cultural resources in their neck of the woods. They needed a map.
Chief Almir heard of a U.S.-based company that uses GPS and the Internet to make detailed maps. Breaking with thousands of years of history—his tribe had no contact with Europeans until the 1960s—he got in touch with his independent side and reached out to this company, Google, and to other organizations in the Global North, including the Virginia-based Amazon Conservation Team and the California-based Skoll Foundation. Within three years, the partners had not only mapped the many treasures of the Surui homelands, but had also set up a surveillance system to detect illegal activities on the land. Google also anointed Chief Surui a “Google Earth Hero,” which helped the tribe and its NGO partners secure more than $2 million to protect biodiversity and cultural diversity in the Amazon.79
The Global South can harness not only Northern institutions, but also Northern practices and products. With them, they can inspire people to speak up, act out, and change their local culture cycles for the better. A surprisingly potent cultural product that organizations throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America are using to instill a little independence is that warhorse of daytime television, the soap opera. In 2002 in Ethiopia, for example, thousands of listeners religiously tuned into Yeken Kignit, a radio soap opera that followed the travails of a young woman whose husband contracts HIV from a neighbor. The heroine bucks tradition and bravely travels to a clinic to get tested for the dreaded disease. After discovering that she is negative, she forgives her husband, cares for him until his death, remarries, and lives happily ever after. The series inspired more than fifteen thousand letters from its listeners, many of them from women testifying that the program had prompted them and their husbands to get tested for HIV.80
Yeken Kignit is one of many soap operas that the Vermont-based Population Media Center has produced to endorse smaller families, elevate the status of women and girls, and reduce the transmission of HIV in Africa and Asia. The soaps draw heavily on the research of psychologist Albert Bandura, who has spent decades demonstrating how media role models can change the behaviors of their audiences.81 Combining the science of the North with indigenous genius, the radio plays employ local writers, actors, and producers to create riveting characters and plots that encourage listeners to reconsider their traditions and beliefs.82
The play’s also the thing for reducing ethnic tensions in Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Every week, millions of radio listeners tune in to Musekeweya (New Dawn), a Romeo-and-Juliet soap opera that teaches Hutus and Tutsis how to heal the wounds of the past and prevent future violence.83 Like Yeken Kignit, Musekeweya mixes Northern science with Southern soap. Sociologist Ervin Staub has documented that most genocides follow a common course: social instability leads to the scapegoating of a less powerful group, and then to an ideology that justifies aggression against that group. But if enough people speak out against this us-and-them thinking and the leaders who would manipulate it, communities can avoid the spiral into violence.84
Musekeweya models this intervention. Characters who intercede in unjust activities, criticize divisive leaders, and mend rifts between neighbors become the show’s heroes. These characters are now so beloved that parents are naming their children after them, reports Radio Benevolencija, a Dutch nonprofit that partners with local actors and writers to produce the show.85 The soap is not just popular; it works, psychologist Betsy Paluck finds. Her carefully controlled evaluation showed that listeners were more likely than non-listeners to stand up to authority and voice their own opinions in their communities.86 Anecdotes of Musekeweya’s effectiveness abound. For instance, surrendering rebels at the Rwanda-Congo border cite the show as their main reason for giving up the fight.87
Another independent practice that would not only elicit the North’s trust, but also increase the South’s effectiveness, is to hire and promote people because of their qualifications, not just their connections. Note that this suggestion does not preclude hiring friends and relatives. But cronyism and nepotism become major problems when incompetent people crowd out competent ones.
A strict meritocracy would solve this problem. But even the Global North, for all its independence, fails miserably on the meritocracy front (as we saw in the 42 percent of European-American students who would seek internships for their sisters). In the United States, for example, nine out of ten businesses are family-owned. This includes 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies.88 “Family tradition and continuity exist in our society, even though we pride ourselves on valuing merit above all,” says Adam Bellow (son of author Saul Bellow), author of the book In Praise of Nepotism. “We are more like Swiss cheese, where you have pockets of nepotism in a framework of meritocracy.”89
Rather than insisting on a system that few can follow, both the Global North and the Global South might do better to follow a middle way: make sure the friends and family you are hiring are competent for the job, and then invest in making them even better. To our knowledge, no organization in the Global North is explicitly implementing this idea. But it does seem to be the common practice of many organizations the world over.
Many traditions teach the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have done unto you.” But the Global North and South so often clash because what you want done unto you is not what others want done unto them. Interdependent selves do not want to be treated independently, and vice versa.
To sow greater peace and prosperity, we suggest that that Golden Rule get a makeover. We propose what sociologist Milton Bennett calls the Platinum Rule: “Do unto others as they themselves would have done unto them.”90 To this end, Global Northerners attempting to meet their Southern neighbors in the middle can try these tactics:
Meanwhile, Global Southerners who want to partner with their colleagues to the north can consider implementing these techniques:
By polishing its interdependence, Global Northerners might more readily understand that Global Southerners are not inherently more irrational, corrupt, senselessly violent, or inefficient than they. Meanwhile, by honing its independence, the Global South might better partner with Global Northerners, rather than writing them off as frosty and exploitative.