Talk:Jason Hickel

It must be wrong that "Hickel was born and raised in Swaziland (now Eswatini) where his parents were doctors at the height of the AIDS crisis." He was born in 82 and the AIDS crisis reached its height 2 to 3 decades later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_in_Eswatini — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joolu7 (talk • contribs) 22:44, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

Issues

[Copied from User_talk:Avatar317#Hickel_page - Because this is the proper venue for this discussion; that way other editors can also see and contribute to the discussion.]

I have some questions about this statement: "Hickel argues in The Divide that pre-colonial societies were not poor, challenging notions of a Great Divergence. He writes that precolonial agricultural societies in Africa and India were “quite content” with a “subsistence lifestyle,” and that it was colonialism that made them worse off.[15]" (1) The cited source does not mention the Great Divergence. I checked The Divide and found that Hickel affirms the Great Divergence, citing Pomeranz, and argues it was caused by colonialism. (2) I could not find a statement in The Divide PDF saying pre-colonial societies were not poor... only that they were not worse off than Europe in the 1500s. In the World Development article mentioned earlier in the bio, Hickel does say that in pre-colonial societies “extreme poverty was not a normal condition”. Maybe better to use this statement instead? (3) I searched "quite content" and "subsistence lifestyle" in The Divide and found it refers specifically to South Africa in the 1800s (not "Africa and India"), where he says Dutch and British settlers could not attract enough labour for colonial plantations and mines because the local population was “quite content” with a “subsistence lifestyle” (the section says "under traditional tenure arrangements, most people had access to land on which to graze their cattle and grow food for their families. They didn’t see why they should leave their homes for back-breaking labour on plantations and in mines") and so colonisers resorted to taxation and dispossession to push people into wage labour. This makes me think footnote 15 is not a RS? Do you agree? Should we clarify with additional detail or just remove the statement? AnaGuterres (talk) 10:16, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

I agree with removing the words "Great Divergence" since the Vox source never uses those words. But since the Vox journalist (Dylan Matthews) clearly spent a lot of time reviewing Hickel's work, as well as direct correspondence with Hickel and others, that this source IS a Reliable Source. WP:RSPVOX Also, in Wikipedia, we prefer WP:SECONDARY sources in which someone other than us (Wikipedia editors) generate statements, summaries, or analysis of WP:PRIMARY sources. Matthews says: But Hickel takes issue with this depiction of precolonial societies as “poor.” In his book The Divide, he argues that precolonial agricultural societies in Africa and India were “quite content” with a “subsistence lifestyle.” In Africa, for instance, he writes that “most people had access to land on which to graze their cattle and grow food for their families. They didn’t see why they should leave their homes for back-breaking labor on plantations and in mines.” Likewise, before the British forced a new agricultural system, Hickel writes that Indian farmers raised crops for “subsistence,” and were rendered vastly worse off when British colonial authorities imposed a new system on them. (my bolding to answer your above question.) ---Avatar317^(talk) 00:49, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

The same source [15] is cited late to say "As a consequence of population growth, the absolute number of people living under this threshold has increased from 3.2 billion in 1981 to 4.2 billion in 2015, according to World Bank data." But in that source it is the author who says it is a consequence of population growth, while Hickel says this view assumes extreme poverty is a natural condition, which he disputes. Suggest removing the phrase "As a consequence of population growth".

Source [15] is also cited to say "Additionally, Shaohua Chen and Martin Ravallion's research shows that no matter where the poverty threshold is defined, the percentage of the world's residents who live below it declined from 1981 to 2008." But in that source Hickel agrees that proportions are declining (the section on Chen and Ravallion is preceded by saying "as Hickel himself concedes". He is also cited as writing "The proportion of people living under $1.90 per day has declined significantly, but poverty as measured by $7.40/day has declined more slowly, from 70.8 percent in 1981 to 58.1 percent in 2013.” It seems his main contention is just that the $1.90 line is too low to capture the scale of poverty. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AnaGuterres (talk • contribs) 10:47, 28 May 2023 (UTC)