>You aren't trying to say then that the colonial powers assumed control of Africa to stop rape?
We should be thankful that they didn't. Who knows how they would have screwed it up?
No, the mechanism is a happy accident of nature, that people take care of the things they own. A country with a bunch of rape going on is a disorderly, unsafe country, which is bad for business. It may grate against your idealism (as it does mine!) that the right things often come about for the "wrong" reasons, but I think the parties concerned would greatly prefer it to the wrong things happening for the "right" reasons---as things are now.
I get that social order was produced in colonial Africa, but you kind of have to ask...for whom? To say that there was strong social order for Africans is probably a stretch. The crimes against them were probably legal in a lot of colonial areas. So while they had fewer public works that were rusting it was probably legal for certain parties to commit rape even at the height of colonial Africa.
Rape maybe one extreme...it was certainly the case that crimes perpetrated by Africans were punished differently.
Same thing for the Southern US ...there were some slaves that chose to stay with their masters, but most of them were ok with the hunger and joblessness that came with emancipation.
Is the question in the end something like...Is a safe and orderly society under a tyranny the same kind of good as self determination in the face of lawlessness? Which one is the greater good? Is that even a meaningful question?
(Keeping in mind, I guess, that these kind of beard scatcher's are the hallmark of liberal western privilege.)
We should be thankful that they didn't. Who knows how they would have screwed it up?
No, the mechanism is a happy accident of nature, that people take care of the things they own. A country with a bunch of rape going on is a disorderly, unsafe country, which is bad for business. It may grate against your idealism (as it does mine!) that the right things often come about for the "wrong" reasons, but I think the parties concerned would greatly prefer it to the wrong things happening for the "right" reasons---as things are now.