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I had the pleasure last night of watching the 2011 documentary Empire of Dust, a Belgian film that explores interactions between a Chinese construction group and local Congolese in rural Congo. I'm sure many of you have seen it - you've certainly seen this meme - but I wanted to bring it up anyway for discussion, as it was a brilliant piece of film-making and very thought-provoking. The whole thing is available free here on Youtube.
The main theme of the documentary is probably cultural differences between Chinese and Congolese workers. The Chinese complain about how the Congolese are lazy, dishonest, and disorganised and are only interested in beer, dancing, and football. We see lots of glimpses of this, with many scenes of Congolese workers just standing around doing nothing, and seriously dysfunctional industry and construction.
On the other hand, the Chinese foreman, Lao Yang, often comes across as grumpy, abrupt, and occasionally inhumane. He rarely smiles, doesn't engage in any playful or friendly conversation that we see, berates locals for their ignorance, and argues with local Congolese about price constantly. His Congolese translator actually addresses this, saying "he may seem like he's grumpy about something, but that's just how he is all the time." The Congolese by contrast seem generally relaxed, amiable, and friendly (though admittedly difficult to work with).
Lao Yang is at his most engaging and humane, it seemed to me, when he was marveling at the old Belgian infrastructure and talking about how devastating it was to see it completely neglected - "Do you have any idea how hard it must have been to build that railway?" On the one hand, he's still scolding his Congolese contact Eddy, but he comes across as a genuine engineer, sad to see great works in decline.
Also striking to me were the physical differences; despite the poverty and (one assumes) malnutrition, the Congolese men were mostly tall and muscular and generally physically impressive, whereas most of the Chinese we see looked comparatively weedy. Again, Lao Yang addresses this, saying something to the effect that "this is a harsh land where only the strongest survive, which is why everyone here is so well built".
I don't have any grand culture wars lessons here, other than the obvious one that culture matters - China and Congo are very different societies, and what works in one may not work in another. It also made me somewhat more pessimistic about West Africa's potential for economic development, though perversely, made me more positively disposed towards its culture. The movie also has some odd coverage of colonialism; there's no real criticism of the Belgians demonstrated (when discussing the Congolese motivations for seeking independence in 1960, Eddy says simply "we wanted to rule ourselves"), and a general sense of missed opportunities at failing to preserve the infrastructure and development left by the Belgians.
In any case, it's a wonderful film, and now I'm on a documentary kick, I'd love to get some more recommendations. Most of the documentaries on Amazon seem to either be fairly introductory science that I already know (e.g., Cosmos stuff) or else have a focus on individual personalities - true crime, famous sportsmen, outrageous personalities, etc.. I enjoy a good tale of real survival, but in general, I'm more interested in films that help expand my knowledge of the world, especially stuff like geopolitics, history, or culture. Would love to hear some suggestions!
Yeah, this resonates with me; I had some excellent West African study abroad students while teaching in the US, for example, who were consummate professionals and very serious (not uncommon for them to wear suits and ties to class!). More broadly, thanks to signaling and countersignaling I think you get a lot of cleavage between the culture and norms of a nation's elites and the behaviour of its mainstream culture, to the point where there are even inverse correlations (example: in my experience American international elites tend to be slimmer and fitter than their British or Irish equivalents, despite - or rather because of - the greater prevalence of obesity among working class Americans). All that said, you can't run a country with elites alone, so the culture of the general populace matters, and it's hard for me to watch EoD without feeling at least some pessimism about Congo's near-term development.
This reminds me of the 'bee sting effect' as used by economists to understand the behaviour of people living in poverty. Imagine you have two people, A and B, and both have bee stings. Person A has 2 bee stings, and Person B has 6, and you can get each sting treated for $20 a pop. The idea is that Person A perversely is more likely to seek treatment, because there's a realistic pathway to being "bee sting free", whereas Person B might just drown their sorrows in booze or similar. A related phenomenon is why you're much more likely to get a dent fixed on your car if you only have one than if you have ten. With this in mind, you might think that your average Congolese day labourer has an extremely limited and precarious set of pathways to serious economic empowerment, whereas Lao has lots, and that this explains the difference in their behaviour, which as you say, might not be irrational.
I think I'll be watching this one tonight.
But this seems to discount marginal utility. Presumably an additional dollar to the poor is worth more than an additional dollar to the already well off?
Talking to some poor people from Romani community, this is not always the case. Poor families often organize themselves around clans. If one of them "makes it" there is implicit expectation of support for wider family/clan supposedly in exchange for higher status but also higher pressure and responsibility. Shit is complicated.
Yeah, I've seen this too, growing up.
Including the resentment shown in @Iconochasm's DMX lyric: because the system is implicit and not really systematized, it seems to work well generally but struggles when someone is atypically successful.
Because usually you only get demands from your own family or "clan" and they'll be relatively reasonable things; things poor people could help each other with. However, if you are prominent, larger groups of people (who have a much weaker claim but you nonetheless can't tell to go fuck themselves, not that sort of society) start making even more demanding appeals. You don't have to give it to them, but you do have to listen which causes enough stress on its own.
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