The host-guest story disavows how prosperity and poverty are historically interconnected

Evidence

All Bauer’s writings aimed to demolish the premise that the wealth of the colonial powers was a consequence of the poverty of the colonised – and vice versa. The prosperity of the United States and Japan, he insisted, has nothing to do with the poverty of Chad, Mali and Nepal. The development economist therefore rejected the very category of the ‘Third World’, arguing that it conflated ‘a vast and diverse collection of societies differing widely in religion, culture, social institutions, personal characteristics and motivations’. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 405 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Inequality lost its historical justification once material abundance made poverty abolishable — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 193; American goodness narratives erase the value gap rather than confront it — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still…, 124; Anti-forced-marriage narratives erase colonization from the story — Sherene Razack, Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims…, 280 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• First-world wealth does not causally depend on third-world poverty #complicates (0.83) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 405