There’s been a lot of discussion in this thread about whether or not your examples are valid. But there seems to be a more substantial problem: Your primary example, of whether or not decolonization was a good thing or was handled well is extensively discussed in academia. Similarly, most of the people doing ev psych are tenured professors and the like. So whether or not the views expressed are accurate, the claim that they are ignored by academia seems to be false.
Now, moving on from that, let’s look at your claims.
Then there is evolutionary psychology, which tells us that Archie Bunker was right about nearly everything,
Is this a statement about racial groups or a statement about gender relations? I can’t quite tell which was intended. Note that ev psych doesn’t really say that much that Archie Bunker would actually agree with. Is this intended for rhetorical effect? If so, can you please state this more explicitly.
For a thousand years before the mid nineteenth century, pretty much everyone agreed that equality between husbands and wives would destroy marriage and fatherhood. Then in the nineteenth century, they introduced marital equality. Observe the result.
The request for citations below for the first sentence has already been asked and hasn’t been really answered. (I will note that the Talmud which is a series of texts known for debating almost everything about its own legal system has nothing at all saying that equality between the sexes would destroy marriage). But aside from that matter, there’s really a pair of pretty easy explanations for the “breakdown” of marriage.
First, in many places, common law marriage (really sui juris marriage), which really wasn’t much more than acknowledged long-term cohabitation, was considered marriage. As that became less acceptable in the 20th century, people who if they had lived a century before would have been considered married were no longer counted as married.
Second, lifespans went up. In the 19th century, many marriages ended at an early age with the death of a spouse. See here. This data isn’t ideal for this purpose because they are calculating life-expectancy of everyone which means that the decline in infant mortality also comes through. But in general, life expectancy has gone up. Divorces have become more common as a means of ending marriage, but the actual length of the average marriage is not that different from what it was in the 19th century.
There is an argument that equality between males and females has also lead to higher divorce rates. And it probably helps that females can initiate divorce (something that was difficult to do in some places in previous centuries) . It also obviously didn’t hurt matters that rising equality made it easier for women to live on their own, which made getting a divorce have fewer downsides. But the claim that equality in marriage itself led to a decline in marriage seems to be extremely weak to the point where the correlation so obviously doesn’t imply causation that it is almost a textbook example of that problem.
Your primary example, of whether or not decolonization was a good thing or was handled well is extensively discussed in academia.
Really? Could you refer me to an academic paper that has a perspective on decolonization similar to the one sam presents? Near as I can tell “post-colonial studies” are all about blaming Europeans and their descendents for all the world’s problems.
Another exercise, since I believe you’re currently in academia your self, bring up the perspective on decolonization with fellow academics in a way that implies it has merit. Let me know if you still have an academic career by the time the resulting firestorm blows over.
[These views have support by some academics. Economic historian Niall Ferguson has argued that empires can be a good thing provided that they are “liberal empires”. He cites the British Empire as being the only example of a “liberal empire” and argues that it maintained the rule of law, benign government, free trade and, with the abolition of slavery, free labour.[12] Historian Rudolf von Albertini agrees that, on balance, colonialism can be good. He argues that colonialism was a mechanism for modernisation in the colonies and imposed a peace by putting an end to tribal warfare.[13] Historians L.H Gann and Peter Duignan have also argued that Africa probably benefited from colonialism on balance. Although it had its faults, colonialism was probably “one of the most efficacious engines for cultural diffusion in world history”.[14] These views, however, are controversial and are rejected by many who, on balance, see colonialism as bad. The economic historian D.K Fieldhouse has taken a kind of middle position, arguing that the effects of colonialism were actually limited and their main weakness wasn’t in deliberate underdevelopment but in what it failed to do.[15] Niall Ferguson agrees with his last point, arguing that colonialism’s main weaknesses were sins of omission.[12] Marxist historian Bill Warren has argued that whilst colonialism may be bad because it relies on force, he views it as being the genesis of Third World development.[6]
Strictly speaking these are arguments for colonialism as good, not for decolonization as bad (maybe these authors believe colonialism was a positive stage compared to the previous status quo, and decolonization is even better) but they do not seem to fit with your stereotype of academic views (“blaming Europeans and their descendents for all the world’s problems.”) I found this with a two-minute search; I suspect a more thorough one could find also perspectives sceptical of decolonization.
“Although it had it faults”—eliding some pretty big details here. Note that India was exporting grain (for the benefit of the British military, mostly) while millions of people were dying in famines and related epidemics under the Raj.
There’s been a lot of discussion in this thread about whether or not your examples are valid. But there seems to be a more substantial problem: Your primary example, of whether or not decolonization was a good thing or was handled well is extensively discussed in academia. Similarly, most of the people doing ev psych are tenured professors and the like. So whether or not the views expressed are accurate, the claim that they are ignored by academia seems to be false.
Now, moving on from that, let’s look at your claims.
Is this a statement about racial groups or a statement about gender relations? I can’t quite tell which was intended. Note that ev psych doesn’t really say that much that Archie Bunker would actually agree with. Is this intended for rhetorical effect? If so, can you please state this more explicitly.
The request for citations below for the first sentence has already been asked and hasn’t been really answered. (I will note that the Talmud which is a series of texts known for debating almost everything about its own legal system has nothing at all saying that equality between the sexes would destroy marriage). But aside from that matter, there’s really a pair of pretty easy explanations for the “breakdown” of marriage.
First, in many places, common law marriage (really sui juris marriage), which really wasn’t much more than acknowledged long-term cohabitation, was considered marriage. As that became less acceptable in the 20th century, people who if they had lived a century before would have been considered married were no longer counted as married.
Second, lifespans went up. In the 19th century, many marriages ended at an early age with the death of a spouse. See here. This data isn’t ideal for this purpose because they are calculating life-expectancy of everyone which means that the decline in infant mortality also comes through. But in general, life expectancy has gone up. Divorces have become more common as a means of ending marriage, but the actual length of the average marriage is not that different from what it was in the 19th century.
There is an argument that equality between males and females has also lead to higher divorce rates. And it probably helps that females can initiate divorce (something that was difficult to do in some places in previous centuries) . It also obviously didn’t hurt matters that rising equality made it easier for women to live on their own, which made getting a divorce have fewer downsides. But the claim that equality in marriage itself led to a decline in marriage seems to be extremely weak to the point where the correlation so obviously doesn’t imply causation that it is almost a textbook example of that problem.
Really? Could you refer me to an academic paper that has a perspective on decolonization similar to the one sam presents? Near as I can tell “post-colonial studies” are all about blaming Europeans and their descendents for all the world’s problems.
Another exercise, since I believe you’re currently in academia your self, bring up the perspective on decolonization with fellow academics in a way that implies it has merit. Let me know if you still have an academic career by the time the resulting firestorm blows over.
Wikipedia on “Benign Colonialism”:
Strictly speaking these are arguments for colonialism as good, not for decolonization as bad (maybe these authors believe colonialism was a positive stage compared to the previous status quo, and decolonization is even better) but they do not seem to fit with your stereotype of academic views (“blaming Europeans and their descendents for all the world’s problems.”) I found this with a two-minute search; I suspect a more thorough one could find also perspectives sceptical of decolonization.
“Although it had it faults”—eliding some pretty big details here. Note that India was exporting grain (for the benefit of the British military, mostly) while millions of people were dying in famines and related epidemics under the Raj.