Andrian Kreye discusses the phenomenon of "genital thieves" in the early 1990s in West Africa and an economic explanation advanced to account for it and the violent response to it. Says Mr. Kreye,
[A] regional recession triggered a wave of superstition. In countries like the Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso and Senegal, the myth of the "voleurs du sexe" made the rounds. Black magicians, according to popular belief, robbed innocent men of their genitals, by chanting magic spells while shaking the hands of their victims. None of these cases of course were ever proven. However, the deadly side effect of the superstition were massive witch-hunts with angry mobs chasing alleged genital thieves across town, finally stoning them to death. Some psychiatrists in Senegal found a perfectly sound explanation for this phenomenon. The reason for the recession had been a devaluation of the West African Francs, the regional currency strongly dependent on the French Francs and the goodwill of the Banque de France.
Most people of West Africa might have encountered hardship at one point or the other. But in most cases the underlying causes had been clear–drought, floods, or wars. An economic austerity measure such as the government mandated devaluation of a currency caused widespread confusion. The superstition engendered by this economic confusion could be explained in very simple psychological terms: Because the breadwinners had been de-empowered, i.e. emasculated, their angst turned into fears of castration that were taken out on alleged genital thieves who in turn were punished by lynching.
Mr. Kreye then goes on to comment on our current world economic crisis and wonder what behavioral economics might have something to say about that as well. Is explaining the crisis a matter of "whodunit," thus solvable through legal and political, and other measurable, objective means? That is, should we take steps that will make us feel as though we have identified "what happened" and try to make certain we could head off such a crisis or minimize a future crisis? Are economic crises to some extent the result of our own behavioral nuttiness? Can behavioral economics guide reactions to economic crises to ease the pain and avoid compounding the problem? Read his column here.
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