- ict4d
12.13.07
“highlights of technology and development in the Global South”
- all materials attached and linked here are provided for educational purposes and use only!
- introduction/outline
- first we are going to look at some technologies that most of us probably think are successes.
- then we are going to look at some concepts from the world of development that may be useful tools in thinking about problem solving and project design.
- terminology
- these phrases will be used interchangeably
- Third World
- Postcolonial Countries
- Developing Countries (Yes one day Europe was developING too, but this phrase is only used as a synonym for Third World. It's confusing, and we prefer Third World because it clearly communicates the power relationships.)
- Periphery
- Global South
- as will these
- First World
- Developed World
- Centre
- former colonizers
- Global North
- 1. tech gone wrong (in different ways)
- high yielding varieties
- Vandana Shiva, The Violence of the Green Revolution. 1992: Zed Books, London
- summary
- This book is a detailed analysis of the effects of green revolution "high yielding varieties" (HYVs) in the Punjab in India. These varietes were introduced in the late 1960s. The book analyzes the impacts of HYVs and their accompanying required chemical fertilizer input on soil fertility and the impacts of the "thirstiness" of these seeds on the overall water system. The excerpts attached here are from the chapter which examines the impacts of "monocrops" (a field growing only one variety of one crop) on productivity -- the improvement of which was their purported goal.
In addition to the "costs" of soil health and water availability, the new agricultural system brought other costs, discussed in Chapter 5; they increased income inequality and the number of people living below the poverty line. Some farmers became prosperous, others became poorer, and conspicuous consumption of Western commodities became a source of tension. One of the responses to this tension was Sikh fundamentalism focused on reclaiming traditional values. Another response was putting pressure on the Central government of India to reduce the cost of the inputs farmers had become dependent on. As this pressure intensified, the Prime Minister took the path of fomenting ethnic conflict between Sikhs and Hindus by attacking a Sikh temple. She transformed a class struggle into an ethnic one, with the tragic result of a long cycle of interethnic violence in the Punjab and in the nation (eventually taking the life of the Prime Minister herself). [p174-191]
Shiva argues that while the Green Revolution promised "peace through abundance" it instead delivered new forms of scarcity, inequality, and conflict. "The Green Revolution package was not just a technological and poltiical strategy. It... also...replaced traditional peasant values of co-operation with competition, of prudent living with conspicuous consumption, of soil and crop husbandry with the calculus of subsidies, profits and remunerative prices...The process of development leads, in effect, to turning one's back to the soil as a source of meaning and survival...The destruction of organic links with the soil also leads to destruction of organic links within society. Diverse communities, co-operating with each other and the land become different communities competing with each other for the conquest of the land. The homogenisation processes of development do not fully wipe away differences. Differences persist, not in an integrating context of plurality, but in the fragmenting context of homogenisation." [184-5, 189-90]
- excerpts on the topic of productivity
- The HYV system looks at productivity only in terms of grain produced. It replaced a system of diverse cropping, which provided a mix of nutritional and household needs (roofing and fuel), as well as producing inputs to the farm system. In comparing, HYV only compares the grain production of the old system.
- In traditional agriculture, the crops provided agricultural inputs including: fodder to feed the tractor animal, plant humus as water and fertilizer, and animal manure as fertilizer. These inputs are eliminated with the HYV system, making the farm dependent on imported fertilizer.
- HYVs produce problems, new costs, through negative impacts on the ecology
- HYVs are engineered to reduce the production of straw, and put more plant energy into grain. Because the uses of the straw (humus, fodder, and roofing) was not valued. Besides reducing the quantity of straw, animals will not eat the HYV straw, and it fails as a roofing material.
- And comparisons show that traditional varieties outproduce the HYVs even by the narrow system of evaluation of grain alone!
- This chart shows the range of productivity of farming under several different systems, and also shows the off-farm or imported inputs necessary to achieve that rate of production. A final issue is the vulnerability of a crop with a "narrow genetic base" compared with a biodiverse crop, leading to a lack of food security.
- questions
- How should unpredicted effects be assessed?
- Who decides if the costs are acceptable?
- How can engineers become more mindful of the larger systems impacted by single interventions?
- Is there a system of restoration of damages/costs associated with a new technology?
- Does this technology support diversity or reduce it? Does it increase or decrease opportunities for livelihood and social equity?
- (just in case you want more) pdf of entire book
- microcredit
- Thomas Dichter, "The Worrisome State of the Microcredit Movement". The South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA), Braamfontein, October, 2006.
- summary
- This article takes a careful look at microcredit. It distinguishes between poverty alleviation and actual development, determining that much microcredit is used for the former and not the latter. The author is concerned is that the PR has been focused on anecdotal stories of development, which have been hyped and may not be representative of the experiences, which are more for poverty alleviation. Finally, he raises some concerns about the possibilities for entrepreneurship in certain contexts, and also which sector of the poor has the most possibilities to make productive use of entrpreneurship money. He also raises some questions about scaling up having happened too rapidly, before best practices were clarified. Evaluation has been difficult. In this case the "pilot" was good (Grameen Bank) but the scaleup has problems, which the hype is concealing.
Two of the major controversial development issues that this article touches are: The informal sector as a location for economic development. (Dichter believes that the informal sector is a bad target.) Whether development should be done by direct engagement with the poor or through large-scale institutional changes, such as building new industries at a national scale with state direction, protection, and financing, which is what South Korea and the other Asian Tigers did. (Dichter believes that going directly to the poor is popular becuase it "feels good" to the donors. This move is also driven by the current anti-government mindset.) He concludes:
"And so we come again to familiar territory in the development industry. An idea that, after all, can produce some modest changes in the life of poor people (cash flow smoothing, confidence building, etc.) but that really works well only in some circumstances, is carried off by hype and urgency, offered as much more than it really is, and applied everywhere. As it grows it is inevitably caught up in the decades-old incentive structure of the development aid industry - people and institutions are rewarded for mobilising and moving money, and for acting on the mistaken notion that the way to solve poverty is to go directly to the poor themselves. Since the 1970s, time and again our industry ignores complex and contextual approaches to development (institutional, legal, governance, and other reforms) in favour of superficial feel-good solutions that produce at best marginal changes, but satisfy the need to be perceived as 'doing something for the poor.'"
- link to article
- questions
- When should scale up happen? How fast?
- What if the successes of the technology are not the same as its goals?
- Is it ok for corporate banks to move into microcredit, making millions from Africa's poorest people? (see BusinessWeek cover story 12.10.07)
- Roben Farzad, CAN GREED SAVE AFRICA? (cover story) Business Week; 12/10/2007 Issue 4062, p046-054, 8p, 1 map, 7c
- farzad2007.html
- dams
- Patrick McCully, Silenced Rivers: The Ecology and Politics of Large Dams. 1996: Zed Books.
- summary
- This book examines in detail the impacts of large dams. It looks at the impacts on water quality, migratory fish, geology and hydrology, economics, technical failures, and aging. Dams have negative impacts on disease vectors, including changing the ecology of malaria, spreading other diseases borne by mosquitoes, flies, and worms. The book also examines whether they deliver on their promised benefits of irrigation, flood control, and rural electrification and whether the poor and those displaced by the dam are among the beneficiaries in the end. Archival analysis of the world's dams shows that few have delivered the promised benefits in total power production and benefits to the poor (they usually provide electricity to industry and well-off urban residents and irrigation to large landowners and agroindustry.)
One of the most difficult issues is displacement of rural people and the failure to provide them with the possibilities of life that are taken from them. When indigenous people are displaced their cultural survival is at stake. India's Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada river will displace more than 320,000 people and is being fiercely resisted. More than 1.3 million people will be displaced by China's Three Gorges Dam to be completed in 2009. There is an international movement of resistance to dams. There is also a long history of small dams and water management systems which farmers have built and maintained to share water.
"The gargantuan scale of large dams, and their seeming ability to bring powerful and capricious natural forces under human cotnrol, gives them a unique hold on the human imaginaation...They also symbolize the might of the state that built them, making huge dams a favorourite of nation-builders and autocrats. When a dam is given such a powerful symbolic role, its economic and technical rationale and potential negative impacts fade into insignificance in the decision-making process...Probably the most common refrain is that undammed rivers are 'wasted'. This belief negates...the economic value of unregulated rivers to the hundreds of millions of people who depend on them for drinking water, food, transport [and livelihood]. The wasted river ideologues are justifying not human use of rivers, but the expropriation of rivers from one set of users to another." [237-8].
- excerpts
- Some of the difficulties of resettlement
- The extent and politics of displacement
- Dams as aid
- Dams as subsidies to international corporations
- questions
- Who benefits the most from this development project?
- Who pays the costs?
- How are development projects linked to elites?
- Do mega-development projects (dams to fuel new industries) ever "trickle down" to the poorest?
- (just in case you want more) pdf of entire book
- 2. some development theories
that may be useful in solving the problems you want to solve
(UH, we may not have time to get through all these in class...)- colonialism
decolonization
postcoloniality
- summary
- Although most countries were formally decolonized by the mid 1960s, many scholars view the process of decolonization as still incomplete. Some of the legacies of colonialism which are important in understanding continuing poverty and inequality in the Global South are: Land distrubution patterns which may not have been repaired at the end of colonialism; distorted development in which extensive land, labor, and other resources are devoted to a few major export industries; and continuing relationships with former colonizers in which those countries retain extensive influence over (or even continue to own large parts of) the economy; and ideas inculcated during colonialism which have continued to shape national priorities under the rule of elites educated in the West, (such as particular notions of "civilization", "dignity", "progress", and European political ideas, aesthetics, etc.) Not only in the Global North, but in the leadership and administration of the Global South, "West" is not only "Best", but is seen as the only way to develop.
Postcoloniality is the contentious and incomplete intellectual project of imagining and discovering what it would be like to recover and build a new nation that is authentic and liberatory. A number of postcolonial intellectuals have observed that the colonizer was changed and damaged (perhaps even dehumanized) by the experience (and particularly the assumptions about European superiority) of colonialism. They have also observed that the experience of colonialism can never be "over" nor the colonizer completely extricated from the colonized country. Some postcolonial scholars have devoted themselves to reminding the current "leaders" of the world of the scientific and engineering accomplishments of the postcolonial nations, much of which was accomplished before comparable developments in Europe. Indigenous peoples' knowledge of agronomy and medicine was extremely sophisticated, a fact now being recognized by pharmaceutical and biotech companies who seek to patent the accumulated engineering knowledge of traditional societes.
- some readings
to browse
- what is colonialism? (SHORT) The Ecologist, Whose Common Future? 1993: New Society, Philadelphia
- a couple of pages, covering it all: Nils Ole Glück's blogged summary of colonialism, decolonization, and postcoloniality
- excerpts
- The term “decolonisation” seems to be of particular importance while talking about post-colonialism. In this case it means an intellectual process that persistently transfers the independence of former-colonial countries into people’s minds. The basic idea of this process is the deconstruction of old-fashioned perceptions and attitudes of power and oppression that were adopted during the time of colonialism. First attempts to put this long-term policy of “decolonising the minds” into practice could be regarded in the Indian population after India became independent from the British Empire in 1947.
- nilsole.net > Index ? ...
- wikipedia on decolonization with a great section on UNCTAD's plan for an Economic Order to help developing countries
- Decolonization is a political process, frequently involving violence. In extreme circumstances, there is a war of independence, sometimes following a revolution. More often, there is a dynamic cycle where negotiations fail, minor disturbances ensue resulting in suppression by the police and military forces, escalating into more violent revolts that lead to further negotiations until independence is granted. In rare cases, the actions of the native population are characterized by non-violence, India being an example of this, and the violence comes as active suppression from the occupying forces or as political opposition from forces representing minority local communities who feel threatened by the prospect of independence. For example, there was a war of independence in French Indochina, while in some countries in French West Africa (excluding the Maghreb countries) decolonization resulted from a combination of insurrection and negotiation. The process is only complete when the de facto government of the newly independent country is recognized as the de jure sovereign state by the community of nations…
- Empires have expanded and contracted throughout history but, in several respects, the modern phenomenon of decolonization has produced different outcomes. Now, when states surrender both the de facto rule of their colonies and their de jure claims to such rule, the ex-colonies are generally not absorbed by other powers. Further, the former colonial powers have, in most cases, not only continued existing, but have also maintained their status as Powers, retaining strong economic and cultural ties with their former colonies. Through these ties, former colonial powers have ironically maintained a significant proportion of the previous benefits of their empires, but with smaller costs — thus, despite frequent resistance to demands for decolonisation, the outcomes have satisfied the colonizers' self-interests.
- The term "Third World" was coined by French demographer Alfred Sauvy in 1952...The emergence of this new political entity, in the frame of the Cold War, was complex and painful. Several tentatives were made to organize newly independent states in order to oppose a common front towards both the US's and the USSR's influence on them, with the consequences of the Sino-Soviet split already at works.
- Thus, the Non-Aligned Movement constituted itself... In 1960, the UN General Assembly voted the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. The next year, the Non-Aligned Movement was officially created in Belgrade (1961), and was followed in 1964 by the creation of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) which tried to promote a New International Economic Order (NIEO). The NIEO was opposed to the 1944 Bretton Woods system, which had benefited the leading states which had created it, and remained in force until 1971 after the United States' suspension of convertibility from dollars to gold. The main tenets of the NIEO were: (click the + above if you don't see 1-4)
- 1. Developing countries must be entitled to regulate and control the activities of multinational corporations operating within their territory.
- 2. They must be free to nationalise or expropriate foreign property on conditions favourable to them.
- 3. They must be free to set up associations of primary commodities producers similar to the OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, created on September 17, 1960 to protest pressure by major oil companies (mostly owned by U.S., British, and Dutch nationals) to reduce oil prices and payments to producers.); all other States must recognize this right and refrain from taking economic, military, or political measures calculated to restrict it.
- 4. International trade should be based on the need to ensure stable, equitable, and remunerative prices for raw materials, generalized non-reciprocal and non-discriminatory tariff preferences, as well as transfer of technology to developing countries; and should provide economic and technical assistance without any strings attached.
- The UNCTAD however wasn't very effective in implementing this New International Economic Order (NIEO), and social and economic inequalities between industrialized countries and the Third World kept on growing through-out the 1960s until the 21st century…
- In many independent, post-colonial nations, the systems and cultures of colonialism continue. Weak Parliaments and Ministerial governments (where Ministries issue their own edicts and write laws rather than the Parliament) are holdovers of colonialism since political decisions were made outside the country, Parliaments were at most for show, and the executive branch (then, foreign Governor Generals and foreign civil servants) held local power. Similarly, militaries are strong and civil control over them is weak; a holdover of military control exercised by a foreign military. In some cases, the governing systems in post-colonial countries could be viewed as ruling elites who succeeded in coup d'etats against the foreign colonial regime but never gave up the system of control.
- Bill Weinberg, War on the Land: Ecology & Politics in Central America. 1991: Zed Books, London.
- summary
- This book shows the cycles of industries, and their effects on people and ecology, during and after colonialism. It shows how the patterns of land ownership, and authority over the economy, were never repaired. The lack of access to land and self-development is important in understanding the persistence of poverty in Latin America, and thus in understanding peoples desperation to migrate or acquire a sweatshop job.
- excerpt from the book
- Prasenjit Duara, ed., Decolonization: Perspectives from Now and Then. Routledge, 2003. 318 pgs.
- excerpts
- From a historian’s perspective, decolonization was one of the most important political developments of the twentieth century because it turned the world into the stage of history. Until World War I, historical writing had been the work of the European conquerors that, in the words of Oswald Spengler, had made the world appear to ‘revolve around the pole of this little part-world’ that is Europe. With few exceptions, the regions outside Europe were seen to be inhabited by people without the kind of history capable of shaping the world. The process of decolonizaton, which began towards the end of World War I, was accompanied by the appearance of national historical consciousness in these regions, that is, the history, not of dynasties or the work of God/gods, but of a people as a whole. To be sure, historical writing continues to be filtered through national preoccupations, but the rapid spread of modern historical writing to most of the world also enabled us to see how happenings in one region – no matter how peripheral or advanced – were often linked to processes and events in other parts. It became possible to grasp, as did the leaders of decolonization, the entire globe as an interconnected entity for understanding and action.
- Within this approximate time and region, decolonization refers to the process whereby colonial powers transferred institutional and legal control over their territories and dependencies to indigenously based, formally sovereign, nation-states. The political search for independence often began during the inter-war years and fructified within fifteen years of the end of World War II in 1945. It should be noted that there were many formally independent countries, such as Iran and China, whose leaders considered themselves to have been informally and quasi-legally subordinated to colonial powers, and who viewed their efforts for autonomy as part of the anti-imperialist movement (see Chapters 2 and 6 by Sun Yat-sen and Jalal Al-i Ahmad respectively). Therefore decolonization represented not only the transference of legal sovereignty, but a movement for moral justice and political solidarity against imperialism. It thus refers both to the anti-imperialist political movement and to an emancipatory ideology which sought or claimed to liberate the nation and humanity itself.
- More recently, the debates around post-colonialism have questioned the extent or thoroughness of ‘decolonization’ when independence from colonial powers meant the establishment of nation-states closely modelled upon the very states that undertook imperialism.
- The imperialism we are concerned with in this volume was the imperialism of Western nation-states and later Japan that spread from roughly the mid-eighteenth century to Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean and Pacific islands. The brutal and dehumanizing conditions it imposed upon these places have been well documented, most graphically by the independence movements themselves. At the same time...this imperialism represented an incorporation of these regions into the modern capitalist system. As we shall see in the historiographical survey of imperialism conducted by Patrick Wolfe in Chapter 9 this volume, debates continue about the purposes and nature of this incorporation, but we may make a few general comments about it. First, the colonial projects of capitalist nation-states such as Britain, France, the Netherlands, and later Germany, Italy, the US and Japan, among others, were an integral part of the competition for control of global resources and markets. The ideology accompanying the intensification of competition in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was Social Darwinism. This was an evolutionary view of the world that applied Darwin’s theory of ‘the survival of the fittest’ to races and nations, and justified imperialist domination in terms of an understanding that a race or nation that did not dominate would instead be dominated. Imperialist competition for a greater share of world resources, particularly on the part of late-comer nation-states such as Germany and Japan, was an important factor behind the two world wars of the twentieth century. Ironically, however, both wars accelerated decolonization considerably.
- Second, from the perspective of the colonized, this incorporation inevitably involved the erosion of existing communities as they experienced the deepening impact of capitalism and alien cultural values. The extent to which these communities were able to adapt to the new circumstances depended upon the historical resources they were able to muster, as well as their position and role in the imperialist incorporation process. Thus it was not uncommon to find a dualistic type of society in the colonies: on the one hand, an adaptive and relatively modern, coastal, urban sector, integrated under however unequal terms, with metropolitan society. On the other hand, a vast hinterland where historical forms of social life, economic organization and exploitation continued to exist, but hardly as pristine ‘tradition’. This is the phenomenon known in dependency theory as ‘the articulation of modes of production’, whereby modern capitalism utilizes non-capitalist modes of production and exploitation for the production of capitalist value. Whether responding to global prices or a plantation economy, these regions also serviced the modern capitalist sector of the metropolitan economy, but, typically, they received few of its benefits. In other words, the gap ought not to be seen merely as the difference between a traditional and a modern sector, but as different kinds of incorporation into the capitalist system. The gap between these two sectors and ways of life would often shape and bedevil the decolonization process.
- As we shall see in the essays by the decolonizing leaders in Part I, the ideals of decolonization and the anti-imperialist movement were built upon two pillars: socialism and the discourse of alternative civilizations, or what I call the new discourse of civilization. These two aspects were much more closely and deeply intertwined in the twentieth century than we have customarily believed. By socialism, I refer specifically to the Leninist programme of anti-imperialism and socialist equality, as well as state and party command over society. Some societies like China, Vietnam, North Korea and Tanzania adopted the socialist programme more completely, but most other decolonizing societies also reflected more or less the socialist ideals of equality, market restrictions and state re-distribution programmes as the alternative to the imperialist capitalism under which they had suffered.
- Journalist: What do you think of Western civilization?
Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.
- In some ways, the idea that there were other civilizations had been around in the West for a long time. Yet by the nineteenth century, European civilization based on Enlightenment ideas of progress came to displace the idea that other civilizations mattered. Indeed, the absence of such an idea of civilization in a society was sufficient reason to justify colonization. The war, the changed balance of power in the world, and the critique of European civilization restored the idea that other civilizations were just as (or nearly as) legitimate, and decolonizing thinkers associated civilization with claims to sovereignty, thus reversing the terms of the European assertion that denied sovereignty because of the lack of civilization.
- The new discourse of civilization was a truly global intellectual product. Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West, written just before World War I, and the postwar writings of Arnold Toynbee, converged with those of many Asian, and later, African, thinkers and writers. Among them were Okakura Tenshin and Okawa Shumei from Japan, Gu Hongming, Liang Qichao and Liang Shuming in the Chinese speaking world, Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi in India, and Léopold Senghor, Aimé Césaire and others of the Négritude movement. The view that emerged from this discourse was the world could be saved from materialist greed and technological destructiveness by combining the spiritual and moral qualities of other – such as Islamic, Hindu, African, Buddhist or Confucian – civilizations. The validity of these civilizations was often established through three, sometimes combined, approaches. One was to find elements similar to European civilization within these societies: Confucian rationality, Buddhist humanism, Hindu logic, etc. Another found the opposite of the West in alternative civilizations which are ‘peaceful’ as opposed to ‘warlike’, ‘spiritual’ as opposed to ‘material’, ‘ethical’ as opposed to ‘decadent’, ‘natural’ as opposed to ‘rational’, ‘timeless’ as opposed to ‘temporal’, communal as opposed to competitive, and so on. Finally, these new nations would synthesize or harmonize these binaries and Western materialism would be balanced by Eastern spirituality and modernity redeemed. In such ways, the discourse of multiple and alternative civilizations gave considerable authority and confidence to the critique of the Social Darwinist ideology that had fuelled imperialism and the imperialist idea of the civilizing mission.
- During the period of colonial empires, several developments took place that were to leave a different heritage for decolonizing nations. First, as a modern state, the colonial state was built upon the imperative that all global resources be controlled by territorially sovereign polities, whether nations or empires. This logic transformed the fuzzy frontier zones of the historical empires into the militarized boundaries of the modern state. The rulers of modern empires, such as the British, the French or the Japanese, were often obsessed by the need to maximize their territories and militarize their boundaries, often in remote, unprofitable regions. Their actions provided the impetus for emergent nation-states like China, India, Nigeria, Iraq or Indonesia to maximize and militarize their own territories. Modern states have tended to incorporate contiguous, alien territories and peoples wherever possible, thereby blurring the practical distinction between imperialism and nationalism in these areas. This drive led not only to border conflicts among the new states, but also often meant the rapid deterioration of the environment – especially forests – and the elimination of the means of livelihood and cultures of indigenous peoples. In other places it often led to the alienation of larger populations, such as Kashmiri Muslims, the Tibetans, the Kurds or the East Timorese.
- Second, the problem of ethnicity was frequently created and certainly compounded during the colonial period. Colonial states often created new categories of people – and even reified such categories as caste or tribe – for purposes of governance and to establish their power through a policy of divide and rule. In Africa, European colonialists reified a certain image of the tribe in order to co-opt chieftains whose power they had recently enlarged. The British in India favoured certain ‘martial classes’ from the north, such as Sikhs or Gurkhas, in opposition to the ‘effeminate’ and politically restive Bengali intellectuals. More consequential for the South Asian subcontinent was the division of electoral constituencies in the twentieth century along religious lines, which had the effect of exacerbating and deepening tensions between majority Hindus and Muslim elites who felt they would be dominated in a new Indian nation. Colonial policies encouraged and facilitated large-scale immigration from China, India and elsewhere to work on plantations and mines in Southeast Asia, the Caribbean and Africa. Colonial powers frequently used these immigrant communities as ‘docile labour’ or as junior partners of imperial rule – as merchants, intermediaries and functionaries – thus fomenting much ethnic strife between the local and diasporic communities, a strife that continues to the present.
- entire introductory chapter
- just a tidbit from: Bruce Cumings, "Colonial Formations and Deformations: Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam" in Duara, ed., 2003.
- A debate has emerged about the sources of economic growth in South Korea and Taiwan: did it all begin around 1960, when both had miniscule per capita incomes but somehow launched themselves onto a trajectory of export-led growth, or do the origins of growth push back further, into the legacies of Japan’s colonial rule? That debate also bears on the export-led plans of a different former colony, at a very different time: Vietnam in the 1990s.
First we need to know what a ‘colonial legacy’ is, and why colonial history is still such a neuralgic point in East Asia today. I take a colony to have been one way of organizing territorial space in the modern world system, one that obliterated political sovereignty and oriented the colonial economy toward monopoly controls and monopoly profits (even if done differently by the various imperial powers), and a legacy to be something that appears to be a follow-on to the different historical experiences of colonialism.
- questions
- How do the legacies of colonialism affect how we think about who is "developed" and who is "undeveloped"?
- How do the legacies of colonialism affect global poverty and inequality?
- If these countries have so much great stuff that the first world wants, why are they poor?
- washington consensus
- summary
- The 'Washington Consensus' and 'Neoliberalism' refer to a set of economic concepts and policies that are enforced through Structural Adjustment programs of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund and Free Trade Agreements (WTO, NAFTA, CAFTA, etc.). (Neoliberalism has nothing to do with 'liberalism' as we use it in the US to refer to humanitarian politics. It is about economic 'liberalisation', which means allowing the economy to be governed by the market and not having any kind of national protections from foreign economic actors.)
- what is it?
- Maria Mies & Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen, The Subsistence Perspective. 2000.
- this is a distillation of the concepts of the Washington Consensus
- subsist2.tiff
- update
- The Post-Washington Dissensus Walden Bello | September 24, 2007 Foreign Policy In Focus
- http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4569
- excerpt: "Development circles were not shocked last year when two studies detailed how the World Bank’s research unit had been systematically manipulating data to show that neoliberal market reforms were promoting growth and reducing poverty in developing countries. They merely saw these devastating findings, one by American University Professor Robin Broad, the other by Princeton University Professor Angus Deaton and former International Monetary Fund chief economist Ken Rogoff, as but the latest episode in the collapse of the so-called Washington Consensus. Partisans of this development model during its heyday in the 1980’s and early 1990’s borrowed Margaret Thatcher’s famous remark to claim that the alternative to the Washington Consensus was TINA - that is, “There is no alternative.”
The Washington Consensus rejected economic strategies involving heavy participation by government and positioned the unfettered market as the driver of development. Imposed on developing countries in the form of “structural adjustment” programs funded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, the Consensus reigned until the late 1990’s, when the evidence became clear that on all key criteria of development - sustained growth, poverty reduction, and reduce inequality - it simply was not delivering. By the first half of this decade, the Consensus had undergone a process of unraveling, although neoliberalism remained the default mode, simply out of inertia, for many economists and technocrats that had in fact lost confidence in it."
- questions
- What have been the results of this country opening its economy to foreign projects? What was the process that opened it up?
- Are we considering working with governments? Why or why not?
- structural adjustment programs
- summary
- Structural adjustment programs are "conditions" imposed by the World Bank and IMF on borrowers. They include a range of economic policies which must be implemented, including privatization (water, electricity, transportation, and other services), liquidation of assets, ending land reform programs, restricting labor activities and wages, downsizing civil service and government spending on poverty programs, currency devaluations, and the implementation of other aspects of Free Trade Agreements which open the economy up to foreign investment and "dumping" (sale of imported products below the cost of production, which drives local producers out of business). SAPs were implemented starting in the early 1980s. They have had a deleterious impact on poverty, inequality, and even growth (which they were supposed to spur). Free Trade Agreements, which began to be implemented in the mid 1990s push the same economic policies through a different international mechanism. Both SAPs and FTAs are now being rejected by many Global South countries throughout the world, but they have already done a lot of damage.
- further reading
- Detailed and useful web page, discussing policies of World Bank and IMF, and how they maintain poverty and dependency. It also looks at the attempts to "reform" these institutions.
- questions
- What does it mean to help someone while ignoring what it is that is harming them?
- As someone representing the Global North working in the Global South, do we need to understand the ongoing terms of relationships between our countries?
- Do we want to be encouraging privatization of healthcare and education?
- an aside on global relations and power
- Global elites such as powerful nations, multilateral institutions, and corporations have influence over economics in the Global South.
- The interests of domestic national elites in any Global South country may be more closely aligned with the interests of national elites of Northern countries than they are to their own people.
- Progressive leaders have a hard time implementing progressive policies because of structural adjustment programs. Here we see the failures of Mandela in South Africa and Aristide in Haiti to implement their visions of social justice.
- No less important is the power of unquestioned ideas, particularly the concept that there is only one form of development and the corresponding devaluation of pre-colonial and "alternative" economic and political organization.
- net capital outflow
- summary
- Although there is a common perception of development aid and foreign investment flowing from the Global North to the Global South, in reality there is a net outflow of capital from South to North.
- a little more explanation
- Mohameden Ould-Mey, Global Restructuring and Peripheral States. 1996: Rowman & Littlefield.
- an update
- "According to estimates by the International Monetary Fund, the developing economies as a group had a current account surplus of $640 billion last year. Because the financial counterpart to this surplus is a deficit on the financial accounts, it represents the net capital outflow to the industrial economies. $640 billion is a big number and stands in sharp contrast to the situation preceding the Asia crisis. For example, in 1996 the combined current account balance of the developing economies was a deficit of $80 billion, representing a capital inflow of that amount from the industrial world...In 2005, gross capital outflows from the developing economies totaled almost $1.2 trillion--more than a tripling of the 1996 figure. --Speech by Federal Reserve Governor Randall Krozner, May 15 2007
- charts & graphs
- Bob Sutcliffe, 100 Ways of Seeing an Unequal World. 2001: Zed Books
- questions
- Why is the third world poor?
- modernization theory
- summary
- The "promise" of development to postcolonial nations was that if they followed the economic principles recommended by the first world: industrialization, urbanization, trade liberalization, export, they would achieve ***growth*** which would then enable them to increase standard of living and invest in health, education, environment, etc.
This promise, and acccompanying FDI [Foreign Direct Investment] and aid was made so as to secure the openness of these markets to capitalist interests. In the 1950s and 1960s, modernization was a competition for access to postcolonial countries' resources, against the communist countries' offers. (From the perspective of the third world, the Cold War was about "where can we get the better deal?" At the same time, many postcolonial countries chose somewhat socialist paths to development, establishing free education (including university), some land reform (not enough), and other economic measures as rights to be paid for by public ownership of major industries.
***Growth*** has not turned out as promised, with much of it ending up in the hands of elites. Third world countries with successful growth may have severe inequality. Moreover, much useful economic activity is not counted as growth becuase it does not take place in the formal economy. Lots of this activity is sacrified for growth, leading to difficulties for people in maintaining subsistence which was formerly secure. In the case of the Asian Tiger economies, growth was achieved only at the cost of severe labor exploitation, destruction of the agrarian economy, and economic damage. Since those economies have crashed, they are reconsidering the growth-oriented model of development.
- papa
- Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth. 1960: Cambridge UP
summary from wikipedia
- the stages
- Traditional Societies: Traditional societies are marked by their pre-Newtonian understanding and use of technology. These are societies which have pre-scientific understandings of gadgets, and believe that gods or spirits facilitate the procurement of goods, rather than man and his own ingenuity. The norms of economic growth are completely absent from these societies.
- Preconditions to Take-off: The preconditions to take-off are, to Rostow, that the society begins committing itself to secular education, that it enables a degree of capital mobilization, especially through the establishment of banks and currency, that an entrepreneurial class form, and that the secular concept of manufacturing develops, with only a few sectors developing at this point. This leads to a take off in ten to fifty years. At this stage, there is a limited production function, and therefore a limited output. There are limited economic techniques available and these restrictions create a limit to what can be produced.
- Take-off: Take-off then occurs when sector led growth becomes common and society is driven more by economic processes than traditions. At this point, the norms of economic growth are well established. In discussing the take-off, Rostow's is a noted early adopter of the term “transition”, which is to describe the passage of a traditional to a modern economy. After take-off, a country will take as long as fifty to one hundred years to reach maturity.
- Drive to Maturity: The drive to maturity refers to the need for the economy itself to diversify. The sectors of the economy which lead initially begin to level off, while other sectors begin to take off. This diversity leads to greatly reduced rates of poverty and rising standards of living, as the society no longer needs to sacrifice its comfort in order to strengthen certain sectors.
- Age of High Mass Consumption: The age of high mass consumption refers to the period of contemporary comfort afforded many western nations, wherein consumers concentrate on durable goods, and hardly remember the subsistence concerns of previous stages. Rostow uses the Buddenbrooks dynamics metaphor to describe this change in attitude. In Thomas Mann’s novel, Buddenbrooks, a family is chronicled for three generations. The first generation is interested in economic development, the second in its position in society. The third, already having money and prestige, concerns itself with the arts and music, worrying little about those previous, earthly concerns. So too, in the age of high mass consumption, a society is able to choose between concentrating on military and security issues, on equality and welfare issues, or on developing great luxuries for its upper class. Each country in this position chooses its own balance between these three goals.
- criticisms
- only for larger countries with resources
- denies Friedrich List’s argument that countries reliant on exporting raw materials may get “locked in”,
- de-emphasizes any difference between how leading sectors develop in free and controlled markets.
- Rostow's model is descendent from the liberal school of economics, emphasizing the efficacy of modern concepts of free trade and the ideas of Adam Smith.
- allows for a degree of government control over domestic development not generally accepted by some ardent free trade advocates.
- believes that countries want to modernize as he describes modernization, and that the society will ascent to the materialistic norms of economic growth.
- keep in mind
- Not one country has followed the path of modernization and ascended from postcolonial to First world status. (South Korea appeared to do so, but the outcome has reversed. Moreover, South Korea developed according to state command capitalism, not actually according to modernization theory.)
- questions
- If it hasn't worked, why are we still using it?
- dependency & dependent development
- summary
- Dependency theory claims that modernization theory was not happening becuse postcolonial countries were held in a form of economic activity that was dependent on a few major exports, largely to their former colonizers. They were being held in a position of "underdevelopment" and promised that it would eventually serve them.
- readings
- Peter B. Evans, Dependent Development. 1979: Princeton UP.
- Dependency Theory: An Introduction Vincent Ferraro, Mount Holyoke College South Hadley, MA July 1996
- excerpt. propositions of dependency theory
- 1. Underdevelopment is a condition fundamentally different from undevelopment. The latter term simply refers to a condition in which resources are not being used. For example, the European colonists viewed the North American continent as an undeveloped area: the land was not actively cultivated on a scale consistent with its potential. Underdevelopment refers to a situation in which resources are being actively used, but used in a way which benefits dominant states and not the poorer states in which the resources are found.
- 2. The distinction between underdevelopment and undevelopment places the poorer countries of the world is a profoundly different historical context. These countries are not "behind" or "catching up" to the richer countries of the world. They are not poor because they lagged behind the scientific transformations or the Enlightenment values of the European states. They are poor because they were coercively integrated into the European economic system only as producers of raw materials or to serve as repositories of cheap labor, and were denied the opportunity to market their resources in any way that competed with dominant states.
- 3. Dependency theory suggests that alternative uses of resources are preferable to the resource usage patterns imposed by dominant states. There is no clear definition of what these preferred patterns might be, but some criteria are invoked. For example, one of the dominant state practices most often criticized by dependency theorists is export agriculture. The criticism is that many poor economies experience rather high rates of malnutrition even though they produce great amounts of food for export. Many dependency theorists would argue that those agricultural lands should be used for domestic food production in order to reduce the rates of malnutrition.
- 4. The preceding proposition can be amplified: dependency theorists rely upon a belief that there exists a clear "national" economic interest which can and should be articulated for each country. In this respect, dependency theory actually shares a similar theoretical concern with realism. What distinguishes the dependency perspective is that its proponents believe that this national interest can only be satisfied by addressing the needs of the poor within a society, rather than through the satisfaction of corporate or governmental needs. Trying to determine what is "best" for the poor is a difficult analytical problem over the long run. Dependency theorists have not yet articulated an operational definition of the national economic interest.
- 5. The diversion of resources over time (and one must remember that dependent relationships have persisted since the European expansion beginning in the fifteenth century) is maintained not only by the power of dominant states, but also through the power of elites in the dependent states. Dependency theorists argue that these elites maintain a dependent relationship because their own private interests coincide with the interests of the dominant states. These elites are typically trained in the dominant states and share similar values and culture with the elites in dominant states. Thus, in a very real sense, a dependency relationship is a "voluntary" relationship. One need not argue that the elites in a dependent state are consciously betraying the interests of their poor; the elites sincerely believe that the key to economic development lies in following the prescriptions of liberal economic doctrine.
- http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/depend.htm
- other forms of dependency
- "the aid industry" or the "charity industrial complex": provides jobs and vested interests other than those of the purported beneficiaries. it also causes recipients to reorganize their economic activities to make the most of aid, leading them to be dependent on a very wierd economy.
- "disaster capitalism" is an idea recently promoted by Naomi Klein in her book of that name:
- At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq’s civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country’s vast oil reserves…. Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the “War on Terror” to Halliburton and Blackwater…. After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts.... New Orleans’s residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened…. These events are examples of “the shock doctrine”: using the public’s disorientation following massive collective shocks – wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters -- to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy.
- http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine
- questions
- How does a given tech project relate to existing dependent relations?
- Does this project provide "technology transfer"?
- monoculture
- summary
- Monoculture is most clearly associated with export-based economic development. In agriculture it is called "monocropping". It is also used to analyze the results of an increasingly homogenous set of consumer commodities, which, when imported, then block out the possibilities for more diverse local products. (Coca-Cola is an example.) It is also associated with a lack of diversity in economic imagination, in Shiva's phrase, "monocultures of the mind".
- futher reading
- Vandana Shiva, Monocultures of the Mind. 1993: Palgrave.
- questions
- Does this project increase or decrease diversity?
- Instead of just teaching English teach indigenous languages?
- alternative ideas about development
- rethinking progress
- summary
- Some scholars question the First World as a vision of progress and suggest a more careful examination of other societies and ways of living. Mies & Bennholdt-Thomsen propose that subsistence is a condition of self-reliance, security, and sustainability. And a legitimate choice of being.
- excerpt
- Maria Mies & Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen, The Subsistence Perspective. 2000.
- localization
- summary
- Many scholars are currently reconsidering the healthy properties of small scale economies, protected from global actors and markets. Hines promotes the concept "protect the local, everywhere". This book contains a variety of policy proposals to do this.
- excerpt of principles
- Colin Hines, Localization: A Global Manifesto. 2000.
- conscientização
- summary
- This is an approach to development which emphasizes a particular kind of education, one in which postcolonial people become aware of their own experience as a basis of knowledge and judgments about global economics and different forms of development. The person credited with developing this approach to development (and education), and he is now quite famous all over the world, is Paulo Freire.
- excerpt
- Paulo Freire
- Education for Critical Consciousness. 1973: Seabury Press, New York
- endogenous v. exogenous development
- summary
- Exogenous development is development ideas and projects that come from outside, like modernization theory and neoliberalism.
Endogenous development is the same thing as indigenous development, meaning that development comes from within the principles and concepts that are traditional to the people and place where the development is needed. The colonial mentality tells both the people and those that would help them that there is nothing endogenous that is of value. A postcolonial perspective knows that it will take work to find what has been thrown away, hidden in shame, or forgotten, but which may hold the key to a healthier form of society.
The issue isn't just the origin of the ideas but how the decisions are made to pursue a particular path of development. Are those decisions are taken under pressure, threat, or coercion or are they taken by the people themselves who will be MOST AFFECTED by the development projects? - Gandhi's "Khadi" Village-based development as a vision for economic development of India in Swaraj (self-rule). Consumption and production should occur as near to one another as possible and every village should be self-supporting for basic needs. Industry, machinery, and centralized mass production must be made to serve the people instead of enriching some at the cost of the well-being of others. Thus well being, and economic exchanges are decentralized and self-reliant.
- Gibson-Graham 2006 critique mainstream economic development as "capitalocentric". it fails to recognize the many forms of production and exchange which are already going on in every economic setting. alternative economic development needs to get away from the trap of production for export. Other ways of thinking about economic development are:
- • Choosing to meet local NEEDS by delivering increased well-being directly (rather than relying on the circuitous route of capitalist industrialization) and recognizing and building on the diversity of practices that support subsistence and sustain livelihoods.
-
• Using surplus as a force for constituting and strengthening communities – defining the boundary between necessary and surplus labor, monitoring the production of surplus, tracking the ways in which it is appropriated and distributed, and discussing how it can be marshaled to sustain and build community economies. (For an extended discussion of surplus, see the section on Móndragon, 101-126)
-
• Recognizing consumption as a potentially viable route to development rather than simply its end result, and defining and making decisions about consumption versus investment on a case-by-case basis, rather than privileging the latter as the "driver" of development.
-
• Creating, enlarging, reclaiming, replenishing, and sharing a commons, acknowledging the interdependence of individuals, groups, nature, things, traditions, and knowledges, and tending the commons as a way of tending the community [193]
- citation: J. K. Gibson-Graham, A Postcapitalist Politics. 2006: U Minnesota.
- excerpts
- Walden Bello, "All Fall Down" July 30, 2007 Foreign Policy In Focus
- excerpt
- It is not only the IMF but neoliberalism, the dominant ideology of the 1990s, that came crashing down in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis. Malaysia imposed capital controls and stabilized the economy, allowing it to weather the recession in 1998-2000 better than other afflicted countries. It was, however, Thailand that most dramatically broke with neoliberalism. After three stagnant years under governments faithfully complying with the IMF’s neoliberal prescriptions, the newly elected government of Thaksin Shinawatra propelled countercyclical, demand-stimulating neo-Keynesian policies to get the economy back on track. The Thai government froze repayments on rural debt, instituted government-financed universal health care, and gave each village one million baht to spend on a special project. Despite dire predictions from neoliberal economists, these measures contributed to propelling the economy onto a moderate growth path that has since been sustained by demand created by China’s red-hot economy.
The 1997 financial crisis, which saw one million Thais drop below the poverty line in a few short weeks, turned the populace against neoliberal globalization. Even as the government refocused on stimulating domestic demand through income support for the lower classes in the countryside and the city, popular sentiment went against free trade. On Jan 8, 2006, several thousand Thais tried to storm the building in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where negotiations for an FTA (free trade agreement) were taking place between the United States and Thailand. The negotiations were frozen; indeed, Prime Minister Thaksin’s advocacy of the FTA became one of the factors that contributed to his loss of legitimacy and eventually his ouster from power in September 2006.
This souring on globalization has been paralleled by the rise in popularity of the economic program of the country’s popular monarch, King Bhumibol. Dubbed the “sufficiency economy,” it is an inward-looking strategy that stresses self-reliance at the grassroots and the creation of stronger ties among domestic economic networks.
- link
- Gandhi
- gandhi-manibhavan.org > Gandhiphilosophy > Philosophy village villagedevelopeconomy
- excerpt
- Machinery, The Practical Side
- Machinery has its place; it has come to stay. But it must not be allowed to displace necessary human labour. An improved plough is a good thing. But if by some chances, one man could plough up by some mechanical invention of his the whole of the land of India, and control all the agricultural produce and if the millions had no other occupation, they would starve, and being idle, they would become dunces, as many have already becomes. There is hourly danger of many more being reduced to that unenviable state. I would welcome every improvement in the cottage machine, but I know that it is criminal to displace hand-labour by the introduction of power-driven spindles unless one is at the same time ready to give millions of farmers some other occupation in their homes. That use of machinery is lawful which subserves the interest of all. I would favour the use of the most elaborate machinery if thereby India’s pauperism and resulting idleness be avoided. I have suggested hand-spinning as the only ready means of driving away penury and making famine of work and wealth impossible. The spinning wheel itself is a piece of valuable machinery, and in my own humble way I have tried to secure improvements in it in keeping with the special conditions of India.
‘Are you against all machinery?’ My answer is emphatically, ‘No’. But, I am against its indiscriminate multiplication. I refuse to be dazzled by the seeming triumph of machinery. I am uncompromisingly against all destructive machinery. But simple tools and instruments and such machinery as saves individual labour and lightens the burden of machinery as saves individual labour and lightens the burden of the millions of cottages, I should welcome. What I object to, is the craze for machinery as such. The craze is for what they call labour-saving machinery. Men go on ‘saving labour’, till thousands are without work and thrown on the open streets to die of starvation. I want to save time and labour, not for a fraction of mankind, but for all; I want the concentration of wealth, not in the hands of few, but in the hands of all. Today machinery merely helps a few to ride on the back of millions. The impetus behind it ail is not the philanthropy to save labour, but greed. It is against this constitution of things that I am fighting with all my might.
‘Then you are fighting not against machinery as such, but against its abuses which are so much in evidence today.’ I would unhesitatingly say ‘yes’; but I would add that scientific truths and discoveries should first of all cease to be mere instruments of greed. Then labourers will not be over-worked and machinery, instead of becoming a hindrance, will be a help. I am aiming, not at eradication of all machinery, but limitation. ‘When logically argued out, that would seem to imply the all complicated power-driven machinery should go.’ It might have to go but I must make one thing clear. The supreme consideration is man. The machine should not tend to make atrophied the limbs of man.
For instance, I would make intelligent exceptions. Take the case of the Singer Sewing Machine. It is one of the few useful things ever invented, and there is a romance about the device itself. Wife labouring over the tedious process of sewing and seaming with her own hands, and simply out of his love for her he devised the Sewing hands, and simply out of his love for her he devised the Sewing Machine in order to save her from unnecessary labour. He, however, saved not only her labour but also the labour of everyone who could purchase a sewing machine. ‘But in that case there would have to be a factory for making these Singer Sewing Machines, and it would have to contain power-driven machinery of ordinary type.’ Yes, but I am socialist enough to say that such factories should be nationalized, or State-controlled. They ought only to be working under the most attractive and ideal conditions, not for profit, but for the benefit of humanity, love taking the place of greed as the motive. It is an alteration in the condition of labour that I want. This mad rush for wealth must cease and the labourer must be assured, not only of a living wage, but a daily task that is not a mere drudgery. The machine will, under these conditions, be as much a help to the man working it as to the State or the man who owns it. The present mad rush will cease, and the labourer will work (as I have said) under attractive and ideal conditions. This is but one of the exceptions I have in mind. The Sewing Machine had love at its back. The individual is the one supreme consideration. The saving of labour of the individual should be the object, and honest humanitarian consideration, and not greed, the motive. Replace greed by love and everything will come right. ‘You are against this machine age, I see.’ To say that is to caricature my views. I am not against machinery as such, but I am totally opposed to it when it masters us.
‘You would not industrialize India? I would indeed, in my sense of the term. The village communities should be revived. Indian villages produced and supplied to the Indian town and cities all their wants. India became impoverished when our cities become foreign markets and began to drain the villages dry by dumping cheap and shoddy goods from foreign lands. ‘You would then go back to the natural economy?’ Yes. Otherwise I should go back to the city. I am quite capable of running a big enterprise, but I deliberately sacrificed the ambition, not as a sacrifice, but because my heart rebelled against it. For I should have no share in the spoliation of the nation which is going on from day to day. But I am industrializing the village in a different way.
- Large-scale Production and Our Economic Problem
- Our mill cannot today spin enough for our wants, and if they did, they will not keep down prices unless they were compelled. They are frankly money-makers and will not therefore regulate prices according to the needs of the nation. Hand-spinning is therefore designed to the put millions of rupees in the hands of poor villagers. Every agricultural country requires a supplementary industry to enable the peasants to utilize the spare hours. Such industry for India has always been spinning. Is it such a visionary ideal- an attempt to revive an ancient occupation whose destruction has brought on slavery, pauperism and disappearance of the inimitable artistic talents which was once all expressed in the wonderful fabric of India and which was the envy of the world? We want to organize our national power not by adopting the best methods of production only, but by the best method of both the production and distribution. What India needs is not the concentration of capital in a few hands, but its distribution so as to be within easy reach of the 71/2 lakhs of villages that make this continent 1900 miles long and 1500 miles broad. Multiplication of mills cannot solve the problem. They can only cause concentration of money and labour and thus make confusion worse confounded. India should wear no machine-made clothing whether it comes out of European mills or Indian mills (written in 1909). Do I seek to destroy the mill industry, I have often been asked. If I did, I should not have pressed for the abolition of the excise duty. I want the mill industry to prosper-only I do not want it to prosper at the expense of the country. On the contrary, if the interests of the country demand that the industry should go, I should let it go without the slightest compunction. The great mill industry may be claimed to be Indian industry. But, in spite of its ability to compete with Japan and Lancashire, it is an industry that exploits the masses and deepens their poverty in exact proportion to its success over Khadi. In the modern craze for wholesale industrialization, my presentation has been questioned, if not brushed aside. It has been contended that the growing poverty of the masses, due to the progress of industrialization, is inevitable, and should therefore be suffered. I do not consider the evil to be inevitable, let alone to be suffered. The A.I.S.A. has successfully demonstrated the possibility of the villages manufacturing the whole of the cloth requirement of India, simply by employing the leisure hours of the nation in spinning and the anterior processes. The difficulty lies in weaning the nation from the use of mill cloth. This is not the place to discuss how it can be done. My purpose in this note was to give my definition of Indian industry in terms of the millions of villagers, and my reason for that definition.
- The Economics of Khadi
- The science of Khadi requires decentralization of production and consumption, Consumption should take place as nearly as possible where Khadi is produced. The central fact of Khaddar is to make every village self-supporting for its food and clothing. Self-sufficient Khadi will never succeed without cotton being grown by spinners themselves or practically in every village. It means decentralization of cotton cultivation so far at least as self-sufficient Khadi is concerned. Khaddar does not seek to destroy all machinery but it dies regulate its use and check its weedy growth. It uses machinery for the service of the poorest in their own cottages. The wheel is itself an ezqu8isite piece of machinery. I am personally opposed to great trusts and concentration of industries by means of elaborate machinery. If India takes to Khaddar and all it means, I do not lose the hope of India taking only as much of the modern machinery as may be considered necessary for the amenities of life and for labour-saving purposes.
- Mass Production Vs. Production by the Masses
- I would categorically state my conviction that the mania for mass-production is responsible for the world-crisis. Granting for the moment that machinery may supply all the needs of humanity, still, it would concentrate production in particular areas, so that you would have to go about in a round about way to regulate distribution, whereas, if there is production and distribution both in the respective areas where things are required, it is automatically regulated, and there is less chance for fraud, none for speculation. You see that these nations (Europe and America) are able to exploit the so-called weaker or unorganised races of the world. Once these races gain an elementary knowledge and decide that they are no more going to be exploited. They will simply be satisfied with that they can provide themselves. Mass-production, then, at least where the vital necessities are concerned, will disappear. When production and consumption both become localized, the temptation to speed up production, indefinitely and at any price, disappears. All the endless difficulties and problems that jour present-day economic system presents, too, world then come to an end. There could be no unnatural accumulation of hoards in the pockets of the few, and want in the midst of plenty in regard to the rest. ‘Then, you do not envisage mass-production as an ideal future of India? Oh yes, mass-production, certainly, but not based on force. After all, the message of the spinning wheel is that. It is mass-production, but mass-production in people’s own homes. If you multiply individual production to millions of times, would it not give you mass-production on a tremendous scale? But I quite understand that your "mass-production" is a technical term for production by the fewest possible number through the aid of highly complicated machinery. I have said to myself that that is wrong. My machinery must be of the most elementary type which I can put in the homes of the millions. ‘So, you are opposed to machinery, only because and when it concentrates production and distribution in the hands of the few?’ You are right, I hate privilege and monopoly. Whatever cannot be shared with the masses is taboo to me. That is all.
- Decentralization and Nonviolence
-
I suggest that, if India is to evolve along non-violent lines, it will have to decentralize many things. Centralization cannot be sustained and defended without adequate force. Simple homes from which there is nothing to take away require no policing; the palaces of the rich must have strong guards to protect them against dacoity. So must huge factories. Rurally organized India will run less risk of foreign invasion than urbanized India, will equipped with military, naval and air forces. Remember also that your nonviolence cannot operate effectively unless you have faith in the spinning wheel. I would ask you to read Hind Swaraj with my eyes and see therein the chapter on how to make India nonviolent. You cannot build nonviolence on a factory civilization, but it can be built on self-contained villages. Even if Hitler was so minded, he could not devastate even hundred thousand nonviolent villages. He would himself become nonviolent in the process. Rural economy as I have conceived it, eschews exploitation altogether, and exploitation is the essence of violence. You have, therefore, to be rural-minded before you can be nonviolent, and to be rural-minded you have to have faith in the spinning wheel. The end to be sought is human happiness combined with full mental and moral growth. I use the adjective moral as synonymous with spiritual. This end can be achieved under decentralization. Centralization as a system is inconsistent with nonviolent structure of society.
- Gibson Graham 2006
- examples?
- Orangi Pilot Projects
- The approach at the OPP is to encourage and strengthen community initiatives (with social, technical guidance and credit for micro enterprise) and evolve partnerships with the government for development based on local resource. Development is self financed by the people. OPP institutions provide social and technical guidance and credit for micro enterprise. The methodology is action research and extension. That is analyzing outstanding problems of the area, peoples initiatives, the bottlenecks in the initiatives, then through a process of action research and extension, advice and guiding community organization for self help and partnership with the government.
- questions
- how much participation in design goes on? where?
- social movements
- summary
- Agencies and NGOs are not the only organizations doing development. Around the world, social movements of slum dwellers, peasant farmers, and workers organize themselves to do development. Often they are annoyed that NGOs and highly paid bureaucrats in international agencies claim the money, credit, and prestige for making change that social movements have done with only their own resources and creativity.
- examples
- The MST in Brazil organizes landless workers to build communities including agricultural cooperatives.
- La Vía Campesina is a social movement of 150 million farmers in 65 countries organizing to protect the interests of small-scale farmers and fisherfolk against global trade in agriculture and for "food sovereignty". Their development work included farmer-centered rebuilding after the Tsunami.
- The Haitian Platform to Advocate Alternative Development (PAPDA) is a coalition of nine Haitian popular and non-governmental organizations which work with the Haitian popular movement to develop alternatives to the neo-liberal model of economic globalization. When the Haitian government moved to privatize certain industries, PAPDA worked with the unions and the business community to create strategies that would improve production and minimize cost without privatization.
- The Zapatistas in Chiapas, México have established autonomous communities opposed to globalization, figuring out another path to dignified, participatory, democratic development. They build their own schools, clinics, justice systems, water systems, and fair trade arrangements.
- 3. additional readings
- Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning Rittel, Horst W. J.; Webber, Melvin M. Policy Sciences, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 155-169, Jun 1973. (the "wicked hard problems" paper)
- 4. questions & ideas generated in discussion at ict4d on 12.13.07
- thinking about HYVs and dams:
has this technology improved things?
- need for systems analysis that takes things into account that you don't know about (tech interventions are disruptive. how do you find all the ripple effects and track how things change?)
- even once you have that, how to decide if benefits outweigh risks and costs. (more income v. food security)
- some things are hard to value
- human life
- biodiversity
- unpredictable systemic change
- languages
- environmental beauty
- tradition
- difficulties in assessment: correlation v. causation
- thinking about exogenous v endogenous development
- sometimes people don't know what is possible and it's hard to know what to ask for
- in economic development, observers note that people start the same business their neighbor has.
- would UN welfare indicators be relevant?
- thinking about the principles of medical interventions
should we develop such principles for development?
- do no harm
- intervention must be beneficial to that patient in particular (not to humanity in general)
- is it ok to introduce or increase inequality as part of a development project?
- you can regulate/tax later to redistribute?
- assumption of trickle down
- thinking about corporate banks going into microcredit:
is it ok to make a profit from addressing poverty?
- how can scaling up be accountable to orginal principles and incorporate its lessons?
- possibility of using the concept of "open-source" designs to help MIT folks understand that those they are working with want ownership and control over their own development
- need to make sure it's accessible and not expert-only
- need to mix open access with opportunities to create entrepreneurial projects
- technology often has power considerations, such as access to change
