the Voice of Steely

[Craig Clark]

Jean wrote:
>      Why was this sad, Craig? - would you rather see the Inuit eating 
>      chewing on some dried seal meat while his fat pregnant barefoot wife 
>      sits next to him repairing his mugluks with a bone needle and polar 
>      bear sinews?  Damn those third worlders (although Alaska was part of 
>      the US last time I checked - or was this a Canadian Inuit?) who just 
>      won't stay quaint and backwards!

I wrote a reply to Steve Maas which covers this: it's under the 
heading "Re: Modern Technology". For your information, the 
Inuit in question was a native of Greenlander. I (usually, not always)
try to avoid the "First/Third World" distinction, preferring "Developed/
Developing" or even better, "Developed/Under-developed". It's useful to
put things this way because it makes it possible to realise that a substantial 
proportion of the citizens of the good ole US of A live in the 
Under-Developed World, not in the Developed One.

However, I think Jean is raising a very important issue when you imply 
that the "traditional" life-style is hard on women. Regrettably the 
process of modernisation seldom improves the lot of women, though 
there are a minority of development efforts underway in the Third 
World which try to make the improvement of the status of women 
the primary goal of development (believing, IMHO correctly, that 
when womens' status is improved everything else follows).

Craig Clark

"Living inside the system is like driving across
 the countryside in a bus driven by a maniac bent
 on suicide."
   - Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"