Peace Corps Fantasies: How Development Shaped the Global Sixties (Critical American Studies), by Molly Geidel
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Peace Corps Fantasies: How Development Shaped the Global Sixties (Critical American Studies), by Molly Geidel
Ebook PDF Peace Corps Fantasies: How Development Shaped the Global Sixties (Critical American Studies), by Molly Geidel
To tens of thousands of volunteers in its first decade, the Peace Corps was “the toughest job you’ll ever love.” In the United States’ popular imagination to this day, it is a symbol of selfless altruism and the most successful program of John F. Kennedy’s presidency. But in her provocative new cultural history of the 1960s Peace Corps, Molly Geidel argues that the agency’s representative development ventures also legitimated the violent exercise of American power around the world and the destruction of indigenous ways of life.
In the 1960s, the practice of development work, embodied by iconic Peace Corps volunteers, allowed U.S. policy makers to manage global inequality while assuaging their own gendered anxieties about postwar affluence. Geidel traces how modernization theorists used the Peace Corps to craft the archetype of the heroic development worker: a ruggedly masculine figure who would inspire individuals and communities to abandon traditional lifestyles and seek integration into the global capitalist system.
Drawing on original archival and ethnographic research, Geidel analyzes how Peace Corps volunteers struggled to apply these ideals. The book focuses on the case of Bolivia, where indigenous nationalist movements dramatically expelled the Peace Corps in 1971. She also shows how Peace Corps development ideology shaped domestic and transnational social protest, including U.S. civil rights, black nationalist, and antiwar movements.
Peace Corps Fantasies: How Development Shaped the Global Sixties (Critical American Studies), by Molly Geidel- Amazon Sales Rank: #619268 in Books
- Published on: 2015-09-15
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.50" h x .90" w x 5.50" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 320 pages
Review
"Peace Corps Fantasies illuminates the normative force and gendered imperatives of U. S. endeavors to fortify liberal internationalism against anticolonial struggles for freedom."—Alyosha Goldstein, University of New Mexico
About the Author
Molly Geidel teaches American Studies at the University of Manchester, UK.
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1 of 3 people found the following review helpful. The Fantasies are Molly Geidel's alone. By Joanne Roll Peace Corps Fantasies may be well researched, but the research is not well used. Instead, I would argue that Geidel had a preconceived theory and her research was only to carefully choose items that would confirm her theory that modernization was bad. It is not clear, to me, what philosophy of development she would champion. She visited the few Peace Corps archives that exist, but carefully, I think, avoided many of the records documenting the extensive work of Volunteers, in the 60s, teaching at all levels including universities, not only in “remote indigenous” communities. The TV Education program in Colombia is well documented in a variety of places. It was ignored. Peace Corps nurses worked in hospitals and clinics from the very beginning. The scope of this work is not included, only a few isolated examples that suit Guidel’s preconceived notions. I am a woman and served in the Peace Corps from 1963-65. I believe that again, Geidel choose examples of Peace Corps women to create a lopsided picture of our work in the Peace Corps.Geidel begins with a quote from Nanda Shrestha’s, “In the Name of Development”. He describes how he felt in a school developed by the Peace Corps: “Every morning we went to schools excited, ready to enjoy our new chairs and work with fancy tools, but after school the hard reality of life would set in as many of us returnedhome to face the same prospect of haunting hunger.” Nanda Shrestha is now a Associate Professor in the School of Business and Industry at Florida A&M University. His book is described, on Amazon: “This book focuses on how development victimizes people from different walks of life.” I believe that the voices of those who were the “objects” of “development are rarely heard and so Shrestha’s book is very important. My only question would be how exactly did Shrestha go from poverty in Nepal to a professorship at A&M; and did the Peace Corps school in any way help or hinder him?Geidel focuses on the 60s but omits a historical framework. There is no mention of World War II, the Marshall Plan, and the restoration of Japan, or the Cold War with the Soviet Union. No mention is made of the combat veterans who created the Peace Corps or the children of WWII, who were the first Volunteers or how these monumental events of the 40s and 50s influenced those who were so essential to the Peace Corps of the 60s. Geidel speaks of the political movements of the 60s, but she does not mention the assassinations of President Kennedy, Rev. Martin Luther King, or Senator Robert Kennedy. These assassinations are essential to understanding what happened to the Peace Corps, the civil rights movements, and the anti-Vietnam War protests.When she speaks of women’s role in the early Peace Corps. Again, she gives no historical framework. Peace Corps started in 1961. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 included women as a group entitled to full rights. However, the inclusion of women was seen by many as a gesture to mock civil rights. Affirmative Action which mandated employment equity was not a regulation until 1972. Peace Corps was way ahead of its time. Guidel admits that Peace Corps had “gender-blind incorporation of women.” Returning Volunteer women were immediately hired as evaluators, trainers and staff. Serving Volunteers were promoted to Peace Corps Leaders. But somehow this does not garner Geidel’s admiration.Geidel's analysis of modernization theory claims to promote a promise of brotherhood and "heroic modern male." Her description is loaded with phallic symbols. Since Peace Corps women don't fit the pattern, they are not even mentioned until page 55. Then Geidel quotes. not from her "extensive research of actual Peace Corps records" but a LIFE magazine article on the "re-entry crisis". Evidently, by 1965, a Peace Corps nurse who had become a legend because of her accomplishments in a hospital in Pakistan, was hired at Peace Corps HDQ in Washington and wore her Pakistani clothes to work. She received a letter from a high level Peace Corps administrator who told her that her choice of wardrobe was damaging her reputation at Peace Corps and represented "disillusionment with America'. The Returned Peace Corps nurse immediately went out and bought a $100 silk suit. Guidel opines 'relearning the correct identification and consumption patterns that impel her to buy Asian raw materials only after their modification and refinement by Western tastemakers and manufacturers." To me, Guidel is superimposing, without any evidence, her own bias on this woman’s decision. My take would be that the nurse was a strong woman who could negotiate the crazy subculture of the Peace Corps bureaucracy as compently as she did a hospital in Pakistan. Guidel does not describe the work done in Pakistan. Evidently women’s work was not important, only their wardrobe choices.Peace Corps women, and I am in this group. who were assigned to areas of community development, home economics and health education encountered real cultural barriers both within Peace Corps and in countries of service. Such problems were complicated by a lack of resources, infrastructure and training. Geidel does mention these problems.However, because she fails to comprehensively examine the role of all women in all sectors of the Peace Corps, her analysis lacks perspective. Also missing from this book are the voices of the women with whom Peace Corps women worked, with one exception that will note, now.She does cite the work of one Peace Corps woman in Bolivia who wrote in her journal, “The mothers asked me how they could stop having babies. The said they were embarrassed to ask doctors about it. I’ll see what can be done.” The Volunteer went on to bring an education program to her village, and ultimately a doctor who did insert IUDs for women had attended the education program with their husbands. The program was initially successful. Geidel dismisses this example to meet the expressed needs ofBolivian women as “…a few women’s request for birth control is translated into justification for containment and control…” I can only speak from my own experience in another poor country in South America. Mothers there counted their babies, by name, those living and those dead. When asked what they wanted, the answer was universal. “We want to keep the children we have alive and we don’t want to have any more babies.” I believe that is the universal prayer of women throughout the ages.Meanwhile, back in the book, Geidel mixes up actual description of Peace Corps in Bolivia with a movie, that was not a documentary of an alleged plan to sterilize Bolivian women.It is difficult for me to understand if Geidel thinks the IUD is a form of sterilization or knows that it is a form of contraception.For those who are interested in the early days of the Peace Corps, especially as students or instructors, may I recommend the book “Cultural Frontiers of the Peace Corps” by Dr. Robert Textor, now sadly deceased. Researchers need to study Peace Corps, its good deeds, it bad mistakes, its road paved with good intentions. Much can be learned, but not from this book, in my opinion.
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful. Great book! Must read, especially for students of American history! By Amazon Customer Lucidly written and rigorously researched. This book changed the way I look at the Peace Corps, and see it in the context of American interventionalism.
See all 2 customer reviews... Peace Corps Fantasies: How Development Shaped the Global Sixties (Critical American Studies), by Molly Geidel
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