word of the day: hagiography

The word of the day is hagiography:

the writing and critical study of the lives of the saints (dictionary.com)


"More generally, high valuation on land has translated into Australians'  embracing rural agricultural values justified by their British background but not justified by Australia's low agricultural productivity.  Those rural values continue to pose an obstacle to solving one of modern Australia's built-in political problems: the often disproportionate influence of rural voters.  In the Australian mystique even more than in Europe and the U.S., rural people are considered honest, and city-dwellers are considered dishonest.  If a farmer goes bankrupt, it's assumed to be the misfortune of a virtuous person overcome by forces beyond his control (such as a drought), while a city-dweller who goes bankrupt is assumed to have brought it on himself through dishonesty.  This rural hagiography and disproportionately strong rural vote ignore the already-mentioned reality that Australia is the most highly urbanized nation.  They have contributed to the government's long-continued perverse support for measures mining rather than sustaining the environment, such as land clearance and indirect subsidies of uneconomic rural areas."

 - Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed