Chris Blattman

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4 Responses

  1. the F**k Jared Diamond piece is like an extended youtube comment, full of ad hominem attacks and puerile pettiness. He doesn’t bother to refute Diamond; his main beef is that environmental determinism is convenient to bourgeois intellectuals that he doesn’t like. Just because you don’t like the people who like an idea doesn’t mean it’s not a valid idea.

    And anyone who doesn’t think people (be they white, black, brown or orange) move more slowly in the tropics hasn’t been to the tropics.

  2. @Lana

    Criticism of Jared Diamond’s envrionmental determinsm has been exposed ad nauseum, but the public and notable politicians prefer his skewed version.

    I welcome this funny rant.

  3. Regarding #3, the paper abstract does not even mention industrial policy (directed by the state) as one possible reason. Ha Joon Chang in ‘Kicking Away the Ladder’ cites IP as the main reason for Britain’s industrial revolution, for example.

    Your thoughts, professor Blattman?

  4. So what is new about the f**k Jared Diamond piece? Or is it just an “angry call” to really put environmental determinism behind… And I would think it is already behind in planning departments for example, and some geography departments also. But what is piece adding to our knowledge of the drawbacks of environmental determinism as a lens to read development issues?

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