Beyond Colonialism, Development and Globalization: Social Movements and Critical Perspectives 9781350218611, 9781783605842

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This collection is dedicated to Peter Gillespie, fellow traveller, friend and colleague, whose life embodied a genuine commitment to a praxis rooted in critical thinking and collective action that dared to question the comfort of certainties and dogmas, with humility, authenticity and a generosity of spirit.

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Acknowledgements As with many collective projects, this one grew out of conversations around how social movements were challenging the way international organizations, non-governmental organizations and governments were constructing and defining ‘development’ projects and programmes within capital. Oftentimes wrapped in the mantra of liberal rights and norms and well-meaning intentionality, such interventions were conceived without attending to local histories, economic disparities and politics, let alone culture and reflexivity and their links to an increasingly globalizing capitalism. At the same time, we were witnessing an expanding theoretical literature criticizing and questioning the ‘development project’ and its institutional field. Marked by a rich and creative use of adjectives and evocative imagery (among others, post-development, alternative develop­ ment, après development, human development, radical development, beyond development, development impasse) and emerging theoretical bricolage (postmodernism, postcolonialism, subaltern perspective, social constructivism, etc.), a momentum was building within academic circles, it seemed, to open and explode new frontiers. Yet, such effervescence also seemed detached from social struggles on the ground and the very specific contexts and localities where our research and activism was placed. From these and other related conversations and shared concerns, we decided to write to colleagues whom we thought would be interested in exploring these ideas and attempt to bridge this apparent disconnect. It has turned out to be a fruitful endeavour, albeit a lengthy one, that will now, we hope, continue to stimulate critiques and praxis in various contexts of

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struggle and critical academic scholarship considering social movements, colonialism, development and globalization or capitalism and related Euro-American global knowledge projects. This collection was made possible through individual grants from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. We would like to thank all our contributors for their effort and their fidelity in staying with this protracted process, and Allison Crump, who has patiently accompanied us through multiple revisions and edited with rigour and a wonderful sense of humour. Dominique would also like to thank Timothé Nothias and Anne-Cécile Gallet, who helped synthesize and translate earlier drafts, and in particular the ABC gang (Arca, Bing and Claude), who helped him keep his sanity and health by pulling him away from his office.

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Beyond Colonialism, Development and Globalization Social Movements and Critical Perspectives Dominique Caouette and Dip Kapoor

Introduction More than sixty years ago, US President Harry Truman announced that his nation would undertake the project of improving what he described as underdeveloped countries (Escobar 1995; Parpart and Velmeyer 2004). The idea of a ‘developing world’ (Ferguson 1994; Rist 2001), later named Third World (Beaudet et al. 2008; Dansereau 2008), captured the imagination and energy of several generations of individuals and institutions dedicated to the project. The international development industry was not just the domain (chasse-gardée) of the West; the Communist bloc also promoted development aid programmes. Although capitalist and socialistdriven aid programmes differed widely in terms of the role of the state and commitments to equality, the notion of political participation and the ultimate goals of development were infused with ideas embedded in the philosophical liberalism of the Enlightenment and of modernity, science and industrial modernization. Although the origins of the ideology of unlimited scientific progress and its intrinsically positivist character go back as far as Greek Antiquity, it is with the onset of the Enlightenment period in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that the doctrine of social development took root. As development became institutionalized, it started to embody various corpuses of knowledge, each with its own underlying disciplinary effects, including productivity, homogeneity and division of labour. Such ideas were not detached from the daily realities of the time, as newly consolidated Western European nation states were experiencing social tensions and new problems with increasing industrialization and

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urbanization. Liberal philosophers and intellectuals, who advised policymakers and the emerging bourgeois regimes, worked to avoid or stabilize social disorder. This period was thus marked by the maintenance of and concern for order and progress. This prompted the construction of public institutions and agencies capable of regulating social practices, ranging from hygiene to transportation to market transactions, in order to move towards modernity in the eighteenth century. Development gradually became the end rather than the means of government intervention, because it embodied the ideas of progress and modernity. Anything that fell outside this path was considered as disorderly, archaic and backwards and eventually became linked to underdevelopment. Associated with the tension between development and under­ development, the era of social Darwinism in the nineteenth century strengthened and legitimized the myth of Western superiority (Cowen and Shenton 1995; Hopkins 2002). Acting as a justification for the ongoing process of colonization, a universalizing language of ‘trusteeship’ of developed and modern nations towards their colonies started to emerge. With development becoming an intrinsic part of the civilizing mission of the West, colonization acquired an appearance of legitimacy for its important and much more ‘real’ motivations, namely the extraction of resources and wealth from the colonies. The strength of development as the embodiment of modernity and progress intensified during the second half of the nineteenth century and the race for colonies. Colonial administrations, despite their intra-imperial competition, promoted the European model as the natural way (voie royale) to be followed towards progress and modernity. Scientific positivism, the epistemological basis for action, bred the first experts of scientific development. Not surprisingly, as early as the turn of the twentieth century, dissenting voices and attempts to construct a counter-hegemonic discourse were heard among anti-colonial and anti-nationalist movements (Anderson 2007). Soon after the wave of independence that followed the end of WWII, several intellects from the ‘Global South’ and elsewhere, were able to point out continuities between colonial and development projects and development theory or thinking (Connell 2007; Fanon 1963/2005; Nandy 1967/1999). Both types of international assistance programmes aimed at modernization and were rooted in notions of progress, scientific rationalism and what some scholars have referenced as development racism (Dossa 2007; Fanon 1952/2008; Kothari 2006; Wilson 2013). Underdevelopment was described as a pathological condition at worst and as a transitive moment towards development at best. International assistance programmes were then conceived to move the underdeveloped nations towards development. Both the East and the West were convinced

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that their own historical trajectories could chart a model to be followed. Providing international assistance was hardly philanthropic, but instead rooted in geopolitical and economic interests of the ‘ex-colonial’ powers. Nonetheless, assistance was cloaked in a discourse of philanthropy and/or internationalist solidarity. The international development project of the 1950s, which extended well into the 1980s, required the deployment of new elites, oftentimes administrators, technocrats, social scientists, engineers and other applied scientists, as well as ambitious and opportunist politicians and well-meaning idealists, scholars, and large contingents of volunteers – the new missionaries of this era (Barry-Shaw and Jay 2012; Beaudet 2009; Crush 1995; Favreau, Fréchette and Lachapelle 2008). More than anything else, at the core of the international development project was a strong economist perspective. Local political institutions, local knowledge, cultural diversity, ecologies and identities were set aside since economic growth through industrialization and urbanization held the promise of positive and unequivocal transformation. While the colonial project metamorphosed into the development credo in the 1950s and 1960s, another discursive shift has occurred more recently, in the last twenty years or so, with globalization embodying the new face of old ideas of modernization, progress, productivity and scientific rationalism (Caouette 2010; McMichael 2010). Today, fundamental ontological, epistemological and methodological challenges are shaking up and cracking the foundations of this four-part edifice of liberal modernity. Hardly comfortable sitting under a single label, postcolonial, postdevelopment, après-development, subalterity, or alter-globalization scholars (Amoore 2005; Appadurai 2001; Gandhi 1998; Martell 2010; McEwan 2009; McMichael 2010) and indigenous scholarship and activism addressing decolonization (Alfred 2005; Coulthard 2014) share three important qualities: none of them claim to be totalizing, all-encompassing or even true in the limited sense of positive truth, but rather partial, subjective and context-driven, and with varied commitments to decolonization and anti-capitalism. This process of radical questioning has informed current development studies’ debates that have been marked by a rejection of mainstream discourse on development. Key authors within the dominant discursive circles of development studies have included Escobar (1995), Esteva and Prakash (1998), Nederven Pierterse (2000), McEwan (2009) and McMichael (2010), among many others. They have been instrumental in shaping and generating a large and dynamic field of contention within development studies around key issues, such as the notion of development itself, but also how discourse, narratives and rationales have been constructed to justify and give meanings to a major attempt at spreading

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liberal modernity. This collection takes up these development-centric and other related interdisciplinary critiques and lively conversations on the continuities and discontinuities that exist between three modernizing projects (colonization, development and globali­ zation), by inviting activists and observers of grassroots social movements to highlight a series of multiple, heterogeneous and diverse perspectives on alternative and dissenting paths away from a colonial capitalist modernity. These perspectives are emerging from the practices of the movements themselves as well as from analysts, fellow academics, observers and activists. The goal here is not programmatic nor paradigmatic, but rather inductive and localized within a particular historical moment, marked by the new duality of a hegemonic colonial project of market driven globalization and its various counter-hegemonic responses (Dupuis-Déri 2010; Pleyers 2010). This collection of case studies and rooted reflections interrogates the practice of social movements in order to identify whether these constitute the seeds of alternative scenarios, visions, scripts and of different narratives of the present. While the contributions stand in parallel and in solidarity with much of the counter-discourses and practices, there is also a keen awareness of the gradual institutionalization of such radical and reformist departures from the dominant discourse on globalization by NGOs, transnational coalitions and networks (Barry-Shaw and Jay 2012; Choudry 2007; Choudry and Kapoor 2013; Murphy 2001; Tarrow 2005). The dangers of institutionalization are not new, however, and have marked much of the history of social movements. Subsequently, authors who are placed to speak from a rooted and/or social movement perspective have participated in the development of this collection. The book challenges the existing body of ‘modernizing’ ideas that have underlined three globalizing and historical projects: coloniz­ ation, international development and neoliberal globalization. Authors grapple with some of the following questions: what can we learn about these projects and their alternatives using the experiences and perspectives of social movements? Are there ideas, practices and notions that are common or shared by these social movements that are indicative of new counterhegemonies? From these alternative practices, ideas and concepts can we begin to develop a common syntax and a grammar that is freed from the liberal ideas of modernization, progress and Western scientific rationalism? The foundational argument being advanced here is that colonization, development and globalization projects have been reductionist and guided by universalizing assumptions, which are rooted in an economic and cultural liberalism that places progress and growth as objective and natural facts that can be fostered, measured, assessed and controlled. Moving

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away from these meta-narratives, this collection suggests alternative avenues for imagining and acting on transformative practices and resistance to global forces in market, state and international organizations and hegemonic knowledge. While the chapters are characterized by a variety of approaches, some convergent ideas and practices can be identified around the critical notions of local praxis, identity, collective action, learning and pedagogy, and situated knowledge.

Beyond development and globalization: constructivism, postdevelopment, postcolonial and subaltern studies and indigenous perspectives As part of the larger debate on globalization and one of its antitheses, alterglobalization, the field of development theories has been consumed by a process of soul-searching. Most of these critical approaches (postdevelopment, alternative development, anti-development, beyond develop­ ment) have veered away from meta-narratives, a critical analysis that has a strong lineage in preceding indigenous and anti-colonial scholarship and practice. Much more modest in their theoretical claims than their development-centric predecessors, these ‘postist’ approaches share the premises of constructivism regarding the social construction of reality and the importance of inter-subjectivity (Crush 1995; Wendt 1999) and have put to rest linear or teleological conceptions of development and modernization. Some of the most critical views are in keeping with postmodernism, questioning and deconstructing modernity as discourse and practices (Ferguson 1994; Loomba 1998; McEwan 2009). These approaches mark the transition from a critical view of development to a foundational critique of globalization and modernity. Constructivism and development Similar to the alternative development perspective that was first put forward in the 1980s emphasizing local initiatives and bottom-up approaches, the post-structural constructivist approaches (postdevelopment and beyond development) argued that the development project had reached a dead end. This is not to say that policy prescriptions or development projects had disappeared, but rather that the lost decade of the 1980s – when many of the development achievements of the previous decades (reduction in mother and infant mortalities, gains in education and reduction of poverty) vanished – had revealed how development was essentially an euphemism for the continued extension of Western interests and conceptions of progress in the ‘postcolonial era’. Confronting the

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illusion of development and re/colonizations became an imperative for scholars and activists alike. Constructivist approaches marked an important breach in the hegemonic discourse on development. One of the first to offer a systematic critique of the development project was Arturo Escobar in his seminal work Encountering Development (1995) where he provided a systematic and well-articulated attack on the concept of development. In his study, he argued that much of the development project is the result of a confluence of factors linked to the context of the post-WWII period. At that time, the West began constructing a narrative of development, especially following the Truman Point IV programme for a reconstruction of Europe, the ‘discovery of poverty’ and the naming of developing countries as nations in need of assistance. Such international assistance enabled developed nations to ‘manage’ poverty and extend capitalism and modernity. Looking at how the 1950s marked the deployment of a variety of ‘interventions’, Escobar revealed how many of these sought to subjugate popular sectors and classes, which the Americans feared could organize and turn to communism. Beyond this goal, the early years of the development project brought about the constitution of its key components, namely a mix of financial assistance and policy prescriptions. The development project gradually became comprised of scientific and technology transfers, support for management programmes, the elaboration of development plans, and the design of projects and programmes to support and stimulate industrialization, urbanization, savings, trade and a range of stage institutions. At the core of this modernizing project, there were development experts – technocrats, either expatriates or foreign-trained engineers, and social scientists including economists. In many ways, underlying this programme was a logic of medicalisation, which promoted the idea that the patient, the underdeveloped subject, was in need of intervention that could be only practised by an expert. Such expertise was positioned as neutral and objective since it was based on ‘scientific’ research and knowledge. Once put in place, this modernizing project created its own system of logic. Following the pioneering work of Escobar and others (Sachs and Esteva 1996), the late 1990s was a rich period of intense critiques of the project of development. Some went on to expand Escobar’s constructivist endeavour and revealed the philosophical roots of the development project by linking it back to the gradual dominance of philosophical liberalism in the nineteenth century. In their exploration of the philosophical roots of development, Michael Cowen and Robert Shenton (1995) point out that as early as 1844, Robert Chambers had argued for the universality of development as an objective law, comparable to the law of gravity. In addition, Newman’s (1878) essay on the development of a Christian

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doctrine suggests that history moved inexorably towards development, and that corruption, which was considered decadent, disarticulate and dismembered, would be its opposite. These first theses on the immanence of development were also profoundly teleological and naturalizing; as such, it would be ‘normal’ that a nation would go through a range of period or stages. These stages were first defined by Adam Smith (1859), who argued that human activities would go through a set of stages ranging from nomadic hunting and fishing to sedentary agriculture and then to the age of commerce and later industrialization. According to Smith, this transformation would inevitably foster social disorders and traumas and would require programmes that would smooth these transitions and ensure that social and human upheavals would be limited. In line with the arguments of Escobar, Sachs, and Cowen and Shenton, and more recently Halperin (2013), this collection continues to advance the proposition that the idea and practice of international development constitute the direct product of the worldwide expansion and dominance of modernity and of a Western conception of science, i.e. colonialism and imperialism. Constructivist and post-development authors share scepticism of the power and credibility given to development experts and technocrats as well as to top-down and hierarchical paradigms. While these perspectives eventually branched out into alternative development and joined the ranks of alter-globalization, a more ontological critique came from scholars mostly from the ‘South’ who were able to definitively establish and reveal the continuity between colonialism, development and globalization (Loomba 1998; McEwan 2009). Loosely labelled as postcolonial and sometimes identified with subaltern studies, these critical voices also emphasized how the colonial relationship had a profound effect on both the ‘colonized’ and the ‘colonizer’ (Gandhi 1998). But more fundamentally, postcolonialism pushed the debate about development into a broader socio–political and historical context and brought to the forefront the knowledge and the perspective(s) of those excluded and marginalized that had until recently been depicted as beneficiaries or the poor in need of assistance or, worse still, as backward. The academic radicalism of postcolonialism and the post-development stream (Rahnema and Bawtree 1998) has been challenged by authors who have sought to go beyond post-development. Authors, such as Nederven Pieterse (2001), have taken a critical stand against post-development discourse and argued that this specific theoretical stream centred too much on the lost decade of the 1980s, which explains its sharp criticism of development discourse as well as its vitriolic opposition to any form of authority. Other critics of post-development discourse, such as Walden Bello (2002), and Robin Broad and John Cavanagh (2009), argued that the

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perspective tends to overlook the importance of management and planning by concentrating on discourse analysis, critical deconstruction and emphasizing the resistance component instead of focusing on an emancipatory praxis (Bijon 2011; Murphy 2001). Moreover, as much as post-development theories are rich in terms of discourses, there is little in the manner of empirical studies that ground the rhetoric. Dissenting voices also argued that the post-development perspective with its critical views of modernity and science sometimes falls back into a romantic conception of a pre-colonial past. Beyond development (grassroots radical pluralism) In part as a response to these criticisms and as a means to move beyond the linearity of mainstream international development, and in part due to direct observations of the emergence of a multiplicity of local and autonomous movements, Gustavo Esteva and Madhuri Suri Prakash (1998) suggested inverting mainstream development approaches and post-developmental critiques on their heads. These critical perspectives, referenced here as beyond development (or grassroots radical pluralism), rely on an interactive and iterative process of conceptualizing social change. Characterized by their bottom-up and open-ended views and inspired by writers such as Gandhi (Fisher 1962), Illich (1970), Schumacher (1973) and Berry (1972), these authors strived to avoid grand narratives, such as those contained in certain streams of alter-globalization, and suggested instead to examine local and rooted experiments and experiences. The key contribution of these authors is their argument that global thinking and cross-border activism run the danger of being disembodied and detached from daily practices of resistance to both the development and the globalization projects. Instead, change needs to be conceived at the local level where resistance is experienced and practised in daily actions, guided by autonomy and self-sufficiency (Esteva and Prakash 1998; Inter Pares 2006; Murphy 1999). In this view, globalization is seen as a limited form of imagination rooted in Western culture, a perspective that needs to be challenged and replaced with a vision of plurality and diverse forms of resistance. Direct resistance that radically challenges the logic and values of neoliberal globalization, it is suggested, can happen only at the local level. Postcolonial feminist perspectives While feminist scholars have contributed a great deal to the emergence of this fundamental questioning of development (Antrobus 2005; DAWN 2012; Moghadam 1994; Parpart 1995), feminists associated with postcolonialism and capitalist development have had an important role in

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bringing about a more sophisticated and complex under­standing of the links and continuities between colonization and development (Kothari 2002; Mohanty 2002). They essentially argued that the developer– developed dichotomy was a continuity of the dialectical relations between the colonizer and colonized. Inspired by post-modernity and constructivism, postcolonial feminists pointed out that (capitalist) development discourse was marked from its very early days by ethno­centricism, patriarchy, gendered–exploitation of female labour and colonial hierarchy. They revealed how development discourse (and institutionalization) had in many ways depicted ‘Third World’ households as embodying negative values in contrast with Western house­ holds. The former was characterized by extended family, large numbers of children, little savings capacity, non-productive expenses and illiteracy. Without any attempt to understand and grasp the relevance of local knowledge, culture and traditions, the colonizer, the development technocrat or today’s advocate of global markets and the virtues of exportled growth, all came and engaged with the South with ready-made prescriptions and solutions inspired by the specific and peculiar history of the Western countries. Trying to capture the perspectives of the multiple marginalized – the indigenous and exploited women – postcolonial feminists created a space of dissent challenging not only development experts but also Western feminisms (e.g. see Third World Feminisms and DAWN). Emphasizing the significant and crucial material contributions made by women in rural and marginalized communities as well as their wealth of knowledge, post­colonial feminists highlighted the multiple ways and diversity of experiences of women. By connecting and weaving various social categories and images used during the colonial era and the early years of the development projects, postcolonial feminists built on the work of socialist feminists who highlighted the link between class and gender, by adding race as the third pillar of feminist postcolonial analysis. This analytical lens allowed for a critical stand towards development and globalization. Feminist scholars moved beyond the three narratives of modernity (colonization, international development and globalization), by seeking to recover women’s knowledge through an understanding of specific local conditions and by developing an understanding of how power, language and dominant knowledge have interacted to maintain and deepen hierarchies. Using dialogic and participatory approaches, they moved beyond male-centric academic discourse and research by placing the agency and capacity to act of those dispossessed and marginalized at the centre of the analysis. Postcolonial feminist perspectives seek to offer an approach that is critical of essentialism or perspectives that homogenize, and they also stress

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how identity constitutes another key element of any understanding of counter-hegemony. By including identity as an important axis to unravel the complex relationship between colonizer and colonized, between development experts and project recipients, between NGO workers and the so-called beneficiaries, postcolonial feminist perspectives informed by feminist socialism, for instance, have revealed that these encounters are moments of unequal and hierarchical transformation predicated on the historical influences of a colonial capitalist development and globalization that calls for social movement (extra-institutional) activism. An activism that is not characterized by vintage postcolonial analyses consumed with the discursive and the cultural politics of re/presentation (e.g. power neutral preoccupations with hybridity and syncretism) or an academic politics that has unwittingly emerged as a rhetorical distraction for neoliberal globalization (Mohanty 2002; Sankaran 2009; Sethi 2011). Subaltern studies in the ‘post colony’ and indigenous perspectives from settler colonies Emergent in the 1980s and 1990s, the subaltern studies project of Indian Marxist historians inspired by the work of Antonio Gramsci, initiated an intellectual insurrection aimed at destabilizing colonial and nationalist elitist historiographies including Marxist historio­ graphy. Subaltern historiography introduced the ideas of tribal and peasant political consciousness made evident in the political relations of elite-subaltern domination and resistance or insurgency and the related notion of an autonomous domain (Guha 1983) which in effect expanded the boundaries of ‘the political’ to include what European political thought (Left and Right) had dismissed as ‘pre-political’. Prior to what was referred to as the postcolonial culturalist and linguistic drift, introduced by postcolonial feminists and postcolonial literary scholars, the early subalternists proposed that nationalism and colonialism had instituted a rule of capital in India in which bourgeois ideologies exercised dominance without hegemony, i.e. this was capitalism without characteristic capitalist hierarchies, or a capitalist dominance without an attendant hegemonic capitalist culture (Guha 1997). This was a colonial capitalism wherein domination and subordination of the subaltern by the elite was ever present and achieved through violence and suppression. Later versions of subaltern studies applications highlighted related processes of primitive accumulation, accumulation by dispossession and postcolonial–colonial capitalism (Sankaran 2009; Sarkar 2005), while continuously expanding the space for subaltern history, popular politics (for a discussion on political society, see Chatterjee 2011) and current

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expressions of contestation from below, always in relation to multiple modes of being, production and power. These postulations made it possible for contemporary adherents of the critical structuralist traditions of early subaltern studies to speak to development and globalization as continuing colonial projects of global and national elitism and subaltern domination, which invited a subaltern politics of resistance. Contemporary applications of subaltern analytical perspectives and its variations in political and cultural ecology or anthropology (Baviskar 2008; Shah 2010; Sundar 2009) and social movement studies, and pedagogies of activism concerning development and globalization (Da Costa 2010) have sought to demonstrate the connectivity, separation and irreducibility of global capital (global histories of capital) and power (history of power) and the multiplicity of resistances and responses to the same (Kapoor 2012, 2013). Having originated in the Indian and South Asian contexts, the scope of subaltern studies now includes the Latin American context and wider applications to social theory and historiography in general, while inspiring several substantive/useful or pedantic (ideological) critiques levelled at the project by liberals, Marxists and feminists (Bannerji 2000; Brass 2007; Chibber 2013; Sarkar 2005). Several case studies and reflections considered in this collection are partially in keeping with the proffered insights of a Gramscian-inspired subaltern studies; postcolonial (feminist) analyses that are cognizant of the socio–cultural and political–economic (material) implications of capitalist development and globalization; and indigenous onto-epistemic perspectives and colonial analyses/resistances from settler colonies (Alfred 2005; Bargh 2007; Coulthard 2014; Grande 2004; Smith 1999). Indigenous analyses continue to remain unacknowledged in both postcolonial and development studies in general (Sankaran 2009), despite their foundational and prior contributions to critiques of European colonialism, capitalist development and globali­zation, and their enduring experience with colonialism (Choudry 2010). In other words, they highlight the importance of conceiving of colonization, development and now globalization not as linear or one-way processes, but as reciprocal, mutually transforming and embedded in openended and unequal (re/colonizing) power dynamics of syncretic changes/ contestation. This calls for a constant re-examination of colonization, development and globalization as moments of encounters of mutual and unequal influences, thereby prompting decolonizing projects of indigenous resurgence (Alfred 2005; Coulthard 2014), including anti-capitalism (Coulthard 2014; Grande 2004). It is from these encounters that knowledge and narratives about domination, resistance and possibility are constructed. Furthermore, given the multiplicity of experiences and encounters, the political discourses that weave narrative and knowledge together are

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necessarily fragmented, partial and localized, prompting myriad expressions of concrete struggle in relation to colonial capital and the coloniality of power (Quijano 2000).

The book: beyond development and globalization Conscious of the evolution of development theories and under­standings of globalization and their multiple connections to the colonial and development projects, we brought together scholars and activists who have consciously taken a critical and reflexive stand towards the colonial project of modernity and capital accumulation, while actively drawing from the perspectives and practices of peasant, rural, subaltern social classes and groups and indigenous communities. This collection represents an intellectual journey that includes subaltern and indigenous perspectives, critical realism and utopianism and a renegotiation with modernity, including ruptures with this historical project. The chapters in this volume are organized into three parts. Part I, ‘Indigenous and Peasant Movement Perspectives’, presents various perspectives of the local and trans-local experiences of indigenous and peasant movements in different nation states: India, Ghana and Bolivia. Dip Kapoor examines contemporary rural struggles of what he references as subaltern social movements (SSM) in Orissa, India. Following the neoliberalization of the economy and its consequences in terms of development and modernization projects advanced by State and foreign investors, in particular mining companies, Adivasi (original dwellers) and Dalits (down-trodden out/castes) have chosen to resist compulsory modernization/industrialization through the Lok Adhikar Manch (LAM), or people’s rights platform. The LAM is a regionally-based trans-local network of subaltern social movements and organizations addressing development displacement/dispossession in the rural hinterland. The chapter elaborates on LAM’s critique of state capitalism, neoliberal globalization and compulsory modernization, while registering and amplifying the unacknowledged political significance of these movements and alliances in relation to capital. Kapoor’s participatory research demonstrates how this trans-local alliance of SSMs works to ‘resist, protect and persist in their relations with nature and decide on what development and change mean from their point of view, as opposed to having it imposed on them.’ Grounding his analysis on the local movements of the community against the use of the Salt Flats of the Songor Lagoon in Ghana, Jonathan Langdon explores how the notion of ‘transnational neoliberal govern­ mentality’ (implying the dominance by national and transnational

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economic forces over local ones) is being challenged and contested. Opposing the 1992 Constitution and the privatization of the commons – in that case the Songor Lagoon – local rural movements connecting with one another have been able to construct an effective resistance that is ‘grounded in local subjugated knowledge that contests the neoliberal truth regime by recontextualizing who truly holds this land in trust for the rest of Ghanaians.’ By reasserting the primacy of traditional collective management of the Lagoon, locally-rooted movements reveal how it is possible to challenge, contest and resist the logic of transnational neoliberal governmentality when state authorities have become complicit with global private interests. The third case study, by Stéphanie Rousseau, demonstrates how the rise of the indigenous peoples’ movement in Latin America, in particular in Bolivia, has to be understood in the context of the neoliberal reforms of the 1980s and 1990s. In her analysis of indigenous politics, Rousseau shows how members of these movements are asserting and demanding ‘recognition as citizens of postcolonial states and claiming their right to participate in decision-making about development.’ In a state where 60 per cent of the population now claim indigenous origin, the rise and consolidation of the indigenous movement was contingent upon specific local conditions, which define ‘the opportunities and constraints but also shape the particular ways the claims, strategies and alliance of indigenous organizations’ are made. Rousseau’s study extends this argument and she reveals how indigenous peasants, miners and migrants from various parts of the country gradually responded and contested neoliberal policies, and also astutely used political decentralization and an incipient recognition of multicultural rights. In doing so, they asserted and mobilized themselves around a multidimensional notion of indigeneity to become the defining social and then, political movement in the country, eventually electing the first self-declared indigenous president. Part II of the book, ‘Acting across Borders’, presents case studies of how social movements are able to organize themselves across borders and deploy a range of forms of collective action. Peasants, farmworkers, migrant women and alter-globalization activists attempt to challenge the nation-state logic of the develop­ment project and the liberal capitalist market-driven globalization project. Part II provides a rich array of critical and reflexive perspectives on how grassroots and cross-border movements are able to redefine the issues and processes that affect their lives, livelihoods, cultures and identities. They also reveal the importance of creativity, agency, and awareness of power relations. While NGOs and aid organizations might be perceived and considered allies, the recognition and self-awareness of the traps of institution­alized development are very much

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part of the dynamics that characterized their interactions with grassroots social movement. In the same fashion, while there is an understanding of the forces of the globalization process, counter-hegemonic movements respond from a plurality of places, spaces and standpoints, which recognize the multitudes (see Hardt and Negri 2000, 2004) and the possibilities offered by the new connections, new solidarities and collective action that transcend constructed spaces such as the nation-state. In her chapter, Annette Aurélie Desmarais examines the most known cross-border movement, La Vía Campesina, an agrarian transnational movement that now involves more than 164 organizations in seventy-three countries. Reflecting on the constitution of this widespread movement, Desmarais wonders what made such an alliance possible and what explained its success, by noting that peasants, who had been considered to be going extinct, were able to reassert and reclaim an identity. As her analysis reveals, it is through recognition of diversity and building of a common identity (being ‘people of the land’) that Vía Campesina was able to develop, expand and sustain itself over time. As Desmarais claims, ‘the movement is actively engaging in cultural politics as it reclaims and redefines what it means to be a peasant, and through food sovereignty it challenges us fundamentally to alter social relations, cultures and politics, the very basis of modern society.’ The following chapter, by Eric Chaurette and Beatriz Oliver, builds on the previous one by exploring what might account for the difficulty and decline of small farms, and also for the emergence and growth of crossborder resistance. Hence the authors focus on what they aptly describe as the ‘productivist myth’. This myth emphasizes that production and economic growth have led to excluding important social and ecological considerations, privileging techno­logical fixes and economic incentives. As the authors argue, ‘productivism has been supported by seemingly neutral discourses of mainstream development and regulatory science while serving powerful interests.’ This discourse and its promoters argue that the faster, more complete the integration of rural production in the national and global circuits of agricultural production and trade, the more economic growth will be considered the cornerstone of development and modern­ization. Recent anthropological and agroecological research has demonstrated however that the overall productivity in multifunctional peasant agriculture exceeds that of monocropping and industrialized agriculture. As Chaurette and Oliver show in the second part of their chapter, through a presentation of peasant-based initiatives to push back and debunk the productivist myth, the food sovereignty perspective has now gathered momentum because it offers a powerful lens for understanding and challenging global agricultural policies.

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Beside peasants and small-scale farmers, migrant workers have been increasingly active and successful in organizing and acting across borders. The next two chapters examine the realities of what Aziz Choudry, following Vijay Prashad (2003), describes as a ‘contingent class’, constituted by people of colour and the working poor, many of them migrant workers. In his case study of the contemporary struggles for justice, and of migrants and immigrant workers in Canada, Choudry highlights how capitalism through international institutions, trade agreements and global forums, has led to a situation where ‘working people are categorized by hierarchies according to often interlocking immigration status, race, gender, and class, and in reference to historical and contemporary processes of the racialized construction of nationstates and citizenship.’ Examining specifically the expansion of the temporary migrant worker programme in Canada, in particular the livein and care programme (LCP) and the seasonal agricultural workers programmes (SAWP), he reveals how these programmes contribute to entrenching, exploiting and commodifying workers. Efforts at legitimizing these programmes emphasize an unshakable faith in the market ‘to deliver equitable outcomes and deal with the labour market.’ Moreover, migrant worker remittances are now promoted as a new development mantra and they have now exceeded ODA (Official Development Assistance) financial flows. Despite an ongoing process of marginalization and attempt by governments and business elites to undermine organizing efforts on the basis of immigration status, local struggles against unfair conditions and precariousness are finding creative and militant ways to organize, connect and draw strength from migrant worker activism across borders. Nonetheless, as pointed out by Choudry, and Michel Ford and Lenore Lyons in their chapters, the strength of global networks rests on the grounding of local struggles. The dilemma and dynamics of cross-border organizing to promote migrant workers’ rights is at the heart of Ford and Lyons’ focus on the campaign ‘A Day Off’, which has been adopted by three Southeast Asian regional organizations, the United for Domestic Workers Rights (UFDWR), the International Migrants Alliance (IMA) and the Asian Domestic Workers Assembly (ADWA). Acknowledging the difficulty in regulating this sector, the authors suggest that in order to be successful, cross-border coalitions have to ‘take into account conditions on the ground in different destination countries because conditions of work are primarily determined by national level policies in destination countries.’ From their review of those three cases and national contexts in three receiving countries (Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand), the authors recognize that while there is now a greater awareness of migrant women’s rights, these coalitions

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have been less successful at establishing a genuine mass-based transnational social movement and have had less impact in terms of changing or influencing policymaking processes than national-level organizations. This questioning of the potentiality of transnational movements and collective action forms the core of Kléber Ghimire’s case study of the World Social Forum (WSF), which is oftentimes perceived as the embodiment of the alter-globalization movement. In his chapter, Ghimire suggests that this movement (made of a worldwide web of movements, NGOs, coalitions, networks and campaigns) is unique because of its structure and functioning. WSF aims ‘to address the malaise of the neoliberal system in its entirety and it looks for mobilizing social forces in the North and South as well as beyond metropolitan centres and dependent peripheral regions and countries’, while at the same time rejecting the use of violence. Rather than focusing on outcomes or results, Ghimire tries to understand whether the movement, as expressed by the WSF, in fact constitutes the latest expression of Kantian humanism, which Ghimire defines in broad strokes as being ‘about accepting all human beings as equal and recognizing their individual and collective potential with the goal of achieving the highest degree of human well-being and universality.’ To test this idea, he reviews three elements of the WSF, its charter, its resistance to neoliberalism and its fostering of alternatives. The chapters in Part III of the volume, ‘Reflections on Critical Knowledge, Culture and Pedagogy’, take a reflexive approach to the issue of knowledge and argue that social movements are inherently the locus of knowledge creation. This counter-hegemonic or subaltern knowledge challenges orthodoxies and linear truths, especially as embodied in the development project or in the universal pretention of globalizing markets and its relentless process of commoditization. It is in the interstices of power, in the spaces of dissent, and in the collective acts of resistance that sites of dissonant knowledge are being constructed. Those sites are multiple, differentiated, heterogeneous and oftentimes critical of modernity. These are also incipient and localized knowledge because their producers and creators refuse the claim of universality and ahistoricity, recognizing instead the moving nature and character of truth. Their post-modernist character stems also from the refusal of linearity of progress, here challenging most ODA agencies, but also NGOs who have been tamed by institutionalized knowledge and codified protocols of development intervention. The chapters in Part III open new spaces for critical reflexivity, but also bring in the cultural dimensions of resistance, affirmation and collective action. Part III begins with a critical view of the recent cultural turn common to much of development studies. Warning against a de-historicizing of

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development and a facile reification of culture, Dia Da Costa suggests instead that the more salutary effect of this turn is the recognition of culture ‘as a constitutive force within the political history of capitalist development.’ In fact, culture has been and is commodified and integrated into the market. Its insertion into poverty alleviation programmes or nation-building can easily tame its more radical dimension as a mode of resistance to domination. To explore how it might be possible to mobilize and foster collective action for redistributing the means of representation and thereby resisting the dispossession of meaning, which the author defines as the ‘repre­sentational inequality situated in political–economic inequalities’, Da Costa looks at the practice of a political theatre group in West Bengal, the Jana Sanskriti (JS) (People’s Culture). Established in 1985, JS represents a fascinating case, as it stands in opposition to the hegemonic leftist state government as well as challenges the dominant market episteme guiding development and democracy in West Bengal. Using performance and fieldwork with peasants and agricultural labourers, JS constitutes an innovative incarnation and adaptation of the pedagogy of the oppressed (Freire 1970) and is capable of fostering debate and collective action to imagine and make real ‘alternate social norms and possibilities’ and ‘daily material realities.’ The next chapter by Sandy Grande and Naadli (Todd Ormiston) explores the role and importance of alternative pedagogies for understanding the impact and continuation of colonialist policies towards indigenous peoples in the United States. The authors emphasize that ‘the idea of “America” as a colonialist state remains impalpable to its Whitestream citizen.’ In fact, as they argue, today’s neoliberal globalization project extends a political order that was already defined in the colonialist project. Failing to name globalization for what it is not only erases and marginalizes the lived experience of indigenous peoples but also stalls the march of a genuine democratic order. As they underline ‘every decimated indigenous community, language and culture means one less ontological framework able to contribute to the development of pedagogies of possibility and sustainability for the world.’ To tackle and challenge the current reiteration of the colonialist project, they argue that indigenous resistance and regeneration organized around what they call ‘red pedagogies’ must be at the forefront of cross-border coalitions and agendas. Praxis-oriented pedagogy rooted in indigenous ontologies would include a critique on neoclassical economics, with an emphasis on principles of sustainability and the underuse of economic capacity to maintain the resilience of the resource base, but also a keen awareness and knowledge of the connections to the land and a holistic world-view of societies that can integrate the mind, body and spirit, rather than a fragmented, compartmentalized and individualized approach to life.

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The last two chapters in the volume also explore the central place of education and pedagogy in bringing about genuine challenges to Western liberalism and capitalist globalization. In his analysis of the destruction or marginalization of African cultures, epistemologies and learning systems initiated during the colonial era and now extended with globalization, Ali Abdi argues that this is an outcome of a capitalist world system that is historico-ethnocentrical. This system has linked and connected a multiplicity of cultures and people in favour of promoting the interests of Northern countries while ‘deculturing’ entire continents, such as Africa. For the author, globalization is so embedded in African peoples’ lives that it is impossible to erase or be ignored; the question is one of humanizing globalization. Such humanizing would imply an exploration of the ‘possibilities of recasting the conceptual and theoretical locations of globalization.’ For Abdi, this requires recognizing the effects of colonial education in de-ontologizing and deculturing the continent and at the same time modifying and de-verticalizing educational systems to ‘introduce into their midst African epistemic notations and epistemologies, which if gradually and carefully intermixed with what we have now, could improve the situation for hundreds of millions of learners.’ Brian Murphy is also concerned with the role of learning and the generation of alternative knowledge. Echoing some of the ideas put forward by Choudry, Ghimire and Abdi, he argues that making poverty history as many NGOs have campaigned for, will not be achieved through development assistance since it depends on and serves the existing global and national economic structures of wealth. Instead, he suggests that ‘our priority and fundamental line of action has to be radical and public common cause with national, regional and planetary social movements to challenge and transform global political and economic structures.’ For him, this vision can only be achieved through dialogue, sharing of experience, and mutual support grounded ‘in acceptance and respect and a human vision of humanity.’ At the core is what he describes as the ‘profound politics of transforming our direct experience into collective knowledge and social action.’ In the creation of knowledge, theory, perspective and meaning, he emphasizes the centrality of movements ‘as a locus of self-actualization and self-expression.’ Proposing the notion of active knowledge as dynamic interaction between lived experience and reflection, which not only leads to make sense of a situation but also transforming it, he suggests that knowing is a subjective act guided by a certain perspective. This perspective, according to Murphy, refers to the way we see rather than what we see. Since experienced knowledge is ‘intrinsically social’, the open space approach is central ‘because [of] its recovered insight that resistance and social action are rooted fundamentally in personal experience and knowledge, which is

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created at the most local level of people in their actual lives, places and communities.’ Rather than depending on academics and experts, radical transformation of the world requires a challenging of the gatekeepers of established consensus on development. Murphy argues that we need to ‘focus on the most important knowledge of those who are often seen to be least knowledgeable – those living the situation.’ In conclusion, this collection draws upon and platforms marginal perspectives, knowledge, experiences and resistances. Encounters with colonialism, development and globalization that have been a daily lived experience for specifically situated social groups and classes have informed the chapters in Part I. Part II reveals how there have been and are ongoing attempts to connect experiences and understandings across borders from the margins of the dominant narratives and hegemonies that were produced and associated with a continuous colonial process of liberal capitalist expansion and modernity. Part III highlights the centrality of learning and reflexivity in undermining and challenging what is typically and questionably seen as the unavoidable march of modernity and progress. In the final and concluding chapter of the book, Dominique Caouette returns to a more transversal understanding of the key themes that run throughout the book in order to offer a synthesis of considerations for creating a postcolonization-development-globalization reading of contemporary social transformation.

References Alfred, T. (2005). Wasase: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Amoore, L. (ed.) (2005). The Global Resistance Reader. London and New York: Routledge. Anderson, B. (2007). Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination. London: Verso. Antrobus, P. (2005). The Global Women’s Movement: Issues and Strategies for the New Century. London: Zed Books. Appadurai, A. (2001). ‘Grassroots globalization and the research imagination.’ Public Culture, 12(1): 1–9. Bannerji, H. (2000). ‘Projects of hegemony: towards a critique of subaltern studies’ resolution of the women’s question.’ Economic and Political Weekly, (11 March): 902–20. Bargh, M. (2007). Resistance: An Indigenous Response to Neoliberalism. Wellington: Huia. Barry-Shaw, N. and Jay, D. O. (2012). Paved with Good Intentions: Canada’s Development NGOs from Idealism to Imperialism. Halifax and Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing.

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20  r One Baviskar, A. (ed.) (2008). Contested Grounds: Essays on Nature, Culture and Power. New Delhi: Oxford. Beaudet, P. (2009). Qui aide qui? Une brève histoire de la solidarité internationale au Québec. Montreal: Éditions du Boréal. Beaudet, P., Schaffer, J. and Haslam, P. (2008). Introduction au Développement International: Approches, Acteurs et Enjeux. Ottawa: Presses de l’Université d’Ottawa. Berry, W. (1972). A Continuous Harmony: Essays Cultural and Agricultural. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Bello, W. (2002). Deglobalization: Ideas for a New World Economy. London: Zed Books. Bijon, J. F. (2011). Coopération au développement: Les raisons de persévérer. Paris: Éditions Charles Léopold Mayer. Brass, T. (2007). ‘“A world which is not yet”: Peasants, civil society and the state.’ Journal of Peasant Studies, 34(3–4): 582–664. Broad, R. and Cavanagh, J. (2009). Development Redefined: How the Market Met Its Match. Boulder and London: Paradigm Publishers. Caouette, D. (2010). ‘Globalization and alterglobalization: global dialectics and new contours of political analysis?’ Kasarinlan: Philippine Journal of Third World Studies, 25(1–2): 49–66. Chatterjee, P. (2011). Lineages of Political Society: Studies in Postcolonial Democracy. New York: Columbia University Press. Chibber, V. (2013). Postcolonial Theory and the Spectre of Capital. London and New York: Verso Press. Choudry, A. (2007). ‘Transnational activist coalition politics and the de/colonization of pedagogies of mobilization: learning from anti-neoliberal indigenous movement articulations.’ International Education, 37(1): 97–113. Choudry, A. (2010). ‘Against the flow: Maori knowledge and self-determination struggles confront neoliberal globalization in Aotearoa/New Zealand.’ In D. Kapoor and E. Shizha (eds.). Indigenous Knowledge and Learning in Asia/ Pacific and Africa. NY and London: Palgrave Macmillan, 47–62. Choudry, A. and Kapoor, D. (2013). NGOization: Complicity, Contradictions and Prospects. London: Zed Books. Connell, R. (2007). Southern Theory: Social Science and the Global Dynamics of Knowledge. Cambridge: Polity Press. Coulthard, G. (2014). Red Skin White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Rejection. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Cowen, M. and Shenton, R. (1995). ‘The invention of development.’ In J. Crush (ed.). Power of Development. London: Routledge, 62–83. Crush, J. (ed.) (1995). Power of Development. London: Routledge. Da Costa, D. (2010). Development Dramas: Reimagining Rural Political Action in Eastern India. New Delhi: Routledge. Dansereau, S. (2008). ‘Les théories du développement: histoire et trajectoires.’ In P. Beaudet, J. Schaffer and P. Haslam (eds.). Introduction au développement international: Approches, acteurs et enjeux. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 39–53.

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  Caouette and Kapoor  r 21 Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) (2012). Breaking Through the Development Silos: Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, Millennium Development Goals and Gender Equity. Quezon City: DAWN Secretariat. Dossa, S. (2007). ‘Slicing up “development”: colonialism, political theory, ethics.’ Third World Quarterly, 28(5): 887–99. Dupuis-Déri, F. (2009). L’Altermondialisme. Montréal: Éditions du Boréal. Escobar, A. (1995). Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Escobar, A. (2004). ‘Beyond the Third World: imperial globality, global coloniality and anti-globalization social movements.’ Third World Quarterly, 25(1): 207–30. Esteva, G. and Prakash, M. S. (1998). Grassroots Post-Modernism: Remaking the Soil of Cultures. New York: Zed Books. Fanon, F (1963/2005). The Wretched of the Earth. NY: Grove Press. Fanon, F. (1952/2008). Black Skin, White Masks. NY: Grove Press. Favreau, L., Fréchette, L. and Lachapelle, R. (2008). Coopération nord-sud et développement: Le défi de la réciprocité. Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval. Ferguson, J. (1994). The Anti-Politics Machine: ‘Development’, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. Minneapolis and London: University of Minneapolis Press. Fisher, L. (ed.) (1962). The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of his Writings on his Life, Work and Ideas. New York: Vintage Books. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum. Gandhi, L. (1998). Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction. New York: Columbia University. Grande, S. (2004). Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Guha, R. (1983). Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Guha, R. (1997). Dominance Without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Halperin, S. (2013). Re-Envisioning Global Development: A Horizontal Perspective. London and New York: Routledge. Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2000). Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2004). Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. New York: Penguin Books. Hopkins, A. G. (ed.) (2002). Globalization in World History. London: Pimlico. Illich, I. (1970). Celebration of Awareness: A Call for Institutional Revolution. New York: Doubleday. Inter Pares (2006). ‘Repenser le développement: promouvoir la justice sociale au 21e siècle.’ Publications occasionnelles d’Inter Pares, numéro 7. Ottawa: Inter Pares (June). Kapoor, D. (2012). ‘Human rights as paradox and equivocation in contexts of Adivasi (original dweller) dispossession in India.’ Journal of Asian and African Studies, 47(4): 404–20.

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22  r One Kapoor, D. (2013). ‘Trans-local rural solidarity and an anti-colonial politics of place: contesting colonial capital and the neoliberal state in India.’ Interface: A Journal for and about Social Movements, 5(1): 14–39. Kothari, U. (2002). ‘Feminist and postcolonial challenges to development.’ In U. Kothari and M. Minogue (eds.). Development Theory and Practice: Critical Perspectives. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 35–51. Kothari, U. (2006). ‘Critiquing “race” and racism in development discourse and practice.’ Progress in Development Studies, 6:(1) 1–7. Loomba, A. (1998). Colonialism/Postcolonialism. London: Routledge. McEwan, C. (2009). Postcolonialism and Development. London and New York: Routledge. McMichael, P. (ed.) (2010). Contesting Development: Critical Struggles for Social Change. New York and London: Routledge Martell, H. (2010). The Sociology of Globalization. Cambridge and Malden: Polity Press. Moghadam, V. M. (2005). Globalizing Women. Transnational Feminist Networks. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Mohanty, C. (2002). ‘“Under Western eyes” revisited: feminist solidarity through anti-capitalist struggles.’ Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28(2): 499–535. Murphy, B. K. (1999). Transforming Ourselves, Transforming the World, an Open Conspiracy for Social Change. London, UK: ZED Books and Halifax, NS: Fernwood. Murphy, B. K. (2001). ‘International NGOs and the challenge of modernity.’ In D. Eade and E. Ligteringen (eds.) Debating Development, NGOs and the Future. Oxford: Oxfam Publications, 60–85. Nandy, A. (1967/1999). Traditions, Tyranny and Utopias: Essays in the Politics of Awareness. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Nederveen Pieterse, J. (2000). ‘After post-development.’ Third World Quarterly, 21(2): 175–91. Nederven Pieterse, J. (2001). Development Theory: Deconstructions/ Reconstructions. London: Sage. Newman, J. H. C. (1909). An Essay on The Development of Christian Doctrine. London, 14th Printing (originally 1878). London: Longmans, Green. Parpart, J. L. (1995). ‘Post-modernism, gender and development.’ In J. Crush (ed.). Power of Development. London: Routledge, 253–265. Parpart, J. L. and Veltmeyer, H. (2004). ‘The development project in theory and practice: a review of its shifting dynamics.’ Canadian Journal of Development Studies 25(1): 39–59. Pleyers, G. (2010). Alter-Globalization: Becoming Actors in the Global Age. Cambridge and Malden: Polity Press. Quijano, A. (2000). ‘Coloniality of power and Eurocentrism in Latin America.’ International Sociology, 15(2): 215–232. Rahnema, M. and Bawtree, V. (1998). The Post-Development Reader. London: Zed Books.

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  Caouette and Kapoor  r 23 Rist, G. (2001). Le développement: Histoire d’une croyance occidentale. (2nd edn.) Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. Sachs, W. and Esteva, G. (1996). Des ruines du développement. Montréal: Éditions Écosociété. Sankaran, K. (2009). Globalization and Postcolonialism: Hegemony and Resistance in the 21st Century. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Sarkar, S. (2005). ‘The decline of the subaltern in subaltern studies.’ In D. Ludden (ed.). Reading Subaltern Studies: Critical History, Contested Meaning and the Globalization of South Asia. New Delhi: Paul’s Press, 88–102. Schumacher, E. F. (1973). Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. New York: London: Blond and Briggs. Sethi, R. (2011). The Politics of Postcolonialism: Empire, Nation and Resistance. London: Pluto. Shah, A. (2010). In the Shadows of the State: Indigenous Politics, Environment­alism and Insurgency in Jharkhand, India. Durham: Duke University Press. Smith, A. (1859). Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations. Paris: Guillaumin: Livre IV. Smith, L. (1999). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. New York and London: Zed Books. Sundar, N. (2009). Subalterns and Sovereigns: An Anthropological History of Bastar (1854–2006). New Delhi: Oxford. Tarrow, S. (2005). The New Transnational Activism. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Wendt, A. (1999). Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Wilson, K. (2013). Race, Racism and Development. London: Zed Books.

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2 Subaltern Social

Movements and Development in India

Rural Dispossession, Trans-local Activism and Subaltern Re-visitations Dip Kapoor

Peasant movements like Chipko (northern India) and peasant protest reveal how policies of ‘economic development’ or ‘modernization’ formulated at the top levels of states, corporations and international financial institutions are often experienced by peasants, rural women, and labourers – as exploitation. In the strategies of economic development, indigenous peoples, landless peasants, and women are expected to withstand the worst of industrialization; disease, social unrest, food scarcity and land hunger testify to the impact of this process. (Ramachandra Guha, The Unquiet Woods 1990: 195–6)

Introduction Subaltern1 social movements (SSMs) and popular struggles in India today continue to proliferate in conjunction with developments marking the post1991 neoliberalization of the economy (Baviskar 2005; Menon and Nigam 2007; Oliver-Smith 2010). The shift in the Indian political economy has begun to amplify the impacts of state and capital-driven intrusions in the rural hinterlands marked by processes of forced or benevolent inclusions into national progress (development) (Baviskar 2005; Prasad 2004), market violence and primitive accumulation, proletarianization and dispossession (Harvey 2003; Levien 2013; Mehta 2009). On a global scale and specifically with respect to Latin America, Anibal Quijano references this process as a continuity with the historical project of the ‘coloniality of power’ replete with vectors of racism and ethno-cultural chauvinisms (Quijano and Ennis 2000) given that specific subalterns are repeatedly targeted for multiple dispossessions (small/landless peasants, Adivasis and Dalits are a case in point in the Indian context) often justified in the name of the state’s power to

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define the public good vis-à-vis eminent domain (Mehta 2009). Such rural dislocations encourage forced and voluntary migration to already dense urban centres, leading to the proliferation of a ‘planet of slums’ (Davis 2006) where subalterns are again compelled to take on urban-based struggles for space (Gibson and Patel 2010; Harvey 2009; Pithouse 2008). Modernizing state, market and civil society actors are variously implicated in advancing these trajectories either as overt champions of neoliberalism, or as civil society actors wedded to humanizing capital (a politics of allegedly benign inclusivity) and social justice reformism, or as state-socialist enterprises (socialist market economies) renegotiating relations with a recalcitrant peasantry. As Nivedita Menon and Aditya Nigam (2007: 105) observe: The policies pursued by the CPI(M)-led Left Front (LF) government in West Bengal (India) have become virtually indistinguishable from those of other parties committed to the neoliberal agenda. In recent times, the LF government has turned out to be more zealous than many others in dispossessing farmers of their land, and making it available for capital. According to one calculation, the acquisition of some 120,000 acres over the past five years of land reforms in the state has been accompanied by an increase of 2.5 million landless peasants. (Banerjee 2006: 4719)

Given these contexts of development dislocation, displace­ ment, dispossession, and associated responses and resistances, this chapter draws on a recent participatory critical-interpretive research initiative (Kapoor 2009b) with an Adivasi (Kondhs) and Dalit (Panos) movement in South Orissa (an east coast state in India) that seeks knowledge for the first time (in this context) about Adivasi–Dalit social movements and struggles. The research introduces SSM critiques of state-capitalist development and compulsory moderni­zation (national and global trajectories) based on an analysis proffered by subaltern movements that were clearly refusing to value land at its exchange value (i.e. not looking for higher compensation) while being engaged in a politics of dispossession marked by an unwillingness to engage in a class compromise ‘on the terrain of commodification’ (Levien 2013: 374). This exposition is developed from perspectives shared at a gathering of thirteen LAM partners (see Table 2.1) by thirty leaders/participants (all but two of whom are currently active). LAM is a state/provincially based network of SSMs and social movement organizations engaged in a ‘translocal alliance’ (Da Costa 2007: 315) and politics that first emerged among lead groups in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The insights from this data set are augmented on occasion with perspectives shared in a similar gathering of twenty-three village representatives from the Adivasi–Dalit Ekta Abhijan (ADEA) movement, a leading LAM movement participant.

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Kapoor  r 29

The primary objective of this chapter is to amplify the contemporary politics of these movements in relation to the ‘development project’ (McMichael 2007) as voiced by SSM participants. Second, the radical potential of rural/subaltern struggles and social movement activism is briefly considered in relation to what we can learn from their articulations pertaining to ‘development’ and the associated resistance(s) or response(s) to the colonizing impetus of capitalism. In keeping with critical and reflexive commentary on Subaltern Studies (Chaturvedi 2000; Ludden 2005), this research represents an attempt to check the drift away from an earlier structuralism documenting the struggles of the poor and the dispossessed (hence the title, ‘Subaltern Re-visitations’) or what Sumit Sarkar (1997) has referred to as a Faustian bargain and others have described as the conventional postcolonial/modern turn in the project (Brass 2007; Chibber 2013). The broad impetus for the research germinated from the author’s longstanding practical engagements with Adivasis and Dalits (both groups account for some forty-five per cent of the state population and they live mostly in rural villages in hilly forested ghats) in the region since the early 1990s and through a research partnership with the Adivasi–Dalit Centre for Research and Development Solidarity (CRDS) in Orissa supported by a recent Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant (2006–10 and 2013–18).

Accelerated development and subaltern displacement, dispossession and assertions in India While subaltern struggles against dispossession date back to the colonial era of the British or the pre-1947 period and have been rationalized in an elite nationalist historiography as part of the anti-imperialist struggle for independence, or to use Menon and Nigam’s (2007: 68) metaphor, ‘tucked cosily away in to a pleat of Mother India’s sari’, similar assertions in the post-independence era are instantly branded as anti-national, antidevelopmental (modern) and regressive on the part of these more ‘traditional’ and ‘backward’ social segments that are retarding prospects for India’s economic growth and status as a global economic power; that is, Adivasis and/or diffident subalterns are seen to be standing in the way of development (Baviskar 2005; Mehta 2009; Oliver-Smith 2010; Rajagopal 2003). The policy of development at the time of independence (1947) ushered in industrialization through large-scale power projects, dams, oil and gas, and mineral/natural resource exploitation, and urbanization and infrastructure development led by a state committed to democratic socialism through a process that was defined in successive five-year national

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plans that have displaced about 500,000 people each year, primarily because of land acquisition by the state (Menon and Nigam 2007; Patnaik 2007; Ray and Katzenstein 2005). While not going unchallenged during this period (conflicts pertaining to dams like Bhakra, Hirakud and Rihand are but a few examples), the post 1991 neoliberalization of the Indian political economy has accelerated this process of development in the interests of providing for a growing middle class and a global marketplace. This has been achieved through an increasingly greater reliance on the corporate sector and transnational corporate investment in India, as the state (left and right politics inclusive) has been lobotomized, and key sectors of the economy have been handed over to the private sector (the proliferation of Special Economic Zones or SEZs attests to this) in a move that increasingly sees the corporatized state shifting to protect private interests and profit in the face of unprecedented and increasingly organized resistance, as specific groups benefit at the expense of the majority (Guru and Chakravarty 2005; Menon and Nigam 2007). Reports from the UN’s Working Group on Indigenous Populations and the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) include ‘plundering of resources’, ‘forced relocation’ and ‘forced integration of indigenous peoples in to market economies’ are but some of the political economic problems being faced by the indigenous peoples of Asia (Eversole et al. 2005: 32). While Adivasis constitute 8 per cent of the Indian population (or 80 million or more people belonging to some 612 Scheduled tribes), they account for 40 per cent of development-displaced persons (DDPs), and in the state of Orissa (home to sixty-two groups numbering eight million or more people) where they make up 22 per cent of the population, they account for 42 per cent of DDPs (Fernandes 2006: 113). Promoting market access has become the key neoliberal response to eliminating poverty, which in turn entails disciplining the subaltern who are presented as inhabiting a series of local spaces across the globe marked by the label ‘social exclusion’ and are subsequently outside civil society. Their route back is through the willing and active transformation of themselves to conform to the discipline of the market (Cameron and Palan 2004: 148). This is nowhere more apparent than through the SEZ process that continues to consume the country, especially in the eastern region and in Orissa (given its huge mineral reserves – bauxite/alumina, coal and iron ore especially – and largely unexploited rural-forested hinterlands, see Padel and Das 2010), prompting several subaltern and other movement/ struggles in multiple locations, many of whom are part of the LAM (see Table 2.1). Intended as duty-free and tax-free enclaves and treated as ‘foreign territory’ when it comes to trade operations, tariffs and duties, SEZ policy was initiated by the right-wing National Democratic Alliance

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Kashipur, Lakhimpur, Dasmantpur and adjacent blocks in Rayagada district of Orissa

2. Prakritik Sampad Suraksha Parishad (PSSP) (late 1980s)

3. Jana Suraksha Manch (2007)

Gopalpur-on-sea (centre) including coastal Orissa, from Gopalpur in Ganjam district to Chandrabhaga and Astaranga coast in Puri district

1. Kalinga Matchyajivi Sangathana (Kalinga fisher people’s organization) (early 1980s)

Adava region of Mohana block, Gajapati district including 60 or more villages

Approximately 200 movement villages

Location/ operational area

Movement participant and year established

Saura and Kondh Adivasis and Panos (Dalits)

Adivasis including Jhodias, Kondhs and Parajas and Pano/ Domb Dalits

Fisher people (mainly Dalits) originally from the state of Andhra Pradesh called Nolias and Orissa state fisher people or Keuta/Kaivartas

Social groups engaged

Table 2.1  Lok Adhikar Manch (LAM) network members and issues

• Government and local corruption • Police brutality and atrocities • Deforestation and plantation agriculture (NC investment)

• Bauxite mining (alumina) (TNC investments) • Industrialization, deforestation and land alienation/ displacement • People’s rights over ‘their own ways and systems’

• Trawler fishing, fish stock depletion and enforcement of coastal regulations and zones. (Trans/national corporate – TNC – investments) • Occupation of coastal land by defence installations (e.g. missile bases) • Hotel/tourism industry developments along coast (TNC investment) • Special economic zones (SEZ) and major port projects for mining exports (TNC investment) • Pollution of beaches and oceans • Displacement of fisher communities related to such developments

Key issues being addressed

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Location/ operational area

Jaleswar, Bhograi and Bosta blocks in Balasore district and Boisinga and Rasagovindpur blocks in Mayurbhanj including over 100 villages

20 panchayats in Gajapati and Kandhmal districts including 200 plus villages (population of about 50,000)

30 villages in the district of Nabarangapur

Movement participant and year established

4. Adivasi Dalit Adhikar Sangathan (2000)

5. Adivasi-Dalit Ekta Abhiyan (2000)

6. Indravati Vistapita Lokmanch (late 1990s)

Table 2.1  continued

Several Adivasi, Dalit and OBC communities

Kondh and Saura Adivasis, Panos (Dalits) and OBCs

Dalits, Adivasis, fisher people and other backward castes (OBCs)

Social groups engaged

• Dam displacement (Indravati irrigation and hydro-electric project) (NC investment) • Land and forest rights • Resettlement, rehabilitation and compensation for development displaced peoples (DDPs) • Industrialization and modern development and protection of peoples ways

• Land and forest rights • Food • Sovereignty/plantation agriculture (NC investment) • Industrialization, modernization and protection of indigenous ways and systems • Communal harmony • Development of people’s coalitions and forums (no state, NGO, corporate, ‘outsider’, upper/middle castes participants)

• Dalit and Adivasi land rights and land alienation • Industrialization, port development and displacement of traditional fisher people (TNC investment)

Key issues being addressed

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State-level forum with an all-Orissa presence (all districts) with regional units in Keonjhar and Rayagada districts and district-level units in each district

Kidting, Mohana block of Gajapati district including some 20 villages

5 blocks in the Kandhmal district with 10 participating local movements (networks)

Umerkote block, Koraput district (includes a 30 village population base displaced by the upper Kolab hydroelectric and irrigation reservoir)

Three panchayats in the border areas of Kandhmal and Gajapati districts including 50 or more villages with a population of 12,000 people

7. Orissa Adivasi Manch (1993–4)

8. Anchalik Janasuraksha Sangathan (2008)

9. Dalit Adivasi Bahujana Initiatives (DABI) (2000)

10. Uppara Kolab Basachyuta Mahasangh (late 1990s)

11. Jeevan Jivika Suraksha Sangathan (2006) Kondhs and Saura Adivasis and Panos (Dalits) and OBCs

Paraja Adivasis, Panos and Malis Dalits and OBCs

Kondh Adivasis, Panos (Dalits) and OBCs

Kondh and Saura Adivasis and Panos (Dalits)

Over 40 different Adivasi communities

• Land and forest rights/issues • Communal harmony • Food sovereignty and livelihood issues

• Displacement due to the upper Kolab hydro-electricity and irrigation reservoir (NC investment) • Compensation, rehabilitation and basic amenities for DDPs • Land and forest rights

• Land and forest rights • Food sovereignty and livelihood issues • Communal harmony

• Land and forest rights • Conflict resolution and communal harmony between Adivasis and Dalits over land and forest issues

• Adivasi rights in the state • Tribal self-rule, forest and land rights and industrialization (SEZs) (TNC investments)

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Location/ operational area

Kalinga Nagar industrial belt in Jajpur district (25 or more villages, along with several participants in the Kalinganagar township area)

Baliapal and Chandanesar block in Balasore district including 32 coastal villages being affected by mega port development (part of SEZ scheme)

Movement participant and year established

12. Adivasi Pachua Dalit Adhikar Manch (APDAM) (2000)

13. Janajati Yuva Sangathan (2008)

Table 2.1  continued

Dalit fisher communities and OBCs.

Adivasis, Dalits and OBCs

Social groups engaged

• SEZs (TNC investments) • Industrialization and displacement • Land alienation and marine rights of traditional fisher communities

• Industrialization and displacement (TNC investment) • Land and forest rights • Compensation and rehabilitation • Police atrocities/brutality • Protection of Adivasi–Dalit ways and forest-based cultures and community

Key issues being addressed

Kapoor  r 35

(NDA). This was subsequently pursued by the Left-supported United Progressive Alliance that came to power in 2004 and again in 2009, minus the Left which faced a decisive electoral setback in Bengal and nationally post-Singur, Nandigram and Lalgarh land conflicts in the state (Menon and Nigam 2007). The attempt to establish SEZs (as in Nandigram) involves the handover of Scheduled Area lands and forests (protected areas for Scheduled Tribes/Adivasis) to private industry through a process that has invited spontaneous and organized resistances from subalterns to such land grabs by capital, aided by the corporatized state and in almost all instances, buttressed by the state’s monopoly over the use of force (for examples, see Kapoor 2009b, 2009c; Padel and Das 2010). These statecorporate land grabs are being opposed and met by different subaltern movements (and local or trans/national allied movements) in Orissa and West Bengal (the eastern regions) including, for example: 1. In Singur (Bengal) (not an SEZ acquisition) where the Left Front government failed to acquire 997 acres of peasant land for the Tata group to manufacture cars; 2. In Nandigram (Bengal) where the same government is being opposed by peasants in its bid to acquire 14,500 acres for an SEZ and this is a small part of a wider SEZ plan where as much as 144,000 acres of land in nine districts have been earmarked for private industry (Bidwai 2007) encouraging similar responses elsewhere, as is currently evident in Lalgarh (Bengal); 3. In Kashipur (Orissa) where Kondh, Penga, Paraja, Jhodia tribes and Dalits (who have formed the Prakrutik Sampad Surakshya Parishad) are still engaged in a protracted opposition that has lasted over a decade in response to a billion dollar open-pit bauxite mine proposed by Utkal Alumina International Ltd (a consortium of trans/national companies which used to include ALCAN of Montreal and Indal, a subsidiary of Hindalco Industries which is a filial of the Aditya Birla Indian conglomerate); 4. In Lanjigarh (Orissa) where the Dongria Kondh Adivasis are up against British global mining giant, Vedanta (owned by London-based billionaire Anil Agarwal) open-pit bauxite mining venture in the Niyamgiri hills (of religious significance to the Dongrias), a company described by mining expert Roger Moody (cited in Chicaiza 2009: 15) as ‘the world’s most damaging mining company’ given its use of ‘deception, lies, breaches of faith and violation of regulations over the past five years’; 5. In Kalinganagar (Orissa) or the steel hub of Orissa, where Adivasis and Dalits (through the Visthapan Virodhi Jana Manch) have been

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protesting a proposed steel plant by Tatas as part of a much wider process of acquisition by the Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation of Orissa (IDCO); 6. And similarly, at an Orissa state level, betel leaf farmers and the POSCO Pratirodh Manch (engaging Adivasis and Dalits) are holding up a US$12 billion project by South Korean steel giant, Pohang Steel Corporation (POSCO) that has signed Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) with the state government to exploit the best coal and iron ore of the state for export markets for a period of thirty years.

Lok Adhikar Manch (LAM), Orissa and SSM post-mortems of development What are the perspectives of SSMs/struggles on development in India today, given that the context of development–displacement and dispossession is so real for subalterns as directly affected groups? Where and how do subalterns see themselves vis-à-vis this developmental scenario? What is the subaltern analysis and critique of what is transpiring? What are some of the possible responses and what does current subaltern politics entail? What do subalterns hope to achieve through SSM activism? LAM participants provide us with some insight in relation to these questions that are of political–practical and theoretical import when it comes to addressing development and movement politics today, and more specifically as these relate to the invasion of capital locally, nationally and on a global scale. We, the people’s movements present here representing people’s struggles from South and coastal Orissa have discussed and debated our issues and are hereby resolved to stand as a broad-based platform known as Lok Adhikar Manch (LAM) in support of the following manifesto (people’s statement): We are communities dependent on natural resources like land, forest and water, which are more than resources for us – our life system depends on them. Our way of life, beliefs, knowledge and values have historically, and as it is today, revolve around our natural surroundings. More than at any other point of time in our lives as traditional communities, today we feel pressurized and pushed hard to give up our ways and systems and give way to unjust intrusions by commercial, political and religious interests for their development and domination (shemano koro prabhavo abom unathi). We have been made to sacrifice, we have been thrown out throughout history by these dominant groups and forces for their own comfort and for extending their way of life while we have been made slaves, servants and subordinates (tolualoko). Our natural systems have taught us that each of us is important, each of our communities are important and we are an integrated part of the natural order we live in. At this critical juncture, we resolve to work together to protect ourselves, our interests, our natural bases (prakrutik adhar) and fight against

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Kapoor  r 37 any unjust appropriation of our natural habitations by commercial and state developmental interests. The manner in which industrialization is taking place (especially mining and dam projects), displacing the sons and daughters of the soil, destroying our resource and life base, we collectively oppose it and resolve to stand together to oppose it in the future. We have nothing to gain from liberalization (mukto bojaro), privatization (ghoroi korono) and globalization (jagothi korono), which are talked about today. We want to live the way we know how to live among our forests, streams, hills and mountains and water bodies with our culture, traditions and keep whatever is good in our society intact. We want to define change and development for ourselves (amo unathi abom parivarthanoro songhya ame nirupono koribako chaho). We are nature’s friends (prakruthi bandhu), so our main concern is preserving nature and enhancing its influence in our lives. (LAM Statement, Field Notes)

The above statement, adopted as part of LAM’s People’s Manifesto suggests that development is understood as a process of exploitation (of nature), dispossession of subalterns who are the friends of/close to nature – prakruthi bandhu) and assimilation of subalterns (being pressured to give up their ways). Or, it implies that subalterns are simply seen as being in the way of development and therefore deemed expendable (burnable communities) – development as a process of extermination (physical and cultural). As one Dalit leader at the gathering put it: We are gathered today as Adivasi, Dalit and peasant and fisher folk, as people of nature and as natural resource-dependent communities. We are also burnable (expendable) communities and by this we mean, we, the Dalit, the Adivasi, the farmer and the fisherman are always forced to give up whatever we have, suffer and sacrifice for the sake of what they call development. Why should the government develop this country at the cost of our way of life? The government and the industrialists accuse us of being obstacles in the process of development and as enemies of modernization, enemies of progress and enemies of Indian society – what they mean by this is that we are in the way of their process of exploitation of natural resources for this development. With the help of the big companies and industrialists and multinationals, the state and central governments want to continue to exploit our natural resources to the maximum and we know what this means for us. (Field notes)

Subalterity is embraced to the extent that there is an attempt to define a ‘common identity’ across the included social groupings that is defined/linked by a sense of ‘ecological ethnicity’ (prakruthi bandhu), the ‘difference’ from moderns (as the enemies of progress and the ‘burnable’), a common experience with relations of subordination (development–displacement, dispossession, cultural assimilation and/or extermination – being turned to dust – talitalanth) and the claim to being ‘root peoples’ (mulo nivasi).

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Antithetically speaking, the state, corporates (trans/national, i.e. trans­ national corporations and national corporations), upper classes and castes (ucho-barga) and urbanites (often referred to as ‘developer-outsiders and Oriyas’) are assessed as social groups and specific actors that are perpetrating development against the subaltern through, for instance, a strategy of encroachment, stampeding and deliberate creation of inequality and disunity. We are the mulo nivasi (root people) and the people who dominate us, as history has taught us, came here 5000 years ago… Today the sarkar (government) is doing a great injustice (anyayo durniti)…and the way they have framed laws around land-holding and distribution, we the poor are being squashed and stampeded in to each other’s space and are getting suffocated (dalachatta hoi santholito ho chonti). This creation of inequality (tara tomyo) is so widespread and so true…we see it in our lives. They tell us they want to make machines and industries for themselves. To do this they are doing forcible encroachment of our land – they are all over our hills and stones…we have become silent spectators (niravre dekhuchu) to a repeated snatching away of our resources…whenever we have asserted our land rights, we have been warned by the upper castes, their politician friends and the wealthy and have faced innumerable threats and retaliations. The ucho-barga (dominant castes and classes) will work to divide and have us fight each other till we are reduced to dust (talitalanth). (Kondh Adivasi leader, Interview notes)

In addition to the above references to physical and cultural extermination of burnable or expendable communities who are in the way of development and being reduced to dust, development (and specific agents of development) is being described as a colonizing and racist project built upon a foundation of ethno-cultural chauvinism (of the developers=outsiders=Oriyas), casteclass superiority and urban colonial prejudices aimed at subalterity and the sub­altern meaning and ways of life; a coloniality of power (development as exploitation, assimilation and extermination of subalterns) that is not just a personal expression (from developer to subaltern) but one that is systematic and deliberate (several quotes shared above illustrate this possibility, as do the following quotes) in terms of its political economic and socio–cultural trajectories as experienced by the subaltern (Das and Poole 2004). We fought the British thinking that we will be equal in the independent India. (Kondh elder, Interview notes) The sarkar (government) and their workers think that we Adivasis do not know anything and we are good for nothing, that we are weak and powerless and will not question them if they treat us unjustly. That is why they think that they do not need to ask us anything before going ahead. That is why they think they can put their pressure on us (shakti a bong prayogo karanti). To the

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Kapoor  r 39 government we are of no significance (sarkar amar prathi heyogyano karuchi). They are selling our forests, our water and land and maybe they will sell us also. (Adivasi woman leader, Interview notes) They have the power of dhana (wealth) and astro-shastro (armaments). They have the power of kruthrima ain (artificial laws and rules) – they created these laws just to maintain their own interests…and where we live, they call this area adhusith (Adivasi-Dalit infested, as in ‘pest-infestation’)…we are condemned to the life of the ananta paapi (eternal sinners), as colonkitha (dirty/black/ stained), as ghruniya (despised and hated). (Dalit leader, Interview notes)

Development is also alluded to as violence, that is, as a process involving physical/material destruction of nature and dispossession of subalterns or what Shiv Vishvanathan has referenced as development triage (Vishvanathan 1987) (for similar contemporary analyses see Escobar 2004; Kapoor and Shizha 2010: Kothari and Harcourt 2004; Menon and Nigam 2007; Nandy 2008; Oliver-Smith 2010; Palit 2009, Rajagopal 2003). For example, almost without exception, every struggle referenced earlier, from Singur to Kashipur and Kalinganagar, has involved the use of statecorporate violence against Adivasis–Dalits who have been killed while protesting (Gerber’s findings on resistance to industrial tree plantations in the Global South finds official physical violence in 50 per cent of the cases studied, 2010: 33). The use of violence has been attested to by statements made by LAM participants: We have people here from Maikanch who know how the state police always act for the industrialists and their friends in government who want to see bauxite mines go forward in Kashipur against our wishes, even if it meant shooting three of our brothers; we have people here from Kalinganagar where Dalits and Adivasis are opposing the Tata steel plant and there too, thirteen of us were gunned down by police…many people have been killed by the state and industrialist mafias. (Field notes)

Development also inflicts and relies upon cultural violence including forced assimilation and extermination of subaltern ways – a dispossession of meaning, as has already been alluded to. Both, physical and cultural processes rely on violence from without as, for example, propagated by the state and corporate informants/goons (dalaals) and through the deliberate stoking and active promotion of division, discord and disunity among subalterns by these agents of development and caste-class interests. There is communal conflict around land and forests because the political powers, in order to keep their control and access to these vital resources, are

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40  r Two promoting division and hatred among the communities (Domb, Kondh and Saora). Our communities once had equal access to land and forests, which today have been controlled using outside methods of the sarkar (government) and the vyaparis (business classes) and upper caste (Brahmins). They want to perpetuate their ways and ideas among us and always keep us divided. We are all garib sreni (poor classes) and land and forest are vital for our survival. And if they succeed in controlling them, they also end up controlling our lives. As has been the case over the ages, they want us to live in disharmony and difference so that they can be the shashaks (rulers) all the time. (Adivasi elder, Interview notes)

Recognizing these attempts to divide and rule, LAM partners have emphasized the need, in their political-education processes, to consciously address difference and maintain unity (ektha) (development of communal harmony is a movement objective in itself, see Table 2.1) between various subaltern groups. LAM is apparently well aware of exploitable differences among subaltern communities and works to address these in light of divisive tactics employed by these caste-class outsiders. Expanding upon the notion of development and cultural violence, Da Costa’s (2007: 292) observation that David Harvey’s (2003) preoccupation with ‘expanded reproduction’ and ‘accumulation by dispossession’ ignores the serious consideration of ‘dispossessions of meaning as a core struggle uniting critiques of development’ is a relevant observation, which subaltern participants in LAM address in no uncertain terms. It is time we seriously start to think about this destruction in the name of development…otherwise, like yesterday’s children of nature, who never depended upon anybody for their food security, we will have no option but to go for mass transition from self-sufficient cultivators and forest and fish gatherers to migratory labourers in far away places. After displacement, we stand to lose our traditions, our culture and own historical civilization…from known communities we become scattered unknown people thrown into the darkness to wander about in an unknown world of uncertainty and insecurity. (Adivasi leader, Field notes) Who wants to go to join the Oriyas and do business and open shops and be shahari (city folk/moderns) if they make you labour like donkeys for one meal? Even if they teach us, we do not want to go to the cities – these are not the ways of the Adivasi. We cannot leave our forests (ame jangale chari paribo nahi). The forest is our second home (after the huts). There is no distance between our homes and the forest. You just come out and you have everything you need… My friends, we are from the forest – that is why we use the small sticks of the karanja tree to brush our teeth – not toothbrushes. Our relationship with the forest is like a finger is to flesh (nakho koo mangsho) – we cannot be separated. (Adivasi elder, Interview notes)

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Kapoor  r 41

SSM articulations and the prospects for radical political praxis LAM’s critical analytical perspectives on development and the agents of development are instructive for political praxis and for those who seek to theorize such engagements. Listening to the subaltern, not as infallible communities but as communities facing an unparalleled existential crisis, and who are more than qualified by virtue of direct experiences with colonial oppression (through time and in terms of magnitude), is politically instructive. LAM makes it abundantly clear, for instance, that the movement in relation to ‘development’ is a struggle to maintain subaltern ways as friends of nature and this means addressing cultural (‘our ways’) and material colonizations by the forces and agents of development and modernization (‘our struggle is around khadyo/food, jamin/land, jalo/water, jangalo/ jungle and ektha/unity land, water and forests’ – Adivasi participant, Interview notes, February 2007). The struggle is in relation to imperialism and colonialism or advanced capitalism and accumulation by dispossession, which are primarily political economic processes associated with ‘development’ as a capitalist colonization of subaltern spaces. This process of accumulation is also facilitated through the dispossession of meanings/ ways of subaltern life, i.e. through a systematic deployment of casteracializations and ethnic-chauvinist impositions not dissimilar to socio– political constructions promoted by moderni­zation theorists of capitalist development apparently keen to discipline subalterns of the ‘Third World’ in to psycho–social dispositions deemed necessary for entrepreneurial/ market orientations consistent with moderni­zation or modern peoples. The dominant Euro-American literature on social movements too, dismisses or emasculates SSM politics and trans-local alliances like LAM when associating/categorizing these movements with a relatively nondescript (read as ineffectual), amorphous politics of post-modernism which provides the impetus for a predominantly urban-based New Social Movement (NSM) politics germinating in the West. NSMs are theorized as being mostly preoccupied with questions of identity and to the relative exclusion of material/survival concerns or the capture and revolutionary transformation of the state. SSMs, however, are defined by tangible political markers and a locally grounded politics, potentially differentiating them from old social movements (labour movements) and NSMs (civil societarian identitybased urban movements, including for example, environ­mental, gender and human rights movements) (Kapoor 2009b). They are potentially defined by:

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• A political project that seeks to address the ongoing project of colonization of nature and subalterns as directly affected (culturally, politically and economically) social groups; • Identifiable social groups and actors as per a general definition of subalterns (see definition/note 1 and descriptions of groups engaged with LAM in Table 2.1); • A subaltern collective political consciousness (e.g. prakruthi bandhu and a perspective that draws from the common experience of being DDPs) and project that recognizes colonizing agents of the corporatizedstate, trans/national corporations (and the reproduction of market forces and interests), civil society elements (e.g. mainly welfare NGOs and those engaged in the depoliticization of SSMs and direct action) (Kapoor 2013), caste-class outsiders/ groups and their interests and so on as those who perpetuate colonial control; • A subaltern political–economic–cultural analysis of colonization and poverty, exploitation, domination and the nature of resistance which directly informs (praxis) attempts to influence, shape, reconstruct and capture elements of the state to meet their own ends (e.g. pressure to define and protect Fifth Schedule provisions for Adivasi–Dalit communities in Scheduled and forested areas or to ensure enforcement pertaining to the coastal regulation zones that prevented corporate shrimp farming operations in South Orissa from decimating fisher peoples) in ways that it is expected, will produce the necessary structural conditions for decolonization; • SSM praxis includes an appraisal of the social structures of containment (the power of the state–market–civil society nexus and of caste-class interests and ruling relations) based on assessments derived from concrete experience with exploitation (e.g. market violence and state violence/use of force) and response/resistances – given the mostly David–Goliath status of these encounters, SSMs have scaled up their action through the likes of the LAM (trans-local alliances) to reproduce a necessary critical mass, while attempting to maintain a sense of rootedness (place) by including subaltern groups facing similar issues and who are from the state of Orissa); • SSMs in LAM recognize the dangers of disunity and the external (e.g. caste-class interests) and internal (e.g. gender relations) social vectors which destroy communal harmony and ektha (solidarity and sense of community) (see Table 2.1 and the focus on communal harmony); and finally, • SSMs are political projects that experience real gains in relation to SSM objectives, including (intentionally or otherwise) the roll back, disruption and weakening of the projects of capital (e.g. ALCAN of Montreal

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Kapoor  r 43

divested from the Kashipur mining venture as did Norsk-Hydro before it, partially due to the PSSP-led movement activism in Kashipur). While the significance of SSMs and subaltern activism is apparently selfevident to subalterns, these movement formations are also indispensable whether as a component of counter-hegemonic (e.g. subaltern forest– rural–peasant–worker partnerships) coalitions and/or as an anti-hegemonic politics that resists, erodes, blocks (is in the way of) and precludes the reproduction of capital through struggles in and around the fields, forests and water bodies targeted by and for modern development (Gerber’s study, referenced earlier in this chapter, on resistance to Industrial Tree Plantations in the Global South also states that popular struggles have been successful in interrupting/stopping projects in a fifth of the cases examined). To interrupt, let alone replace capital (Sklair 2002), is a project that requires multiple forms of penetration. Tormey (2004: 116) is instructive on this count when he posits the need for more ‘open accounts of how resistance to capitalism arise, and thus to a less doctrinaire account of who as well as what can be considered “progressive” from the point of view of developing an anti-capitalist stance’. In the end, SSM politics is and will continue to be of wider significance given their sustained contributions to the struggles against colonial projects and given how indispensable SSMs have become in correcting the colonial trajectory of dogmatic socialisms and the more conspicuous impositions of a neoliberal capitalist regime.

Concluding reflections This chapter has relied on participatory critical interpretive research exploring SSM critical perspectives on ‘development’ with a view to learning from contemporary subaltern critiques of the development project (and the globalization of capital) and to amplify critical analyses of a subaltern movement politics (LAM) in India; movements whose politics extends beyond the terrain of commodification of land by capital (e.g. the defence of Niyamgiri hills from Vedanta bauxite mining interests by the Dongria Kondhs in the name of ‘the sacred’). All the movements included in this study, barring two, are still active although LAM continues to struggle to meet and collaborate, given the various political pressures being exerted on them by the state (e.g. increased surveillance of leaders; recent changes to the Foreign Contribution Regulations Act which restrict the space for dissent; and the growing troop presence in the area allegedly targeting Maoists but simultaneously scrutinizing ‘anti-industrial’ popular movements/leaders) and various political parties interested in co-opting their process.

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44  r Two

A recent analysis suggests that higher compensation will not dissipate India’s land wars and that whatever their politics or the various class compromises involved, ‘combined, they are making it increasingly difficult for capitalists to obtain that seemingly mundane but crucial condition of accumulation: a physical place on Earth’ (Levien 2013: 381). Levien cites several current examples to make the point: in the case of the POSCO steel project in Orissa, farmers publicly burned their compensation packages; in Niyamgiri the Dongria Kondh have unanimously rejected the Vedanta bauxite mine; fisherman in Gorai, Maharashtra have refused to give their island for a tourist SEZ; while in Goa others have successfully mobilized against a pharmaceutical SEZ. As critical responses to capitalist development, these development–displacement and dispossession-related movements will continue to register a form of politics which emerges as resistance to proletarianization (Harvey 2003) and the subsequent colonization of subaltern ways of being, as opposed to a proletarian politics embedded in capitalist social relations; a subaltern politics that is debatably more destabilizing for capital given that these movement locations are mainly outside the terrain of commodification and/or class compromise. SSMs are also likely to continue to proliferate in India given the demise of the party-political left formations in the 2014 elections that acted as partial conduits for addressing SSM suffocation and/or political aspirations in formal institutional spaces and also because, as Sudipta Kaviraj (1996) notes, the Indian state is faced with the prospect of proletarianization of rural populations (through primitive accumulation, displacement and dispossession) and the disciplining of the working class in to the new regimes of trans/national capital (accelerated development) while simultaneously attempting to establish its democratic credentials. That is, unlike in the West where capitalist industrialization stabilized itself before facing democratic demands, India is having to deal with the compulsions of democracy and human rights while enforcing a capitalist transformation, thereby creating an opportunity structure for movements (including SSMs) in/directly seeking to address the rule of capital. The escalating decibel level of SSM challenges to compulsory modernization (colonization), state socialist and/or corporatist statemarket-civil society penetrations will, at minimum, continue to expose the dominant tendency to construct the response to rural dislocations and dispossession in liberal terms, i.e. terms that are focused on addressing the individual dislocated person or as Menon and Nigam (2007: 72–3) express it: There is no understanding of communities as the subjects of dislocation or ways of life that are destroyed. There is an abyss of incomprehension on the part of the Indian elites toward rural and tribal communities. Ripping them out

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Kapoor  r 45 from lands that they have occupied for generations and transplanting them overnight in to an alien setting (which is the best they can expect) is understood as rehabilitation and liberation from their backward ways of life.

Note 1

A term first coined by Antonio Gramsci to refer to peasants and labouring poor/common people and a subaltern common sense (possible basis for a unifying peasant political consciousness) in Italy. It is being used here in terms of Ranajit Guha’s application in the Indian context with its related ambiguities pertaining to the debatable sociological distinctions between the elite and subaltern duality in postcolonial India (Guha cited in Ludden 2005). More specifically, it is being used here as a reference to social groups and classes like the rural landless poor (migrant under employed labour), poor (small) peasants, pastoralists and nomads, Adivasis (original dwellers or tribals in official terminology), Dalits (‘untouchable’ castes), Other Backward Castes (OBCs) and development displaced people (DDPs) specifically from these former categories, including women in any of these groupings. Subalterity is also being understood here as the dialectics of superordination and subordination (between these groups and class, caste, gender, urban and/or ethically dominant groups sometimes embedded in and across multiple modes of production) in global and national hierarchical social relations of exploitation (including but not restricted to those that reproduce capitalist property relations).   Subaltern struggles are being revisited here to register the significance of a material politics of the subaltern which is continuously informed by an apparent and imbricated cultural content and valuations concerning development, power and politics. This potentially informs both cultural and material reductionisms (and related polemics) addressing subaltern politics. This is a revised and augmented version of an article that was first published in the Journal of Asian and African Studies, 46(3) (June/spring issue, 2011).

References Banerjee, P. 2006 (November 18). ‘West Bengal – land acquisition and peasant resistance in Singur.’ Economic and Political Weekly (Kolkata): 4718–720. Baviskar, A. (2005). ‘Red in tooth and claw? Looking for class in struggles over nature.’ In R. Ray, and M. Katzenstein (eds.). Social Movements in India: Poverty, Power and Politics. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 161–78. Bidwai, P. (2007). ‘Left faces critical choices.’ Combat Law, 6(3): 12–16. Brass, T. (2007). ‘“A world which is not yet”: Peasants, civil society and the state.’ Journal of Peasant Studies, 34(3, 4): 582–664. Cameron, A. and Palan, R. (2004). The Imagined Economies of Globalization. London: Sage.

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46  r Two Chaturvedi, V. (2000). Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial. London: Verso. Chibber, V. (2013). Postcolonial Theory and the Spectre of Capital. London: Verso. Chicaiza, G. (2009 July). ‘Interview with Roger Moody.’ Seedling (Barcelona, Spain), 14–16. Da Costa, D. (2007). ‘Tensions of neo-liberal development: state discourse and dramatic oppositions in West Bengal.’ Contributions to Indian Sociology, 41(3): 287–320. Das, V. and Poole, D. (eds.) (2004). Anthropology in the Margins of the State. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press. Davis, M. (2006). Planet of Slums. London: Verso. Escobar, A. (2004). ‘Development, violence and the new imperial order.’ Development, 47(1): 15–21. Eversole, R., McNeish, J. and Cimadamore, A. (eds.) (2005). Indigenous Peoples and Poverty: An International Perspective. London: Zed Books. Fernandes, W. (2006). ‘Development related displacement and tribal women.’ In G. Rath (ed.). Tribal Development in India: The Contemporary Debate. New Delhi, India: Sage, 112–32. Gerber, J. (2010). ‘An overview of resistance against industrial tree plantations in the Global South.’ Economic & Political Weekly, XLV(41): 30–4. Gibson, N. and Patel, R. (2010). ‘Democracy’s everyday death: South Africa’s quiet coup.’ Pambazuka News, Issue 451. Available at http://www.pambazuka.org/ en/ category/features/59322. [Accessed on 26 January 2010]. Guha, R. (1982). ‘On some aspects of the historiography of Colonial India.’ In R. Guha (ed.). Subaltern Studies (no. 1). Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1–8. Guha, R. (1990). The Unquiet Woods. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Guru, G. and Chakravarty, A. (2005). ‘Who are the country’s poor? Social movement politics and Dalit poverty.’ In R. Ray and M. Katzenstein (eds.). Social Movements in India: Poverty, Power and Politics. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 135–160. Harvey, D. (2003). The New Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harvey, D. (2009). Social Justice and the City. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. Kapoor, D. (2009a). ‘Subaltern social movement learning: Adivasis (original dwellers) and the decolonization of space in India.’ In D. Kapoor (ed.). Education, Decolonization and Development: Perspectives from Asia, Africa and the Americas. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 7–38. Kapoor, D. (2009b). ‘Globalization, dispossession and subaltern social movement (SSM) learning in the South.’ In A. Abdi and D. Kapoor (eds.) Global Perspectives on Adult Education. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 71–92. Kapoor, D. (2009c). Adivasi (original dwellers) ‘In the way of state-corporate development: development dispossession and learning in social action for land and forests in India.’ McGill Journal of Education, 44(1): 55–78. Kapoor, D. (2010). ‘Learning from Adivasi (original dweller) political-ecological expositions of development: claims on forest, land and place in India.’ In D. Kapoor and E. Shizha (eds.). Indigenous Knowledge and Learning in Asia-

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Kapoor  r 47 Pacific and Africa: Perspectives on Development, Education and Culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 17–33. Kapoor, D. (2013). ‘Social action and NGOization in contexts of development dispossession in rural India: explorations into the un-civility of civil society.’ In A. Choudry and D. Kapoor (eds.). NGOization: Complicity, Contradictions and Prospects. London: Zed, 45–74. Kaviraj, S. (1996). ‘Dilemmas of democratic development in India.’ In A. Leftwich (ed.). Democracy and Development: Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Polity Press, 162–181. Kothari, S. and Harcourt, W. (2004). ‘Introduction: the violence of develop­ment.’ Development, 47(1): 3–7. Levien, M. (2013). ‘The politics of dispossession: theorizing India’s ‘land wars’.” Politics and Society, 41(3): 351–394. Ludden, D. (ed.) (2005). Reading Subaltern Studies: Critical History, Contested Meaning and the Globalization of South Asia. New Delhi: Pauls Press. McMichael, P. (2006). ‘Reframing development: global peasant movements and the new agrarian question.’ Canadian Journal of Development Studies, (27)4: 471–86. McMichael, P. (ed.) (2010). Contesting Development: Critical Struggles for Social Change. USA: T & F Books. Mehta, L. (ed.) (2009). Displaced by Development: Confronting Marginalization and Gender Injustice. New Delhi: Sage. Menon, N. and Nigam, A. (2007). Power and Contestation: India Since 1989. London: Zed Books. Mignolo, W. (2000). Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Nandy, A. (2008). The Romance of the State: And the Fate of Dissent in the Tropics. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Oliver-Smith, A. (2010). Defying Displacement: Grassroots Resistance and the Critique of Development. Austin: University of Texas Press. Padel, F. and Das, S. (2010). Out of this Earth: East India Adivasis and the Aluminium Cartel. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan. Palit, C. (2009) ‘Displacement, gender justice and people’s struggles.’ In Mehta L. (ed.). Displaced by Development: Confronting Marginalization and Gender Injustice. New Delhi: Sage, 282–94. Patnaik, U. (2007). The Republic of Hunger and Other Essays. Gurgaon, India: Three Essays Collective. Pithouse, R. (2008). ‘A politics of the poor: shack dweller’s struggles in Durban.’ Journal of Asian and African Studies, 43(1): 63–94. Prasad, A. (2004). Environmentalism and the Left: Contemporary Debates and Future Agendas in Tribal Areas. New Delhi, India: LeftWord Press. Quijano, A. and Ennis, M. (2000). ‘Coloniality of power, Eurocentrism and Latin America.’ Nepantla: Views from the South, 1(3): 533–80. Rajagopal, B. (2003). International Law from Below: Development, Social Movements and Third World Resistance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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48  r Two Ray, R. and Katzenstein, M. (2005). Social Movements in India: Poverty, Power and Politics. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. Sheth, D. (2007). ‘Micro-movements in India: toward a new politics of participatory democracy.’ In D. Sousa Santos (ed.) Democratizing Democracy: Beyond the Liberal Democratic Canon. London: Verso, 3–37. Sklair, L. (2002). Globalization: Capitalism and Its Alternatives. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tormey, S. (2004). Anticapitalism. Oxford: Oneworld. Vishvanathan, S. (1987). ‘On the annals of the laboratory state.’ In A. Nandy (ed.). Science, Hegemony and Violence. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

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3

Democratic Hopes, Neoliberal Transnational Government(re)ality Grounded Social Movements and the Defence of Communal Natural Resources in Ghana Jonathan Langdon1

Introduction Democratization in Africa since the 1990s has brought many hopes for African populations, among which two stand out: that African governments would begin to be more accountable to them, and that this accountability would mean an end to foreign domination of African economies and government policies (Abrahamsen 2000). In the aftermath of the popular movements that helped bring about democratic change in countries such as Ghana, the second hope failed to materialize, as a neoliberal consensus emerged among ruling elite and transnational institutions and capital (Abrahamsen 2000; Akwetey 1994; Ninsin 2007). This consensus, or what James Ferguson (2006) has called neoliberal transnational governmentality, can be clearly felt in the symbol of Ghana’s new democracy, the 1992 Constitution, where the needs of foreign capital are placed ahead of the needs of Ghanaian citizens and communities (Ayine 2001). This chapter begins by exploring the notion of transnational neoliberal governmentality, where a respatialization of dominance over the local in Ghana suggests the national is merely a facilitator for transnational priorities. Central to this exploration is a discursive teasing apart of the 1992 Constitution for its links to transnational governmentality through a key clause that places ownership of natural resources such as minerals in the hands of the presidency, to be held ‘in trust for the people of Ghana’ (Ayine 2001: 86). Equally important, this chapter also counter-balances the notion of governmentality derived from Foucault (1991) with his notion of local subjugated knowledges (Foucault 1981). It is through this lens that a

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discussion of Ghanaian social movements grounded in natural resource defence is opened up. For instance, contesting the constitutional clause mentioned above is grounded in local subjugated knowledge that contests the neoliberal truth regime by recontextualizing who truly holds this land ‘in trust’ for the rest of Ghanaians. To illustrate both the effects of transnational govern­mentality and the way in which local subjugated knowledges contribute to contesting it, the chapter draws on one particular local movement defending natural resource use. This movement, defending non-corporate access to a salt lagoon in southern Ghana, is important not only in the way it has successfully contested government and capital’s attempts to marginalize communal access, but also because it is intrinsically tied to the constitutional clause mentioned above. The chapter concludes by bringing transnational governmentality into dialogue with the resistance mobilized through local subjugated knowledges as in the case of the Ghanaian salt flat example. The conclusion argues that while these movements are clearly embedded in and are resisting neoliberal transnational govern­mentality, it is not – as Ferguson (2006) suggests – by connecting with transnational social movements such as the anti-globalization movement that these forces can best be contested at the local and transnational level. Instead, it is rather by connecting the various local Ghanaian movements to one another that a more effective resistance of the local, national and transnational registers can emerge.

Topographic power and transnational governmentality in Africa James Ferguson (2006) argues that the wave of democratization that has swept African nation-states over the last two decades should be understood as a renewed attempt to gain legitimacy for a level of governance that has been seriously undermined by a history of foreign intervention, manipulation and coercion. According to Ferguson, the failure of structural adjustment policies – the most sweeping of these interventions – necessitated a re-legitimation of national governments that had visibly abandoned their populations. Ferguson (2006: 100) advances a framework to analyze this wave of democratization of African nation states, called ‘topographies of power’. It involves a reconceived spatialization of power relations as they apply to African nation states. Ferguson (2006: 92) further argues that African nation states have been commonly conceived as vertically encompassing civil society, communities, families and citizens, as if the state exists somewhere ‘up there’ above these other elements in society. Through this conceptualization of power, African nation states claim

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Langdon  r 51

legitimacy and supremacy in deciding how people should live at the local level because of their greater claims to generalizability – they understand what is and is not good for the nation. For example, this claim to greater generalizability can be seen in the Ghanaian Constitution discussed below, where the state holds resources ‘in trust’ for Ghana’s citizens – implying the state has the legitimacy to be trusted to know best how to use these resources. In contrast to this rarely questioned spatial arrangement, Ferguson suggests Africa’s history, and its contemporary relationship with neoliberal globalization, tells of a different topography of power, where the local is embedded in transnational forms of governmentality (Ferguson and Gupta 2002). Following Foucault’s lead, Ferguson extends the notion of governmentality – a term Foucault (1991) linked to the mechanisms through which a population is governed by institutions such as the nation state – to connect with transnational forms of institutions and discourses that govern people, such as neoliberalism. With his colleague Akhil Gupta, Ferguson links the deployment of this term first to Dean’s (1999) understanding of governmentality. Dean and others2 remind us that the key elements are ‘govern’ and ‘mentality,’ where it is the ‘conduct of conduct’ – or the ‘how’ of governing – that is at stake (1999: 2). For Ferguson and Gupta (2002: 989–90), the majority of contemporary uses of the term focus too closely on the Western, ‘shift from the Keynesian welfare state toward so-called free market policies,’ and while, ‘such extensions’ are ‘undoubtedly illuminating … they remain strikingly Eurocentric’. Likewise, these contemporary uses also remain ‘closely tied to the idea of territorially sovereign nation-state as the domain for the operation of government’ (990). Instead, Ferguson and Gupta ‘propose to extend the discussion of governmentality to modes of government that are being set up on a global scale’ (990). For the purposes of this chapter, it is useful to mention how for Dean (1999: 1) the current popularity of the term has led to ‘a certain dilution of the conceptual focus and analytical force it helped make possible’. As such, Dean argues for placing the term’s use in context with Foucault’s broader thinking. He argues in fact that the term allows for ‘broader meanings of government and governing that are not necessarily tied to nation-state’ (2). From a similar angle, Sawyer and Gomez (2008: 5) note how a recent alternative ‘burgeoning literature’ has ‘extended Foucault’s Eurocentric focus both historically and geographically’, and is providing an important ‘counterbalance’ to the ‘oft-heard critique of Foucault’s notion of historical process of power [as being] too omniscient, omnipresent and all-consuming’. Instead, this literature, which includes Ferguson and Gupta (2008: 5), argues that:

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52  r  Three Rather than seeing processes of governmentality as all-determining, this work sees the historical process of attempts to manage and shape people and their relations to things as always deeply compromised prospects, composed of contradictory movements.

In this sense, these new non-Eurocentric uses of govern­mentality are more closely in dialogue with Mignolo’s (2000) connection with Foucault’s sense of power, where discursive regimes of truth – or what he calls global designs – are constantly being challenged by subjugated knowledges, what Foucault (1980) describes as ‘knowledges that have been disqualified’ by dominant discourses and that Mignolo (2000: 19) renames ‘local histories’. It is based on Mignolo’s reminder of this more complex understanding of power, especially in the postcolonial context, that the description of the global design of transnational neoliberal governmentality is counterbalanced with a description of local subjugated knowledges that contest this governmentality’s truth regime. Returning to the African context that informs this use of transnational governmentality, Ferguson (2006) reminds us that the contemporary African postcolonial state cannot be understood without reference to its colonial antecedent. Ferguson further notes that African states continue to ‘be ruled in significant part by transnational organizations’ (100). Yet, what Ferguson’s reconcept­ualization of these topographies also suggests is that transnational forms of governmentality are not just dominating the postcolonial African state – democratic or not – but bypassing it altogether and connecting directly to the local through, for example, foreign capital taking over local security agencies. In fact, neoliberal discourses of governance, at the heart of the present form of market-led democracy, have successfully reconfigured the state as an obstacle for change, something that should ideally be bypassed (Ferguson 2006; Taylor 2002). This recasting of the state from protagonist of development to obstacle to development legitimates a direct connection to the local by transnational institutions such as the World Bank as well as transnational forms of capital such as mining. It is this new web of connections between the local and the transnational that Ferguson sees as transnational governmentality. James Ferguson also argues the notion of ‘civil society’ should be viewed with scepticism as it contains many elements that support the current set of power relations, and contributes to the stabilization of the local for capital extraction. Instead, he advocates social movements as a better category of differentiation, and describes resistance to this form of transnational governmentality as being associated with transnational solidarity movements, or international social movements:

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Langdon  r 53 If … transnational relations of power are no longer routed so centrally through the state, and if forms of governmentality increasingly exist that bypass the states altogether, then political resistance needs to be reconceptualized in a parallel fashion. (Ferguson 2006: 106)

This is important, as this new topography of power makes room for a form of resistance that sees not only the state or even a class as an adversary, but further recognizes the transnational forms of relations that reproduce global governmentality on a local scale. Ferguson’s ‘parallel’ structure aims to resist and contest on both these registers at once. With this framework of topographies of power, and bearing in mind transnational forms of governmentality, the next section elaborates further how local Ghanaian social movements can effectively contest and resist on multiple registers the attempts by transnational capital, through the overt or covert facilitation of the Ghanaian state, to take control of the local, even as civil society approaches try to stabilize and contain this dissent.

Grounding the discussion: defending the salt flats of Songor3 Turning now to look at the case of the Songor lagoon in Ghana, what is important in the description that follows is that the conflicts arising around communal versus corporate access to a natural resource are governed by a shifting mentality at the transnational and, subsequently, at the national level during the period of first structural adjustment and then democratization that Ferguson outlines above. This results in a new form of government reality that predicts the failures of the democratic hopes to come, even as it also generates the emergence of the local subjugated knowledges that contest this new reality. In describing the evolution of the Songor conflict and the subsequent mobilization of resistance, Takyiwaa Manuh (1992) has shown how the decision to build a major dam on the Volta river in the 1960s led to a dramatic change in the ecology of the Songor salt flats and lagoon in the 1970s – with a massive reduction in salt provision. According to her, it is partially as a result of this dramatic change that a local traditional authority, the Ada Traditional Council, decided to grant land leases to two companies in the 1970s. However, according to Kofi Larweh, a member of the PAR collective informing this discussion, as well as Managing Director at Ada’s community radio station: There had been attempts, especially in the 70s to take over the lagoon. At some point, the local chiefs said they were approached, when government came in to allow privatization. The discussion was for a small parcel, but on paper it was something huge. OK, that was one of the reasons for the [formation of the

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54  r  Three movement] because what was discussed was not what was put on paper, and the people were being prevented from winning salt even from the larger portions that was for the local people. (PAR group meeting, 23 February 2008)

In the years following this decision, the prevention of access to the lagoon by one company in particular, Vacuum Salt Limited (VSL), partially precipitated the formation of the Songor movement. Yet, instrumental to the formation of this movement was also the shifts in power at the national level, as on 31 December 1981 a supposedly socialist military government – the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) – took control of the country from a civilian administration. Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings, the new government’s leader, claimed the revolution espoused socialist goals meant to ‘transform the social and economic order of this country’ (quoted in Shillington 1992: 80). This shift, according to Manuh (1992: 115), opened the door for one of the local People’s Defence Committees (PDCs) ‘formed in communities and workplaces following the events of 31 December 1981’ to take ‘over the operations of Vacuum Salt Limited’. However, when the PNDC and Rawlings took an abrupt right turn and introduced Ghana’s first structural adjustment policy in 1984, the tables were turned. The owners of Vacuum Salt Limited returned and reintroduced their prevention of access to the lagoon, but this time with the backing of local police and military forces. According to Manuh, it was at this point that many of those involved in the PDCs who had been purged and maligned with the shift to neoliberal logic began to organize local salt-winners into a loose cooperative. In many ways this cooperative forms the backbone of the movement for the defence of the Songor, even in contemporary times where cooperatives in Ghana are a thing of the past. While many other cooperatives existed at the local level in Ghana during this period – a tacit connection to a leftist rhetoric of the PNDC still maintained – the salt cooperatives were different and ‘arose from the struggle of Ada people … to regain sovereignty over the lagoon’ (Manuh 1992: 115). At its height, the main cooperative boasted 3,200 members. In contemporary times, despite the much looser organization framework, this history of struggle along with the cooperatives that emerged as a result of it helps ensure the ongoing presence of the movement. In this sense, the cooperative structure provided the mechanism through which a movement could be formed in the PNDC era – an era where many of those opposing the new neoliberal focus on deregulation were targeted, tortured and imprisoned. It was through this cooperative that the growing arrogance of VSL and the Apenteng family that owned it were resisted. Albert Adinortey Apetorgbor, a member of the movement and a National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) organizer, described the situation:

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Langdon  r 55 The late Apenteng, especially his son Stephen, would not allow anybody to win salt, let alone keep it in stock around the Lagoon for a better price. One day… he brought some soldiers to the Kasseh market some 20 kilometres away from the Lagoon…The soldiers started beating all the women selling salt at the market and all the vehicles loaded with salt were attacked. (Radio Ada 2002: 3)

The violence used by VSL to guarantee its claim to monopoly over salt in the area helped spark the formation of the cooperative described above. It also provoked an intervention by the local priests who guarded the spiritual essence of the lagoon (Manuh 1992). Apetorgbor describes how the local knowledge of preserving the salt formation to ensure equitable distribution as well as maintenance of the ecosystem became a rallying point during the conflict with VSL (Songor focus group, March 2008). The practice of fetish priests placing sticks in the lagoon in order to indicate a ‘ban on entering the lagoon’ was used symbolically to challenge the use of the lagoon by VSL. When the company removed the sticks, it sparked large-scale anger and acts of resistance against the company and its local police and military allies (Songor focus group, March 2008). These acts included the burning of ‘a heap of salt kept in storage…most of which belonged to Apenteng [of VSL]’ (Radio Ada 2002: 5). As a result, Apetorgbor describes how: Anybody found in the Lagoon was arrested…They were sent to the Vacuum Salt Company’s office. The suspects were given salt to chew and salt concentrates to drink. They were given other unspeakable punishments, as Apenteng directed. Thereafter, they were taken to…Accra, where they were put in cells for three weeks. (Radio Ada 2002: 5)

On 17 May 1985, the violence of VSL against the people of Ada culminated in the killing of Maggie Lanuer – a pregnant woman innocently standing by during one of the police raids against members of the cooperative and those attempting to sell salt. She was killed by a stray bullet fired by one of the police officers. After her death, the government formed a commission to investigate the complaints being made by Ada residents, and ultimately banned the VSL owners from operating in and around the lagoon (Manuh 1992). Yet, this victory is hollow, as what has really been at stake in this conflict is not a simple movement against a particular company, but rather a contestation of a regime of truth that suggests it is the national government, or the logic of neoliberalism that should dictate how the salt flats in the Songor are used. This is in contrast to how it was managed ‘in the past,’ where ‘the process of collecting salt from the lagoon demonstrated community management of a natural resource’ (Manuh 1992: 104). Yet, as Apetorgbor

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notes, this was not the only implication of this way of knowing and being: ‘People from all walks of life come to the Songor Lagoon for salt. Some come from as far as Tamale, Ewe land, Kumasi and other places’ (Radio Ada 2002: 3).4 As Kofi Larweh explains it: You have this big salt resource…and you have millions of tons forming there for the people to collect, and anybody at all, the people are so liberal, whatever you are able to collect is yours, you only give some small part as tax to the chief and…the owners . (PAR group meeting, 23 February 2008)

Larweh also notes how the traditional resource management system helped guarantee this sense of collective ownership and access: The [Songor] movement is deeply rooted in the culture of the people, why? Because of the way ownership is conceived. Ada is made up of different clans, about ten or so twelve clans, and one clan is seen as the owner of the water body. And there are four others who are owners of the surrounding lands. You look at the wisdom in this… So when you say the owner of the water body is there, and the surrounding lands have also got owners it is a convenient agreement for joint ownership and defence of the resource. (PAR group meeting, 23 February 2008)

It is convenient precisely because no one clan can claim outright ownership of the resource. The implications for this collective ownership process are far reaching, especially when one considers how it not only benefits all those living in the Ada area, but also other Ghanaians migrating from across the country to win salt. In fact, according to Larweh, this makes the Songor flats a ‘national asset’. However, this national character was interpreted differently by the PNDC government in the aftermath of Maggie’s death. Instead of returning the management of this resource to the communities who had been successfully maintaining and defending it for generations, the government enacted PNDC law 287 that was later to form the backbone of the natural resource law, and would then surface in the 1992 Constitution upon Ghana’s return to democracy. The essence of this law is that salt is like any other natural resource, and in a display of the topography of power of the state, these resources are claimed in the name of Ghana by the PNDC as the national government with a greater claim to generalizability. Yet, as Manuh notes, this generalizability is actually for hire, as the supposedly national government changes sides in local conflicts based on the transnational powers of the day. This claim by the national government worries those fighting for local control of the Songor lagoon. For instance, Maggie Lanuer’s husband, Thomas Ocloo, states that ‘it was the death of

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my wife that led the former President [Rawlings] to make a law to take over the Songor and hold it in trust for the people of Ada’ (Radio Ada 2002: 6). For Ocloo, having the resource held in trust by the central government leaves it open to abuse by whoever is in the Presidency and the interests they represent. He notes, ‘the present government and for that matter the current President Kufuor is doing all he can to take over the resource completely to deprive the Adas of ownership’ (6). This has led the people of Ada to realize they cannot trust the national government. As a result, according to Ocloo, ‘The Adas want the government to hand over the resource to them’ (6). Al-hassan Adam, a lead educator-activist in the anti-privatization of water movement, has rightly pointed out that this desire by the people of Ada means they are not just fighting the government of the day, but ‘Ada is fighting against the constitution’ (PAR group meeting, 23 February 2008). In the sections that follow, the implications of this differentiation and the way it connects to transnational governmentality will be explored.

Being held in trust: a constitution for the people? At the end of 1992, after more than ten years of military rule, Ghana became a democracy again. Yet the form this democracy took betrayed the hopes of those who demanded change (Abrahamsen 2000; Ninsin 2007). The pressure for democratization in Ghana was the result of two factors, while the form democracy took was the product of a number of other factors. The first factor behind the demand for change was the continued erosion of people’s livelihoods as a result of structural adjustment. The military regime abandoned its socialist leanings in 1983, and had instead come under the heavy sway of the IMF and World Bank, resulting in the adoption of a series of structural adjustment policies called Economic Recovery Programmes (ERPs) (Hutchful 2002). These ERPs carried with them the classic traits of neoliberalism, with a massive downsizing of the civil service, the introduction of cost-recovery measures in government services, and an open market to foreign capital (Hutchful 2002). While this transition enabled the beleaguered Ghanaian economy to begin growing again, it failed to translate into improved livelihoods for the vast majority of Ghanaians (Ninsin 2007). In this sense average Ghanaians felt the military government was not improving their lives. The second factor behind the transition to democracy was the mobilization of this discontent into a movement for change. Much like in other parts of the continent, the failure of structural adjustment led to the mobilization of a popular democracy movement to replace a form of governance that was autocratic and dominated by the IMF, World Bank

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and a neoliberal market-led agenda (Abrahamsen 2000; Akwetey 1994). In the Ghanaian case, the military govern­ ment tried to control this democratization process through two years of citizen engagement on the form democracy was to take – with the government leaning towards a local non-partisan rather than a national multi-party model (Shillington 1992). In the end, due in large part to the momentum of the democracy movement, a multi-party model was adopted, and a new constitution was drafted and then approved by the Ghanaian electorate through a referendum (Abrahamsen 2000; Boafo-Arthur 2007). Yet, this new form of governance maintained the same neoliberal logic and agenda, with its privileging of foreign capital and downsizing of national government that the democracy movement had mobilized against (Abrahamsen 2000; Akwetey 1994). This has led Kwame Ninsin (2007) to call Ghana’s current form of governance ‘democratic elitism’ as it fails to address the disparity between rich and poor that has emerged in the country as a direct result of structural adjustment. Linking the neoliberal agenda to the resource exploitation sector, Gavin Hilson (2004: 72) notes: From the available evidence, it appears that, rather than providing the Ghanaian government with advice on how to restructure its mineral economy to provide increased benefits to Ghanaians, the IMF and World Bank have been more intent on providing a stable investment platform for opportunistic multinationals.

In the aftermath of the transition to democracy, this clear favouring of foreign capital continued unabated (Hilson 2004), and was translated directly into the 1992 Constitution. The tension at the heart of the democratic betrayal is embedded in the fabric of the 1992 Constitution. This is especially true when it comes to the way the rights of communities endowed with natural resources are interpreted by the document. For instance, on the one hand, the Constitution contains important recognitions of human rights, and establishes the autonomous Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) to monitor rights abuses, but yet, on the other, it continues the tradition of excluding Ghanaians from decisions being made about their resources and minerals (Ayine 2001). For instance, the Constitution’s twenty-first chapter spells out the ‘comprehensive provisions for dealing with the subject of lands and natural resources’ (Ayine 2001: 86). Article 257 clause 6 states: Every mineral in its natural state in, under or upon any land in Ghana, rivers, streams, water courses throughout Ghana…is the property of the Republic of Ghana and shall be vested in the President on behalf of, and in trust for the people of Ghana. (quoted in Ayine 2001: 86)

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Here it is clearly the presidency that has the final word on the disposition of natural resources such as minerals. This authority is discursively mediated by the notion of holding the resources ‘in trust for the people of Ghana’ – a vague phrase that seems to imply the presidency would not betray the trust of those whose resources have been placed in the president’s care. Despite its vague nature, the importance of this additional phrase is clear when this article is compared to the antecedent law that informed it. Key sections of the Minerals and Mining Law of 1986 (PNDC Law 153) are transplanted into the Constitution, with ‘the wording [of the above article being] the same as section 1 of Law 153 except the addition of the word “rust”’ (Ayine 2001: 100). This shift in wording is reflective of the shift in governance mentalities (as the PNDC law was enacted under the revolutionary military regime) and, in this sense, is indicative of the emerging governmentality, whereby including this proviso legitimates this ‘conduct of conduct’ since it alone will somehow hold the presidency accountable for the manner in which lands containing minerals are allocated and used. Yet, as the example of the Songor above showed, it has become clear to a number of communities directly affected by presidential concessions of natural resource exploitation that ‘the President and by implication the executive branch of government is…in breach of trust imposed on them by the Constitution’ (Ayine 2001: 98). Ayine (2001) builds his case for this breach of trust by further referring to the Constitution, and by embedding this ‘trust’ in the rights granted Ghanaian citizens in the 1992 Constitution. For Ayine, the key here is that the communities affected by mining and or other natural resource extraction have had their fundamental rights violated with the complicity of the state. Hilson (2004: 54) provides an apt description of the situation in mining communities: [The] perpetual expansion of mining and mineral exploration activity has displaced numerous subsistence groups outright and destroyed a wide range of cultural resources. Operations have caused widespread environmental problems, including excessive land degradation, contamination, and chemical pollution.

Ayine documents the ways in which rights – such as the right to life (Article 13), the right to protection from deprivation of property (Article 20), and the right to protection of personal liberty (Article 15) – have been violated, not only by mining companies but also through state complicity, including state security agencies who act against Ghanaian citizens at a company’s command (Ayine 2001: 89–94). These cases of abuse of human rights have also been recently documented by CHRAJ, the autonomous government body charged with rights-defence mentioned at the outset of this section.

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Their report documents environmental, health and physical abuses, including ‘incidents of police and military excesses [that] occur in mining communities’ (CHRAJ 2008: 21). Ayine concludes by linking state complicity in all these abuses to the failure of government to protect the rights of mining affected communities: State complicity in corporate abuse of human rights constitutes a breach of trust… Due to the fiduciary character of trusteeship, [the President] is obliged by law to act in the best interest of the beneficiary…[and] is therefore in breach of trust imposed on [him] by the Constitution where the acts or omissions of state agencies aid and abet the violation of the human rights of the beneficiaries under the trust (i.e. local communities). (2001: 98)

While this case is well articulated, what it doesn’t challenge is the right of the president to arbitrarily award concessions to companies and therefore strip the people living in these areas of their land, their natural resources and their livelihoods. In this sense, what the people of Ada are challenging is something much greater than just whether the president is holding the resource in trust or not; they are questioning his or her right to decide. According to a group of long-time Ghanaian activists, when the Constitution places the disposition of natural resources in the hands of one person it invites arbitrary abuse of power and facilitates potentially corrupt and unaccountable concession-granting arrange­ ments with foreign and local capital. For the people of Ada, this arbitrary abuse of power begins with the Constitution’s definition of a mineral: Because nationally the salt is considered as a mineral. And the people [of Ada] are saying no, mineral, a mineral is below ground and is not renewable. Mineral is a limited resource, it diminishes as you mine. Therefore salt is renewable, it is regenerating itself, and so they are saying it is not a mineral. (Kofi Larweh, PAR group meeting, 23 February 2008)

Al-hassan Adam responds by linking the 1992 Constitution to a neoliberal agenda: You see, that’s the problem with the neoliberal agenda, because the Constitution of Ghana…says that minerals found in the country…belongs to the state and the President holds it in trust for the people. So the Constitution itself, now it’s a question that Ada is fighting against the Constitution. (PAR group meeting, 23 February 2008)

He then goes on to link this notion of outright ownership of mineral wealth by the political elite not just to a neoliberal agenda but also to a colonial legacy. Linking the issues in Ada to the experiences in mining affected communities, Adam traces the history of alienation of natural resources:

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Langdon  r 61 [In] the colonial time there was brutal force, because of the colonial institutions when they came people were selling, gathering gold from the streams and selling it to them and then they moved in and used the same chiefs, places where they have no chieftaincy they created them, to control and hold everything and then privatize it. First they use the state and then the state comes and takes it as state concession. (PAR group meeting, 23 February 2008)

In this sense, Adam is describing how the current Ghanaian Constitution fits into a historical constellation of discursive techniques designed to alienate natural resources from resident communities – much like the discursive shifts described above where SAP failures are blamed on bad African governance, and where trust is inserted in laws to denote a new democratic era. This particular approach has been used to justify not only the alienation of resources by the state, but also the further selling of these resources to private capital – especially foreign private capital. Based on this, the Ghanaian state needs to be seen as a facilitating agent for capital exploitation, not as a mediating force balancing the needs of local Ghanaians against the need for jobs and economic growth. In this sense, Adam has provided the scaffolding that hints at the notion of transnational governmentality discussed above.

Contesting transnational government(re)ality through local subjugated knowledges In the initial discussion above of the Songor movement’s contestation of the president holding their natural resource ‘in trust,’ there are two crucial components to highlight at the outset of this final section. The first is that the traditional collective management of the Songor Lagoon salt flats gave equitable access to these flats and did not privilege the local Ada people over other Ghanaians. This is in sharp contrast to the example of capitalistic exploitation that greatly reduced its equitable access. The second point to be drawn is linked to the first, and has been captured best by Al-hassan Adam when he states, in ‘fighting against the constitution…the struggle… is beyond Ada v the State, this is the citizens of Ghana v the State’ (PAR group meeting, 23 February 2008). Building on Ferguson’s topography of power, this point can be extrapolated to mean the citizens of Ghana vs. transnational governmentality, as the Constitution clearly privileges foreign and elite capital over the average Ghanaian – underscoring Ninsin’s (2007) point about ‘democratic elitism’. Both of these components have a direct correlation with other resource defence movements in the country, as their struggles are beyond being local in character: by creating enclaves of capitalist exploitation the government of Ghana and allied transnational

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institutions have dramatically affected the livelihoods of people not just from that locality, but from across the nation. For instance, when talking of the mining sector, the local galamsey operators – individuals practicing a traditional form of gold mining that goes back to pre-colonial times, and predominantly operating illegally because of the monopoly large mining companies have on resource-rich land (Hilson and Potter 2003) – are composed of people from every part of the country: ‘50 per cent of [galamsey operators] are from…Northern Ghana, Volta Region, Ashanti’ (Al-hassan Adam, PAR group meeting, 23 February 2008). Hilson and Potter (2003) also add that these galamsey operators have migrated to mining locations precisely because of the economic hardships that came with structural adjustment. Likewise, many of the farmers most directly affected by concessions given to mining companies are not just indigenous to the area, but are in fact migrants from across the country. For example, ‘the people [farming] in the thick of the forests, they are all from Volta, Brong-Ahafo, Northern Region, Ashanti, Upper East and Upper West’ (Al-hassan Adam, PAR group meeting, 23 February 2008). With recent decisions by the president to grant mining concessions in these forested areas (Tienhaara 2006), the implications this could have on the livelihoods of Ghanaians from across the nation could be disastrous (Owusu-Koranteng 2008). The argument to be drawn from these points is that there are two contrasting systems in place for resource use in Ghana. The first of these, based on traditional management systems with access for migrants and locals to natural resources, favours Ghanaians from across the country. The second of these systems grants monopolistic access to resources to a company, usually a transnational company, and restricts resource wealth to only those exploiting it and the few elite government officials benefiting from state complicity in the company’s activities. According to Hilson (2004: 54), the dramatic contrast between these two systems is further underscored by the fact that, ‘Ghana’s mining sector continues to contribute comparatively little to national GDP.’ In this sense, the 1992 Ghanaian Constitution, with its clear defence of the second modality of resource use, reinforces a form of democratic elitism that favours foreign and elite capital over average Ghanaians. It also further shows that this form of democracy is embedded in a topography of power that resolves whatever tension may have been present in the Constitution between the human rights of Ghanaians and the arbitrary power of the state as facilitator of transnational governmental favour of the latter. It is based on this argument that the focus group identified locally-based resource movements, such as the Songor movement and the anti-mining movement, as the best source of mobilized contestation against neoliberal

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transnational governmentality. The reasons for this are two fold. First, as Kofi Larweh notes, ‘these [resource based] movements are embedded in people’s livelihoods’ (PAR group meeting, 23 February 2008), meaning that it is in communities where the direct effects of neoliberalism are being felt that movements are mobilizing. Coleman Agyeyomah, a long-time community activist, connects this point to the anti-mining movement, noting that ‘most of the farmer based associations [in mining affected communities], have turned overnight into anti-neoliberal movements. They are doing that because it has been necessitated in the current [neoliberal] environment’ where their livelihoods have been destroyed (PAR group meeting, 23 February 2008). This rootedness in people’s lives leads to movements with a strong sense that what they are fighting is local, national and transnational in character. In this sense, they are contesting the reality that neoliberalism constructs. Second, these movements are also grounded in an alternative relationship with the land and with resource use that is based on what Mignolo (2000) calls ‘local knowledges and histories’ – such as the Songor’s – that question the logic of neoliberal and capitalist politics of exploitation. This is in large part why these local knowledges have been subjugated by national and transnational governmentality. These local subjugated knowledges contest the overall shape of transnational neoliberal governmentality’s truth regime, not through an essentialized other identity, but rather through the reinterpretation of the construction of reality of neoliberalism and hyper-globalization as a global design (Mignolo 2000). The deeply informed and historically documented process of equitable and sustainable natural resource use in the Songor aptly contests the materialization, commodification and the attempted deracination of the resource from its environment and from those who have maintained it. And, as the example of the fetish priests mentioned above suggests, these local subjugated knowledges also provide important avenues of mobilization – as the way of knowing and being that has maintained this resource is disregarded by capitalism’s sole interest in exploitation. In this sense, it is locally-based resource movements that not only have the will but also the subjugated knowledges to contest neoliberalism’s truth regime. Elsewhere, others have echoed the strength of movements based on the defence of natural resources (Peet and Watts 2004), especially where this defence is grounded in local knowledges (Kapoor 2007). In light of this conclusion, the focus group sees an alternative form of resistance to transnational governmentality than that described by Ferguson above. Unlike his vision of a ‘parallel’ form of ‘political resistance’ based on transnational social movements that are ‘worldly, well connected, and opportunistic’ (Ferguson 2006: 106–7), the PAR group advances a vision

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grounded in these local movements connecting with one another to build a strong coalition to contest what the best uses of the resources would be for the people of Ghana. One of the problems with Ferguson’s model discussed elsewhere (Langdon 2008) is that it invites the same spatial dominance of the ‘worldly’ or transnational over the local that he analyzes in neoliberal transnational governmentality. This leads to a transnational approach to contestation that has very little impact on the actual sites of struggle in Ghana and elsewhere in Africa. Expressing similar concerns about power relations in the anti-globalization movement, Choudry (2007) has noted how local indigenous movements and the complexity of their understanding of their struggle are silenced and subjugated at the transnational level. This does not mean ignoring the transnational, but rather ensuring that the register chain begins in the local sites of struggle and moves across to other sites of local struggle, rather than topographically up or down. In this sense, Ferguson’s reconceptualization is highly useful as it helps to remind us that the local is already embedded in transnational as well as national relations, and in resisting governmentality through the interconnection of sites of its deployment, it is possible to contest multiple registers at once. And even as these sites of struggle connect with what might be considered transnational social movements, it is useful to remember that movements described as transnational are often in fact equally embedded in local manifestations of governmentality (Langdon 2008). Following this logic, it then becomes equally important to build coalitions against particular local and national manifestations of this governmentality, even as links are built to other geographic localities that may claim to be transnational. In other words, by building a coalition of resource defence movements in Ghana grounded in their subjugate knowledges, this grouping can then ensure its struggle is presented at the transnational level in such a way as to have a direct impact on the reality and the challenges faced by Ghanaians in the everyday. This then leads to the last point being advanced by this chapter, where, returning to the debates around Ghana’s 1992 Constitution, it is clear that the national must not be left out of this register chain, since to do so is to ignore the mediating role the national level continues to play in the fortunes of many of Ghana’s resource defence movements – but this must be done with a sense of contesting the claims to generalizability of the national level. In challenging the Constitution, the Songor movement and potentially other resource defence allies can have an impact on the transnational register; the neoliberal regime of truth surrounding resource use can be challenged with an alternative that places Ghanaians before capital. But it can also have an impact on the national level, where a revision to the Constitution in favour of a more inclusive resource use decision-making process would have repercussions on how complicit state agencies could be. In the past, as

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Manuh (1992) shows, the national government apparatus has been shown to shift sides due to pressure; in contemporary times, the challenge of the anti-mining movement has led CHRAJ to implicate other state agencies in their abuse of human rights. How much more would an amended Consti­ tution provide room to manoeuvre CHRAJ and these local movements? Finally, at the local register, a strong coalition embedded in a local history of equitable resource access can and is challenging the discursive and physical monopoly of major mining companies on a daily basis through galamsey operations and continued community resistance (Owusu-Korentang 2008). Along similar lines, despite national government intentions, the Songor Lagoon remains open to the access of Ghanaians from across the nation. This is a fitting last note to end this discussion, as the ongoing momentum needed to maintain this access is the real testament to the movement of local Ada residents who will not easily let this resource be held in the trust of any politician or government.

Notes 1

2 3

4

The author would like to acknowledge the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) for their financial support of the participatory action research (PAR) study upon which this chapter draws. Equally important, the author would also like to acknowledge and thank the members of the Participatory Action Research Focus group at the centre of the study, Alhassan Adam, Gifty Emefa Dzah, Kofi Larweh, Coleman Agyeyomah and Tanko Iddrissu. See for instance Sawyer and Gomez (2008). This case is drawn from a larger participatory study of many movements in Ghana conducted in 2008. Further details of this study can be found in Langdon (2009). Tamale is in Ghana’s North, while Eweland refers to Eastern Ghana, and Kumasi is in the middle of the country.

References Abrahamsen, R. (2000). Disciplining Democracy: Development Discourse and Good Governance in Africa. London: Zed Books. Akwetey, E. O. (1994). Trade Unions and Democratization. A Comparative Study of Zambia and Ghana. Stockholm: University of Stockholm. Boafo-Arthur, K. (ed.) (2007). Ghana: One Decade of the Liberal State. London: Zed Books and CODESRIA. Choudry, A. (2007). ‘Transnational activist coalition politics and the de/colonization of pedagogies of mobilization: learning from the anti-neoliberal indigenous movement articulation.’ International Education, 37(1): 97–112.

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66  r  Three CHRAJ. (2008). The State of Human Rights in Mining Communities in Ghana. Accra: Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice. Ferguson, J. (2006). Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order. Durham: Duke University Press. Ferguson, J. and Gupta, A. (2002). ‘Spatializating states: toward an ethnography of neoliberal governmentality.’ American Ethnologist, 29(4): 981–1002. Foucault, M. (1991). ‘Governmentality.’ In G. Burchell, C. Gordon and P. Miller (eds.). The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 87–104. Hilson, G. (2004). ‘Structural adjustment in Ghana: assessing the impact of miningsector reform.’ Africa Today, 51(2): 53–77. Hilson, G. and Potter, C. (2003). Why Is Small Scale Mining so Ubiquitous in Rural Ghana? Oxford: African Development Bank. Hutchful, E. (2002). Ghana’s Adjustment Experience: The Paradox of Reform. Geneva: UNRI. Kapoor, D. (2007). ‘Subaltern social movement learning and the decolonization of space in India.’ International Education, 37(1): 10–41. Langdon, J. (2008). ‘Strategies of social movements in Ghana: questioning the dividends of democracy and/or being embedded in new topographies of power?’ Paper presented at the conference Canadian Association for the Study of International Development, Vancouver, 28 May–2 June. Langdon, J. (2009). ‘Learning to sleep without perching: reflections by activist/ educators on learning in social action in Ghanaian social movements.’ McGill Journal of Education – special issue on learning in social action, 44(1): 79–105. Manuh, T. (1992). ‘Survival in rural Africa: the salt so-operatives in Ada District, Ghana.’ In D. R. F. Taylor and F. Mackenzie (eds.). Development from Within: Survival in Rural Africa. New York: Routledge, 102–24. Ninsin, K. A. (2007). ‘Markets and liberal democracy.’ In K. Boafo-Arthur (ed.). Ghana: One Decade of the Liberal State. London: Zed Books and CODESRIA, 86–105. Owusu-Koranteng, D. (Writer) (2008). 10th Anniversary of WACAM Anniversary Speech. Ghana: Wassa Association of Communities Affected by Mining. Peet, R. and Watts, M. (eds.) (2004). Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, Social Movements (2nd edn.). London: Routledge. Radio Ada (Writer) (2002). Radio Ada Oral Testimony Documentary: Resource Conflict – The Songor Lagoon. Ghana: Radio Ada. Sawyer, S. and Gomes, E. T. (2008). Transnational Governmentality and Resource Extraction: Indigenous Peoples, Multinational Corporations, Multilateral Institutions and the State. New York: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development. Shillington, K. (1992). Ghana and the Rawlings Factor. London: MacMillan Press. Tienhaara, K. (2006). ‘Mineral investment and the regulation of the environment in developing countries: lessons from Ghana.’ International Environmental Agreements, 6: 371–94.

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4

Indigenous Movement Politics in Bolivia Forging New Citizens of a Plurinational and Decolonized State Stéphanie Rousseau

Introduction In Latin America, the end of the twentieth century has seen the emergence of many social movement organizations formed by indigenous peoples seeking recognition as citizens of postcolonial multicultural states and claiming their right to participate in decision-making about development. Most of them are also pursuing the project of transforming the national state into a plurinational state. As is well known, from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth century indigenous peoples have been subjugated to colonial rulers with millions of them decimated by war, illness or forced labour. Many indigenous institutions and cultural practices were abandoned, marginalized or eradicated by colonialism. The new independent states of the nineteenth century led to even greater attacks on indigenous communities as liberal laws further eroded collective land­ holdings. During most of the twentieth century, states fostered policies seeking to assimilate indigenous peoples into dominant European culture through the promotion of a form of nationalism and racial ideology called mestizaje (miscegenation, literal and/or as a cultural metaphor) and the framing of indigenous peoples as campesinos (peasants) ignoring their distinct cultural patterns, institutions and history. With the demise of import-substitution industrialization models in the 1970s and the end of state protection over agriculture with the application of neoliberal doctrine as of the 1980s, development patterns became yet again dominated by natural resource extraction and land ownership concentration. This shift has in many ways contributed to the rise of indigenous and other social movements in Latin America, who reacted to

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this new wave of attacks on their means of survival and relative control over resources. Moreover, the turn to formally democratic political regimes in the 1980s also lessened the risks associated with mobilization and opened up new spaces for indigenous actors to act autonomously at various institutional and extra-institutional levels (Van Cott 2005; Yashar 2005). Struggles around material well-being have combined with a new ethnic politics where various features of indigenous cultures – languages, customary law, political institutions, spiritual life – are put forward as alternatives to dominant Latin American arrangements. While many authors rightly consider the indigenous movement to have a region-wide significance and to be a transnational movement with some influence on global politics (Brysk 2000; Martin 2002), it is important to acknowledge the specificities of different national and sub-national experiences of indigenous peoples organizing for change (Lucero 2008). Local contexts determine the opportunities and constraints but also shape in particular ways the claims, strategies and alliances of indigenous organizations. Moreover, indigenous identities are diverse and socially constructed. This chapter is about the case of Bolivia, where over 60 per cent of the population claims to belong to one of the thirty-six indigenous peoples of the country. It is also one of the few countries where the indigenous movement has managed to win significant power over national state institutions in recent years. Most strikingly, in 2005 Bolivians elected as President Evo Morales, an indigenous union leader heading a party (MAS) made up of a coalition of social movements where indigenous organizations are key. Morales was then re-elected in December 2009 with 63 per cent of the popular vote, a landslide victory. However, a year after, in light of a series of unpopular decisions, which were strongly opposed by massive street protests or month-long marches, Morales appeared as a more ambiguous ally for several sectors of organized indigenous peoples. Nonetheless, as I will argue, the indigenous movement has managed to shift the terms of national politics significantly, allowing the majority of Bolivians to be represented in a new Constitution adopted in 2009, seeking the creation of a popular plurinational state. Moving from a subaltern status as peasants, miners or migrants, the indigenous majority has recently been empowered in a new citizenship regime and new leadership patterns. This historic transformation is largely due to different sectors of the indigenous movement who have pressured for a constitutional reform. But resistance among the elite, and some sectors of the urban areas, has created a new heightened phase of conflict, which has been resolved in part by the MAS leadership’s bowing to some of their resistance. The indigenous movement faces the challenge of maintaining its autonomy and reconciling its internal differences to defend the gains made under the MAS government.

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Before addressing indigenous movement politics to understand its diversity, its origins, and the main changes new indigenous actors have imposed on national elites, I will briefly set up the historical context defining Bolivian society in the contemporary period. The last two sections of this chapter will explore some of the indigenous movement’s main claims around the issues of decolonization and plurinationalism. This chapter is based on field research done in Bolivia in May 2007 and March 2011 where I interviewed, as a researcher, several indigenous leaders and academic experts.

Contemporary Bolivia Poverty and inequalities With a population of almost 9 million of which over 60 per cent lives in urban areas, Bolivia is among the poorest and most unequal Latin American countries. Since 1990, when in Latin America poverty rates measured by income have fallen on average by 11 per cent, in Bolivia it has increased to reach 60 per cent of the population, with around 30 per cent living in extreme poverty. The Gini coefficient is 0.614, higher than Brazil’s (0.613), the latter often being (wrongly) considered the most unequal country of Latin America (Ocampo 2007: 3). Rural–urban gaps in poverty levels are acute, even if globally speaking, social indicators have improved. For example, between 1975 and 2005, life expectancy climbed from 47 to 64.7 years and literacy from 63 per cent to 86.7 per cent (Ocampo 2007: 5). Bolivia is described as a case where there is ‘human development without income’, in that basic human needs such as health, education and housing have improved, but without significant change in income generation or distribution (Espinoza 2006: 6). Moreover, improvements are due to demographic trends more than social programmes. Poverty and inequalities affect more indigenous than non-indigenous Bolivians. When controlling for other predictors of poverty, being indigenous increased the probability of being poor in Bolivia by 16 per cent in the early 1990s and 13 per cent in 2002. The schooling gap between non-indigenous and indigenous was 3.7 average years of schooling in 2002 (Hall and Patrinos 2005: 5–6). Ethnic segregation is evident in occupational patterns, as in the case of domestic workers who are systematically (young) indigenous women coming from rural areas to work in urban middle- and upper-class families. The subaltern situation of the indigenous majority is a direct consequence of the colonial system and of the institutions set up in the republican era since independence. Still today, UN (United Nations) Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous peoples Rodolfo Stavenhagen deplored that some

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Guarani communities endure bonded labour in three departments of the country (UN General Assembly 2007). Over 50 per cent of the population makes a living in the informal sector, following the massive restructuring of the economy in the mid1980s when tin mines were closed or privatized, together with a series of structural adjustment and liberalization measures. Miners and their families migrated to coca growing regions in the late 1980s and 1990s, or to the cities of El Alto (close to La Paz), Cochabamba or Santa Cruz where micro-businesses now abound. Others continue to migrate to the lowland Santa Cruz department, where agribusiness and hydrocarbons now constitute the main national export activities. From corporatist nationalism to neoliberal multiculturalism Bolivia’s history is marked by what is referred to as the 1952 Revolution, when a new reformist party, the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (Nationalist Revolutionary Movement-MNR), led by modernizing middleclass intellectuals and professionals, took state power with the support of peasants and miners. The Revolution followed decades of indigenous peasant mobilizing against the oligarchic system, seeking the abolition of the practice of pongueaje (periodic forced labour for the benefit of the local landlord) and the recuperation of landholdings privatized at the expense of indigenous communal holdings (Rivera Cusicanqui 2003: 95). With the 1952 Revolution, the old oligarchic order was abolished in the highlands with a vast land reform programme that ended the reign of latifundios (large estates where patrimonial relations prevailed), the instauration of universal suffrage for all Bolivians and the nationalization of the mining sector, among others. Miners and peasants were enlisted by the MNR in new corporatist unions who sometimes acted as militias used against the opposition coming both from conservative sectors and more radical leftists. The Central Obrera Boliviana (Workers’ Union of Bolivia-COB) was created by the ‘revolutionary’ government, which included union leaders in the cabinet. The MNR regime officially sought to de-indianize Bolivian society by banning the word indigena (indigenous) from its official vocabulary and programmes, as reflected in the national censuses that were carried forward after 1952 (in 1976 and up to 1992). Whereas prior to the Revolution the census gathered information on raza (race), after 1952 it became more politically correct to speak of campesinos (peasants) instead of indios (Indians), and only information on spoken languages were collected in the census (Molina and Albó 2006: 28). The MNR relied on an ideology typically in line with mestizaje en vogue elsewhere in Latin America at that

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time. A ‘Nation of Bolivians’ was to be consolidated over and above ethnic diversity and the latter would eventually disappear according to state reformers following modernization theory (Lucero 2008). In 1964, a military coup ended the MNR revolutionary regime and Bolivia was thrown into the infamous group of Latin American states who were ruled by authoritarian regimes for two decades. In the early 1980s, multiparty politics resumed, representative democracy was installed and neo­liberal reforms were implemented under the rule of the MNR who was re-elected several times in the first two decades of democratic rule. The irony of history is that the MNR then dismantled most of the institutions and protective laws it had created in the 1950s. The economy was deregulated and liberalized, most state enterprises were privatized, in a social context marked by high levels of confrontations between state security forces and civilians. Several states of emergencies were decreed from the mid-1980s onwards to shut off the opposition protesting against neoliberal measures. As part of the neoliberal programme to ‘modernize’ Bolivian society, the MNR government introduced reforms addressing local participatory mechanisms and the recognition of ethnic diversity. These major policy changes were not technically needed to facilitate the liberalization of the economy, but one can easily see them as a ‘treat’ for indigenous and other popular sector actors who opposed the government on its neoliberal platform (Rivera Cusicanqui 2006: 5–6). In what observers have also called a strategy to break regional elite power, the state created municipal governments, decentralized important aspects of social programme implementation to these governments, and institutionalized innovative mechanisms for popular participation at this level to elect and monitor municipal authorities. This was done while the nine departments of the country remained fiscally very dependent on the central state (Grindle 2003: 325). Besides, in responding to the growth of the indigenous movement – as will be explained in the next section – the state included in the 1994 constitutional reform official recognition of the ‘multi-ethnic and pluricultural’ character of the country (article 1). This groundbreaking legal gain was followed by an educational reform that introduced bilingual intercultural education in native languages in 1994, the recognition of the legal personhood of indigenous communities and of indigenous territorial rights and titles as part of the Agrarian Reform Law of 1996. The fact that neoliberal economic reforms and multicultural recognition were adopted together has been described by Charles Hale as a menace confronting indigenous movements because of the minimal rights this pattern actually contains for indigenous peoples. Both agendas have been promoted by international development agencies and fed into government policies such as Bolivia’s and other countries’ in the 1990s (Hale 2002). In

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Bolivia, while indigenous actors did not find the 1990s’ reforms satisfactory, especially considering the lack of political will to implement the Agrarian Reform Law, the two sets of reforms – decentralization at the local level and multicultural rights – created a political-opportunity structure ripe for enhanced mobilization. The effects of neoliberal structural transformations, aside being materially visible, were also interpreted by social movements as a new episode of collective alienation of natural resources to the benefit of multinational firms. This background combined with the enhanced political opportunity structure to support a powerful cycle of popular protest in the 2000s. Protest cycle and the election of Evo Morales Bolivia is a country with an old extensive culture of political mobilizing by popular sectors. The application of neoliberal reforms by successive democratically elected governments was met with increasing opposition from various sectors of society. The latter increasingly took to the streets and blockaded major roads to protest privatizations and policies granting favourable terms to foreign resource extraction investors with little returns for the state or local communities. Throughout a ten-year period from 1994 onwards, these protests were accompanied by the growth of a new left-wing political party, the Instrumento Político por la Soberanía de los Pueblos (Political Instrument for Peoples’ Sovereignty-IPSP) which eventually was to be named the Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement towards Socialism-MAS). This party made rapid gains first at the local municipal level in the department of Cochabamba, entered into Congress in 1997 with five deputies, became second most voted party at the national level in 2002 and finally first, with its leader Evo Morales elected President in 2005 with 54 per cent of the vote. One of the first terrains where popular resistance to the neoliberal state manifested itself was the coca growing regions of the central valleys of the country. Faced with forced coca eradication programmes funded by the US accompanied by brutal repression of its membership and leaders, the coca grower federation soon decided that the solution to their problems depended on their capacity to enter the electoral sphere with an autonomous organization. It gradually mobilized not only coca growers but also the CSUTCB, the nationwide peasant union, and the Federación de mujeres campesinas Bartolina Sisa (Women Peasant Federation Bartolina Sisa) to form the IPSP-MAS. Eventually, indigenous ethnic organizations also allied themselves with the MAS, who also called on intellectuals and professionals from the old and new Left. One of them, Alvaro García Linera, a prominent sociologist and former guerrilla leader, became vice-

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president in 2005. Evo Morales, himself a coca grower, became a national and international symbol of anti-imperialist struggle. Outside of the electoral arena, other important sites of popular struggle emerged particularly as of 2000, when highland rural populations and urban popular movements rose in protest against several economic measures adopted by neoliberal governments: first against the effects of water privatization, then against the control over natural gas reserves granted to multinational firms and, finally, plans by the government to authorize its export without significant returns for the state and with no preferential price for Bolivian consumption. These protests, labelled ‘Wars’ by the media and popular actors themselves, led to severe confrontations with state forces, with the most dramatic episode being that of September–October 2003 when more than eighty civilians were killed and 400 injured by bullets fired by the military (Spronk and Webber 2008: 83). These events led President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada to resign and leave the country by helicopter to find refuge in Miami in 2003. He had been re-elected in 2002 after having been the key instigator of structural adjustment in the mid1980s and major privatizations and constitutional reforms in the 1990s. The Gas War precipitated his fall. His party, the MNR, as well as other elite political parties who had collaborated in maintaining ‘democratic pacts of governance’ since the mid-1980s, became totally discredited through the 2000s protest cycle that ended with the election of Evo Morales in 2005.

Explaining the rise of the indigenous movement Who is indigenous in Bolivia? Race and ethnicity in Bolivia, as in the rest of Latin America, is a relatively fluid concept, yet sociologically very determinant in shaping differential status in political, cultural and economic structures. Indigeneity was first defined by colonial power that described ‘the Other’, the non-European, as uniformly ‘Indian’. Up to the late twentieth century, being an Indian was associated in elite Bolivian culture with social backwardness and poverty. A renewed indigenous pride and increased social value was granted to indigenous cultural expressions in the last decades, but being indigenous remains associated with lower social status, even if it is not always the case that someone identifying as indigenous is poor. Indigeneity is best understood as a complex identity formed by different elements where the most important are: speaking or having learned to speak an indigenous language; and/or identifying as a member of a recognized indigenous people (Molina and Albó 2006). This more recent definition elaborated by anthropologists in Bolivia and elsewhere emphasizes self-attribution of indigenous status in relation to an indigenous

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people. This is a reflection of the political and collective nature of ethnic relations and of the socially constructed hence shifting understanding of the boundaries of ethnicity, belonging and culture. What this also means is that indigenous movement politics is a process whereby the adhesion of Bolivians to indigenous identities is modulated by the construction of indigenous discourses and symbolism transmitting and transforming references to collective memory, traditions, and power relations (Alvarez et al. 1998). In that sense, indigeneity in Bolivia has grown rapidly in the last decades as part of the process of popular mobilization among rural and urban sectors that have recuperated different dimensions of indigenous cultures to foster ‘new’ identities (Canessa 2007). Some crucial initiatives such as the Andean Oral History Workshop (Taller de Historia Oral Andina-THOA), a group of Andean researchers seeking to construct alternative accounts of history in order to empower indigenous collectivities, have played an important role in that process from the 1980s onwards (Stephenson 2002). In the 2001 national census, 62 per cent of the population identified as a member of one of Bolivia’s thirty-six indigenous peoples or nations (Molina and Albó 2006). Diversity in the movement The contemporary indigenous movement is characterized by an important diversity in ethnic, socio–cultural backgrounds, organizations, claims and strategies. Following roughly the geographical zones of the country, one encounters three different dynamics associated with the western highlands, the eastern lowlands and the central valleys. The earliest wave of organizing in the current period was found in the western highlands, in Aymara territory, where the Katarista movement began mobilizing a new indigenous pride discourse in the late 1960s. The social basis of this movement is a growing group of Aymaras who migrated to La Paz and other cities of the highlands and who, as a result, experienced discrimination and racism through their insertion into urban social structures dominated by criollo (white) and mestizo upper and middle classes. Increasing access to secondary and superior education facilitated the development of a network of Aymara intellectuals and social communicators, who expressed their resentment against the ethnic hierarchy that seriously impeded upward social mobility for indigenous migrants. Referring to older waves and heroes of indigenous uprisings such as the rebellion led by Tupaq Katari in the late eighteenth century, a number of political and cultural groups emerged in the 1970s that would later be called the Katarista movement (Rivera Cusicanqui 2003). Because of continuing links between urban migrants and their rural communities,

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the Katarista movement managed to penetrate throughout the social fabric of the highlands. In 1973, the movement launched the Manifest of Tiwanaku, where it stated that after decades of state-imposed cultural homogenization, indigenous peasants felt ‘like strangers in their own country’ (cited in Rivera Cusicanqui 2003: 155). National education was perceived as one of the tools used to assimilate indigenous peoples, and the deep social and economic problems of indigenous peasants were seen as reflection of the neo-colonial social structure. In the years that followed, the movement developed into a more explicitly political actor through the renewal of peasant unions away from state paternalism and corporatist control. In 1979, the Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia (The Unified Confederation of Peasant Workers of Bolivia – CSUTCB) was created with Jenaro Flores, one of the founders of the Katarista movement, as its first Executive Secretary. While the new union was made up of different tendencies where indigenous identity discourses were not always mobilized, the Katarista movement was clearly dominant and transformed the symbolism of peasant unionism. Since the CSUTCB was linked to the COB, the largest national union, this also had an influence on workers who began to recuperate their indigenous roots. More recently, in 1997, another important organization was formed, the Consejo Nacional de Ayllus y Markas del Qullasuyu (National Council of Ayllus and MarkasCONAMAQ), to represent the highland indigenous peoples and nations that started the process of reconstituting the ayllus, the Andean community structures based on kinship groups that cover large territories (Stephenson 2002). CONAMAQ breaks with the pattern of union-type organization originally imposed by the state and which the CSUTCB pursues. Instead, it seeks to foster clearly alternative ways of building political power through the recognition of indigenous institutions. Political differences and conflicts have arisen at several junctures between these two types of indigenous organizations (Lucero 2008). In the central valleys of Cochabamba, the key movement is the coca growers’ union movement, where Evo Morales became a central leading figure. The basis of this movement is the Quechua speaking population of this zone and Aymaras who migrated there in search of economic opportunities in the 1980s and 1990s. As explained earlier, the first goal of the movement was to defend its economic activity against US-backed coca eradication programmes. Eventually, it developed a discourse based on the sacred historical character of coca leaf in Andean culture, which is part of its anti-imperialist and nationalist platform. Through the launch and electoral victories of the MAS, it has become one of the central political actors in the country. The President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, is still the

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leader of the Federation of Coca Growers, which gives them a direct access to state power. In the tropical lowlands, the configuration of ethnic relations is quite different, as indigenous peoples are much less numerous. However, the Guarani of Santa Cruz in particular have been very active in organizing themselves to oppose the increasing appropriation of their land by foreign or national investors in the agribusiness or hydrocarbon industries. Contrary to the situation of highland areas, where land reform has been applied from the 1950s onwards and has therefore transformed indigenous peasants into small farm-owners, lowland indigenous peoples had to wait the 1990s to see the state begin to recognize the land spoliation and appalling social conditions of which they were victims (Grey Postero 2007). The originality and strength of lowland indigenous organizations lie in their historical political autonomy from the state and partisan politics, as well as their capacity to organize several marches that stroke the national imagination because they involved hundreds of people marching through hundreds of kilometres in the Amazon and in the Cordillera to reach the centre of political power in La Paz. The 1990 March for Territory and Dignity organized by the Confederación de Pueblos Indígenas de Bolivia (Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Bolivia-CIDOB), marked the beginning of their emergence as a national political actor. CIDOB was born in 1982 as a federation of thirty-four indigenous peoples of lowland Bolivia, of which the principal are the Chiquitanos, Ayoreos, Guarayos and Guaranis. The 1990 March began under the initiative of the Mojeño People from Trinidad. It led the government to adopt a Supreme Decree recognizing the existence of indigenous territories in the lowlands. Also historically significant was the encounter between highland and lowland indigenous groups during this march, as the highlanders welcomed the lowlanders when the latter reached the border zone between the two geographic areas, and all the groups continued to march up to the National Palace in downtown La Paz (Stephenson 2002: 102). In 1996, the March for Territory, Development and Indigenous Peoples’ Political Participation was held by all the indigenous federation members of CIDOB. It achieved two things: the adoption of the law creating a National Institute on Land Reform (INRA), an institution mandated to resolve conflicts over land titling, and the recognition of thirty-three indigenous territories called Ancestral Community Land (Tierras Comunitarias de Origen). In 2000, the March for Land, Territory and Natural Resources, led to a decree recognizing officially the languages of lowland indigenous peoples. Finally, in 2002, the March for Sovereignty, Territory and Natural Resources, managed to gather not only the

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participation of all Bolivian indigenous organizations, but also over fifty other social organizations that demanded a constitutional reform through the holding of a popularly elected Constituent Assembly. Political opportunities Even though the contemporary indigenous movement has old roots and began to form before the neoliberal era, one can clearly identify the 1990s as a key period where political opportunities opened up for collective action by indigenous actors. First, as underlined above, the impact of the Katarista movement and the willingness of the new MNR government to embark into the multicultural liberal politics had direct consequences: Victor Hugo Cardenas, former leader of the Katarista movement, joined the government as Vice-President and presided over the major reforms mentioned above. This had a symbolic effect in terms of showing to the indigenous movement that they could enter the institutional sphere and make positive change. The decentralization gave incentives for autonomous electoral organizing on the part of indigenous actors and the law on popular participation strengthened local community structures (Van Cott 2005). As a result of neoliberal reforms when the mining sector was privatized and generous concession rights granted to multinationals, large natural gas reserves were discovered after 1997, making Bolivia the country with the second largest reserves of Latin America. The discovery in itself was a major event, but the most visibly conflictual issue revolved around the way the government had granted a reduction of wellhead royalties for all newly discovered fields from 50 to 18 per cent (Spronk and Webber 2008: 80–1). Of course, indigenous peoples are among the first to be affected by the natural resource exploitation regime, be it because it interferes with their territorial claims or because it echoes with the Bolivian history filled with similar experiences of giving away key natural resources, such as tin or silver, collected through the labour of indigenous Bolivians. The success of popular opposition to the privatization of hydrocarbons was reflected in the decision by the Evo Morales’ government to adopt a new law to ‘nationalize’ the hydrocarbons sector in 2006. This nationalization did not go as far as some popular groups wanted, since it essentially meant the renegotiation of contracts with private firms in order that the state recuperates 50 per cent of royalties. A third element to be emphasized to understand the political opportunities and significance of indigenous mobilizing is the election of a Constituent Assembly in 2006. First demanded by the lowland indigenous peoples who marched to La Paz in 1990, the Assembly was a strong popular claim

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consolidated after the Water War of 2002, when it became obvious that the old state and elite political parties were no longer capable of containing the great challenges posed by mobilized social actors. Evo Morales and his MAS party were elected in great part on the basis of their promise to install such an Assembly. For indigenous peoples, the Constituent Assembly was sought as an opportunity to rebuild the foundations of the state through a totally renewed Constitution. While indigenous peoples had claimed to be directly represented at the Assembly, the MAS leadership opted instead for a partybased election, thus maintaining its hold over the process. However, indigenous organizations formed the Pacto de Unidad (Unity Pact) to make sure that they would remain united in their demands and would pressure the MAS to follow their agenda inside the Assembly. In the two sections that follow, I examine some key elements of this agenda as it was included for the most part in the Constitution adopted by the Constituent Assembly in December 2007 and approved by national referendum in January 2009.1

Decolonization The decolonization project carried by the indigenous movement is fundamentally an issue of power; the power to define the terms under which politics will be played out and the power to end the monopoly by a minority elite over the state at its various institutional levels (Rivera Cusicanqui 2006: 6). Bolivia’s Vice-President Alvaro García-Linera describes the current process of the rise of the indigenous movement and the victory of Evo Morales in 2005 in Gramscian terms as the emergence of counter-hegemony (García-Linera 2008). While not strictly socialist in Marxist terms, the counter-hegemony carried by the MAS as main agent of this discourse and politics, rests on the rise of a subaltern indigenous public to state power. However, state power is sought as an instrument to foster a transversal project of cultural transformation and social justice. Capitalism is not identified as the only or even the main system of oppression, even if strongly criticized especially in its neoliberal version; rather, colonization and neo-colonial social relations are the crux of the matter. The MAS preaches an anti-imperialist discourse coupled with an opening to a diversity of economic systems: community-based, cooperative, state-led and private capital-led. Within the indigenous movement as such one can find a great diversity of views regarding the proper balance to be given to each. The indigenous movement’s discourse and practices carry a central message: democracy and justice will not happen in Bolivia unless the country goes through a process of decolonizing its institutions, its social structures, and the mentalities of both dominant and dominated social

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strata. Against the state’s multi­culturalist agenda that treated indigenous peoples as minorities, the movement seeks to break with the social relations created by colonial conquest that established European cultures as superior and indigenous cultures as inferior. Far from meaning a historical return to a mythic past – even though some indigenous discourses echo such myths – decolonization is seen by the movement as a necessary path to the construction of equal citizenship and self-determination. Indigenous peoples want to end their second-class status. Teodora Tapia, an Aymara social communicator elected on the MAS list at the Constituent Assembly, explained in interview that: ‘we are not asking to be recognized by the state, we are the owners of this country like we’ve always been, what we want is policies that attend to our needs like agricultural credit, education, health…what we want is to be part of the state leadership, now we have an indigenous President but that is not enough…if we are a majority, then we need to be represented as a majority in all institutions and sectors.’2 Later in interview, Teodora reported that even at the Constituent Assembly where translation services were provided, the latter were so bad that she and other indigenous-language speakers had to make the effort to speak in Spanish while debating the future of indigenous rights and representation in Bolivia. The decolonization project carries important challenges to the liberal version of the modern state and its institutions. First, recognizing that the community associated with the Bolivian state is plurinational rather than united under a single nation, an issue I will return to in the next section. Then, acknowledging that not only individuals have rights, but collectivities do as well. Be they nations, peoples or local communities, collective rights are asserted as legitimate ways to define political norms together with individual rights – with various meanings assigned to the relations and hierarchies between these sets of rights. This perspective has been recognized in international law under ILO Convention 169 (September 1991) and the more recent UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (September 2007). Collective rights affirm the historical precedence of indigenous peoples vis-à-vis the states that formed at the end of colonial times and therefore establish their right to self-determination (Garcés 2008). In practice, decolonization means the inclusion of differentiated regimes of citizenship grounded in different levels of autonomous governance structures: municipal, departmental, indigenous muni­cipality and indigenous territory. In indigenous terms, democracy is conceived not as abstract representation of individual wills and majority rule, but as consensus-oriented collective deliberation and periodic rotation of individuals assuming leadership in the name of the whole community, not of political parties. Justice is conceptualized as a way to repair a

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damage done on the community and therefore seeks to restore the equilibrium broke by an individual’s wrongful act. The new Constitution recognizes the equal weight of ordinary justice and customary justice based on indigenous practices. Another important area is that of indigenous peoples’ cosmologies which are articulated in different ways to their relationship to the natural world. Rather than defining individual property rights and seeking to exploit natural resources for economic accumulation, many indigenous peoples conceive the human as being part and parcel of the universe, and therefore with no right to abuse and dominate the natural world. The struggle for the recognition of collective rights to live on a territory that characterizes contemporary indigenous politics is the result of power relations deriving from colonization. Raúl Prada, among others, makes the important point that indigenous territorial claims make sense only because they arise in reaction against the frontiers created by the modern state system and the control over natural resources granted to public and private actors under state power (Prada 2002). However, as different conflicts between peasant organizations and indigenous organizations in the lowlands or in the Ayllu movement make clear, some indigenous citizens of Bolivia – those who identify more as peasants – are privileging individual land rights. Strong waves of migration from the highlands to the lowlands, motivated by the lack of land in the former, have created new forms of ethnic and economic conflicts in the lowlands, where collective rights to territories are being challenged by illegal settlements. Decolonization is also described as a project to create the conditions to live well (el vivir bien) in opposition to capitalist accumulation and economic growth. From that point of view, for example, land reform is conceived as a way to give landless families and communities the means to live autonomously, and should eliminate large landholdings kept by their owners for speculative purposes only. Non-renewable and renewable natural resources should be protected and managed collectively for public rather than private benefit, which contrasts heavily with the neoliberal privatization agenda. Health insurance should be universal and health services should be adapted to the cultural reality of different indigenous collectivities. The MAS government has started to adopt reforms along these lines but the indigenous movement has to struggle to make sure that the central state will decentralize power accordingly to the new indigenous municipalities to be formed in implementing the new Constitution. Evo Morales’s first cabinet nominated in 2006 gave the country a first taste of what a decolonized state might look like. Morales nominated Casimira Rodriguez, a strong leader of the domestic workers movement and therefore a woman of very modest origins, as Minister of Justice, a

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blow in the face of the very elitist Bolivian Bar. The first Minister of Foreign Affairs was David Choquehuanca, a prominent indigenous leader who had been very active in transnational indigenous movements. The elite and some in the urban middle classes were shocked that the country’s diplomacy be headed by an indigenous activist. However, cabinet has never been formed by a majority of indigenous ministers. In response to this transformative agenda, the opposition organized principally by the elite of the lowland Eastern departments was claiming ‘We are all Mestizos’, thereby seeking to minimize the very existence of indigenous peoples and thus the legitimacy of their decolonization discourse. The reaction from the elite was virulent. Since Morales’ election to the presidency, elected authorities in five out of nine departments, as well as elite-led so-called civic committees in these same regions, mounted a political response to the decolonization project through a new demand for departmental political autonomy and the creation of youth militias carrying mob attacks against central state agencies or indigenous and peasant organizations’ offices. The opposition left the Constituent Assembly before it concluded its work, in order to invest in a strategy based on increasing regional polarization and sabotaging the central state’s plans to use the hydrocarbons royalties to finance socially progressive programmes such as a universal Pension plan. The country went through a series of violent confrontations in the lowland departments where partisans of the MAS attempted to resist the regional elite’s destabilization tactics. The 2009 national referendum to approve the new Constitution confirmed the country’s deep regional polarization, even though the new Constitution received support from 61.43 per cent of the population overall. Bolivia’s indigenous movement has a long struggle to carry on to implement the country’s new plurinational citizenship regime. Negotiations around the content of the laws adopted to implement the new Constitution, as well as several errors on the part of key leaders of the opposition, have reduced significantly the strength of elite opposition.

Building a plurinational state The decolonization project is linked to a profound renewal of the state through the adoption of a new foundational pact between equals, rather than the imposition of a Constitution by the criollo elite such as had been the case in Bolivian history. The new state that the indigenous movement has built through the Constituent Assembly process is based on the principles of interculturalism and cultural pluralism and is deemed to be plurinational in that it recognizes the self-determination of indigenous peoples. New political

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and judicial institutions and a series of new social and cultural rights have been won, leading to the recognition of indigenous autonomy on ancestral territories where they shall be allowed to form their own governing bodies according to indigenous customary norms. This being said, the actual laws adopted in 2010 and 2011 to implement the new autonomy regimes and legal pluralism, are being criticized by several indigenous organizations in the lowlands and highlands for not upholding the spirit or even the rights enshrined in the Constitution. Several limits to self-determination are meant to preserve centralized control, especially over resources of the subsoil. Legal limits also complicate if not render impossible the formation of indigenous governments over territories that cross departmental frontiers. Through a differentiated citizenship based on equal respect for all cultures and peoples, Bolivian indigenous organizations sought to end the homogenizing and oppressing legacy of the modern liberal state founded on the myth of a united Nation and formal equality. Néstor Torres, an Aymara leader from the North of Potosi where the traditional political structure of the Ayllu has been revived in the last decades, was elected at the Constituent Assembly to ‘institutionalize this democratic practice based on customary law that is more democratic than the imposition of prefects by the State that we have experienced for years’.3 The Ayllu is based on kinship ties and rotating positions of collective responsibility for the community. The implementation of the autonomous indigenous municipal regime is however progressing slowly as only 11 out of the 145 municipalities whose population includes over 90 per cent of indigenous citizens have gone through the procedures mandated by law to be recognized as such. This new Constitution contains many elements that alarm the economic elites and some sectors of the middle classes. Many argue that indigenous customary norms are not compatible with some international human rights standards, or that in any case liberal individual rights should be the unique type of rights recognized. More profoundly, control over land and political jurisdictions is what is at the crux of the matter. As a mirror counter-claim to indigenous self-determination, the quest for departmental autonomy led by the lowland departments’ elites was clearly attempting to undercut indigenous aspirations to territorially-based governments, especially as they conflicted with large agricultural estates or hydrocarbon reserves. Major conflicts have already erupted in the implementation of the constitutional recognition of departmental, indigenous, regional and municipal autonomy. The sad news is that the government of Evo Morales is showing clear signals of disavowal of fundamental principles such as the right of indigenous peoples to be consulted on development projects affecting their territories, using a rhetoric of national development to oppose respect for indigenous collective territorial rights.

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Conclusion Bolivia’s indigenous movement reveals a politics of rebuilding the State that echo Charles Tilly’s political process model whereby social movement action is geared towards political inclusion (Tilly 2004). The Bolivian case shows that inclusion may lead to profound institutional transformations threatening some key elite interests, yet falling short of a revolution – even though Evo Morales likes to call the process a ‘democratic revolution’. A particular lesson coming out of this case is the association of typical movement tactics such as protests, road and street blockades, with the construction of a political party solid enough to sustain loyalty among a very diverse set of movement actors, and to win democratic elections. This configuration of movement activity, where indigenous movement organizations are central, highlights a key commitment to reforming the institutional political process and giving a new content to citizenship. This plurinational and decolonizing society in the making is, however, only beginning to take shape, facing great resistance from the elite and real divisions within social movement actors now that Bolivia is in the highly conflictive business of implementing its new Constitution.

Notes 1 2 3

See full text of the new Constitution at http://www.repac.org.bo/html/ constitucion/primera_parte.html. [Accessed on 20 April 2009.] Interview with the author, Sucre, Bolivia, May 2007. My translation. Interview with the author, Sucre, Bolivia, May 2007. My translation.

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84  r Four Grindle, M. (2003). ‘Shadowing the past? Policy reform in Bolivia, 1985–2002.’ In M. Grindle and P. Domingo (eds.). Proclaiming Revolution. Bolivia in Comparative Perspective. London: Institute of Latin American Studies, 318–44. Hale, C. (2002). ‘Does multiculturalism menace? Governance, cultural rights and the politics of identity in Guatemala.’ Journal of Latin American Studies, 34(3): 485–524. Hall, G. and Patrinos, H. A. (2005). Indigenous Peoples, Poverty and Human Development in Latin America: 1994–2004, Executive summary. Washington: World Bank. Lucero, J. A. (2008). Struggles of Voice: The Politics of Indigenous Representation in the Andes. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Martin, P. (2002). The Globalization of Contentious Politics: The Amazonian Indigenous Rights Movement. New York: Routledge. Molina, R. and Albó, X. (2006). Gama étnica y lingüística de la población boliviana. La Paz: PNUD/UNDP. Ocampo, M. (2007). Estimación del índice de nivel socioeconómico 1976–2001. Documento de Trabajo. Informe Nacional sobre Desarrollo Humano 2009. La Paz: PNUD/UNDP. Prada, R. (2002). ‘Multitud y contrapoder. estudios del presente: Movimientos sociales contemporáneos.’ In R. Gutiérrez, A. García, R. Prada and L. Tapia (eds.). Democratizaciones plebeyas. La Paz: Muela del Diablo Editores, 73–146. Rivera Cusicanqui, S. (2003). Oprimidos pero no vencidos. Luchas del campesinado aymara y quechwa, 1900–1980. La Paz: Aruwiyiri-THOA. Rivera Cusicanqui, S. (2006). ‘Chhixinakax utxiwa. Una reflexión sobre prácticas y discursos descolonizadores.’ In Mario Yapu (ed.). Modernidad y Pensamiento Descolonizador. La Paz: U-PIEB, 3–16. Spronk, S. and Webber, J. (2008). ‘Struggles against accumulation by dispossession in Bolivia: the political economy of natural resource contention.’ In R. StahlerSholk, H. Vanden and G. D. Kuecker (eds.). Latin American Social Movements in the Twenty-First Century: Resistance, Power, and Democracy. Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield, 77–91. Stephenson, M. (2002). ‘Forging an indigenous counterpublic sphere: the taller de historia oral andina in Bolivia.’ Latin American Research Review, 37(2): 99–118. Tilly, C. (2004). Social Movements, 1768–2004. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers. United Nations General Assembly (2007). Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of Indigenous People, Rodolfo Stavenhagen. Addendum. Preliminary Note on the Mission to Bolivia (25 November to 7 December 2007). Human Rights Council, 6th session, item 3, A/HRC/6/15/Add.2, 11 December. Van Cott, D. L. (2005). From Movements to Parties in Latin America: The Evolution of Ethnic Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press. Yashar, D. (2005). Contesting Citizenship in Latin America: The Rise of Indigenous Movements and the Postliberal Challenge. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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5

What Are Peasants Saying about Development? La Vía Campesina and Food Sovereignty Annette Aurélie Desmarais

We are the men and women of the land. We are those who produce food for the world. We have the right to continue being peasants and family farmers, and to shoulder the responsibility of continuing to feed our peoples. We care for seeds, which are life, and for us the act of producing food is an act of love. Humanity depends on us, and we refuse to disappear. Declaration of Maputo: V International Conference of La Vía Campesina, 19–22 October (2008b: 1)

Introduction In 2008 newspaper headlines around the world proclaimed a global food crisis. Prices for basic grains were skyrocketing making it impossible for millions of people to purchase sufficient food for sustenance; food riots had erupted in various parts of the world and governments scrambled to find quick fixes. Meanwhile, as hunger and the fear of hunger spread, transnational agri-business, speculators and investors reaped huge profits. What are the causes and solutions to this crisis?1 The proponents of neoliberal globalization, which Gilbert Rist (2002) argues is now synonymous with development, would have us believe that the sudden crisis is the result of ‘shortages’ and ‘market failures’. They assure us that the best way forward is to prevent national governments from intervening in the market, increase production with the adoption of genetically modified seeds and further liberalization of agriculture and food (The Economist 2008a and 2008b). However, the world’s peasants, small and medium-scale farmers, farmworkers, rural women and indigenous communities organized in La

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Vía Campesina argue that the crisis is the result of decades of destructive rural development policies, that the globalization of a neoliberal industrial and capital-intensive model of agriculture is the very cause of the current food crisis and that the ‘time for food sovereignty has come’ (La Vía Campesina 2008a). Since the signing of the Uruguay Round of the GATT in 1994 representatives of rural organizations in La Vía Campesina have protested together in the streets of the cities where international institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank, and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) are holding meetings to discuss agricultural and food issues. Importantly, La Vía Campesina organizations work at the local level in communities when peasants and farm families in places as diverse as Honduras, Mexico, Brazil, Guatemala, Indonesia, Europe or Canada resist the spread of genetically modified seeds, or are being evicted from their land to facilitate land grabs by foreign or national investors, urban sprawl, the development of golf courses, intensive shrimp farms, large pig barns or plantations of eucalyptus. The presence of La Vía Campesina has not gone unnoticed. It is a transnational agrarian movement (TAM)2 embracing organizations in Asia, the Americas, Europe and Africa. These groups are linked together through their intimate connections to the land and a collective will to work together to build a more humane world. Since its inception in 1993, La Vía Campesina has become an increasingly visible social actor, voicing radical resistance to the globalization of a neoliberal and corporate model of agriculture. Importantly, this resistance also includes building alternative food systems based on food sovereignty. The growing visibility of La Vía Campesina as a key social actor, strongly rooted in local communities, while at the same time being increasingly engaged and more skilful on the international stage, has attracted the attention of many rural organizations in search of alternatives. Between 2000 and 2004 the movement grew by over 41 per cent as forty-two organizations joined La Vía Campesina during the movement’s Fourth International Conference held in Itaici, Brazil in June 2004. Nearly half of these newly integrated organizations were movements based in Asia, where the majority of the world’s peasants live. La Vía Campesina now includes 164 organizations from 73 countries. Clearly, La Vía Campesina is filling an important void. Not only did they succeed in mobilizing themselves at an international level, but they also have gifted us food sovereignty How were peasants and small farmers from very different parts of the world able to consolidate a transnational peasant movement? Where did they find the organizational capacity and strength to challenge transnational

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agribusiness corporations and international institutions whose power and influence increasingly dictate national government policy? What has made La Vía Campesina so successful against seemingly impossible odds? This chapter explores the significance of La Vía Campesina by addressing these questions. I argue that by embracing diversity, La Vía Campesina successfully built a collective identity based on common ground: they are ‘people of the land’. Armed with a strong peasant collective identity and an uncompromising commitment to their right to continue making a living by growing food in the countryside, Vía Campesina organizations are fighting for the very right to exist. This is not just a struggle for survival; it is a struggle to protect not only their communities and cultures but also their right to produce food in culturally appropriate ways for domestic consumption – through what they call food sovereignty. In doing so, the movement is actively engaging in cultural politics as it reclaims and redefines what it means to be a peasant, and through food sovereignty it challenges us fundamentally to alter social relations, cultures and politics – the very basis of modern societies.

The cultural politics of radical social movements Many researchers confirm Elizabeth Jelin’s (1990) argument that radical social movements are engaged in struggles that go beyond economic and political demands; they are clearly involved in a cultural struggle as they seek new ways of seeing, knowing and being in the world (Alvarez et al. 1998; Escobar and Alvarez 1992; Melucci 1984, 1988; Parajuli 1991). These forms of cultural politics seek to create new ‘alternative’ collective identities and solidarities, exercise the right to be different, redefine what is political, create new structures of collective organization, and establish new ways of doing politics. Furthermore, Jordan and Weedon (1995: 5–6) assert that ‘for marginalized and oppressed groups, the construction of new and resistant identities is a key dimension of a wider political struggle to transform society’. Also, Melucci (1998: 425) reminds us that generating new cultural identities is an exercise in redefining power. He suggests that rather than believing that we can rid society of power, a key role of social movements is to reveal where that power lies by exposing the ‘nontransparency of political processes’ thus making some forms of power ‘more visible and therefore more negotiable than others’ (426). The job of social movements then is to question and redefine ‘what counts as political’, where (in what spaces) politics occur and ‘who gets to define the rules of the game’ (Alvarez et al. 1998: 12). As Kathryn Sikkink (2002: 304) reminds us in her work on transnational advocacy networks ‘the power to shape the agenda, or to

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shape the very manner in which issues are perceived and debated, can be a deep and substantial exercise of power’. In other words, radical social movements are not working for ‘inclusion’ in existing political structures and the dominant culture; instead, they reject ‘adverse incorporation’ and strive to ‘transform the very political order in which they operate’ (Alvarez et al. 1998: 8). Simultaneously, critical social movements are seeking new ways of being in the world. They seek to democratize and thus limit the power of the sites and structures of power, and their vision for social change often encompasses developing a political culture that is based on the principles and practices of inclusion and social justice (Stammers 1999: 86). This is not to suggest that all social movements around the globe have these same goals. Indeed, there are numerous movements who work to entrench the status quo by reinforcing privilege and inequality. But La Vía Campesina is one such radical social movement that is involved in this kind of cultural politics. La Vía Campesina struggles for inclusion and greater participation in defining a different world order as it strives for greater access to and control over productive resources for farming families everywhere. The main goal of La Vía Campesina is to build a radically different food system, one based on the concept of food sovereignty. The transnational peasant movement believes that this can only be done by building unity and solidarity among the great diversity of peasant and farm organizations around the world.

Building unity within diversity La Vía Campesina emerged in a particular economic, political and social context that was undermining the ability of farmers and peasants around the world to maintain control over land and seeds – the very foundations of their existence and cultures as producers of food. The neoliberal model of rural development was altering rural landscapes, threatening to make local knowledge irrelevant and denigrating rural cultures. Key elements in this phenomenon were the encroaching globalization of a modern industrial corporate model of agriculture, on the one hand, and the search for an alternative development approach among those most harmed by the epidemic of dislocation left in its wake (Desmarais 2002, 2007; Edelman 2003; Martínez-Torres and Rosset 2008; Patel 2005; Petras and Veltmeyer 2005; Wittman 2009). The roots of La Vía Campesina can be traced back to the North–North, South–South, and North–South exchanges among farm and peasant organizations that occurred throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. Two examples of the movement’s early transnational links, among many others,

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were the ones established by the youth of the National Farmers Union of Canada (NFU) with the Windward Islands Farmers’ Association and the women’s linkage between the NFU and the Unión Nacional de Agricultores y Ganaderos (UNAG) of Nicaragua. Meanwhile, the Confédération Nationale des Syndicat de Travailleurs Paysans in France (the precursor to the Confédération Paysanne) had established bilateral relations with the Unión Nacional de Organizaciones Regionales Campesinas Autónomas in Mexico, the UNAG in Nicaragua, and the Confederación Campesina del Perú. Exchanges throughout Central and South America led to the consolidation of regional movements – all key to the consolidation of La Vía Campesina.3 Through organizational exchanges – often involving delegation visits to and from each other’s countries that lasted anywhere from one to six weeks – delegates learned about the local agricultural situation, developed a collective analysis about the forces affecting changes in their host nation and discussed strategies of resistance. Consequently, by the time farm leaders gathered together at the Congress of Nicaragua’s UNAG, held in 1992, they had already established much common ground and thus were quick to agree on the need to work together to counter the global offensive on peasant agriculture represented by structurally adjusted agriculture and free trade agreements (Managua Declaration 1992). One year later, as the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) negotiations were drawing to a close, farm leaders formally constituted La Vía Campesina in a gathering held in April 1993 in Mons, Belgium (La Vía Campesina 1993). From its inception, La Vía Campesina was intent on carving out a new space in the international arena, one that they would fill with peasant voices and peasant demands. In doing so, the newly created movement effectively challenged two other key elements of civil society that had dominated deliberations of food and agriculture in the international arena: international and national non-governmental organizations and the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP) (Desmarais 2003; Edelman 2003). While the IFAP and many NGOs concentrated on reforming the World Trade Organization (WTO), a key instrument of neoliberal globalization, for La Vía Campesina there was little option but radical transformation. Indeed, developing alternatives to neoliberal globalization and the WTO was the very raison d’être of the movement. As Rafael Alegría, a peasant leader from Honduras and former Operational Secretariat of La Vía Campesina explains: From La Vía Campesina’s point of view, the neoliberal model is causing the collapse of this … peasant economy. It is destroying natural resources, and the environment. It is also undermining our own peasant movements around the

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92  r Five world. For this reason, it is very important that we have an international organization like the Vía Campesina, so we can come together on the issues we are facing and bring together our ideals and aspirations that have not yet disappeared from this world. … Those of us in La Vía Campesina believe we need to find a global solution for the peasants of the world. Creating a global response is the very reason for the Vía Campesina’s existence. (La Vía Campesina 1996b: 8–9)

As La Vía Campesina (1996a) so defiantly stated during its Second International Conference held in Tlaxcala, ‘we will not be intimidated’ nor ‘disappeared’. Amid the creeping corporate takeover of agriculture and food, increasing rural poverty and growing hunger, peasants in the South and farmers in the North coalesced around common concerns – flying in the face of the commonly held beliefs as expressed by Bonnano et al. (1994) that rural peoples in the North and South could not possibly have much in common and that farmers and peasants did not have the organizational capacity to pressure effectively the international institutions (i.e. WTO, OECD), that were increasingly responsible for determining agricultural and food policies. Initially, it might have been difficult to imagine farmers from diverse countries marching together on a GATT meeting in Punta del Este in 1986, at the beginning of the Uruguay Round. But a few years later there was no need for imagining such a situation. In May 1993, forty-five peasant and farm leaders from various regions of the world gathered together in Mons, Belgium, under the banner of a new global peasant movement, La Vía Campesina. Just seven months after La Vía Campesina was formally constituted, over 5,000 protestors including peasants and farmers from Europe, Canada, the Unite States, Japan, India and Latin America did march together on the GATT in Geneva. Three years later in November 1996, La Vía Campesina was an active and visible political actor at the World Food Summit (WFS), held in Rome and convened by the United Nations FAO. Here, they challenged the FAO to recognize their legitimacy as representatives of peasants and small farmers organized in one of the largest rural movements in the world and requested to be given official delegate status at the WFS. In addition, La Vía Campesina delegations represented a significant presence and force at the Global Assembly on Food Security in Quebec City (1995) in celebration of the Food and Agriculture Organization’s fiftieth anniversary, the Global Forum of Agricultural Research (GFAR) held in Dresden (2000), the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre (2001 to 2003 and 2005), and the World Summit on Sustainable Development (2002). They participated in the massive demonstrations in Prague, Washington, Quebec City, Quito and Genoa, in protest against the globalization of neoliberalism, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the

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World Bank, and the Group of Eight. La Vía Campesina leaders also headed the anti-neoliberal globalization marches at the various WTO Ministerial meetings held in Geneva (1998), Seattle (1999), Cancun (2003) and Hong Kong (2005). The movement made its presence known in Italy in April 2009 when protesting the G8’s approach to the global food crisis; it was also a visible actor at the Asian Peoples’ Summit Against the Asian Development Bank in early May 2009 in Bali. The list goes on.4 Since its inception La Vía Campesina has organized six international congresses, a number of regional meetings and women’s workshops in different parts of the world. All of these, in addition to the activities described above, are important gatherings that enable the movement to pursue one of its main objectives: ‘to build unity within the diversity of organizations’ (La Vía Campesina, n.d.). Here, peasant and farm leaders engage in debate, acknowledge differences, move on to establish some common ground, debate and solidify a collective identity and arrive at consensus on strategies and actions. This collective identity and sense of common purpose have been clearly expressed at all six of the International Conferences of La Vía Campesina. Much of La Vía Campesina’s success is due to the fact that it is balancing – with great care and effort – the diverse interests of its membership that could potentially cause divisions. Reflecting on his experience as a member of La Vía Campesina delegation in events surrounding the WTO Ministerial meeting in Seattle, François Dufour, a leader of the Confédération Paysanne and member of the CPE, says: You can’t talk about factions within Vía Campesina, which is a worldwide farmers’ organization defending what it considers to be the most crucial issues of the day. What holds for Santiago or Bamako, doesn’t necessarily hold for Rome or Paris. The exchange of opinions and experiences makes this a wonderful network for training and debate. The delegations to the Vía Campesina don’t negotiate in terms of conquering the market but to promote, above all, development of mutual respect. (Quoted in Bové and Dufour 2001: 158)

And, Rafael Alegría (2000), stressing the common purpose of the movement puts it like this: I think that what really unites us is a fundamental commitment to humanism, because the antithesis of this is individualism and materialism. For us in La Vía Campesina the human aspect is a fundamental principle, so we see the person, man and woman, as the centre of our reason for being and this is what we struggle for – for this family that is at the centre of all. Common problems unite us … But what also unites us are great aspirations … What unites us is a spirit of transformation and struggle … We aspire to a better world, a more just world, a more humane world, a world where real equality and social

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Make no mistake: La Vía Campesina is not a homogeneous movement and arriving at this collective ‘we’ is not a given; it is the result of much, and ongoing, concentrated political work within the movement. As Miles (2001: 149) reminds us, the articulation of a shared identity must be seen as a ‘political achievement … not a given condition’ and these politicized identities become ‘foundations to reach out from, not walls to hide behind’. There are all kinds of barriers – class, gender, ethnicity, cultural dynamics, personality conflicts, historical political struggles, and divergent ideologies – that constantly challenge La Vía Campesina’s ability to build and maintain ‘unity within diversity’ and reaffirm a collective identity (Desmarais 2002, 2007). Some analysts (Borras 2004, 2008; Borras et al. 2008) have highlighted the differences within La Vía Campesina that cause conflict. However, as important as these are, one of the key strengths of La Vía Campesina, indeed one of the main explanations for its persistent cohesion and growing presence is its ability to embrace diversity to better create an international community of resistance. This is perhaps the most radical aspect of the movement. This is not to suggest that the road is always smooth. Tensions, conflicts and divisions (especially at the national level) have surfaced again and again (Borras 2008; Borras et al. 2008; Desmarais 2007). However, rather than focusing on social constructs that have succeeded in dividing movements in the past, La Vía Campesina’s experience demonstrates that the movement’s diversity and heterogeneity do not exclude the possibility of establishing a shared politicized identity and unity.5 La Vía Campesina formed in the North and South around common objectives: an explicit rejection of the neoliberal model of rural development, an outright refusal to be excluded from agricultural policy development and a firm determination to work together to empower a peasant voice. According to La Vía Campesina, the conflict is not between farmers of the North and peasants in the South. Rather the struggle is over two competing – and in many ways diametrically opposed – models of social and economic development. On the one hand, a globalized, neoliberal, corporate-driven model where agriculture is seen exclusively as a profit-making venture and productive resources are increasingly concentrated into the hands of agroindustry. It is this industrialized model of agriculture and food that is being globalized. La Vía Campesina, on the other hand, envisions a very different, more humane, rural world: one based on a ‘rediscovered ethic of development’ stemming from the ‘productive culture’ and ‘productive vocation’ of farming families (Managua Declaration 1992). Here, agriculture is farmer-

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driven, based on peasant production, uses local resources and is geared to domestic markets. In this model, agriculture plays an important social function while at the same time being economically viable and ecologically sustainable. As far as trade is concerned, food is produced first and foremost for local consumption and only the surplus is traded. The movement rejects a vision of agricultural development in which everything is privatized and local knowledge has no place. It insists that food and food-producing resources like land, seeds and water are not just commodities, and financial speculation has absolutely no place in the food system (La Vía Campesina 2008a, 2008b). La Vía Campesina envisions a world where social justice and human rights actually mean something, and those who produce and consume food should be at the centre of policy development on issues related to food and agriculture.

Food sovereignty: ‘feeding the world and cooling the planet’ In a nutshell, food sovereignty is the ‘right of nations and peoples to control their food systems, including their own markets, production modes, food cultures and environments’ (Wittman et al. 2010: 3). It is at the heart of La Vía Campesina’s alternative models of agriculture and the movement sees it as the only viable solution to the global food and environmental crises (La Vía Campesina 2008a). Food sovereignty – first introduced by La Vía Campesina (1996c) at the World Food Summit held in Rome in 1996 – is a prerequisite to realizing the human right to food and includes farmers’ and peasants’ ‘right to produce our own food in our own territory’ and ‘the right of consumers to be able to decide what they consume and how and by whom it is produced’ (La Vía Campesina 2003). For La Vía Campesina (2003) key elements of food sovereignty involve: • Placing priority on the production of healthy, good quality and culturally appropriate food primarily for the domestic market; • Providing remunerative prices for farmers, which requires that the state has the power to protect internal markets against imports at low prices; • Regulating production on the internal market in order to avoid the creation of surpluses; • Stopping the process of industrialization of production methods, and developing family farm based sustainable production; and • Abolishing all direct and indirect export aids. Food sovereignty also requires the accompaniment of La Vía Campesina’s broadly conceived agrarian reform whereby genuine agrarian reform ‘is an instrument to eliminate poverty and social differences, and to promote …

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develop­ment of our communities’ (La Vía Campesina 2000a: 2). For La Vía Campesina: Land is a good of nature that needs to be used for the welfare of all. Land is not, and cannot be a marketable good that can be obtained in whatever quantity by those that have financial means. We defend the principle of the maximum size of the social ownership of the land per family in relation to the reality in each country. Access to the land by peasants has to be understood as a guarantee for survival and the valorisation of their culture, the autonomy of their communities and a new vision on the preservation of natural resources for humanity and future generations. The land is patrimony of the family and land titles only in the name of men have to be avoided. (2000a: 2)

Moreover, food sovereignty is only possible with the democratic control of the food system and recognition that ‘cultural heritage and genetic resources belong to all humanity’ (La Vía Campesina 1996b: 22). This means that all life forms – including plant and animal – must be protected from patenting (La Vía Campesina 2000b). In today’s world of commodification of everything and global liberalized trade La Vía Campesina’s concept of food sovereignty is nothing less than revolutionary. As João Pedro Stédile, leader with the MST, the Vía Campesina Regional Coordinator for South America, says: This brings us into head-on collision with international capital, which wants free markets. We maintain that every people, no matter how small, have the right to produce their own food. Agricultural trade should be subordinated to this greater right. Only the surplus should be traded, and that only bilaterally. We are against the WTO and against the monopolization of world agricultural trade by the multinational corporations. As José Marti would say: a people that cannot produce its own food are slaves; they don’t have the slightest freedom. If a society doesn’t produce what it eats, it will always be dependent on someone else. (Quoted in New Left Review 2002: 100)

And, José Bové, leader with the Confédération Paysanne, points out that: Our concept of sovereignty enables people to think for themselves, without any imposed model for agriculture or society, and to live in solidarity with each other. This sovereignty means independent access to food: to be self-sufficient and to be able to choose what we eat … we welcome fair trade, cultural exchange and solidarity: we stand for a dignified and free life under real democracy. (Bové and Dufour 2001: 159)

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La Vía Campesina’s initial ideas of food sovereignty were further elaborated in the People’s Food Sovereignty Statement (2001: 1) developed by an international coalition of social movements, research institutes and nongovernmental organizations to include: The right of peoples to define their own food and agriculture; to protect and regulate domestic agricultural production and trade in order to achieve sustainable development objectives; to determine the extent to which they want to be self reliant; to restrict the dumping of products in their markets; and to provide local fisheries-based communities the priority in managing the use of and the rights to aquatic resources.

And, the 600 representatives of peasants, farmers, farmworkers, fishers, pastoralists, indigenous peoples, rural women, urban-based social movements, and development NGOs from eighty countries who gathered together for the Nyéléni 2007 Forum for Food Sovereignty in Mali expanded food sovereignty beyond production to include greater consideration of consumption issues. They agreed on the following key elements of food sovereignty: it focuses on food for people, values food providers, localizes food systems and decision-making, and builds on local knowledge and skills of food providers (La Vía Campesina 2007). Food sovereignty has the potential to foster dramatic and wide­spread change (Wittman et al. 2010). At an international work­shop on food sovereignty6 held at the University of Saskatchewan, Jim Handy, a professor of history, spoke of the revolutionary implications of the seemingly simply idea of democratizing the food system: Food sovereignty challenges not just a particular development model, doesn’t just challenge a particularly abhorrent form of neo-liberalism, doesn’t just suggest a new set of rights. Rather, it envisions fundamental changes in the basis of modern society. Modern society was based on a set of exclusions and enclosures that were fundamental to the emergence and strengthening of capitalism. Those exclusions were felt primarily in the countryside and primarily in agriculture. Capitalism was dedicated to divorcing producers from any right over the goods they produced and encasing those goods in ever larger, ever more disconnected, ever more monopolized, and ever more destructive markets. Food sovereignty challenges all of that because it demands that we rethink what was at the very centre of this transition; it demands that we treat food not simply as a good, access to which and the production of which is determined by the market, it demands that we recognize the social connections inherent in producing food, consuming food, and sharing food. In the process it will change everything.

Certainly, food sovereignty forces us to rethink our relationships with food, agriculture and the environment. But, perhaps the most revolutionary aspect of food sovereignty is that it forces us to rethink our relationships with one another. The magnitude of this transformation hit home in a powerful way

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when, during its Fifth International Conference, La Vía Campesina launched a campaign with the slogan ‘Food sovereignty means stopping violence against women.’7 As the Declaration of Maputo stated: ‘If we do not eradicate violence towards women within our movement, we will not advance in our struggles, and if we do not create new gender relations, we will not be able to build a new society’ (La Vía Campesina 2008b).

Conclusion La Vía Campesina’s international efforts are leading to important shifts in the terms of the debate around food and agriculture. No doubt, this is a result of the movement’s work at the local, national and internationals levels.8 La Vía Campesina’s concept of food sovereignty has spread widely and is now embraced by local, national and international movements around the world (Wittman et al. 2010). The concept is also being discussed by global institutions such as the FAO,9 and the United Nations Human Rights Council is working on a Declaration on the Rights of Peasants (Claeys 2015; United Nations Human Rights Council 2015). And, some national governments such as Nepal, Bolivia, Venezuela and Mali are adopting the concept into their national constitutions and/or into national legislation and policies (Araujo 2010; Schiavoni 2015). After having all but disappeared from national government and international plans over the past twenty-five years, genuine agrarian reform is now back on the international agenda and the World Bank’s ‘market-assisted land reform program’ is now in question. On 10 March 2006, 350 government delegates and seventy representatives of farmers’ and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) gathered at the FAO’s International conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development and formally recognized the essential role of agrarian reform in eradicating hunger and poverty.10 But, perhaps more importantly, peasants are back on the agenda. Many years ago Karl Marx predicted that with agrarian capitalism, peasants would simply disappear. Considered by many as remnants of a distant past, the demise of peasants was welcomed by capitalists, national and development planners, indeed, by virtually everyone but the peasants themselves. Today, the masters of globalization expect them to succumb to commercialized large farms. Yet, peasants are stubbornly refusing to go away. Indeed, in the face of a development model geared to ensure the extinction of peasants and small farmers, La Vía Campesina is redefining what it means to be a peasant or a small farmer. A process of what Cliff Welch calls ‘re-peasantization’ (2001) is in fact occurring as national and regional organizations proudly embrace the term ‘peasant’ to describe themselves.11

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This is a politicized identity. In today’s politicized globalization articulating identity across borders forged out of diversity and based on locality and tradition is a deeply political act. Indeed, reclaiming the meaning of being a peasant is perhaps one of La Vía Campesina’s most important accomplishment. It reflects people who share a deep commitment to place, people deeply attached to a particular piece of land, people who are all part of a particular rural community, and people whose mode of existence is under threat. This place-bound identity – that of ‘people of the land’ – reflects the belief that they have the right to be on the land. They have the right and obligation to produce food. They have the right to be seen as fulfilling an important function in society at large. They have the right to live in viable communities and the obligation to build community. All of the above form essential parts of their distinct identity as peasants. As Karen Pedersen (2002), former Women’s President of the NFU-Canada proudly declared at a public gathering: The language around us is changing all the time. Historically, we were peasants. Then when that term came to mean ‘backward’ we became ‘farmers’. In these days ‘farmer’ has the connotation of inefficiency and we are strongly encouraged to be more modern, to see ourselves instead as managers, business people or entrepreneurs capable of handling increasingly larger pieces of territory. Well, I am a farmer and I am a peasant. Through my participation in the Vía Campesina I learned that I had much more in common with peasants then I did with some of my agribusiness neighbours. I am reclaiming the term peasant because I actually believe that small is more efficient, it is socially intelligent, it is community oriented. Being a peasant stands for the kind of agriculture and rural communities we are striving to build.

The globalization of a modern industrial corporate-led model of agriculture focused primarily on an international marketplace has contributed to a global food crisis as well as an environmental crisis. La Vía Campesina argues that this represents an important political moment and that important steps can be taken to help resolve the crises only if governments support peasant and small-scale production, rebuild their national food economies, regulate international markets, and the international community respects, protects and fulfils human rights – especially the right to food. The Vía Campesina seeks to effect change in the countryside, change that improves the livelihoods of people of the land, change that enhances local food production for local consumption, change that opens democratic spaces and empowers people of the land with a greater role, position and stake in decision-making on issues affecting their daily lives. Consequently,

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not only are peasants refusing to lie down, they are at the centre of resistance and they are gaining strength. The Fifth International Conference held in October 2008 integrated thirty-nine new member organizations, further consolidated itself by establishing two regions in Africa, deepened food sovereignty to include the elimination of violence against women, and reinforced collaborative ties with other key social movements and nongovernmental organizations. Perhaps most importantly, in a constant struggle to build a complex and heterogeneous transnational movement, the Maputo Fifth International conference reaffirmed the importance of cohesion within La Vía Campesina: One of our greatest strengths is our ability to unite different cultures and ways of thinking in one single movement. La Vía Campesina represents a common commitment to resist, and to struggle for life and for peasant and family farm agriculture. … [We] are committed to the defence of food and of peasant agriculture, to Food Sovereignty, to dignity and to life. We are here, the peasants and rural peoples of the world, and we refuse to disappear. (La Vía Campesina 2008b: 4)

A similar commitment to ‘unity within diversity’ was reiterated at the VI International Conference of La Vía Campesina held in Jakarta in June 2013 in celebration of the movement’s twentieth anniversary. This time, La Vía Campesina issued an international call to other organizations and movements to work together to build food sovereignty and in so doing, transform the world (La Vía Campesina 2013).

Notes 1 This chapter is a revision of earlier works and contains excerpts from La Vía Campesina: Globalization and the Power of Peasants published in 2007 by Fernwood Publishing and Pluto Press. 2 See Borras, Edelman and Kay (2008) for explorations of various dimensions of TAMs. This edition of the Journal of Agrarian Change provides interesting insights into rural organizing in various parts of the world. 3 Edelman (1998) provides an in-depth discussion of transnational dynamics involved in the creation of Asociación de Organizaciones Campesinas Centroamericanas para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo (ASOCODE), one of the founding members of La Vía Campesina. See Welch (2000) for a discussion of the formation of the Coordinación Latinoamerica de Organizaciones del Campo which brought together organizations throughout Latin America. Also, Holt-Giménez (2006)analyses how cross-border exchanges of Central American and Mexican peasants involved in the Campesino a Campesino movement focused on sustainable agronomic practices. 4 See Martinez-Torres and Rosset (2010), Claeys (2015) and McKeon (2015) for more recent contributions of La Vía Campesina.

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Here, Miles’ (2001: 156) assessment of four women’s movements working in a completely different context offers a compelling case of the meaning of a collective identity: ‘These … local and global groups and networks based on political (as opposed to essentialist) expressions of identity name their particular experience (as poor mothers, prostitutes, disabled/Black/Third/lesbian/ indigenous/Muslim women) in the expect­ation that this will deepen the general understanding of all women’s reality: not because all women’s experience is the same, but because women share a complex reality which only the experience and insights of diverse women can reveal in its entirety. The identity base of membership in these groups is designed to foster connections and inclusion across differences, to sustain collective action, and support the myriad voices necessary for a broader multi-cantered movement’ (my emphasis). 6 The workshop brought together a number of well-known scholars and farm leaders and contributed to the publication of two books: Food Sovereignty: Reconnecting Food, Nature and Community (2010) and Food Sovereignty in Canada: Creating Just and Sustainable Food Systems (2011). 7 It is important to note that from its inception women within La Vía Campesina have engaged in an ongoing struggle for gender equality and they have taken some exemplary steps to establish gender parity. The dynamics of this are discussed in depth in Desmarais (2007). 8 See McKeon (2009, 2015) for an excellent discussion of changes in civil society involvement in global governance on food and agricultural issues. 9 In 2003, following the World Food Summit: Five Years Later (2002), the FAO formally recognized the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty, a global network of non-governmental organizations and social movements, as its main civil society interlocutor for follow-up to the World Food Summit. 10 For an in-depth analysis of the impact of La Vía Campesina’s work on agrarian reform see Borras (2008). 11 It is important to note a resurgence of discussions of peasants in the academic literature. Among others, see Bernstein (2006), McMichael (2008), Ploeg (2008), Pérez-Vitoria (2005), Akram Lodhi et al. (2008) and Handy (2009). Also significant are the recent academic discussions of food sovereignty (for example, among others, the Journal of Peasant Studies 2014; Trauger 2015; Claeys 2015; Andree et al. 2014; Grey and Patel 2014). There is a growing and very interesting literature on food sovereignty, too many to cite here.

References Alegría, R. (2000). Former Operational Secretariat of La Vía Campesina. Interview with author, Teguigalpa, Honduras. Alvarez, S. E., Dagnino, E. and Escobar, A. (eds.) (1998). Culture of Politics: Politics of Culture. Boulder: Westview Press. Akram Lodhi, H. and Kay, C. (eds.) (2008). Peasants and Globalization: Political Economy, Rural Transformation and the Agrarian Question. London: Routledge.

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102  r Five Andree, P., Ayres, J. M., Bosia, M. J. and Massicotte, M. (eds.) (2014). Globalization and Food Sovereignty: Global and Local Change in the New Politics of Food. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Araujo, S. (2010). ‘The promise and challenges of food sovereignty policies in Latin America.’ Yale Human Rights and Development Journal, 13(2) (2010): 493–506. Bernstein, H. (2006). ‘Once were/still are peasants? Farming in a globalising ‘South’.’ New Political Economy, 11(3): 399–406. Borras, S. Jr. (2004). ‘La Vía Campesina: an evolving transnational social movement.’ TNI Briefing Series No. 2004/6. Transnational Institute: Amsterdam. Borras, S. Jr. (2008). ‘La Vía Campesina and its global campaign for agrarian reform.’ Journal of Agrarian Change, 8(2 and 3): 258–89. Borras, S. Jr., Edelman, M. and Kay, C. (2008). ‘Transnational agrarian movements: origins and politics, campaigns and impact.’ Journal of Agrarian Change, 8(2 and 3): 169–204. Bové, J. and Dufour, F. (2001). ‘The World is Not for Sale.’ Interviews by Luneau, Gilles, trans. de Casparis, Anna. London and New York: Verso. Claeys, P. (2015). Human Rights and the Food Sovereignty Movement: Reclaiming Control. London and New York: Routledge. Desmarais, A. A. (2002). ‘The Vía Campesina: consolidating an international peasant and farm movement.’ Journal of Peasant Studies, 29(2) (January): 91–124. Desmarais, A. A. (2003). ‘The WTO … will meet somewhere, sometime. And we will be there.’ Part of a series of papers prepared for the project entitled ‘Voices: The Rise of Nongovernmental Voices in Multilateral Organizations.’ North– South Institute, Ottawa, Canada. Available at http://www.nsiins.ca/english/pdf/ Voices_WTO_Desmarais.pdf. Desmarais, A. A. (2007). La Vía Campesina: Globalization and the Power of Peasants. Black Point and London: Fernwood Publishing and Pluto Books. Economist, The (2000). ‘Survey: agriculture and technology.’ 25 March: 1–16. Economist, The (2008a). ‘The silent tsunami: The food crisis and how to solve it.’ 19–25 April: 13. Economist, The (2008b). ‘The new face of hunger.’ 19–25 April: 32–4. Edelman, M. (1998). ‘Transnational peasant politics in Central America.’ Latin American Research Review, 33(3): 49–86. Edelman, M. (2003). ‘Transnational peasant and farmer movements and networks.’ In Mary Kaldor, Helmut Anheier and Marlies Glasius (eds.). Global Civil Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 185–220. Escobar, A. and Alvarez, S. E. (eds.) (1992). The Making of Social Movements in Latin America: Identity, Strategy and Democracy. Boulder: Westview Press. FAO (2000). ‘Agriculture, trade and food security: issues and options in the WTO negotiations from the perspective of developing countries.’ Volume II, Country Case Studies, Commodities and Trade Division of the FAO: Rome. Available at http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/033/x8731e/x8931e01a.htm [Accessed on 14 January 2003].

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Desmarais  r 103 Grey, S. and Patel, R. (2014). Food sovereignty as decolonization: some contributions from indigenous movements to food system and development politics. Agriculture and Human Values [ahead of print]. Handy, J. (2009). ‘Almost idiotic wretchedness’: a long history of blaming peasants.’ Journal of Peasant Studies, 36(2): 323–42. Holt-Giménez, E. (2006). Campesino a Campesino: Voices from Latin America’s Farmer to Farmer Movement for Sustainable Agriculture. Oakland: Food first Institute for Food and Development Policy. Jelin, E. (ed.) (1990). Women and Social Change in Latin America. Geneva and London: UNRISD and Zed Books. Jordan, G. and Weedon, C. (1995). Cultural Politics: Class, Gender, Race and the Post-modern World. Oxford: Blackwell. Journal of Peasant Studies (2014). Special issue: Global Agrarian Transformations: Critical Perspectives on Food Sovereignty. Vol. 41, Issue 6. La Vía Campesina (n.d.). Pamphlet on La Vía Campesina. Office of the Operational Secretariat formerly located in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. La Vía Campesina (1993). ‘Mons Declaration: The Vía Campesina follow-up to the Managua Declaration.’ Reprinted in Proceedings of the II International Conference of the Vía Campesina (1996). Brussels: NCOS. La Vía Campesina (1996a). ‘Tlaxcala declaration of the Vía Campesina.’ Reprinted in Proceedings of the II International Conference of the Vía Campesina. Brussels: NCOS Publications. La Vía Campesina (1996b). ‘Proceedings of the II International Conference of the Vía Campesina.’ Brussels: NCOS Publications. La Vía Campesina (1996c). ‘The Right to Produce and Access to Land.’ Position of La Vía Campesina on food sovereignty presented at the World Food Summit, Rome, Italy, 13–17 November. La Vía Campesina (2000a). ‘The struggle for agrarian reform and social change in the rural areas.’ Position paper approved at the Third International Conference of La Vía Campesina, Bangalore, India, 3–6 October. La Vía Campesina (2000b). ‘Biodiversity, biosafety and genetic resources.’ Position paper approved at the Third International Conference of La Vía Campesina, Bangalore, India, 3–6 October. La Vía Campesina (2000c). ‘Food sovereignty and international trade.’ Position paper approved at the Third International Conference of La Vía Campesina, Bangalore, India, 3–6 October. La Vía Campesina (2003). ‘What is food sovereignty?’ Position paper produced by La Vía Campesina. Available at www.víacampesina.org La Vía Campesina (2007). ‘Proceedings of Nyéléni 2007 Forum for Food Sovereignty.’ Selingué, Mali. La Vía Campesina (2008a). ‘An answer to the global food crisis: peasants and small farmers can feed the world!’ Jakarta, 24 April. Available on-line at www. víacampesina.org La Vía Campesina (2008b). ‘Declaration of Maputo: V Internacional Conference of La Vía Campesina’, Maputo, Mozambique, 19–22 October.

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104  r Five La Vía Campesina (2013). ‘The Jakarta Call: VI Conference of La Vía Campesina – Egidio Brunetto,’ Available at http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/ourconferences-mainmenu-28/6-jakarta-2013/resolutions-and-declarations/1428the-jakarta-call. McKeon, N. (2009). The United Nations and Civil Society: Legitimating Global Governance – Whose Voice? London: Zed Books McKeon, N. (2015). Food Security Governance: Empowering Communities, Regulating Corporations. London and New York: Routledge/Earthscan. McMichael, P. (2008). ‘Peasants make their own history, but not just as they please …’ Journal of Agrarian Studies, 8(2/3): 205–28. Managua Declaration (1992). ‘The Managua Declaration.’ Farmers’ declaration issued in the framework of the II Congress of the UNAG, 26 April, Managua, Nicaragua. Martínez-Torres, M. E. and Rosset, P. (2008). ‘La Vía Campesina: transnationalizing peasant struggle and hope.’ In R. Stahler-Sholk, H. E. Vanden, and G. D. Kuecker (eds.). Latin American Social Movements in the Twenty-First Century: Resistance, Power, and Democracy New York and Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 307–22. Martínez-Torres, M. E. and Rosset, P. (2010). ‘La Vía Campesina: The birth and evolution of a transitional social movement,’ Journal of Peasant Studies, 37(1): 149–76. Melucci, A. (1984). ‘An end to social movements?’ Social Science Information, 23(4/5) 819–835. Melucci, A. (1988). ‘Getting involved: Identity and mobilization in social movements.’ In B. Klandermans, H. Kriesi and S. Tarrow (eds.). International Social Movement Research, vol. 1, From Structure to Action: Comparing Social Movement Research Across Cultures. Greenwich, CT: JAI, 329–48. Melucci, A. (1998). ‘Third World or planetary conflicts?’ In S. E. Alvarez, E. Dagnino, and A. Escobar, (eds.). Cultures of Politics: Politics of Cultures. Boulder: Westview Press, 422–29. Miles, A. (2001). ‘Global feminist theorizing and organizing: life-centred and multicentred alternatives to neoliberal globalization.’ In P. Hamel, H. Lustiger-Thaler, J. Nederveen Pieterse, and S. Roseneil. (eds.). Globalization and Social Movements. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave, 140–65. New Left Review (2002). ‘Landless battalions: the Sem Terra Movement of Brazil.’ Interview with João Pedro Stédile. New Left Review, 15 (May–June): 77–104. Parajuli, P. (1991). ‘Power and knowledge in development discourse: new social movements and the state in India.’ International Social Science Journal, 127: 173–90. Patel, R. (2005). ‘Global fascism revolutionary humanism and the ethics of food sovereignty.’ Development, 48(2): 79–83. Pedersen, K. (2002). Former women’s president of the National Farmers Union, interview with author, 21 June, Cutknife, Saskatchewan. Peoples’ Food Sovereignty (2001). ‘Priority to peoples’ food sovereignty – WTO out of food and agriculture.’ [on-line listserve] agri-trade@yahoogroups [Accessed on 6 November 2001].

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Desmarais  r 105 Pérez-Vitoria, S. (2005). Les paysans sont de retour. Arles: Actes Sud. Petras, J. and Veltmeyer, H. (2005). Social Movements and State Power: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia and Ecuador. London: Pluto Books Rist, G. (2002). The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith. London and New York: Zed Books. Schiavoni, C. (2015). ‘Competing sovereignties, contested processes: insights from the Venezuelan food sovereignty experiment.’ Globalizations: 1–16. Sikkink, K. (2002). ‘Restructuring world politics: the limits and asymmetries of soft power.’ In S. Khagram, J. V. Riker and K. Sikkink (eds.). Restructuring World Politics: Transnational Social Movements, Networks, and Norms. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 301–18. Stammers, N. (1999). ‘Social movements and the challenge to power.’ In M Shaw (ed.). Politics and Globalisation: Knowledge, Ethics and Agency. London and New York: Routledge, 73–88. Trauger, Amy. (ed.) (2015). ‘Food sovereignty in international context: discourse, politics and practice of place.’ Routledge Studies in Food, Society and the Environment. London and New York: Routledge. United Nations Human Rights Council. (2015). Second session of the open-ended intergovernmental working group on a United Nations declaration on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas. Available at http://www. ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/RuralAreas/Pages/2ndSession.aspx. van der Ploeg, J. D. (2008). The New Peasantries: Struggles for Autonomy and Sustainability in an Era of Empire and Globalization. London: Earthscan. Welch, C. (2000). ‘Marking time with the CLOC: international rural labor solidarity in the Americas from World War II to the third millennium.’ Paper presented at the XXII International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, Miami, Florida, 8–10 March. Welch, C. (2001). ‘Peasants and globalization in Latin America: a survey of recent literature.’ Paper presented at the XXIII International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, Washington, DC, 6–8 September. Wittman, H. (2009). ‘Reframing agrarian citizenship: land, life and power in Brazil.’ Journal of Rural Studies, 25(1): 120–130. Wittman, H., Desmarais, A. A. and Wiebe, N. (2010). Food Sovereignty: Reconnecting Food, Nature and Community. Point Black and Oakland: Fernwood Publishing and FoodFirst Books. Wittman, H., Desmarais, A. A. and Wiebe, N. (2011). Food Sovereignty in Canada: Creating Just and Sustainable Food Systems. Point Black: Fernwood Publishing.

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6

Debunking the Productivist Myth Food Sovereignty Movements Eric G. Chaurette and Beatriz Oliver

Introduction Family farmers around the world are resisting trade policies and technologies that threaten their livelihoods and lands. As declared by Mexican peasant leader, Alberto Gómez, ‘we will not be disappeared’. In 2007, over 500 delegates from 80 countries gathered in Mali at the Nyéléni World Forum on Food Sovereignty. Whether participants represented women, migrant workers, fishers, farmers, indigenous peoples, or whether they were from the South or North, a common theme throughout the forum was one of unicité de la lutte or common struggle. Through national and international linkages, farmers allied with civil society leaders, researchers and activists are creating bonds based on shared analysis and values that are increasingly bringing the voices of the marginalized to centre stage to influence policymaking. One of these shared perspectives that continues to gain strength and momentum is ‘food sovereignty’. Coined in 1996 by the international social movement La Vía Campesina, food sovereignty is a call for the defence of small farmers, biodiversity, and the right of citizens and countries to define their own agricultural policies. Food sovereignty emphasizes agroecology, rather than industrial agriculture, and trade systems that prioritize local production and consumption over export agriculture. The concept goes beyond food security, which concerns people having access to enough food, to encompass cultural, social and environmental considerations, i.e. how the food was produced and where it comes from (Rosset 2003). Whereas the official discourse in food security has problematized hunger as a technical issue of

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crop yields and productivity, or the logistics of distributing food, food sovereignty is explicitly political: Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. It puts those who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and corporations. (Excerpt of the Nyéléni Declaration, World Food Sovereignty Summit, Mali 2007)

This chapter explores the discourse behind policies contributing to the decline of small farms, with special focus on the control of seeds – the foundation of agriculture. Productivism – the emphasis on production and economic growth to the exclusion of social and ecological considerations – is analyzed here in terms of the key technological and economic trends it enables. Finally, examples from civil society initiatives in West Africa, Honduras and Uruguay are discussed to illustrate how food sovereignty is a powerful framework for collective organizing and for challenging the dominant discourse on agricultural development.

Productivism Productivism is the belief that economic productivity and growth are the only valid societal goals. It is based on the assumption that more production itself is inherently good. Mayhew (2004: 403–4) defines productivist agriculture as ‘intensive, expansionist, and based on the expansion of world trade in food, ever increasing farm sizes, and the use of technology to increase output; factory farming and agribusinesses are both examples’. The application of this ideology in agriculture has been far-reaching, promoting industrialization while advancing a myth that small farms are inefficient. Productivism has been supported by seemingly neutral discourses of mainstream development and regulatory science, while serving powerful interests. The development paradigm Development as a paradigm has enabled a productivist approach to agricultural development. Highly influential institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) based development planning on supposedly scientific economic studies (Escobar 1995). The legacy of colonialism was largely ignored in the Western formulation of development, supporting the view that the concept is legitimate and universal, and that poverty is apolitical (Esteva 1992). The idea of

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development has grown to be an extremely powerful one, not only as an economic prescription but also in terms of mental imagery, in creating ‘perceptions, myths and fantasies’ (Sachs 1992: 1). As Canadian social justice organization Inter Pares (2004: 17) explains: The myth of historical progress, upon which development theory and practice are premised ... includes the assumption that there are natural and universal steps in the development of societies – ‘stages’… and the task of international development is to assist societies, or nations, through these stages to successively higher orders of development. These stages are defined almost entirely on the basis of economic and technological criteria, and the successive stages are premised on obliteration of the more ‘primitive’ characteristics of the stages they replace – for example, diverse farming and local markets being supplanted by industrialized agriculture, monocultures and external international markets.

Despite the transformations of the concept of development, including the focus on social programmes, which began in the 1970s and ‘sustainable development’ in the 1980s, governmental and institutional discussion about development still revolves around the idea of economic growth (Escobar 1995; Esteva 1992). This has been used to justify the weakening of trade protections and assistance programmes for farmers. For example, the action plan for Latin America and the Caribbean in the World Bank’s (2003) rural development strategy states that rural poverty remains due to ‘structural impediments’ to the integration of the rural poor into the rest of the economy and thus benefits from the macro reforms and rural modernization. It argues that past subsidies had ‘perverse effects’ and trade protections to assist farmers were inefficient, whereas ‘productivity, competitive­ness and increased private sector involvement are key engines of growth’ (World Bank 2003: 122, 124). Regulatory science Productivist arguments often claim support in scientific studies that are assumed to be neutral. Foucault (1991) used the term ‘governmentality’ to refer to the increasing regulation of the population by the state based on knowledge of political economy and statistics. In this process, policies are made to seem natural because they are based on scientific rationality. For example, laws of impact assessment set out steps for evaluation and mitigation. Such ‘regulatory science’ moderates society’s relation to the environment in an apparently rational manner, thus constituting a ‘normalizing strategy’ (Rutherford 1999: 59). Since it is portrayed as neutral, ‘expert knowledge’ often depoliticizes governmental policies and the interests that benefit from these (Shore and Wright 1997). In turn, the

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promotion by the state of certain expert viewpoints gives the fields they are based on greater scientific or ethical legitimacy. Perhaps one of the most compelling examples of this is the use of ‘substantial equivalence’ in the regulation, or more appropriately, the nonregulation of transgenic or genetically engineered (GE) organisms. Coined by an OECD Working Group in 1993, the term has long been criticized as being unscientific or, according to Millstone, Brunner and Mayer (1999: 525) writing in Nature, pseudoscience: The concept of substantial equivalence has never been properly defined; the degree of difference between a natural food and its GM [genetically modified] alternative before its ‘substance’ ceases to be acceptably ‘equivalent’ is not defined anywhere, nor has an exact definition been agreed by legislators. It is exactly this vagueness that makes the concept useful to industry but unacceptable to the consumer.

In 2001, the Royal Society of Canada released its report Elements of Precaution: Recommendations for the Regu­lation of Food Biotechnology in Canada. Recommendation 7.1 proposes critical changes: The Panel recommends that approval of new transgenic organisms for environmental release, and for use as food or feed, should be based on rigorous scientific assessment of their potential for causing harm to the environment or to human health. Such testing should replace the current regulatory reliance on ‘substantial equivalence’ as a decision threshold.

Nevertheless, in a number of countries, including Canada, GE crops continue to be developed and approved for animal and human consumption without having gone through independent testing for potential environmental and health risks (Dona and Arvanitoyannis 2009; Ewen and Pusztai 1999; Royal Society of Canada 2001). A closer look at productivity Productivist discourse dismisses traditional methods as less productive than industrial ones. Proponents of GE crops, for instance, argue that they are needed to ‘feed the world’.1 However, anthropological and agroecological studies in various contexts have shown that production by peasants is high per unit of land, exceeding monocrops in various aspects (Altieri and Nicholls 2008; De Schutter 2011; Netting 1993; Rosset 1999). Netting (1993) explains how smallholder farmers around the world produce abundant food on small plots by relying on highly sustainable intensification methods. These may include soil manipulation to foster plant growth and control erosion (tilling, ridging and terracing), regulation

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of water (e.g. irrigation), nutrient conservation (e.g. application of manure and compost), diversification of production (e.g. a variety of plants that are intercropped, rotated and vary seasonally; use of different microclimates; animal husbandry) and protection from pests and weeds through natural barriers (e.g. intercropping) (Netting 1993). For Rosset (1999: 1), the ‘multifunctional’ nature of small farms means they are ‘more productive, more efficient, and contribute more to economic development than large farms. Small farmers can also make better stewards of natural resources, conserving biodiversity and safe-guarding the future sustainability of agricultural production.’ Productivity must be considered with regard to a farming system as a whole. Small farmers often value a crop for various uses, for example, not only the grain but also the stalks fed to animals. Indeed, the main weakness of the productivist viewpoint is its focus on yields, separated from other essential facets of food production and rural life. Traditional farming systems are also crucial for preserving and enhancing crop diversity, the foundation of most of the world’s food supply (Altieri et al. 1987; Brush 2000; Merrick 1990). Diversity – both between and within crop species – is crucial for smallholders because it reduces the risks of massive crop failure (Brush 2000). Varieties also have different desired qualities with respect to culinary, ecological and storage needs (Merrick 1990). Locally adapted varieties do not require agrochemicals to do well, unlike commercial varieties bred for uniformity and wide application.2 Organic, agroecological and other approaches to sustainable agriculture promote or attempt to recuperate such time-tested practices which have been shown to be better for the conservation of soil, water and biodiversity generally (e.g. polycultures, agroforestry, crop rotations, use of nitrogenfixing plants). These methods are of crucial importance. Current models indicate that ‘organic agriculture has the potential to secure a global food supply, just as conventional agriculture today, but with reduced environmental impacts’ (FAO 2007: 5). Finally, it is important to ask: productivity for whom? Economic and political inequalities continue to be at the heart of world hunger – not productivity. In Latin America, unequal land distribution has historically been linked to poverty (Redclift and Goodman 1991). Most of the countries with hunger crises are actually food exporters (Lappé et al. 1998). Moreover, recent increases in the price of food are due in large measure to market speculation and the diversion of crops to agrofuel production (Mitchell 2008).

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Global assault on farmers Trade liberalization, industrialization and privatization are purported to be the engines of economic growth and agricultural productivity. In reality, these trends benefit a small group, while the majority of farmers, and global food security, pay the price. Trade liberalization Many countries in the Global South have been forced to withdraw from investing in agriculture due to structural adjustment programmes prescribed by the IMF and the World Bank as conditions for debt financing – essentially, the reduction of public spending and an increase of exports, foreign investment and privatization. Structural adjustment programmes make it even more difficult for countries to pay debts (Gélinas 1998). They reduce or remove protective mechanisms such as supply management boards and tariffs on imports, weakening domestic productive capacity. With market liberalization, entire agricultural sectors in Southern countries have been abandoned due to the importation of cheap crops. Subsidies in certain countries, such as the United States and in Europe, place both domestic and export-oriented agriculture in other countries at a considerable disadvantage through dumping – the sale of crops at lower than the cost of production. A case in point is West Africa’s experience. As Ibrahim Coulibaly (2005: 20–1), Secretary General of the Malian farmers’ Union, Coordination nationale des organisations paysannes du Mali (CNOP), explains: We produce cereals that we cannot sell because in the middle of the 1980s, following a period of financial insolvability of our African states, our policies called for Structural Adjustment Measures, as dictated by the IMF and the World Bank. These policies forced our governments to withdraw all forms of support to domestic agriculture. … Farmers were left to themselves, fully exposed to the forces of the market. At the same time, our countries were required to liberalize their economies, thus opening our borders to food imports. As there are food surpluses in the world, and that these are sold at extremely low prices, our businesses began importing these agricultural surpluses without having to pay any import tariffs. This is what devastated our agriculture.

Despite pleas from many countries of the Global South to maintain import tariffs to protect their domestic economies, discussions at the World Trade Organization (WTO) continue to focus on a global reduction of tariffs as the solution to dumping, rather than the ability of countries to manage their own economies (CCIC 2005).

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Green Revolution When the Green Revolution was launched in the 1960s, it was touted by many governments and research centres as the solution to world hunger. The technology package was based on the use of so-called ‘high-yielding’ hybrid seeds that respond well to the application of chemical fertilizers and pesticides and irrigation. Specialization and monocropping – the growing of a single variety over extended areas – was promoted as the most productive form of land use, so that uniform rows of a crop could easily be planted, sprayed and harvested mechanically. While under optimal conditions, crop yields increased, the Green Revolution has come under harsh criticism due to the heavy toll it has had on biodiversity and rural livelihoods. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization’s report The State of the World’s Plant Genetic Resources (FAO 1997), the ‘spread of modern, commercial agriculture’ is the principal cause of genetic erosion in crops. Diversity is often lost through the displacement of local varieties by external ones (Brush 1986). Conversion to hybrids also breaks the cycle of crop improvement through seed selection. As hybrids lose their strength after a generation, farmers buy these seeds rather than save them. With the replacement of local farmers’ varieties with external, purchased ones, local biodiversity and the associated knowledge are lost. The Green Revolution ‘technology transfer’ approach has mainly advantaged large-scale operations (Altieri 1990; Chambers 1990). Smallholders in many regions of Latin America, for example, have been unable to access or maintain the expensive new technologies and face an economic disadvantage compared to industrialized operations and agribusiness that gain increasing vertical integration (Redclift and Goodman 1991; Teubal 1987). The result in many communities has been an aggravation of inequality, indebtedness and rural–urban migration. The decline of the family farm in North America must also be considered. As industrial farming relies heavily on agrochemicals and fossil fuels, farmers are vulnerable to price increases of these inputs. The National Farmers Union of Canada has shown that as grain or livestock prices increase, the costs of agricultural inputs invariably follow suit, eating away at farmers’ profit margins. In 2004, for example, farmers’ net income from markets (i.e. not including government payments) was on average negative $CA10,000, while chemical and seed companies saw record profits (NFU 2005).3 The impact of this income loss is clear. According to the 2011 Canadian agricultural census, the number of farms in Canada has shrunk by 10.3 per cent since 2006, translating into 23,643 fewer farms. Nearly half of farmers (46.9 per cent) were reported to be working off the farm in 2010 (Statistics Canada 2012), indicative of insufficient farm income.

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GE crops and intellectual property rights Genetically engineered (GE) crops constitute a major threat to on-farm crop diversity through biological and legal means. Since their introduction, there have been repeated cases of genetic contamination. In Mexico – the centre of origin for maize – farmers and scientists have documented genetic contamination that may have serious implications for on-farm or in situ conservation of local varieties (Quist and Chapela 2001). In Canada’s prairies, it is virtually impossible to grow GE-free canola due to genetic contamination (Friesen et al. 2003). Pesticide use has also increased with the expansion of GE crops (Benbrook 2009; López et al. 2008). Indeed, over 80 per cent of land dedicated to growing GE crops is sown with plants engineered to be resistant to the application of herbicides (Bonny 2007). The rise of GE crops has proceeded hand in hand with the spread of seed privatization laws. The WTO, through its Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), requires states to adopt intellectual property laws in all fields of technology. The agreement permits the patenting of life forms as inventions, provided they are ‘new’. States are not obliged to adopt patenting of all life forms, but they must at least adopt sui generis, or standalone, measures for intellectual property rights concerning plant varieties (WTO Agreement 1994: 331, Article 27.3.b). One of the frameworks for a sui generis system promoted in the WTO context is the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) (Swaminathan 1998). Seventy-one countries have adopted the UPOV acts as of 2012. These acts stipulate exclusive breeder’s rights regarding the sale and use of a ‘new’ crop variety, and place legal restrictions on seed saving and exchanging. This, in effect, marginalizes farmers who do not have the means of acceding to breeder’s rights, while their seeds may be used to design protected varieties or even appropriated outright. There have been several cases of ‘biopiracy’ in which traditional varieties were patented by corporations (Shiva 1997). Farmers buying GE seeds must sign Technology Use Agreements, requiring them to renounce saving these seeds. Biological means are also being developed to prevent seed saving, such as through Genetic Use Restriction Technologies (GURTs) or Terminator. This technology renders the next generation of seeds sterile at harvest, so that farmers must always purchase them. There is a moratorium on the technology through the Convention on Biological Diversity, though several companies and governments – including Canada – have tried to lift it (Vidal 2005; see also www.banterminator.org). The discourse used to defend intellectual property rights over plant life is that it increases innovation by securing companies’ research and commercial interests. However, TRIPS and UPOV do not include

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recognition of the communities from which varieties originate, nor the ‘fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources’ as stipulated under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD 1992: 146). Instead, ownership is increasingly in the hands of a few. For example, 82 per cent of commercial seed sales in the world are now proprietary, subject to intellectual property (Context Network cited in ETC Group 2008: 11). Furthermore, ten corporations control 73 per cent of the commercial seed market (ETC Group 2011).

Pushing back: food sovereignty Much of the struggle for food sovereignty is occurring at the community level. Local groups emphasize, however, that food sovereignty requires broader collective effort. The cases discussed below illustrate how food sovereignty is uniting community organizations and social movements and enabling them to counter the productivist discourse and the policies rooted in it. COPAGEN The Coalition for the Protection of African Genetic Heritage (Coalition pour la Protection du Patrimoine Génétique Africain), or COPAGEN, was founded in 2004 by African civil society organizations in West Africa. It is now present in nine countries of West Africa (Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinea, GuineaBissau, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo), bringing together over 180 civil society and peasant associations as members, representing millions of small farmers. COPAGEN was founded to resist the introduction of GE crops into West Africa and to defend the rights of communities over their genetic resources. Their position is clear: Yes for independent scientific research that values local biological resources and traditional and indigenous knowledge in the interest of small farmers and African consumers. No to the patenting of life forms and to [genetically modified organisms] because of the real and potential risks associated with them. (COPAGEN 2007)

With support from a broad spectrum of professionals (e.g. lawyers, geneticists, agronomists, environmentalists, agro-economists, linguists and teachers), COPAGEN has produced publications, films, radio programmes, and developed curricula to educate the public (both urban and rural) about intellectual property rights and GE crops. These have been translated into local languages such as Bambara, thereby empowering local groups to speak about these issues and enabling greater public engagement in national

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debates on biotechnology and agriculture policy. COPAGEN also offers an annual post-graduate course on the regulation of genetic engineering in Africa for regulators and civil society leaders. COPAGEN has become a recognized and authoritative voice on these issues. In Mali, COPAGEN was invited by the government to help elaborate the national law on agriculture development (Loi d’orientation agricole), which is largely founded on food sovereignty principles. In Burkina Faso, the coalition is conducting scientific studies on the impact of GE cotton on farmer livelihoods. In Togo, COPAGEN was called to assist the government in developing a biosafety framework, outlawing outright the introduction of GE crops in the country. In Benin, thanks to massive public mobilization and effective advocacy with the government, the country renewed a fiveyear moratorium on the introduction of GE crops. COPAGEN has recently added the fight against land grabbing into its scope of work. The strength of COPAGEN resides in the fact that it was born from within dynamic, endogenous social movements and organizations in West Africa. Its agenda is rooted in local needs and aspirations, and does not compromise funders who may have different views. However, it has also sought to create strategic international links with coalitions working for food sovereignty, enabling civil society in the North to carry out advocacy with a deeper understanding of how policies at home impact others. For instance, in the spring of 2007, COPAGEN was invited by Canadian NGOs to share a panel with a representative from the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) during a high-level seminar convened in Ottawa. AGRA is a multi-million dollar endeavour seeking to radically transform Africa’s agriculture, primarily through introduced seeds and chemical inputs. It was launched in 2006 by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, allied with the Rockefeller Foundation. COPAGEN made it clear that unless AGRA gave priority to African farmers’ proposals, this new Green Revolution was not welcome there. Seeds of survival Crop diversity and the right to save seeds are key elements of food sovereignty. As stated in the declaration of the civil society forum held during the 2002 FAO World Food Summit in Rome, food sovereignty requires: Protecting seeds, the basis of food and life itself, for the free exchange and use of farmers, which means no patents on life and a moratorium on the genetically modified crops which lead to the genetic pollution of essential genetic diversity of plants and animals. (NGO/CSO Forum 2002: 3)

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There are a growing number of NGO and community-led projects working to reverse genetic erosion, many inspired by the Seeds of Survival (SoS) programme, which began in the late 1980s. This programme provides technical and financial support to farmers’ groups to increase agrobio­ diversity through farmer-led research, on-farm (in situ) conservation and community gene banks, and international exchanges and training workshops. SoS was born in Ethiopia in 1989 through the joint efforts of the Plant Genetic Resources Centre of Ethiopia (now the Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute), USC Canada, Rural Advancement Fund Inter­national (RAFI, now ETC Group), and Inter Pares.4 USC Canada manages SoS, which currently directly supports agrobiodiversity programmes in ten countries.5 The experience of the SoS programme affirms that biodiversity-based agriculture is the best solution for farmers in marginalized areas, due to the reliance on locally adapted varieties. This work is ever more important due to climate change. Melaku Worede, founder of Ethiopia’s first gene bank and scientific advisor to the SoS programme explains: Soil, pests and climate are all very dynamic and diversity is the key to adapting to these fluxes. We therefore need to work with landraces, what I call farmers’ varieties, and enhance these. In the face of climate change, the key strategy is to get a diversity of seeds in the hands of farmers so they can do their own plant breeding.6

In Honduras, USC’s partner, the Foundation for Participatory Research with Honduran Farmers (Fundación para la Investigación Participativa con Agricultores de Honduras, FIPAH), works with farmer cooperatives to improve food security through the promotion of agrobiodiversity. Participating farmers are organized into local agricultural research committees or CIALs (Comité de Investigación Agrícola Local), which are grouped into regional associations and a national association. These committees and their associations provide many benefits to members and to the communities as a whole, including the sale and loan of affordable local seeds and grains, regional farmer radio programmes, reforestation and support to microenterprises. The creation of community-run seed and gene banks in Honduras have brought back into circulation local varieties that were thought to be extinct. These are now being multiplied in the communities and exchanged through seed fairs. They are also being used for participatory plant breeding, a process by which farmers and agronomists work together to improve varieties according to local needs and preferences (see Humphries et al. 2005). It has resulted in the release of several new varieties of maize and beans by the Honduran farmers, named in honour of special people and places of significance to the process. The programme has led to measurable improvements in food security in the communities (Classen et al. 2008).

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Many seed-saving programmes and networks around the world have made connections to food sovereignty because this work demonstrates the importance of local varieties for food supply and environmental protection, but also necessarily involves promoting farmers’ rights. As Agrawal (1995: 5) notes: ‘In situ preservation cannot succeed unless indigenous populations and local communities gain control over the use of the lands on which they dwell and the resources on which they rely’. In Honduras, the CIAL organizations are involved in national networks that seek to improve agricultural policies in favour of smallholders. As explained by former national association president and farmer, the late Luis Alonzo Pacheco, ‘Food sovereignty means growing and eating what we want, how we want and when we want’.7

Sustainable Uruguay In the past fifty years there has been a steady rural–urban migration in Uruguay, during which the number of farms and ranches was halved. Key among contributing factors are trade liberalization measures that led to diminished protections for small producers and national agro-industries (Cayota and Picerno 1995; Panario et al. 2000; Piñeiro 1991; Richards 1997). Organizations representing small-scale producers in Uruguay reject the productivista mindset and favor holistic rural policies. Several have embraced agroecology and food sovereignty models, which push further the critique of industrial agriculture and commonly accepted notions of development. A significant arena for the elaboration of these alternatives has been the Sustainable Uruguay (Uruguay Sustentable) programme coordinated by the Social Ecology Network-Friends of the Earth Uruguay (Red de Ecología Social-Amigos de la Tierra, or REDES-AT). It was aimed at strengthening social movements in the country through the creation of a citizens’ proposal for social justice and environmental sustainability. Beginning in the mid1990s, forums and workshops were held in which participants analyzed different sectors and proposed alternatives to current policies. A series of regional and national forums with about 170 organizations led to the development of a socio–environmental analysis (diagnóstico socio– ambiental) (Uruguay Sustentable 2000). Recommendations for action known as platforms were later documented through a cyclical process in ongoing forums. Development of an agricultural platform was based on discussions between environmentalists, academics, small producers, rural women, trade unionists and rural workers. Most participants represented grassroots organizations.

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The use of long-term participatory research and education methods encouraged the participation of marginalized groups and a newfound collaboration across rural–urban and rural–rural divisions. The establish­ ment of personal relationships and a broadening of common points of interest were crucial. Rural unions, for example, first became involved out of concern about colleagues who became sick due to exposure to agrochemicals. There was a growing recognition that all are facing similar problems in the current agro-industrial model. As one farmer stated during a forum in 2002: In order to keep the country going, it is not only the rural people, not only the small and medium producers who need to get out of this, not only rural workers, the [unions], and not only the women’s rural movement, not only the merchant, the industrialist. No, it is a problem related to the model this country has adopted and that we must analyze at its roots.

Central to the platform is the creation of integrated national policies that would aim to achieve food sovereignty. It sets out the priority areas for action and specific measures. Several of the structures advocated already exist in government. What is demanded is a change in model to one oriented towards the goals of food sovereignty, decentralized decisionmaking, sustainable land use, and the priority of protecting and promoting rural livelihoods. Rather than export-oriented production, the priority would be to satisfy local needs first. Agricultural exports would have to be of ‘high environmental quality’, differentiated as to origin. Ideally in this view, agroecological methods that make the most of local inputs and cultural practices would receive greater attention than Green Revolution technologies. Instead of GE crops, there would be protection of local varieties and their exchange among farmers. Finally, planning and land use management at watershed levels would replace centralized decision-making and markets (Uruguay Sustentable 2003). The concept of food sovereignty has been able to bring people together from very different backgrounds because it appeals to diverse needs. It became central to the platform on agriculture because it responds to many of the demands of the workers, women, farmers and environmentalists involved (Oliver 2007). The dialogue at a national level is also tied to international social movements and networks through which a range of shared and complementary ideas and values circulate. This common analysis has facilitated information exchange, community-level agroecological projects, joint campaigns and international solidarity, strengthening the work of participating groups.

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Conclusion More important than food aid or designing some rural development project for the Third World is building a movement in this country that makes the connection between the way government, corporate, and landed elites continue to undermine food security both here and abroad. ... Fewer and fewer farms control a larger and larger portion of our food. We get more and more needless processing and less nutrition for higher prices. Thus, as we fight to democratize our food economy in this country, we are fighting directly against the very forces that contribute to hunger in other countries. (Lappé and Collins 1977: 8)

These words were written by Frances Moore Lappé and Joseph Collins in 1977 in the United States in their influential book Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity. They could easily have been written today. Market liberalization, Green Revolution and genetic engineering technologies, coupled with ever-stricter seed laws, are squeezing out small farmers and agricultural biodiversity. What is different today is the emergence of a unifying concept, which is both critiquing the current food system and relations of power behind it, and proposing a new paradigm. The proposal of food sovereignty is increasingly uniting movements because it responds to a wide range of social, political, economic and environmental concerns. Diverse perspectives are converging in a collective critique that runs counter to the productivist discourse on agriculture. Food sovereignty is providing a lens with which to analyze current policies and how these affect the environment, people’s health, and communities in both rural and urban areas. In West Africa, food sovereignty has been a banner to unite against the imposition of GE crops. In Uruguay, the elaboration of a food sovereignty platform has encouraged previously isolated organizations to work together. Seed-savers and agro-biodiversity advocates worldwide have turned to the concept of food sovereignty to anchor the importance of in situ conservation within a policy framework. By presenting compelling proposals for change developed through extensive participatory processes, food sovereignty activists are increasingly being listened to in wider circles (see IAASTD 2008; De Schutter 2010; Council of Canadian Academies 2014). The 2008 food crisis, land grabs and the continuing volatility of food prices, have also led to a renewed and expanded debate about the global food system, potentially a crucial moment for the proposal of food sovereignty. As noted by Edelman (1999: 209): The now extensive literature…that sees ‘political opportunities’ as central to the formation of social movements rightly points to the critical importance of moments of state or elite vulnerability. But for this potential to be realized or even recognized, grassroots organizers need already to be in place or, alternatively, to emerge quickly; in either case, they have to undertake a great deal of analysis and

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120  r Six very hard work. And ‘opportunities’ may be lost…if organizers do not succeed in moving – in both senses of the word – potential movement participants.

At Nyéléni, banners covered the walls of the great outdoor gathering place with the words ‘The time for food sovereignty is now’. Perhaps it is.

Notes 1

2 3 4 5 6 7

For example: ‘Food biotechnology offers tremendous potential to improve our health, to help feed the world’s population and to benefit the environment’ (BIOTECanada, www.biotech.ca/EN/faqs.html, April 2005). Personal communication, Dr Awegechew Teshome, Senior Program Specialist at USC Canada (Ottawa 2005). In 2004, of the 75 companies examined, 41 posted record profits and 76 per cent of these had their best year, or nearly their best (NFU 2005). See Worede, Tesemma and Feyissa (2000) for discussion of the results of the SoS experience in Ethiopia. See USC Canada’s website, www.usc-canada.org. Personal communication, Dr Melaku Worede (Ottawa, 2007). Personal communication, Luis Alonzo Pacheco, (Yorito, Honduras, 2006), our translation.

References Altieri, Miguel A. (1990). ‘Agroecology and rural development in Latin America.’ In Miguel A. Altieri and Susanne B. Hecht (eds.). Agroecology and Small Farm Development. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 3–11. Altieri, Miguel A. (1995). Agroecology: The Science of Sustainable Agriculture. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Altieri, Miguel A. and Nicholls, Clara I. (2008). ‘Scaling up agroecological approaches for food sovereignty in Latin America’. Development 5(4): 472–80. Altieri, Miguel A., Anderson, K. and Merrick, L. C. (1987). ‘Peasant agriculture and the conservation of crop and wild plant resources.’ Conservation Biology, 1(1): 49–58. Agrawal, Arun (1995). ‘Indigenous and scientific knowledge: some critical comments.’ Indigenous Knowledge and Development Monitor, 3(3): 3–6. Benbrook, Charles (2009). ‘Impacts of Genetically Engineered Crops on Pesticide Use in the United States: The First Thirteen Years.’ Critical Issue Report, the Organic Centre. Available at http://organic-center.org. Brush, Stephen B. (ed.) (2000). ‘The issues of in situ conservation of crop genetic resources.’ In S. B. Brush (ed.). Genes in the Field: On-farm Conservation of Crop Diversity. Rome: IPGRI; Ottawa: IDRC; 3–26. Brush, Stephen B. (1986). ‘Genetic diversity and conservation in traditional farming systems.’ Journal of Ethnobiology, 6(1): 151–67. Cayota, S. and Picerno, A. (1995). Políticas diferenciadas para la producción familiar en la integración regional. Montevideo, Uruguay: CIESU Serie Técnica 6.

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Chaurette and Oliver  r 121 CBD (1992). Convention on Biological Diversity. United Nations. CCIC (2005). ‘The WTO Sixth Ministerial Meeting in Hong Kong: demise of the development agenda? A CCIC Background Briefing Paper.’ Ottawa: Canadian Council for International Cooperation. Chambers, Robert (1990). ‘Farmer first: a practical paradigm for the third agriculture.’ In Miguel A. Altieri and Susanna B. Hecht. (eds.). Agroecology and Small Farm Development. Boca Raton: CRC Press, 237–43. Classen, L., Humphries, S., Fitzsimons, J., Kaaria, S., Jiménez, J., Sierra, F. and Gallardo, O. (2008). ‘Opening participatory spaces for the most marginal: learning from collective action in the Honduran hillsides.’ World Development, 36(11): 2402–20. COPAGEN (2007). Position document translated from French. Available at www. combat-monsanto.org. Coulibaly, Ibrahim (2005). ‘Voices from the South: biotech seeds, food security and international development – a civil society – government dialogue initiative.’ Working Group on Canadian Science and Technology Policy, 20–1. Available at www.interpares.ca. Council of Canadian Academies (2014). ‘Aboriginal food security in Northern Canada: An assessment of the state of knowledge.’ Ottawa, Canada. Expert Panel on the State of Knowledge of Food Security in Northern Canada, Council of Canadian Academies. De Schutter, Olivier (2010). Report submitted by the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. Human Rights Council, Sixteenth session (20 Dec. 2010), United Nations General Assembly. Dona, A. and Arvanitoyannis, I. S. (2009). ‘Health risks of genetically modified food.’ Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, 49(2): 164–75. Edelman, Marc (1999). Peasants against Globalization: Rural Social Movements in Costa Rica. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Escobar, Arturo (1995). Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Esteva, Gustavo (1992). ‘Development.’ In Wolfgang Sachs (ed.). The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power. London: Zed Books, 6–25. ETC Group (2011). ‘Who will control the green economy?’ Communiqué No. 107: November 2011 Available at www.etcgroup.org. Ewen, S. W. B. and Pusztai A. (1999). ‘Effects of diets containing genetically modified potatoes expressing Galanthus nivalis lectin on rat small intestine.’ Lancet, 354: 1353–1354. FAO (1997). The State of the World’s Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. FAO (2007). ‘Organic Agriculture and Food Security.’ International Conference on Organic Agriculture and Food Security, Italy. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Inter-Departmental Working Group on Organic Agriculture, 3–5 May. Foucault, Michel (1991). ‘Governmentality.’ In Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller (eds.). The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 87–104.

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122  r Six Friesen, L. F., Nelson, A. G. and Van Acker, R. C. (2003). ‘Evidence of contamination of pedigree canola (Brassica napus) seedlots in Western Canada with genetically engineered herbicide resistant traits.’ Agronomy Journal, 1995: 1342–7. Gélinas, Jacques (1998). Freedom from Debt. Dhaka: University Press Ltd. London: Zed Books; Ottawa: Inter Pares. Inter Pares (2004). ‘Towards a new internationalism: a values-based program for life and justice.’ In Inter Pares 2005–2010 Program submission to CIDA Voluntary Sector Division. Unpublished document, Inter Pares, Ottawa, 1–104. Humphries, Sally, Gallardo, Omar, Jiménez, Jose and Sierra, Fredy with members of the Association of CIALs of Yorito, Sulaco and Victoria (2005). ‘Linking small farmers to the formal research sector: lessons from a participatory plant breeding programme in Honduras.’ Agricultural Research and Extension Network (AGREN) Network Paper No. 142. Lappé, Frances Moore and Collins, Joseph (1977). Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity. Institute of Food and Development Policy. Lappé, Frances Moore, Collins, Joseph and Rosset, Peter with Esparza, Luis (1998). World Hunger: 12 Myths. Oakland: Food First; New York: Grove Press. López Villar, Juan and Freese, Bill. (2008). Who Benefits from GM Crops? The Rise in Pesticide Use. Amsterdam: Friends of the Earth International (FOEI). Mayhew, Susan (2004). A Dictionary of Geography. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Merrick, Laura C. (1990). ‘Crop genetic diversity and its conservation in traditional ecosystems.’ In Miguel A. Altieri and Susanna B. Hecht (eds.). Agroecology and Small Farm Development. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 3–11. Millstone, Erik, Brunner, Eric and Mayer, Sue (1999, 7 October). ‘Beyond “substantial equivalence”.’ Nature, 401(6753): 525–526. Mitchell, Donald (2008). ‘A note on rising food prices’. Policy Research Working Paper 4682, The World Bank Development Prospects Group. Available at http:// econ.worldbank.org. Netting, Robert (1993). Smallholders, Householders: Farm Families and the Ecology of Intensive, Sustainable Agriculture. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. NFU (2005). The Farm Crisis and Corporate Profits: A Report by Canada’s National Farmers Union. Available at www.nfu.ca. NGO/CSO Forum (2002). ‘Food sovereignty: a right for all’, Political Statement of the NGO/CSO Forum for Food Sovereignty. Rome, June 2002. Nyéléni (2007). ‘Declaration of Nyéléni.’ Available at http://viacampesina.org. Oliver, Beatriz (2007). ‘A place for family farming: food sovereignty in Uruguay.’ Unpublished doctoral dissertation, McGill University, Montreal, Canada. Panario, Daniel, Marchel Achkar and José Pedro Aicardi (2000). ‘Sector agropecuario: Diagnóstico y escenarios sustentables.’ In REDES-AT (ed.). Uruguay Sustentable: Una Propuesta Ciudana. Montevideo: REDES-AT, 19–160. Piñeiro, Diego (1991). ‘La agricultura familiar: el fin de una época.’ In D. Piñeiro (ed.). Nuevos y no tanto: Los actores sociales para la modernización del agro Uruguayo.Montevideo: CIESU, 148–98. Quist, David and Chapela, Ignacio (2001). ‘Transgenic DNA introgressed into traditional maize landraces in Oaxaca, Mexico.’ Nature, 414(29): 541–3.

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Chaurette and Oliver  r 123 Redclift, Michael and Goodman, David (1991). ‘The machinery of hunger: the crisis of Latin American food systems.’ In M. Redclift and D. Goodman (eds.). Environment and Development in Latin America: The Politics of Sustainability. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 48–78. Richards, Donald G. (1997). ‘Dependent development and regional integration: a critical examination of the Southern cone market.’ Latin American Perspectives, 24(6): 133–55. Rosset, Peter (1999). ‘The multiple functions and benefits of small farm agriculture in the context of global trade negotiations.’ Food First Policy Brief, 4. Rosset, Peter (2003). ‘Food sovereignty: global rallying cry of farmer movements.’ Food First Backgrounder, 9(4). Royal Society of Canada (2001). Elements of Precaution: Recommendations for the Regulation of Food Biotechnology in Canada. Ottawa: Royal Society of Canada. Rutherford, Paul (1999). ‘The entry of life into history’. In Eric Darier (ed.). Discourses of the environment. London: Blackwell, 37–62. Sachs, Wolfgang (1992). The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power. London: Zed Books. Shiva, Vandana (1997). Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge. Boston, MA: South End Press. Shore, Cris, and Wright, Susan (1997). ‘Policy: a new field of anthropology.’ In Cris Shore and Susan Wright (eds.). Anthropology of Policy: Critical Perspectives on Governance and Power. London: Routledge, 3–39. Statistics Canada (2012 ). ‘2011 Census of Agriculture.’ The Daily, Statistics Canada 12 May 2012. Available at www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien. Swaminathan, M. S. (1998). ‘Farmer’s rights and plant genetic resources.’ Biotechnology and Development Monitor, 36(6–9). Uruguay Sustentable (2000). Uruguay sustentable: Una propuesta ciudadana. Montevideo: REDES-AT / Uruguay Sustentable. Uruguay Sustentable (2003). ‘Política nacional agropecuaria.’ Working paper. Montevideo: REDES-AT/Uruguay Sustentable. Teubal, Miguel (1987). ‘Internationalization of capital and agroindustrial complexes: their impact on Latin American agriculture.’ Latin American Perspectives, 14(3): 316–64. Vidal, John (2005, 9 February). ‘Canada backs terminator seeds.’ Guardian. Available at http://www.guardian.co.uk. Worede, Melaku, Tesemma, Tesfaye and Feyissa, Regassa (2000). ‘Keeping diversity alive: an Ethiopian perspective.’ In Stephen Brush (ed.). Genes in the Field: On-farm Conservation of Crop Diversity. Rome: IPGRI; Ottawa: IDRC, 143–161. World Bank (2003). ‘Reaching the rural poor: a renewed strategy for rural development.’ Washington, DC: World Bank. WTO Agreement (1994). ‘Annex 1C: Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights.’ Agreement establishing the World Trade Organization, signed in Marrakesh, Morocco on 15 April 1994, 319–51.

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7

Neoliberal Immigration and Temporary Foreign Worker Programmes in a Time of Economic Crisis Local/Global Struggles Aziz Choudry

Introduction With reference to the major mobilizations against capitalist globalization in North America at the turn of the twenty-first century, Vijay Prashad (2003) asked ‘who is at the frontlines of the struggles?’. Arguing for the importance of incremental struggles by the contingent class – predominantly people of colour and the working poor – and the disconnect between them and most of those in major ‘global justice’ mobilizations, he says: The question is not just about gaps that have opened up between those who demonstrate and those who don’t, but between those who think they are at the frontlines when they toss the tear gas canisters back at the police and those who face routine political disenfranchisement, economic displacement, social disdain, and yet spend their days in their own forms of fight-back. (194)

This chapter contextualizes the ongoing local/global struggles of migrant and immigrant workers for justice and dignity in Canada in an era of global capitalist crisis. Such struggles take place on the farms of rural British Columbia, Manitoba, Quebec, and Ontario, behind the doors of suburban homes in the lives of domestic workers, in the factories and foodprocessing plants, on construction sites, in and around Alberta’s tar sands, and many other visible and invisible locations. They resonate with struggles in many other societies as working people are categorized according to often interlocking immigration status, race, gender and class, and in reference to historical and contemporary processes of the racialized construction of nation states and citizenship. As Rodriguez (2010a) notes with regard to contemporary Filipino migrant workers, the restructuring

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and undermining of many societies in the Global South under earlier eras of colonialism, and historical institutional arrangements concerning labour are an important part of the context for understanding labour and immigration under today’s form of global capitalism. This chapter considers the expansion of temporary migrant worker programmes in Canada over recent years, alongside the role of global institutions/intergovernmental processes on migration and labour, such as the Global Forum on Migration and Development, and labour mobility provisions in free trade and investment agreements such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), and bilateral and regional free trade and investment agreements (FTAs) outside of the WTO. Although Canada’s temporary foreign worker programmes have tended to cover low-skilled workers for the most part, and labour mobility provisions in free trade agreements tend to cover a relatively small number and narrow categories of skilled workers, it argues that these mechanisms contribute to the entrenching of the exploitation and commodification of workers. One challenge for local struggles against unfair working conditions and precarity, for dignity and immigration status is to find ways to connect to, contribute towards, and draw strength from building an analysis and networks of migrant worker activism. The final part of this chapter discusses current and future directions of local/ global struggles of im/migrant workers, from local daily forms of fight back to international movement network-building to reveal how the process of resistance creates knowledge ‘from the ground up’ – important resources for contemporary and future struggles. Around the world, migrant workers, established immigrant communities and, in some cases, second- and third-generation immigrant workers provide pools of ‘cheap’ labour to be exploited by domestic and transnational economic interests. These cheap labour pools are pivotal to the functioning of many societies. In the current economic crisis, as profits are privatized, costs/losses socialized, and new austerity measures imposed domestically and internationally by governments, the burden of the devastating impacts of the financialization phase of global capitalism is squarely placed onto working people’s shoulders. As the economic crisis has mutated to span crises in the housing and financial sectors, to a sovereign debt crisis (McNally 2010), migrant workers are affected in their countries of work and in their countries of origin. Meanwhile, in an era where immigration policies are increasingly defined by free market priorities of states, we see new forms of state control over migrant communities. In many countries, including Canada, border controls have been increasingly geared towards managing flows of largely temporary migrant workers – what some liken to a rotating-door labour market – geared to just-

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in-time production of various kinds. Kundnani’s (2007) reflections on recent British immigration history hold true for many other contexts. He writes that ‘those migrating into this peripatetic underclass would be rightless and without a foothold in society, unable to wield any of the formal rights of citizenship that post-WWII settlers enjoyed, and which enabled them, eventually, to challenge the indignities meted out to them’ (144). Instead of the idea of the post-WWII reserve army of manual workers The new post-industrial migrant workforce was characterized by several distinct streams – reserve regiments of labour – each adapted to the specific needs of different sectors of the economy. The intricacies of the system would be kept subject to constant review and adjustment, so that the numbers, character and entitlements of workers entering the economy under different schemes could be changed as necessary. Each of these various routes provided employers with a different package of exploitation. (145)

Perhaps nowhere is the categorization, regulation and racialization of work in Canada more obvious than in temporary worker programmes such as the Live-in Care Giver Program (LCP) which bring in caregivers, mainly Filipinas, and the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP), predominantly Mexican and Caribbean workers (Preibisch 2007a). In these programmes there is a clear distinction between civil rights of foreigners and citizens. Such jobs were initially done by white Canadians, new European immigrants who were granted status. By contrast, the nonwhite temporary workers who replaced them in these categories are for the most part denied the automatic right of permanent residence, freedom of movement between employers and jobs, and access to rights and entitlements of social citizenship. In temporary migrant worker schemes, workers are commodities, pure and simple, labour units to be recruited, utilized and sent away again as employers require, tied to a specific employer through a combination of their immigration and labour permits and, therefore, often stuck with worse conditions with little recourse to improve them (Choudry et al. 2009; Preibisch 2007b; Rodriguez 2010a; Sharma 2006; Stasiulis and Bakan 2003; Zaman 2006). The expansion of temporary worker programmes along a more employer-driven and directed, privatized model also expands a class of workers for whom it is more difficult to gain permanent status. Temporary foreign workers are a way of meeting labourmarket demand without incurring administrative costs. Employers can easily fire such workers without incurring social costs when employment declines. In this context, discrimination and exploitation because of race, immigration status, class, and gender play out together. Women migrant workers are particularly impacted, comprising the majority in sectors with

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the least protections, lowest wages and most demeaning conditions. As Stasiulis and Bakan (2003: 14) have pointed out, they are particularly affected by ‘the neoliberal realignment of the public/private divide’ as care shifts more into households as shrinking state commitments to funded child care and healthcare. Typically, such workers have not been allowed to join unions, so have no collective bargaining power. Sometimes, they are not paid on time, and in some cases they are not paid at all. They may endure unsafe and unhealthy working conditions, and receive wages far below the average paid to local workers for equivalent work, while toiling long hours, and perhaps being more willing to accept this situation because of the relatively short duration of their employment abroad; and they may be subject to abuse from employers (Choudry et al. 2009; Preibisch 2007b; Stasiulis and Bakan 2003). Stasiulis and Bakan (2003: 52) argue that the LCP (which was replaced by the Caregiver Program in 2014) amounts to a condition of ‘indentured labour’. The Alberta Federation of Labour (2009) described Canada’s temporary foreign worker programmes as ‘entrenching exploitation’ of migrant workers. Notwithstanding recent reforms of the programmes, the recently-defeated Conservative Government led by Stephen Harper promoted the expansion of a system of temporary foreign worker programmes which further institutionalized a new, cheap, disposable migrant workforce, with its system of hierarchies and exclusions in a range of jobs. Under Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s low-skill pilot programmes (Pilot Project for Occupations Requiring Lower Levels of Formal Training) these workers have been labouring in the fields to grow and harvest food, working on the meatpacking chain, in hotels and other sectors, at a time when Canadian permanent residence status is being offered to fewer people. In the 2007 federal budget, Ottawa committed an additional $50.5 million over two years to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) to reduce processing delays, and respond more effectively to regional labour and skill shortages. In September 2007, Ottawa announced a pilot project in British Columbia and Alberta to speed up processing times for approving temporary foreign workers in twelve sectors. The occupations chosen included carpenters, crane operators, hotel/hospitality room attendants, hotel front desk clerks, food and beverage servers, food counter attendants, tour and travel guides, registered nurses, dental technicians, pharmacists, snowboard and ski instructors, and retail sales clerks. According to Human Resources and Social Development Canada (HRSDC 2006) in 2006, there were 171,844 temporary workers in Canada, a 122 per cent increase from ten years earlier. In 2008, the number of workers entering Canada under temporary foreign worker programmes outnumbered those arriving to become permanent residents:

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370,000 temporary foreign workers were admitted, while 250,000 people were granted permanent residence – the first time that the numbers of temporary foreign workers arriving in Canada exceeded those arriving as landed immigrants. Built around labour flexibility, Ottawa responded to business demands to make the use of temporary foreign workers more friendly to employers, while critics, including trade union and immigration justice groups (e.g. Alberta Federation of Labour 2009; Choudry et al. 2009; UFCW 2010) and a strongly worded report by the Auditor-General’s office (2009) have charged that these programmes have few real safeguards, and lead to much actual and potential abuse of workers. During 2013 and 2014 there was sustained media attention and criticism of the TFWP, followed by official announcements of reforms and promises of further changes to the programmes. Yet while some of this debate reflected concerns about the actual and potential exploitation of foreign workers, most demands hinged on the preservation of Canadian jobs. Very few acknowledged the broader historical and contemporary feature of Canada’s capitalist economy – its systemic reliance upon exploitation through race, immigration status and shifting forms of ‘unfree labour’ (for exceptions, see Ramsaroop and Smith 2014). Public pressure led the federal government (with its eye on the 2015 federal election), to ban the restaurant industry from using the TFWP (e.g. Harper 2014). Opposition parties and labour unions called for the moratorium to be extended to the entire programmes. But the moratorium placed on the use of migrant workers in this sector forms a knee-jerk reaction, which fails to address the racist foundations of Canada’s temporary labour migration regime, and the role of capitalist restructuring and broader transformations of work in contributing to the pronounced use of temporary foreign workers across many sectors. Indeed, in mid-2015 thousands of low-skilled temporary foreign workers would be forced to leave Canada, and stay outside for four years before being able to apply for another work permit due to the reforms.

Neoliberal immigration management Globally, Richmond (1994: 204) describes the rise of ‘a system of global apartheid based on discrimination against migrants and refugees from poorer developing countries.’ A global (often Western) educated elite is relatively mobile, but the overwhelming majority is temporary, non-status, exploitable, and often underground. Ottawa routinely invokes increased competition due to economic globalization in its rationale for immigration policy. Canada, along with other countries, moved to expand these programmes with greater involvement of the private sector and international organiz­ations such as the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

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This is in spite of criticisms of such programmes, and accompanying wider injustices and inequalities in both the workplace and wider society experienced by new immigrants and racialized communities in Canada. Canada interacts internationally with other immigrant-receiving countries such as Australia and European nations, including exchanges between policymakers and officials in various forums about best practices for ‘managing’ immigration and related matters (Abu-Laban and Gabriel 2002; Hennebry and Preibisch 2010). The Canadian government has positioned itself internationally as an authority on ‘immigration management’, sharing expertise with other governments, and is an active player in the internationalization of policy, research and informationsharing on approaches to immigration. Such international­ization helps to account for the renewed interest and expansion of temporary foreign worker programmes, the overall import and export of policy ideas on regulation of immigration, state multiculturalism and diversity. Contemporary policy trends and struggles of migrant workers must be seen with reference to the process of construction of the Canadian nation, from which they are effectively excluded. Since colonization, Canada has been based on the creation of a settler colony primarily for British and French immigrants and their descendants, built on the dispossession of indigenous peoples, the commodification and appropriation of their lands and resources, and constructed with successive waves of immigrant labour. Canada has historically used racialized immigration policy to provide the labour of immigrants to the national economy, and many scholars (AbuLaban and Gabriel 2002; Stasiulis and Bakan 2003; Thobani 2000, 2007) note the historical continuities underpinning contem­ porary Canadian immigration, labour and other policy frameworks. Dominant narratives of Canadian immigration tend to claim that race-based immigration policies have ended and been replaced by ‘multicultural’ practices (Canadian Heritage 2004). An image of Canada has been constructed which portrays the nation and national values as inherently humanitarian and caring (Razack 2004; Thobani 2007). Moreover, a number of critics (Abu-Laban and Gabriel 2002; Arat-Koç 1999; Thobani 2000, 2007) contend that the introduction of the immigration points system and the end to explicit discrimination in favour of ‘white’ immigrants to Canada by no means deracialized immigration policy; nor, more broadly, do these policy changes substantively trouble understandings of who and what is ‘Canada’ and ‘Canadian’ which challenge the ‘hegemonic Euro-Canadian project’ (Thobani 2007: 16). Critics charge that the immigration points system has become more elitist, while the refugee system has fewer avenues for appeal. Abu-Laban and Gabriel (2002) and Arat-Koç (1999) draw attention to the way in which the increasing neoliberalism underpinning Canadian

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government policy has influenced immigration policy. Under a neoliberal regime, the state role in regulating the labour market is changing; so, too, with the restructuring of the state and the economy. Faith is placed in the market to deliver equitable outcomes and deal with labour market inequalities; neoliberal values guide policy in immigration, multiculturalism and employment equity. From the laboursending end, Rodriguez (2010a) maps the emergence of the Philippines as a labour brokerage state, mobilizing and exporting its citizens as a profitable commodity through facilitated out-migration and remittances. Globally, with the intensification and restructuring of capitalism has come an intensification of inequality. The International Labour Organization (2002) partly attributes the significant rise in irregular forms of migration and irregular status of an estimated 15 per cent or more migrant workers to ‘the increasing commercialization of the private recruitment process and the growing practice among developed countries of applying unduly restrictive immigration policies.’ Meanwhile, Ottawa has cut back spending and devolved state responsibility for settling new immigrants onto individuals and communities themselves, while it facilitated the increased privatization – greater employer and private sector involvement – in temporary foreign worker programmes. New immigrants to Canada are increasingly viewed through a lens of how they might benefit Canada’s ‘global competitiveness’; and are expected to be self-sufficient and shoulder increased responsibilities for adaptation and integration.

Canada’s brand of global capitalism pushing people to migrate McNally (2002: 137) argues that ‘[t]he fundamental truth about globalization – that it represents freedom for capital and unfreedom for labour – is especially clear where global migrants are concerned’. In addition to the neoliberal underpinning of domestic policy, in international forums such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), Canada actively supports the expansion of free market capitalist policies – not least in agriculture – which have destroyed or eroded traditional societies and livelihood opportunities in the name of a model of development through export-driven, market-oriented growth. Migration continues to be shaped by interconnected economic, political and social push-and-pull factors. As Razack (2004), Thobani (2007), Wright (2006) and others contend, Canada’s role in creating or exacerbating these push factors needs close scrutiny. Push factors include structural adjustment programmes imposed in the Global South by the World Bank

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and International Monetary Fund and other financial institutions, and often supported through bilateral official aid, ‘development’ projects, restructuring of economies along neoliberal lines through trade and aid arrangements in which both CIDA and Canadian international trade and economic policy play roles. Akers Chacón (2006: 90) writes of ‘neoliberal immigration’ – ‘displacement accompanied by disenfranchisement and often internal segregation in host countries’. Neoliberal policies force people from their farms, jobs, families and communities and into exploitation and precarity as migrant workers in other countries. Deindustrial­ ization and the downsizing and privatization of essential services – accompanied by increasing user fees – are other ‘push factors’ forcing growing numbers to seek work abroad (McNally 2002; Mathew 2005; Stasiulis and Bakan 2003). The material conditions in workers’ countries of origin, as well as the structures of labour markets in the migrant-receiving countries shape the place of migrant workers. Free trade and investment agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and structural adjustment programmes push farmers off their land as common lands are privatized – often to facilitate corporate export-based agricultural production. This forces people into low wage labour in maquiladora assembly plants or to find ways to migrate north across an increasingly dangerous and militarized US–Mexico border. Likewise, Canadian corporations operating in the Philippines, India, Colombia and elsewhere have both shaped and benefited from deregulated natural resources policy regimes, which have led to the displacement and the impoverishment of communities, who are often forced to migrate to seek livelihoods elsewhere. The economies of countries like Mexico, the Philippines, Pakistan and Bangladesh, have become increasingly dependent on remittances in the wake of loss of foreign exchange earning capacity, takeovers by privatization, and massive public sector cuts. Sutcliffe (2004: 273) observes that ‘the individual decisions of individual migrant workers lead to considerably more money being transferred to poorer countries than all the development aid provided by the world’s richest countries (including the multilateral agencies)’. Migrant workers and remittances are a key area of interest to the World Bank, the European Commission, and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and other international agencies, which increasingly promote the concept of migrant workers’ family remittances to keep their countries of origin from collapsing. Remittances are what Kapur (2004), calls ‘the new development mantra’. The growing dependence on remittances from migrant workers puts many countries at the mercy of vagaries of anti-immigrant sentiment and immigration (and other) policies of other countries, not least in times of economic crisis and

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uncertainty. Notwithstanding new hardships, including the impact of the 2008 economic crisis, the pressure remains on finding ways to send remittances home. According to a 2009 World Bank Migration and Development brief (Ratha, Mohapatra and Silwal, 2009), globally remittances in 2008 amounted to US$328 billion. Although officially recorded remittance flows to developing countries fell in 2009 from their 2008 level, and may continue to fall, migrants often worked to absorb economic difficulties and maintain sending remittances home through further sacrifices (Awad 2009). Recorded remittances in 2009 were nearly three times the amount of official foreign aid flows. A 2012 World Bank report projected worldwide remittances from migrant workers, (including those sent to high-income countries) to total US$534 billion in 2012, and to grow to $685 billion in 2015 (World Bank 2012). Locked into a neoliberal model, countries that have grown dependent on exporting workers often have shrinking policy space to pursue other options for economic development. One international site of policy discussion (and contestation) of the migration and development model is the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) which was set up after the 2006 UN high-level dialogue on migration and development as a venue for sending-sending and receiving governments, to discuss strategies on instituting temporary labour migration programmes. Rodriguez (2010b: 53) describes it thus: Pegged as a win-win-win, for both sets of governments and migrants themselves, temporary labour migration programmes are being celebrated as the best solution to labour-receiving governments demand for cheap foreign workers to whom they are unwilling to extend full citizenship rights, to labour-sending governments’ need to address domestic unemployment, and to bolster foreign exchange reserves, and migrants’ and their families’ need for liveable wages.

Rodriguez contends that the migration-as-development approach promoted by the World Bank, the IOM, and the GFMD through temporary labour migration programmes ‘allow employers to exploit foreign workers, absolve developing states from introducing truly redistributive develop­ mental policies and relieve states from extending the full benefits of citizenship to immigrants’ (Rodriguez 2010b: 55). Remittances have been a way of downloading state responsibility to individual workers, as well as a social safety valve for masses of unemployed or underemployed workers in many countries. In both migrant-worker sending and receiving countries, a more general trend of state withdrawal for responsibility for provision of social services affects local and migrant workers alike.

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Free trade, unfree labour Besides temporary foreign worker programmes legislated by states, internationally, in the course of negotiating free trade and investment agreements, the hint of possible concessions on labour mobility have been used by some Northern governments to encourage liberalization and deregulation in other areas, such as investment, services and government procurement. Free trade, its advocates promise, will supposedly lead to a reduction of immigration because countries will become more prosperous. Washington proclaimed that NAFTA would lead Mexico to export goods, and not people, to the US, yet ‘illegal’ immigration to the US has risen (Uchitelle 2007). The potential of such trade agreements as vehicles for certain categories of temporary foreign workers is as yet unclear; yet social justice activists have raised concerns about this. The WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) includes clauses on the temporary movement of ‘natural persons’ to facilitate trade and investment in services, although there is no definition of what ‘temporary’ means. Its annex on the movement of natural persons deals with negotiations on individuals’ rights to stay temporarily in a country for the purpose of providing a service. David Hartridge, former Director of the WTO’s Services Division, claimed that ‘without the enormous pressure generated by the American financial services sector, particularly companies like American Express and Citicorp, there would have been no services agreement’ (Hartridge 1997: n.p.). The European Commission stated: ‘GATS is not just something that exists between Governments. It is first and foremost an instrument for the benefit of business’ (European Commission 1998). GATS is more about investment than trade. Under GATS, governments agree to open the economy to foreign suppliers of certain services. In those services, foreign suppliers must be given at least as favourable treatment as afforded to local suppliers. Governments cannot set limits on the numbers of service suppliers operating in its market or impose requirements for local content. Just as workers are treated as mere commodities in these agreements, so too are fundamental services. Kelsey (2003) characterizes GATS as an ideological transformation of services from fundamentally social relations embedded in communities to commercialized commodities traded within an international marketplace. Critics charge that the GATS approach to labour mobility is very much driven by the interests of TNCs and investors, and not those of workers in the Global South. GATS Mode 4 extends to foreigners who are service suppliers in the host, home or a third-member country, in respect of the supply of a specific service, employed in a foreign company established abroad, or which is

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supplying services under a contract without permanent presence in that country. It also includes independent or self-employed service providers, who get paid directly by customers. GATS does not apply to work outside of service sectors nor to people seeking permanent employment or permanent residence. Some Southern governments look to GATS Mode 4 as a possible way to help facilitate increased mobility of temporary workers from labourabundant countries to labour-scarce ones, earning them more foreign exchange, while others see in these moves the potential for a global migrant worker programme that should be opposed. The Least Developed Countries (LDC) group at the WTO, led by Bangladesh, has unsuccessfully pushed developed countries to liberalize their markets for semi-skilled categories of service providers of the LDCs under Mode 4, going beyond high-skilled categories (Hossain 2007). Some commentators argue that governments lobbying for a broader interpretation of GATS Mode 4 would need to demonstrate their intention and means of enforcing the temporary nature of the Mode 4 movement before Northern countries agree to liberalize this area. The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU, now ITUC) and Public Services International (PSI) expressed alarm at a request made by China and India to remove the stipulations of wage parity which those countries which have made Mode 4 commitments have specified in their offers from the negotiations. ‘Not only is it bad enough that the WTO, which has no expertise in migration issues, has undertaken to conduct such discussions [but] [i]t sends the wrong signal to all those who think exploitation of workers is a competitive advantage in the quest for profits’, argued Guy Ryder, General Secretary of the ICFTU (ICFTU 2006: n.p.). Under dispute mechanisms of free trade and investment agreements, wage parity between temporary migrant service workers and locals may even be challenged as a protectionist measure. Sending countries could charge that wage parity undermines the competitive advantage of their migrant workers who will work for lower wages. Yet temporary workers would still have to pay the same living expenses as local workers. Proposals to expand Mode 4 commitments to explicitly cover semi-skilled and unskilled workers must be seen in the context of expansion of temporary foreign worker programmes in the North. They are no solution to injustices created by neoliberal programmes, and they further undermine domestic labour rights by creating and expanding a subclass of workers on special temporary visas in service sector jobs. Tensions over the coverage and liberalization of labour mobility under GATS cannot be separated from analysis of the horse-trading and power

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politics that takes place in relation to other aspects of trade and investment agreements, and aid conditionalities, for example, as well as longstanding debates over linkages between labour standards and free trade commitments. Third World governments are being blamed for blocking progress at the WTO on services that are in the interest of Northern governments and TNCs. Yet Northern govern­ments are making few commitments in areas of interest to the Third World and continue to pressure Southern governments to make better offers on liberalizing service sectors (especially finance, tele­ communications, energy, distribution and environment) as a pre­requisite for any new concessions on agriculture, for example. With the slow pace of WTO negotiations and the emergent understanding that lower-key bilateral talks can often achieve faster, deeper results, while dividing up emerging alliances among Third World governments against Northern positions at the WTO, attention turned to FTAs. In general, governments have preferred separate bilateral labour agreements, usually sectoral, giving them more flexibility, control, and regulatory discretion over multilateral agreements (OECD 2004), or more traditional immigration policies governing temporary workers from overseas. Now, a number of bilateral free trade and investment agreements have also become processes through which some governments seek agreements on labour mobility. Globally, while there has been some limited sector-specific liberalization of temporary movement of labour in FTA services provisions, the restrictive approach has prevailed. While Canada has taken a rather cautious approach on this so far (Henry 2002; MacLaren 2008), it may be instructive to look at moves to bring various categories of temporary foreign workers under such agreements in other contexts. NAFTA’s chapter 16 covers temporary entry/movement of labour of four broad categories of workers, ‘business visitors’, ‘traders and investors’, ‘intra-company transferees’ and ‘professionals’ engaging in business activities. Several dozen professions and occupations are covered, ranging from architect to zoologist, applying to only a narrow segment of workers in each member country. Canadian FTAs, such as the Canada–Chile FTA, typically state an intention to facilitate licensing and accreditation procedures between the two countries, including development of mutually acceptable standards and criteria for licensing and certification of professional service providers, but little more than that. In negotiations with the recently concluded (but yet to be ratified) European Union for a Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) Canada sought a broader coverage of professions than under NAFTA (Gauthier and Holden 2010). Should trade in services continue to expand through future FTAs and other agreements, will we see a gradual expansion of labour mobility provisions covering other service sectors in Ottawa’s international trade

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commitments in addition to immigration policies? While Canada seems unlikely to expand labour mobility coverage through FTAs to cover temporary lower-skilled service occupations (Henry 2002; MacLaren 2008), neither this avenue, should Ottawa take it, nor the management of temporary foreign worker programmes augur well for the rights of workers and struggles for immigration justice.

Resistance through crisis: local and global In the current economic crisis, im/migrant workers find themselves still in demand for their labour, but also scapegoats for job losses and all manner of societal ills. While governments like Ottawa ‘get tough’ on ‘illegal’ immigrants, they seek to corral more and more im/migrants into inherently temporary and precarious labour programmes in lieu of opportunities to obtain permanent residence (Choudry et al. 2009; Sharma 2006; Wright 2006). Worldwide, the neoliberal offensive has eroded trades jobs, attacked unionism, and imposed policies of labour deregulation, flexibilization, casualization, expanded sub­ contracting chains, and the relocation of industry to cheaper production sites. In some cases, these changes have fuelled exclusionary or racist practices within unions towards new immigrants, instead of solidarity and support for struggles for workplace justice and within wider society. Immigration status is used as a tool by governments and business elites to undermine alliance building among workers, while immigrants still make convenient scapegoats for politicians the world over, especially in times of economic crisis. There is a widespread reluctance and denial to admit the extent to which so many economies depend on migrant labour. Yet the crisis may make migrant labour even more attractive to employers who think they can get advantage from paying vulnerable foreign workers – migrant workers and new immigrants – less than prevailing wages and shirking health and safety protections. Another feature of the neoliberal transformation of work has been the growth of temporary labour agencies for which many migrant and immigrant workers work (Choudry and Henaway 2012); not to mention pitting migrant workers against local workers and exerting downward pressure on labour rights and conditions through them. As they have been throughout history, migrant workers and new immigrants alike provide convenient scapegoats for social political and economic ills. With continuing adversity comes renewed resistance. In Canada, there is alliance-building between im/migrant worker justice organizing and other groups and networks that work more broadly on issues of immigration justice – No One Is Illegal, Solidarity Across Borders,

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Justicia 4 Migrant Workers, and Montreal’s Immigrant Workers Centre, for example – and others working on issues of racial profiling and security certificates. These groups and movements organize broader campaigns that mobilize across organizations and bring people together to challenge the general condition of migrants, as well as specific concerns. It is important to build beyond the local and connect on some of the wider conditions facing migrant workers. Internationally, new organizations and networks have been founded to build solidarity, to share local experiences and to express the fact that the injustices faced by migrants worldwide are similar and are a result of the global displacement linked to neoliberal capitalism and its crises. In a situation in which countries like the Philippines export domestic workers around the world, as a matter of state policy (Rodriguez 2010a; Stasiulis and Bakan 2003), international organizing networks provide a means for sharing knowledge and strategies, and building solidarity. The first step towards justice for immigrant workers begins with local organizing: carrying struggles forward requires allies such as unions and wider social movements to challenge the power of international capital. In Hong Kong in June 2008, an assembly of 118 migrant workers’ organizations and their allies from twenty-five countries across the world, including a sizeable delegation from several cities in Canada (i.e. representatives from the Montreal-based Immigrant Workers Centre (IWC) and PINAY, a women’s organization of domestic workers and their supporters) formed the International Migrants Alliance (IMA). IMA aims to strengthen solidarity connections between migrant workers’ struggles and to coordinate joint actions and campaigns on issues such as just wages, job security, criminali­zation of undocumented migrants and the trafficking of women. The October 2008 GFMD in Manila was challenged by migrant workers’ organizations and their advocates organizing a counter-conference and mass action under the slogan: ‘Migrants’ Challenge to the GFMD: Uphold and Protect the Rights of Migrants and Refugees!’ The event’s organizers strongly critique dominant positions on migration and development including many held by NGOs and unions claiming to speak for migrant workers, contending that the GFMD, which they called the ‘global forum on modern-day slavery’, promotes ‘greater commodification of migrants and the perpetuation of conditions for cheap labour, not to mention the social costs of migration, especially on children and families.’ The GFMD and its agenda were targeted when it met in Athens in November 2009, in Mexico, the following year. These movements charge that the dominant concept of ‘development’ through migration and the reliance on remittances as development tools are neoliberal ideas and strategies, which thrive

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138  r Seven on people’s exploitation and miseries of migrants, enhances labour flexibilization and therefore, greater commodification of labour, and only brings Third World countries into the quagmire of poverty because these do not address the root causes of underdevelopment and the massive migration of peoples from poor countries. (IAMR [International Assembly of Migrants of Refugees] 2008)

However, the strength of such international networks is their grounding in concrete local struggles. For example, Montreal’s IWC, a founder member of the IMA, sees education and mobilization about the interconnections between its casework, its campaign for CSST (Commission de la Santé et Sécurité au Travail – Quebec worker compensation board) coverage for domestic workers and new immigrants to Quebec, supporting organizing among temporary foreign workers and temporary agency workers, support work for immigration/status cases with public campaigns and media work, advocacy, workshops, lobbying and building and sustaining coalitions and networks with other groups, communities which are struggling for a more just future, in Montreal, across Quebec, Canada, and internationally. Those connections between the local and the global are key to understanding the context, and breaking the sense of isolation around what sometimes seem like individual cases of abuse, and for strategizing about how to mount effective collective campaigns. Significantly, organizations such as the Immigrant Workers Centre, and the struggles that they support can be key sites of informal and non-formal learning and knowledge production. This process occurs through workers’ struggles and contestation of their conditions and rights. One study on immigrant workers’ struggles in Quebec (Choudry et al. 2009: 112) notes: Individuals that did eventually take action always did so with the support of others, who provided information and other resources to help them in a dispute with an employer. These others can be unions, community organizations or co-workers or friends with whom they have informal relationships. ‘Street smarts’ and small victories are shared between people: this in turn encourages others to take action. Such learning most often grows out of pre-existing relations with other individuals, peers or friends. However, organizations play a key role.

Learning to question or to resist exists in tension with learning to cope, adapt or ‘get by’ – as it does in workplace industrial relations since the emergence of capitalism. Sometimes, as Rodriguez (2010b) notes, such knowledge forms contest not only the power (and knowledge) produced by governments, but also that of professionalized NGOs which purport to speak on behalf of migrant workers. But building alliances with trade unions, through education and supporting internal debates occurring

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within organized labour to encourage unions to more meaningfully represent the needs and concerns of immigrant and migrant workers is an important aspect of these local and global struggles for justice. In an April 2010 victory for migrant workers, the Quebec Labour Relations Board (QLRB) overturned a forty-year-old section of the Quebec Labour Code, article 21.5, which only allowed union organizing at Quebec farms with three or more employees continuously employed throughout the year, excluding many industrial-scale farms, where most workers are seasonal. The QLRB determined that whether seasonal or year-round – all farmworkers in Quebec, including some 6,000 migrant farmworkers in the province, have the constitutional right to organize for the purposes of collective bargaining as protected under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (UFCW 2010). This right for farmworkers to unionize in Quebec was further upheld by a 2013 Quebec Superior Court ruling. But this was then undermined through Bill 8, legislation passed by the Quebec provincial assembly in October 2014, which effectively denies the right of seasonal workers in small farms and greenhouses to unionize and bargain collectively (UFCW 2014).

Conclusion Global capitalism fragments labour and the lives of working people everywhere. Struggles for immigration status, dignity and justice for temporary im/migrant workers are raising some of the most important challenges to capital and state in recent years. While Canada’s emphasis on turning to temporary foreign worker programmes to enhance its global competitiveness continues to draw fire from a range of critics, it might be prudent to keep one eye on labour mobility provisions in free trade and investment agreements. Critics argue that these processes of services liberalization are fundamentally about advancing and locking in privatization, deregulation, and unrestricted foreign investment and contracting-out that workers around the world have been resisting on many fronts. Many movements have rejected the idea of making global capitalism seem more benign by incorporating so-called ‘social’ and ‘green’ clauses linking free trade to labour and environmental standards, viewing that neoliberal globalization is fundamentally exploitative of workers. Such an analysis was advanced at the founding assembly of the International Migrants Alliance, which strongly condemned both labour mobility provisions in FTAs and temporary foreign worker programmes for locking migrant workers into membership of a permanent underclass in many countries, and seeing both instruments as inherently commodifying and

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exploiting workers (International Migrants Alliance 2008). This analysis arising from knowledge produced in migrant workers’ struggles and allied social movement research networks, which advocates resisting the expansion of labour mobility provisions in these trade and investment agreements alongside support for struggles of migrant and immigrant workers for regularization, justice and dignity, and im/migrant workers’ movement organizations. Migrant and immigrant worker organizers and some trade unions continue to actively confront Canada’s lurch towards expanding guest worker programmes in lieu of just immigration and labour policies. At the time of writing, thousands of migrant workers across Canada are bearing the brunt of reforms of the TFWP, their situation highlighting once more the vulnerability of temporary foreign workers to the vagaries of domestic politics, the barriers to applying for permanent residence, and the relative ease with which their lives and livelihoods can be treated with casual indifference by the same government which had massively expanded the programme years earlier. Finally, echoing Prashad’s (2003) comments at the start of this chapter, in looking for the frontlines of social justice struggles in the early part of this century, for those of us located in academe and engaged in research on im/migrant workers requires some reflection and commitment. Commenting on the role of a growing number of NGOs and think-tanks which purport to represent migrant workers’ interests, yet exclude workers themselves, Rodriguez (2010b) argues that it is vital to pay attention to the knowledge production of those excluded from official venues and who cannot participate in the circuits, virtual and otherwise, frequented by others in the ‘global justice movement’. She says: In order to be able to document the kinds of struggles engaged in by migrant worker activists … requires some level of political investment on our part as scholars, for it is in spaces outside of the seats of power, like the space of the street, where migrants can come together not only to narrate their experiences, but also to articulate radical alternatives to the contemporary global order. (67)

Indeed, for both engaged academics, working on immigration and labour issues, and for those who organize on the frontlines of struggles for social justice, the analyses and knowledge produced in the course of such struggles are vital conceptual resources for understanding and challenging the continued exploitation and commodification of migrant workers.

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References Abu-Laban, Y. and Gabriel, C. (2002). Selling Diversity: Immigration, Multiculturalism, Employment Equity and Globalization. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press. Alberta Federation of Labour (2009). ‘Entrenching exploitation.’ Available at http:// www.afl.org/index.php/View-document/123-Entrenching-Exploitation-SecondRept-of-AFL-Temporary-Foreign-Worker-Advocate.html. [Accessed on 28 March 2015]. Akers Chacón, J. (2006). ‘Introduction’. In Akers Chacón, J. and Davis, M (eds.). No One Is Illegal: Fighting Racism and State Violence on the US–Mexico Border. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 90–7. Arat-Koç, S. (1999). ‘Neo-liberalism, state restructuring and immigration: changes in Canadian policies in the 1990s.’ Journal of Canadian Studies, 34(2): 31–56. Awad, I. (2009). ‘The global economic crisis and migrant workers: impact and response.’ International Labour Office-Geneva: International Labour Organi­ zation. Available at http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTEMPSHAGRO/ Resources/GlobalEconomicCrisis_and_MigrantWorkers.pdf. [Accessed on 28 March 2015]. Canadian Heritage (2004). ‘Canadian diversity: respecting our differences.’ Choudry, A., Hanley, J., Jordan, S., Shragge, E. and Stiegman M. (2009). Fight Back: Workplace Justice for Immigrants. Blacks Point, NS: Fernwood Publishing. Choudry, A. and Henaway, M. (2012). ‘Agents of misfortune: contextualizing migrant and immigrant workers’ struggles against temporary labour recruitment agencies.’ Labour, Capital and Society, 45(1): 36–64. Choudry, A. and Smith, A. A. (eds.) (forthcoming, 2016). Unfree Labour? Struggles of Migrant and Immigrant Workers in Canada. Oakland, CA: PM Press. European Commission (1998, June). ‘Where next? The GATS 2000 negotiations.’ Director General Trade. Brussels: European Commission. Gauthier, A. and Holden, M. (2010). ‘Canada–European trade negotiations: 9. Labour mobility. Parliamentary and Research Service’. Library of Parliament. Ottawa. Publication No. 2010–60E. Available at http://www2.parl.gc.ca/ Content/LOP/ResearchPublications/2010-60–e.htm. [Accessed on 28 March 2015]. Harper, Tim (2014). ‘Jason Kenney suspends food services sector from foreign worker program.’ Toronto Star. Available at thestar.com/news/canada/ 2014/04/24/a_flood_of_foreign_workers_drives_up_western_unemployment_ tim_harper.html. Hartridge, D. (1997). ‘What the general agreement on trade in services can do.’ Speech to Opening Markets for Banking Worldwide: The WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services, 1 August 1997, London, UK. Hennebry, J. L. and Preibisch, K. (2012). ‘A model for managed migration? Reexamining best practices in Canada’s seasonal agricultural worker program’. International Migration, 50(1): e19–e40. Henry, P. (2002). ‘Mode 4 through a Canadian immigration policy lens.’ Paper presented at ‘Mode 4 Trade – The Regulators’ View of the Joint WTO-World

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142  r Seven Bank’. Symposium on ‘Movement of Natural Persons (Mode 4) Under the GATS’, 11–12 April 2002, Geneva. Hossain, M. T. Foreign Secretary of Bangladesh. Statement at the Second Committee of the UN General Assembly on agenda item 52 (a): International Trade and Development, New York, 25 October 2007. Available at http://www.un.int/ bangladesh/statements/62/ c2_intl_trade_dev.htm. [Accessed on 28 March 2015]. Human Resources and Social Development Canada (2006). Temporary Foreign Worker Program improved for employers in BC and Alberta. Available at http:// news.gc.ca/web/view/en/index/jsp?articleid=350829 [Accessed on 2 May 2010]. IAMR (2008, October 25). ‘Migrants say “no” to the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD).’ Statement of the International Assembly of Migrants of Refugees. Available at https://iamr3.wordpress.com/about/l. [Accessed on 25 March 2015). ICFTU (2006, April 7). ‘Exploitation not a path to alleviating poverty, trade union body warns at and of services negotiations at WTO.’ Press release. Available at http://ourworldisnotforsale.org/en/node/1485. [Accessed 28 March 2015]. International Labour Organization (2002). ‘Current dynamics of international labour migration: globalisation and regional integration.’ Available at http:// www.ilo.org/public/english/protection/migrant/about/index.htm. [Accessed on 25 March 2015]. International Migrants Alliance (2008). ‘The IMA communiqué.’ Available at http://imacanada.blogspot.ca/2008/01/communiqu-of-international-migrants. html. [Accessed on 28 March 2015]. Kapur, D. (2004). ‘Remittances: the new development Mantra? G-24 Discussion Paper No. 29.’ Available at http://www.cities-localgovernments.org/committees/ fccd/Upload/library/gdsmdpbg2420045_en_en.pdf. [Accessed on 28 March 2015]. Kelsey, J. (2003). ‘Legal fetishism and the contradictions of the GATS.’ Globalisation, Societies and Education, 1(3): 267–280. MacLaren, B (2008, June). ‘Labour mobility and trade in the Americas: current frameworks and socio-economic implications.’ Research paper. Canadian Foundation for the Americas. Available at http://www.focal.ca/pdf/labour%20 mobility%20trade_MacLaren_frameworks%20and%20socioeconomic%20 implications_June%202008.pdf. [Accessed on 28 March 2015]. McNally, D. (2002). Another World Is Possible: Globalization and Anti-Capitalism. Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring. Mathew, B. (2005). Taxi! Cabs and Capitalism in New York City. New York: New Press. OECD (2004). ‘Migration for employment: bilateral agreements at a crossroads.’ Available at http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/ migration-for-employment_9789264108684-en. [Accessed on 28 March 2015]. Office of the Auditor-General of Canada (2009). 2009 Fall Report of the Auditor General of Canada. Available at http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/internet/English/ parl_oag_200911_02_e_33203.html [Accessed on 2 May 2010]. Prashad, V. (2003). Keeping up with the Dow Joneses: Debt, Prison, Workfare. Cambridge, MA: South End.

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Choudry  r 143 Preibisch, K. L. (2007a). Patterns of Social Exclusion and Inclusion of Migrant Workers in Rural Canada. Ottawa: North-South Institute. Preibisch, K. L. (2007b). ‘Local produce, foreign labour: labour mobility programs and global trade competitiveness in Canada.’ Rural Sociology, 72: 418–49. Ramsaroop, C. and Smith. A. A. (2014, May 21). ‘The inherent racism of the temporary foreign worker program.’ Toronto Star. Available at thestar.com/ opinion/commentary/2014/05/21/the_inherent_racism_of_the_temporary_ foreign_worker_program.html. [Accessed on 28 March 2015]. Ratha, D., Mohapatra, S. and Silwal, A. (2009, July 13). ‘Outlook for remittance flows 2009–2011: remittances expected to fall by 7 to 10% in 2009.’ Migration and Development Brief 10. Migration and remittances team. Development prospects group: World Bank. Available at http://siteresources. worldbank.org/INTPROSPECTS/Resources/334934-1110315015165/Migration &DevelopmentBrief10.pdf. [Accessed on 28 March 2015]. Razack, S. H. (2004). Dark Threats and White Knights: The Somalia Affair, Peacekeeping and the New Imperialism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Richmond, A. H. (1994). Global Apartheid: Refugees, Racism and the New World Order. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press. Rodriguez, R. M. (2010a). Migrants for Export: How the Philippine State Brokers Labour to the World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Rodriguez, R. M. (2010b). ‘On the question of expertise: a critical reflection on “civil society” processes.’ In A. Choudry and D. Kapoor (eds.). Learning from the Ground Up: Global Perspectives on Social Movements and Knowledge Production. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 53–68. Sharma, N. (2006). Home Economics: Nationalism and the Making of Migrant Workers in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Stasiulis, D. and Bakan, A. (2003). Negotiating Citizenship: Migrant Women in Canada and the Global System. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Sutcliffe, B. (2004). ‘Crossing borders in the new imperialism.’ In L. Panitch and C. Leys. (eds.). The New Imperial Challenge. Socialist Register 2004. London: Merlin Press, 261–80. Thobani, S. (2000). ‘Nationalizing Canadians: bordering immigrant women in the late twentieth century.’ Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, 12(2): 279–312. Thobani, S. (2007). Exalted Subjects: Studies in the Making of Race and Nation in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Uchitelle, L. (2007, 18 February). NAFTA should have stopped illegal immigration, right? New York Times. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/18/ weekinreview/18uchitelle.html. [Accessed on 28 April 2015]. UFCW (United Food and Commercial Workers) (2010, 21 April). ‘UFCW Canada union victory for Quebec farm workers’. Press release. 2010. Available at http:// www.ufcw.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=690&catid =5&lang=en. [Accessed on 28 March 2015]. UFCW (2014, 24 October). ‘UFCW Canada Denounces Bill 8, Demands Quebec Government Stop Discriminating Against the Most Vulnerable”. Press release. 2014. Available at http://ufcw.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article

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144  r Seven &id=30301:ufcw-canada-denounces-bill-8-demands-quebec-government-stopdiscriminating-against-the-most-vulnerable&catid=9563&Itemid=98&lang=en [Accessed on 28 March 2015]. World Bank (2012). Migration and Remittances Available at http://web.worldbank. org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:20648762~pagePK: 64257043~piPK:437376~theSitePK:4607,00.html. [Accessed on 3 August 2013]. Wright, C. (2006). ‘Against illegality: new directions in organizing by and with nonstatus people in Canada.’ In C. Frampton, G. Kinsman, A. K. Thompson and K. Tilleczek (eds.). Sociology for Changing the World: Social Movements/Social Research. Black Point, NS: Fernwood, 189–208. Zaman, H. (2006). Breaking the Iron Wall: Decommodification and Immigrant Women’s Labour in Canada. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

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8

Working for a Day Off Advocating the Rights of Migrant Women in Southeast Asia Michele Ford and Lenore Lyons

Introduction The commodification of poor, Third-World women’s domestic labour and the creation of a transnational division of female labour reveals that gendered and racial discourses of work continue to shape the way migrant women’s work is perceived by policymakers and employers. Migrant domestic workers are deemed to be low-skilled (frequently termed ‘unskilled’) workers and are subject to regulatory mechanisms that seek to control their conditions of work, as well as their mobility and sexuality. These women face a range of problems related to their employment in countries of destination, including low wages, high debt repayments, harsh working conditions, constant surveillance by employers and physical and sexual abuse (Anderson 2000; Chin 1998; Constable 1997; Huang et al. 2005; Kempadoo 1999; Law 2000; Parreñas 2001). In Asia, the women’s movement, trade unions, migrant labour activist networks and religious groups have joined with grassroots migrant organizations to raise public awareness about the issues faced by these migrant women and to lobby for improvements to their conditions of work (see Ford and Piper 2007; Gurowitz 2000; Lyons 2006, 2009; Piper 2005; Sim 2003). Their actions constitute local and regional responses to an issue that has gained recognition as a global problem. This chapter traces the ways in which the labour rights of migrant domestic workers are taken up at different scales and by different organizations and networks. In doing so, it seeks to explore how the concept and practice of ‘solidarity’ is enacted across borders. Much of the rhetoric surrounding the idea of ‘global civil society’ promotes transnational networks and alliances as the most effective forms of organizing to have

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emerged under conditions of globalization (see Moghadam 2000). Indeed, there is an implicit assumption in many accounts of transnational civil society that scaling up provides local level organizations and their constituents with a range of advantages that would not otherwise be available to them. In the field of labour migration studies, Piper and Uhlin (2002: 179) contend that, at a time when ‘workers’ rights generally are being contested by the application of neoliberal policies, NGO advocacy has a great potential to transnationalize and help address the inequalities in human and labour rights embedded in globalizing labour markets’. Gurowitz (2000: 882) suggests that there is an even greater necessity for activists to collaborate at the regional level in countries like Malaysia where it is difficult to form links with international NGOs and tension surrounds the applicability of international norms. This assumption has not gone uncontested. Ong has argued that we should be sceptical about NGO claims about building a ‘global public sphere’. As she observes, because migrant worker NGOs are situated within ‘particular constellations of power and ethics; their interventions can actually generate new moral hierarchies’ that can support national agendas and capitalist interests (Ong 2006: 215). Her concerns echo those of Mackie (2001: 188) who argues that ‘transnational public sphere, if it can be said to exist, is a gendered, raced, classed and ethnicized public sphere’. Tarrow also cautions against the predictions that globalization will naturally lead to the emergence of transnational social movements. In his view, mass-based transnational social movements (TSMs), which he defines in terms of contentious collective action, are ‘hard to construct, are difficult to maintain, and have very different relations to states and international institutions than the less contentious family of international NGOs or activist networks’ (Tarrow 2001: 2). Within much of the literature on migrant worker organizing, the distinction between TSMs and transnational advocacy networks (TANs) is blurred. While migrant worker organizing in Southeast Asia is frequently ‘transnational’ in the sense that campaigns (and advocates) cross national borders, few of these activities would fit Tarrow’s definition of a social movement in which ‘socially mobilized groups with constituents in at least two states, engaged in sustained contentious interaction with power holders in at least one state other than their own, or against an international institution, or a multinational economic actor’ (Tarrow 2001: 11). Instead, as Lyons (2009) argues, most transnational migrant worker organizing in the region falls into one of three categories: cross-border campaigns by nationally and regionally based organizations and TANs; national-level coalitions and alliances made up of individuals and/or organizations representing different national groups (groups that ‘transcend’ nationality

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as the basis for organizing); and local/national organizations or networks which adopt a transnational frame of reference in their work. In the discussion that follows, we focus on the first category of transnational activism – cross-border campaigns. We examine three coalitions that emerged in Southeast Asia between 2007 and 2009 with the aim of addressing the working conditions of migrant domestic workers: United for Foreign Domestic Workers’ Rights (UFDWRs), International Migrants Alliance (IMA) and Asian Domestic Workers Assembly (ADWA). We describe the aims and background of each coalition, focusing in particular on the similarities and differences in their approaches to the issue of a compulsory day off for foreign domestic workers, an issue of common concern, in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. Analysis of the campaigns of these different coalitions to secure a day off for domestic workers allows us to explore how campaign messages are formulated and mobilized at the regional level and in particular national contexts. Attention to the ways in which values and beliefs are turned into concrete activities is important because it provides an opportunity to consider how regional activism intersects with work at a national level. To be successful, the work of these regional coalitions needs to take into account conditions in different destination countries because conditions of work are primarily determined by national-level policies. Our analysis focuses on the extent to which a day off is a problem at the national level, how national-level organizations have sought to address this issue and the extent to which the three regional coalitions have been active in each country. Our analysis reveals that although these coalitions have succeeded in generating an awareness of the conditions under which migrant women labour in Southeast Asia, the politics of organizing challenges assumptions of solidarity both at the national and cross-border level. Contrary to the claims made by Piper (2005) and Gurowitz (2000), this case suggests that regional coalitions provide few tangible direct benefits to national-level organizations. Rather than being a mechanism for national-level groups to ‘scale up’, the regional coalitions that we studied had few sustained interactions with national-level organizations and campaigns. Instead, much of their efforts were focused at either the regional level or the international level, where they engaged in cross-border networking and lobbying for policy changes within international organizations.1

Fighting for a day off Mandatory rest days are a component of the labour laws of most countries in East and Southeast Asia. While such laws typically only govern the regulation of working conditions in the formal sector, many workers in the

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informal sector also claim rest days as a core labour right. However, a common feature of the employment of foreign domestic workers is restrictions on migrant women’s access to leisure time. In the major destination countries for foreign domestic labour in Asia, domestic workers who arrive as part of a formal labour migration programme are admitted as contract workers. Documented labour migrants are subject to employment contracts that regulate their conditions of work and salaries. In the majority of Asia’s receiving countries, employment contracts are drawn up between employment agents and employers, and workers are rarely involved in the formal negotiation of conditions of work. While countries such as the Philippines mandate the use of a standardized employment contract for all nationals going abroad, it is not uncommon for workers to sign multiple contracts or to have the contract they sign superseded by a new contract they are required to sign on arrival in the destination country. In most destination countries, the absence of rest days has historically been a consistent feature of most contracts. And while all migrant workers are vulnerable to abuse, including the absence of rest days, undocumented migrant workers are even more likely to face exploitative conditions than those in possession of appropriate travel documents and an employment pass. In this difficult-to-regulate sector, there is also significant evidence to suggest that access to rest days is determined by whether domestic workers have a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ employer. While some workers understand the structural factors that support such practices, many others attribute their working conditions to a matter of ‘bad luck’. By contrast, migrant worker advocates recognize that such variations are the product of underlying structures that shape the employment of migrant workers, including the failure of destination country governments to include domestic workers in their national labour laws; the lack of interest or willpower on the part of authorities to regulate the employment conditions of domestic workers; and the unequal power relations between workers, employers and employment agents. Migrant worker rights advocates argue that, in the absence of a formal, standardized and enforceable contract, individual employers and agents are able to dictate work conditions without considering the needs and rights of the women they employ. United for Domestic Workers Rights (UFDWRs) UFDWRs was launched at the ASEAN Civil Society Conference, hosted in Singapore in November 2007. The coalition comprises five NGOs working in the field of migrant worker activism: Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD); Coordination of Action Research on

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AIDS and Mobility (CARAM Asia); Global Alliance against Trafficking in Women (GAATW); Mekong Migration Network (MMN); and Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants (APMM). Four of these organizations are regional NGOs that operate as networks or alliances of national-level organizations, while APMM is an NGO based in Hong Kong that works with migrant workers from different national groups. Each NGO has been involved in issues facing foreign domestic workers to some extent over a period of many years.2 At the launch, migrant worker organizations in attendance were invited to partner with UFDWRs in pursuing a ‘One Paid Day Off Weekly’ campaign as the first component of the ‘Recognition of Domestic Work’ campaign to be run from 2007 to 2009.3 Drawing on international labour rights conventions, UFDWRs argued that the right for a weekly day off is a universal right for all workers. In particular, they linked the call for a day off to the ability of domestic workers to organize themselves, as a day off would allow domestic workers to come together. Their aim was encourage national governments and international organizations to enact laws to protect migrant domestic workers and the ILO to develop new mechanisms for the protection and realization of domestic workers’ rights (UFDWRs 2008). As a regional coalition comprising regional NGOs, UFDWRs believed that it is best placed to have input into the ASEAN mechanism, which it sees ‘as one of the strategic venues to be engaged with in their attempt to protect the rights of FDWs from the Region’ (CARAM Asia 2007). Throughout 2008, UFDWRs worked on a draft response to the ASEAN multilateral framework for the protection of migrant workers, which emerged out of the Vientiane Action Programme of 2004 (ASEAN 2004). The ASEAN Declaration on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Migrant Workers was subsequently signed in January 2007. Under this agreement, receiving countries agreed to ‘intensify efforts’ to protect the rights of migrant workers and facilitate regular migrants’ access to information, education and training, justice, social services, and fair wages and conditions, while sending countries undertook to promote migrant workers’ rights, regulate labour migration and develop viable livelihood alternatives at home. Member states also agreed to a number of cooperative measures concerning information sharing, the prevention of trafficking, and the development of an ASEAN instrument on the protection and promotion of the rights of migrant workers (ASEAN 2007). Following the end of the ‘Day Off’ campaign in 2009, UFDWRs focused its efforts on a broader range of labour and human rights issues affecting migrant domestic workers, including the ILO’s draft Domestic Worker Convention (UFDWRs 2010, 2011) and a critique of the Global Forum on Migration and Development (UFDWRs 2013).

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International Migrants Alliance (IMA) Founded in Hong Kong in June 2008, IMA is an international alliance of grassroots migrant organizations. Although the alliance is open to migrant worker organizations globally, its core membership is based in sending and receiving countries in the Asia-Pacific. IMA’s constitution stipulates that a regular member (of which there are over 100) must be ‘a grassroots mass organization, union or alliance of migrant organizations and their families’ (IMA 2008d). Although organizations that provide services to migrant workers can join IMA as associate members, IMA explicitly excludes NGOs from its membership, reflecting its desire for migrants to speak for themselves (IMA 2008a: 1). IMA also adopts a strong anti-imperialist and anti-globalization stance, although members do not need to be ‘professed comprehensive anti-imperialist’ organizations to be a member of the alliance (IMA 2008b). IMA aims to encourage greater coordination and cooperation between national-level and regional-level migrant organizations, including through joint campaigns, in order to ‘develop a genuine international antiimperialist and pro-migrant advocacy network’ (IMA 2008c: 3). The efforts of the alliance are focused on all migrant workers, but include a particular interest in the issues faced by migrant women, including migrant domestic workers. Although a day off has not been a central focus of IMA’s campaign work (which is primarily focused on anti-imperialist struggle), on the first day of the founding assembly a representative from APWLD spoke about UFDWRs’ campaign to recognize domestic work as work. Four core members of UFDWRs participated in the IMA founding assembly – APWLD, CARAM-Asia, APMM and GAATW – and the first three joined IMA as associate members. The presence of large numbers of foreign domestic workers at the event ensured that their issues dominated discussions at the meeting.4 Asian Domestic Workers Assembly (ADWA) Formed in 2007 order to serve as ‘the broad alliance of [migrant domestic workers], trade unions and civil society groups to spearhead the joint regional advocacy in Asia’ (ADWA 2008), the Asian Domestic Workers Assembly (ADWA) is also primarily an alliance of grassroots migrant worker groups. Later renamed the Asian Migrant Domestic Workers Alliance, ADWA held its first assembly in Manila. The event was coorganized by Migrant Forum in Asia (MFA) and the Coalition for Migrants Rights (CMR) with support from the Asian Migrant Centre (AMC), Alliance of Progressive Labour (APL), Human Rights Watch (HRW), UNIFEM and ILO (ADWA 2007a). The first assembly aimed to determine

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‘what kind of alliance, network or action mechanism is needed by MDWs in order for them to collaborate and represent themselves more effectively’ (ADWA 2007b). In May 2008, at the second assembly in Jakarta, ADWA and its partners launched a regional campaign on the recognition and protection of domestic work as work, the key targets of which included ‘valid, fair and standard’ employment contracts ‘based on decent work principles including wages, rest days, working hours, and living and working conditions’ (ADWA 2008). While ADWA is led by grassroots domestic worker organizations, it is regarded as the creation of MFA, a network of over 290 NGOs, associations, and trade unions of migrant workers and individual advocates from Asian countries of origin and destination. MFA describes itself as a ‘regional advisor’ to ADWA (MFA 2010). Its interest in supporting ADWA reflects its view that migrant women face a number of pressing problems that can be best served through grassroots initiatives. Although MFA was initially supportive of UFDWRs, it was concerned that the coalition is made up of NGOs and has no apparent grassroots involvement. It also wanted to create a viable grassroots alternative that would appeal to MDWs who are uncomfortable with the anti-imperialist rhetoric of the IMA. While supportive of a ‘Day Off’ campaign, it chose to campaign to recognise domestic work as work rather than focus on a day off per se.5 To this end, in 2008 MFA and ADWA joined with RESPECT (a European NGO) to create an International Working Group for Domestic Workers (IWG-DW) to influence the drafting of the ILO Convention on Domestic Work.

Links in different national contexts UFDWRs, IMA and ADWA are regional-level coalitions that advocate primarily at the regional and international levels. Their activities include the circulation of campaign materials and other documents to members and partners, the release of press statements and campaign messages, and formal and informal lobbying at meetings of international organizations. For example, during the time frame that we focus on here, all three were represented at the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) held in Manila in October 2008. Through their attendance, each group was able to meet with coalition members as well as individuals and organizations from the broader migration and development field. Each organization also held separate meetings and forums where they pursued their campaigns in support of migrant worker rights.6 While these types of regional networking activities are useful as a means of sharing information and tactics, what is less clear is how the work of these regional groups affects conditions of work in different countries. In this section, we explore

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the intersections between these regional campaigns and the work of national-level organizations in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. Singapore In May 2008, three Singaporean NGOs joined forces to launch a ‘Day Off’ campaign aimed to raising public awareness about the absence of rest days. Formed in 2003, TWC2 is primarily an advocacy-oriented organization, which also runs a helpline service for migrant women in need.7 The organization was involved in lobbying for the introduction of the standard contract but was disappointed with the outcomes. Also formed in 2003 and also primarily service-oriented, HOME provides shelter and casework support to male and female migrant workers. It is engaged in some lobbying efforts with the national government, and works closely with a number of employment agencies.8 UNIFEM Singapore, the national committee of the United Nations Development Fund for Women, is mandated to raise funds in support of UNIFEM’s regional activities and has had a long-term interest in addressing the issues facing migrant women in Asia.9 Singapore has been a major receiving country of foreign workers since the late 1970s. In 2007, Singapore’s 713,300 foreign workers constituted 27.5 per cent of the total workforce (MOM 2007). About 550,000 of these workers are considered unskilled or low-skilled, of which an estimated 170,000 are domestic workers, made up of one-third each from the Philippines and Indonesia, and a significant minority from Sri Lanka. Unlike most destination countries in the region, Singapore has long had a standard contract that contains provision for mandated rest days. However, following its introduction in 2006, agents and employers regularly circumvented the recommendation that domestic workers had a day off per month. The Association of Employment Agencies Singapore (AEAS) found that in random checks conducted in 2008 only 70 per cent of agents had recommended rest days to their clients (Lin 2008). In supporting the claim for a mandatory day off per week, the coalition adopted a multi-focused approach that drew on a range of different arguments in support for a mandatory rest day. The first of these was the feminist claim that ‘housework is work’, which was used to leverage the position advocated by the international labour rights movement that a day off is a basic labour right. The second was the Singaporean state’s own rhetoric about the need for positive relations between employers and employees and the importance of skills upgrading by lower-skilled workers, in this case to make them more attractive to employers. The third was a set of moral values that appeal to Singaporeans’ sense of decency as a community, which resonates with the slogans of the coalition partners. In

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addition to establishing a website,10 throughout 2008, coalition members organized talks and information sessions for schools, community groups, and public and private organizations individually and as a group with the aim of ‘changing the behaviour of those employers who do not at present give their workers time off’ (TWC2 2008: 2). Members of both TWC2 and HOME attended the launch of UFDWRs and signed up as campaign partners. TWC2 activists were extremely visible at the launch and played a key role in focusing the UFDWRs initial campaign on the right to a day off. HOME posted messages of support to the UFDWRs listserv, it had more direct engagement with ADWA. HOME is a member of the alliance and HOME’s founder, Bridget Lew, gave presentations at both ADWA assembly meetings. But the joint campaign was ultimately driven locally. The impetus for the Singapore Day Off Campaign emerged well before UFDWRs was formed and although the campaign coincided with the UFDWRs’ 2008 ‘One Paid Day Off Weekly’ campaign, there were no formal links between the two. Moreover, UFDWRs provided no practical support for the campaign, although it disseminated information about it to a regional audience. This is partly explained by reluctance on the part of local NGOs. On one occasion when UFDWRs attempted to lend regional support to the national campaign, it was warned to tread cautiously in case its efforts disrupted the work of Singaporean NGOs, which have a fraught relationship with the Singaporean state. UFDWRs was counselled to take account of ‘local conditions’ and lend support for the local campaign through a ‘modest’ approach that engaged the Singaporean state in dialogue rather than open confrontation. In this instance, the regional campaign was presented as a potential threat to local level efforts rather than a mechanism to achieve change.11 Malaysia In Malaysia, there are some 1.8 million documented migrant workers, of whom 225,000 are domestic workers (Sabri Bin Haji Karmani 2010). In addition, it hosts an estimated 2 million migrant workers without documents (Ng 2014). Formed in 1991, Tenaganita is Malaysia’s largest and most visible migrant worker organization. It established a dedicated Domestic Worker programme in 1994 and subsequently coordinated a national-level coalition to achieve a ‘Day Off’, launched in October 2008. Tenaganita listed ‘no day off’ as one of the top six violations of foreign domestic workers’ labour rights (Tenaganita 2008). According to the NGO’s director, Irene Fernandez, specialized legislation was required to protect the labour and gender rights of domestic workers, and to ensure the immediate introduction of a paid day off and a standardized contract

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for all migrant domestic workers. For this reason, the Day Off coalition adopted a two-pronged approach – a public awareness and education programme aimed at changing the mindsets of employers, and a lobbying effort designed to put pressure on the Malaysian government to include domestic work under the Employment Act. Tenaganita argued that the introduction of a paid day off would be positive for both workers and employees. In pressing its case, it drew on the example of Filipina workers in Malaysia, the majority of whom have at least one day off per month. Tenaganita used this example to demonstrate that having a day off is beneficial for all involved and to show that a worker will not run away if she is allowed to leave her employer’s home (Fernandez 2008b).12 Unlike TWC2 and HOME in Singapore, Tenaganita argued that its national campaign must work hand in hand with regional efforts (Tenaganita 2008). This decision reflects Tenaganita’s deep involve­ ment in regional networks. Tenaganita played a pivotal role in the establishment of CARAM Asia, which in turn helped spearhead UFDWRs’ regional campaign – although Tenaganita has no direct collaboration with UFDWRs despite its ties to CARAM Asia and the fact that several Tenaganita members have held executive positions in APWLD.13 Irene Fernandez also gave a rousing speech at the founding assembly of IMA, in which she argued that the rights of women workers, both Malaysian nationals and foreigners, and female migrant workers more generally, are explicitly linked to globalization which is understood as a form of ‘modern-day imperialism’ based on the exploitation of race, gender and nationality (Fernandez 2008a). She was subsequently elected to IMA’s International Coordinating Body. Thailand Most NGOs working on labour migration in Thailand focus on a range of different ethnic groups from Myanmar, reflecting the flow of Burmese refugees into the country. According to NGO estimates, there are around 2 million foreign workers in Thailand (Thai Labour Campaign 2004). Bureau of Migrant Worker Administration figures suggest that almost 1.3 million of these migrants had registered, and that 70 per cent of those registered migrant workers were Burmese. Between 1996 and 2001, domestic workers were not allowed to apply for employment passes in Thailand. Just a year after they were permitted to register, 47,359 Burmese, 13,278 Laotians and 3,094 Cambodians, most of whom are women, had obtained work permits that allowed them to be employed in Thailand as domestic workers (AMC 2005: 146). Even though registration is now possible, many unregistered migrant workers continue to be employed in the sector.

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The sensitivity of the refugee issue has historically pushed many Thailand-based NGOs to adopt an explicitly service-oriented approach, for example providing healthcare services to migrant workers (Ford 2007). For example MAP, which began working with Burmese migrants in 1996 is known in Thai as the MAP Foundation for the Health and Knowledge of Ethnic Labour. MAP explicitly adopts a rights-based position. Its staff believes that its service-oriented programmes are not only beneficial to migrant workers, but also serve as a vehicle through which relationships can be established and information about issues such as labour rights can be disseminated.14 MAP is the lead organization in the Action Network for Migrants (Thailand), which is the larger of two major national groupings of NGOs and other civil society organizations with an interest in migrant labour issues. ANM describes itself as ‘a national network of community organizations, and NGOs working with migrants from Myanmar, Cambodia and Lao to protect the rights and fair work of migrant workers and their families’.15 MAP is also very active regionally. It houses the Thai office of the Mekong Migration Network, which brings together groups from Cambodia, China, Lao PDR, Thailand, Vietnam and is supported by Oxfam and the Rockefeller Foundation. Although not formally associated with MFA, MAP is always well represented at MFA regional gatherings, where MAP activists more often than not play an active role chairing sessions and leading discussions.16 It is also affiliated regionally with APWLD and CARAM Asia. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, MAP was the major proponent of the UFDWRs’ Day Off Campaign in Thailand.17 Key MAP activists took on a facilitating role of the founding of UFDWRs in Singapore and were vocal proponents of the day off as an appropriate regional campaign focus. Although information about the campaign is not prominently displayed on MAP’s website, a presentation by the Director of MAP to a joint forum of NGOs and trade unions on migrant worker organizing at the People’s Global Action on Migration, Development and Human Rights, an event held in the lead-up to the 2008 GFMD, focused almost exclusively on the Day Off campaign, showing a DVD of domestic workers campaigning for a day off and exhibiting tea towels they had produced.18 MAP is not associated with either ADWA or IMA.

Efficacy of transnational activism Regional coalitions such as UFDWRs, IMA and ADWA have succeeded in promoting an awareness of the rights of migrant women through their media campaigns and engagement in forums such as the GFMD. Among

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their members and associates, they have also played a key role in sharing information, garnering symbolic support for national-level campaigns, and generating a sense of shared commitment for the rights of migrant domestic workers. Together, these activities help to forge a sense of shared ‘solidarity’ across national borders. However, this sense of solidarity is limited in scope and scale. Their organizational structures, membership policies and the limited nature of their activities mean that in most cases solidarity manifests as a common concern for migrant workers rather than a concrete call for action. In other words, while they have succeeded in generating awareness of migrant worker issues such as the day off, they have been less successful in establishing effective cross-border campaigns or developing a mass-based transnational social movement. This can be explained in terms of the particular nature of these coalitions and the broader challenges associated with transnational organizing, including the problems of competing agendas, dissonance between regional and local campaign goals, and the problems of moving beyond symbolic collaboration to concrete actions that enhance the ability of local grassroots organizations and NGOs to meet the needs of their constituencies. This is nowhere better illustrated than in the campaign for a day off. At the regional level, there were significant organizational and ideological barriers to the development of a coherent approach towards migrant domestic worker issues. Organizationally, UFDWRs was a network of NGOs, an organizational form that key figures in IMA openly criticized. Although ADWA was also primarily a grassroots organization, it was considerably more open than IMA, extending membership to NGOs and trade unions. These organizational differences are a significant barrier to the development of concrete alliances between the three coalitions. Ideological differences made it even more difficult for regional networks to collaborate. As illustrated by the case studies presented here, different networks can have differing emphases on particular aspects of the migrant worker rights agenda. Although UFDWRs, ADWA and IMA all promoted migrant domestic workers’ rights, they did not agree on the relative importance of particular issues such as the right to a day off. These differences reflected deep-seated ideological divisions. For example, although IMA, which is closely associated with the leftist Filipino group Migrante was launched in Hong Kong, the powerful Hong Kong-based labour NGO, AMC – which sponsors some of the most well-known grassroots migrant worker organizations in the territory and is affiliated to MFA – was conspicuous in its absence from the IMA launch. These ideological differences can create difficulties for NGOs and grassroots organizations that are part of more than one umbrella group. For example, the nationally-based organization Tenaganita, which was both a member

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of MFA and a very public supporter of IMA, was forced to choose to actively engage with one or the other. Regional networks face difficulties too in formulating campaign strategies that meet the needs of migrant workers and the organizations that support them in very different national contexts. In practice, regional advocacy campaigns are formulated either without real consultation with member organizations or in such a way that reflects the interests of one or two dominant organizations or national coalitions. The UFDWRs’ day off campaign was driven largely by Singaporean and Malaysian NGOs working with formally registered constituencies of foreign domestic workers. As a result, there was little in its structure, focus or strategies to address the needs of the hundreds of thousands of undocumented foreign domestic workers in Malaysia and Thailand. It is this failure to account for the question of registration that made all three regional coalitions particularly inconsequential in Thailand, which has no equivalent of Malaysia’s large-scale formal domestic worker programme. When regional coalitions are established without taking into consideration the nature of conditions in particular national (and even local) settings, their activities can be ineffective. IMA’s policy of grassrootsonly membership is unworkable in many destination countries, including Singapore and Malaysia, where migrant workers are forbidden from forming their own grassroots organizations or trade unions. This made it impossible for IMA to recruit members in either country. Its strong anticapitalist and anti-globalization stance was an added barrier, particularly in Singapore, where NGOs’ existence depends on accommodating state rhetoric. Unlike Malaysia’s Tenaganita, which has been willing to associate itself with IMA, NGOs in Singapore are extremely wary of being ‘tainted’ with leftist ideology. ADWA faced a similar problem with regard to membership, although its more open policy enabled NGOs like HOME to become a conduit for grassroots engagement in Singapore. This was also possible because ADWA is a more politically conservative organization. In an authoritarian environment, involve­ment with ADWA and UFDWRs is considered to be much more politically acceptable than that with the more radical IMA. These examples point to the fact that, despite their broader scale, regional coalitions have much less power to influence policymaking than national networks or organizations. As noted in the introduction, it is often assumed that scaling up provides local NGOs and other migrant worker organizations with the benefits of an increased power base, including additional financial and other resources. One of the potential benefits of linking up with UFDWRs, for example, was that its core membership is made up of regional and international NGOs that have

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greater access to international donor funding. However, as a coalition, UFDWRs had no mechanism to provide financial support to member organizations, and has no central pool of funding for its campaigns. Moreover, even when regional-level consultative initiatives between international organizations and governments result in concrete policy outcomes, they appear to have little impact upon conditions for migrant workers on the ground. For example, Thailand was a key signatory to the 1999 Bangkok Declaration on Irregular Migration but studies of migrant labour in Thailand continued to report the lack of protection or labour standards, human rights abuses, as well as poor education and health conditions, experienced by migrant workers. Beyond their symbolic and information-sharing roles, then, regional coalitions arguably provide few tangible forms of assistance to nationallevel migrant worker organizations. Moreover, while regional networks can arguably be potentially most effective when lobbying at the regional level, there is little evidence that ASEAN has responded proactively to the issue of migrant worker rights. National NGOs in all three countries told us that they are suspicious of regional networks’ decision to commit resources to raising awareness of the migrant labour issue within ASEAN, arguing that there was little point trying to use ASEAN mechanisms to convince destination countries like Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore to change their approach. Despite these limitations, it is widely accepted among activists at all levels that regional networks are important, but only if they support local initiatives and help local NGOs in their endeavours. However, as one Malaysian informant concluded, ‘regional networks must be rooted in national-level organizations rather than the other way around’.19 MMN provides a good example of how this can happen. Representatives of the Thai member organizations of MMN believe that one of network’s major attractions is that it facilitates the flow of information between NGOs in source countries and NGOs in Thailand and helps local NGOs get access to international organizations like the ILO or other UN agencies, and helps put pressure on the Thai government. However, as the dynamics of regional and national responses to the day off campaign indicate, the aspirations of transnational activist coalitions are not always possible to achieve given the organizational politics, structures and constituencies of the coalitions themselves and their nationally based members.

Conclusion Effective cross-border activist campaigns are difficult to establish and sustain. As demonstrated by the role played by IMA and ADWA (and to a

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limited extent UFDWRs) in the drafting of the ILO Convention on Domestic Work, regional networks can influence policy change at the international level. In this instance, local-level contacts provided regional coalitions with important information about national-level conditions as well as a means to collect feedback during the drafting process. Ultimately, however, the success of such efforts is constrained by local conditions – in this case, the failure of all three receiving countries to become signatories to the Convention. As this demonstrates, when it comes to the labour rights of migrant domestic workers, state agendas remain pre-eminent, and transnational networks have a limited role in bringing about social change. In the case of the three regional coalitions examined in this study, although activism in support of the right of migrant domestic workers to a day off was characterized by a diversity of deeper aims and objectives, the modes of engagement with national-level organizations, migrant workers and policymakers were very similar. Their activities included assembly meetings and workshops, conference attendance, and the circulation of campaign materials, press releases and other documents to members and partner organizations. While these activities help to develop a sense of shared solidarity across national borders, this sense of solidarity was ultimately limited in both scope and scale. Although these coalitions succeeded in generating an awareness of the working conditions facing migrant domestic workers, they do not constitute a mass-based transnational social movement. In fact, these regional coalitions have had few sustained interactions with national-level organizations and campaigns and, thus, little impact on conditions experienced by migrant domestic workers on the ground. As discussed here, there are many reasons why these coalitions did not have greater success in generating a transnational social movement. Some of these problems are common to all coalitions – competing agendas, different aims and objectives between regional and local partners, organizational and ideological differences, as well as the difficulty in moving from symbolic to concrete forms of collaboration. Most importantly, however, these regional networks experienced difficulty formulating campaigns that take into consideration the issues facing migrant workers and their advocates in particular national and local contexts. Sometimes this problem arose because of an absence of consultation with member organizations, or because organizational or ideological factors failed to take into account the political and industrial relations regimes that govern migrant labour. As a consequence, these regional coalitions simply became conduits for the dissemination of information to local activists rather than being a mechanism for nationallevel groups to ‘scale up’ and strengthen local campaign efforts.

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Notes 1

Michele Ford’s contribution to this chapter was supported by Australian Research Council (ARC) Grant DP0880081; Lenore Lyons’ contribution was supported by ARC Grant DP0557370. 2 UFDWRs currently lists five other migrant worker organizations as ‘Other Campaign Members’ on its website – Committee for Asia Women (CAW), Engender Hong Kong, Solidarity Migrants San Calibrini (sic) (SMC, based in Indonesia), Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2, based in Singapore), and Asian Migrant Coordinating Body (AMCB, based in Hong Kong). 3 Not long after its campaign launch, UFDWRs established an email listserv ([email protected]) to keep individuals and migrant worker organizations up to date with its activities. The listserv functions primarily as a means for list members to circulate information about their latest campaigns and activities. The level of posting varies over time, with considerable activity in the lead-up to International Migrants Day, and fewer postings at other times of the year. List members are encouraged to circulate information about their nationallevel activities and some of this information has been uploaded to the UFDWRs website (http://ufdwrs.blogspot.com). However, the information contained on the blog is brief and postings by members of UFDWRs are infrequent. During the period of the ‘Day Off’ campaign (2008–9) there were 37 posts, compared to 85 in 2011 (the year the ILO adopted the Domestic Worker Convention). The blog has been inactive since 2013. 4 The authors were present at the launch. The Second General Assembly was held in 2011 with the theme ‘Strengthen and Expand our Movement: Migrants, Resist Intensified Imperialist Attacks, Achieve Victories in Our Struggle’ (IMA 2011). IMA has operated a website since 2012 (http://ima2008.wordpress. com) which it updates on an irregular basis. 5 Statement made in an interview with the authors by a member of MFA, June 2008. 6 Authors’ observations, Manila, October 2008. 7 See Lyons (2005, 2007b) for a discussion of TWC2’s advocacy efforts. 8 See Lyons (2009) for a discussion of HOME’s advocacy efforts. 9 See Lyons (2007a) for a discussion of UNIFEM Singapore’s involvement in migrant worker issues. 10 The site is mirrored at two different URLs: www.dayoff.sg and www. maiddayoff.com 11 In addition, the Singapore ‘Day Off’ campaign continued long after UFDWRs’ 2009 deadline. After four years of campaigning, in 2012 the Singapore government announced that from January 2013 all new contracts would include a rest day, although employers were to be permitted to provide domestic workers with monetary compensation in lieu of a rest day with the domestic worker’s permission. Domestic workers are still excluded from other key labour rights protections under Singapore’s Employment Act and Singapore did not become a signatory to the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) Convention No. 189 on Decent Work for Domestic Workers, adopted in June 2011.

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Ford and Lyons  r 161 12 Tenaganita was also part of a national network of NGOs with an interest in migrant labor and refugee issues, called the Migration Working Group (MWG). Formed in 2006, MWG is a loose association of organizations with very different agendas and approaches. Leading actors in MWG argue that it performs two important roles: strengthening advocacy campaigns by giving them collective weight, and ensuring that lobbying campaigns do not have a negative impact on other groups of migrants. While MWG did not become directly involved in the Day Off Coalition, membership of the network facilitated contact between coalition partners and provided the means to begin planning for joint activities (Interview with a member of MWG, October 2008). 13 The idea for the formation of regional network of organisations committed to action–research on Mobility and HIV/AIDS was mooted at a workshop organized by Tenaganita in 1994. The network was formed in 1997 and Irene Fernandez sat on its Board of Directors and Tenaganita is the CARAM Asia partner in Malaysia. 14 Interview with MAP activists, February 2007. 15 In addition to MAP, the network’s fifteen members include Empower Foundation (which focuses on sex workers); the Foundation for Child Development; Friends of Women Foundation; Friends for Women; the Mekong Sub Regional Project; the Organization of Migrant Workers and their Families; Pattanarak Foundation; Peace Way Foundation; and Rak Thai Foundation. The network has links with the Thai Labour Solidarity Committee; the Arom Phong Phakhan Foundation; the Sub-committee for Labour of the National Human Rights Commission; the Human Rights Sub-Committee on Ethnic Minorities, Stateless, Migrant Workers and Dis­placed Persons; and the Law Society of Thailand. A newer working group, centred on the Thai Labour Solidarity Committee and the Thai Labour Campaign, includes the representatives of the Thai Action Committee for Democracy in Burma, the Burma Labour Solidarity Organization and the Legal Clinic in Mae Sot. Most of these NGOs concentrate primarily on labor migrants from Myanmar. See Ford (2007) for details. 16 We have observed this at a number of MFA events over the last several years. 17 Like their counterparts in Singapore and Malaysia, very few foreign domestic workers in Thailand receive a day off. A study conducted for the International Labour Organization of 319 documented and undocumented domestic workers found that under 7 per cent received a day off per week and over 62 per cent received none at all (ILO 2006: 81). This reflects the fact that, although permitted to register as migrant workers from 2001, the work undertaken by foreign domestic workers remained unrecognized under Thai labour law. 18 Authors’ observations, Manila, October 2008. 19 Statement to authors, February 2007.

References ADWA (2007a). ‘Asian Domestic Workers Assembly.’ Available at http://www. mfasia.org/mfaResources/ADWA2007.html [Accessed on 12 January 2008].

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162  r Eight ADWA (2007b). ‘Statement of unity.’ Adopted at the 1st Asian Domestic Workers Assembly, 17–18 June 2007, Pasig City, Metro Manila, Philippines. ADWA (2008). Statement on International Labour Day 2008 and the launching of the ‘Regional Campaign on the Recognition & Protection of Domestic Work as Work’, 1 May 2008, Jakarta, Indonesia. AMC (2005). Migration Needs, Issues and Responses in the Greater Mekong Subregion: A Resource Book. Hong Kong: AMC. Anderson, B. (2000). Doing the Dirty Work? The Global Politics of Domestic Labour. London: Zed Books. ASEAN (2004). ‘The Vientiane Action Programme (VAP) 2004–2010.’ Available at http://www.aseansec.org/Publ-VAP.pdf. [Accessed on 15 March 2007]. ASEAN (2007). ‘ASEAN Declaration on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Migrant Workers.’ Available at http//www.aseansec.org/19265.htm. [Accessed on 6 April 2007]. Battistella, G. and Asis, M. M. B. (2003). ‘Southeast Asia and the specter of unauthorized migration.’ In G. Battistela and M. M. B. Asis (eds.). Unauthorized Migration in Southeast Asia, Quezon, Philippines: Scalabrini Migration Center, 1–34. CARAM Asia. (2007). ‘A-day-off campaign takes off!’ Available at http://www. caramasia.org/index.php?Itemid=51&id=674&option=com_content&task =view. [Accessed on 17 December 2008]. Chin, C. B. N. (1998). In Service and Servitude: Foreign Female Domestic Workers and the Malaysian ‘Modernity’ Project. New York: Columbia University Press. Constable, N. (1997). Maid to Order in Hong Kong: Stories of Filipina Workers. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Fernandez, I. (2008a). ‘Resistance to imperialist globalization and politics of migration to gain rights and dignity.’ Keynote Address given at International Migrants Alliance 1st Assembly, Hong Kong SAR, 15 June. Fernandez, I. (2008b, 20 October). ‘Launch of campaign for one paid off day for domestic workers.’ Available at http://www.tenaganita.net/index.php? option=com_content&task=view&id=242&Itemid=51. [Accessed on 16 December 2008]. Ford, M. (2007). Advocacy Responses to Irregular Labour Migration in ASEAN: The Cases of Malaysia and Thailand. Manila: Migrant Forum in Asia. Ford, M. and Piper, N. (2007). ‘Southern sites of female agency: informal regimes and female migrant labour resistance in East and Southeast Asia.’ In J. Hobson and L. Seabrooke (eds.). Everyday Politics of the World Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 63–80. Gurowitz, A. (2000). ‘Migrant rights and activism in Malaysia: opportunities and constraints.’ Journal of Asian Studies, 59(4): 863–88. Huang, S., Yeoh, B. S. A. and Rahman, N. A. (eds.) (2005). Asian Women as Transnational Domestic Workers. Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Academic. ILO (2006). The Mekong Challenge – Underpaid, Overworked and Overlooked: The realities of young migrant workers in Thailand (Volume 2). Bangkok: ILO. IMA (2008a). ‘Communique of the International Migrants Alliance Founding Assembly’, released at the Founding Assembly, Hong Kong, SAR. 15–16 June.

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Ford and Lyons  r 163 IMA (2008c). ‘IMA basis of unity’, released at the Founding Assembly, Hong Kong, SAR. 15–16 June. IMA (2008d). ‘IMA Constitution’, released at the Founding Assembly, Hong Kong, SAR. 15–16 June. IMA (2011). ‘Communique of the Second General Assembly of the International Migrants Alliance’, Manila, 3–4 July. IMA. (2008b). ‘Frequently asked questions.’ Available at http://pinas.net/ima/ index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11&Itemid=25. [Accessed on 23 December 2008]. Kempadoo, K., (ed.) (1999). Sun, Sex, and Gold: Tourism and Sex Work in the Caribbean. Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield. Law, L. (2000). Sex Work in Southeast Asia: The Place of Desire in a Time of AIDS. London: Routledge. Lin, Y. (2008). ‘2 years on, employers still skirt day-off clause: should there be a law to get employers to comply?’ Today [Online newspaper]. Singapore. 25 April. Lyons, L. (2005). ‘Transient workers count too? The intersection of citizenship and gender in Singapore’s civil society.’ Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, 20: 2: 208–48. Lyons, L. (2006). ‘The limits of transnational activism: organizing for migrant worker rights in Malaysia and Singapore.’ Paper read at Transnationalisation of Solidarities and Women’s Movements, 27–28 April, Political Science Department, University of Montreal. Lyons, L. (2007a). ‘A curious space “in-between”: the public/private divide and gender-based activism in Singapore.’ Gender, Technology and Development, 11: 27–51. Lyons, L. (2007b). ‘Dignity overdue: women’s rights activism in support of foreign domestic workers in Singapore.’ Women’s Studies Quarterly, 35(3–4): 106–22. Lyons, L. (2009). ‘Transcending the border: transnational imperatives in Singapore’s migrant worker rights movement.’ Critical Asian Studies, 4(11): 89–112. Mackie, V. (2001). ‘The language of globalization, transnationality and feminism.’ International Feminist Journal of Politics, 3(2): 180–206. Martin, P., Abella, M. and Kuptsch, C. (2006). Managing Labor Migration in the Twenty-first Century. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. MFA (2010) ‘International Campaign for the Recognition of Domestic Work as Work.’ Available at http://www.mfasia.org/latest-stories/169-internationalcampaign-for-the-recognition-of-domestic-work-as-work. [Accessed on 7 October 2014]. Moghadam, V. (2000). ‘Transnational feminist networks: collective action in an era of globalization.’ International Sociology, 15(1): 57–85. MOM (2007). ‘Singapore Yearbook of Manpower Statistics.’ Available at http:// www.mom.gov.sg/publish/etc/medialib/mom_library/mrsd/yb_2007.Par.45234. File.tmp/2007YearBook_LFtable1_1.xls. [Accessed on 5 February 2008]. Ng, J. (2014). ‘Malaysia gets tough on illegal immigrants as Amnesty Program expires’, Wall Street Journal 21 January. Available at http://blogs.wsj.com/ indonesiarealtime/2014/01/21/malaysia-gets-tough-on-illegal-immigrants-asamnesty-program-expires/ [Accessed on 30 September 2014].

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164  r Eight Ong, A. (2006). Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty. Durham: Duke University Press. Parreñas, R. S. (2001). Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration and Domestic Work. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Piper, N. (2005). ‘Rights of foreign domestic workers – emergence of transnational and transregional solidarity?’ Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 14(1–2): 97–119. Piper, N. and Uhlin, A. (2002). ‘Transnational advocacy networks and the issue of female labor migration and trafficking in East and Southeast Asia: a gendered analysis of opportunities and obstacles.’ Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 11(2): 171–96. Sabri Bin Haji Karmani, M. (2010) Migration of Labour in Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur: Labour Department, Peninsular Malaysia. Sim, A. (2003). ‘Organising discontent: NGOs for Southeast Asian migrant workers in Hong Kong.’ Asian Journal of Social Science, 31(3): 478–510. Sziraczki, G. (2006). Labour and Social Trends in the Asia and the Pacific 2006: Progress Towards Decent Work. Bangkok: International Labour Organization. Tarrow, S. (2001). ‘Transnational politics: contention and institutions in International politics.’ Annual Review of Political Science, 4: 1–20. Tenaganita (2008). ‘One paid day off campaign for domestic workers.’ Available at http://www.tenaganita.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view &id=233&Itemid=51. [Accessed on 16 December 2008]. Thai Labour Campaign (2004). ‘Nationalists capitalism – suppression of migrant workers.’ Labour Focus: 1. Thanasombat, S. (2004). ‘Vulnerabilities and visibility: Thailand’s management of female domestic workers from Burma.’ Journal of Public and International Affairs, 15: 1–23. TWC2 (2008). Media Fact Sheet for One Day Off Campaign. Singapore: Transient Workers Count Too. TWC2, HOME, UNIFEM Singapore. (2008). Press Release: ‘Singapore NGO’s join forces to launch national campaign’. Singapore: TWC2. UFDWRs (2008). ‘United for Foreign Domestic Workers’ Rights.’ Available at http://ufdwrs.blogspot.com/. [Accessed on 17 December 2008]. UFDWRs. (2011a). Analysis of the International Labour Organisation Proposed Convention and Recommendation on Domestic Work. Chiang Mai and Kuala Lumpur: APWLD and CARAM-Asia. UFDWRs. (2011b). ‘UFDWR analysis of the “Blue Report”.’ Available at UFDWR Facebook page. [Accessed on 7 October 2014]. UFDWRs (2013). ‘Position Paper to the 2nd UN High-Level Dialogue.’ Available at http://ufdwrs.blogspot.com/. [Accessed on 7 October 2014].

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9

The Alter-globalization Movement: A New Humanism? The Case of the World Social Forum Kléber Ghimire

Introduction This chapter seeks to further develop discussion on the contemporary forms of anti-systemic transnational movements, notably the alterglobalization movement. Undeniably an essential part of the current global social campaigns, the alter-globalization movement is rather unique in its structure, functioning and certain claims. Both ‘global’ and ‘social justice’ oriented movements have not lacked in the past or in recent decades. For example, when Christianity was introduced in Europe at the beginning of the first millennium it contained a wide corpus of universal fraternity, asserting that ‘there should be no more winners or losers, neither free men nor slaves, neither Romans nor Greeks or Jewish, they were all Christians’ (Ambrosy 1930: 472). Many intellectuals as well as common people rallied behind this message and Christianity rapidly spread using the geographical unity, peace and communication linkages bestowed by the Roman Empire. The Islamic religion’s reach between the eighth and twelfth centuries was even more global, stretching from Senegal in West Africa and Southern Europe to Eastern China. It called for brotherhood and solidarity and it ‘had everywhere to take on people as it found them, with a degree of tolerance unknown in the populous West’ (Braudel 1995: 61). The movements promoting ideas of antislavery, labour mobilization, women’s franchise rights and so forth have in more recent times remained fairly global and attempted to advance various elements of social justice. Hence, what is so unique about the alter-globalization movement? One way to reply to the above question is to say that unlike many past social movements, which nevertheless remained limited to calls for reforms

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in the specific sector (spiritual, work or gender) and largely in selected regions, the alter-globalization movement seeks to address the malaise of the neoliberal economic system in its entirety, and it looks for mobilizing social forces in the North and South, as well as between metropolitan centres and dependent peripheral regions and countries. It is true that in its criticism of neoliberal globalization, its reasoning is not fundamentally different than that of Marxism’s stance on capitalism. Where it differs with Marxism is in its emphasis on the mobilization of social forces across social classes and ideologies and its rejection of violent means to bring about major societal changes. It also does not suggest throwing out the existing system altogether and replacing it with a completely a new one. Overall, it wants to bring about substantial reforms within the present economic and political parameters so that human welfare, solidarity and dignity, in their real sense of the meaning, are attained. With the motto of ‘another world is possible’, it strives to convey a more positive vision for the future. Ascending in force since the protests at the Seattle WTO meeting in 1999 and concretizing in the launching of the World Social Forum in 2001, the alter-globalization movement has become a topic of particular attention within government institutions, the business world and among the public to an extent. It has particularly attracted a great deal of academic research and writings. Within this literature, one major strand consists primarily of demonstrating optimistic inquisitiveness and appraisals towards the movement. Just to give a few examples: Bourdieu (2001: 61) sees the alterglobalization movement as a ‘new internationalism’, while Touraine (2005: 47–8) considers it ‘as important as socialism during the first decades of the industrial society’. In the same fashion, della Porta and Tarrow (2004: 12) believe recent transnational contentions ‘have produced major innovations in the existing repertoires’. Amin (n.d.), one of the principal contemporary critiques of the neoliberal system, views the movement to be a ‘civilizational progress’ in the existing democratic practice – given its refusal to hierarchy and horizontal cooperation in action. Finally, according to Attac (2006: 28), alter-globalization is a social movement, which ‘aims at the emancipation of the humanity’. Naturally, the above authors seek to explain the phenomenon and expansion of the alter-globalization movement from varied theoretical and militant perspectives; and the consideration of each standpoint would require significant explanation and scrutiny – a task clearly out of the scope and ambition in this chapter. What it does want to take up is the very last citation by Attac that refers to the emancipatory role of the movement. More precisely, we are interested in exploring the conception of ‘humanism’ inherent or upheld within the alter-globalization movement.

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The alter-globalization movement is a generic term designating a worldwide network of NGOs, social movements and international campaigns. Despite significant differences in their origin, structure, networking and advocacy capacity, many of these associations join hands in holding common protest rallies and meetings, media lobbying, publication and information dissemination, as well as considering various propositions for unified actions in specific contexts. Since 2001, the World Social Forum (WSF) has galvanized many of these activities. As such, it is frequently referred to as a movement of movements. It is also very distinctive in its structure, methods of functioning and decision-making. What seems particularly characteristic is that the movement displays a profoundly humanist outlook in its philosophical vision and desired outcomes. In short, in this chapter, by considering the specific case of WSF, we like to know how and the extent to which the alter-globalization movement could be considered the latest form of humanism. But what does this new humanism actually consists of? And what are the potential outcomes for fundamental societal changes, if any, which might be expected? To consider these questions in a structured manner, we must necessarily begin this discussion by noting the notion of ‘humanism’ itself.

Basic conception of humanism In a broad sense, humanism is about accepting all human beings as equal and recognizing their individual and collective potentials. In this vain, the prime goal is to achieve the highest degree of human well-being and universality. This is naturally an idealistic view, and there exists plentiful literature along these lines (see for example: Kurtz 1973). This strand of opinion believes in particular in the genius and greatness of the human being vis-à-vis nature and its ability to evolve towards excellence. Kant for example suggested that through its faculty to make use of reasoning and intellect, man retained capacities to develop to the highest degree of perfection, and this not in individuals, but in a collective and single form of humanity (Kant 1988: 11). This was in any event the central idea advanced during the Enlightenment period. Spread of education and knowledge were the chief mechanisms to liberate humanity from darkness and move towards a universal achievement in all regions and among all social categories. However, this vision sadly ended up portraying Western society ‘special’ and ‘superior’ to rest of the other societies (Elias 1978: 3–4). Despite the negative consequences resulting in colonization and subjugation, as well as wide-ranging academic criticism, this notion of bringing ‘light’ to poorer or backward population groups continues to have reverberations even today. Many dimensions of this

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conception can especially be found in development aid programmes, as donor agencies from industrialized countries commonly infer this as a way of bringing new knowledge and financial resources to uplift the human conditions in poorer countries. Placing importance on humanism essentially implies that fundamental moral and ethical dimensions are not forgotten. Within the Enlightenment thinking, in some ways, the spread of education and knowledge was also interpreted as a moral and ethical obligation. However, these dimensions have particularly been promoted within various religious traditions. For example, Saint Augustine (n.d.: 26) said that ‘divine misericorde was open to all nations on earth’ and that ‘one must love its next like oneself’. Such humanitarian views are not unique to Christianity. Within Islam mutual social responsibility, common bonds and societal harmony have remained strong and fervent ideals (Said and Sharify-Funk 2003: 17–30; Tripp 2006: 55–92). Likewise, Confucian and Taoism religious thoughts have had lasting impacts on ‘the moral nature of man and the massive humanism that developed in China in subsequent centuries’ (Blakney 1955: 19). It is in this sense that Said laments that academic debates on humanism have remained limited mainly to Western contexts (Said 2005: 24–5). Moral and ethical dimensions emerge within specific historical and social contexts. They are also subject to varied interpretations or even manipulations. Nietzsche argued that the manifestation of morality at the individual level was nothing more than a mere satisfaction of one’s ego (Nietzsche 1992: 87). But even when morality and ethical features are integrated within collective forms of solidarity, let us say between nations, there is no guarantee that they do not convey the protracted notion of charity or produce dependency relationships. On the contrary, this perception is no doubt a major plight in the present forms of international cooperation. Marxism as a philosophy asserted itself to be a progressive humanism in that the removal of the conditions of exploitation of the working class would liberate humanity from alienation and misery. As such, institutionalization of a socialist society was seen to be ‘the basis for the development of a new Humanism’ (Fromm 1966: ix). It sought to give new explanations to historical and structural conditions, as well as give a new ideological tool for bringing about critical social and economic changes. Of course, a criticism commonly advanced about Marxism has been that it gave far too much importance to the economy and ideology, but less to moral spiritual facets and the broad ‘questions of the meaning of life and man’s goal in living’ (Fromm: x). Generally, debates on humanism often appear as explanations and rejoinders to particular societal conditions that menace basic human values

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and collective interests. According to Braudel (1995: 340–1), humanism is a major fight across historical periods and in opposition to many forms of domination and tyranny. As he writes: [H]umanism is always against something: against exclusive submission to God; against a wholly materialist conception of the world; against any doctrine neglecting or seeming to neglect humanity; against any system that would reduce human responsibility ... It is a perpetual series of demands – a manifestation of pride.

It is precisely in the light of this assertion that we find the consideration of the WSF most appropriate. Clearly, the movement has, right from its inception, identified the contemporary forms of neoliberal economic globalization and political hegemony by a unipolar superpower: the United States, as the prime cause of worldwide concern. But it does not limit itself simply to censuring the ‘system’. Instead, it advances its criticism in the form of a series of demands aimed at altering and ameliorating conditions for the average lot, world peace and ecological protections. Undoubtedly, these are wide humanist ideals. Broadly, we can assess the WSF’s humanist fundamentals, visions and results of its actions to date under three principal headings: its charter of principles; resistance to neoliberalism; and building of new alternatives.

The WSF as a humanist movement: key features A masterpiece charter Shortly after organizing a first international social forum in Porto Alegre in 2001, the key organizations and movements behind the initiative went ahead developing and adopting a Charter of Principles to steer and expand the movement. This Charter can be considered a masterpiece in many regards, reflecting numerous dimensions of humanism. It is perceptibly a masterpiece in the selection and depth of certain words and notions. We may note in specific: (i) the idea of a planetary society; (ii) fruitful interactions among people and between them and the nature; (iii) world solidarity, plurality, diversity and non-confessional nature of composition of internal structure and actions (see Table 9.1). Although the terms directly related to ‘humanism’ as such is mentioned in only a couple of places, the text demonstrates a remarkable capacity in amalgamating numerous neatly related concepts and outlooks. Taken as a whole, the main ambition that surfaces is the attempt to construct a humanist utopia. The WSF Charter articulates several key elements that concern humanism. First is the cosmopolitan vision in which it seeks to provide ‘a space for actors who may construct democratic projects in different

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170  r Nine Table 9.1  Selected extracts from the WSF’s Charter of Principles (Terms pertaining to humanism are set in italics) 1.

Groups and movements within WSF ‘are committed to building a planetary society directed towards fruitful relationships among Humankind and between it and the Earth’.

2.

The alternatives proposed at the WSF ‘are designed to ensure that globalization in solidarity will prevail as a new stage in world history’.

3.

The WSF is a ‘plural, diversified and non-confessional’ context.

4.

The WSF ‘will increase the capacity for non-violent social resistance to the process of dehumanization the world is undergoing’.

Source: World Social Forum (WSFa, n.d.)

contexts, both local and global’ (Teivainen 2002: 624). Grzybowski (2003: 12), one of the key figures behind the WSF process, argues that the designation of the initiative as ‘social’ itself meant ‘people, human beings and collective subjects organized in movements, networks and campaigns’ as well as it ‘encompasses a vision of the world’. Second, the Charter recognizes an intimate relationship between human beings and nature. This is significant, noting especially that many of the leaders and activists of the movement come from the politics of the left that tended to emphasize in the past mainly the material dimension of progress and human welfare, at times ignoring completely the ecological conditions. Moreover, the Charter enunciates that economic and political actions aimed at integrating human needs and vital ecological functions should not only look at the present but also future generations (Article 1 of the Charter; WSFa n.d.). Third, and rather singularly, it renounces violence both as a means to acquire as well as hold onto power. It also rejects fundamentalist politics and groups that defend armed struggles and wars (Articles 9 and 10; WSFa n.d.). Finally, it recognizes the human potential. In particular, it calls for civil society organizations and movements to develop actions from local to national levels with a view to promoting popular participation in searching for change-inducing practices. These measures should also go hand in hand with an attempt to encourage understanding and mutual recognitions among participant groups. The basic purpose of all this is to build ‘a new world in solidarity’ (Article 14; WSFa n.d.). Similar observations can be made concerning certain methods of its functioning as perceived in the Charter. One such approach is the search for doing politics differently. In other words, unlike in the past which frequently included global social actions along sectoral, professional and party lines, the WSF sees strength in the enlistment of social forces along

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diverse political origins. Besides, in Grzybowski’s (2003: 11) terms, it demonstrates ‘consciousness of humankind and shared planetary common good’; and as such, he goes onto noting that ‘[i]deologies do not unite us at the WSF, but those principles and values do’. Equally significant is the emphasis placed on the recognition of the scope of vigorous citizenry and action through social organizations and movements in the face of detached, bureaucratic and opaque institutional politics. The practice of seeking to bring about political transformations through a vanguard party is perceived obsolete. Also, pre-eminence of party politics is seen as divisive, as fighting and hegemony for power within the WSF could split the participants into groups along party lines and hence weaken the movement (Whitaker 2005: 16–17). It is for this reason, the Charter formally barred the participation of political parties, military organizations, governments and international organizations, although their representatives may be permitted to attend on a personal capacity (Article 9; WSFa n.d.). Let us add to this list one more point, which has to do with the conception to consciously avoid hierarchy within the movement. The Charter discourages participants from taking any decisions on declarations or proposals for action that would commit the Forum as a whole (Article 6; WSFa n.d.), with the belief that this would dissuade the emergence of hierarchy consisting of leaders and militants, as well as between organizations. Hence, according to Whitaker (2005: 50–1): ‘The Forum becomes an intense moment in networking life, without chiefs neither command while guaranteeing a complete autonomy of each organization, movement and person’. Resistance The WSF states that it stands ‘in opposition to a process of globalization commanded by the large multinational corporations and by the governments and international institutions at the service of those corporations interests, with the complicity of national governments’ (Article 4; WSFa n.d.). It goes onto stipulate that as a movement it looks for ‘means and actions to resist and overcome’ the ‘domination by capital’ (Article 11; WSFa n.d.). In short, it articulates its resistance to the present forms of economic globalization and the political system that spouses it in a defiant manner. In concrete terms, this resistance is expressed through the means of various global, regional and national forums held regularly since 2001. Considerable mobilization of a range of social actors and the public has been witnessed in these forums. As can be seen from Table 9.2, between 2001 and 2013, the number of participants in the global social forums had risen from 4,700 to 60,000 with the peak of 155,000 in 2005. This was

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172  r Nine Table 9.2  Information on participants at various world social forums Year

Place

Number of registered participants

2001

Porto Alegre

4,700

2002

Porto Alegre

12,274

2003

Porto Alegre

27,763

2004

Mumbai

74,126

2005

Porto Alegre

2006

Bamako

155,000 10,000

Caracas

53,000

Karachi

30,000

2007

Nairobi

75,000

2008

No international or regional forums organized

2009

Belem

2011

Dakar

113,000 70,000

2013

Tunis

60,000

Source: WSF (n.d.b, 2009), Wikipedia, http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_social_mondial

due primarily to the holding of the intercontinental meeting of the Free Trade Area for the Americas (FTAA) in Buenos Aires with the participation of US President Bush, at the same time as the social forum, and the widespread regional mobilization by trade unions, NGOs and political parties. During these meetings, particular efforts are made to mobilize individual citizens, local communities, public figures and the media. The opening and closing ceremonies in specific are utilized as testimony to a demonstration of major influence with participation and addressing of the meeting by eminent personalities such as Nobel laureates and charismatic leaders and musical concerts by well-known bands. Different groups and networks present at these forums may also come up with declarations, focusing on issues of regional, political and strategic implications and actions. Albeit quite varied, these activities evidently do not involve any direct actions in the classical forms of strikes, pickets, occupation of offices, blockades and organization of peasants and workers. Nor do they involve taking up of arms and causing tragic bloodshed. Indeed, the WSF explicitly criticizes the exercise of violence by the state, as well as seeks to ‘increase the capacity for non-violent social resistance’ by seeking to ‘strengthen and create new national and international links among organizations and movements of society – in both public and private life … and reinforce the humanizing measures being taken by the action of these movements and organizations’ (Article 13; WSFa n.d.). In essence, the meaning of resistance used by the WSF has a more discursive contour. Annual gatherings of social organizations and

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movements that take place under its leadership are primarily meant to rouse interest and enthusiasm among participating groups, and inform the wider public of the negative consequences of neoliberal economic globalization, as well as the inability of the existing political system to deliver any promising results. In addition, they are designed to crystallize the popular voice and outcry that may be taken into account by certain governments and international organizations (notably the United Nations system). Obviously, the media, some government figures, intellectuals and political party representatives present in these events are expected to serve as crucial intermediaries in this process. Construction of ‘another world’ An inherent utopia that guides much of the spur occurring within the WSF is its declared maxim: ‘Another world is possible’. This new and envisaged world should, as it implies, replace the currently dominant political and economic order, which is plainly seen as the root of the existing forms and degrees of human deprivation, distress and injustice, including a high cost to the natural environment. How this novel world would be achieved is however not quite evident. One fundamental trait of humanism, according to certain authors, is that it abstains from fanatic conducts (Fromm 1966: vii). This is because such activities inevitably lead to violence, thereby causing widespread exclusion, sufferings and physical harm. The WSF, by rejecting violence in a clear fashion, looks for peaceful solutions that are built on nonexploitative relations and mutual solidarity. In other words, the WSF’s approach for societal change remains deeply non-confrontational. In this respect, we may recall that, as in the overall alter-globalization movement, the emphasis within the WSF shifted from the ‘anti’ to ‘alter-globalization’ approach. This signifies that the WSF is willing to recognize the positive side of the globalization processes, as well as to conceiving and advancing alternative proposals within the existing parameters. What are in effect these alternative proposals? To Grzybowski (2003: 12), the forum as an open space, ‘encompasses discovery, mapping out, and recognition of what we do and how we do it, opening us up to mutual questioning of its possibilities and limits’. Similarly, Wallerstein (2005: 1275) who has shown marked empathy to the movement, views the WSF’s present non-hierarchical and non-polarizing structure as a proof of the foundation of another world. Others such as Amin (n.d.) view the construction of ‘social hegemony’ (of working classes and their allied groups) as the only alternative capable of substituting the social system of power actually in place. Thus, propositions within the WSF tend to come

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from three strands: first, the forum is considered primarily as a space for debates and bearing in mind of potential actions (Grzybowski’s position); second, proposals should reflect the open and non-hierarchical nature, but so far they ‘have no real names and have no detailed outlines’ (Wallerstein, 2005: 1275); third, the WSF should prove a fresh springboard to class struggle (Amin’s perspective). Evidently, these positions reveal varying ideological origins and standpoints. Houtard, thus, advances the notion of ‘collective human life’, consisting of ecological, economical, political and cultural spheres (see Table 9.3). These are munificent ideas, with significant philosophical and humanist content. Essentially, the problem remains who should carry out these tasks and how? From a more practical point of view, Massiah (n.d.) proposes to converge the civil society efforts manifest within the WSF around the principle of ‘access to rights to all’ building on the new political context created by the arrival of powerful left-wing leaders in Latin America. Such a call can also have the potential of bringing together varieties of forces concerned with Third World issues, including international bodies promoting the perception and practice of ‘human development’. Ostensibly, the question emerges: will this type of moderate and reformist approach lead towards the actual creation of ‘another world’ in a far-reaching manner? Assessment In the above, we noted the WSF having the benefit of a Charter of Principles, which is rather unique in its appreciation of a set of key societal concepts and processes, including its articulation to promote a cosmopolitan and civil society driven vision of democracy and a non-hierarchical method of functioning. We observed its stated forthright resistance to the current neoliberal system. It also seeks to offer alternative ideas and solutions as a Table 9.3  Construction of ‘another world’: principle axis for action according to Houtard 1.

Sustainable use of natural resources, which means a new culture of the relations between human beings and nature, from exploitation to symbiosis.

2.

Predominance of use value over exchange value, meaning a new philosophy of the economy, the capitalist system giving exclusive priority to the market.

3.

Full democracy, representative and participative in the political field, but also in all social relations, being of gender or of production.

4.

Interculturality, meaning the participation of all cultures, knowledge, philosophies and religions in the construction of societies, on the base of the three first principles.

Houtard (n.d.)

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way of addressing democratic deficits and human deprivation. With this, it should be evident that the movement overall conveys a humanist message in a very persuasive way. Yet its organization setup, strategic visions and actions are filled with numerous tensions and ambiguities. We now turn to considering some of these aspects.

The rigidity and contradictions in defining the actual role of an ‘open space’ We may recall that the WSF was initially founded to directly counter the Davos Economic Forum (DEF) (formally World Economic Forum) that has since 1982 brought together world economic and political leaders to advocate free market economy with correspondingly lessened political inter­ventions by public bodies and social forces (such as the trade unions). For this reason, the WSF changed simply one word on its title (i.e. replacing ‘economic’ with ‘social’) and began holding annual editions of its global forums on the same dates as that of the DEF. Furthermore, to effectively defy its adversary, the WSF needed to create a broad-based alliance of social forces that opposed the Davos process. Hence the conception of the WSF as an open, permanent and global meeting space, which would gather public voices and resentments to neoliberalism and domination of capital, as well as allow contacts, exchanges and consideration of alternative proposals, made a great deal of sense. And this scope proved valid, and was made use of quite effectively by attracting in addition to the public also academics, the media and well-known personalities, representatives of public institutions, and so on. Indeed, in terms of its popularity and expansion, certain observers affirmed by 2003 that ‘Porto Alegre killed Davos’ (Boniface 2003). Since 2001, a lot of water has flowed under the bridge. The DEF has begun to incorporate on its working agendas moderate and reformist issues associated with poverty, income disparities, and transparency of financial markets and social responsibility of enterprises. Above all, it recognizes that ‘globalization must be combined with a sense of values cantered on the notions of justice and freedom’ (World Economic Forum 2008: 4).1 On the other hand, within the WSF there have been interrogations regarding the utility of holding regular annual meetings to discuss more or less the same topics year after year and without any elaboration of specific plans for effective action. In a strategic document in 2007, the WSF did recognize the need to reassess if it were to remain ‘to be relevant as a counterpart to Davos’ as well as ‘the existing tensions between constructing an open and inclusive space from one side and radicalizing the WSF from the other’ (WSFd n.d.). So, in the face of these evolutions, is the argument

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still convincing that the WSF should remain solely a ‘meeting place’ without consideration for ‘action’? In a strict denotation, it is not quite true to say that the WSF does not care about action. It states in its Charter that it is an open space for ‘effective action’ and ‘committed to building a planetary society’ (Article 1; WSFa n.d.). At the same time, it also notes in Article 5 that ‘it does not intend to be a body representing world civil society’. In short, the WSF calls for change, but does not want to lead or permit it to be utilized as an instrument or a resource for bringing about such transformations. This is plainly contradictory.

The question of a political strategy The whole idea of pushing for ‘another world’ entails that a certain number of concrete propositions are identified, including a possible course of action to accomplish them. In particular, following several years of debate, reflection and exchange of points of view on the major themes of globalization at various forums (from national to regional and international), a generalized expectation among participants (individuals and organizations) has been that the movement would take up certain initiatives to elaborate a well-defined strategy for political action. Attempts were also made by a number of groups to promote organized declarations calling for direct national and international actions, such as the Call of Bamako in 2006.2 However, the WSF secretariat distanced itself from this initiative (see Amin n.d.). In fact, key architects of the WSF such as Chiko Whitaker (2005: 193) have persistently insisted that: the great challenge that poses for the continuity of the Forum process, and that it realizes fully its vocation of incubator of movements and initiatives, is to multiply worldwide such ‘spaces’ really open and free, without reducing them around any specific propositions.

One consequence of the absence of such a strategy is that the WSF has turned more and more into a ‘celebratory’ event. In particular, the initiative does not acquire a sufficiently ‘conflictual’ character. According to Hardt (2002: 114): There are indeed two primary positions in the response to today’s dominant forces of globalization: either one can work to reinforce the sovereignty of national-states as a defensive barrier against the control of foreign and global capital, or one can strive towards a non-national alternative to the present form of globalization that is equally global.

In other words, to Hardt, the conflict should be against the capitalism itself whether it is globalized or home-based. His criticism emanates from the

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fact that the WSF has identified neoliberalism as the primary target and in that, it sees global capital as the main foe with severe impacts on the weakening role of the state. There are inherent dogmatic debates in these sorts of arguments. Nevertheless, there are, on the one side, those who make a case that mounting an international struggle against the expansion of neoliberal capitalism requires a structured political orientation, including the development of a precursor political force: for example an international political party (Patomäki and Teivainen 2006: 180–7). Another view, often coming from the libertarian tradition, is to see both the international capital and centralized structure of state sovereignty as detrimental to popular voice and local alternative management, although certain authors within this tradition now propose to create an Assembly of the Social Movements to revamp an organized opposition internationally (Adamovsky 2007). Yet others, probably the majority within the WSF, do recognize a vital convenience in mounting an alliance with progressive state elites to fight against international capital. According to Wallerstein (2005: 1275), those governments sharing the vision of WSF could deal with short-run issues, while social movements could continue promoting medium- and long-term visions. He adds: ‘Both kinds of issues affect the longer-run transition process. And short-run issues affect our daily lives immediately. An intelligent political strategy must move on all fronts at once’. Consequently, the horizontal mobilization process sustained by WSF is viewed to be a great potential for mobilizing widespread social clusters, networks and forces. This is also the core belief prevalent among most NGOs and similar civil society organizations engaged in practical service delivery activities heavily represented within the movement. For example, OXFAM (a leading international NGO within WSF in terms of its philosophical and financial weight) deems it essential to make economic relations fairer by removing trade barriers in rich Northern countries for Southern agricultural or handicrafts products, and has sought to mobilize state elites and international organizations (Oxfam 2002: 3–16). Oxfam does not see international markets or capitalist relations as such a problem, but rather the absence of social justice. In this context, one major problem is the WSF Charter which postulates that ‘the participants in the Forum shall not be called on to take decisions as a body, whether by vote or acclamation’ (Article 6; WSFa n.d.). The WSF’s organizational structure thus makes it difficult to develop even minimalist common political strategy among participating individuals and groups. Given this situation, the crucial question is: what is the general strategy that could eventually help to extend political space favouring increased discussions and negotiations with the authorities and formal institutions?

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Without doubt, the mainstream force within the movement has manifestly chosen to remain outside of the electoral politics and state institutions. We should recall again that the WSF Charter views any direct influence of political parties within the movement with a negative eye. The perception has been that the current political institutions based on elections and party politics are ‘distant, undemocratic and non-transparent ... with increasing bureaucrat­ization of politics itself’ (Grzybowski 2003: 10). Thus, popular mobilizations within civil society are considered more appropriate in influencing the dominant institutions than participating in elections and taking part in management activities. Despite support from a certain number of political personalities and the media, it is difficult to affirm if this approach has actually helped to put into practice specific politics in the line of WSF’s perceptions or campaigns. Does this, therefore, lend support to the call for greater efforts on the part of the WSF and other related movements to directly control formal institutions and their resources, at least at the local or municipal level? Or, on the contrary, given that the neoliberal system is so solidly designed and settled, should the movement instead imagine a more formal political organization (e.g. an international party) and actions that are more combative? Overall, there is a void on many of these areas; and by insisting that it represents merely an ‘open space’ for civil society meetings and dialogue, the WSF has so far simply avoided taking them up. Increasingly, however, the dearth of a fitting political strategy has evolved into a major source of frustrations among numerous alter-globalization activists, moderates as well as radicals3.

The resources problem There are two distinct problems that specifically merit attention. The first is the absence of a reliable grassroots base of the WSF. This is usually a basic downside of networking politics. In other words, since the WSF is a network of social organizations and movements it has no members of its own. In 2013, the WSF’s International Council (the organ that decides upon the movement’s activities and future orientations) was represented by 162 member organizations. These organizations are thus its key support base. But many of them, especially the NGOs, have no members themselves. Overall, the WSF relies on twelve to fifteen member organizations (the majority of them being Brazilian) and increasingly on six working commissions led by the representatives from the same organizations with support from various individual experts (cf. Whitaker 2005: 124–7). The basic point here is that the WSF does not have a solid membership base, as one would see in the case of trade unions, for example. In this

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respect, the movement’s organizational setup is more akin to an average NGO than that of a trade union. Apart from the country where the global or regional forum gets organized, the participation of the grassroots within the movement is rather muted. On top of this, the movement’s regional participation is highly skewed with Asia, Africa and former Soviet Union countries badly represented. In short, much of the WSF’s mobilizations are based on heterogeneous groups whose participation cannot always be counted on. Hence, this makes it difficult to plan for any swift and reliable campaigns. There is already a generalized lassitude among certain participants because since 2001 the forums have considered more or less the same types of issues. Furthermore, the lack of a clearly defined political strategy is also a source of their increased frustration. The second resources difficulty is the WSF’s weak financial situation. This author has earlier analyzed this feature in some detail (Ghimire 2006: 4–10). While the costs of organizing national, regional and international forums have amplified4, the income levels have not met the growing needs created by the increase in activities and participants. In fact, between 2001 and 2005, the total income of the movement rose from USD1.65 million to 8.27 million. However, the expenditure (based on the anticipation of income) remained always higher. This led to chronic deficits, rising by more than USD1.5 million in 2005. As a result, no international forum was organized in 2006; and in 2007, financial difficulties forced the organizers of the Nairobi forum to seek sponsorships from international hotel chains and telephone companies, attracting a great deal of criticism (see for example Bonfond 2008). There are two reasons for this financial vulnerability. First, in the absence of a membership base, the WSF is unable to maintain any stable internal financial resource base. The principal source of its internal income is the registration fees that the individual and organizational delegates have to pay in order to participate in the forum, but this income usually constitutes less than 10 per cent of its budget. Second, the movement’s reasoning and procedure to hold an international forum each year coinciding with the Davos Economic Forum, frequently preceded by national and regional forums, has proved a costly business. This has made the movement very dependent on certain international NGO donor agencies such as OXFAM. Also, according to some authors, this situation has reinforced the domination of financially powerful NGOs over autonomous social movements within the WSF structure, as well as holding it back from taking a more politically motivated radical programme (Amin n.d.).

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Conclusions Pertinently the essential force and objective of humanism has been to critically question the existing order as well as offer solutions for societal transformations. Persistently opposing violent behaviours, it has stressed the respect for basic human value and ethical dimensions. The WSF, as a leading force within the alter-globalization movement, no doubt reveals many of these qualities, if not more. Indeed, as stated, the WSF is rather distinctive in its organizational set up (inclusive and non-hierarchic gathering of social organizations and movements), methods of functioning (peaceful mobilizations and campaigns) and a spirit of pragmatic political change (exertion of pressure and persuasion rather than all-out confrontations with the adversary). Precisely, it is because of these virtues that we considered labelling the WSF, in particular, and the alterglobalization movement in general, as a ‘new humanism’. Although clearly forceful in political philosophy, humanist movements have very often been criticized for their inability to transform themselves as tools of praxis (Said 2005: 28–9). Take for example the US case. It has one of the strongest humanist movements led by intellectuals and university academics since the beginning of the twentieth century. Yet, the country’s economic, military and political dominance with severe social and environmental consequences worldwide reveal that its humanist records are far from promising. Instead, it continues to be a prime target of hostility and opposition among various social movements and networks including the alter-globalization movement. With specific respect to the WSF, the observations we have made show that the movement is precarious in its actions, and has made no tangible results towards creating ‘another world’. Its rhetorical radicalism remains limited to the innovation of a prodigious Charter and call for resistance through the holding of annual forums. At the same time, this Charter demonstrates a very inflexible and nonevolutionary character; there exists no political strategy to carry through the charge of waging war against the neoliberal policies that it has given itself; and, most of all, it acutely lacks a sturdy grassroots base as well as essential financial resources. Many of these elements have been illustrated in recent studies and analyses (Pleyers, 2011; Sen and Waterman 2012). Nevertheless, in a strict humanist sense, the movement is not totally futile. If a social movement is to be measured in terms of its capacity to become a ‘force symbolique’ raising questions on existing power relations (Bourdieu 2001: 40), the WSF fulfils its objective quite successfully. It has gained a certain identity within the current anti-systemic movement and marks probably a distinct historical period in the evolution of capitalism and in the gathering of popular opposition (either collective or individual).

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It is obviously risky to predict how the WSF will fare in the next ten or twenty years. A split in the movement cannot be ruled out by those seeking to radicalize the movement. In spite of that, the WSF’s minimum survival in its present form is guaranteed thanks to the keen support of certain international NGO donor agencies and notably by the Brazilian government. Indeed, as argued elsewhere, the Brazilian government and business community see the WSF very much as part of the country’s diplomatic efforts to promote its enhanced influence at regional and international levels; as such, they would not want the WSF to simply disappear from the Brazilian and international political landscape (Ghimire 2008: 9). In the final analysis, the future course of the WSF is uncertain not because it lacks a minimum external financial support or functional condition, but rather it remains largely pre-set in its structure and has no future strategies other than continue to serve as an open space for meetings and discussions among NGOs and social movements. As for its humanist message, the grand principles are all there, as previously noted. What is missing is essentially the lack of articulation between these principles and their concrete application through the medium of politics. Rejecting outright the call for integrating the implementation of a certain number of basic actions is that in the long run, the WSF’s mobilizing and discursive role could risk becoming empty of any ideological sense. Currently, there is little sign that the ‘system’ feels truly threatened obliging it to concede major changes. Manifestly, this seems to suggest that there are major limits to a humanist anti-systemic movement such as the WSF to enable fundamental societal changes despite its high emancipatory and humanist ideals.

Notes 1

2

Obviously, it is difficult to gauge whether there have been some impacts of the WSF, or civil society mobilization in general, in the way the DEF identifies these issues (and more importantly the question is whether or not it allocates significant resources). However, Martin et al. (2006: 510) suggest that the alter-globalization movement in general has not been able to affect the workings of the major international bodies such as WTO, IMF or the European Union. These organizations have only introduced ‘modifications in their institutional communication, which in the end just seems to reinforce their legitimacy’. The call was launched at the Bamako polycentric forum on 18 January 2006. It included an attempt to develop a more militant political strategy and a detailed list of short- and long-term action plans as a way of consolidating the gains made from the past mobilizations at the WSF. For an integral text see Monthly Review (n.d.).

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For example, see the different articles published by the WSF on its site: World Social Forum, ‘Evaluation and other texts’ (WSFd n.d.). The WSF seeks to cover air transport and subsistence allowances to participants coming from poor countries and it must also cover the costs for the hiring of space, infrastructure, equipment, security, sanitation, translation, communi­ cation, and basic staff, etc.

References Adamovsky, E. (2007, December). ‘Autonomous politics and its problems.’ Available at http://www.znet/viewArticle/3911 [Accessed on 17 July 2008]. Ambrosy, A. (1930). Histoire romaine. Paris: Hatier. Amin, S. (n.d.). ‘Le forum social mondial est-il utile pour les luttes populaires?’ Available at www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/noticias_textos.php?cd_news= 349 [Accessed on 17 July 2008]. Attac (2006). Le petit alter: Dictionnaire altermondialiste. Paris: Mille et une nuits. Blakney, R. B. (1955). The Way of Life Lao Tze. New York: The New American Library. Bonfond, O. l. (2008). ‘Forum social mondial de Nairobi: Premier bilan.’ Available at www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/noticias_textos.php?cd_news=357 [Accessed on 18 July 2008]. Boniface, P. (2003, November 10). ‘Porto Alegre a tué Davos.’ Le Figaro. Bourdieu, P. (2001). Contre-feux 2. Paris: Editions Raisons d’agir. Braudel, F. (1995). A History of Civilizations. New York: Penguin Books. Della Porta, D. and Tarrow, S. (2004). Transnational Protest and Global Activism. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Elias, N. (1978). The Civilizing Process. New York: Urizen Books. Fromm, E. (ed.) (1966). Socialist Humanism. New York: Anchor Books. Ghimire, K. (2006). ‘Introduction: financial independence among NGOs and social movements.’ Development, 49(2): 4–10. Ghimire, K. (2008). ‘Essor altermondialiste et pouvoir public: Une analyse critique de trois régimes politiques’. [unpublished paper], May. Grzybowski, C. (2003, January). ‘Why reflect on the World Social Forum?’ Democracia viva, No. 14, IBASE, Rio de Janeiro. Hardt, M. (2002). ‘Today’s Bandung?’ New Left Review, 14: March/April: 112–18. Houtard, F. (n.d.). ‘The World Social Forum in Nairobi.’ Available at www. forumsocialmundial.org.br/noticias_textos.php?cd_news=354 [Accessed on 18 July 2008]. Kant, I. (1988). Idée d’une histoire universelle au point de vue cosmopolitique. Paris: Bordas. Kurtz, P. (ed.) (1973). The Humanist Alternative. London: Pemberton Books. Martin, D., Metzger, J-L. and Pierre, P. (2006). ‘The sociology of globali­zation: theoretical and methodological reflections.’ International Sociology, 21(4): 499–521.

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 Ghimire r 183 Massiah, G. (n.d.). ‘Le nouveau cycle du FSM.’ Available at www.forum socialmundial.org.br/noticias_textos.php?cd_news=323 [Accessed on 18 July 2008]. Monthly Review (n.d.). ‘The Bamako appeal.’ Available at http://www. monthlyreview.org/0206bamako.htm [Accessed on 17 July 2008]. Nietzsche, F. (1992). Ecce homo. Paris: Flammarion. OXFAM (2002). Rigged Rules and Double Standards: Trade, Globalisation, and the Fight against Poverty (Summary). Oxford: OXFAM. Patomäki, H. and Teivainen, T. (2006). ‘Epilogue: beyond the political party/civil society dichotomy.’ In Katarina Sehm-Patomäki and Marco Ulvila (eds.). Democratic Politics Globally. Tampere: Juvenes Print. Pleyers, G. (2011), Alter-Globalization. Becoming Actors in the Global Age, Cambridge: Polity Press. Said, A. and Sharify-Funk, M. (2003). ‘Dynamics of cultural diversity and tolerance in Islam.’ In A. Said and M. Sharify-Funk (eds.). Cultural Diversity and Islam. Lanham: University Press of America. Said, E. (2005). Humanisme et démocratie. Paris: Fayard. Saint Augustine (n.d.). ‘La Cité de Dieu.’ Available at http://pot-pourri.fltr.ucl. ac.be/files/AClassFTP/Textes/Augustin/civ [Accessed on 18 July 2008]. Sen, J. and Waterman, P. (2012), World Social Forum: Critical Explorations. New Delhi: OpenWord. Teivainen, T. (2002). ‘The World Social Forum and global democratization: learning from Porto Alegre.’ Third World Quarterly, 23(4): 621–32. Touraine A. (2005). Un nouveau paradigme. Paris: Fayard. Tripp, C. (2006). Islam and Moral Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wallerstein, I. (2005). ‘After developmentalism and globalization, what?’ Social Forces, 83(3): 1263–78. Whitaker, C. (2005). Changer le monde. Paris: Editions Ouvrières. Wikipedia (2008). http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_social_mondial. World Economic Forum (2008). ‘Executive Summary 2008.’ Available at www. weforum.org/pdf/SummaryReports/Davos_report.pdf [Accessed on 18 July 2008]. World Social Forum (n.d. a). ‘World Social Forum Charter.’ Available at www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/main.php?id_menu=4&cd_language=2 [Accessed on 18 July 2008]. World Social Forum (n.d. b). ‘World Social Forum Memorial.’ Available at http:// www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/main.php?id_menu=14&cd_language=2 [Accessed on 18 July 2008]. World Social Forum (n.d. c). ‘Composition of the International Council.’ Available at http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/main.php?id_menu=3_2_1&cd_ language=2 [Accessed on 18 July 2008]. World Social Forum (n.d. d). ‘Evaluation and other texts.’ Available at http://www. forumsocialmundial.org.br/dinamic.php?pagina=memoria_2007_en [Accessed on 18 July 2008].

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184  r Nine World Social Forum (2007). ‘Summary of the discussion at the Strategy Commission (Belem meeting, 2007).’ Available at www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/dinamic. php?pagina=belem_strategy_EN. [Accessed on 18 July 2008]. World Social Forum (2009). ‘World Social Forum 2009: converging of networks to face the global crisis.’ Available at http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/ noticias_01.php?cd_news=2556&cd_language=2. [Accessed on 24 April 2009].

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10 Liberating Development from the Rule of an Episteme Dia Da Costa1

Introduction The cultural turn of development has been characterized as the institutional and intellectual recognition that the study of development and institutional practices conceived economically is not enough. In the cultural turn, development was given a human face, with emphasis on human development indicators and through the institutional foundation of the World Commission on Culture and Development in 1992. Concomitantly, methodologies were democratized to incorp­ orate participation by beneficiaries where local knowledge came to count as social capital. Well before the present era though, ‘culture’ had been a thoroughly encompassed and expedient resource in accomplishing colonial and postcolonial rule (see Cooper and Packard 1997; Dirks 1992). The shared history of capital and culture makes the narrative of a ‘recent’ cultural turn problematic. Assuming that the relationship between culture and development is a recent one, as implicit in the cultural turn, amounts to de-historicizing development and reifying culture. This is not to dismiss the cultural turn as vacuous but to guard against slippery characterization that conflates the history of development with a dominant analytic framework for understanding that history. One of the most significant accomplishments of the cultural turn is a broader recognition of culture as a constitutive force within the political history of capitalist development. At the same time, analysis of the relationship between culture and capital has confirmed that a constitutive tension of our present is the inability to trust culture as political process and to accept praxis as foundation of collectivity (Da Costa 2010). Countless

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critics have shown how the enthusiastic incorporation of culture into the market for profit, as mode of national belonging, or for poverty alleviation, can neutralize the capacity of popular culture to act as a mode of resistance to domination. For example, David Guss’ (2000) study shows how a British tobacco multinational responded to a ban on advertising tobacco in Venezuela by ‘diversifying’ their product, marrying the cultivation of tobacco to the cultivation of culture, and thus treating popular culture itself as a frontier of capital accumulation. Similarly, while Arjun Appadurai (2004) sees potential in grassroots cultures of survival, constructing dignity and aspirations, Julia Elyachar’s (2005) ethnographic study of the informal economy in Cairo incisively identifies how social capital and cultures of survival have become another frontier of capital accumulation. Notwithstanding the programmatic attention to a world beyond markets, at the capitalist extreme, neoliberal incorporation showcases and commodifies culture, reducing praxis and process to generalizable nuggets of wisdom for development brochures on best practice. On the other hand, in a post-Cold War world, analysis of development and social change is still anxious that the size of collectivity and change matters. Small spaces of hope are received with healthy doses of scepticism for fears of succumbing to communitarian culture, or as moments of creative battle that signify minimal structural transformation, if any at all. Indeed, despite the cultural turn, ultimately, mobilizing collectivity based on redistributing the means of representation rather than the means of production faces all the baggage of being merely cultural (Butler 1998) and merely politic (Yudice 2003). In this chapter, I assume that the expedient incorporation of culture within institutions of governance and development is significant reason for scholarly analysis of cultural work. Academic scholarship offers few, if any, tools with which to adequately analyze and situate the anomaly of mobilizing for redistributing the means of representation within the world-historical analysis of development. Rather, the meaning of such anomalies is dispossessed of significance in intellectual conventions, reinforcing the daily dispossessions of meaning that constitute their marginality in the first place. By dispossession of meaning, I refer to representational inequality situated in political– economic inequalities and enforced through processes of rule. For example, as scholarship on contemporary peasant movements shows, dispossessing the value of food sovereignty, agrarian livelihood and rural future by privileging industrial development, agribusiness and trade on a global market, naturalizes the meaning of development along a market episteme (Desmarais 2002; McMichael 2008). The case presented in this chapter looks through the unconventional lens of political theatre of the peasant and agricultural labourer to reveal how

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their political action refuses normative foreclosure on organizing contemporary and future social life in a regional context of hegemonic leftist rule, a national context of expropriating agricultural land for industrial development, and a global context of neoliberalism.2 Since 1985, Jana Sanskriti (meaning ‘People’s Culture’) has constructed village theatre teams. Today, this organization is composed of three urban, middle-class members, and over 750 agricultural and wage labourers in the state of West Bengal. Jana Sanskriti’s (JS) rural members come from landless to middleclass and low to middle-caste families. Three out of ten people in the central coordinating committee of JS are from non-agricultural backgrounds. The director, Sanjoy Ganguly, founded JS in 1985 in search of an alternative to his own engagement in trade union activism and having quit his middlemanagement job in the manufacturing sector. All the central committee members of JS have had affiliations with a range of regional political parties. Five out of ten committee team members are women. There are two integral practices to JS work: performances and fieldwork. Together with theatre team members from villages in South 24 Parganas district, the JS coordinating team of leading actors and activists share the tasks of scripting plays onstage and challenging power relations offstage, so that political and cultural activism feed each other. The first practice – performance – includes rehearsals, theatre workshops, enactment of plays, engagement in Forum Theatre (explained below) and organizing religious and cultural festivals. The second practice – fieldwork – involves calling meetings, debating and brainstorming sessions, and ‘ideological training’ aimed at building coherence and continuity across seasons and disparate village communities. Village theatre teams are also engaged in political campaigns and bargaining with panchayats3 for the right to cultural spaces, fighting dowry and domestic violence, mobilizing anti-liquor agitations, employing local artists to perform in festivals, and demanding the right to work in villages. For the past twenty-eight years, JS has done its’ best to resist becoming a service-providing NGO (nongovernmental organization) even though this would give them financial security. Their focus on representational struggle is not an accident, but a conviction and vision. Rural political theatre in West Bengal is a development anomaly in two main ways. First, rural Bengali citizens are known as iconic beneficiaries of Left Front Government (LFG) agrarian reforms and political decentralization and they are educated in leftist ideologies. They are not supposed to be engaging in political theatre to contest the market episteme ruling development and democracy against a seemingly emblematic government of and by the rural poor. Yet, JS political action has been engaged in expressing doubts about dominant spaces of political

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representation and practices of development for the past three decades. In the first section, I argue that Amartya Sen4 has recently contributed to the ruling culture and common sense in West Bengal, while JS has questioned the regional common sense. Second, as rural citizens who are facing proposals by the LFG to acquire agricultural land for industrialization, they oppose the dispossession of peasant livelihoods while continuing to engage in struggles that are primarily about cultural work. In other words, not only do they refuse the familiar story of development, which assumes that peasants will disappear, they do so by engaging in cultural work as their first task. As such, they constitute a striking world-historical anomaly. In the second section, I make a case for going beyond the common sense and dominant paradigms in analyzing development and globalization by broadening our definitions of what counts as productivity to argue that theatrical work is productive work. In conclusion, I argue against the dominant perspective that views theatre as a mode of resistance, a perspective that runs parallel to seeing theatre as having a safety-valve function in relation to social transformations.

Ruling culture There is resounding institutional legitimacy for culture within development imaginaries today. Yet, in the current conjuncture of food crises, wars and displacement, what effect can culture have on material crises and resource struggles? The conundrum of the cultural turn within development thinking is demonstrated starkly by the rural Bengal experience. Rural Bengalis have unfailingly voted the Left Front Government back into power since 1977. Notwithstanding consistent electoral success, the ruling Left’s recent proposals to acquire agricultural land for industrialization invoking a colonial Land Acquisition Act of 1894 has incited militant public protests. Counting on decades of electoral legitimacy in the countryside, LFG leaders embraced private capital investment to correct the trends of capital flight, unemployment and a declining workingclass vote since the 1980s. Recently, 997 acres of multi-crop land were leased to the Indian conglomerate Tata5 to build a people’s car factory. Inducing industrial development, the LFG suggests, is necessary for variously addressing the specific problems of land fragmentation and agrarian livelihoods, which can no longer absorb the rural population. This in turn adversely impacts on growth, job creation, welfare, and possibilities for future socialism. While land reform was the mantra to explain electoral legitimacy through the 1980s and 1990s, the current Chief Minister of West Bengal has a new jingle for new times ‘Agriculture is our base, industry our future’ (Banerjee 2006: 865).

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Development thinking and Marxism tend to share the Chief Minister’s ultimately disdainful vision of peasants as base, history and legacy, but not future. As one professor of economics puts it, ‘West Bengal’s comparative advantage must lie with industry and services and not with agriculture. … Since land is anything but abundant in West Bengal, efficiency requires that the state imports agricultural goods from the rest of India selling in return services and industrial goods’ (Sarkar 2007: 1438). Such calculations of comparative advantage and efficiency are loyal to a market episteme claiming it as the only realistic and therefore normative formulation of development in West Bengal.6 These views construct agriculture and industry in a zerosum game, where the development of one, can only be constructed by displacing and dispossessing the other. Seen from the perspective of villagers in India who are asked to accept industrial development’s being ushered in by suffering dispossessions of land, livelihood and meanings, can development have a human face? The question of agency and freedom is a particularly fraught issue in light of the need and desire for capital on the one hand and the realities of cultural imperialism and political–economic coercion on the other (Da Costa 2007a; Ferguson 2006). This has direct bearing on how we conceptualize the relationship between culture and development. Arguably, the issue is not just whether or not culture is commodified, but also how the commodification of culture and politics contributes to naturalizing certain modes of participating and belonging in society, normalizing certain constructions of being and becoming, and making viable certain definitions of social justice and social change while ruling out others (Rajagopal 2001). Here, culture is not just that which is being incorporated into capital. Culture is the constitutive and persuasive force of the market episteme despite and through capital’s interaction with other histories of power. This is an entirely different formulation to Amartya Sen’s (1999) popular ideas of development as freedom. Sen certainly does not argue for an uncritical incorporation of culture. In fact, he sees the pendulum swing – from ignoring culture to cultural determinism – as equally problematic reifications of culture (Sen 2004). For him, culture must be understood as one constituent element of substantive freedoms at the same time that culture constitutes exclusionary practices. Both outcomes of inclusion and exclusion must be taken into account, while making the former the goal of producing interdependence, development, and freedom. While these are laudable theoretical suggestions, what do they mean in practice? In a recent interview with Sambit Saha in the Kolkata daily, The Telegraph, Amartya Sen justifies the expropriation of agricultural land in

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Singur by invoking Bengal’s history as a centre of industry. He argues that the postcolonial de-industrialization of Bengal can and must be corrected to return Bengal to its glorious industrial heritage. Moreover, he argues that, dispossessing agricultural land for industrialization has always competed against the use of fertile land for agriculture in the history of industrial development. Sen says: It is also very important to recognize that production of industrial goods was based on the banks of the Hooghly and the Ganges, which are fertile areas anyway. So to say that ‘this is fertile agriculture land and you should not have industry here’ not only goes against the policy of the West Bengal government but also against the 2,000-year history of Bengal. This is where industry was based because even though the land may be very fertile, industrial production could generate many times more than the value of the product produced by agriculture. The locations of great industry, be it Manchester or Lancashire, these were all on heavily fertile land. Industry has always competed against agriculture because the shared land was convenient for industry for trade and transportation. (Saha and Sen 2007)

While industry wins in this competition, it wins through a circular logic, holding European developments as ideal and through a definition of value captive to a market episteme. Other values and substantive freedoms such as rural livelihoods, skills and futures apparently do not seem to matter here. Using the examples of the United States, Canada and Australia, Sen argues later in the interview that these countries have prosperous agriculture today because there is simultaneously a very small population in agriculture and widespread industry to absorb those displaced from agriculture. In other words, industry must be generated because the people displaced from agriculture must be absorbed. In the interest of restoring Bengal’s glorious industrial heritage and ensuring industrial development, Sen contradicts his own philosophical discourse on development as freedom, one that is celebrated worldwide as a transition in development thinking that considers culture. Sen has identified development as ‘substantive freedoms – the capabilities – to choose a life one has reason to value’ (Sen 2002: 74). Substantive freedoms can be summarized as those that ‘enable people to participate in the determination of what they should value and/or enable people in effect to construct their opportunities’ (Da Costa and McMichael 2007: 591). Critics have argued that his ‘model presumes the very thing it claims to deliver’ (591). Sen also undermines the very freedoms that he claims development will deliver, because he denies viability to critiques against industrialization in Singur on account of the claim that agriculture does not generate as much (market) value as industry would.

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Although Sen’s philosophical thoughts appear to give agency and opportunity to the poor to choose a life they have reason to value, when it comes to policies and decision-making around land-grab for industrialization, he is squarely with former World Bank president James Wolfensohn, who said globalization ‘is here to stay’. In other words, while the ideal of development as freedom suggests a world of possibility, Sen himself participates in dispossessing certain meanings and futures of value when he suggests that market values are the important ones. In the end, Sen’s views on Singur provide support for the ruling regional common sense on ‘development’ in West Bengal. When JS protests against the dispossession of rural livelihoods and meanings, their aim is not to suggest that West Bengal does not need capital investment, development or rural employment. Rural Bengalis including JS members certainly want employment, they want capital investment in rural Bengal, they want their sons and daughters to get an education so that they can become engineers and doctors, and many want employment in villages without displacement from their rural homes. Many across India also want a future beyond the fields. I do not wish to suggest that such normative aspirations are evidence of villagers’ false consciousness. Nor is JS using the idea of primordial rural cultural difference to ‘disguise relations of inequality’ (Ferguson 2006: 20). As James Ferguson has recently argued, we need to go beyond anthropological relativizing in the debates on ‘mental colonization or capitulation to cultural imperialism’ and instead take seriously the meaning and power of African yearnings for a rectangular modern house over an ecologically sensible thatched one, among other ‘yearnings for cultural convergence’ (20). Ferguson argues that claiming cultural difference and denying certain material advancements as ill-conceived development are statements of privilege, which serve to reinforce categorical and material subordination of the African – already much integrated, exploited and dominated in global history. JS members are not making a claim for cultural difference and economic isolation. Indeed, rural Bengalis have long been part of global history and what Gidwani and Sivaramakrishnan (2003) have called ‘regional modernity’, as they move through rural and urban spaces of living and working. The significance of growing unemployment across urban India, cycles of capital insertion and capital flight which haunt rural and urban landscapes in many developed parts of the world; and the fact that their rural homes represent some measure of security in comparison with a deeply insecure urban housing environment is not lost on rural Bengalis. The disregard and insecurity rural migrants have faced in urban centres is a reality which competes with the experience of the dispossessed value and decreasing viability of rural livelihoods. To many, the competition between

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these realities does not spell a foregone conclusion about their place in the future. Because of this regional modernity and movement, JS members critique dispossession of agrarian land and meanings. They reveal the ongoing categorical and material subordination of villagers, whereby rural life and agriculture are made visible as base, legacy and past, but unviable as an adequately productive future. In this context, some rural Bengalis are asking whether addressing material inequality has to come with displacement, deskilling, and devaluing extant skills, livelihoods and life-worlds. Developing Ferguson’s (2006) question and following the JS lead, I ask whether the ‘aspiration to overcome categorical subordination’ (Ferguson 2006: 20) and material inequality has to be accomplished through material and symbolic dispossession? JS is combating the way in which the comparative advantage of West Bengal’s industrialization and profit-making has to be realized by invoking a colonial law, using a police force and ruling out other historically existing and possible ways of defining rural futures. The promise of re-skilling the dispossessed for an industrial economy rings particularly false to rural Bengalis who have lived with decades of shoddy rural schooling. The assertion that another development is possible might strike the social scientist and political realist as idealism and even elitism. But the idea that factory work is the only realist perspective on employment, that comparative advantage must rule social relations and that industrialization through ecological and social disregard is the tragic necessity of our times – are the bankrupt corpus of ideas that perpetuate the dispossession of alternate notions of work, value and future, further closing off existing possibilities. The theatre activists who brave a battle against the constant normalization of a world of shrinking possibilities and social relations are rendered idealists, while those who acquiesce to neoliberal capital’s normalizations are considered realists. In the next section, I conceptualize the development anomaly of theatrical work to pay homage to those who engage in the productive work of refusing such normative closures, rethinking the cultural persuasion of capitalism and the masquerade of the state. In so doing, they reveal one way in which to liberate development from the rule of the market episteme.

Counting the productivity of cultural work Rather than view elected leaders as the distant state, farmers in the JS play Unnayan (Development) say, ‘No matter what, behind the clothes lies a human being we elected’. The JS play Unnayan was written in the aftermath of recent land acquisitions and dramatic protests. Unnayan begins by

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identifying the difference between feudal lords of the pre-colonial past, who controlled and took away land at will, and the government today with a similar ability to take away land. The difference, as one character onstage puts it, is that ‘the government does not keep the land. They give it to Tata. That’s it, isn’t it?’ Tata is the conglomerate that will set up a people’s car factory on multi-crop agricultural land. The play depicts the transition from past to present land relations by showing yesterday’s feudal lord as today’s Chief Minister and sycophant, while Tata has become today’s feudal lord with sycophants like the Chief Minister at their beck and call. The play reveals a thoroughly compromised leftist Chief Minister – an emperor with no clothes – who cannot find his decent attire (the ideals of communism) because he has sold the red flag. The entity that bought the red flag is Tata. For the Chief Minister, this factory represents ‘people’s development’. Tata is pleased to be participating in a ‘new history for Bengal. … Let the people of the world see how communists love capitalists’. The play depicts Tata lending the red flag to the Chief Minister on occasions when the Minister has to face farmers in public forum. Unnayan is a critique of the expedient use of leftist ideological rhetoric of a people’s car for people’s development to mask a process of neoliberal transition to aggressive capitalism. Cultural work, as I conceptualize it, provides a lens into the relationship between processes of meaning-making and the ongoing formation of multiple histories of power. I have written elsewhere about JS engagement with histories of power (Da Costa 2009). Here I continue my focus on the rule of the market episteme. The text of Unnayan apart, how should we count and conceptualize the productivity of Jana Sanskriti’s cultural work more generally? I view their theatrical work as a whole way of struggling over the naturalization of economism and the market episteme as the relation of rule that dispossesses other meanings and modes of living as anomalous and anachronistic. This is productive work if we are committed to materializing human development indicators beyond the economism of GDP. Unnayan is an outcome of cultural work: political theatre workshops and offstage political action feed each other to question the accumulating dispossessions of meanings and possibilities. In his book, Spaces of Hope, David Harvey (2000: 49) argues that to address alienation in the world today, ‘Ways have to be found to connect the microspace of the body with the macrospace of what is now called “globalization”’. Studying political theatre allows analysis of the practice of bringing the microspace of the body into direct public confrontation with the macro-processes of state power and neoliberal globalization. Harvey’s discussion of the microspace of the body describes the body as an accumulation strategy, which makes

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Figure 10.1  Tata controlling the West Bengal Chief Minister (left) and Finance Minister (right) in a puppet dance. Photo: Dia Da Costa

it both a space of capital as well as a space of hope. He draws on Marx to argue that the labouring body is an essential strategy of capital accumulation as the body labours to produce surplus value for capital accumulation. For this, the body must be disciplined into the rhythm and requirements of the working day, to the denials and dogma of individualism, and dissuaded from the possibility of collective organization. Crucially echoing the larger argument in Marx’s Capital, Harvey shows that the body is not just a strategic force for producing surplus value, but rather, the body is also

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reproduced by the fraction of surplus value that is consumed by the worker enabling the labourer to return to work and maintain the production of surplus value and capital accumulation. The marginal consumption of surplus value then enables the labouring body to be a force within the accumulation strategy. Harvey highlights the importance of capital accumulation to argue that recent studies of the body tend to focus on discourse, discipline and subjection, without adequate attention to body as a space and strategy of capital accumulation. On the other hand, Harvey’s understanding limits conceptualizations of power to the history of capital. JS political theatre is situated in circuits of capital, but they do not treat theatrical work or labour as an accumulation strategy. Their theatre is not performed for a price and their international theatre festivals are organized and paid for through fees, which cover basic costs. Funds granted to individuals such as Sanjoy Ganguly are poured into organizational work rather than accumulated as personal wealth. The roughly one dozen members of the coordinating team are employees of JS. While their work is central to JS’s reputation, survival and strength, the modest salaries of JS employees cannot be characterized as capital accumulation. Their theatrical work questions the normalizations, disciplines and shrinking possibilities for the villager in the contemporary conjuncture. The theatrical form that JS practise is theatre of the oppressed, which is Augusto Boal’s (1979) innovative translation of pedagogy of the oppressed into a theatrical vocabulary. Among Boal’s techniques used commonly by JS, Forum Theatre refers to the process of scripting plays by weaving together images portraying daily experiences enacted by participants in theatre workshops. Often Ganguly, and increasingly non-urban middleclass actors, weave these stories told in kinetic form during workshops into a short play on given social issues. The themes of plays build upon the political campaigns at any given time. The play is performed for an audience. A second enactment of the play uses a joker who prompts the audience to rescript the play at any given stage of its telling. In the Forum Theatre format, audience members are encouraged to step onstage to rescript roles, norms and taken-for-granted interactions of daily life, which lead to the extraordinary social issues being discussed. Boal’s term for an audience member who intervenes in the play is ‘spect-actor’. I have on occasion witnessed ten-minute first enactments turn into three hours of discussion with scores of interventions from the audience. With these routine kinetic debates witnessed publicly, JS aims to generate debate on alternate social norms and possibilities and make imagined possibilities daily material realities. Boal’s (1979) theatrical methods aim to combat the muscular alienation of oppressed bodies, which serve capital accumulation. Philip Auslander

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(1994: 130) has rightly argued that the body ‘can never escape ideological encoding’. At the same time, the body in Boalian theatrical practice is perpetually in movement, ‘never comes to rest in a neutral state’, where the goal is to try on different masks, different ideological encodings (Auslander 1994: 131). In JS practice, the goal of trying on different masks is not multicultural inclusion, but nurturing critical and collective embodied thinking. Engagement in confronting one’s muscular alienation and ideological encoding does not show a specific path towards liberation, but rather dramatizes the fact that there is no straightforward path to liberation. Looking at rural cultural and political action to understand development as lived experience decentres knowledge and power. Judith Butler (1999) has argued that power has contingent foundations and that any category (such as sex, or state or consciousness) that we imagine to be foundational, stable and embodied is only coherent and unified because people look for intelligibility, origins and causes. Butler’s (1990) study of repetitious enactments emphasizing the performative constitution of gender identity highlights the fact that embedded in repetition is the possibility of refusing to play normative scripts loyally. While scholars have applied Butler’s theories to the study of racial and gendered discourse, and identity formation, I am interested in applying performativity to analyze the structure and rule of the market episteme. Moreover, while Butler privileges the offstage, I am interested in the relation between everyday performativity and staged performativity (Da Costa 2009). Looking through Butler’s lens, definitions of development acquire hegemonic status through daily materializations of regulatory norms. Like reified gender identity which rules daily actions, development through the market episteme is a ‘compelling illusion, an object of belief’ (Butler 1990: 271) created through daily normative practices of power with the outcome of organizing subjection and with punitive consequences for transgressing dominant epistemic norms (Abrams 1988; Butler 1990). The embodied materialization of regulatory norms reaffirms the political authority of a market episteme for ruling a complex and diverse social world, making capital the most realistic, relevant, viable and powerful optic and episteme. The political theatre of JS publicizes the constitution of such normative discourses of development, while dramatizing people’s daily resistance to and participation in the constitution of ruling epistemes and relations. The theatrical labour that JS is engaged in disrupts the seamless incorporation and use of the body as accumulation strategy. Despite their insecure condition and low place in dominant political and economic scales, JS workers encourage each other and audiences to refuse to play normative scripts loyally. Here collective engagement with theatre is the grounds for constructing solidarity. For example, JS members choose theatrical work

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over the structurally imposed and enabled path of becoming cheap labour. They assert the right of peasants and farmers to intellectually debate the terms of (industrial) development rather than acquiesce to ruling assumptions about material distress, the survival of rural communities and productivity. In this way, the performative materialization that reinforces accumulation of surplus value as the primary purpose of work is interrupted and the rule of a dominant episteme disrupted. A vivid example comes from JS’s anti-liquor struggle. Since 1985, JS has demanded and dramatized the right to work in villages rather than migrate seasonally to keep their village homes viable. In 2005, they seemed to contradict their own demand when they called for an end to the lucrative rural livelihood of liquor production, joining village women who led processions to break liquor pots, unearth and burn hidden jerry cans at well-known liquor workshops. However, the anti-liquor agitation is in fact a crucial articulation of their right-to-work campaign as an epistemic struggle. One might ask, in a context of high rural unemployment, does JS not understand that this is one of the few ways of addressing material distress, productivity and unemployment? As I have shown (Da Costa 2007b), it is rather the representational inequality in the very definitions of material distress, productivity and employment that JS is questioning. Since the mid-1990s, JS theatre teams have watched liquor gain hold over social life in villages in Bengal. JS highlights what most villagers know: that many liquor producers are in fact the influential rich rather than the poor without a choice. JS supports the protests of liquor consumers’ wives who face the material distress of domestic violence, emotional instability and increased work burdens to make up income lost to alcohol. In other words, they are questioning the very exclusion of poor women’s definitions of material distress and dramatizing the political choice to mobilize around the work, employment and material distress of liquor producers and not liquor consumers’ wives. These are some of the ways in which JS disrupts the loyal enactment of scripts of development in West Bengal. Along with such local political struggles, JS is also situated in transnational flows and circuits of capitalist development. Their transnational ties are not so much with funding organizations as trans-local struggles across South America, Western and Eastern Europe, and South Asia, which variously combat collaborations between imperial capital and state. Since its inception, JS has grown within West Bengal and built alliances with people’s movements elsewhere in India. They now have theatre teams in the states of Delhi, Gujarat, Tripura, Uttaranchal, Maharashtra, Goa, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa. Each theatre team is an outcome of an initial request for a theatre workshop by JS, conducted by the artistic director and coordinating team members. At a JS Festival in 2004, the team from the

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Indian state of Gujarat performed a chilling play on the orchestrated killing of Muslims in Gujarat; the Tripura team performed on the challenges of daily life in the midst of the regional insurgency; the Maharashtra team, comprising of Katkari tribals, performed a play on the challenges at the public food distribution shop and so forth. At the JS festival in October 2006, a Federation of Theatre of the Oppressed was formally constituted as a collective of cultural groups and people’s movements from twelve states in India. These festivals allow JS to experience itself as a collective of locally grounded struggles that share their critiques and imagined strategies with each other. These festivals have also brought to India scores of practitioners and performers from Pakistan, Palestine, Brazil, Spain, France, the United States and Great Britain. While there continue to be very real hindrances of language at these festivals, a shared vocabulary of theatre that insists on spectator participation helps generate the collaborations among cultural workers across borders and inequalities of postcolonial development. Having resisted being a service-providing NGO since their inception, in 2001, JS began to receive funding to institute learning centres. Currently, JS coordinates approximately 150 learning centres which are basically preprimary schools servicing approximately 3,750 children from 150 villages and constituting a source of income to 150 women in the age group of 20 to 35 years. Although this is clearly in the model of providing a development good, JS views schooling in continuity with its theatrical work, joined as they are by pedagogical practice. At the same time, JS views its work in pre-primary schooling as a temporary intervention, as long as the funding lasts. They are not willing to continue their work in the education sector at the cost of their theatre work. Rather, they are working towards making theatrical and education work complementary by bringing the issue of public education onstage. Their commitment to education is first and foremost to ‘make education people’s agenda’ in Ganguly’s words. Money for these schools has come from the domestic corporation, Tata. Tata’s funding for JS work no doubt raises questions because Tata is the very domestic corporate group that JS critiques in their play Unnayan and is a key beneficiary of the ruling Left’s coordinated expropriation of agricultural land.7 Does the funding for pre-primary schools allow JS to be incorporated into Tata’s public display of corporate social responsibility? This funding has not stopped JS from being on the public frontlines of protest against land expropriation in Singur and Nandigram. Their play Unnayan makes no secret of who is to blame in the expropriation of agricultural land. Indeed, Tata is depicted as controlling the West Bengal industries minister and Chief Minister, as apparent in Figure 10.1. The JS public protest against their own funders is plain for all to see. Moreover,

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for JS, Tata and the LFG only happen to be the object of recent protests. The larger critique is of the kind of aggressive capitalism that requires government to succumb to undemocratic practices. Still, JS leaves itself open to critique for accepting funding from a sullied source. But rather than pretend that they are not tied to circuits of capitalist development, their dramatic protests on and offstage are a refusal to temper critique and to maintain some control over the terms of their funding. Ganguly is at pains to establish that Tata has never intervened in the JS agenda. This enables JS to use their insertion into circuits of capital for rural employment and for enhancing the quality of rural schooling in West Bengal, while critiquing the insertion of Tata’s capital when it dispossesses agrarian land and peasant livelihood. Either way, the analysis of their cultural work shows that processes of production and rule hardly bear stark oppositions to the processes of resistance.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have questioned any uncritical embrace of the cultural turn of development, by arguing that constructions of ‘development as freedom’ must be situated within the context of the rule of the market episteme in order to historicize substantive freedoms (Sen 1999). Studying the JS case, I have shown that any cultural work (and an analysis of it) has to wrestle with the possibilities of agency and power embedded in cultural practices of meaning-making on the one hand, while attending to the ways in which cultural work constitutes and remains subject to relations of power which can commodify agency and depoliticize resistance. Rather than glib assumptions about the power of culture as constitutive of ‘substantive freedoms’ of the marginalized, in a world where agency is tied to the political history of capitalist development and liberal democratic ideals, it is imperative that constructions of development are understood as outcomes of power and resistance. To conclude: how do we know if this cultural work leads to some form of change? Our answer must remain tentative. Much of the appreciative literature of the role of political theatre in South Asia views it as significant political action (for exceptions, see Nagar 2000; Ruud 2003; Seizer 2000). In these narratives, political theatre is born and flourishes in moments when legitimate forms of political action lose transparency and accountability. To greater or lesser degrees, these studies view performance as extraordinary, creative action that emerges in conditions of repression and censorship. Extraordinary not just in the sense of spectacular, but extraordinary in the sense that there is an assumed normality and ordinariness to legitimate power, governmental or state action.

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Through the case of JS, we can see that a view of political theatre as extraordinary action is a partial appreciation of the power of theatre, because it does not capture political theatre itself as ordinary political action in ordinary times, and as an everyday engagement of normal practice in democratic contexts. Ultimately, seeing theatre as an ephemeral act of resistance requires that the proof of social effectiveness and change be demonstrated in evidence of structural domination overcome. It also generates problematic expectations that subjects of domination and repression act in unified, productive ways towards singular ends with radical outcomes (O’Hanlon 2001). Instead, viewing political theatre, as I have tried to do in this chapter, as ‘everyday forms of collaboration’ (White 1986: 56), as much as everyday forms of disloyal enactments and refusals to play normative scripts loyally (Butler 1990) allows us to critically scrutinize ‘those who want to limit freedom’ as well as ‘those who want to extend it’ (Mahmood 2005: 10). In turn, such a method allows us to reimagine ‘the political’ of political action and rethink the multiple sites and spaces of structural social change that offer insights (whether we are looking or not) for liberating development from the rule of an episteme.

Notes 1

2

3 4

5 6

This chapter is an abridged version of arguments developed in greater detail and excerpted from my larger work Development Dramas: Reimagining Rural Political Action in Eastern India. New Delhi: Routledge, 2009. I am grateful to Dominique Caouette, Alexandre Da Costa and Dip Kapoor for helpful comments on an earlier version of this chapter. At the time of writing this chapter in 2008, the LFG was on its way out of power and the oppositional party, Trinamul Congress (TMC) was poised to replace it. With the TMC in power since the elections in 2011, the political context in West Bengal has changed. Although this chapter makes no references to specific changes, the epistemic critique of development and attention to the inter-relationship of material and representational inequality in this chapter remains important. Panchayats are local institutions of self-government that are conduits for development funds and projects. Amartya Sen is a Nobel Laureate economist who wrote an influential book called Development as Freedom (1999) contributing to the ‘human face’ of development. Tata has an emblematic place in India’s postcolonial development history as makers of everything from steel to tractors. There are others who argue that the problem should not be treated as industry versus agriculture since the reality is far more complex where rural areas are not merely spaces of agricultural livelihoods (Mohanty 2007). But, ultimately, in these views, ‘development’ remains captive to a market episteme defined as

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7

increasing ‘productivity alongside full employment’ (Mohanty 2007: 739). A stated assumption, then, is that development is about a shift from the relatively lower productivity of agriculture to relatively higher productivity of industry (Mohanty 2007). After raging struggles and counter-movements over two years, on 5 October 2008, the Tata car factory was moved from West Bengal and welcomed by Chief Minister Narendra Modi and farmers in Gujarat. Tata’s flight reinforces the terms of the ideological battle: the choice is to want development, as capital will have it, or not at all.

References Abrams, P. (1988). ‘Notes on the difficulty of studying the state.’ Journal of Historical Sociology, 1(1): 58–89. Appadurai, A. (2004). ‘The capacity to aspire.’ In V. Rao and M. Walton (eds.). Culture and Public Action. Delhi: Permanent Black, 59–84. Auslander, P. (1994). ‘Boal, Blau, Brecht: the body.’ In M. Schutzman and J. CohenCruz (eds.). Playing Boal: Theatre, Therapy, Activism. London and New York: Routledge, 124–133. Banerjee, S. (2006 March 11). ‘Elections, Jatra style. West Bengal.’ Economic and Political Weekly, 864–6. Boal, A. (1979). The Theatre of the Oppressed. New York: Urizen Books. Butler, J. (1990). ‘Performative acts and gender constitution.’ In S. Case (ed.). Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 270–82. Butler, J. (1998). ‘Marxism and the merely cultural.’ New Left Review, 227: 33–45. Butler, J. (1999). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. 2nd edn. New York: Routledge. Cooper, F. and Packard, R. (eds.) (1997). International Development and the Social Sciences. Berkeley: University of California Press. Da Costa, D. (2007a). ‘Tensions of neo-liberal development: state discourse and dramatic oppositions in West Bengal.’ Contributions to Indian Sociology, 41(3): 287–320. Da Costa, D. (2007b). ‘Have they disabled us? Liquor and the grammars of distress and distribution in rural West Bengal.’ Paper presented at the conference Neoliberalism in Contention: A Social Movement Analysis, Robert and Ruth Polson Institute for Global Development, Cornell University, Ithaca, 28 September. Da Costa, D. (2009). Development Dramas: Reimagining Rural Political Action in Eastern India. New Delhi: Routledge. Da Costa, D. (2010). ‘Introduction: relocating culture in development and development in culture.’ Third World Quarterly, 31(4): 501–22. Da Costa, D. and McMichael, P. (2007). ‘The poverty of the global order.’ Globalizations, 4(4): 588–602. Desmarais, A-A. (2002). ‘The Vía Campesina.’ Journal of Peasant Studies, 29(2): 91–124.

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204  r Ten Dirks, N. (ed.) (1992). Colonialism and Culture. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Elyachar, J. (2005). Markets of Dispossession: NGOs, Economic Development, and the State in Cairo. Durham: Duke University Press. Ferguson, J. (2006). Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order. Durham: Duke University Press. Gidwani, V. and Sivaramakrishnan, K. (2003). ‘Circular migration and the spaces of cultural assertion.’ Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 93(1): 186–213. Guss, D. (2000). The Festive State: Race, Ethnicity, and Nationalism as Cultural Performance. Berkeley: University of California Press. Harvey, D. (2000). Spaces of Hope. Berkeley: University of California. McMichael, P. (2008). ‘Food sovereignty, social reproduction, and the agrarian question.’ In H. Akram-Lodhi and C. Kay (eds.). Peasant Livelihoods, Rural Transformation and the Agrarian Question. United Kingdom: Routledge, 288–312. Mahmood, S. (2005). Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Durham: Duke University Press. Mohanty, M. (2007). ‘Political economy of agrarian transformation: another view of Singur.’ Economic and Political Weekly, 42(9): 737–41. Nagar, R. (2000). ‘Mujhe Jawab Do! (Answer me!): women’s grass-roots activism and social spaces in Chitrakoot (India).’ Gender, Place and Culture, 7(4): 341–62. O’Hanlon, R. (2001). ‘Recovering the subject: subaltern studies and histories of resistance in colonial South Asia.’ In D. Ludden (ed.). Reading Subaltern Studies: Critical History, Contested Meaning, and the Globalisation of South Asia, Delhi: Permanent Black, 135–86. Rajagopal, A. (2001). Politics after Television: Religious Nationalism and the Reshaping of the Public in India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ruud, A. A. (2003). The Poetics of Village Politics: The Making of West Bengal’s Rural Communism. New Delhi and New York: Oxford University Press. Saha, S. and Sen, A. (2007, July 23). ‘Prohibiting the use of agricultural land for industries is ultimately self-defeating.’ Available at http://www.telegraphindia. com/1070723/asp/nation/story_8094453.asp. Sarkar, A. (2007). ‘Development and displacement: land acquisition in West Bengal.’ Economic and Political Weekly, 42(16): 1435–42. Seizer, S. (2000). ‘Roadwork: offstage with special drama actresses in Tamilnadu, South India.’ Cultural Anthropology, 15(2): 217–59. Sen, A. (1999). Development as Freedom. New York: Knopf. Sen, A. (2002). ‘Response to commentaries.’ Studies in Comparative International Development, 37(2): 78–86. Sen, A. (2004). ‘How does culture matter?’ In V. Rao and M. Walton (eds.). Culture and Public Action. Delhi: Permanent Black, 37–58. White, C. P. (1986). ‘Everyday resistance, socialist revolution, and rural development: the Vietnamese case.’ Journal of Peasant Studies, 13(2): 49–63. Yudice, G. (2003). The Expediency of Culture: Uses of Culture in the Global Era. Durham: Duke University Press.

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11 Neoliberal Globalization as Settler Colonialism the Remix

Centring Indigenous Resistance and Resurgence Sandy Grande and Naadli (Todd Ormiston)

Growing up in the Yukon, the thought of a natural gas pipeline running through Northern Tutchone and Tlingit territories, hung like a heavy cloud over my people. At the time, it was the largest corporate venture ever proposed, hailed by its supporters as the biggest ‘in the history of free enterprise’. Before construction was allowed to commence however, Canadian Supreme Court Justice Thomas Berger mandated a three-year impact study across the Arctic. Upon completion, he issued the provocatively titled report, ‘Northern Frontier, Northern Homeland’ (1977) wherein indigenous leaders spoke to the devastating impact of the pipeline on the forests, wildlife and fisheries and to the dangers of gas leakage on the groundwater, freshwater and marine life. To the shock of Government officials and indigenous peoples alike, Justice Berger delayed pipeline development for ten years. Now, nearly forty years later, development is once again a concern as governments jockey to address the so-called energy crisis. To this, we restate, the Yukon is not a wilderness or a frontier. It is an indigenous homeland. (Naadli, personal communication, 2008)

Introduction Over the passing decade analyses of neoliberal globalization have become de rigueur in the academy. Following September 11th and the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, a storm of critique ignited, linking neoliberalism to agendas of empire building, global hegemony and the resuscitation of the authoritarian state. Kaplan (2004: 2) writes: ‘It’s fashionable, in fact, to debate whether this is a new imperialism or business as usual, whether the United States should be properly called imperial or hegemonic, whether it is benevolent or self-interested, whether it should rely on hard

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power or soft power, whether this empire closely resembles the British Empire or the Roman, and whether it is in ascendancy or decline’. Such discourses have only intensified in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and mounting state violence against black and indigenous peoples. Running parallel to this analysis are the voices of indigenous scholars for whom the global deployment of neoliberalism and rise of American hegemony does not signal a radical shift away from an otherwise progressive and democratic history but rather indicative of a ‘deepening, hastening and stretching of an already-existing empire’ (Alfred and Corntassel 2005: 601). Indigenous analyses begin with the understanding that this nation only came into being through the genocide, removal, enslavement and dispossession of Native Americans and black Africans meeting all the criteria of empire: conquest, removal, enslavement, enclosure and hegemony. Thus, while the global deployment of neoliberalism may have intensified both the scope and pace of dispossession, it is nothing new. This is not to suggest a flattening of the distinctions among various frames of analysis (i.e. globalization, neoliberalism, imperialism and empire) but rather to underscore their continuities with the settler project,1 illuminating ‘the common social character of what prima facie appears to be distinct socio–economic processes’ (De Angelis 1999: 1). While it is important to continually examine the complexities of indigenous state relations through contemporary frameworks, it is also important to examine how the ever-shifting discourses (i.e. neoliberalism, globalization) refract the remove-to-replace logics of settler colonialism.2 Naomi Klein (2007) suggests that the refusal to name and be named is a strategy deployed by conservatives to obfuscate and de-historicize their policy agenda. She writes, for example, on this strategy as it pertains to difficulty in tracing the history of neoliberalism: The ideology is a shape-shifter, forever changing its name and switching identities. (Milton) Friedman called himself a ‘liberal,’ but his U.S. followers, who associated liberals with high taxes and hippies, tended to identify as ‘conservatives,’ ‘classical economists,’ ‘free marketers,’ and, later, as believers in ‘Reganomics’ or ‘laissez-faire.’ In most of the world, their orthodoxy is known as ‘neoliberalism,’ but it is often called ‘free trade’ or simply ‘globalization.’ (Klein 2007: 17–18)

For Klein, the refusal to be named is the refusal of history and, thus, accountability. While she focuses on conservatives, liberals have also contributed to the diffusion adding terms such as ‘disaster capitalism’, ‘dirty democracy’, ‘accumulation by dispossession’, and ‘McWorld’ to the lexicon.

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Such discursive machinations not only hinder accountability as suggested by Klein, but also replay the logic of the marketplace, repackaging and redistributing history as novelty in a (academic) marketplace that rewards ‘new’ formations of knowledge at the same time it rejects the ‘traditional.’ And, once the thought-to-be-dead colonialist project is effectively rebranded3 as neoliberalism, globalization, or empire, it is resuscitated, brought back to colonize yet another day. As such, we submit that the refusal to name, acknowledge and attend to the ongoing effects of settler colonialism not only imperils the struggle for indigenous sovereignty but also the viability of the democratic project. Thus, one of the central aims of this chapter is to contextualize neoliberal globalization as the colonial present, which is to say as an extension of the historical project that began in 1492. Rather than ask whether the current arrangements of power constitute a new phase of capital or rise in state power, we examine how the initial dispossession of indigenous peoples has given rise to a nation state predisposed to (re)enact relations of domination. We begin by tracing the historical trajectory of the current arrangements of power that circulate under the signs of neoliberalism, globalization, the new imperialism and empire. Next, through the critical purchase of David Harvey’s ‘accumulation by dispossession’ thesis, we provide an analysis of how the technologies and strategies of neoliberalism mimic those employed during the colonialist era. Finally, we suggest indigenous resurgence as a global imperative and means of disrupting, of abolishing, the settler project. As discussed by Taiaike Alfred Resurgence is acting beyond resistance. It is what resistance always hopes to become: from a rooted position of strength, resistance defeats the temptation to stand down, to take what is offered by the state in exchange for being pacified. In rejecting the temptation to join the Settlers and their state, seeking instead to confront settler society in a struggle to force an end to the imperial reality and to lay down the preconditions for a peaceful coexistence, we would choose to use contention as a means of widespread enlightenment and societal change. (Alfred 2009: 151–152)

Mapping the neoliberal order American historian and evolutionary biologist John Fiske imagined colonization as the manifest road toward civilized society, a gift of the ‘English race’ to the savage and uncivilized. He infamously avowed that once the world was, ‘finally English in its language, political habits, traditions and to a predominant extent in the blood of its people,’ the world would be ‘blessed with a Sabbath of perpetual peace,’ portending a

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virtual end of history (cited in Stephanson 1995: 81, emphasis added). Substitute ‘capitalist’ for ‘English’ in Fiske’s statement and the makings of the neoliberal order begin to emerge. While there has always been a relationship between colonial rule and capitalist accumulation, a discernible shift in the scope and intensity this relationship commenced after 9/11. Almost instantaneously the debate shifted from whether or not the United States represented a new formation of empire, to what kind of global imperial power it should aspire to and toward what end. In this debate, liberals advocated for a return of the Clinton-administration global diplomacy model, which Andrew Bacevich (2002: 102) defines as ‘the drive to harness the forces of globalization for the benefit of the United States and the world.’ (Neo) conservatives, however, rejected the multilateralism of the liberal agenda, gravitating instead toward what Kristol and Kagan (1996) define as a model of ‘benevolent global hegemony’. As the parties split hairs on the role and formation of state power, one imperative was clear to all; that Friedman’s notion of unfettered or ‘pure capitalism’ would serve as the telos (Klein 2007: 24). Just as Fiske presaged colonization by the ‘English race’ as the end of history, Friedmanites envisaged the conclusion of the Cold War as history’s end. No longer driven by theories of containment, they imagined a ‘new’ empire, constructed through the liberation of capital (Stewart-Harawira 2005: 6). That is, with the fall of the communist state, little was perceived as standing in the way of the dream of a truly global, free market. While the work of Milton Friedman helped to lay the theoretical groundwork for the ‘rapid-fire transformation of the economy’ (Klein 2007: 8), Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher began to enact theory into practice. Specifically, they drafted foreign and domestic policy agendas that helped to form the holy ‘policy trinity’ of neoliberalism: (i) the elimination of the public sphere; (ii) total liberation for corporations; and (iii) skeletal social spending (Klein 2007: 18). While together the Thatcher and Regan administrations did much to further the agenda, it wasn’t until 9/11 and the George W. Bush administration that neoliberals saw an ‘opportunity’ to globalize neoliberalism; to create a global Pax Americana or unipolar imperative to maintain and extend America’s unrivalled global dominance (Dorrien 2004). In The New Imperialism, David Harvey (2003), writes of this moment as the regrettable convergence of neoconservative politics with neoliberal economic policies that together constituted a ‘new imperialism’ with one central objective: to uphold individual liberty as the high point of civilization, protected through ‘strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade’ (Harvey 2006). According to Harvey, this form of

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neoliberalism functions primarily by redistributing rather than generating wealth, enacting a ‘capital accumulation by dispossession’ rather than accumulation by the expansion of wage labour (14). When asked about what is, more precisely, ‘new’ about this new imperialism, he states: There are two things…some of this is a reversion of…events that happened at the end of the 19th century by the British Empire: taking away resources, destroying Indians’ indigenous industries and supplanting them…it is sort of a repetition of what happened…The big distinction is that, apart from Iraq, it has generally not involved colonial occupation. It uses the power of the economy, the power of international institutions, such as the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund…the United States has worked that way through the colonial kind of problem, rather than going through direct occupation as the British, French and other imperial regimes. (Harvey 2006: 2–3).

While we recognize the significant contribution of Harvey’s analysis (particularly his corrective of Marx’s thesis of ‘primitive accumulation’ and recognition that such processes are not confined to a particular era but rather ongoing), his failure to contextualize his analysis through the frames of settler colonialism (including the ongoing dispossession of and occupation of indigenous lands) requires further examination. Indeed, indigenous peoples worldwide have continuously been subjugated to invasion, whether violent or under the auspices of ‘civilizing,’ ‘assimilating’ or ‘settler colonialism’ in order to expropriate lands, traditions and culture. (Ormiston, 2010: 51). Thus, in the following section, we examine the particular constellation of strategies identified by Harvey as being unique to the new imperialism or what he refers to as accumulation by dispossession: (i) privatization; (ii) financialization; (iii) management/manipulation of crises; and (iv) state redistributions.

Indigenizing Harvey In this section we examine the four practices articulated by Harvey as the core components of neoliberalism as accumulation by dispossession, illuminating the ways in which such practices are not new but rather extensions of practices employed during the initial formation of the nation state, which is to say settler colonialism. Privatization/commodification of public assets The privatization and/or commodification of public assets mainly refers to the process by which public property is transferred into private hands,

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generating a source of profit for the capitalist class as they sell or rent what was once commonly owned. The earliest, most pervasive, conversion of a ‘public asset’ into a private commodity was the wholesale transfer of thousands of acres of commonly held Indian land. One of the central means of this transfer was the Dawes Act passed in 1887 with the advocacy of self-proclaimed ‘friend of the Indians’ and United States Senator, Henry Dawes. What was formally referred to as the General Allotment Act, not only exemplifies the impulse towards privatization inherent to neoliberalism but also refracts the very particular ‘convergence’ of this strategy of dispossession with the fundamentalist or ‘conservative’ politics that Harvey cites as distinct to the current formations of power. Employing Locke’s theory of property, Dawes argued on the floor of the US Senate, that the normative ‘deficiency’ of tribalism constituted proper grounds for the dissolution of tribal lands (cited in Hendrix 1983: 32). He articulated the essential difference between ‘tribal’ and ‘civilized’ societies as follows: The head chief told us that there was not a family in the nation that had not a home of its own. There is not a pauper in that nation, and that nation does not owe a dollar. It built its own capitol, in which we had this examination, and built its schools and hospitals. Yet the defect of the system was apparent. They have got as far as they can go, because they hold their land in common. It is (the socialist writer) Henry George’s system, and under that there is no enterprise to make your home better than that of your neighbors. There is no selfishness, which is at the bottom of civilization. Till these people will consent to give up their lands, and divide them among their citizens so that each can own the land he cultivates, they will not make much progress. (Henry Dawes)

It was through the express convergence of conservative politics and market ideology that Dawes was able to convince the US Congress that Indian ‘civilization’ and thereby civilization more generally could only be achieved through the virtues of private property.4 In 1887, the General Allotment Act (24 Stat., 388) was inaugurated, ‘authorizing the President, at his discretion, to survey and break up the communal land holdings of tribes’ into individual allotments (Wilkins and Lomawaima 2001: 108).5 Though the decimation to indigenous sovereignty has myriad effects, Dawes commenced the transfer of approximately 100 million acres of Indian land to settlers over a fifty-year period. Financialization In plain speak, financialization describes the shift from an economy of either trading or making something to a credit economy whereby patterns

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of accumulation and profit making occur through financial channels rather than through trade and commodities production. Neoliberalism is, thus, prefigurative of financialization as such manipulations of the market are contingent upon government deregulation and roll back of consumer protections. As such, financialization has given rise to a mode of corporate governance that is more reliant on market financial systems than electoral systems (Krippner 2005: 181).6 The impact of the diminished role of government oversight was starkly revealed by the most recent subprime mortgage crisis. More specifically, it used to be that banks and lending companies not only financed mortgages but also accounted for them in their own books and bottom lines. With the growth of financialization, such entities were incentivized to treat mortgages as commodities reselling them to investors in the form of securities to be bought and sold on the secondary market (Wall Street). The involvement of multiple actors not only diffused corporate accountability but also left the individual homeowner to hold all the risk and none of the assets. Such specious financial practices are also not new but rather formative of settler colonial relations. Almost from the moment the Dawes was passed, newspapers began reporting that Indians were getting cheated from specious accounting of the profits gained through the Indian land trust.7 Yet, it was decades (1929) before the General Accounting Office (GAO) publicly admitted to the disastrous state of accounting. Even then, rather than conduct a careful audit of their records, the GAO dismissed any wrongdoing, reporting that while expenditures from the trust fund may not have gone directly to Indians, they were used for purposes that, by a ‘very broad interpretation … was to the benefit of Indians’ (Brinkley 2003: 1). Such lack of accountability opened the door to several more years of neglect and mismanagement. Indeed, it wasn’t until 1992 that a Congressional Report, ‘Misplaced Trust: The Bureau of Indian Affairs Mismanagement of the Indian Trust Fund,’ recognized the long history of indiscretions, characterizing the mismanagement of the trust as ‘a dismal history of inaction and incompetence’ (cited in Brinkley 2003: 1). In 1996, Elouise Cobell, a Montana banker and member of the Blackfoot nation,8 filed a lawsuit against the federal government, asserting that it had been cheating Indians out of billons of dollars since the Indian Land Trust was first established in 1887. Based on their own records, the tribes claimed that the US government owed them in excess of US$176 billion in lost revenues (Nieves 2005: 19). The suit also called for control over the individual accounts to be taken away from the Interior Department and placed in receivership, managed instead by officers who would report directly to the Justice Department.

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Interior Secretary Gail Norton adamantly opposed this and, with little input from tribes, developed a new internal accounting system (under her supervision) called the Bureau of Indian Trust Asset Management. Predictably, Norton’s Bureau did little to ameliorate the injustices and even more to compound them. Then, in a surprising move, federal judge Royce Lamberth indicted Secretary Norton for gross mismanagement and for the submission of falsely positive progress reports to the Court. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt (D) and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin were also found in contempt for their failure to establish an effective accounting system. Regarding this indictment, Elouise Cobell (2001) stated, ‘I think he’s [Judge Lamberth] heard six years of lying, and he’s just tired of it…Now he knows what it is like to be an Indian, except we’ve been lied to for 100 years’. While Gail Norton and others escaped the contempt charge, their trials helped to expose the depth of mismanagement, neglect and abuse enacted by the government and its corporate sponsors. Among other transgressions, court investigators found evidence of massive document destruction and distortion; and in certain instances, it was found that the government ‘failed’ to collect any money from profit-reaping companies (Norton 2002). Ultimately, the trials revealed the specious and fraudulent tactics perpetrated by the federal government to hide billions in lost, stolen and misappropriated funds. Most conspicuously, they claimed that a full accounting of the Fund was not possible since ‘too many of the records have been lost or destroyed over the years’, and then tried to pass legislation that would forbid any accounting of the Indian Trust prior to 1985, citing cost as a prohibitive factor.9 In response to such dealings, Representative Tom Udall (D-New Mexico) remarked, ‘The way these trust fund holders have been treated is a national disgrace. If 40,000 people were cut off from Social Security, there would be an uproar in Congress.’10 And, Representative Nick Rahall (D-West Virginia) dubbed the Interior Department ‘the Enron of federal agencies.’11 Under the Lockean terms of property, Indians didn’t ‘own’ their land – a condition that Dawes used as evidence of their inherent deficiency – and thus no mortgages were bought, sold, or exchanged. However, by virtue of Dawes what was once understood as a living entity and relation was commodified, converted into ‘property’ to be sold, rented, transmuted into a currency, a market security that would ultimately pay billions in dividends for the federal government. The management and manipulation of crises The third benchmark of neoliberalism is the creation and manipu­lation of (financial) crisis, forcing poor nations into bankruptcy or further

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disadvantage. According to Harvey (2006), while such ‘debt crises’ were uncommon in the 1960s, they became very frequent in the 1980s and 1990s. As many of the market manipulations contributing to the recent financial crisis have already been discussed, we examine here the ways in which the management and manipulation of the so-called energy crisis is deployed as a means of gaining access to indigenous lands and resources. Specifically, we examine the development of the Northern Gateway pipeline in Western Canada. The Northern Gateway project is a 5.5 billion dollar proposal by the Canadian oil and gas company Enbridge to build two pipelines stretching 1,177 km between the Alberta oil sands and Kitimat on the western coast of British Columbia. According to Enbridge, the pipeline would have the capacity to transport 525,000 barrels of oil per day and generate approximately $2.6 billion in local, provincial, and federal tax revenues over thirty years as well as create 3500 jobs (Enbridge 2014). The catch? Enbridge needs access to indigenous lands to complete the project. To date, it has offered an estimated $380 million to Aboriginal communities for their land. As with earlier forms of colonization, the promise of civilized life (accumulation of profit) is not only waged upon the dispossession of indigenous peoples (forcing those directly impacted by extractive operations to abandon their ways of life and their communities) but also on the transmutation of public and natural resources (land, water and gas) into private goods. Not to be deterred, the federal government in Canada is also offering a 10 per cent equity stake in the project to be divided among the forty-five Aboriginal communities directly impacted by the pipeline (in Alberta and British Columbia). What isn’t commonly known is the devastating track record of oil spills in Alberta. About 415,000 kilometres of Canada’s oil and gas pipelines operate solely within Alberta’s boundaries, for which they have endured an average of two crude oil spills a day, every day for the past 37 years (Young 2013). In response to the mounting pressures, Aboriginal peoples all along the pipeline route are mobilizing and resisting. They not only resist its particular development but also extractivist models (i.e. fracking) deemed essential by US and Canadian corporations, threatening everything from terrorism to war as they manipulate the need for domestic and global energy. State redistributions State redistributions are policies enacted by the nation state that ultimately work to redistribute capital from the working and middle classes to the elite class via regressive taxes, subsidies, and tax deferrals. Such policies

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are rooted in the neoliberal dogma of trickle-down economics. Even as such practices recently plundered the US economy, elites remain shielded from absorbing responsibility, receiving government bailouts at the same time the financial suffering of the individual taxpayer are dismissed as the result of irresponsible choices. This practice harkens back to the seventeenth century when global corporations such as the Virginia and Massachusetts Bay Company were the beneficiaries of the state redistribution of indigenous capital, rendering indigenous peoples the first victims of trickle-down economics. Even more foundational is the fact that without the initial violent dispossession of indigenous peoples there would be no state and significantly less accumulated wealth to redistribute in the first place. Clearly, the four practices of neoliberalism identified by Harvey share continuities with those central to settler colonialism. As noted by Leroy Little Bear (2000: 84), the hegemonic effects of colonization and its attempts to construct a singular social order by means of force and law, suppresses the diversity of human world-views; the result is a very powerful and dangerous form of colonization. One that operates, not by ‘attempting to exterminate the physical signs of indigenous peoples as human beings, but by trying to exterminate their existence as peoples through the elimination of the histories, ways of knowing and geographies that provide the foundation for indigenous cultural identities and sense of self’ (Alfred and Corntassel 2005: 598). The implications of this devastation are proving to be far reaching. Today, many of the planet’s dwindling resources remain located on indigenous lands, placing these communities at continued risk. The impact of environmental destruction is, however, now not only being felt by indigenous peoples but by the global community. So we enter a time when it may all come down to one central question: (indigenous) peoples or profits?

Transformations: Red Pedagogies of self-determination In terms of sustainability, indigenous peoples continue to call attention to the myth that there are no alternatives to capitalist economies; that they represent the end of history and the apex of civilization. Research on traditional and subsistence economies has demonstrated that so-called ‘primordial’ societies – people who earn their livelihood from hunting, fishing, gathering and small-scale agriculture – actually enjoyed a greater amount of leisure time since they were able to meet their survival needs relatively easily (Harry 2001). Furthermore, most indigenous societies purposely avoided accumulating surplus, and where they did, they

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instituted various strategies of surplus management to ensure that accumulated wealth was distributed equally among members of their society (i.e. potlatches, feasts, give-aways) as well as instituted a variety of social sanctions against individual wealth accumulation. Although many environments that sustain subsistence economies could support increased production and accumulation, as well as larger populations, Native peoples deliberately under-produced; harvesting and consuming only what they needed, conserving the rest for future generations. They understood that underuse of economic capacity minimizes the risk of resource depletion and enhances the resilience of the resource base, thus ensuring the survival of people. Today, under capitalism, while indigenous peoples represent only 5 per cent of the world’s population they comprise roughly 15 per cent of the worlds ‘poor’ and one-third of the 900 million ‘extremely poor’ (International Fund for Agricultural Development, n.d.). In the United States, the ratio of American Indian/Alaska Natives living below the poverty line compared to all other groups is more than 2:1, which translates into one in every three Native Americans living in poverty.12 The statistics are no better in Canada where 40 per cent of indigenous peoples live in poverty. While the causes of global poverty may be broadly contested, within indigenous communities, poverty is undeniably viewed as the dilatory effect of colonization, with indigenous communities standing as monuments to avarice – living testimony of what happens when you stand in the way of ‘progress’. Indigenous peoples have always known that the expansionist economies would eventually collapse under their own weight. Thus, unlike other marginalized communities, the political project of indigenous peoples has never been about inclusion but rather centred around self-determination and resurgence of indigenous nationhood; the connection between life and land and the ‘original instructions’ about how to live on the land. Such ways have not only been summarily dismissed by settler societies but also served as the just grounds for elimination. Nevertheless, indigenous peoples and communities remain resilient, keeping alive the knowledge and relationships with the land that continue to elude more technologically ‘advanced’ societies. The world has reached a ‘must change’ status because the planet’s ecosystems are no longer able to absorb the immense assault at the hands of first world nations. The implications of the ecological crisis are deeply pedagogical. That is, we must undertake a massive relearning of history from an indigenous perspective and come to terms with the impact of genocide and colonization on the current relationships between indigenous peoples and whitestream society. Those indigenous and settler peoples alike who have put their faith

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in continued economic growth, excessive resource use, and technological solutions to the cultural and environmental crises must realize that nothing less than a wholesale abandonment of the drive for commodity accumulation is required. The indigenous world-view, which reconnects mind, body and spirit, brings a holistic vision to a society that is accustomed to approaching life in a fragmented and compartmentalized fashion. The traditional emphasis on spiritual well-being and the satisfaction of needs rather than endless wants introduces a sense of limits to a culture that has not, to this point, acknowledged any limits to continued economic growth, technological advancement and material accumulation. The traditional practice of shared economies to operate to protect the well-being of all members of society provides an alternative to the dominant model where wealth is privately appropriated for the benefit of the few. Dr Graham Smith (2003: 1) advocates a Kaupapa Maori approach in which transformation has to ‘be won on at least two broad fronts; a confrontation with the colonizer and a confrontation with “ourselves”’. This approach employed in New Zealand in the 1980s serves as a model for developing successful transformative actions that have the potential to be more widely applied across other communities and contexts. The following six principles are considered to be the crucial change factors in Kaupapa Maori praxis: 1 The principle of self-determination or relative autonomy. 2 The principle of validating and legitimating cultural aspirations and identity. 3 The principle of incorporating culturally preferred pedagogy. 4 The principle of mediating socio–economic and home difficulties. 5 The principle of incorporating cultural structures which emphasize the ‘collective’ rather than the ‘individual’ such as the notion of the extended family. 6 The principle of a shared and collective vision/philosophy. (Smith 2003: 3) The six principles of Kaupapa Maori generate important under­standings about transformative praxis across multiple forms of oppression and exploitation. As noted by Smith, ‘This expansive resistance approach is important in responding to the new formations and re-shaping of cultural oppression(s) and economic exploitation(s). That is, multiple formed oppressions need to be responded to with multiple formed resistance strategies’ (Smith 2003: 3). More specifically, Kaupapa Maori reconfigures the linear models of Western forms of critical and other revolutionary

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pedagogies. The first figure below (Figure 11.1) represents the more common linear approach to social transformation articulated by Paulo Freire. The second figure (Figure 11.2) represents a cyclical, indigenous recasting of this model; one that holds all elements of change in equal relation to each other. This cycle can be entered into at any point and does not necessarily start with conscientization. Smith (2003: 4) believes it is important that the arrows go in both directions, which ‘reinforces the idea of simultaneous engagement with more than one element, as well as moves beyond the hierarchical representation implied in the linear model’. Smith’s model stresses the importance of how we need to become ‘change agents’, to develop transformation of the undesirable circumstances we are in. Such is the premise and promise of Red Pedagogy. It is an indigenous pedagogy that operates at the crossroads of Western theory and indigenous knowledge. In bridging these epistemological worlds, Red Pedagogy asks that native peoples examine their own communities, policies and practices,

Conscientization → Resistance → Transformative action Figure 11.1  Social transformation (linear formation)

Conscientization

Resistance

Transformative action

Figure 11.2  Social transformation (cyclical formation)

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we take seriously the notion that to know ourselves as revolutionary agents is more than an act of understanding who we are. It is an act of reinventing ourselves, of validating our overlapping cultural identifications and relating them to the materiality of social life, power relations, and localities of place. As such, Red Pedagogy is, by definition, a space of engagement. It is the liminal and intellectual borderlands where indigenous and nonindigenous scholars encounter one another, working to remember, redefine and reverse the devastation of the original colonialist ‘encounter’. Specifically, it offers the following ways of thinking around and through the challenges facing American education in the twenty-first century, in particular our need to define a pedagogy for decolonization: • Red Pedagogy is primarily a pedagogical project wherein pedagogy is understood as inherently relational, political, cultural, spiritual, intellectual and perhaps most importantly, place-based. • Red Pedagogy is fundamentally rooted in indigenous knowledge and praxis. It is particularly interested in knowledge that furthers understanding and analysis of colonization. • Red Pedagogy promotes an education for decolonization where the root metaphors of relationship, sovereignty and balance provide the foundation. • Red Pedagogy is a project that interrogates both democracy and indigenous sovereignty, working to define the relationship between them. • Red Pedagogy actively cultivates a praxis of collective agency. That is, Red Pedagogy aims to build transcultural and transnational solidarities among indigenous peoples and others committed to reimagining a sovereign space free of imperialist, colonialist and capitalist exploitation. • Red Pedagogy is grounded in hope. This is, however, not the futurecentred hope of the Western imagination, but rather a hope that lives in contingency with the past – one that trusts the beliefs and understandings of our ancestors, the power of traditional knowledge, and the possibilities of new understandings. Essentially, a Red Pedagogy requires that we look to the past to understand where we are today and to imagine our common futures. In so doing, Coulthard (2014) calls for cautionary engagement with the settler-state, and the liberal pluralism of state-based efforts that serve to mediate and accommodate indigenous claims. He writes: What our present condition does demand…is that we begin to approach our engagements with the settler-state with a degree of critical self-reflection, skepticism, and caution. It also demands that we begin to shift our attention

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Grande and Naadli  r 219 away from the largely rights-based/recognition orientation that has emerged as hegemonic over the last four decades, to a resurgent politics of recognition that seeks to practice decolonial, gender-emancipatory, and economically nonexploitative alternative structures of law and sovereign authority grounded on a critical refashioning of the best of indigenous legal and political traditions. It is only by privileging and grounding ourselves in these normative lifeways and resurgent practices that we have a hope of surviving our strategic engagements with the colonial state with integrity and as indigenous peoples. (Coulthard 2014: 179)

The dynamic concepts of Red Pedagogy and Kaupapa Maori, provide this ‘grounding’, enabling connections through history, ceremony, language and land, keeping relationships (kinships) at the core of indigenous identity. It is the ongoing maintenance of respectful relationships that guides all interactions and experiences with community, clans, families, individuals, homelands, plants, animals and all living beings. The teachings of indigenous theories of transformation are based on ancestral knowledge about how to live on the land in an ecologically and socially sustainable way. They also illuminate the centrality of indigenous sovereignty and selfdetermination to processes of transformation. At the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Expert Conference on the Implementation of the Right of Self-Determination (1999), it was agreed that: self-determination can include, but is not limited to, guarantees of cultural security, forms of self-governance and autonomy, economic self-reliance, effective participation at the international level, land rights, and the ability to care for the natural environment…(and) that self-determination should include spiritual freedom and the various forms that ensure the free expression and protection of collective identity in dignity. (Conclusions and recommendations of the UNESCO Expert Conference, see van Walt, van Praag and Seroo 1999: 19–20)

Such assurances not only hold promise for indigenous peoples but also for the world. In closing, we offer the words of Sheila Watt-Cloutier, born in the small village of Kuujjuaq in Canada’s frozen north. Sheila has devoted much of her life to improving the lives of the Arctic communities, in the face of climate change and other over-development disasters. In 2006, Sheila spoke these words at the International Forum on Globalization and the Tebtebba Foundation: And we Inuit and other Northerners, of course, because we’re at peril, because governments are taking a short-term view that is favored by many businesses, in fact what we are doing here is we are defending our right to culture, our right to lands traditionally used and occupied, our right to health, our right to

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220  r Eleven physical security, our right to our own means of subsistence and our rights to residence and movement. And as our culture, again, as I say, is based on the cold, the ice and snow, we are in essence defending our right to be cold.

Notes 1 In this context, the settler project refers to the society and aims of ‘settlers’ – those who occupy lands previously stolen or in the process of being taken from their indigenous inhabitants or who are otherwise members of the settler society (Barker 2009: 328). 2 As articulated by Tuck and Yang (2012: 5), ‘In the United States, many indigenous peoples have been forcibly removed from their homelands onto reservations, indentured, and abducted into state custody, signalling the form of colonization as simultaneously internal (via boarding schools and other biopolitical modes of control) and external (via uranium mining on indigenous land in the US Southwest and oil extraction on indigenous land in Alaska) with a frontier (the US military still nicknames all enemy territory ‘Indian Country’). 3 Rebranding is the marketing strategy by which a product or service is marketed or distributed with a different identity. Rebranding often occurs when one company acquires another. 4 Wilkins and Lomawaima (2001: 108) write, ‘policymakers had such abiding faith in the deeply transformative powers of America’s Protestant mercantile culture that they believed the mere prospect of private property ownership would magically transform tribal Indians into ruggedly individualistic, Christian, self-supporting yeoman farmers’. 5 The Royal Proclamation of 1763 enacted the same effects as Dawes in the Canadian context, setting up ‘fee simple’ lands and the treaty process that Aboriginal peoples still contend with on a daily basis. 6 Krippner adopts this definition from Giovanni Arrighi’s (1994) The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times (London: Verso). 7 Under Dawes, ‘surplus’ Indian land was leased to private interests. The ‘royalties’ gained from such ventures (oil, coal, etc.) were to be accounted for and held ‘in trust’ by the US government. 8 The Blackfoot Nation consists of four distinct Blackfoot nations who share a historical and cultural background but have separate leadership: the Siksika (which means Blackfoot), the Akainawa (also called Kainai or Bloods), the Pikanii (variously spelled Piikani, Pikani, Pikuni, Piegan, or Peigan), and the Blackfeet. The first three nations are in Alberta, Canada, and the fourth is in Montana. (‘Blackfeet’, though the official name of this tribe, is actually a misnomer given to them by white authorities; the word is not plural in the Blackfoot language, and some Blackfoot people in Montana resist this label.) 9 To be clear, an audit dating back to 1887 would cost US$2.4 billion while the cost of one dating back to 1985 would be US$907 million. 10 http://mytwobeadsworth.com/Indian TrustFund.html. 11 Text from congressional record. Debate: HR 5093, 17 July 2002.

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Grande and Naadli  r 221 12 Within this context, ‘living in poverty’ means enduring higher rates of disease, suicide, landlessness and malnutrition, as well as lower rates of access to education and healthcare.

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222  r Eleven Krippner, G. R. (2005). ‘The financialization of the American economy.’ SocioEconomic Review, 3(2): 173–208. Kristol, W. and Kagan, R. (1996). ‘Toward a neo-Reaganite foreign policy.’ Foreign Affairs, 75: 18–32. Little Bear, L. (2000). ‘Jagged worldviews colliding.’ In Marie Battiste (ed.). Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision. Vancouver: UBC Press, 77–85. Nieves, E. (2005). ‘Indian leader seek to settle lawsuit over leasing of land.’ Washington Post, A19. Norton, Gail. (2002). PBS Newshour transcript. Accessed at http://www.pbs.org/ newshour/bb/government_programs-july-dec02-indiantrusts_12–18. Ormiston, T. (2010). ‘Re-conceptualizing research: an indigenous perspective.’ First Nations Child & Family Caring Society of Canada, vol. 5(1): 50–6. Available at http://www.fnwitness.ca/volume-5-number-1-2010. Smith, G. H. (2003). ‘Kaupapa Maori theory: theorizing Indigenous transformation of education and schooling.’ Unpublished paper presented at Kaupapa Maori Symposium: NZARE/AARE Joint Conference. Australian Association for Research in Education. Stephanson, A. (1995). Manifest Destiny: American Expansion and the Empire of Right. New York: Hill & Wang. Stewart-Harawira, M. (2005). The New Imperial Order: Indigenous Responses to Globalization. London: Zed Books. Tuck, E., and Yang, W. (2012). ‘Decolonization is not a metaphor.’ Decolonization, Indigeneity, Education, Society 1(1). Available at http://decolonization.org/ index.php/des/article/view/18630 van Walt, M. C., van Praag, M. C. and Seroo, O. (eds.) (1999). The Implementation of the Right to Self-Determination as a Contribution to Conflict Prevention. Report of the International Conference on Experts held in Barcelona: Centre UNESCO de Catalunya, 19–20. Wilkins, D. and Lomawaima, K. T. (2001). Uneven Ground: American Indian Sovereignty and Federal Law. University of Oklahoma Press: Norman, Oklahoma. Young, L. (2013). ‘Crude awakening: 37 years of oil spills in Alberta.’ Global News. Available at http://globalnews.ca/news/571494/introduction-37-years-ofoil-spills-in-alberta.

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12 Globalization, Culture and Development

Perspectives on Africa Ali A. Abdi

Introduction The relatively new phenomenon of highly organized globalization has now been with us for about thirty years. Yet, the realities of generic globalization would be as old as the first collective systems of humanity itself. In different places and at diverse epochal intersections of people’s lives, select practices of globalization in commercial, educational, religious or technological innovations were always present, and as was the case always, those who thought they had better material and/or knowledge possibilities often globalized their products and ideas to the rest. In the new realities of the current globalization, though, the novel phenomenon where the multitrajectory practices of the case are reaching almost all corners of the world is interesting and worthy of all the intellectual and analytical curiosities it spawns. In the case of Africa especially, the expansive processes of globalization that have become dominant from the mid-nineteenth century to about the mid-twentieth century, ushered in new and unprecedented forms of globalizations that were driven, sans exception, by Europe’s political, economic, educational and cultural interests and intentions. It was here where African cultures, epistemologies, world-views and indigenous learning systems were either destroyed or relegated to the status of nonviability (Monga 1996; wa Thiongo 1986). And from the long-term effects of these unevenly eschewed encounters, the colonial and postcolonial forms of ‘social development’ (if one could characterize them that way) were so fundamentally de-cultured, they were just creating more underdevelopment and institutional weaknesses.

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With that in place and with basic philosophies and operational­izations of African development mainly based on continually colonizing platforms, the political and economic fall of the Eastern Bloc in the late 1980s instigated a new form of globalization for Africa. This time, it was the full sanctioning of overnight established, nominal democracies that the public neither understood, nor had the chance to examine and appreciate either on their merits or demerits (Ihonvbere 1996). Here, the imposition of Western liberalism as a system of government, and as an important component of globalization – or as Francis Fukuyama (1993) put it, as a testimony to the absolute triumph of the ideas of the West vis-à-vis the rest – on countries that have had different histories and life management systems, and above all, different cultures of governance, was to have, and had a negative impact and outcome. Today, after almost twenty years of African democracy, most countries are worse off than they were when they became ‘democratic’ from 1990. It is in response to these expansive and globalization-induced de-culturing and under-developing processes of the overall vita Africana that this chapter examines the ongoing problematiques of the situation, complemented by select analysis of the initially disturbing conceptualizations and practically deforming forces of globalization. It should be meaningful to say that the totalizing nature of globalization has created and seems to sustain a discernible delinking of Africa, in both developmental and psychosocial terms, from the rest of the world. The delinking problem, is not, we need to repeat as often as needed, the result of something endemic to people’s capacities, whether they be in Africa, Asia or the Americas, to make duly comprehended decisions to manage and, where needed, change their lives. It is, I categorically submit, the direct outcome of a world system that is historico-ethnocentrically interlinked or delinked, and with selectively located multiplicities of inter­connectedness (Wallerstein 2004), heavily favours and advances the interests of Northern countries whose powers are usually sustained by the longue durée inertia of the de-culturing processes. The chapter will suggest ways of overcoming these issues including the re-culturing of African systems of life, which are essential for people’s capacities to relate to and constructively respond to the exigencies of the social and physical phenomena that surround them. In the new active space that should be established with respect to the problems of deculturation and the possibilities of re-culturation, I am mainly aspiring for socially inclusive and practically located points of divergence and convergence where the design as well as the implementation of Africa’s educational, economic and political projects are undertaken with expansive attention to the continent’s historical, cultural and actual needs, which should not be devoid of the communally interdependent ways of existing

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that still characterize African life. In engaging the overall counterpoints vis-à-vis the top-down hegemonies of globalization, therefore, the analyses undertaken in these pages concur with the point that globalization is now so interwoven with our lives that rescinding its realities and its impact is almost impossible. As Bessis (2003) notes, in poor Southern countries, people understand that they may not able to directly confront and effectively neutralize the onslaught of globalization at this point and as such are more interested in new ways that can modify its dominant realities, which could minimally benefit them in their actual contexts. It is on that basis that we should also talk about possible ways of humanizing globalization. While I am using the generic term in this work, Africa, my focus is on sub-Saharan Africa.

Conceptualizing and theorizing globalization: select pointers As one of the most debated issues in recent academic scholarship, globalization may be defined in many ways, with selectively inherent empowering or disempowering interests and as many divergent intentions. With such simple characterizations as open borders and the movement of everything, to more complex and inclusive observations, definitional assumptions about globalization abound. In my classroom teachings, I have presented ‘true’ globalization as the unhindered movements of peoples, goods and services across regional, national and continental boundaries. In speaking about goods and services, one can include commodities and related economic transactions as well as social, political, cultural, educational, technological and preconceivable futuristic possibilities that can enhance the desired exchanges and their mechanisms. More impersonally, I tend to tentatively borrow one useful definition of globalization provided by Held et al. (2004: 68), which sees the issue ‘as a process (or set of processes) which embodies a transformation in the spatial organization of social relations and transactions – assessed in terms of their extensity, intensity, velocity and impact – generating transcontinental or interregional flows and networks of activity, interaction and the exercise of power.’ Indeed, it is these unique extensities, intensities and velocity of current globalizations that would distinguish it from previous ones. So if we assume that these new globalizations have started with global economic restructuring that included the few financial blueprints that were devised for the developing world by the World Bank and the IMF (International Monetary Fund), then we could say, as I have noted elsewhere (Abdi 2006), that the new situation may have started from the late 1970s into the early 1980s. And that should raise the question, what happened to people’s lives and what happened to Africans in particular since the early 1980s? Concisely, the overall picture is not very

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appealing, in fact, it is extensively problematic and we shall see more of this discussion in the latter sections of the chapter. In terms of the global viability and applicability of Held et al.’s definition (above), one might say that despite all its linguistic and descriptive dexterity, it cannot not speak for the world of the African, or for the new hundreds of millions of peasants, the urban poor or women and children who are being disenfranchised by rapid and global multinational-driven globalization all over the world. These peoples have no access to the mechanisms that could enable the long reach of their actions. So at the end of the day, such definitions, as important and research-wise and useful as they are, and to be fair, as conceptual distillers of globalization as they may represent, should always raise one important question: whose world does this speak for? As should be clear by now, one important trouble with globalization is that it seems to speak mainly for the globalizers, that is, those who due to the endowed nature of their societies and their powerful multinationals are either directly or indirectly globalizing the less endowed majority of the world. We will deal more with this in the following pages. Suffice it to say, that as Teodoro (2003) noted, in the current configuration of events, there may be a number of globalizations affecting people, not only with respect to their immediate impact, but also via their developmentally problematic outcomes. And that should persuade us to at least provisionally claim the right to define globalization from the perspective of its many victims. As such, I could locate globalization as a mostly profit-driven, historically de-conscientizing, selectively enriching, culturally alienating, and politically dominating, and economically attempting to create an amalgam of world economies and related life systems, all for the purpose of maintaining, mainly by design but occasionally by default, the ideological and institutional supremacy of the West over the rest. However one conceptualizes or theorizes it, though, the factedness of the complexity of globalization makes it difficult to prospectively quarantine it. As McMichael (2004: 285) said, globalization, in all its dimensions, ‘is a formative and contradictory process with no clear structural imperative’. In adding to his observations, McMichael immediately points out what most of us should already know: despite these irregularities in structure and outcomes, globalization must, at least theoretically, obey the common rules of the market. That, ipso facto, assures us how the monetary dimension and its architects from the corporate elite are by and large, the dominant constructors of the processes of globalization. Perhaps the dominance of the corporate elite is also a reflection of their insider status as part of the international agencies, the so-called international financial institutions (IFIs) that are the originators

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and current enforcers (in terms of policy and programmes) of globalization. So, before we even worry about the outcomes of globalization, we already see thick asymmetries in how different groups understand and can, by extension, operationalize it for their well-being. And the concerned socio– cultural complexities are, as Rouse (in Behdad 2006: 65) notes, not easy to navigate, especially for less developed societies: We live in a confusing world, a world of crisscrossed economies, intersected systems of meaning and fragmented identities. Suddenly, the comforting modern imagery of the nation-states and national languages, of coherent communities and consistent subjectivities, of dominant centres and distant margins no longer seems adequate.

It is this complexity that calls for something new: a return to the possibilities of recasting the conceptual and theoretical locations of globalization. Thus far, the new globalizations were not only designed and imposed on the rest of humanity by Western agencies, they have also been defined, redefined, remodelled and purposefully augmented or repainted at will by the same agencies, their analysts and some supposedly less bureaucratized Western academics who have been trying their best to tell us what globalization means. But the continuing colonization of the meanings of globalization incessantly confirms the marginalizing practices of the case. And to create enduring social or institutional meanings, the issue of representations becomes paramount. That is, before we continue focusing on what globalization has done to, or could do for Africa, Africans and others in comparable corners of development should have one important a priori right. They must ask for and be told what they have never been told, i.e. what are the meanings and intentions of globalization, why it is so important, and why should everyone jump on its bandwagon? Undoubtedly, this proposition would sound preposterous to some. The counter-argument could be that with the forces of globalization now everywhere and with almost everyone in the world directly interacting with their realities, no one can disengage from it, so let us just be reasonable, the argument could go, and focus on the immediate post-facto situations. We may also be told that everybody knows and understands globalization. Indeed, as Williamson (1993), partially speaking for his former employer, the World Bank, advised us some years ago, we should have been at the point of no return, and with the world practically heeding the siren call for universal mono-economics, all was and should be fine. If Williamson’s world was realized, then we should already be in the era of hyper-globalization where states, let alone borders, are no longer viable and where the social, cultural and educational are all subservient to the monetary interests of neoliberal economics. In the case of the political, we

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should already be in the long-ago predicted promised land of liberal democracy (Fukuyama 1993). Of course, none of this has happened for Africa; if anything, the opposite would be true. In economic terms, for example, most African countries were doing worse in the early twenty-first century than was the case in early 1990s (UNDP 2003), and the promise of imported liberal democracy did materialize in one unexpected but important way. It precipitated more economic woes and institutional failure for most of the poor countries that embraced it after the fall of the Eastern Bloc (Abdi 2008; Ake 2003; Ihonvbere 1996). To see why more representation is needed in the boardrooms and academic circles where new ideas and their pending practices are conceptualized, selectively theorized, and for lack of better words, snobbishly implemented, one can read Ihonvbere’s (1996) important essay, ‘On the threshold of another false start’, where, for example, the imposition of a Eurocentric and unworkable processes of democratization were imposed on post-Cold War Africa. Clearly, the intentions here were not removed from sustaining a clear political–economic line from colonialism, to pre-‘democracy’ problematic spaces and into post-Cold War ill-advised incidences of counter-indigenous, so-named democracies. It was also in 1996 that Claude Ake’s book Democracy and Development in Africa, and Celestin Monga’s Anthropology of Anger, were published. As in Ihonvbere’s essay, both books questioned, among other things, the socio–political development decisions that are made on behalf of Africa without the direct involvement of Africans. As Ake (1996) noted, whether it is the false promises of globalization, the general threads of economic and political development, or the shallow rhetoric of democracy, no historically or culturally inclusive practices of any of these were ever implemented in the old continent. What has happened instead, was that ideas, concepts, policies and programmes were conceived and constructed elsewhere, and exported almost in pre-packaged fashion to Africa. For Monga (1996), the problems lie not only in producing and distributing the wrong items, but basically misunderstanding the overall African context. And to his dismay, technically ditto for the rest of us, Western governments and institutions were more than willing to construct new meanings about African life that are for Africa, but not about Africa. The point should be clear: things, ideas and programmes were conceptualized and manufactured about Africa, but in real terms, they have nothing to do with Africa. In a more direct language, they were false fabrications about the continent, which by driving globalization and development policies, would do, as they have extensively done, more harm than healing. Indeed, as Ihonvbere (1996) pointed out, in terms of the processes of democratization, which for the West were some of the most

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important components of globalization, the line that was followed did not seem to be different from the misguided, European-based policies of social development that almost all post-independence African countries chose to apply. So, with the failure of that impractical first phase of African development, Western donors and their rentier states did not seem to have learned anything from those experiences. Thus, with so much of Africa heeding the unidirectional call to democratize, the ‘threshold’ of another false start on the presumptions of democratization were at play, and the consequences, as pointed above, were anything but conducive to the wellbeing of people.

Colonialism and the problematic globalizing and de-culturing of Africa In Africa, as in other parts of the world, the processes of globalization have been happening with different intentions, intensities and outcomes. What we can say, though, is that European colonialism from early-mid nineteenth century into late twentieth century was, before the current trends of globalization, the most expansive, externally imposed form of globalization the continent has experienced. Important in analyzing the two trends of globalization is how the former has actually directly affected the way Africans have been able to respond to, or more appropriately survive the current one, which we may term latter-day globalization. For me at least, this is extremely important, for I subscribe to the conclusions about the effects of colonialism on Africans and their subsequent realities of underdevelopment that have been extensively discussed in the writings of such brilliant historians and cultural sociologists of colonialism as Frantz Fanon (1967, 1968), Julius Nyerere (1968), Aimé Cesaire (1972), Ivan van Sertima (1981), Walter Rodney (1982), Ngugi wa Thiongo (1986, 1993), and Albert Memmi (1991). Fanon, in Black Skin, White Masks (1967), extensively and quite effectively talks about how the biggest outcomes of colonial relationships have been not necessarily the direct political and economic exploitations, although these were very important, but the cultural domination of Europeans over the rest. Fanon’s points are corroborated by Ngugi wa Thiongo who in Decolonizing the Mind (1986) critically dissected how, by de-linguicizing people (i.e. taking their language out of their education and imposing a foreign language) and by extension, de-culturing them, colonialism has expansively colonized the minds of Africans; and to achieve viable livelihoods and development, mental decolonization is of paramount importance. Before Ngugi wa Thiongo, Fanon (1967, 1968) also saw the complexity as well as the importance of psycho-cultural platforms along

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with physical domination. Fanon clearly understood that subjecting citizens, especially when they are either psychologically or physically (or both) subjugated, leads to completely new projects where people are objectified, and to de-objectify them, we have to do so much to reconstitute some of the psychosomatic possibilities that have been lost. In analyzing and relating the colonial globalization of Africa, therefore, my focus should be less on economic relationships and more on the schemes of deontologizing and de-culturing this complex Southern continent. This is important in the sense that culture is the way people live in given tempospatial contexts and with respect to their stable or changing social and physical environments. When cultural platforms are deformed or destroyed, therefore, as we shall see below, people’s lives may cease to exist in ways that benefit them and may only function to advantage those who caused the problems in the first place. My point above on the important relationship between earlier colonial globalizations of Africa and the current neoliberal driven one is also culturally and psychologically located. As related elsewhere (Abdi 2002a), colonialism was first and foremost psychological, then cultural, from there selectively educational, then political and culminated in the economic. It was initially psychological in the sense that through the writings of European thinkers and philosophers (see Hegel 1965; Kant in Eze 1997; Montesquieu 1975; Voltaire 1826), the continent and its peoples were portrayed as irresponsible, socially infantile and needing, actually deserving the domination of Europeans. And with the encounter of the two peoples favouring, not only the technologically superior group, but also disfavouring the inclusive ontologies of Africans for whom humanity was intersubjectively located, and dehumanizing others was equal to dehumanizing yourself, the air and the incremental practice of superiority were slowly established. From there, the cultural patchwork was set in motion, and with the socio–cultural methodologies of Europeans successfully portraying their world-view and their life systems as universally superior and to be emulated (Bessis, 2003), the colonized were taught how to do those life systems, which in a twisted turn of events, would de-culture them, thus affirming Fanon’s pointers that once this is achieved, the rest, in the simple parlance of everyday life, should be easy. Indeed, the processes of colonial globalization we are talking about are mainly facilitated by the cultural hegemonies and their educational platforms that affirm the rising status of those natives who are good at adopting the new prescriptions and who become the ground-level militia for the ensuing and more measurable political and economic platforms of the colonizing process. Interestingly, the de-culturing and overall processes of conquest and exploitation were portrayed as a mission civilisatrice (Said

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1993), which from there strengthens the claims of the racist philosophers, thus effectively locating the continuities of the quasi-concretizable cultural and learning relationships that are established. It is, therefore, through this shedding of one’s world-view, language, culture and later, communal ways of living that the programme of globalization takes place. As Ivan van Sertima (1981) so cogently noted about the real life of colonialism in Africa, though, the story was anything but Europeans overtaking the continent, exploiting it in multiple ways and leaving when the people rebelled. What we need to critically understand is how the people who were in Africa before colonialism were entirely different from those the socio–culturally explosive practice left behind. Here a note of note: people act, react and interact with respect to mental processes that govern their decisions and behaviour. People, therefore, are, at the end of the season, more psychological and cultural than anything else. What colonial globalization did to Africa, more than anything else, was the de-patterning of mental dispositions, thus changing them from confident, socially located communities into what Aimé Cesaire, in his powerful Discourse on Colonialism (1972: 19) has described as millions of men and women ‘who have been skilfully injected with fear, inferiority complexes, trepidation, servility, despair and abasement’. And to just go back to the claim of the mission civilisatrice, Gerald Caplan (2008; see also Hochschild 1999) talks about the barbarism of the civilizing mission in the context of Belgium’s King Leopold who successfully killed 10 million of 20 million Congolese in twenty-five years during his personal rule; and the extermination of the Herero people of Namibia by the Germans, which together should represent some of the most horrible acts of genocide in history. As noted by both Hochschild and Caplan, it was actually King Leopold who introduced the severing of limbs to Africa, a tactic replicated by Africans in Sierra Leone’s civil war about a century later. And the massive genocidal practices of the European civilizing missions (the oxymoron nature of the description need not detain us here) were not at all limited to Africa. Many centuries earlier, in the fifty years between 1531 and 1581, Indigenous populations were so decimated by mainly Spanish and Portuguese colonizers in the post-Columbus Americas, their numbers were reduced from 80 million to 10 million (de Botton 2002). Eventually, the project of colonialism was so effective in all its dimensions that the voluntary participation of the colonized in its projects was not difficult (Memmi 1991). Several centuries before Memmi, the Tunisian historian Ibn Khaldun described, in his important circa 1380 Prolegomena or Muqaddimah (Introduction) to his Universal History (see Issawi 1969) how people who are conquered by others eventually begin to imitate their conquerors in

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almost everything they do. The reason should not be too complicated to see. Conquest and colonialism involve extensively interactive regimes and heavy contexts of identity deformation, misrecognition, loss of self-esteem, and individual and social doubt in self-efficacy. All of these could, in the long run at least, mentally and culturally reward the victors, and through the psychology of need, people could equate perfection, achievement and success with those who have had the right means to trump their ontologies and existentialities. As Ibn Khaldun pointed out, when these relationships continue for too long, the acceptance of defeat and the admiration of the conqueror become convictions that might persuade the vanquished to actually identify (as the inferior adopted self) with the colonizer. Looking at the world today, it is not really difficult to see the result of the important analyses presented here. Even in the current discussions on the declining economic status of many Western countries, the fate of the lower selves of the world (in development terms), whose financial liquidities have been devastated by the forces of globalization, seems to have become so habitualized that their suffering is, without any desire for better words, ‘normal’. Indeed, this reality has so invaded the global public space that one can clearly see how it is a direct descendant of the processes of colonization where the natives (global natives now) were to be controlled and fed before the point of starvation. As Chinua Achebe (2000) wrote, the notion, actually the maxim, ‘I know my natives’ – that is they do not need development, and hardly any sustenance, and they will still like me – was popular with colonial officers. Undoubtedly, therefore, the now descriptively celebrated less than US$2 per day story was invented long ago by those officers who critically understood that income, food and other essentials were to be used to control people’s choices and by extension, their loyalty. In a semireversed practice of events, it is the combined forces of the African elite and agencies of globalization that are now playing with that earlier devised golden rule to oppress and rule. Indeed, globalization has wrought havoc on the economic lives of Africans (Abdi 2006, 2008) and I do not see any viable debate, although that can change in the future, in addressing the negative impact of this project on the situations of the least endowed in this continent and elsewhere. If anything, the perverse normalization of the suffering of Africans continues unabated, and like old times, the only time that any action is actualized seems to be at the point when the images of starving children and other victims of natural disasters are flashed on television screens, so as to revive what Western analysts call the moral imperative to help hapless Africans, and occasionally some Asians (in North Korea, Cambodia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, India and other places) who are having these

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problems because of (a) their corrupt rulers, or (b) their own laziness or inaction before the calamities hit them. From inclusive global perspectives or even sober historical analysis, no one seems to have time to investigate the role of globalization in instigating the repetitive nature of these and similar calamities. As Amartya Sen (1993, 2000) noted, open societies (selectively democracies) do not experience starvation, and development happens and sustains itself more effectively when basic freedoms for all segments of society are accorded. And, if anything, the latest colonization by globalization of the African public space has been the imposition of false labels of democratization that are now beyond the threshold Ihonvbere (1996) spoke about, which have derailed, at least for the time being, any viable governance structures that are open, accountable or minimally transparent.

Globalization as counter-culture/development I will be brief on the culture point. Most of the preceding analysis should have been about culture, and even if my pointers were historically eschewed, the applicability, as I have made quasi-abundantly clear, to current events and life systems are practical, tangible and impactful in people’s daily experiences. I will just say that based on my readings of history and society, when people’s psychological patterns and connections are pulverized by global forces that they cannot deal with (in our discussion, either colonial globalizations or current postcolonial, imperial globalizations, see partially Hardt and Negri 2001), the threads of their cultural platforms start to slowly disentangle, their ontologies become decentred, they begin to lose social (communal) agency, and could, in the process, lack the capacity for social development. As I have done in some of my earlier writings and presentations, I am using the construct ‘social development’ as inclusively talking about all types of development including economic, political, educational, cultural, technological and emotional well-being. It is also the case that lately, I have been occasionally using development and well-being interchangeably. A propos the inclusive nature of the idea, for me, development is always interwoven with power. From ancient times and into our here and now, those who were developed, that is, those with more economic, political, educational, cultural, technological and psychological well-beings vis-à-vis others, had more power, not only to manage their lives as they wished, but as well, to influence the lives of others. As Walter Rodney noted, power relations, or the prerogative to have your way in the contexts you reside, is the most important variable in human relations. Indeed, as Rodney himself so effectively discussed in his outstanding work, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1982), the most important outcome from the

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globalization of European colonialism of Africa, was the extensive underdevelopment of Africa, and undoubtedly, the rapid development of Europe. If we were to measure the value of the primary resources and the free or almost free labour Europe has extracted and is still extracting from Africa, one should be able to quickly see how the former would not be where it is today without those arrangements. But it was not only the massive hauling of resources that has assured the problems of underdevelopment; the case also involved, as Nyerere (1968) pointed out, the destruction of African platforms of development and African indigenous educational systems that were, as Mandela (1994) among others noted, the backbone of the continent’s schemes of social progress over millennia. Here, the divergent and purposefully location-specific meanings of development are important. Some would say, for example, that to analyze international development, we should start with former US President Harry Truman’s inaugural address on January 20, 1949 where he spoke about spreading scientific advances and industrial progress to ‘under­ developed areas’, which he envisaged as ‘a programme of development based on democratic fair dealing’ (Black 2002: 15). Doing so holistically surely expands the usual American-centric perspectives of many aspects of our contemporary lives. The more realistic case should talk about development, as globalization, being part of human life for ever, and as globalization, different groups have shared their ideas and practices of development over time and space. Indeed, as Archer (2000: 17) said, ‘human interaction with the world constitutes the transcendental conditions of human development, which otherwise remain an unrealized potentia of our species’. And in that ongoing human interaction, colonialism was undoubtedly, and contrary to the falsehoods of its proponents, a fruitful programme of international development for Europe and a tangible project of international underdevelopment for Africa. In describing the issues, therefore, let us be tolerant with a historical continuum of development that does not start with the time-constrained, ethnocentric understandings of some, where it becomes a global faith that should be religiously followed (see Rist 2003). As Nederveen Pieterse (1998) pointed out, development, when it is not inspected with multi-focal lenses, would be mainly about different intersections of Western hegemony, which immediately nullifies the validity of the myriad of other advancements that have been achieved all over the world at least in the past 4,000 years. Despite all the impositions of development, though, most of Africa still remains highly underdeveloped, and some of it is actually de-developing and all the remedies hitherto imposed are not working. But again, both the descriptive and analytical hegemonies are important. They justified colonialism, persuaded Samuel Huntington (1971) to prescribe modernity

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for the non-Western world where ‘primitive, backward’ (his own words, of course) societies could only move forward if they follow the trajectories of development that the West has adopted. For Huntington, the proof was not far-fetched. ‘If you are not doing well, why not just do as I did, and you will be like me’ could have been, verbatim, attributed to the late American commentator. Succinctly, Huntington and others like him never seriously analyzed how the West developed: by robbing the resources and the labour of others. Was Africa accorded the opportunity to do the same to Europe, that is, not to rob anybody, but at least to get back some of the material stolen from her? Or perhaps a more pragmatic point: was Africa ever allowed to analyze its development needs in a global context where it is disempowered vis-à-vis the West? No, because, as Edward Said (2002: xiv) explained, ‘to this day, the demeaning of non-Western ideas, scholarship and general cultural possibilities continues’ – that, despite the exponential increase in the number of important works produced about the lives of non-Westerners by those who know them best, non-Western scholars. The exclusionary ideas also spawned the misguided travels of legions of development experts who visit Africa and other non-developed places and impose their ideologies and de-contextualized practices of good life. Here again, these schemes of non-viable development were important components of globalization that were advanced, among others, by the World Bank and the IMF. The most important of these prescriptions in the past decades came in the form of Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs), which were the main blueprint for African development. The focus of SAPs was mainly on reducing government expenditures, privatizing public institutions, and reducing public expenditure on social development programmes such as education and healthcare (World Bank 1994). The failure of SAPs is a well-known story and we need not detail the tragic outcomes here. Briefly, they were counter everything the African public space was made of, including the role of government in national development, people’s incapacity to pay for private services including privatized schools and health clinics, and the communal culture of sharing that is still common in the majority of African life situations. As Schatz (2002) noted, the World Bank was actually aware of the programme’s weaknesses as early as 1996 and internally promised to make some changes, but as I write this chapter, the world is still waiting for any ideas and practices from this important but globally misnamed American institution. To some careful observers of the situation such as the late Nigerian political economist Claude Ake (1996), the failure of hegemonic development was not to surprise anyone. Development, if it has to succeed must not be unloaded from the wagon of globalization and from the misinformed platforms of the World Bank or the IMF, it must not be

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historically de-contextualized, and above all else, it will do no good if it is expansively de-cultured and socially alienating. Ake (1996: 13) wrote: Because the development paradigm largely ignored the specificity and historicity of African countries, it put them in a position in which everything was relevant to them, and nothing was uniquely significant for understanding them. Hence, the mounting anarchy of development studies in Africa. Bits and pieces borrowed from theories and paradigms constructed for other purposes and for other kinds of experiences, meaningless for being incomplete and out of context, were applied in ways and for purposes that are not always clear, and to realities that defy comparability.

As it has been imposed on Africa by the forces of globalization, therefore, development was devoid of an authentic kernel of what Raymond Aaron might have intended when he spoke about a possible ‘germ of universal consciousness’ (see Hoffman 2004), and was actually de-conscientizing, to use an antithesis of Paulo Freire’s (2000 [1970]) popular characterization about the role of education in human well-being or lack thereof. In speaking about the role of education in social development, it was the case – and continues to be case – that one of the worst things that has happened to Africa’s advancement has been the destruction of African learning systems and languages by colonialism, and with no change in the philosophical and policy foundation of African education from colonial times, the failure of the continent’s schooling systems as platforms for social development, continued into the era of new globalizations. Therefore, if education is to be an important engine of national development (Mandela 1994), then recasting Africa’s learning programmes so they reflect the histories, cultures and the languages of the people, should be prioritized. In speaking about these possibilities, my intention is not to do away with current systems of schooling structures, but to introduce into their midst, African epistemic notations and epistemologies, which, if gradually and carefully intermixed with what we have now, could improve the situation for hundreds of millions of learners. While there have been some recommendations in this regard, most of them talk about the Africanization of knowledge, I would subscribe, as I have done before (Abdi 2002b) to a more inclusive approach that talks about the relative Africanization of schooling and avoids the a priori and posteriori notions and intentions of knowledge construction and validation. It is the case that Africans, wherever they may be, cannot and should not disengage from the global context, and knowledge should be seen as a collective human heritage that should belong to, and benefit all. While I have deliberately engaged what might be perceived as a scathing criticism of colonialism, globalization and conventional development, I pragmatically know that we are in a post-facto context, and a systematic withdrawal should not be recommended by many, and least by me who is

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relatively cosmopolitanized, and is in fact exercising this right to analyze and critique mainly due to opportunities accorded to me by my attachments to the global labour space. Still the criticisms, whether heavy or benignly soft, should be legitimate, for what I have described here, in simple and straightforward terms, has actually taken place. However, our current desires to speak about ways of constructively living and achieving more than what has been prescribed, as the philosopher Alain Badiou would suggest, in these extensively interactive world moments, are also legitimate. For me, this calls for possible ways to humanize the dominant paradigms of the day, and that requires, without any analytical alibi, select de-verticalizations and not necessarily de-globalizations, as Bello (2002) suggested, of the processes of globalization. Doing so shall benefit, not only the multinationals and citizens of the West, along with those in the developing world who are in the right global circle with the former (see Hoogvelt 2001), but also the other billions who deserve enfranchising life platforms that are no longer psycho-physically demeaning and marginalizing. And because we live in globally open, competitive environments (even within the confines of one’s country), relevant systems of education for historical consciousness and social development should be designed for and accorded to all. No, this is not a rhetorical manifestation, it is the basic right of every African and others in all parts of the world, the same way it was my right and the right of my readers. And there are some new stretches of hope that are emerging in many parts of Africa. Beyond the general educational systems, which are still of a topdown nature, there is a high number of civil society groups that are using informal learning programmes, community theatre and neighbourhood gatherings to teach locally marginalized groups such as women, the unemployed and youth about their political and economic rights. Most of these volunteer associations are responding to the problems, not the promise, of economic globalization and democratization where people are realizing that despite the nominal elections that take place every four or five years, it is basically the same elite who have re-constitutionalized themselves as the new legitimate rulers, mostly with the tacit support of Western donors and governments. It is actually well known to the African public how the bar has been lowered when it comes to African democracy, where for Western sponsors, as long as the electioneering processes are visible, then supposedly, Africans are democratic. As Ake (2003) so rightly noted, democracy will thrive in Africa only if it reflects the traditional notions of Africa’s communal participatory culture. While the difficult contexts of globalization and democracy are still real, the important reconstructive point here is that people are responding, and groups such as Women for Change in Zambia who I visited when I was doing citizenship education-related fieldwork in that country few years ago, are achieving so

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much, not only in the social arena, but also in the political space. Such viable actions and many others like them (the organized voice of trade unions in South Africa, and environmental groups in Kenya are two other examples) are gaining momentum throughout the continent, and despite the current problems of globalization and democracy, there are few attainable glimmers of hope on the horizon.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have attempted to put together a number of ideas and analyses about the meanings, select historical locations and the outcomes of globalization with respect to the African context. In so doing, I was intent on being as descriptively inclusive as possible, but with the limited space I had and the expansiveness of the topic assigned, that was not a simple task. As such, I decided to put more emphasis on certain areas that I believe have not been treated as effectively as they deserve. For me, one of these areas is the reality of colonialism as one of the most important forms of globalization Africa has seen. And although, I have done it in a limited fashion, I have decided to reintroduce the need to discuss more extensively the meanings of globalization. As the case is now, at least academic definitions of globalization seem to be the preserve of those who have not been pained by the opening of borders and the free movement of commodities, peoples and capital. While speaking about the African experiences of the case, most of my points seem to have expounded into a multi-pronged criticism of what these have done to the persona Africana and how more than anything else, they have shaped the current configurations of cultural alienation, social underdevelopment and highly uneven power relations that permeate the lives of people. Indeed, I have agreed with those who see the current spectres of globalization as a new imperial order that favours former colonial powers and their regions. Actually, I have put forward those propositions as much as anybody else, and I believe that despite the rhetoric of independent countries and peoples transacting with one another, contemporary globalizations are actually sustaining the remnants of the mental and cultural, and by extension, politico-economic dominations that have been established by colonialism, with these directly limiting the capacity of Africans to redefine their world, recapture lost agency, reconstitute their existentialities and achieve effective social development schemes that can recast current contexts in this ancient continent. Finally, I am aware that Africans are not and should not be perpetual victims of their histories, and as such, the extensive emergence of anti-colonial and anti-globalization civil society associations and other progressive collectivities should have a positive impact on the lives of the public.

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References Abdi, A. A. (2002a). Culture, Education and Development in South Africa: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Abdi, A. A. (2002b). ‘Postcolonial education in South Africa: problems and prospects for multicultural development.’ Journal of Postcolonial Education, 1(1): 9–26. Abdi, A. A. (2006). ‘Culture of education, social development and globalization: historical and current analysis of Africa.’ In A. Abdi, K. Puplampu and G. Dei (eds.). African Education and Globalization: Critical Perspectives, Lanham, MD: Roman & Littlefield, 14–30. Abdi, A. A. (2008). ‘De-subjecting subject populations: historico-actual problems and educational possibilities.’ In A. Abdi and L. Shultz (eds.). Educating for Human Rights and Global Citizenship. Albany, NY: UNY Press, 65–80. Achebe, C. (2000). Home and Exile. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ake, C. (1996). Democracy and Development in Africa. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Ake, C. (2003). The Feasibility of Democracy in Africa. Dakar, Senegal: CODESRIA. Archer, M. (2000). Being Human: The Problem of Agency. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Behdad, A. (2006). ‘On globalization, again!’ In A. Loomba, S. Kaul, M. Bunzl, A. Burton, and J. Etsy (eds.). Postcolonial Studies and Beyond, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 62–79. Bello, W. (2002). De-Globalization. London: Zed Books. Bessis, S. (2003). Western Supremacy: The Triumph of an Idea? London: Zed Books. Black, M. (2002). The No Nonsense Guide to International Development. Toronto: Between the Lines. Caplan, G. (2008). The Betrayal of Africa. Toronto: Groundwood Books. Cesaire, A. (1972). Discourse on Colonialism. New York: Monthly Review Press. de Botton, A. (2002). Consolations of Philosophy. New York: Vintage. Eze, E. (1997). Race and the Enlightenment Reader: A Reader. Toronto: WileyBlackwell. Fanon, F. (1967). Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove Press. Fanon, F. (1968). The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press. Freire, P. (2000 [1970]). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum. Fukuyama, F. (1993). The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press. Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2001). Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hegel, G. W. F. (1965). La raison dans l’histoire. Paris: UGE. Held, D., McGrew, A., Goldblatt, D. and Perraton, J. (2004). ‘Rethinking globalization.’ In D. Held and A. McGrew (eds.). The Global Transform­ations Reader: An Introduction to the Globalization Debate. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 67–74. Hochschild, A. (1999). King Leopold’s Ghosts: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Africa. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

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240  r Twelve Hoffman, S. (2004). ‘Clash of globalizations.’ In D. Held and A. McGrew (eds.). The Global Transformations Reader: An Introduction to the Globalization Debate. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 106–11. Hoogvelt, A. (2001). Globalization and the Postcolonial World: The New Economy of Development. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave. Huntington, S. (1971). ‘The change to change: modernization, development and politics.’ Comparative Politics, 3(3): 283–322. Ihonvbere, J. (1996). ‘On the threshold of another false start? A critical evaluation of prodemocracy movements in Africa.’ Journal of Asian and African Studies, XXXI(1, 2): 125–42. Issawi, C. (1969). An Arab Philosopher of History. London: John Murray. McMichael, P. (2004). ‘Globalization: Myths and realities.’ In T. Roberts and A. Hite. (eds.). From Modernization to Globalization: Perspectives on Development and Social Change. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 274–291. Mandela, N. (1994). Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela. Toronto: Little, Brown & Company. Memmi, A. (1991). The Colonizer and the Colonized. Boston: Beacon Press. Monga, C. (1986). Anthropology of Anger: Civil Society and Democracy in Africa. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Montesquieu, Baron de (1975). The Spirit of the Laws. New York: Hafner Press. Nederveen Pieterse, J. (1998). ‘My paradigm or yours? Alternative development, post-development, reflexive development.’ Development and Change, 29(2): 343–73. Nyerere, J. (1968). Freedom and Socialism: A Selection from Writing and Speeches, 1965-67. London: Oxford University Press. Rist, G. (2003). The History of Development: from Western Origins to Global Faith. London: Zed Books. Rodney, W. (1982). How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Washington, DC: Howard University Press. Said, E. (1993). Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage. Said, E. (2002). Reflections on Exile and Other Essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Schatz, S. (2002). ‘Structural adjustment.’ In G. Bond and N. Gibson (eds.). Contested Terrains and Constructed Categories: Contemporary Africa in Focus. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 87–104. Sen, A. (1993). ‘Economic development need not precede democracy.’ In J. Petrikin (ed.). The Third World: Opposing Viewpoints. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press. Sen, A. (2000). Development as Freedom. New York: Anchor Books. Teodoro, A. (2003). ‘Paulo Freire, or pedagogy as the space and time of possibility.’ Comparative Education Review, 47(3): 321–8. United Nations Development Program (UNDP) (2003). Human Development Report. New York: Oxford University Press. Van Sertima, I. (1981). Blacks in Science: Ancient and Modern. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books. Voltaire (1826). Essai sur les Mœurs. Paris: S.N.

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Abdi  r 241 wa Thiongo, N. (1986). Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. London: James Curry. wa Thiongo, N. (1993). Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedoms. London: James Curry. Wallerstein, I. (2004). World Systems Analysis: An Introduction. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Williamson, J. (1993). ‘Democracy and the Washington consensus.’ World Development, 21: 1329–36. World Bank (1994). World Bank Report. Washington, DC: World Bank.

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13 Learning, Knowledge and Action in Social Movements

Brian K. Murphy

Ehe! Talkam like that. No shaky-shaky mouth again. But oga you see now, to be big man no hard but to be poor man no be small thing. Na proper wahala. No be so? Chinua Achebe (1987: 179) one must accept that there is an inevitable and permanent tension between theory and practice, between thought and action, between truth and power, and thinking that this tension can be eliminated is one of the worst illusions a public intellectual can fall into. Walden Bello (2008) Before considering the question that is seemingly always the most immediate one and the only urgent one, ‘What shall we do?’, we ponder this: ‘How must we think?’ Martin Heidegger (1977: 40)

Introduction As other chapters in this book describe, the development model promoted by the major donor countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) serves wealth and global capital, not the eradication of poverty and the transformation of the conditions of the poor. The global and national economic structures served by development assistance – indeed of which such ‘aid’ is an integral part – contribute to and reinforce inequity and the deepening of poverty generally, even as it sometimes provides incidental opportunities for some, in some places, to escape the structural poverty that is fixed within existing global and national economic structures and the development paradigm. Development

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assistance relies upon and serves these structures of wealth and is a tool of these structures, reinforcing them economically, politically and morally. In this context, what is the way forward for proponents of international social and economic justice action? How do we implement basic survival strategies in the ongoing permanent emergency of the poor and still build a base for transformation? The prevailing framework that dominates all other considerations is a framework of ‘governance’ and power, not of struggle and justice. It is always reduced, in the end, merely to a question of who governs; there is little room for a vision of change in the very act and form of governance to confront the structures that marginalize the marginal and block authentic economic and political participation for the vast majority. At the same time, there are everywhere national and international organizations and social movements that do attempt to challenge wealth and the structures that serve it. To really make poverty history, those of us engaged in international social solidarity and social justice action have to choose whose side we are on. Are we on the side of social movements representing and supporting those trapped in intractable structures of inequality and enforced poverty? Or, are we on the side of wealth and global systems of wealth creation, and the delusion that economic opportunity and access to wealth can be made universal, or even moderately general, through current economic structures and paradigms? If our choice is an option that promotes fundamental social and economic transformation – in days long past it was ambitiously called the ‘New International Economic Order’ and then later more whimsically, ‘the preferential option of the poor’ – then our priority and fundamental line of action has to be radical and public common cause with national, regional and planetary social movements to challenge and transform global political and economic structures. The way forward is realizing in our lives and in the world such a vision will be achieved through dialogue and shared experience, through mutual support and common cause, based on acceptance and respect and a humane vision of humanity, seeking a way forward on the frontiers of human hopes and our collective knowledge and experience. To meet this imperative, we need to scrutinize our perspective on social movements themselves, and how we understand the notional construct of ‘movement(s)’, what they are, how they emerge, and how they know, analyze and act on their reality. We need to rethink the quality of social action and the profound politics of transforming our direct experience into collective knowledge and social action. The place that I start with in this process is with my own personal experience, which is where knowledge begins.

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In late 1992, I made an extended trip to El Salvador, a country that I had been visiting regularly for a decade already in my work, which included support of people’s struggles in the face of government repression and the prolonged civil wars that wracked Central America. I knew these countries intimately by this time and had written quite a bit about the challenges they faced.1 I was visiting now in a new period of transition. A peace accord had been signed recently in El Salvador between the government and the FMLN (Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional/Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front) and negotiations in Guatemala between the URNG (Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca/Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity) and the government were well advanced. Now, within the peace process, we were supporting the reconstruction of rural communities that had been destroyed during the war and the economic reinsertion of displaced people, including the demobilized soldiers of the FMLN guerrilla forces. One morning we visited the site of a massacre that had occurred in 1982, about the time of my first visit to this country, and which was now in the process of being resettled after years of abandonment. As we crawled across the savannah over riverbed roads and down overgrown paths, we passed the crumpled shells of the adobe homes destroyed by the army in their sweeps through this area. Later, we sat under the trees for some time talking with a few of the old campesinos, whose faces were maps of a journey through time, and whose eyes and hands told not only of farming but of years of fighting in the underground. As I sat and watched and listened, I sensed that their resistance was not the resistance romanticized within the myths of international solidarity. I reflected on the inescapable reality that the struggle we supported is not the struggle they fought, and I wondered whether we will ever support their struggle. In my notebook I wrote: ‘This place, this tree where we sit with these people, this earth – these have been here for all time, timeless. History is merely shadows passing over the land. The shadows are gone, and new ones will pass. The land remains, with the people. Our story knows not this tree, and the land is silent after we pass.’ Other images remain from that place: the road we travelled ruined by years of non-use, the hidden bomb-shelters for the children, little rabbit holes that led into small tombs for the living, dug into the clay and hidden by bushes and thorns. And the altar in the weeds, all that was left of the chapel that was destroyed when the army came through so many years ago. Now life was back, and the reconstruction begun, a new era of struggle, and this place and these people would continue on. International aid money of all stripes was pouring in now that the conflict was ‘over’. And somehow, I thought that crisp morning, we all had missed the point

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and had not seen at all what had happened here, and what was about to happen again – is happening again. I wrote in my subsequent report: The way forward is not with micro-economic intervention that implements projects which try to wedge (a few) poor into the (few) cracks in the existing economic system. Rather it is to introduce an economics that compensates, insulates and ultimately undermines the impact of the present system on the poor and gradually transforms their vulnerability into their own authority and economic power. The ‘alternatives’ being considered deal with the crisis momentarily, but don’t confront the cause. In this sense the strategy is doomed to further marginalization and dooms the participants to continued marginalization as well. You can’t save the marginal by moving a few of them to the centre; you save the marginal by changing, and finally doing away with, the margins.

Now, many years later, and countless similar experiences before and since – in Africa, in Latin America, in Asia, and in Canada – I am increasingly sceptical of the clarion call of movement politics, and even more so of the crusade of international solidarity to ‘make poverty history’. We simply cannot any longer believe our own advertisements without self-criticism and reassessment of the depth and quality of our engagement with the poor. The discourse concerning an ‘alternative vision of development’ is loaded,2 and as time passes it is increasingly difficult to defend romantic visions of revolutionary change and its processes. The struggle for justice and an alternative path is a longer one than that experienced in our lifetime, and our own privileged participation in this process does not allow us to appropriate history and blow out of proportion what we are about, or our role. We need to regain a more modest perspective that places today’s events and struggles in a historical and global framework that allows us to genuinely and realistically strive towards an alternative vision without claims to being part of a world-historical moment. In a recent essay John Berger (2007: 7–8) writes: Today the desire for justice is multitudinous. This is to say that struggles against injustice, struggles for survival, for self-respect, for human rights, should never be considered merely in terms of their immediate demands, their organizations, or their historical consequences. They cannot be reduced to ‘movements’. A movement describes a mass of people collectively moving towards a definite goal, which they either achieve or fail to achieve. Yet such a description ignores, or does not take into account, the countless personal choices, encounters, illuminations, sacrifices, new desires, griefs and, finally, memories, which the movement brought about, but which are, in the strict sense, incidental to that movement. The promise of a movement is its future victory, whereas the promises of the incidental moments are instantaneous. Such moments include, life-enhancing

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246  r Thirteen or tragically, experiences of freedom in action (freedom without actions does not exist). Such moments – as no historical ‘outcome’ can ever be – are transcendental, are what Spinoza termed eternal, and they are as multitudinous as are the stars in an expanding universe.

Berger concludes: Not all desires lead to freedom, but freedom is the experience of a desire being acknowledged, chosen and pursued. Desire never concerns the mere possession of something. Desire is a wanting. A wanting now. Freedom does not constitute the fulfilment of that wanting, but the acknowledgement of its supremacy.

Meaning in movements If Berger is correct that the universal struggle against injustice ‘cannot be reduced to “movements”’, what then is the role for movements in the creation of knowledge, of theory, of social meaning and practice, of political action? Movement is an exceedingly troublesome construct. In today’s context there is no coherence or consistency in the use of the term and what movements signify in various contexts. The qualities ascribed to movements are ever-shifting and functional. Often when movements are described and analyzed, they are perceived in terms of historical ‘waves’ and ‘surges’ of social movement and political momentum. What we observe are the waves, the action on the surface; but the real movement is actually below the surface, invisible and uncontrolled and uncontrollable in the currents, the undercurrents, the undertow, the lateral flows. To understand movements, we need to delve beneath the waves. Movements are today everywhere seen as the agents of change. But they need to be understood first and foremost as the result of changes – complex, unseen and often unforeseen – and only secondarily as a cause of change. To fully apprehend the significance and trajectory of movements, we need to understand the changes that they manifest and from which they emerge. In a profound sense, movement is a locus of self-actualization and selfexpression, as much as – sometimes instead of – a locus of collaboration for directed change. The specific and concrete change goal at any moment is often a proxy for an ongoing assertion of identity as well as a quest for self-expression – that is, social, political and economic participation – and for personal, communal and political self-determination. In the end this is an existential quest. In spite of this genesis, movements are usually seen as creations born of theory and action, of vision and will, of dynamic vision and leadership.

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They are described as purposefully authored and identified with personalities. But in fact their history is always written backwards, ordered to serve the purpose of movement identity, whose genesis is already obscure once movements become institutionalized. In actuality, movements emerge from the flux of dynamic reality, experienced dynamically and ‘multitudinously’ (as Berger says). The process is a flow in time and space: flux à [change] à emergence of identity and ‘cause’ à [change] à affinity and association à [change] à social critical mass à [change] à movement/proposition à [change] à the ‘Movement’ institutionalizes à change slows à change stops à the Movement becomes part of the flux.

The ‘fact’ of an emergent movement – its place, space, power – is a new fact-in-reality. This emergent moment is its most dynamic and opportune moment, the moment of greatest opportunity. Most often, once it becomes a ‘fact’ a movement’s energy is soon diverted into protecting this fact – the very fact of its emergence and its existence – and whatever changes this fact symbolizes, its own existence and place, protecting the group, and its leadership. In this sense, established movements are intrinsically conservative, instrumentalizing issues, constructs and subjects to preserve their space. Once formalized, movements quickly become evangelical and are closed and exclusionary of all who do not profess and defend the identity and symbols of the movements whose self-perpetuation has become the collective mission. Movements emerge from concrete experience and knowledge recuperated and shared; rarely do they create new knowledge after the movement is institutionalized, and often they inhibit new knowledge that threatens the facts of movement itself. Knowledge becomes theory becomes dogma and theorists take over leadership from the practitioners as dogmatists and gatekeepers of the movement’s truths. Jean Piaget (1976) famously said that ‘to learn, is to invent.’ He believed that people do not learn by acquisition, by being taught what others know, but that each person develops understanding only by inventing knowledge anew, personally. There is considerable evidence that the same is true for people-in-groups, in community. It is not the answer that is important, but the question itself, and that those who originally ask the question invent the answer. Only thus will the answers be applicable in real-life situations; and only thus will new questions arise.

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Power is centralized and controlled in all societies and most movements, through a system that assures that there are privileged people who have the ‘answers’ – which are the real collateral and capital in any society – and who also establish the questions. The answers come first; the acceptable questions are those that justify and verify the revealed, prescribed answers. The keepers of knowledge programme and frame the questions to lead to the prescribed answers. Anyone posing new questions, or questions that the elect cannot answer, is marginalized, censored and often obliterated. The person, or group, that is able to pose even one new question that falls outside the established unified frame and conventional discourse, and engages and excites the consciousness and imagination of people, undermines prevailing power and, momentarily at least, creates the possibility of revolution and change. Some talk of human society moving towards one unified planetary culture and political system as an inevitable outcome of globalization.3 While that might be something that emerges gradually over time, it need not be a goal, nor an indispensable means towards whatever goal people share or might create together. A unitary planet, with a global ‘language’,4 culture (and government) is not an inevitable higher order of human potential, or one to which ‘history’ – or biology – is naturally striving. Indeed, there is reason to believe that the planet is heading in other, more complex directions, which perhaps should be a relief to us all given the high crimes of idealized universal visions over the past few hundred years and more. When it comes to acknowledging diversity we need to respect and take into account not only diverse pasts and diverse current realities, but also the distinct and concrete possibility of diverse futures. We will do well simply to acknowledge and embrace the broad diversity of place, history and culture, and accept this diversity in and on its own terms, in its own place. In such organic processes the new – or more likely, enhanced – consciousness(es) that emerge are organic and diverse, as are the emerging values and visions of the future. And integral to all are differential experiences and aspirations rooted in ethnicity and religion, in gender, race and class. This is not a technical process and it cannot be directed; it has to be engaged and the more authentically and inductively (subjectively) engaged, the more auspicious will be the outcome. The future will be built on a dialogue among these heterogeneous experiences and visions rather than through the creation of one homogeneous insight about who we are, and how we all want to be.

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Dilemmas of making theory into practice and bringing practice to bear on theory Here, it is useful to look again at the perspective we bring to social change action. Perspective is not so much what we see, but the way we see. It is where we stand to view something, and it is a way of seeing things.5 Perspective is a way of seeing, and a way of representing. It is an aid to understanding, but it is not knowledge, and it is not ‘true’. It is a relationship assumed – or imposed – between a viewer and the reality viewed. This is where knowledge starts, with the subjectivity of the active knower, and our ‘perspective’. But it is not where knowledge ends. Knowledge gains its real edge when perspective itself is revealed in all of its subjectivity and implicates the knower with the known. Such knowledge reveals our own place in the reality we are trying to understand, allowing the details of the concrete to emerge from the shadows of the abstract in such a way that it actually matters to us and implicates us in the situation we are trying to understand. Active knowledge is personal. It is subjective. And we are the subject, both in the sense that we create knowledge, and that we ourselves are its ‘subject’. These notions are critical because social change agency depends critically on knowledge created, recuperated and shared. And the dynamic interaction among knowledge, action and the actual world is the crucible of change.6 The most important knowledge we have always takes place in a situation. It begins with people in-a-situation. It takes place with people in-asituation-together. It almost always begins with action, with work, with the business of living and with our reflection on that action; it begins with our attempt to understand our situation and our actions in a situation. Active knowledge is not a product. It is not fixed. It is a dynamic relationship between our situation and our reflection on that situation, to make sense of it, and to conserve it or to change it, to consolidate it or transform it. Such knowledge is understanding in flux, in an ongoing dialectic interaction – an interaction referred to in some frameworks as ‘praxis’ – between our actions in a situation and our reflection on ourselves acting in and with that situation. Because we live in a situation with others – who are both with us in the situation and also integral to the situation itself, upon which we act together – the act of knowledge is intrinsically social. Our action in reality is social action. Our personal reflection on reality needs also to be a social reflection, taking place in dialogue. To the extent that our reflection takes place in isolation from others, remote from social action and dialogue, our knowledge is increasingly remote from reality, inverted, static and reified.

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Active knowledge is key to the problem of building and participating in movements for social change. And in particular it is key to the ongoing problem about the competing roles of theory and practice in guiding the social change action of such movements. As Walden Bello (2008) stated in the quote that heads this chapter, ‘there is an inevitable and permanent tension between theory and practice, between thought and action, between truth and power,’ and within this tension – which is a creative tension – are revealed the dilemmas and the pathways to authentic social change action, defined as a social praxis of action and reflection in work and dialogue with others with whom we share a common situation. In scrutinizing the relationship between theory and practice, reflection and action, we need to discriminate among the terms we use. Theory is not reflection; theory is a product of reflection. And practice is not merely action; practice is a product of theory – theory applied in the concrete. So ‘theory and practice’ do not signify precisely the same thing as ‘reflection and action’, which are entirely possible – and common – in the absence of theory. It is in its prescription of practice that theory gains its power, over both action and reflection. This relationship can be productive or destructive; it is usually both. The question of how theory is made, therefore, and by whom, and for whose end, is critical to social change movements and social change action. What is often not considered in this dynamic is the role of experience and the place of experience – personal and collective – in the tension among theory and practice, reflection and action. Experience is what we do, what we perceive and what happens to us – the internalized incorporation of the cumulative events and actions of our lives, their implications and their consequences. Experience is memory. Experience is knowledge, the most direct and competent knowledge possible. Experience is the ground of our existence. The paradox is that there is often a direct contradiction between our experience and the socialized knowledge and formalized social theory that is the currency of prevailing social and political interaction. And in social movements too, there is often a tension between experience and the theory that guides collective discourse and social action, and in the processes through which direct experience is shared and acknowledged as the basis for creating knowledge and theory.

Open space as a construct of collective praxis A useful starting point to explore this tension in a contemporary context is the significant debate that has been taking place in the last decade, especially in the context of the history, role and future of the World Social Forum

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(WSF), about the construct of what has come to be called ‘open space’ and its place in the social praxis of movements.7 It is not within the scope of this essay to elaborate this concept or the ongoing discussion about its primacy and significance, which is intense and intricate.8 I will simply make some personal observations about the notion of political and discursive ‘space’ and its relevance to movements and to theory. The basic notion of what is now referred to as ‘open space processes’ is not new. It has been at the heart of critical social literacy processes for almost a century, and was popularized internationally in the 1970s as ‘participatory research’ and ‘research-action’, building on the work of Paulo Freire (1972, 1973), Ivan Illich (1970), and others. It has been mystified considerably in the interim and even quasi-commercialized for mainstream applications as ‘Open Space Technology’.9 But in principle it is a rather common sense approach to dialogue and collective reflection and action10 that has been deployed in various cultural settings in the absence of any specialized theory for millennia. The emergence of a new preoccupation for the creation of open spaces of collective, internationalized reflection is significant because of its recovered insight that resistance and social action are rooted fundamentally in personal experience and knowledge, which is created at the most local level of people in their actual lives, places and communities, and whose significance in the first instance is precisely its concrete locality and specificity. In May 1993, not very long after the visit to El Salvador described earlier, I was in Peru, again investigating conditions of people uprooted by violence and poverty. One day we drove to the outskirts of Lima to one of the many marginal communities that began as an urban land-takeover in the desert surrounding Lima. To get to the community we drove past miles upon miles of the sand dune slums that surround the city. Everything is grey and brown and dust, sand and gravel. It goes on forever, stretching to the sky, up steep hills of sand and stones and rock and across the neverending dunes. It never rains and water is purchased from tankers that pass by every day. The dust never settles and the coarse feeling in the throat and on your skin never leaves. On this day, while meeting the women of a sewing workshop we sat inside one of the dusty, crowded one-room shacks that serves as a home for a family of six or seven. While we were there a teenage girl returned from school, clean and sharp in her school uniform of blue wool and starched cotton; she bowed and obediently kissed us all lightly on the cheek, and kept her thoughts hidden behind secret eyes. I reflected that it is for this that the people endure: to offer her a little more, so that she can offer her children a little more, so that the family can

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slowly over generations move across the sand towards the city and its promise of escape and prosperity. The adults devote their lives to scratching the smallest advantage for the best and the brightest that will manage to survive the blight that is their home. The dream of millions. Immigrants. Class immigrants, trying to migrate across a sea far more daunting than any sea crossed by my own ancestors travelling to a new world they knew actually existed at the end of their journey. I wonder now about that young woman. Today – if she is alive – she will be a little over 35 years old. She probably has children of her own, and is making the same sacrifices that her mother made. And she may well be living in the working-class barrios of the city, and her own children in a proper school, with prospects still modest but ones that their grandmother could only dream about. This is the real project of the poor and the project in which we must engage if our rhetoric about transformation and justice is to be meaningful. John Berger (2007: 98) declares: ‘The poor are collectively unseizable. They are not only the majority on the planet, they are everywhere and the smallest event speaks to them.’ Less lyrically perhaps, but no less acutely, Chinua Achebe (1987: 90), in his novel Anthills of the Savannah, makes the following observation: There is no universal conglomerate of the oppressed. Free people may be alike everywhere in their freedom, but the oppressed inhabit each their own peculiar hell. The present orthodoxies of deliverance are futile to the extent that they fail to recognize this.

If we wish to learn together and create movements based in experience and knowledge, we need to first create spaces where this experience and knowledge can be shared. And in their essence these spaces have to be open in the sense that they welcome all experience and knowledge, and provide open opportunity for the expression, sharing and acknowledgement – that is recognition and affirmation – of this experience.11 It is from this dialogue and sharing that a common reflection can be built that will often lead to a synthesis of experience and learning that may eventually generalize from the particular some principles or learnings that are shared among those in a collective open space. The space, however, is not justified on the basis of this product. It is justified in the act itself: the expression, the sharing and the mutual affirmation through respectful attention to the specificity of our conditions and actions. The emphasis is not primarily on generalizing from this experience – creating theory – but in providing the space and the ground within which the local and particular can be socialized. The significance of the specific does not lie in the generalization; rather, any generalization that emerges derives its significance from its recognition

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of the concrete experience and knowledge of those who contribute to and participate in the general insights that emerge. At the same time, when applying open space principles to creating knowledge for action, paradoxes emerge that reveal the tensions inherent in collective praxis, reflection and action, theory and practice. Within an open space, individual (interior) space coexists within a shared (exterior) space. An authentic open space will be defined by the extent to which it is open to the meeting of these two, the interior and the exterior, the private and the public, the personal and the political. And it will be qualified by the extent that formal and informal relations of power are acknowledged and mediated. Open space is defined by the many. It is largely about subjectivity, actualization, freedom and liberty. It is only a little bit about ownership and democracy; and even less about horizontality, which is one-dimensional and comes from nowhere and leads nowhere. Open space promotes dialogue not between, but among. It searches for understanding, not truth. In a remarkable series of radio documentaries developed by David Cayley and first broadcast for the CBC radio programme, Ideas12 in 1993, British environmentalist, Nick Hildyard struck a chord that has become a refrain in my mind: The groups on the ground reject the idea that the solutions can only come from those institutions like corporations, like development agencies, which have been primarily responsible for the crisis. They say: No, the solutions lie with us; we have the solutions; we don’t need to invent alternatives; in our daily lives we are working them out, we are innovative. We don’t need to be empowered; we don’t need someone to empower us. What we need are people to get off our backs....development...is actually enclosure, expropriation, taking away people’s land, enclosing knowledge, denying access to resources, creating the notion of resources, and then denying people access to their water, to their forests, to their land, using those lands for others, transferring control to a small minority. These are the issues that really matter on the ground and, unless those issues are addressed, I don’t see much hope for either the planet or for social justice. And I think that social justice is now the key issue, the key issue. The idea of saving the world without social justice is for me...simply not worth considering. I wouldn’t want to live in a sort of world that was a technocratic, ecofascist, but safe world.

The relationship between theory and open spaces of shared experience and reflection How does all of this relate to the processes of theory? The formal spaces for making theory are largely closed and theory itself, once formalized, is a closed space. It allows participation in discussion and elaboration only to

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those who accept and operate within the confines and conventions, the structure and syntax, of the theory itself – those who are initiates in the field and the fold. In the exchange between experience and knowledge, between theory and practice, theory more often governs practice than the obverse. In so doing, the norm is to move from the abstract to the concrete, from the general to the particular. The inductive process of collective reflection and action are subordinated to the deductive – and often reductionist – logic of applied theory. Theory – and those in a position to ‘theorize’ – tend to dominate and instrumentalize those who are the objects of theory and the targets of practice. Key issues include the power of the ‘academy’: its role in thought control and social engineering; its role as gatekeeper of the correct perspective and methodology; its role as protector of the established ‘consensus’ and of dominant interests. At one and the same time, theory is a discipline (of thinking), and a disciplining (of thought). In this context it is critical to acknowledge that theory is a tool of ideology. Theory is never neutral. Theory is a competitive discipline, and tends to be justified by its political efficacy and practical utility, rather than by its validity and objective veracity. Almost all theory is built on an invisible foundation of unchallenged givens, assumptions, conventions of diction, syntax, grammar, as well as embedded rhetorical and polemic norms. Theory of how things work, or how things happen or happened, is not a description of reality but a way of describing reality. Much analytic or descriptive theory is rooted in the notion that if something happens, there is a discrete and identifiable cause, and a reason; and it is in the capacity of science and ‘theory’ to uncover it. This is a phenomenologically questionable premise, one which I challenge in some depth elsewhere.13 There is not one, perfect method for reading the world and interpreting it. Rationalism and Western scientific method, are only one way among many.14 The logic intrinsic to any specific theory more often forms a labyrinth than a path: the deeper in we go, the harder it is to find our way out. We often end up describing the maze, not the world outside its gate. Theory is the labyrinth; the theoretician – the expert – is the minotaur who protects it. The dissenter escapes on wings of feathers and wax. In the field of social development, of movements, of change theory, the expert is the guide and the gatekeeper. It is telling that the degree to which we are considered experts is very often a function of how far away from home we are. The status and authority that we are afforded as guests would rarely be proffered at home where we are just one more confused denizen trying to make do. In trying to adjust our perspective critically and consciously the first step needs to be to ask ourselves not what our theory predicts, or what

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our politics desires, but – on the basis of our experience and what we see around us – what we actually think will happen in ten years or one hundred, and what we think the world will look like. We need to share these ‘hunches’, and then begin to adjust our theory or our politics. In such open processes we can derive a deeper shared critical awareness that will enhance our capacity to influence what actually happens in a progressive and transformative manner, rather than simply accede to the trajectory already established. Similarly, in seeking understanding of a situation we wish to transform, we should focus on the most important knowledge of those who are often seen to be least knowledgeable – those living the situation – rather than as we so often do, seizing on the least important knowledge of the ‘most knowledgeable’ – usually experts from away – bringing their systems and models and excuses to obscure specifics with their generalities. Douglas Dunn (2003: 138) writes, ‘Politics softens everything / Truth is known only to its victims.’ To which we might add Imamu Amiri Baraka’s (1993: 662) insight from his Political Poem: Luxury, then, is a way of being ignorant, comfortably. An approach to the open market of least information. Where theories can thrive, under heavy tarpaulins without being cracked by ideas.

An aspirational universe Heroic global social action is carried out by uncountable persons around this planet who in their own places, their own lives, and their own work – over decades and long lifetimes – envision another future and try to promote it, and share it, and live it day after day. They do this in many ways, working with thousands more, and each of them with more thousands still. In this sense, each of us can be seen as an extension of an intangible ethical movement, and what I would call an ‘aspirational universe’; and this movement can similarly be seen as an extension of each of us. Much of the action is in what we each do every day; the action plan is in our (collective) praxis. The future is always inchoate, over the moving horizon of our everevolving experience and the visions that this experience affords of the possibilities inherent in ourselves and in the world we share. Those who wish to promote a process towards universal global justice and economic opportunity need to engage as subject with others, not only in the cognitive domain of theory and knowledge, but also in the material

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and affective domain where people actually live, and which includes their concrete material circumstances. The majority of the people on the planet are poor, and excluded from the structures of political power and economic opportunity. Their continuum of action begins with meeting basic needs. If we do not form common cause with people in transforming material reality, and the structures that underlie this reality, we will have little opportunity – let alone moral authority – to engage at the level of knowledge and consciousness and attempts to collaborate to create meaning and make fundamental change in the world. Knowledge is aspirational. It is a concrete seeking for what is not yet known and understood, exploring what is not known, but might be, and envisioning what is not yet real in the world, but could be, if we could find our way. This is a creative seeking: creating new knowledge actively out of our experience and action in the world. This seeking is rooted in personal and communal hopes and dreams and values – the aspirations towards the future that define human beings and the spirit of our lives. The way forward to make real in our lives, and in the world, the visions enfolded within our aspirational universe is through dialogue and shared experience. As we engage in mutual support and action in common cause with others, we seek our way forward on the frontiers of human hope and collective experience. In this journey we want to regain the authentic, the subjective, the curious attention to diverse experiences and world-view. We want to regain openness in our way of seeing and our way of being, in the deepest sense as discussed earlier in this chapter. We want to regain meaning, and the power to create meaning in our own lives, out of our own lives. Perhaps then we can recuperate and invent a collaborative politics, turning our collective experience into a politics of change that brings real transformation to the world.

Notes 1

See, for example: Murphy (1985, 1986, 1988a/b, 1990, 1992) and Murphy and Symes (1992). 2 The political construct of ‘development’ itself demands critical scrutiny that goes beyond the scope of this chapter. See discussion in Murphy (2001a/b). 3 This prognostication comes not merely from the apostles of economic globalization, but from significant elements within global civil society who promote actively the notion of global governance and world government as a means to regulate globalization and mediate its processes and effects to the benefit of human society. 4 Language is used here in a figurative sense, meaning semantic framework for seeing and discussing the world.

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7

8

9 10

11

12 13 14

In the terms of the Concise Oxford Dictionary (10th edition, 1999), ‘a view or prospect; a particular way of regarding something’. This theme is elaborated in Murphy (1999), especially in Section Two, ‘Possibilities in Process’. Also available as De la pensée à l’action: la personne au cœur du changement social (trans. Geneviève Boulanger). Montréal, QC: Ecosociété, 2001. A good introduction can be found in Sen, Jai, ‘Notes on the grammar and vocabulary of the concept of open space’. Available at: http://www. openspaceforum.net/twiki/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=429 For a historical discussion in the context of the WSF, See Sen, Jai et al. (2004), especially Section Three (e.g. ‘The WSF as open space’ by Chico Whitaker) and Section Five. For example, see http://www.co-intelligence.org/P-Openspace.html Murphy (1999) includes a section on reference groups and learning circles, among other ‘open space’ strategies for promoting collective change processes. See also Murphy (1997). Grace Lee Boggs’ (1998) autobiography is a wonderful window into a long lifetime of learning and practice in bringing open space processes to radical community organizing and struggle at a very concrete level of post-war urban America. Note the root of these words ac-knowledge-ment, re-cognition; recognition and acknowledgement are acts of affirmative understanding and acceptance of the knowing (cognition) and knowledge of others. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: available at http://www.cbc.ca/ideas. Murphy (1999), especially in Chapter Six, ‘Challenging the established rationality’, 68–77. Recommended reading on this theme: philosopher of science, Paul Feyerabend (1973). Although not – certainly not – working in the mode of Michel Foucault (Feyerabend was a mathematician and physicist, as well as a philosopher of science), his work echoes the observations of Foucault and others (see Foucault 1980) about how power is manufactured through the formulation and control of truth (‘tyranny of globalized discourse’), which in turn becomes the bulwark of power; the validity of ‘traditional’ knowledge formulated in culture; and the tension between ‘discontinuous knowledge’ and the collected knowledge and the ‘unified theory’ of Western science.

References Achebe, C. (1987). Anthills of the Savannah. New York: Anchor/Doubleday. Baraka, I. A. (1993). ‘Political Poem.’ In Carolyn Forché (ed.). Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness. New York: Norton, 662. Bello, W. (2008). ‘Challenges and dilemmas of the public intellectual.’ Acceptance speech delivered at the International Studies Association, 49th Annual Convention, Outstanding Public Scholar Award panel, 27 March 2008, San Francisco. Available at http://www.tni.org Berger, J. (2007). Hold Everything Dear: Dispatches on Survival and Resistance. New York: Pantheon/Random House.

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258  r Thirteen Boggs, G. L. (1998). Living for Change. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Dunn, D. (2003). ‘I am a cameraman.’ In Neil Astley (ed.). Staying Alive, Real Poems For Real Times. New York: Hyperion (Miramax), 138. Feyerabend, P. (1973). Against Method, 3rd edn. London: Verso. Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Herder & Herder. Freire, P. (1973). Education for Critical Consciousness. New York: Seabury. Foucault, Michel (1980). Colin Gordon (ed.). Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings. New York: Pantheon, 1972–1977. Heidegger, M. (1977). The Question of Technology and other Essays. New York: Harper Torchbooks (Harper & Row). Illich, I. (1970). Celebration of Awareness: A Call for Institutional Revolution. New York: Doubleday. Murphy, B. K. (1985, September). ‘Between struggle and hope: the Nicaraguan literacy crusade.’ In Participatory Research, the journal of the Participatory Research Group. International Council of Adult Education/OISE: Toronto, 30–32. Murphy, B. K. (1986, November). ‘El Salvador: a Canadian looks in the mirror.’ Canadian Dimension, 20(6): 28–32. Murphy, B. K. (1988a, February/March). ‘Pan-American games: Canada and Central America.’ Canadian Forum, LXVII: 776/7: 9–13. Murphy, B. K. (1988b, May). ‘To accompany the poor: learning on our feet.’ New Internationalist, 183: 12–13. Murphy, B. K. (1990, November). ‘The dice are loaded: structural adjustment and the poor.’ Canadian Forum, LXIX(794): 12–17. Murphy, B. K. (1992, 6 April). ‘Making sure the El Salvador ceasefire holds.’ Globe and Mail (Toronto), A19. Murphy, B. K. (1997). ‘Reference groups and learning circles.’ Unpublished notes for a seminar presented at Summer Program of the Institute in Community Development, Concordia University, Montréal, 16–20 June. Murphy, B. K. (1999). Transforming Ourselves, Transforming the World, An Open Conspiracy for Social Change. London, UK: ZED Books and Halifax, NS: Fernwood Publishing. Murphy, B. K. (2001a). ‘NGOs and the challenge of modernity.’ In Deborah Eade and Ernst Ligteringen (eds.). Debating Development. London: Oxfam, 60–85. Murphy, B. K. (2001b). ‘Thinking in the active voice.’ In Neil Middleton, Phil O’Keefe and Rob Visser (eds.). Negotiating Poverty, London: Pluto Books, 26–40. Murphy, B. K. and Symes, J. (1992, February). The Right to Return: Displaced People in Guatemala: A Brief to Canadian Parliament. Ottawa, ON: Central America Monitoring Group (CAMG). Piaget, J. (1976). To Understand Is to Invent: the Future of Education. New York: Penguin. Sen, J., Arnand, A., Escobar, A. and Waterman, P. (eds.) (2004). The World Social Forum: Challenging Empires. New Delhi: Viveka Foundation.

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14

Conclusion Dominique Caouette

Introduction The case studies in this book represent, on the one hand, an examination of local movements and localized action, and on the other, more abstract and reflexive thinking. What are the common threads that cut across the local, trans-local, transnational and global instances of dissonant and dissenting collective action and resistance? Are there conceptual lenses that might help us understand and untangle the dynamics of challenging and resisting over time the continuum between colonization, development and globalization as specific forms of domination, which are rooted in a set of assumptions around what constitutes progress and modernity? Looking at indigenous communities in Southeast Asia, Duncan (2008) argued that the interrelated projects of colonization, development and globalization are oftentimes depicted by the ruling class as a civilizing effort. What our case studies have revealed, however, is that at each period and at various scales from local to cross-border, there are instances of resistance and dissent against hegemonic attempts at disciplining and subordinating the margins. These dynamics (colonizing, developing and integrating global processes) are repeatedly met with a wide range of counter-hegemonic assertions. These are not only forms of active and passive resistance (Scott 1976, 2010); the very dynamics of struggling and opposing these disciplinary processes reveal instances of knowledge creation and learning. This distancing and critical reflexivity challenge the dominant narratives. In fact, as the preceding chapters have shown, learning, pedagogy and knowledge challenge colonization, development and globalization processes. This implies that dominant power is never

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evenly spread across local, national and global spaces; rather it is fragmented, contested, transformed and co-constituted. In the next pages, I offer a synthesis of the key intersecting themes that have emerged in this volume.

Critiques of domination in the continuum colonization– development–globalization Across a number of chapters, the authors share critical views of colonization, development and neoliberal globalization as being three distinct but related domination projects that are characterized by a series of assumptions regarding progress, modernity, knowledge and science. Implicit in several chapters (Rousseau, Ford and Lyons) and explicit in others (Kapoor, Langdon, Chaurette and Oliver, and Choudry) are a number of critiques of how these three projects have affected marginalized groups, indigenous communities, Dalits, migrant workers, and peasant and rural communities. Underlined by several authors, but especially by Grande and Naadli, this continuum in deep structures of domination needs to be recognized and named as such. In fact, indigenous organizations in North America studied by Grande and Naadli share this view of continuity in the colonial project over time, metaphorically referring to it as having nine lives. Rather than seeing neoliberalism as a ‘new’ political order, in fact, it is very much a new reincarnation of the colonialist project. This critical perspective, which emphasizes continuity in the forms of domination, can be a lens for an in-depth understanding of what Kapoor describes as the vibrant, increasingly noisy critiques and counterhegemonic praxis on the part of the marginalized: ‘The escalating decibel level of SSM challenges to compulsory modernization (colonization), state socialist and/or corporatist state-market-civil society pene­trations will, at minimum, continue to expose the dominant tendency to construct the response to rural dislocations and dispossession in liberal terms, i.e. terms that are focused on addressing the individual dislocated person.’ In the case of Bolivia, where circumstances provided a favourable political environment for change to happen, the gradual emergence of a newly framed identity around the constitution of a subaltern indigenous public identity made the articulation of a decolonization project possible. This project not only seeks to challenge neoliberal capitalism, but as noted by Rousseau ‘colonization and neo-colonial social relations are the crux of the matter.’ Rousseau defines the decolonization project as forwardlooking: ‘[F]ar from meaning a historical return to a mythic past – even though some indigenous discourses such myths – decolonization is seen

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by the movement as a necessary path to the construction of equal citizenship and self-determination.’ Moreover, it challenges the logic of private accumulation and economic growth, emphasizing instead the ‘conditions to live well’ (el buen vivir). In a similar fashion, Vía Campesina derives its strength from a twopronged process: a shared critique of development and globalization and the construction of a collective identity. As clearly stated by Desmarais, the mobilization and unity of peasants, farmworkers, rural women and indigenous communities is rooted in part by a common critique of the dominant development narrative. Vía Campesina affirms that the food crisis and impoverishing of rural communities is ‘the result of decades of destructive rural development policies, that the globalization of a neoliberal industrial and capital intensive model of agriculture is the very cause of the current food crisis.’ As discussed by Chaurette and Oliver, the logic of productivism has led to the marginalization of small farmers, which included even the loss of control of seeds. As illustrated powerfully by the Zapatista slogan, ‘Ya, basta’ (loosely translated as ‘Enough is enough’), the indigenous and rural movements of India, Ghana, Bolivia and the various member organizations of Vía Campesina are rejecting the neoliberal mode of rural development, but are also refusing to be excluded any longer from policymaking processes that marginalized them. For example, ‘Vía Campesina struggles for inclusion and greater participation in defining a different world order as it strives for greater access to and control over productive resources for farming families everywhere’ (Desmarais, in this volume). Struggles over what is development in the era of globalization are particularly acute when it comes to immigration. As clearly illustrated by Choudry, remittances sent by migrant workers have now become a new development mantra, exceeding many times the total official development assistance. Canada’s state policies provide a telling case. The ‘push factors’ that drive workers to seek employment abroad, oftentimes in exploitative conditions, are not alien to the nexus of development and globalization. As Choudry explained in Chapter 7: Push factors include structural adjustment programme imposed in the Global South by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund and other financial institutions, and often supported through bilateral official aid, ‘development’ projects, restructuring of economies along neoliberal lines through trade and aid arrangements in which CIDA [Canadian International Development Assistance Agency] and aid arrangements, in which CIDA and Canadian international trade and economic policy play roles.

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Subalterity, local culture and rootedness As demonstrated in this volume, there are various modes of expression that can challenge the dominant narratives of modernization and progress that are associated with the colonization–development–globalization continuum. As noted by Kapoor in Chapter 2, subaltern social movements have embraced subalterity: to the extent that there is an attempt to define a ‘common identity’ across the included social groupings that is defined/linked by a sense of ‘ecological ethnicity’ … the ‘difference’ from moderns (as the enemies of progress and the ‘burnable’), a common experience with relations of subordination (development–displacement, dispossession, cultural assimilation and/or extermination – being turned to dust – talialanth) and the claims to being ‘root peoples’ (mulo nivasi).

The importance of recognizing collective rights, the deep connections of subaltern communities to nature and the importance of collective wellbeing is also seen in the communities living around Salt Flats of Songor (Langdon) and Bolivian indigenous organization (Rousseau). These perspectives, shared and co-constituted across localities, can become a vector for the formation of trans-local alliances, such as the LAM (Kapoor). Trans-local coalitions derive their strength from their rootedness at the local level, but also by their capacity to elaborate a shared political project that ‘seeks to address the ongoing project of colonization of nature and subalterns’. This is made possible because of a subaltern collective consciousness based on direct experience and confrontation with what Kapoor describes as the ‘colonizing agents’, be it the state (capitalist, socialist or corporatist), multinational corporations, civil society organizations (ranging from charity-based groups to international NGOs) or the ruling class (and/or dominant caste). Linked to this is also a rich and nuanced understanding of local history, ecology and social fabric. Again Kapoor (Chapter 2) aptly explains that: a subaltern political–economic–cultural analysis of colonization and poverty, exploitation, domination and the nature of resistance which directly informs (praxis) attempts to influence, shape, re-construct and capture elements of the state to meet their own ends. … in ways that it is expected, will produce the necessary structural conditions for decolonization.

Whether it is the Dalit and Adivasi in Orissa, the communities living around the Salt Lagoon of Songor, or indigenous peoples of Bolivia, the intimate knowledge of the local environment, culture and history is a counterforce to processes that have been externally imposed, whether through a colonial authority, a state administration or global markets. In

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some ways, the indigenizing process transforms mainstreaming efforts so that what occurs on the ground is never what was conceived and initially intended. In fact, the sense of rootedness and belonging is a key element of asserting a dissonant perspective through covert and open means. As stated clearly in the Manifesto of the Lok Adhikar Manch (LAM): ‘We are communities dependent on natural resources like land, forest and water, which are more than resources for us – our life system depends on them. Our way of life, beliefs, knowledge and values have historically, as it is today, revolve around natural surroundings.’ In fact, Langdon argues that the connection between local livelihoods and subjugated knowledge is central because the ‘rootedness in people’s lives leads to movements with a strong sense that what they are fighting is local, national and transnational in character’. As Langdon further observes: ‘[T]hese local subjugated knowledges contest the overall shape of transnational neoliberal governmentality’s truth regime, not through an essentialized other identity, but rather through the reinterpretation of the construction of reality of neoliberalism and hyper-globalization as a global design.’ For the author and other contributors, resource-based movements are the best alternative since these movements are embedded in people’s livelihoods, and also because these movements ‘not only have the will but also the subjugated knowledge to contest neoliberalism’s truth regime’. As observed by Grande and Naadli: ‘Indigenous peoples continue to call attention to the myth that there are no alternatives to capitalist economies; that they represent the end of history and apex of civilisation.’ Moreover, the profound and intimate connection and knowledge with the land, lost in many Western cultures, allows for the affirmation of a world-view, ‘which reconnects mind, body and spirit, brings a holistic vision to a society that is accustomed to approaching life in a fragmented and compart­mentalized fashion’. This is also true for indigenous groups of Bolivia who draw their strength from their capacity to construct a collective identity that embraces diversity and a common rootedness (‘we are people of the land’). In fact, as outlined in Desmarais’s chapter, cultural politics is at the epicentre of this collective action turmoil embodied by Via Campesina, ‘as it reclaims and redefines what it means to be peasant, and through food sovereignty it challenges us fundamentally to alter social relations, cultures, and politics, the very basis of modern society’.

Collective identity, trans-local movements and scale of action Another central idea that cuts across several of the chapters (Kapoor, Langdon, Rousseau, Desmarais, Ford and Lyons, Choudry) is the dynamics

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by which local issues and movements are able to connect trans-locally. One may talk of trans-locality as a vibrant nexus of collective action. Rather than thinking of transnational movements (Ferguson 2006; Mathews, Ribiero and Alba Vega 2012; Tarrow 2005), which might in fact sometimes be disconnected from national contexts, as revealed by Ford and Lyons, trans-local connections have the potential to maintain rootedness and a firm grounding in local struggles. Instead of perceiving locality as an archaic or retrograde space, it is the space where domination is experienced concretely and where counter-hegemonic praxis can be deployed. Langdon notes that the ‘PAR groups advanced a vision grounded in these local movements connecting one another to build a strong coalition to contest what the best uses of the resources would be for the people of Ghana.’ Choudry (2007) had already pointed out that oftentimes local subjugated knowledge and its richness are displaced and even marginalized by transnational movements and coalitions acting globally. As Langdon aptly argued, ‘this does not mean ignoring the transnational, but rather ensuring that the register chain begins in the local sites of struggles and moves across to other sites of local struggle, rather than topographically up or down.’ Closely linked to the construction of local and trans-local struggles with possible cross-border coalitions is the crucial elaboration and building of identities. Rootedness in locality is central and a way to avoid declared and flimsy forms of collective identity, unfortunately too often associated with NGOs and intermediary civil society organizations. As suggested by Desmarais, ‘[I]n today’s politicized globalization articulating identity across borders forged out of diversity and based on locality and tradition is a deeply political act.’ This observation is further echoed by Choudry, for whom the key challenge ‘for local struggles against unfair working conditions and precarity, for dignity and immigration is to find ways to connect to, contribute towards, and draw strength from building an analysis and networks of migrant worker activism.’ The political act of taking an active voice generates knowledge from the ground up. In fact, the power of migrant organizations is their rootedness, which is ‘the first step towards justice for immigrant workers begins with local organizing’, because the strength of cross-borders coalitions and organizations rest on their grounding in concrete local struggles (Choudry). The same idea is reinforced in Ford and Lyons’ study of a regional campaign on migrant domestic workers’ right for a day off. Contrary to assumptions that would equate cross-border advocacy work with the success campaigns, Ford and Lyons insist that to ‘be successful, the work of these regional coalitions needs to take into account conditions on the ground in different destination countries.’ As they further remark, oftentimes ‘these regional coalitions

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have had few sustained interactions with national-level organizations and campaigns and, thus, little impact on conditions experienced by migrant domestic workers on the ground.’ The chapters by Choudry, and Ford and Lyons deal with the difficulties and challenges of creating cross-border campaigns as well as developing a mass-based transnational social movement. Such endeavours are fraught with concrete obstacles that can be synthesized as: competing agendas; dissonance between regional and local campaign goals; problems of evolving from symbolic collaboration to concrete actions; the existence of important organizational and ideological barriers; the difficulty of sustained campaign strategies in a range of a diversity of contexts; and, the difference in terms of radicalism and conservatism of the different coalitions. As a result, cross-border activism oftentimes has less capacity to influence policymaking than national-level organi­zations. Overall, Ford and Lyons remain sceptical and affirm that ‘rather than being a mechanism for national groups to “scale up”, regional coalitions are ineffective conduits to regional-level policymaking and strengthen local campaigns.’ The issue of connections and grounding of cross-border coalition and transnational space is central in understanding the World Social Forum (WSF). As illustrated in Ghimire’s chapter, the movement is multi­ dimensional, varied, plural and multiform, and combines proposals ranging from a radical overall change in the neoliberal globalization to reforms of capitalism. However, at the core, a certain type of humanism is constructed around a global justice ethos that seeks to challenge the neoliberal economic system and the political hegemony of a monolithic world. The assertion of doing politics differently ran throughout the WSF’s conceptualization and praxis, in particular in the constitution of an open space for a nascent ‘planetary society’ based on world solidarity, plurality, non-violence and diversity, in an attempt to construct a humanist utopia. Within the forum, the idea of the WSF being an ‘open space’, is central and yet, it has a Janus-faced character: it allows for conversations, creative moments of encounter, non-hierarchical dialogues and yet it makes it difficult to develop common political strategy, or, in Ghimire’s words ‘a tool for praxis’. In his chapter, Murphy is more optimistic, stating that the establishment of open spaces is significant because ‘resistance and social action are rooted fundamentally in personal experience and knowledge, which is created at the most local level of people in their actual lives, places and communities, and whose significance in the first instance is precisely its concrete locality and specificity.’ However, one can wonder if the scale of action and the notion of open space limit the potential for direct change. As Ghimire noted: ‘[T]he WSF calls for change, but does not want to lead or permit it to be utilized as an instrument or a resource for bringing about

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such transformations.’ Because of this character, as well as the absence of a membership base and a growing dependence of financing by large NGOs, the WSF while representing an important symbolic force, lacks the intrinsic strength of rooted praxis. Extending some of the observations made by Choudry and Ford and Lyons, Ghimire wonders about the future of the WSF because of its ‘lack of articulation between principles and their concrete applications through the medium of politics’, adding also that ‘in the long run the WSF’s mobilizing and discursive role could risk becoming empty of any ideological sense’. Current attempts to multiply open spaces at local, municipal, regional, provincial and national levels might be a way to allow for greater horizontalism and a more rooted praxis.

State, governmentality and citizenship Another complex theme that cuts across this volume is the role and place of the state. Langdon, inspired by Ferguson’s (2006) writings of the nature of the African states, suggests that ‘the contemporary African postcolonial state cannot be understood without reference to its colonial antecedent’ where the role and strength of external agents are key. In an era marked by neoliberal discourses on governance, the state is oftentimes seen as ‘an obstacle for change’ and the ‘recasting of the state from protagonist of development to obstacle to development legitimates a direct connection to the local by transnational institutions such as the World Bank as well as transnational forms of capital such as mining’. Contrary to a notion of the state as representative of the public good and a liberal conception of civil society as an aggregation of interests and private citizenry, Langdon suggests that the contemporary Ghanaian state is embedded in the notion of transnational forms of governmentality. Faced with this, ‘local Ghanaian social movements can effectively contest and resist transnational capital, through the overt or covert facilitation of the Ghanaian state, to take control of the local, even as civil society approaches try to stabilize and contain this dissent.’ Echoing Langdon’s observation, Choudry notes that in an era of growing migration, states increasingly impose controls and create racial categorization, the antithesis of inclusion. Paralleling the idea of neoliberal governmentality and echoing Richmond’s (1994) writing, Choudry suggests that in fact this form of governance is part of the rise of a system of global apartheid based on discrimination against migrants and refugees from poorer countries. He further argues that in conceiving governmentality for dealing with migrant workers, ‘faith is placed in the market to deliver equitable outcomes and deal with labour market inequalities; neoliberal values guide policy in immigration, multiculturalism and employment equity’.

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In contrast, Rousseau offers an interesting case study of how indigenous peoples in Bolivia were able to organize themselves to capture the state. As she explained: ‘moving from a subaltern status as peasants, miners or migrants, the indigenous majority is now representing a new citizenship regime and new leadership patterns.’ Indigenous struggles for decolonization have important and practical implications as they mean ‘the inclusion of differentiated regimes of citizenship based on indigenous and nonindigenous values and practices.’ In fact, this indigenous movement reveals how through ‘a differentiated citizenship based on equal respect for all cultures and peoples, Bolivian indigenous organizations sought to end the homogenizing and oppressing legacy of the modern liberal state founded on the myth of a united Nation and formal equality.’ The lenses of political inclusion, decolonization and pluri­nationality show how subaltern movements act as profound challengers to a liberal conception of the state. Moving away from a homogenizing conception of citizenship, subaltern movements force us to reconsider and problematize the apparently neutral and objective conceptual construct of citizenship. Decolonizing society implies a drastic move away from the intellectual comfort zone of established norms and categories associated with progress, development, market, economic growth and integration.

Knowledge, pedagogy and academia A fifth central theme of the book revolves around knowledge and pedagogy. Knowledge built on the philosophy of liberalism and the Enlightenment has displaced and subjugated local knowledge. As new truth regimes were and still are being imposed, the subjugated knowledge has persisted rather than disappeared. It has become the depositary of resistance, dissent and alternative narratives that might be pulled from to generate critiques and foster collective action. Chaurette and Oliver point out the fallacy of neutral and objective scientific knowledge in relation to agricultural policies. They note that productivist arguments often claim support in scientific studies that ‘are assumed to be neutral’ and often made ‘natural’, ‘logical’ and ‘embodied in supposedly depoliticized political expert knowledge’. To oppose this apparent neutrality and technocratic knowledge, ‘[F]ood sovereignty is providing a lens with which to analyse current policies and how these affect the environment, people’s health, and communities in both rural and urban areas’. In fact, challenging the domination continuum and building counterhegemonic organizations and struggles rests on the production of alternative knowledge. Several chapters (Langdon, Choudry, Da Costa, Grande and Naadli, Abdi and Murphy) reflect on the processes of

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knowledge creation and social transformation. Some underline the imminent tensions between those whose lives revolve around research and formal knowledge production and those who engage in struggles and directly experience the dynamics of oppression, exploitation and marginalization. It is crucial to be attentive to the knowledge generated at the local level as marginalized groups actively or covertly resist domination or attempts at subordination. As Choudry suggests: ‘the analyses and knowledge produced in the course of such struggles are vital conceptual resources for understanding and challenging the continued exploitation and commodification on migrant workers.’ In addition as pointed out by Murphy, the power of the ‘academy’ needs scrutiny, especially given its ‘role in thought control and social engineering; its role as gatekeeper of the correct perspective and methodology; its role as protector of the established “consensus” and of dominant interests.’ Through various forms of dynamic expression, including popular theatre, alternative pedagogy and on the ground learning processes, it becomes possible to understand how subaltern people might oppose or challenge a wide range of hegemonic subordinations of transnational corporations or institutional, state government (including self-declared socialists), development NGOs and intermediary organizations. As Da Costa observes in the case of the Jana Sanskrit (JS) theatre in India, these counter-hegemonic practices might appear as an anomaly or anachronism, since a self-declared left-wing government has ruled West Bengal for decades, but which has now become captive of what Da Costa describes as the ‘market episteme.’ Instead of assuming that theatre is only an expression of resistance or as a ‘safety valve’ for social tension, Da Costa suggests that theatre activists ‘brave a battle against the constant normalizations of a world of shrinking possibilities’ and are depicted as idealists ‘while those who acquiesce to neoliberal capital’s normalization are considered realists.’ To oppose this marginalization, JS aims to generate debate on alternate social norms and possibilities. In doing so, JS nurtures ‘critical and collective embodied thinking’ towards regulatory norms that reaffirm ‘the political authority of a market episteme for ruling a complex and diverse social world, making capital the most realistic, relevant, viable and powerful optic and episteme.’ Challenging this episteme becomes possible through political theatre as it can bring out an analysis ‘of the practice of bringing the microspace of the body into direct public confrontation with the macroprocesses of state power and neoliberal globalization.’ As further illustrated by Da Costa, popular theatre can enable a form of resistance that might enable a break up of the ‘dispossession of meaning’, which she defines as the ‘representational inequality situated in political–economic inequalities and enforced

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through a processes of rule.’ Again, it is important to underline how local space and direct encounters with power and oppression constitute the core of both everyday forms of collaboration (White 1986) and disloyal enactments and refusals to perform hegemonic norms. The last three chapters of this collection locate the centrality of pedagogy in an emancipatory praxis. In the case of the North American indigenous people, Grande and Naadli emphasize that a ‘Red Pedagogy’ is a powerful act of self-reinvention, ‘of validating our overlapping cultural identifications and relating them to the materiality of social life, power relations, and localities of place.’ Transformative praxis, including critical Red Pedagogy, provides a basis to ‘de-centre capitalism and re-centres colonization as the defining struggle of our time’. For Abdi, the colonizing of the mind and its associated cultural domination were probably the most lasting and profound effects of European colonialism. In fact, ‘what colonial globalization did to Africa, more than anything else, was the de-patterning of mental dispositions,’ because ‘[C]onquest and colonialism involve extensive interactive regimes and heavy contexts of identity deformation, misrecognition, loss of self-esteem and individual and social doubt in selfefficacy.’ Challenging and transforming African learning is central to the task of re-appropriating history. This can occur by investing the current de-cultured learning system and introduce ‘into their midst, African epistemic notations and epistemologies, which, if gradually and carefully intermixed with what we have now could improve the situation for hundreds of millions of learners.’ Murphy also brings out the dynamic nexus between learning, knowledge and action by emphasizing how any project of transformation of global and political and economic structures implies a profound self-reflexive thinking of the ‘quality of social action and the profound politics of transforming our direct experience into collective knowledge and social action.’ Echoing others such as Choudry, Da Costa, Grande and Naadli, Murphy underlines that movements emerge ‘from concrete experience and knowledge recuperated and shared.’ However, he warns against the pitfalls of institutionalized movements by pointing out that these seldom ‘create new knowledge.’ Once a social movement has become institutionalized, it may in fact ‘inhibit new knowledge that threatens the facts of movement itself.’ Pushing the analysis further, Murphy argues that ‘knowledge becomes theory becomes dogma and theorists take over leadership from the practitioners as dogmatists and gatekeepers of the movement’s truths.’ As pointed out by Murphy, and illustrated by many of our case studies, ‘[T]he person, or group, that is able to pose even one new question that falls outside the established unified frame and conventional discourse, and engages and excites the consciousness and imagination of people, undermines prevailing

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power and, momentarily at least, creates the possibility of revolution and change’. Proposing that one might want to use the notion of perspective defined as ‘not so much at what we see, but the way we see’, Murphy nicely synthesizes what critical perspective might emerge from a questioning of how we see. For him, ‘[K]nowledge gains its real edge when perspective itself is revealed in all of its subjectivity and implicates the knower with the known.’ This knowledge is active and located in the crux of a ‘dynamic relationship between our situation and our reflection on that situation to make sense of it, and to conserve it or to change it, to consolidate it or transform it.’

An opening as synthesis We began this book with a questioning around the links between development and globalization theories, the continuum with colonization and how critical and dissident perspectives are emerging and being socially constituted. Murphy aptly suggests that practice ‘is a product of theory – theory applied in the concrete’. As such, and as demonstrated extensively in the chapters of this volume, the importance of questioning how theories are made (‘by whom, and for whose end’) is at the centre and is critical ‘to social change movements and social change action’ (see Murphy’s chapter). To expand and uncover new conceptual possibilities, it is imperative to look at the concrete, the local and the experiences of peoples living and acting on the margins, those who are experiencing, negotiating and participating in dissonant and dissident action. This perspective runs throughout our chapters, whether it is in the Dalit and Adivasi movements in India, indigenous peoples in Bolivia and North America, migrant workers in Southeast Asia and Canada, farmers and peasants across the globe, or even the fringes of the WSF. The success of creating alternative perspectives and conditions for social transformation, as Murphy argues, emerges from the creation of spaces where ‘experience and knowledge can be shared’. These spaces have to be open ‘in the sense that they welcome all experience and knowledge, and provide opportunity for the expression, sharing, and acknowledgement.’ Where do we go from here? In many ways, we are living in an auspicious time to start extending our historical horizons to encompass the continuities and discontinuities in the structure of domination and marginalization. On the one hand, the structures, theories, mechanisms of subordination, dispossessions of culture, livelihoods and ecological and social environments that marked colonization, development projects and, now, globalization have shown inconsistencies over time. Foundational fictions such as the immutability of progress, the optimal

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role of the market, the desirability of economic growth, and the primacy of individual rights and individuality are now increasingly questioned. On the other hand, the resilience and creativity in protest movements and collective organizing, which are marked by multitude forms of local and trans-local resistance and rooted in daily lives and practices, as well as alternative modes of knowledge, expression and methodology that are distinct from dominant Western rationalism and scientific methodology, are multiplying (Juris 2008; Pleyers 2010; Rosenau 2003). Individual and collective agency, the capacity for local and trans-local collective action and struggles of meanings and perspectives are experienced and echoed through many spaces of contention and resistance (Favreau et al. 2010; Parker et al. 2007; Possibles 2013; Prokosh and Raymond 2002). As pointed out by Choudry, in the case of temporary migrant worker’s struggle, the dynamism, the rootedness and radicalism of these struggles ‘are raising some of the most important challenges to capital and state in recent years’. This moment calls for us ‘to engage with others not only in the cognitive domain of theory and knowledge, but in the material and affective domain where people actually live, and which includes their concrete material circumstances’ (Murphy). This volume constitutes a step in a new and critical understanding of global processes (colonization, development and globalization), rooted in the study of local social movements.

References Choudry, A. (2007). ‘Transnational coalition politics and the de/colonization of pedagogies of mobilization: learning from indigenous movement articulations against neo-liberalism.’ International Education, 37(1): 97–112. Duncan, C. (ed.) (2004). Civilizing the Margins: Southeast Asian Government Policies for the Development of Minorities. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Favreau, L., Fréchette, L. and Lachapelle, R. (2010). Les défis d’une mondialisation solidaire: Mouvements sociaux, démocratie et développement. Québec: Presses de l’Université du Québec. Ferguson. J. (2006). Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order. Durham: Duke University Press. Juris, J. S. (2008). Networking Futures: The Movement Against Corporate Globalization. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Mathews, G., Ribiero, G. L. and Vega, C. A. (2012). Globalization from Below: The World’s Other Economy. London and New York: Routledge. Parker, M., Fournier, V. and Reedy, P. (2007). The Dictionary of Alternatives: Utopianism and Organization. London and New York: Zed Books. Pleyers, G. (2010), Alter-Globalization: Becoming Actors in the Global Age. Cambridge and Malden: Polity Press. Possibles (2013). ‘Du printemps arabe au printemps erable: un nouveau cycle de lutes sociales.’ Possibles, 36(2): 222.

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272  r Fourteen Prokosch, M. and Raymond, L. (eds.) (2002). The Global Activist’s Manual: Local Ways to Change the World. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books. Richmond, A. H. (1994). Global Apartheid: Refugees, Racism and the New World Order. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press. Rosenau, J. N. (2003). Distant Proximities: Dynamics Beyond Globalization. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Scott, J. C. (2010). The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. Singapore: NUS Press. Scott, J. C. (1976). The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Subsistence and Rebellion in Southeast Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press. Tarrow, S. (2005). The New Transnational Activism. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. White, C. P. (1986). ‘Everyday resistance, socialist revolution and rural development: the Vietnamese case.’ Journal of Peasant Studies, 13(2): 49–63.

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About the contributors

Ali A. Abdi is Professor and Head at the Department of Educational Studies,

University of British Columbia, Canada. His areas of research include: comparative and international education; citizenship and development education; cultural studies in education; African philosophies of education; and postcolonial studies in education. He has published in journals such as Comparative Education, Compare, McGill Journal of Education, Journal of Black Studies, Journal of Educational Thought, International Education and Journal of Postcolonial Education. He is the author of several books and co-edited collections including: Education and Development in South Africa (2002), Politics of Difference: Canadian Perspectives (2004), Issues in African Education: Sociological Perspectives (2005), African Education and Globalization: Critical Perspectives (2006), Educating for Human Rights and Global Citizenship (2008), and Global Perspectives on Adult Education (2009). Eric G. Chaurette is a co-manager at Inter Pares, an international social

justice organization based in Ottawa. Inter Pares, which means ‘among equals’ in Latin, supports people’s struggles for peace, justice, and equality overseas and in Canada. Since 2005, when he joined the organization, Eric has worked to build greater linkages among social movements for systemic change. Eric is also a co-founder of the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network, where he was Chair from 2006 to 2011, and of the People’s Food Policy Project. Eric continues to serve on the Board of Food Secure Canada where he was Chair from 2012 to 2014.

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274  r  About the contributors Aziz Choudry is Associate Professor in the Department of Integrated

Studies in Education at McGill University and a visiting professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Johannesburg, where he is affiliated to the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation. He is author of Learning Activism: The Intellectual Life of Contemporary Social Movements (University of Toronto Press, 2015), co-author of Fight Back: Workplace Justice for Immigrants (Fernwood, 2009), and coeditor of Learning from the Ground Up: Global Perspectives on Social Movements and Knowledge Production (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), Organize! Building from the Local for Global Justice (PM Press, 2012), NGOization: Complicity, Contradictions and Prospects (Zed Books, 2013), and Just Work? Migrant Workers’ Struggles Today (forthcoming, Pluto Press). With a long history as a social and political activist, educator and researcher, he serves on the boards of the Immigrant Workers Centre, Montreal and the Global Justice Ecology Project. He is also a co-initiator and part of the editorial team of www.bilaterals.org, a website supporting resistance against bilateral free trade and investment agreements. Dia Da Costa is Associate Professor, Theoretical, Cultural and International

Studies in Education, at the University of Alberta. She develops her research and teaching at the intersection of global political economy and cultural studies. She is the author of Development Dramas: Reimagining Rural Political Action in Eastern India (2010) and editor of the book Scripting Power: Jana Sanskriti On and Offstage (2010). She has published articles in Third World Quarterly, Globalizations, Signs: Journal of Women and Culture, and Contributions to Indian Sociology. She is currently working on a second book tentatively entitled The Work of Theatre in an Age of Precarious Labour. Annette Aurélie Desmarais is Canada Research Chair in Human Rights,

Social Justice and Food Sovereignty at the University of Manitoba. Annette is the author of La Vía Campesina: Globalization and the Power of Peasants (2007) that has been published in French, Spanish, Korean, Italian and Portuguese. She also co-edited Food Sovereignty: Reconnecting Food, Nature and Community (2010) and Food Sovereignty in Canada: Creating Just and Sustainable Food Systems (2011). Before obtaining her doctorate in geography, Annette was a small-scale cattle and grain farmer in Canada for fourteen years. She also worked as technical support to La Vía Campesina for a decade and continues to conduct participatory research with the movement.

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  About the contributors  r 275 Michele Ford is Professor of Southeast Asian Studies and Director of the

Sydney Southeast Asia Centre at the University of Sydney. Her research interests focus on the Indonesian labour movement, trade union aid, and trade union responses to labour migration in East and Southeast Asia. Michele is the author of Workers and Intellectuals: NGOs, Unions and the Indonesian Labour Movement (2009), editor of Social Activism in Southeast Asia (2013) and co-editor of several books including Women and Work in Indonesia (2008), Labour Migration and Human Trafficking in Southeast Asia: Critical Perspectives (2012), and Men and Masculinities in Southeast Asia (2012). Kléber Ghimire is Associate Professor and Director of the Department of

Social Sciences in the Faculty of Languages, Literatures and Foreign Civilizations at Stendhal University, Grenoble. His latest publications include: ‘Débats sur la société civile en Chine’, Revue Informations et Commentaires, 149, October–December 2009 (with Xiaoyuan Shang); ‘The United Nations World Summits and civil society activism: grasping the centrality of national dynamics’ European Journal of International Relations, XX(X), 2010; Guest Editor (with Marc Troisvallets), ‘Multiculturalism in Europe’ Journal of Minority Studies, vol. 5, March 2011; and Organization Theory and Transnational Social Movements (2011). Sandy Grande is Associate Professor and Chair of the Education

Department at Connecticut College. She is currently working on developing an indigenous think-tank, with a home location in New York City. Her research and teaching are profoundly inter- and crossdisciplinary and interfaces critical, feminist, indigenous and Marxist theories of education with the concerns of indigenous education. Her book Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought (2004) has been met with critical acclaim. She has also published several articles including: ‘Critical theory and American Indian identity and intellectualism’, in the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, and ‘American Indian geographies of identity and power: at the crossroads of Indigena and Mestizaje’, in the Harvard Educational Review. Jonathan Langdon is Associate Professor at St. Francis Xavier University

in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. In his research, he aims to bring together the fields of development studies, education – especially adult and informal education – and the study of indigenous epistemologies in the West African realm. He is especially interested in the ways in which power manifests itself and circulates within and between political

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institutions, development organizations, cultural institutions and movements. His doctoral studies in education at McGill University focused on the learning of Ghanaian social movements since the country returned to democracy in 1992. This work, as well as all his work in Ghana and elsewhere in West Africa, is grounded in over ten years of engagements with movement activists and local-level development and advocacy organizations, as well as local and national-level governance institutions. Jonathan’s work has appeared in the McGill Journal of Education, Canadian Journal of Development Studies, the IDS Bulletin (with Blane Harvey), and he has edited a collection entitled, Indigenous Knowledges, Development and Education (2009). Lenore Lyons is an Honorary Professor at the Sydney Southeast Asia

Centre, the University of Sydney. Recognized as the leading scholar on the feminist movement in Singapore, her book on women’s activism was published as A State of Ambivalence: The Feminist Movement in Singapore (2004). She recently completed a major study of citizenship, identity and sovereignty in the Riau Islands of Indonesia (with Michele Ford, University of Sydney) and is currently working on a project that examines migrant worker activism in support of female domestic workers in Malaysia and Singapore. Her work has appeared in a number of edited collections as well as journals including Women’s Studies Quarterly, International Feminist Journal of Politics, Critical Asian Studies, Asian Studies Review, Asia Pacific Viewpoint, and Citizenship Studies, among others. Brian K. Murphy is an independent writer, policy analyst, educator and

organizer. He is a former member of the staff team of the Canadian international social justice organization, Inter Pares, where he worked as a programmer and policy analyst for almost thirty years, until the end of 2006. Among many publications, Brian is author of Transforming Ourselves, Transforming the World: An Open Conspiracy for Social Change (1999), available in translation as De la pensée à l’action: la personne au cœur du changement social, translated by Geneviève Boulanger (2001). Beatriz Oliver holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from McGill University. Her

dissertation was on agroecology and food sovereignty networks in Uruguay (A place for family farming: food sovereignty in Uruguay, 2007). She teaches part-time at the School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies of the University of Ottawa and works with USC Canada.

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  About the contributors  r 277 Naadli, Todd Ormiston (Wolf Clan) is Northern Tutchone and Tlingit.

He holds a bachelor of social work degree and masters in public administration. Currently, Todd is completing his doctorate in Education at the University of British Columbia. In addition, Todd currently is the Program Leader of the Indigenous Studies programme at Camosun College. Todd’s lengthy career as a social services worker included working with youth involved in the criminal justice system. His teaching and research interests have a strong focus on policy issues and indigenous peoples. Stéphanie Rousseau is Professor in the Department of Social Sciences at

the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru. Her research is focused on women’s and indigenous movements in the Andean region, more specifically Peru and Bolivia, looking at state–society relations and patterns of citizenship construction. Her book Women’s Citizenship in Peru: The Paradoxes of Neopopulism in Latin America (2009) analyzed the dynamics of different sectors of the Peruvian women’s movement in the context of neoliberal neopopulism in the 1990s. She has published in journals such as Latin American Research Review; Latin American Politics and Society; Social Politics; International Studies in Gender, State and Society; the Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies; and Estudos Feministas. She just completed a comparative research project on indigenous women’s organizing in Peru and Bolivia.

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Index

Aboriginal communities 213 Abu-Laban, Y. 129–30 accumulation strategies 195–8, 209–14, 215–16 Achebe, A. 232 Achebe, C. 252 Action Network for Migrants 155 action in social movements 242–58 activism 27–48, 147, 155–8 Adam, Al-hassan 60–2 Ada Traditional Council 53–4 ADEA see Adivasi-Dalit Ekta Abhijan movement Adivasi caste 27–9, 31–4, 38–40 Adivasi Dalit Adhikar Sangathan LAM partnership 32 Adivasi-Dalit Ekta Abhijan (ADEA) movement 28 Adivasi-Dalit Ekta Abhiyan LAM partnership 32 Adivasi Pachua Dalit Adhikar Manch (APDAM) 34 advocacy networks (TANs), Day Off policies 146–7 ADWA see Asian Domestic Workers Assembly

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AEAS see Association of Employment Agencies Singapore Africa 223–41; conceptualizing/ theorizing globalization 225–9; COPAGEN 114–15; countercultures 233–8; de-culturing 229–33; Ghana 49–66; humanism 179 agrarian movement 88 Agrarian Reform Law 71–2 Agrawal, A. 117 agriculture 62, 110, 112, 191–2, 194–7; food sovereignty 85–106, 114–17; productivism 106–23, see also Food and Agriculture Organization agroecological farming 110 aid programmes, humanism 167–8 AIDS 148–9, 150, 154–5 Ake, C. 228, 235–8 Alaska Natives 215 Alberta 127, 213 Alberta Federation of Labour 127 alcohol 199 Alegría, R. 91–4 Alfred, T.207

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Index  r 279 Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) 115 Alliance of Progressive Labour (APL) 150–1 alter-globalization 165–84 AMC see Asian Migrant Centre Americas 13; Bolivia 67–84; economic crises 137–8; food sovereignty 90–1; free trade 133; FTAA 171–2; productivism 110, see also Canada; United States Amin, S. 173–4 Ancestral Community Land, Bolivia 76 Anchalik Janasuraksha Sangathan LAM partnership 33 Anthills of the Savannah (Achebe) 252 Anthropology of Anger (Monga) 228–9 anti-imperialist organizations 150 anti-liquor initiatives 199 anti-mining movements 62–3 APDAM see Adivasi Pachua Dalit Adhikar Manch Apetorgbor, A. A. 54–6 APL see Alliance of Progressive Labour APMM see Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants APWLD see Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development Arat-Koç, S. 129–30 ASEAN multilateral framework 149, 158 Asia: Day Off policies 145–64; humanism 179 Asian Domestic Workers Assembly (ADWA) 15–16, 147, 150–1, 153, 155–6 Asian Migrant Centre (AMC) 150–1

Beyond Colonialism.indb 279

Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD) 148–9, 150, 154–5 Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants (APMM) 148–9, 150 aspirational universe 255–6 assembly plants 131 assets, privatization/commodification 209–10 Association of Employment Agencies Singapore (AEAS) 152 Augustine, St. 168 Auslander, P. 197–8 Australia 192 autonomous domains 10 Ayllu kinship ties 82 Aymara people, Bolivia 79, 82 Aymara territory, Bolivia 74–5 Ayoreos indigenous people of Bolivia 76 Babbitt, B. 212 Bacevich, A. 208 Bakan, A. 127 Bangkok Declaration on Irregular Migration 158 Bangladesh 134 bankruptcy 212–13 Baraka, I. A. 255 Bello, W. 237 benevolent global hegemony 208 Bengal 35 Bengali communities 190–4 Berger, J. 247, 252 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation 115 Biodiversity Institute, Ethiopia 116 Black Skin, White Masks (Fanon) 229–30 Boal, A. 197–8 Bolivia 13, 67–84

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280  r Index border controls, economic crises 125–6 bourgeois ideologies 10 Bové, J. 96 Braudel, F. 169 British Columbia 213 Brunner, E. 109 Bush administration 208 business visitors 135–6 Butler, J. 198 Canada: economic crises 124–44; food sovereignty 90–1, 92–3; neoliberal globalization 213, 219–20; productivism 109, 116; ruling culture 192 capitalism: development discourse 9; migration in Canada 130–2; neoliberal globalization 213–14, 215–16; rule of episteme 191, 195–8, 200–1 Caplan, G. 231 CARAM see Coordination of Action Research on AIDS and Mobility Cardenas, V. H. 77 car factories 195 Central Obrera Boliviana (COB) 70, 75 Centre for Research and Development Solidarity (CRDS) 29 Cesaire, A. 231 CETA see Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement Chacón, A. 131 Chambers, R. 6–7 Charter of Principles 169–71, 174–8 Chiquitanos indigenous people of Bolivia 76 Choquehuanca, D. 80–1 Choudry, A. 64, 138

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CHRAJ see Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice Christianity 6–7 CIALs see Comité de Investigación Agrícola Local civilization 145–6, 207–8 civil society 30, 42, 44, 50, 52, 53, 59, 101, 106, 107, 114, 115, 146, 150, 155, 170, 174, 177, 178, 181, 237, 238, 260, 262, 264, 266 CMR see Coalition for Migrants Rights CNOP see Coordination nationale des organisations paysannes du Mali Coalition for Migrants Rights (CMR) 150–1 Coalition for the Protection of African Genetic Heritage (COPAGEN) 114–15 COB see Central Obrera Boliviana Cobell, E. 211–12 Cochabamba valleys of Bolivia 75–6 coco growers 75–6 coercion 191 collective agency 218 collective experience 250 collective praxis 250–3 Comité de Investigación Agrícola Local (CIALs) 116–17 Commission on Culture and Development 1992 187 Commission de la Santé et Sécurité au Travail (CSST) 138 Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) 58–60, 64–5 commodification 209–10 ’common identity’ focus 36–8 community radio 53–5

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Index  r 281 Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) 135 CONAMAQ see Consejo Nacional de Ayllus y Markas del Qullasuyu conceptualizing of globalization 225–9 Confederación Campesiona del Perú 90–1 Confederacíon de Pueblos Indígenas de Bolivia (CIDOB) 76 Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia (CSUTCB) 75 Confédération Nationale des Syndicat de Travailleurs Paysans 90–1 Confédération Paysanne 90–1, 96 Confucian thoughts 168 Congressional Reports 211–12 conscientization 216–17 Consejo Nacional de Ayllus y Markas del Qullasuyu (CONAMAQ) 75 conservatives 208 Constituent Assembly, Bolivia 77–81 Constitution: Bolivia 57–61, 71, 79–82; Ghana 57–61 constructivism 5–8, 9 constructs of praxis 250–3 contemporary Bolivia 69–73 contingent class 15 Convention on Biological Diversity 113–14 Coordination of Action Research on AIDS and Mobility (CARAM Asia) 148–9, 150, 154–5 Coordination nationale des organisations paysannes (CNOP) du Mali 111 COPAGEN see Coalition for the Protection of African Genetic Heritage

Beyond Colonialism.indb 281

corporatist nationalism, Bolivia 70–2 Coulthard, G. S. 218–19 counter-cultures 233–8 coups, Bolivian military 71 Cowen, M. 6–7 CPI(M) 28 CRDS see Centre for Research and Development Solidarity crop yields see productivism cross-border initiatives 13–16, 85–184; alter-globalization 165–84; Day Off policies 145–64; economic crises 124–44; La Vía Campesina 85–105; neoliberal immigration 124–44; productivism 106–23; TFWPs 124–44 CSUTCB see Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia culture 185–258; food sovereignty 89–90; globalization and development 223–41; liberation of development 187–204 DABI see Dalit Adivasi Bahujana Initiatives Dalit Adivasi Bahujana Initiatives (DABI) 33 Dalit caste 27–9, 31–4, 39 Darwinism 2 Davos Economic Forum (DEF) 175–6 Dawes Act 210 Day Off policies 145–64 DDPs see development-displaced persons Declaration on Irregular Migration 158 decolonization 67, 78–81, 218 Decolonizing the Mind (Thiongo) 229–30 de-culturing of Africa 229–33

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282  r Index DEF see Davos Economic Forum deferrals of tax 213–14 democracy 218; Bolivia 71; countercultures 237–8; Ghana 49–66 Democracy and Development in Africa (Ake) 228 demonstrations: food sovereignty 92–3, see also protest development-displaced persons (DDPs) 30 Discourse on Colonialism (Cesaire) 231 displacements/dispossession, rural India 27–48 dispossession by accumulation 209–14 dispute mechanisms of free trade 134 diversity: Bolivia 71; food sovereignty 90–5; indigenous movements of Bolivia 74–7, see also multiculturalism dominance without hegemony 10 donor agencies 179 Dresden, Germany 92 Dufour, F. 93 EC see European Commission economic crises 124–44, 212–13 Economic Forum (DEF) 175–6 economic growth see capitalism Economic Recovery Programmes (ERPs) 57 economic reforms, Bolivia 71–2 education 200–1, 218, 242–58; Bolivia 71; counter-cultures 236–8 ego 168 elections 72–3 Elements of Precaution report 109 Elias, N. 167 elite classes 213–14; Bolivia 71; democratic 61–2 Enbridge oil and gas company 213

Beyond Colonialism.indb 282

Encountering Development (Escobar) 6 ’English race’ 207–8 environmental abuse, CHRAJ 59–60 epistemes 187–204 equivalence, productivism 109 ERPs see Economic Recovery Programmes Escobar, A. 6 ETC Group 116 ethics see humanism; human rights Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute 116 European Commission (EC) 131 European Union (EU) 135–6 experience 198, 250, 252–5 Expert Conference, UNESCO 219 exploitation, displacements of rural India 27–48 expropriation of agricultural land 191–2 Fanon, F. 229–30 FAO see Food and Agriculture Organization farmers: food sovereignty 90–1; productivism 106–23, see also agriculture feminism 8–10 Ferguson, J. 50–3, 61–4, 193 Fernandez, I. 153–4 festivals 199–200 Filipino migrant workers 124–5 financial crises see economic crises financialization 210–12 Fiske, J. 207–8 Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO): food sovereignty 88, 92; productivism 112, 115–16 food sovereignty 85–105, 106, 114–17 foreign worker programmes 124–44 Forum Theatre 197

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Index  r 283 Foucault, M. 51–2 France, food sovereignty 90–1 freedom 191–2, see also human rights free trade agreements (FTAs) 131, 133–6, 171–2 Free Trade Area for the Americas (FTAA) 171–2 Freire, P. 236, 251 Friedmanites 208 FTAA see Free Trade Area for the Americas FTAs see free trade agreements Fundación para la Investigación Participativa con Agricultores de Honduras (FIPAH) 116 GAATW see Global Alliance against Trafficking in Women Gabriel, C. 129–30 galamsey operators 62 Ganguly, S. 197 García-Linera, A. 72–3, 78 gas companies 213 The Gas War 73 GATS see General Agreement on Trade in Services GE see genetically engineered crops General Accounting Office (GAO) 211 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 88, 91–2 General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) 133–5 genetically engineered (GE) crops 113–15 genetic resources, productivism 112 Genetic Use Restriction Technologies (GURTs) 113 Genoa 92–3 GFAR see Global Forum of Agricultural Research

Beyond Colonialism.indb 283

GFMD see Global Forum on Migration and Development Ghana 12–13, 49–66 Global Alliance against Trafficking in Women (GAATW) 148–9, 150 Global Assembly on Food Security in Quebec City 92 global capitalism, migration in Canada 130–2 global civil society 145–6 global economic crisis 136–9 Global Forum of Agricultural Research (GFAR) 92–3 Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) 132, 137, 155–6 Gomez, E. T. 51 governmentality 12–13; Ghana 49–66; productivism 108–9 Gramsci, A. 10 grassroots initiatives: Day Off policies 151, 156–7; productivism 117; radical pluralism 8; WSF 178 green revolution, productivism 112, 115 Group of Eight 92–3 Grzybowski, C. 170–1, 173–4 Guarani communities 69–70, 76 Guarayos indigenous people of Bolivia 76 Gupta, A. 51 Gurowitz, A. 147 GURTS see General Use Restriction Technologies Hale, C. 71–2 Halperin, S. 7 Handy, J. 97 Hardt, M. 176–7 Hartridge, D. 133

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284  r Index Harvey, D. 195–7, 208–14 health: CHRAJ 59–60; Day Off policies 155 hegemony 129–30; cultural work 198; humanism 173–4; neoliberal globalization 208, 214 Held, D. 225–6 heroic global social action 255–6 Hildyard, N. 253 HOME 152–4, 157 Honduras, productivism 116–17 Hong Kong 137, 150 hope 49–66, 195–6, 218 Houtard, F. 174 How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Rodney) 233–4 HRW see Human Rights Watch humanism 165–84; ’another world’ construction 173–4; assessment 174–5; basic conception 167–9; Charter of Principles 169–71, 174–8; contradictions 175–6; key features 169–75; ’open space’ 175–6; political strategy 176–8; resistance 171–3; resources 178–9; rigidity 175–6 Human Resources and Social Development Canada (HRSDC) 127–8 human rights: contemporary Bolivia 69–70; Day Off policy 145–64; Ghana 58–60, 64–5 Human Rights Watch (HRW) 150–1 Huntington, S. 234–5 hybrids, crops 112, 113–15 hydrocarbons sector 77, 213 hyper-globalization 227–8 IAMR see International Assembly of Migrants of Refugees ICFTU see International Confederation of Free Trade Unions

Beyond Colonialism.indb 284

IDCO see Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation of Orissa Ideas radio programme 253 identity 218–19 ideologies 10, 67, 70–1, 207–8 IFAP see International Federation of Agricultural Producers IFIs see international financial institutions Ihonvbere, J. 228–9, 233 illegal immigration 133 Illich, I. 251 ILO see International Labour Organization IMA see International Migrants Alliance Immigrant Workers Centre (IWC) 136–8, see also International Migrants Alliance immigration: collective praxis 251–2; Day Off policies 145–64; economic crises 124–44; Ghana 62; rule of episteme 193–4 imperialism 191, 208–9 Implementation of the Right of Self-Determination Conference 219 India 27–48 Indian natives 211–12, 214, 215 indigenous movements 5, 10–12, 25–84; Bolivia 67–84; Ghana 49–66; neoliberal globalization 205–22; subaltern social movements 27–48; United States 17 Indravati Vistapita Lokmanch LAM partnership 32 industrial farming 112 Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation of Orissa (IDCO) 35–6

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Index  r 285 industrialization 29–30, 193, 198–9 inequality 69–70, 193–4 INRA see National Institute on Land Reform Instrumento Político por la Soberanía de los Pueblos (IPSP) 72 intellectual property rights 113–15 International Assembly of Migrants of Refugees (IAMR) 137–8 International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) 134 International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP) 91 international financial institutions (IFIs) 226–7 International Forum on Globalization 219–20 International Labour Organization (ILO) 130, 149, 150–1 International Migrants Alliance (IMA) 15–16, 137, 147, 150–1, 154–6 International Monetary Fund (IMF): conceptualizing/theorizing globalization 225–6; countercultures 235–6; food sovereignty 92–3; Ghana 57–8; migration in Canada 130–1; productivism 107–8, 111 International Organization for Migration (IOM) 128–9, 131–2 International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) 30 Inter Pares 108, 116 intra-company transferees 135–6 investors 135–6 IOM see International Organization for Migration IPSP see Instrumento Político por la Soberanía de los Pueblos Irregular Migration, Declaration 158

Beyond Colonialism.indb 285

ITUC see International Confederation of Free Trade Unions IWC see Immigrant Workers Centre IWGIA see International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs Jakarta 151 Janajati Yuva Sangathan LAM partnership 34 Jana Sanskriti (JS) 194–201 Jana Suraksha Manch LAM partnership 31 Jeevan Jivika Suraksha Sangathan LAM partnership 33 Jelin, E. 89 Jordan, G. 89 Kagan, R. 208 Kalinga Matchyajivi Sangathana fisher people 31 Kalinganagar, Orissa 35–6 Kant, I. 167 Kapur, D. 131–2 Kashipur, Orissa 35 Katarista movement, Bolivia 74–5 Kaupapa Maori approaches 216–17, 218–19 Khaldun, I. 231–2 kinships 82 knowledge 185–258; Day Off policies 155; Ghana governmentality 61–5; liberation of development 187–204 Kristol, W. 208 Kuujjuaq, Canada 219–20 labour 133–6 Labour Relations Board (QLRB) 139 LAM see Lok Adhikar Manch networks

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286  r Index Lamberth, R. 212 land acquisitions 191–5 land reform programmes 70 language 229–30 Lanjigarh, Bengal 35 Lanuer, M. 56–7 Larweh, K. 53–4, 56 Latin America 13; Bolivia 67–84; productivism 110 La Vía Campesina 14, 85–105 LCP see live-in and care programmes LDCs see Least Developed Countries learning 242–58, see also education Least Developed Countries (LDCs) 134 liberalization of trade 111 liberation of development 187–204 liquor bans 199 lived experience 198 live-in and care programmes (LCP) 15 local economic crisis 136–9 ’local histories’, Ghana 52, 61–5 Lockean terms of property 212 Lok Adhikar Manch (LAM) networks 12, 28, 31–4, 36–40 lowland indigenous peoples, Bolivia 76–8 low-skilled workers 145–64 low-skill pilot programmes 127 low wage labour 131 de Lozada, G. S. 73 Lyons, L. 146–7 Mackie, V. 146 McMichael, P. 226–7 Malaysia 147, 153–4, 157–8 Malian farmers’ Union 111 management systems: Ghana governmentality 62; neoliberal globalization 212–13, 214–15; neoliberal immigration 128–30

Beyond Colonialism.indb 286

Manifest of Tiwanaku 75 Manila 150–1 manipulation of economic crises 212–13 Manuh, T. 53, 64–5 MAP Foundation for the Health and Knowledge of Ethnic Labour 155 mapping of neoliberal order 207–9 maquiladora assembly plants 131 March for Land, Territory and Natural Resources 76 March for Sovereignty 76–7 March for Territory and Dignity 76 Marxism 10, 168, 191, 196–7 MAS see Movimiento al Socialismo government Massiah, G. 174 material accumulation strategies 215–16 Mayer, S. 109 Mayhew, S. 107 MDWs 150–1 meaning in social movements 246–8 Mekong Migration Network (MMN) 148–9, 155, 158 Melucci, A. 89 Menon, N. 28, 29 mestizaje ideology 67, 70–1 Mexico: economic crises 137–8; food sovereignty 90–1; free trade 133 MFA see Migrant Forum in Asia middle classes 213–14 Mignolo, W. 52, 63 Migrant Forum in Asia (MFA) 150–1, 156–7 migrants see immigration military coups 71 Millstone, E. 109 mining sectors: contemporary Bolivia 70; Ghana governmentality 62–3

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Index  r 287 miscegenation (mestizaje ideology) 67, 70–1 ’Misplaced Trust’ Congressional Report 211–12 mission civilisatrice 230–1 MMN see Mekong Migration Network MNR see Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario modernization, Bolivia 71 money 200–1, see also capitalism Monga, C. 228–9 monocropping 112 monopolistic access 62 Montreal, Canada 136–8 Morales, E. 68, 72–82 morality see humanism; human rights mortgage crisis 211 Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) government 68, 72, 75–81 Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR) 70–1 multi-crop agricultural land 195 multiculturalism: Bolivia 70–2; neoliberal immigration 129–30 multifunctional nature of farms 110 Muqaddimah (Khaldun) 231–2 NAFTA see North American Free Trade Agreement Nandigram, Bengal 35 National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) 54–5 National Democratic Alliance (NDA) 30, 35 National Farmers Union (NFU) of Canada 90–1 National Institute on Land Reform (INRA) 76 nationalism, Bolivia 70–2 native Americans 211–12, 214, 215

Beyond Colonialism.indb 287

natural resources: Bolivia 76; Ghana 49–66; neoliberal globalization 213 NCCE see National Commission for Civic Education NDA see National Democratic Alliance neo conservatives 208 neoliberalism: Bolivia 70–2; economic crises 124–44; food sovereignty 92–3; Ghana 49–66; settler colonialism 205–22 Netting, R. 109–10 Newman, J. H. C. 6–7 New Social Movement (NSM) politics 41 New Zealand 216–17, 218–19 NFU see National Farmers Union of Canada Nicaragua 90–1 Nietzsche, F. 168 Nigam, A. 28, 29 Ninsin, K. A. 61–2 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) 16, 18; Day Off policies 148–58; economic crises 137–9; food sovereignty 91; humanism 177, 179; productivism 115–17 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) 131, 133, 135–6 Northern Gateway project 213 Norton, G. 211–12 NSM see New Social Movement politics Nyéléni 2007 Forum for Food Sovereignty 97 Nyéléni Declaration, World Food Sovereignty Summit 106–7 Ocloo, T. 56–7 ODA agencies 16

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288  r Index OECD see Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development oil and gas companies 213 One Paid Day Off Weekly campaign see Day Off policies open space 175–6, 250–3 organic farming 110 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD): free trade 135; migration in Canada 130 Orissa 35–40 Orissa Adivasi Manch LAM partnership 33 Ottawa 127, 130, 135–6 OXFAM 177, 179 Pacheco, L. A. 117 paradigms, productivism 107–8 PAR collective 53–4, 56, 60–4 participatory research 251 Pax Americana 208 PDCs see People’s Defence Committees peasant movements 25–84; Bolivia 67–84; Ghana 49–66; La Vía Campesina 85–105; subaltern social movements 27–48 pedagogy 185–258 People’s Culture see Jana Sanskriti People’s Defence Committees (PDCs) 54 personal experience 250 Peru 251–2; food sovereignty 90–1 Philippines 148 physical abuse, CHRAJ 59–60 Piaget, J. 247 Pieterse, N. 234 Pilot Project for Occupations Requiring Lower Levels of Formal Training 127

Beyond Colonialism.indb 288

PINAY 137, see also International Migrants Alliance Piper, N. 146, 147 Plant Genetic Resources Centre of Ethiopia 116 pluralism 8 pluriculturalism see multiculturalism plurinational states of Bolivia 67, 81–2 PNDC see Provisional National Defence Council political action, rule of episteme 198 political opportunities, Bolivia 77–8 Political Poem (Baraka) 255 political praxis, India SSMs 41–3 political strategy, humanism 176–8 political theatre 194–201 political–economic coercion 191 politics of food sovereignty 89–90 Porto Alegre 92 postcolonial studies 5, 8–10 post-development 5, 7–9 post-mortems of development, India SSMs 36–40 poverty 215; collective praxis 251–2; contemporary Bolivia 69–70; Day Off policy 145–64 power: Ghana 50–3, 61–2; meaning in social movements 248 practice and theory 249–50 Prada, R. 80 Prague 92–3 Prakritik Sampad Suraksha Parishad (PSSP) 31 Prashad, V. 124 praxis 41–3, 187–8, 216–17, 218, 250–3 primordial societies 214–15 Principles, Charter of 169–71, 174–8 private sector, SEZs 30 privatization: Bolivia 71; public assets 209–10

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Index  r 289 productivism 14, 106–23; closer look 109–10; cultural work 194–201; development paradigm 107–8; food sovereignty 106, 114–17; genetically engineered crops 113–15; global assault 111–14; green revolution 112, 115; intellectual property rights 113–15; regulatory science 108–9; Seeds of Survival 115–17; trade liberalization 111; Uruguay 117–18 professionals 135–6 Prolegomena (Khaldun) 231–2 property 113–15, 212 protest: Bolivia 70–3; cultural work 194–5; food sovereignty 92–3 Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) 54–7, 59 pseudoscience, productivism 109 PSI see Public Services International PSSP see Prakritik Sampad Suraksha Parishad public resources: neoliberal globalization 213; privatization/ commodification 209–10 Public Services International (PSI) 134 QLRB see Quebec Labour Relations Board Quebec, Canada 92–3, 138–9 Quebec Labour Relations Board (QLRB) 139 radical political praxis 41–3 radical social movements: food sovereignty 89–90; pluralism 8 radio programmes 53–5, 253 RAFI see Rural Advancement Fund International Rahall, N. 212

Beyond Colonialism.indb 289

Reagan, R. 208 Red de Ecología Social-Amigos de la Tierra (REDES-AT) 117 redistributions of state 213–14 red pedagogies 214–20 reflection 253–5 reform programmes, Bolivia 70–2 refugees, Thailand Day Off policies 154–5 regressive taxes 213–14 regulatory science: productivism 108–9, see also governmentality religion 6–7, 168 remittances 131–2 research-action 251 resistance: Day Off policies 147–8; economic crisis 136–9; humanism 171–3; neoliberal globalization 205–22 resources: Bolivia 76; Ghana 49–66; humanism 178–9; neoliberal globalization 213, 215–16, see also productivism RESPECT (NGO) 151 rest days see Day Off policies Restriction Technologies (GURTs) 113 revolution: Bolivia 70; productivism 112, 115, see also protest Rist, G. 87 Rockefeller foundation 115 Rodney, W. 233–4 Rodriguez, C. 80–1 Rodriguez, R. M. 124–5, 132, 138–9 Rosset, P. 110 Rouse, - 227 Rubin, R. 212 rule of epistemes 187–204 ruling culture 190–4 Rural Advancement Fund International (RAFI) 116

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290  r Index rural communities, rule of episteme 193–4, 198 rural dispossession, India 27–48 rural environments, productivism 118 Ryder, G. 134 Saha, S. 191–2 Said, E. 235 Saint Augustine 168 salt flats of Songor 12–13, 53–7 SAPs see Structural Adjustment Programs SAWP see seasonal agricultural workers programmes Sawyer, S. 51 Schatz, - 235 schooling see education science: productivism 108–9, see also governmentality seasonal agricultural workers programmes (SAWP) 15 Seeds of Survival (SoS) 115–17 self-determination 214–20 Sen, A. 191–3, 233 September 11th attacks 208 settler colonies 10–12 SEZs see Special Economic Zones shared experience/reflection 253–5 Shenton, R. 6–7 Sikkink, K. 89–90 Singapore 147, 152–3, 157–8 Singur 35, 191–2 Smith, A. 7 Smith, G. 216 social Darwinism 2 socialism see Marxism socio-environmental productivism 117 solidarity, Day Off policies 145–6 Songor movements 12–13, 53–7, 62–3

Beyond Colonialism.indb 290

Southeast Asia 145–64 sovereignty 218–19; Bolivia 76–7; La Vía Campesina 85–105, see also food sovereignty Soviet Union 179 Special Economic Zones (SEZs) 30, 35 specialization and monocropping 112 Stasiulis, D. 127 state decolonization 67, 78–81 state redistributions 213–14 Stédile, J. P. 96 strategy: cultural work 195–8; humanism 176–8; neoliberal globalization 209–14, 215–16 Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) 235 subaltern social movements (SSMs) 12, 27–48 subaltern studies 5, 10–12 subjugation of knowledge 61–5 subprime mortgage crisis 211 substantial equivalence 109 surplus management 196–7, 214–15 sustainability: food sovereignty 92; productivism 110, 117–18 Taller de Historia Oral Andina (THOA) 74 TANs see transnational advocacy networks Taoism religion 168 Tapia, T. 79 Tata conglomerate 195, 196, 200–1 taxes 213–14 Tebtebba Foundation 219–20 technology: neoliberal globalization 215–16; productivism 112, 113–15 temporary foreign worker programmes (TFWPs) 124–44

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Index  r 291 Tenaganita (2008) 153–4 Teodoro, A. 226 Terminators, GE crop production 113 terrorism 208 TFWPs see temporary foreign worker programmes Thailand 147, 154–5, 157–8 Thatcher, M. 208 theatre see political theatre The New Imperialism (Harvey) 208–9 theorizing of globalization 225–9 theory and open spaces 253–5 theory and practice 249–50 The State of the World’s Plant Genetic Resources FAO report 112 Thiongo, N. wa 229–30 THOA see Taller de Historia Oral Andina Tierras Comunitarias de Origen, Bolivia 76 Togo, Africa 115 topographic power, Ghana 50–3, 61–2 Torres, N. 82 trade: CETA 135; dispute mechanisms 134; free trade 131, 133–6, 171–2; liberalization 111; NAFTA 131, 133, 135–6; traders and investors 135–6, see also World Trade Organization Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property rights (TRIPS) 113–14 traditional farming systems 110 trafficking of women 148–9, 150 transformative red pedagogies 214–20 trans-local activism, India 27–48 trans-local alliances 12, 41, 42, 262 transnational activism 155–8

Beyond Colonialism.indb 291

transnational advocacy networks (TANs) 146–7 transnational agrarian movement (TAM) 88 transnational governmentality 49–66 transnational neoliberal governmentality 12–13 transnational social movements (TSMs) 146–7 tribalism 210 trickle-down economics 213–14 TRIPS see Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property rights Truman, H. 234 trust, Ghana constitution 57–61 trusteeship 2 TSMs see transnational social movements TWC2 152–4 Udall, T. 212 UFDWRs see United for Foreign Domestic Workers’ Rights Uhlin, A. 146 UNAG see Unión Nacional de Agricultores y Ganaderos of Nicaragua underdevelopment 2–3 understanding in flux 249 unemployment 193–4 UNIFEM 150–2 Unión Nacional de Agricultores y Ganaderos (UNAG) of Nicaragua 90–1 Unión Nacional de Organizaciones Regionales Campesinas Autónomas 90–1 Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) 113–14 unipolar imperative of Pax Americana 208

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292  r Index United for Foreign Domestic Workers’ Rights (UFDWRs) 15–16, 147, 148–58 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) 219 United Nations (UN) 69–70, 88, 92, 112, 115–16, 219 United States: food sovereignty 92–3; illegal immigration 133; neoliberal globalization 208, 210–13, 214, 215; ruling culture 192 unity, food sovereignty 90–5 Universal History (Khaldun) 231–2 Unnayan (Development) 194–7 unskilled workers, Day Off policies 145–64 UPOV see Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants Uppara Kolab Basachyuta Mahasangh LAM partnership 33 urban centres 193–4 urbanization 29–30 Uruguay 117–18 Uruguay Round signing 88 USC Canada 116 Use Agreements, GE technology 113 Vacuum Salt Limited (VSL) 54–5 Virginia and Massachusetts Bay Company 214 volunteer associations 237–8 VSL see Vacuum Salt Limited wage parity 134 Wallerstein, I. 173 Wall Street 211 Washington 92–3 Water War of 2002, Bolivia 77–8

Beyond Colonialism.indb 292

Watt-Cloutier, S. 219–20 Weedon, C. 89 WFS see World Food Summit Whitaker, C. 176 Williamson, J. 227–8 Windward Islands Farmers’ Association 90–1 Wolfensohn, J. 193 women: anti-liquor initiatives 199; collective praxis 251–2; countercultures 237–8; Day Off policies 145–64; economic crises 137; food sovereignty 90–1; temporary foreign worker programmes 126–7 work 194–201 working classes 173–4, 213–14 World Bank: conceptualizing/ theorizing globalization 225–6, 227–8; counter-cultures 235–6; food sovereignty 92–3; Ghana 57–8; migration in Canada 130–2; productivism 107–8, 111; rule of episteme 193 World Economic Forum 175–6 World Food Sovereignty Summit 106–7 World Food Summit (WFS) 92, 95, 115–16 World Social Forum (WSF) 16, 92, 165–84, 250–1 World Summit on Sustainable Development 92 World Trade Organization (WTO): food sovereignty 88, 91–2, 93; free trade 133–5; migration in Canada 130; productivism 111 WSF see World Social Forum Zambia 237–8

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