Questioning Development - Potter

Einführung iE Potter 2. VO

Carina Autengruber

Forms of development

Development as fundamental or structural change for example, an increase in income

Development as an intervention and action, aimed at improvement, regardless of whether

betterment is, in fact, actually achieved

Development as improvement, with good as the outcome

Development as the platform for improvement – encompassing changes that will facilitate

development in the future

Advantages of development

Economic growth

National progress

Modernization along Western lines

Improvement of basic needs

Creation of sustainable growth

Improved governance

Disadvantages of development

Dependent and subordinate process

Creating and widening inequalities

Undermines local cultures and values

Poverty, poor working and living conditions

Environmentally unsustainable

Undermines human rights and democracy

Colonialism

Direct political control and administration of an overseas territory by a foreign state

New colonial or neo-colonial role by Truman within the newly independent countries that were

emerging from the process of decolonization. He was encouraging the so-called underdeveloped

nations to recognize their condition and to turn to the USA for long-term assistance.

Modernism

Defined as the belief that development is all about transforming “traditional” countries into

modern, westernized nations. The genesis of much modern(ist) development theory and practice lay

in the period between 1945 and 1955

Trusteeship

Defined as the holding of property on behalf of another person or group, with the belief that the

latter will better be able to look after it themselves at some time in the future. There was little

recognition that many traditional societies might in fact have been content with the ways of life they

already led. Indeed, development strategist often tried to persuade them otherwise. Other writers

recognize that the origins of modern development lay in an earlier period linked with the rise of

rationalism and humanism in the 18s and 19s century. During this period, the simple definition of


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development as change became transformed into what was seen as a more directed and logical form

of evolution. The period when these changes took place is known as the “enlightenment”. In general

it refers to a period of European intellectual history that continued through most the 18s century.

Enlightenment thinking stressed the belief that science and rational thinking could progress human

groups from barbarism to civilization.

Enlightenment thinking

Empiricism (Gaining knowledge through observation)

Concept of universal science and reason

Idea of orderly progress

Championing of new freedoms

Ethic of secularism (the belief that religion should not be involved in the organization of society,

education etc.)

Notion that all human being are essentially the same

Those who could not adapt to such views came to be thought of as “traditional” and “backward”. As

an example of this, the Australian Aborigines were denied any rights to the land they occupied by the

invading British in 1788 because they did not organize and farm it in a systematic, rational way that is

in what was construed as a “Western” manner.

Der 14. Juli ist Frankreichs Nationalfeiertag. Gefeiert wird der Beginn der Revolution von 1789, der

das Land vom Feudalismus befreite und letztlich trotz vieler Rückschläge den Menschenrechten und

der Demokratie zum Durchbruch verhalf. Der Sturm auf die Bastille, Symbol der Unterdrückung und

Entrechtung, wurde das Fanal, auf das hin im ganzen Land der Aufstand gegen das verhasste

Zwangssystem losbrach.

Darwinism began to associate development with evolution. When combined with the rationality of

Enlightenment thinking, the result became a narrower but “correct” way of development, one based

on Western social theory.

Progress was held to be typified by the unregulated chaos of pure capitalist industrialization.

Development was representative of Christian order, modernization and responsibility.

“robbing people of different cultures of the opportunity to define the terms of their social life”

Esteva

Conventional development: „authoritative intervention”

Truman speech of 1949 „a handicap and threat both to them and more prosperous areas … greater

production is the key to prosperity and peace. And the key to greater production is a wider and

more vigorous application of modern scientific and technical knowledge”.

(((1949:

Teilung Deutschlands wird besiegelt.

Salazar gewinnt die Wahlen in Portugal.

Bürgerkrieg in China endet, der kommunistische Mao Tse-tung kommt an die Macht.)))


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Authoritative intervention: the provision of advice and aid programmes

Post colonial theory

Arthur Lewis interpreted the modernizing mission “it should be noted that our subject matter is

growth and not distribution”. In other words, increasing incomes and material wealth were seen as

being of far more importance than making sure that such income was fairly or equitably spread

within society.

The earliest and for many still the most convenient way of quantifying underdevelopment has been

through the lever of Gross National Product (GNP) per capita pertaining to a nation or territory.

GNP per capita is a measured by the total domestic and foreign value added of a nation divided by

its total population. The real problem with this measure is that it gives no indication of the

distribution of national wealth between different groups within the population.

Seers suggested the use of three criteria to measure comparative development: poverty,

unemployment and inequality. Later on social indicators were broadened to incorporate measure of

gender inequality, environmental quality and political and human rights. Critics for example, how


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does one measure human rights when cultural interpretations are not consistent (Drakakis-Smith,

1997)

UNDP Human Development Index (HDI)

HDI was introduced and developed by the United Nations. It measures the overall achievements in a

country in three basic dimensions of human development: longevity, knowledge and a decent

standard of living.

How the HDI is calculated:


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Nobel prizewinner Douglas North seeks to confirm “The modern western world provides abundant

evidence of markets that work and even approximate the neo-classical ideal … Third World

countries are poor because the institutional constraints define a set of payrolls to political/economic

activity that do not encourage productive activity.”

Amartya Sen was awarded for the Nobel Memorial Prize for Economic Science. He argues that

development consists of the removal of various types of unfreedoms that leave people with little

choice and little opportunity for exercising their reasoned agency. Sen’s focus is very much upon

“instrumental freedoms”, that is those which allow us to live lives free from starvation,

undernourishment, escapable morbidity, premature mortality, illiteracy and innumeracy. Being

able to enjoy political participation and free speech are further vital freedoms. Sen critics that

women are not enjoying the same substantive freedoms as men. They suffer from unfair food

sharing and health care within household, and have little voice.

Political freedoms: right to vote, existence of economic opportunities, social facilities, transparency

within the society, protective security

Eurocentricity (European Orientation): It is an economic development theory

Eurocentricity criticism:

Denigration (unfair criticism) of other people and places

Ideological biases

Lack of sensitivity to cultural variation

Setting of ethical norms

Stereotyping of other people and places

Tendency towards deterministic (the belief that people are not free to choose what they are like

or how they behave, because these things are decided by their surroundings and other things

over which they have no control) formulations

Tendency towards empiricism in analysis

Tendency towards male orientation (sexism)

Tendency towards reductionism (the belief that complicated things can be explained by

considering them as a combination of simple parts)

Tendency towards the building of grand theories

Underlying tones of racial superiority

Unilinearity

Universalism

Ultimately development: Improvement of life chances of people.


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Development as economic growth and development as enhancing freedoms

Anti-developmentalism: is based on the criticism that development is a Western construction in

which the economic, social and political parameters of development are set by the West and are

imposed on other countries in a neo-colonial mission to normalize and develop them in the image

of the West.

Social movement: territorially bases action, operating outside the formal political system, with the

objective of defending or challenging the provisions of urban services against the interests and values

of the dominant groups in society.

Urban social movements (USMs): essentially local and non-political in origins, their effectiveness in

improving the quality of life is strongly influenced by the broader social, political and economic

contexts in which they are situated, not only at the urban level but at the regional, national and

international levels as well. (Case study p. 17/18)

Postmodernism: “the cultural logic of late capitalism, effectively representing the new conservatism

… preoccupied with commodification, commercialization and cheap commercialization denies that

history can be examined in a process of progression to “higher” levels of civilization. It sees history

as a contingent succession of events, so that it is difficult to think in terms of goals.

Spatialising development: the Third World/Developing World/Global South/Poor Countries:

In the Cold War politics of the immediate post-war years, this notion of a third way was revived

initially by the French Left, which was seeking a non-aligned path between Moscow and

Washington. It is this concept of non-alignment that was seized upon by the newly independent

states in the 1950s, led in particular by India, Yugoslavia and Egypt, and culminating in the first major

conference of non-aligned nations held in Bandung in Indonesia in 1955. Indeed, at one point

“Bandungia” appeared to be a possibility for their collective title. (LA countries were not present in


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Bandung.) Friedmann claim that as a result of this meeting “the Third World was an invention of the

non-western world”.

Peter Worsely played a major role in the popularization of the term Third World. For him the term

was essentially political, labeling a group of nations with a colonial heritage from which they had

recently escaped and to which they had no desire to return within the ambit of new forms of

colonialism, or neo-colonialism. More over Bandung and Worsley excluded the communist

countries.

In the mid 1980s, before the collapse of the Second World, Thrift and Forbes listed the attributes of a

socialist government as follows:

One-party rule

Egalitarian goals

High or increasing degree of state ownership of industry and agriculture

Collectivization of agriculture

Centralized economic control

The socialist Third World in the 1980s

The 1970s:

Rise of price for petrol by OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) conceived as a

political weapon against the West for its support of Israel, the price rise had a much greater

effect on the non-oil-producing countries of the developing world.

Capital investment via multinational corporations and financial institutions poured out of Europe

and North America in search of industrial investment opportunities in developing countries (four

Asian tigers plus Mexico and Brazil).


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Newsweek identified four worlds, the Third world comprised those developing countries

significant economic potential and the Fourth World consisted of the “hardship cases”.

Time magazine, 5-world classification in which the Third world contained those states with

important natural resources, the Fourth World were the newly industrializing countries (NICs)

and the Fifth World comprised what were clearly regarded as the “basket cases”.

The term Fourth World was also used to describe underdeveloped regions within developed

nations (ex. Aborigines, Inuit)

The 1980s: the “lost decade” for development in the Third world

Developed countries were classified by their dominant mode of industrial production.

Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union were politically identified as “centrally planned”

Non-oil-exporting developing countries were divided on the basis of wealth into low- and

middle-income states.

Lord Bauer expressed it like this “the Third World is the creation of foreign aid; without foreign

aid there is no Third World”.

In the eyes of Marxists there were only two worlds, those of capitalism and Marxian socialism.

North-South labeling received and enormous boost with the publication of the Brandt Report

(criticism: wealthy developed part and another underdeveloped bottom half; lacked explanatory

power).

Core and periphery model by Wallerstein; Semi-periphery gives another division of the world

into three sections that are still bound together by the overarching operations of capitalism

The World Bank, the IMF and the regional banks began to impose what are referred to as

“structural adjustment programmes” (SAPs – economic austerity packages for countries who

wanted financial loans and aid) on the Third World.

Models in the 1980s: North and South; core, periphery and semi-periphery


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The 1990s

The emergence of regional economic blocs in the image of the European Union, such a NAFTA

(North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement) and APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) to

protect their member states, cut across the traditional boundaries of the three worlds

Sachs stated that “the scrapyard” (Schrottplatz) of history now awaits the category “Third World”

to be dumped.

Corbridge joined “with others in questioning the current validity of the term the Third World”

Friedmann also rejected the term in favor of a focus on people rather than places

Progress in development from the 1970s to the 2000s

Increased life expectancy

Less illiteracy

Higher income

More human freedom

An unequal world

In 1960 the ratio of the income of the world’s richest 20 per cent of the population to the income of

the world’s poorest 20 per cent stood at 30:1. By 1980 this ratio had widened considerably to 45:1.

In 1960, East Asia and the Pacific, South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and the least developed countries

all had average per capita incomes that amounted to around one-ninth to one-tenth of those of the

high-income countries of the OECD.

Between 1960 and 1998, East Asia experienced a major improvement in incomes, increasing over

the period to nearly one-fifth of OECD levels.

During the 1980s and 1990s, the average income pertaining to South Asia improved significantly,

having shown relative declines earlier, staying at an average income level of around one-tenth that

of the OECD nations.

The average incomes of East Asian and Pacific nations have shown convergence (narrow) on those of

the rich nations, divergence (wide) in average incomes has been true of sub-Saharan Africa and the

least developed nations

Despite a reduction in the relative differences between many countries, absolute gaps in per capita

income have increased during the period 1960 – 1998.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 2000 – 2015: poverty development and the future

The MDGs were formally adopted at the General Assembly of the UN held in NY on 18 September

2000. The eight overarching goals, each to be achieved by 2015:


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In respect of the majority of targets viewed by continental division (some 100 out of 160), the

outcome looks set to be negative by 2015, judging by present progress. The biggest number of

missed targets are likely to be encountered – namely in sub-Saharan Africa, followed by Oceania,

commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Asia and Western Asia.

Development and anti-development are extremely important concepts for they exist in a global

context where differences in wealth, opportunity and choice appear to be widening at their extremes

rather than narrowing. Aftermath of the events of 11 September 2001, Bill Clinton argued that “we in

the wealthy countries have to spread the benefits of the 21st century world and reduce the risks so

we can make more partners and fewer terrorists in the future”. Clinton observes that over half the

world are excluded from the benefits of the new global economy and he asks “what kind of

economy leaves half the people behind”?


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Concluding issues: geography, development and “distant others”:

McGee emphasizes globalization as “a variable geometry of production or consumption, labor,

capital management and information – a geometry that denies the specific meaning of places outside

its position in a network whose shape changes relentlessly”.

Alvin Toffler argues for the end of geography as there are increased flows of people, goods and

information that serve to dissolve difference and distinctions.

Richard O’Brien claimed an end to geography on the basis that location matters much less for

economic development than it has done in the past.

Allen and Hamnett: Although the recent development of technologies does “challenge conventional

notions of distance, boundaries and movement … geography matters …. Because global relations

construct unevenness in their wake and operate through the pattern of uneven development laid

down.

Massey and Jess: The place is more fundamental than ever, since the realities of development

within the Third World are represented by unevenness and by constantly shifting fusion and conflict

between the global and local.

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Questioning Development - Potter