Slavery's legacy in West Africa: mistrust
Intriguing article in the LA Times on some recent research on slavery in West Africa being at the root of contemporary mistrust within society. The article is a gloss on a paper by Nathan Nunn of the Harvard School of Economics and Leonard Wantchekon of NYU (link is a PDF download).
I can't help thinking that this research on the effects of the collective trauma of slavery may shed light on the weakness of contemporary institutions in Nigeria, and perhaps provide the deep historical backdrop that has led to Nigeria being in general a low-trust society.
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2 comments:
nonsense. the author's comparison of armenians and jews to african makes no sense, unless you view africans as one ethnic group. and is this syndrome supposedly only at the coast, or all over west africa? i don't expect the folks in jigawa to have the same problem since they were not involved in the slave trade
@jeremy, I haven't read the paper, but right off the bat, I would not consider Nigeria a low-trust society. At least not when I compare it with places like the US where I live. Now, lemme read the articles.
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