“ This idea of ‘if you give a man a fish, them you feed him for a day; but teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime…’ that kind of cockle-warming idea is one that on the one hand sounds perfectly reasonable. ‘Who wouldn’t want to teach a man to fish?’ But it’s important to think about how that constructs the recipients of aid. I mean, think about it for a second, the image that underwrites that metaphor is of people eating fish by the side of the river bank in some third world country, and they’ll look over to the river and:
‘What’s that?’
‘It looks like a fish.’
‘And how are we gonna get it out?’
‘I have no idea… We’ll have to wait for the nice white man from the World Bank to come and tell us.’ ”
- Raj Patel, “The Value of Nothing”
12/1/09
