Developing minds : psychology, neoliberalism and power 9781138653917, 1138653918, 9781138653924, 1138653926

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Developing Minds

Development policymakers and practitioners are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their ability to target ‘development’ interventions and the psychological domain is now a specific frontier of their interventional focus. This landmark study considers the problematic relationship between development and psychology, tracing the deployment of psychological knowledge in the production/reproduction of power relations within the context of neoliberal development policy and intervention. It examines knowledge production and implementation by actors of development policy such as the World Bank and the neocolonial state – and ends by examining the proposition of a critical psychology for more emancipatory forms of development. The role of psychology in development studies remains a relatively unexplored area, with limited scholarship available. This important book aims to fill that gap by using critical psychology perspectives to explore the focus of the psychological domain of agency in development interventions. It will be essential reading for students, researchers and policymakers from fields including critical psychology, social psychology, development studies and anthropology. Elise Klein is a Lecturer of Development Studies at the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne in Australia.

Concepts for Critical Psychology: Disciplinary Boundaries Re-thought Series editor: Ian Parker Developments inside psychology that question the history of the discipline and the way it functions in society have led many psychologists to look outside the discipline for new ideas. This series draws on cutting edge critiques from just outside psychology in order to complement and question critical arguments emerging inside. The authors provide new perspectives on subjectivity from disciplinary debates and cultural phenomena adjacent to traditional studies of the individual. The books in the series are useful for advanced level undergraduate and postgraduate students, researchers and lecturers in psychology and other related disciplines such as cultural studies, geography, literary theory, philosophy, psychotherapy, social work and sociology. Most Recently Published Titles: Radical Inclusive Education Disability, teaching and struggles for liberation Anat Greenstein Religion and Psychoanalysis in India Critical clinical practice Sabah Siddiqui Ethics and Psychology Beyond codes of practice Calum Neill The Psychopolitics of Food Culinary rites of passage in the neoliberal age Mihalis Mentinis Deleuze and Psychology Philosophical provocations to psychological practices Maria Nichterlein & John R. Morss Rethinking Education through Critical Psychology Cooperative schools, social justice and voice Gail Davidge Developing Minds Psychology, neoliberalism and power Elise Klein

Developing Minds Psychology, neoliberalism and power

Elise Klein

First published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 Elise Klein The right of Elise Klein to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Names: Klein, Elise, 1983- author. Title: Developing minds: psychology, neoliberalism and power / Elise Klein. Description: 1 Edition. | New York: Routledge, 2016. | Series: Concepts for critical psychology: disciplinary boundaries re-thought | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2016011129 | ISBN 9781138653917 (hardback: alk. paper) | ISBN 9781138653924 (pbk.: alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315623511 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Economic development—Psychological aspects. | Economics—Psychological aspects. | Neoliberalism. | Power (Social sciences) Classification: LCC HD75 .K54 2016 | DDC 338.9001/9—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016011129 ISBN: 978-1-138-65391-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-65392-4 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-62351-1 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by codeMantra

Contents

Acknowledgements Preface

vii ix

1 Introduction 1 2 Power and psychology 22 3 Genealogies of the psychologisation of development interventions 43 4 The psychologisation of contemporary development interventions 58 5 The State and implementing subjectivities 76 6 A place for psychology in development? 97 7 Conclusions 118 Index

125

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Acknowledgements

The writing of this manuscript has not been an individual project. I am indebted to many who have helped along the way. First, to my informants, thank you for your time and trust in me in sharing your stories and lives. They stay with me in each step I take. I hope these words do justice to your ­day-­to-day heroic pursuits in such an unjust world. To my colleagues here at the University of Melbourne and the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University; thank you. Specifically Professor Jon Altman for stretching my mind and being such a trailblazer in his scholarship. I would like to thank all those who attended the 2015 ‘Decolonizing Development: Narratives and Practices’ workshop held at the Australian National University, 6–7 May 2015 for all their insightful comments on parts of a paper used within this book. In particular I would like to thank Dr Zuleika Arashiro, Associate Professor Alastair Greig, Dr Fiona Jenkins and Carlos Morreo. Thanks also to Amanda Gilbertson for kindly reading drafts, and Professor Andy Dawson for his help in the choice of title and review of the manuscript plans. I am also grateful to Professor Ian Parker, the editor of this Routledge series, for his belief in the importance of this manuscript, and to Dr China Mills, Professor Thomas Teo and Professor Desmond Painter for their generous comments on my earlier drafts.To my DPhil supervisors, Dr Sabina Alkire and Dr Alessandra ­Giuffrida, thank you both for your belief, guidance and care over the years. I hope you will be happy to see the doctorate work contribute to this printed book. To my family and friends holding me from home, thank you for loving me from afar, for supporting me in this adventure and not forgetting me each time I would disappear across the oceans. I am also grateful to my

viii Acknowledgements

fellow colleagues from Queen Elizabeth House. To the Loft family, are there words? The world is truly a better place because of you.To Western Rd, thank you for keeping me grounded and sane. I could not have asked for a better bunch of people to share a home with. What fun and adventures we have had together.

Preface

The term ‘development’ is deceptively simple. This book complicates and deepens our understanding of the term, to show how commonsense assumptions about the way it operates in theory and in practice are not only misleading but dangerous. Elise Klein describes practical interventions in ‘development’ and traces through conceptual questions those interventions raised by working at the intersection of two quite different meanings of the term. Each of those different meanings is contested and unravelled in the course of the book. On the one hand, psychologists like to speak of child ‘development,’ and this first meaning is signalled in the title of the book as the description of ‘developing minds,’ a description that is normative and so also pathologising. Each kind of ‘normal’ development, whether it is cognitive or emotional, is mindful of deviations from its path, deviations that are often treated by psychologists as forms of pathology. The book argues against the claims for any one single normative account of child development, and opens the way for us to appreciate the importance of valuing many different kinds of ‘psychologies.’ We move from a single, deceptively simple normative account to multiplicity and complexity in critical work. On the other hand, the term ‘development’ is freighted with the weight of history, a history which the West and Western psychology brings to bear on the way it thinks about the psychological development of its own children and those who are ‘othered,’ of children from ­non-­Western cultures. This brings to the fore a second meaning of ‘development’ in which the journey of the infant towards adulthood is used as a powerful metaphor to describe the development of nations, nations other to the West. Now we notice that the phrase ‘developing minds’ refers not only to the ostensibly neutral story

x Preface

of child psychology but also to the activity of those who would seek to ‘develop’ those who are not yet fully mindful of their future adult status and responsibilities. Here we come up against the intersection of power and neoliberalism. Power is at the heart of Western psychology. No child traces a ‘normal’ path of development today without the apparatus of the ­psy-­complex which invites them to think of themselves as beings separate and in competition with each other, and there is a heavy price to be paid by those who stray from that path, a vast array of labels for those who cannot or will not follow it. And this power is also at the heart of psychological stories of development which then enable psychology as a discipline itself to enter into the stories that are told about members of ‘other’ cultures. Developing Minds: Psychology, Neoliberalism and Power embeds its ­double-­critique of the theories and practices concerned with ‘developing minds’ in an innovative account of psychology and power. First, on the side of the critique, we learn how important ‘neoliberalism’ is as a globalised political–economic framing of the way that individuals and nations are forced to compete in the world, and to do that on a terrain that is itself, paradoxically, profoundly hostile to the flourishing of authentic individuality or to creative flowering of cultural difference. Second, on the side of intervention, we learn of new initiatives that offer alternatives to mainstream Western psychology, and which move ‘outwith’ that psychology to think differently about what ‘minds’ are and what they might do to develop themselves. Ian Parker University of Leicester

1

Introduction

On a dusty road that heads as far north as Timbuktu lies a village of around 400 people. Each person and family has their own story, their own beliefs, their own views and aspirations. On this particular day, however, all of this is forgotten. Burning down the dusty track are the four wheels carrying the development professional. They are coming to the village to talk about ‘development’ with the ‘community.’ This professional has travelled a long distance to be there in this village. They have left their own families and friends behind, donning the robe of the ‘professional’ with its flashy multilateral institutional logos, a passport that allows easy access to places across the world, as well as access to the funds and power to make or break the aspirations of those they come to assess. Sitting under the old baobab tree, the ‘community’ meets as part of the professional’s mandate to undertake ‘participatory methods’  – a way to understand ‘the challenges faced by the community.’ Then what follows are more questions and conversation by men, as the women watch the ‘needs of the community’ articulated before them. The interpreter sitting nearby and listening intently simplifies the messages to ensure ease of the interpretation process. They know that the professional cannot comprehend the full meanings of the explanations received. The interpreter also knows what the development professional wants to hear. A blue ballpoint pen hurriedly meets paper as the professional jots down what they can. Occasionally, the professional will nod their head and smile sympathetically, especially when they hear words that are familiar and favoured – words like ‘collaboration,’ ‘community involvement’ and ‘empowering.’ Afterwards, and with more

2 Introduction

professionals and interpreters arriving at the village from down the dusty road, with ideas and ‘better ways,’ a new ‘project’ magically appears. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, in a remote region of the Kimberley in North West Australia, another development intervention is taking place. ‘We are ­re-­engineering social norms,’ the manager says to the consultant. ‘Your job is to get the community onside with the program.’ The ‘community’ that is referred to has a long history with intervention.The first intervention was called ‘pacification’ by the colonial government, and the ‘killing time’ by locals. This was where pastoralists and the police force used any means necessary to remove Indigenous people from their homelands. Then came the gold rush, a time when murder and rape of Indigenous peoples by White miners was all too common. As the pastoralists and the settlers penetrated further across the Kimberley, acquiring land as they went, Indigenous people were forced into missions. The intervention site is a town now home to many of the families that endured these times, with the stories of horror fresh in their minds. The manager reminds the consultant that the community is dysfunctional: ‘the stick approach is necessary to ­re-­engineer these dysfunctional social norms. We need to help them get their lives back on track.You cannot have alcoholics bringing up children.’  The focus is to challenge the low unemployment and school attendance rates. But the professional misses the point that this is not for a lack of want; there are very few jobs available and the school is unfriendly to Indigenous kids who do not want to learn about Captain Cook anymore. Still, the development professional persists and, for those not obliging, disciplinary measures are used. These include compulsory income management and behavioural conditions on any state assistance, all so that the ­re-­engineering can continue. This is the development intervention. What these two stories show, one from Mali and one from Australia, is the way such interventions unfold. Both stories have been collected through my time as a ‘development professional.’ I will draw on subsequent research undertaken in both Mali and Australia later in this book. However, to begin, it is important to highlight through both these stories how the development intervention is contested. For example, who decides that the norms of Indigenous people in a remote Kimberley town need to be ­re-­engineered? ­Re-­engineered to what? Why is the stick approach appropriate? Why is the manager’s view deemed hegemonic? Where are the voices of Indigenous people in their planning? Turning to the Malian example, how has it come to be that the professional decides which ideas will ‘work’ and which will not? How has it come to pass that the development professional is the holder of resources and opportunity? Who is the ‘community’ and what do they really think?

Introduction  3

The development intervention While the project of development maintains a positive view of itself, the development studies literature is full of analyses showing how the development intervention is a site of contestation, oppression and continued maintenance of ruling classes and structures (Mignolo 2011; Mosse 2005; Quijano 2000; Mbembe 1999; Ferguson 1994; Hayter 1971). From colonisation through to imperialism and on to contemporary modernisation theories, doing development has always been interlinked with relations of power and hegemony. The ‘intervention’ is a site where relations of power and knowledge intersect with the lived realities of those ‘being developed.’ In this sense, the development intervention is never neutral; rather, it is a tool that privileges particular meanings over others and reproduces embedded systems of power, which directly affects the lived reality and ­well-­being of the ‘recipients of development assistance.’ Anthropologists of development have long held this view. Specifically, Olivier de Sardan (2005) argues that development policy and programmes support some groups’ meanings and logics while simultaneously reducing space for the expression of the logics and meanings of other groups. In the case of development policy, ‘progress,’ ‘development’ and ‘­well-­being’ are all contested terms especially because they are generally defined through a Western lens, often conflicting with other worldviews.Yet Western definitions of terms are hegemonic in development policy, and so Indigenous notions of development endure alterity. Whether disciplinary or supportive in intent, the process of development policy and related interventions involves control over the interpretation of events and providing opportunities for some aspirations while blocking others (Mosse 2004). Development discourse underpinning development interventions sets out the rules of the game of ‘development.’ Development discourse concerns a particular set of relations, established between institutions, ­socio-­economic processes, forms of knowledge, technological factors and so on – [which] define the conditions under which objects, concepts, theories and strategies can be incorporated into the discourse. (Escobar 1995: 87) These discursive relations then inform who can speak, and from what position, according to what theory of change (Escobar 1995). To complicate matters more, development discourse does not necessarily translate directly and purely into interventions in a linear, managed fashion. This is because the intervention is not uniform, instead being a network of actors, including individuals, organisations and communities. Locating the intervention’s

4 Introduction

boundaries temporally and spatially is also a challenge. The development intervention framework is complex and can be contradictory in its aims and practice. The contrary nature of interventions is shown by David Mosse (2005) through the example of ‘good governance.’ As a current principle deployed within development discourse, good governance can be found to mean both ownership and conditionality, privatisation as well as democratisation, Western modernisation yet also ­post-­development, decentralisation and centralisation (Mosse 2005). Not only do such contradictions cause one’s head to spin, a seemingly simple concept as ‘good governance’ shows that: the practices of development actors are not governed by policy prescription, but generated by very different and diverse administrative, political or ­social-­relational logics which are concealed by rationalising policy. Alternatively put, because the ordering principles of global policy have to be translated into the intentions, goals and ambitions of the diverse individual and institutional actors they bring together  – whether these are national politicians, international experts, middle managers, bureaucrats, clinicians, technicians or NGO workers and field staff – they ‘cannot shape actual practice in the way that they claim.’ (Mosse 2005: 22–23, original emphasis included) Despite the complexity of development, in the world of development interventions, there is a need for clarity and certainty (Mowles 2010; Mosse 2005). Projects and programmes require logic, a coherent story that will deliver results. Cause and effect must neatly compute into log frames, theories of change, monitoring and evaluation frameworks and risk management matrices. This can only be achieved in particular framing, and some narratives and discourses are simply easier to execute within this environment than others. Specifically, ‘methods are reductive and they tilt power relationships in favour of donors and managers who sit at a distance from the work, because they privilege generalised, ­non-­contestable accounts of what is and is not happening’ (Mowles 2010: 767). Thus, there are some discourses, processes and structures that, while continuously changing and never static, always, at least in some latest iteration, prevail. Tracing prevailing logics of development interventions show they do not always help those they intend. The Western discourse of progress and development endures because it is firmly situated in an unequal global structure of power and exploitation. Development has long been criticised as a project of Western hegemony that is intended to maintain the status quo of the global economy and political power (Escobar 1995; Ferguson 1994). Since colonisation, populations around the world have been impacted by the domination of Western global powers. Initially it was through the conquest of territory,

Introduction  5

followed by the exploitation of labour and resources that continue today. During this time there have been myriad interventions in which the subjects of these interventions have needed to contest and negotiate their encounter with the development project (Escobar 1995).This has been under the wider project of modernisation. Today, some argue that aid is used to appease the poor, while oppressive trade relations continue to exploit poor farmers, never offering them a real chance to get a level footing (Chakrabarti and Dhar 2009; Maertens and Swinnen 2009). Furthermore, the maintenance of the global market economy, some argue, could never create equality or even a reduction in inequality. Instead, capitalism needs the global division of labour that underpins the race of capital accumulation through cheap labour and resources (Harvey 2005; Munck 2002). It is a main argument of this book that the broad canon of Western psychological expertise as a product of Western modernity has been largely accepted into development practice without much hesitation or scrutiny. It is therefore the aim of this work to examine the use of Western psychological expertise as a technology of furthering hegemony and prevailing logics within development, where Western psychological expertise is a technology to reproduce particular processes of power and control.This book will do this by first examining the supposition that Western psychology is universal, overlooking and undervaluing the plurality of psychologies. Second, this book will examine the psychopolitics in which Western psychological expertise is deployed as a ‘technology’ within the development industries, in order to shape the subjectivities of the Global South towards neoliberal and racialised ends. Third, this book will explore possible avenues of how the ‘psychological’ could be relevant within development and beyond.

The changing focuses of development policy and interventions Underpinning development interventions are systems of knowledge regarding what development and related policies mean, although this knowledge is not embodied in the actors of development (institutions and people) in a simple way. Knowledge requires constant translation by diverse actors such as institutions, managers, field agents, consultants and community leaders (Mosse 2004).Therefore, we can think of knowledge being used horizontally (across development actors related to the state, economy and the community) and also vertically (from actors and policies at a macro level of development, to the micro level). These systems of knowledge have changed over the years. Historically, development was seen as a structural process, where the focus centred on the social, economic and political organisation of society. Consequently,

6 Introduction

development interventions focused on the implementation of structural processes such as good governance, infrastructure, aid, access to education, health, sanitation and continued economic growth. Recently, there has been a focus on human agency, on the actions that individuals and collective groups undertake, as a focal point for development. The World Bank’s annual World Development Report (WDR) shows this trend very well (see Box 1.1). The shift in the focus of development policy from structure to the dialectic between structure and agency can be attributed to a number of factors. First, this trajectory has been influenced by the work of social scientists from behavioural economics, human development, anthropology and sociology, who have shown how actors’ perspectives are central to studies of social change and social development (Narayan 2009; Sen 2009, 1999; Alkire 2008a; Batiwala 2007; Mahmood 2005; Nussbaum 2001; Kabeer 1999; Dreze and Sen 1995; Jackson and Karp 1990). Such approaches showed that not

Box 1.1:  The Changing Focus of the World Bank World Development Reports The World Bank, the premier development bank, provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes. In recent years, the Bank has tried to set the agenda for development by branching out into the fields of human development, gender, environmental sustainability, technology, health and education, and its World Development Reports have been influential in setting the global development agenda. Table  1.1 below shows the predominantly structural focus of the last three decades. Only recently has there been a shift towards more human-centred and agency-based approaches to development. Where a report’s focus is described as ‘mixed’ this refers to the renewed focus of the dialectic between structure and agency, instead of a focus on structure alone. In 1980, the focus on human agency interrupted the largely structural focus mainly because of the work of Amartya Sen and the profound impact his writings were having in that time period. Specific chapters on agency and empowerment appeared in the reports for the years 2006 and 2012. The 2000 report was written specifically on empowerment but was changed at the last moment to be on ‘poverty,’ in which empowerment was the focus of one out of the three sections and in which it was defined as ‘facilitating empowerment by making state institutions more responsive to poor people and removing social barriers that exclude women, ethnic and racial groups’ (World Bank 2000: 3). The other two sections were on structural policies, clouding the focus on agency.

Introduction  7 Table 1.1 Year

Title of report

Focus of the report

1978

Prospects for Growth and Alleviation of Poverty Structural Change and Development Policy Poverty and Human Development National and International Adjustment Agriculture and Economic Development Management in Development Population Change and Development International Capital and Economic Development Trade and Pricing Policies in World Agriculture Industrialization and Foreign Trade Public Finance in Development Financial Systems and Development Poverty The Challenge of Development Development and the Environment Investing in Health Infrastructure for Development Workers in an Integrating World From Plan to Market The State in a Changing World Knowledge for Development Entering the 21st Century Attacking Poverty Building Institutions for Markets Sustainable Development in a Dynamic World Making Services Work for Poor People A Better Investment Climate for Everyone Equity and Development Development and the Next Generation Agriculture for Development Reshaping Economic Geography Development and Climate Change Conflict, Security and Development Gender Equality and Development Jobs Risk and Opportunity Mind, Society and Behaviour

Structural

1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000–2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

Structural Mixed Structural Structural Structural Structural Structural Structural Structural Structural Structural Structural Mixed Structural Structural Structural Structural Structural Structural Mixed Mixed Mixed Structural Structural Structural Structural Mixed Mixed Structural Structural Mixed Mixed Mixed Structural Mixed Mixed

8 Introduction

including agency and overlooking the dialectic between agency and structure disregards the discursive nature of individual agents negotiating their lives at psychological, collective and institutional levels (Long 2001). Second, the trend towards participatory development techniques in development policy and interventions also impacted this shift (Chambers 1997). Finally, development policy has shifted focus towards individual agency because of the increasing individualisation of economic relations brought about through neoliberal ideologies. Yet, as I will further explain below and in Chapter 3, the focus on the individual through the lens of neoliberal ideology has had dire consequences for agency, freedom and justice.

The capability approach and putting humans at the centre of development Amartya Sen and other scholars, through the capability approach, have been influential in shifting development policy and practice to consider the centrality of human agency (Crocker 2009; Sen 2002, 1999, 1995; Nussbaum 2001).This scholarship has had a great deal of traction in development policy and practice. Within this approach, social arrangements are viewed in relation to their ability to expand human freedoms on two levels: freedoms of opportunity and freedoms of process and agency (Sen 1999). Such a conclusion emerged after Sen (1979) showed how contemporary political and moral philosophical writings on equality did not sufficiently answer the fundamental question ‘inequality of what?’ Sen (1995) argued that any theory of social arrangements ‘that has stood the test of time seems to demand equality of something – something that is regarded as particularly important in that theory’ (12). Sen engages works from contemporary political and moral philosophy to argue that theories that understand equality through resources fail to understand and critically examine the relevance of such resources to ­well-­being. Sen’s argument is that any focus on resources overlooks the heterogeneity of people and the many different ways in which equality can be judged. Also, by just focusing on particular resources (e.g. liberty or economic resources) it is not clear how persons with different abilities are able to convert such resources into gain (Sen 1995). Sen proposed as his central thesis that equality should instead be assessed in terms of human freedoms, where human freedoms are not just the achievement of functionings that people value or have reason to value but also the ability of people to pursue them in the first place. In this perspective we can understand functionings as actual beings and doings (e.g. being nourished, riding a bike, being educated, being healthy, etc.). The capability is the real ability to achieve sets of functionings (e.g. the ability to be nourished, the ability to ride a bike, the ability to be educated, the ability to be healthy, etc.).

Introduction  9

The ability aspect of Sen’s notion of freedom is complemented by a focus on agency. Agency to Sen is to ensure that there is freedom for p­ eople to achieve particular outcomes if they are desired and valued. Sen (1999) states that, ‘­people have to be seen … as being actively involved – given the ­opportunity – in shaping their own destiny, and not just as passive recipients of the fruits of cunning development programs’ (53). Agency is thus the ability to act on values, or as Sen puts it: ‘what a person is free to do and achieve in pursuit of whatever goals or values he or she regards as important’ (Sen 1985: 203). To Sen (1999), agency is observable at both the individual level (e.g. acting on what one values or has reason to value) and the collective level (e.g. democratic deliberation, public reasoning and collective movements). At the collective level, Sen calls for participatory public deliberation as being fundamental, and a ‘procedural rather than a normative response’ (Alkire 2002: 143). The capability approach provides a way to evade ­top-­down managerial approaches that are often part of the development bureaucracy, and are often at the expense of individual and collective process freedoms. Instead, the capability approach requires ‘that the construction of public interventions is to be achieved via the confrontation of a plurality of informational bases and normative references’ (Bonvin 2014: 12). In other words, the capability approach requires public deliberation in the formation and execution of policies with those actors that are directly impacted by the policy. While Sen uses a narrow definition of agency, focusing mainly on agency that is purposeful and goal directed (Klein 2014a), the contribution made via Sen’s commitment to process freedoms being at the heart of all processes of development and social change is significant. The proposition is that ‘social arrangements should be primarily evaluated according to the extent of freedom people have to promote or achieve functionings they value’ (Alkire 2008b: 28). The capability approach has led to a more ‘human centred’ focus in development. ­Mahbub-­ul-Haq of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and founder of the Human Development Report, invited Sen to help develop the very first Human Development Index. This index was the first of its kind to measure all nation states in ways that go beyond income, for example, also including life expectancy and education. Later this measure was improved by Sabina Alkire and James Foster (2011), who created the ­Multi-­Dimensional Poverty Measure that allows states and global institutions to include measures of valued capabilities instead of income measures. With the focus on human agency in development policy, the psychological domain becomes an obvious area for inquiry. However, how the psychological domain is understood and researched is also important. This book examines this issue, focusing on the role psychological expertise has in how subjectivities and agency are constructed to fit in with broader regimes of power such as neoliberal governmentality.

10 Introduction

Development and neoliberalism In recent years, economic and knowledge systems around the world have been influenced by the rise of neoliberalisation. The structural attributes of neoliberalism form the ‘rules of the game’ and stress the efficiency of market competition, the role of individuals in determining economic outcomes and the reduction of the role of the state as caretaker of the market economy, leading to distortions associated with government intervention and regulation of markets (Palley 2005; Mitchell 2004). According to Hamann (2009), the structural element of neoliberalism is led by a distorted vision of individual freedom whereby actors are ‘trying to determine the conditions within or out of which individuals are able to freely conduct themselves’ (54). Contrary to the ideal theoretical model of neoliberalism, which maintains that state intervention is obsolete in an ideal ‘­market-­based’ society, neoliberalism as it actually exists involves mass regulation by the state. This regulation has shifted from regulating for social protection to regulating for the market (Standing 2014, 2011; Harvey 2005). Indeed, while neoliberal ideology underscores the ideal of individual freedom, state regulation in the neoliberal era can be extremely paternalistic (Cahill 2014). Most notable is how neoliberal and libertarian thinking attribute poverty and the need for support to the fault of individuals, leading to the disciplining of the undeserving poor through austerity and punitive measures (Wacquant 2009). Because the market is believed to be able to restore social and economic equilibrium, ­socio-­political factors in the creation of poverty, inequality and disadvantage are denied. Poverty and disadvantage are thus neatly explained as a failure on the part of the individual. Such a sentiment holds that social support creates dependency, and so policy should target vulnerable groups with conditionalities and sanctions ‘for failing to act in an autonomous, responsible manner’ (Lawrence 2005: 41). Interestingly, the capability approach was not created as a theory to explain social phenomena per se, instead being designed to evaluate and conceptualise social phenomena, complementing other disciplinary p­ erspectives (Robeyns 2006). Consequently, the capability approach has no specific theory of political economy, where the capability approach can be consistent with neoliberal and neoclassical iterations of development and human flourishing. Because of this, the capability approach can be misused to support the neoliberal tendency to acknowledge social structures and power in the shaping of people’s lived reality. This includes the reconfiguring of the state’s role to encourage (at best) individuals to be responsible for their own development (Sayer 2012). What this could lead to is the capability approach being used as a ‘humanistic cover for the neoliberal naturalisation of capitalist structures of domination and exploitation’ (Sayer 2012: 593).

Introduction  11

Policy and interventions in the neoliberal era Development interventions in a time of neoliberalism mean that development policy and practice is oriented in varying degrees towards market ­regulation and individual responsibility (Harvey 2005). In this vein, the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) were a suite of neoliberal policies designed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the 1980s. SAPs were imposed on countries across Africa, South America and parts of Asia. To take Mali as an example, the neoliberal policies of structural adjustment imposed on Mali in the 1980s under the instructions of the World Bank and the IMF were crippling not just for the economy but for the social development of the country (Easterly 2005; Bratton et al. 2002; ­Brunet-­Jailly 1992; Nellis and Kikeri 1989). Mohamed Marouani and Marc Raffinot (2004) recorded 48 different policies implemented by the IMF and World Bank in Mali between 1982 and 1996, promoting a focus on fiscal deficit, monetary policy, trade liberalisation and privatisation of state assets. The legacies of these policies continue today, and it is still evident that in Mali they contributed to the growing unemployment and rising inequality experienced by people, especially the poor (Moseley et al. 2010). Specifically, since the 1980s, with the introduction of the initial SAPs primarily focused on the fiscal deficit, the market as an institution continued to widely fail the majority of Mali’s population because it was not supplemented by appropriate social investments and policies (Ahmed and L ­ ipton 1997). These policies included multiple government reforms that were intended to encourage Mali to move towards a more ‘liberal’ economy with ­market-­oriented economic policies, more efficient use of prices, and greater openness to international trade (Koenig and Diarra 1998). Structural adjustment not only sought to develop private sector markets but also recklessly dismantled the social policies of the state, which had been put in place at the initiative of the ­post-­independence socialist government of Modibo Keïta (Herbst 1990). More specifically, John Nellis (1986) argues that, because of the SAPs implemented in Mali, cumulative public enterprise losses were a significant proportion of the economy’s deficit by the mid-1980s.The impact of these policies on the state intensified, as high levels of taxation on profits, as well as government requirements to transfer a large portion of ­post-­tax profits to its budget, led to reduced funds for reinvestment. Further still, Claudia Buchmann (1996) found that in assuming that individual agency alone was enough to ‘innovate’ under difficult economic times, the SAPs severely impacted the social development of the marginalised in Mali. For example, women experienced reduced access to education, healthcare, and ­income-­generating activities and an increase in their children’s mortality rates.

12 Introduction

Although international aid from predominantly Western countries (although also China and India) has tried to right the wrongs of structural adjustment, social and economic inequality remains. Mali is still one of the poorest countries in the world and is dogged by extremely low literacy rates and life expectancy, high infant mortality rates and low economic growth. While we cannot assign all the blame for inequality in Mali to the SAPs, these policies certainly changed the wiring of the Malian economy dramatically, destabilising production and labour in the process (Moseley et al. 2010; Koenig and Diarra 1998). The penetration of the modern market economy erodes social relations regarding production and exchange (Bakshi 2009). Furthermore, the impact of the opening up of Mali to the global economy can be seen in the deepening inequality between the middle class around the cities and rural Malians, as well as in the contestation between individualist and collectivist worldviews (Klein 2014b).

Development policy today Given the history of the development intervention, and the increasing focus on individual agency in development, the psychological domain has become more and more important. On one level, the inclusion of the psychological domain in development studies can be helpful in conceptualising people as fuller beings, as we seek to move beyond the binary categories of deprivation level, gender, ethnicity, income group, etc. Yet, as the contemporary development intervention is firmly placed within wider structures of power and domination, there is a serious risk that political and economic actors could explicitly or implicitly target the psychological domain for instrumental purposes. For example, in 2015 the World Bank released its annual WDR, titled ‘Mind and Society.’ In a press release just before the report was released, the Bank explicitly articulated the report’s aim to ‘look more deeply inside the economic actor, at the individual’s mental processes.’The report demonstrates the instrumentality of targeting the psychological domain, specifically where ‘new policy ideas based on a richer view of ­decision-­making can yield high economic returns’ (World Bank Group 2015: 1). Furthermore, social policy around subjective ­well-­being and happiness has enjoyed attention of late. On one level, it is indeed quite an achievement for policy to move away from incentivising productivity and towards people being happy. A key issue with this happiness focus, however, is that by focusing just on happiness we miss the objective reality of people’s circumstances. After all, while some poor people are undoubtedly happy, if we focus exclusively on this then we fail to properly take account of the injustice of their poverty. At a national or international policy level, a focus on happiness risks overlooking

Introduction  13

and undervaluing the need to change the objective reality of structural oppression and deprivation. Or worse still, the focus on happiness actually becomes a strategy of policy to overlook structural injustice and oppression. Second, and relating to the point above, the focus on building ­self-­efficacy and the belief in oneself is also becoming a key focus of policy. Yet there is only a small step between ‘believe in yourself and you will make change in your life’ and the neoliberal premise that ‘we all need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.’ The social Darwinism characteristic of neoliberal thinking sees the individual as being responsible for his or her own change, voiding processes of power and structural oppression. Finally, the psychological focus in policy can play a role in the manipulation of aspirations and ­decision-­making, specifically to shape the aspirations of marginalised actors that resist capitalism’s status quo. We see this for example through the use of conditionalities in government payments to Indigenous Australians.These examples will be explored in more detail later in the book.

Critical psychology In recent years, in contexts as diverse as South Africa, Latin America, Europe, Australia and Asia, scholars have used the term critical psychology to destabilise mainstream Western psychological expertise (Teo 2015; Dafermos et al. 2013; Gordo and De Vos 2010; Hook 2004; Parker 1999). Critical psychology as a theory examines the moral and political implications of psychological expertise (Austin and Prilleltensky 2001) and the scholarship has come from both inside and outside the discipline (Dafermos and Marvakis 2006; Parker 1999).There have always been ‘radical’ scholars from inside the discipline, who questioned the ‘cognitive science’ approach to mainstream psychology using phenomenology, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Marxism and ­post-­structuralism in their work (Schraube and Osterkamp 2013; Parker 1999). On the outside, scholars have also engaged with Marxism and ­post-­structuralism as well as feminist theory, queer theory, ­post-­colonial and decolonial theory to situate psychological expertise in broader processes of power, domination and control (Dafermos and Marvakis 2006; Parker 1999). In his paper titled ‘Critical Psychology:A geography of intellectual engagement and resistance,’ Thomas Teo proposes three important areas common in critical psychology scholarship. I will review them now as these three areas have direct impact when thinking about the use of Western psychological expertise within development interventions. First, critical psychology rejects the notion of ‘objective facts’ and universal truth found in much of mainstream psychology. Concomitantly, critical psychology scholars contest the ways in which psychology has constructed itself as a neutral tool of positive ‘science’ with matching epistemological methodologies.

14 Introduction

Second, the examination of power is also central to critical psychology. In Western psychology, power is executed in two ways: in knowledge production (what is known to be true) and how knowledge is used to present some ‘truths’ over other possible forms of knowledge (hegemony of knowledge) (Hook 2005). In response, critical psychology examines psychology as the politics of knowledge and subjectivity. From this vantage point, critical psychology scholars seek to understand how Western psychological expertise produces particular subjectivities and privileges some knowledge systems over others. This hegemony can silence other knowledge systems. The dominance of Western concepts of the self is a case in point, where the global exportation of W   estern psychological knowledge comes from the belief that the Western subject is universal. This knowledge becomes the status quo of  ‘psychology,’ making the Western knowledge system appear to be natural. Having such a benchmark of which the ‘human’ can be judged against can induce two undesirable outcomes. Initially, with the hyper focus on cognitive function, the political, historical and social processes become less important, if not background noise to human agency. This can lead mainstream psychology to reduce ‘­socio-­political circumstances in favour of an analysis which prioritises purely psychological terms of reference, which describe relations of power, such as racism, in ways which suggest a purely internal phenomenon, that is somehow natural, inevitably occurring, cut off from the social and political circumstances that give rise to it’ (Hook 2004: 20). In addition to the first point, the benchmark of the normal human constructed and developed is through the standpoint of a very particular subject of enquiry – a white, Western, heterosexual, ­able-­bodied male. Through doing so, the benchmark of the ‘normal human psychology’ marginalises the many ‘others’ that deviate from or contest the hegemonic standpoint (Burman 2008). Psychology and the knowledge it produces is always profoundly political, and deeply involved in the reproduction and extension of relations of power (Collins 2004). Third, and related to above, critical psychology examines the facilitation of power and how the use of psychological knowledge is inherently connected to the broader process of domination and control. This is not just about how the psychologist relates to their patient, or how and who the psychology researcher conducts their enquiry on, but also about the kinds of knowledge psychologists produce, how they prioritise some views over others, and how they gloss over larger structures of power. Furthermore, critical psychology pays attention to the ends to which particular subjectivities are constructed. This is pertinent when thinking about development, as in the eyes of policymakers there are some subjectivities more conducive to ‘development,’ depending of course on how ‘development’ is defined. Such examples can be seen in thinking about development as economic d­ evelopment  – where subjectivities being shaped to make effective and efficient choices

Introduction  15

according to growth logic becomes a focus. In the context of development interventions, it becomes important to ask: who is producing psychological knowledge, and for whom is this knowledge being produced? For what ends is this knowledge being used? Whose development? And who is defining the development and designing interventions? When thinking about the rapid yet indifferent uptake of psychological knowledge in development interventions, it becomes a matter of urgency to think critically about the intersectionality of power and hegemony, especially in relation to global economic and political processes. Yet given the power and domination inherent in the development project, it is also important to ask whether there is any role for examining the psychological domain in development. Some critical psychology scholars such as Derek Hook have indicated that there is a role for critical psychology in such a project, specifically that critical psychology should constitute an investigation of the relation between power and psychology, that it should be concerned both with the critique of oppressive use of psychology and with enabling potentially transformative forms of practice (from within psychology, or from without) which disrupt imbalances of power and which have social equality as their goal. (Hook 2005: 477) Critical psychology therefore invites scholarship to think about how psychological knowledge can be used for projects of liberation and justice such as the reclamation of Indigenous psychologies.

About this book While critical psychology is a burgeoning field of academic inquiry, there has not been much research on the intersectionality of psychology and development studies beyond the notable exceptions of Burman (2008), Howell (2011), Fernando (2014), Mills (2014) and a few others. In this book, I attempt to address this gap by applying approaches used by critical psychology scholars to the processes of development. In so doing, I ultimately hope to sketch out a framework for sharper thinking about psychological expertise in development studies, especially within the neoliberal era. Specifically, this book touches on three important themes of critical psychology. First, I ask how we define ‘psychology’ in the context of development. This question is pursued in Chapter 2 by exploring the ‘psychological’ concepts of dusu (internal motivation) and ka da I yèrè la (­self-­belief  ) expressed by people living on the urban fringe of Bamako. In particular, I illuminate

16 Introduction

the tensions these concepts of the psyche have with much of the canon of Western psychological expertise. I will then explore a critical psychological approach to understanding the psychological domain, which draws on ­post-­structuralist ideas of subjectivity and power. I also engage with ­post-­colonial ideas of the ontological turn and hybridity, as potential ways to complement and not reductively assimilate Indigenous psychologies. Second, I examine the role of power in psychological knowledge and how it reproduces not just Western psychological knowledge but hegemonic ideas of development. In Chapter 3, I do this by exploring the development of Western psychological expertise alongside the expansion of development discourse more broadly, fleshing out how both are apparatuses of Western modernity. In Chapter 4, examples of contemporary development interventions using psychological expertise are examined, including the proposition put forth in the 2015 WDR. In Chapter 5, I explore paternalistic justifications given for intervening in development interventions with psychological expertise. Here, the psychological focus in policy plays out in the state’s manipulation of individual’s aspirations and ­decision-­making  – ­illustrated through the case of Indigenous policy in Australia.Through the use of behavioural conditionalities in government assistance to Indigenous peoples, the Australian state is actively trying to shift social norms. In past Indigenous policy in Australia, state assistance was used to supplement the livelihoods of Indigenous people who chose to focus their labour in the traditional sector (and resist complete immersion into capitalist Australia). However, successive neoliberal governments now use these very payments to coerce people to be more fully emerged in the capitalist economy. The conditions now put on these payments – such as getting a ‘real job’ or training for capitalist ­employment – leave little option for those aspiring towards hybridity. It is thus demonstrated how the psychological domain can become the site of racial and ­class-­based subjugation. Third, I draw on critical psychology to explore the role of psychology as a productive knowledge process in development studies. Specifically, in Chapter 6, I explore the ideas of liberation psychology and examine the proposition of how this new space may just open the door for radical new ­post-­development projects.

Case studies I draw extensively on two pieces of research to situate my discussion empirically. The first is from a study on the urban fringe of Bamako in Mali and the second is my analysis of Indigenous development policy in Australia. While these two studies may seem at first to be unrelated, both give unique insights into the contemporary development intervention when thinking about the

Introduction  17

psychological domain.The Malian study offers an important insight into psychological concepts as conceptualised by people themselves, and one of the aspects that makes it particularly interesting is that the descriptions of these concepts do not necessarily translate into concepts found in much of the Western psychological canon. The inductive mixed methods approach used in this research was carried out over a total of six months between December 2009 and March 2011. I returned to the study site in November 2011 as a ­double-­checking exercise that included meeting with people included in the initial data collection, as well as some new participants, to discuss the significance of the results and clarify the definitions of concepts that had emerged. While my methods were both qualitative and quantitative, the qualitative methods comprised the majority of my fieldwork. The qualitative methods used included 26 life histories (15 were women, 11 were men), 4 focus groups (1 each with men, women, male youth and female youth), 25 key informant interviews (5 were women, 20 were men) and another 30 interviews conducted during the ­double-­checking exercise (16 were women, 14 were men). The research on Indigenous policy in Australia focuses on the role of the state, policy and the legitimisation of coloniality within the neoliberal framework. This case study has come together through discourse analysis and observations of the implementation of policy using psychological expertise in two remote towns in Northern Australia from November 2013 through to July 2015. I followed critical discourse analysts such as Fairclough (1995) in viewing discourse as the ‘use of language as a form of social practice, and discourse analysis [as the] analysis of how texts work within sociocultural practice’ (7). As Gill (2000) points out, these narratives are usually relayed as a way of not saying something else. Critical Discourse Analysis became an important tool in analysing policies, texts and government documents as I sought to better understand the stories of the contemporary Australian settler state, and how these texts have been developed into policy to target the psychologies of Australian Indigenous people.

About me I do not intend to present an ­anti-­psychology text here. I do, however, intend to think critically about the use of knowledge in the highly contested project of development. Whether ­policy ­makers, academics and practitioners know it or not, development does not just do projects but also creates and shapes subjectivities. It always has done – since colonialism, through to the present day. Therefore, thinking critically about psychology is necessary in order to illuminate the inconsistencies of logic and analyse the deployment of power. Western psychological expertise is, after all, a body of knowledge that, in

18 Introduction

presenting itself as not so different from a natural science, carries a silent promise of universality. Appearing as a neutral science protects large amounts of Western psychological expertise under the cloak of legitimacy.The ­increasing focus on human agency, behaviour and ­decision-­making makes it imperative to analyse the promise of psychology and to interrogate alternatives. I do not come from within the discipline of psychology but am rather on the fringes – a development studies scholar with a deep interest in how social change is conceived and executed by various actors. My critique will be perceived by some as being from the margins, yet there is a certain freedom from being on the margins – one can see certain overarching assumptions underpinning such a broad and diverse canon as that found within the domain of ‘Western psychological expertise’ that may collude with processes of power in development. Many scholars within psychology and on the fringes have pointed out that the analysis of power is missing in much of Western psychological expertise and scholarship.The contribution of this book is to illuminate tension when this Western psychology expertise is applied to development.

References Ahmed, Ismail, and Michael Lipton. 1997. ‘Impact of Structural Adjustment on Sustainable Rural Livelihoods: A Review of Literature,’ IDS Working Paper, 62:1–33. Alkire, Sabina. 2002. Valuing Freedoms: Sen’s Capability Approach and Poverty Reduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Alkire, Sabina. 2008a. ‘Concepts and Measures of Agency,’ in K. Basu and R. Kanbur (eds), Arguments for a Better World: Essays in Honour of Amartya Sen, Volume 1: Ethics, Welfare and Measurement. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Alkire, Sabina. 2008b. ‘Using the Capability Approach: Prospective and Evaluative Analyses,’ in Flavio Comim and Mozaffar Qizilbash (eds), The Capability Approach: Concepts, Measures and Applications, 26–50. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Alkire, Sabina, and James Foster. 2011. ‘Counting and Multidimensional Poverty Measurement,’ Journal of Public Economics, 95(7):11. Austin, Stephanie, and Isaac Prilleltensky. 2001. ‘Diverse Origins, Common Aims:The Challenges of Critical Psychology,’ Radical Psychology, 2(2). Bakshi, Rajni. 2009. Bazaars, Conversations and Freedom: For a Market Culture Beyond Greed and Fear. New York: Penguin Books. Batiwala, Srilatha. 2007. ‘Taking the Power out of Empowerment  – Experiential Account,’ Development in Practice, 17(4):557–565. Bonvin, ­Jean-­Michel. 2014. ‘Towards a More Critical Appraisal of Social Policies: The Contribution of the Capability Approach,’ ­Hans-­Uwe Otto and Holger Ziegler (eds). New York: Springer. Bratton, M., M. Coulibaly, and F. Machado. 2002. ‘Popular Views of the Legitimacy of the State in Mali,’ Canadian Journal of African Studies, 36(2):197–238. ­Brunet-­Jailly, J. 1992. ‘L’ajustement macroéconomique Mali et le secteur de la santé au Mali,’ in World Health Organization (ed.), Environnement ­Mactro-­economique et santé: avec etudes de cas dans les pays les plus demunis, 219–248.

Introduction  19

Buchmann, Claudia. 1996. ‘The Debt Crisis, Structural Adjustment and Women’s Education: Implications for Status and Social Development,’ International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 37(1):5–30. Burman, Erica. 2008. Developments: Child, Image, Nation. New York: Routledge. Cahill, Damien. 2014. The End of ­Laissez-­Faire?: On the Durability of Embedded Neoliberalism. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. Chakrabarti, Anjan, and ­Anup-­Kuma Dhar. 2009. Dislocation and Resettlement in Development. Oxford: Routledge. Chambers, Robert. 1997. Whose Reality Counts? Putting the First Last. London: ITDG Publishing. Collins, Anthony. 2004. ‘Theoretical Resources,’ in Critical Psychology, edited by Derek Hook, 1–23. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press. Crocker, David. 2009. Ethics of Global Development: Agency, Capability, and Deliberative Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dafermos, Manolis, and Athanasios Marvakis. 2006. ‘Critiques in Psychology  – ­Critical Psychology,’ Annual Review of Critical Psychology, 5:1–20. Dafermos, Manolis, Athanasios Marvakis, Mihalis Mentinis, Desmond Painter, and Sofia Triliva. 2013. ‘Critical Psychology in a Changing World: Building Bridges and Expanding the Dialogue,’ Annual Review of Critical Psychology, 10:1–35. Dreze, Jean, and Amartya Sen. 1995. India: Economic Development and Social Opportunity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Easterly, William. 2005. ‘What did Structural Adjustment Adjust? The Association of Policies and Growth with Repeated IMF and World Bank Adjustment Loans,’ Journal of Development Economics, 76(1):1–22. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. jdeveco.2003.11.005 (accessed 23 June 2016). Escobar, Arturo. 1995. Encountering Development: The Making and the Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Fairclough, Norman. 1995. Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. New York: Longman. Ferguson, James. 1994. The ­Anti-­Politics Machine: Development, Depoliticisation, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fernando, Suman. 2014. Mental Health Worldwide: Culture, Globalization and Development. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Gill, Rosalind. 2000. ‘Discourse Analysis,’ in M.W. Bauer and G. Gaskell (eds), Qualitative Researching with Text, Image and Sound, 172–190. London: Sage. Gordo,Á., and Jan DeVos. 2010.‘Psychologism, Psychologising and De-­Psychologisation,’ Annual Review of Critical Psychology, 8:3–7. Hamann, Trent. 2009. ‘Neoliberalism, Governmentality, and Ethics,’ Foucault Studies, 6:37–59. Harvey, David. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hayter, Teresa. 1971. Aid as Imperialism. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Herbst, J. 1990. ‘The Structural Adjustment of Politics in Africa,’ World Development, 18(7):949–958. Holzkamp, Klaus. 2013. ‘Psychology: Social ­Self-­understanding on the Reasons for Action in the Conduct of Everyday life,’ in Ernst Schraube and Ute Osterkamp (eds), Psychology from the Standpoint of the Subject, 233–341. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

20 Introduction

Hook, Derek. 2004. Critical Psychology. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press. Hook, Derek. 2005. ‘A Critical Psychology of the Postcolonial,’ Theory Psychology, 15(4):475–503. Howell, Alison. 2011. Madness in International Relations: Psychology, Security, and the Global Governance of Mental Health. Oxford: Routledge. Jackson, Michael, and Ivan Karp. 1990. ‘Introduction,’ in Michael Jackson and Ivan Karp (eds), Personhood and Agency: The Experience of Self and Other in African Cultures, 1–33. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Kabeer, Naila. 1999. ‘Resources, Agency, Achievements: Reflections on the Measurement of Women’s Empowerment,’ Development and Change, 30:435–464. Klein, Elise. 2014a. ‘Psychological Agency: Evidence from the Urban Fringe of ­Bamako,’ World Development, 64(C):642–653. Klein, Elise. 2014b. ‘Social Norms, Agency and Associations on The Urban Fringe of Bamako,’ West African Review, 24:1525–4488. Koenig, Dolores, and Tieman Diarra. 1998. ‘The Environmental Effects of Policy Change in the West African Savannah: Resettlement, Structural Adjustment and Conservation in Western Mali,’ Journal of Political Economy, no. 5. Lawrence, Rebecca. 2005. ‘Governing Warlpiri Subjects: Indigenous Employment and Training Programs in the Central Australian Mining Industry,’ Geographical Research, 43(1):40–48. Long, Norman. 2001. Development Sociology: Actor Perspectives. London: Routledge. Maertens, Miet, and Johan F.M. Swinnen. 2009. ‘Trade, Standards, and Poverty: Evidence from Senegal,’ World Development, 37(1):161–178. Available at: http://dx.doi. org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2008.04.006 (accessed 23 June 2016). Mahmood, Saba. 2005. Politics of Piety. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Marouani, Mohamed, and Marc Raffinot. 2004. ‘Perspectives on growth and poverty reduction in Mali,’ in Document de travail, edited by Unite de Recherché CIPRE: Institute de recherché pour le développement, Paris. Mbembe, Achille. 1999. ‘Getting out of the Ghetto: The Challenge of Internationalization,’ CODESRIA Bulletin, 3&4:1–3. Mignolo, Walter D. 2011. The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Durham: Duke University Press. Mills, China. 2014. Decolonizing Global Mental Health:The Psychiatrization of the Majority World. New York: Routledge. Mitchell, Katharyne. 2004. ‘Neoliberal Governmentality in the European Union: Education, Training, and Technologies of Citizenship,’ Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 24:389–407. Moseley,William, Judith Carney, and Laurence Becker. 2010. ‘Neoliberal Policy, Rural Livelihoods, and Urban Food Security in West Africa: A Comparative Study of The Gambia, Cote D’Ivoire and Mali,’ PNAS, 107(13):5774–5779. Mosse, David. 2004. ‘Is Good Policy Unimplementable? Reflections on the “Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice”,’ Development and Change, 35(4):639–671. Mosse, David. 2005. ‘Global Governance and the Ethnography of International Aid,’ in David Mosse and David Lewis (eds), The Aid Effect: Giving and Governing in International Development, 1–36. London: Pluto Press. Mowles, Chris. 2010. ‘Successful or Not? Evidence, Emergence, and Development Management,’ Development in Practice, 20(7):757–770.

Introduction  21

Munck, Ronaldo. 2002. Globalization and Labour: The New ‘Great Transformation.’ ­London: Zed Books. Narayan, Deepa. 2009. Moving Out of Poverty Study: An Overview. Washington, DC: World Bank. Nellis, John. 1986. ‘Public Enterprises in Sub Saharan Africa,’ edited by World Bank Discussion Paper. Nellis, John, and Sunita Kikeri. 1989. ‘Public Enterprise Reform: Privatization and the World Bank,’ World Development, 17(5):659–672. Available at: http://dx.doi. org/10.1016/0305-750X(89)90066-1 (accessed 23 June 2016). Nussbaum, Martha. 2001. Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Olivier de Sardan, Jean-­Pierre. 2005. Anthropology and Development: Understanding Contemporary Social Change. London: Zed Books. Palley, Thomas. 2005. ‘From Keynesianism to Neoliberalism: Shifting Paradigms in Economics,’ in Alfredo ­Saad-­Filho and Deborah Johnston (eds), Neoliberalism: A Critical Reader, 1–11. London: Pluto Press. Parker, Ian. 1999. ‘Critical Psychology: Critical Links,’ Annual Review of Critical ­Psychology, 1:3–18. Quijano, Anibal. 2000. ‘Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America,’ Nepantla Views from the South, (3):533–580. Robeyns, Ingrid. 2006. ‘The Capability Approach in Practice,’ The Journal of Political Philosophy, 14(3):351–376. Sayer, Andrew. 2012. ‘Capabilities, Contributive Injustice and Unequal Divisions of Labour,’ Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 13(4):580–596. Schraube, Ernst, and Ute Osterkamp (eds) 2013. Psychology from the Standpoint of the Subject: Selected Writings of Klaus Holzkamp. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Sen, Amartya. 1979. Equality of What? In Tanner Lecture on Human Value. Stanford: Stanford University. Sen, Amartya. 1985. ‘Wellbeing, Agency and Freedom. The Dewey Lectures,’ The ­Journal of Philosophy, 82(4):169–221. Sen, Amartya. 1995. Inequality Reexamined. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sen, Amartya. 1999. Development as Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sen, Amartya. 2002. Rationality and Freedom. United States of America: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Sen, Amartya. 2009. The Idea of Justice. London: Allen Lane, Penguin Books. Standing, Guy. 2011. The Precariat:The New Dangerous Class. London: Bloomsbury. Standing, Guy. 2014. A Precariat Charter: From Denizens to Citizens. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Teo, Thomas. 2015. ‘Critical Psychology: A Geography of Intellectual Engagement and Resistance,’ American Psychologist, 70(3):243–254. Wacquant, Loïc. 2009. Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity. Durham: Duke University Press. World Bank. 2000. World Development Report: Attacking Poverty. Washington, DC: World Bank. World Bank Group. 2015. World Development Report: Mind, Society, and Behavior. ­Washington, DC: The World Bank.

2

Power and psychology

That those development actors responsible for policy and related i­nterventions have delved into the world of psychology to inform new avenues of ‘development’ and ways of constructing the ‘intervention’ seems at one level quite obvious. This is because scholars of psychology have long argued that cognitive and subjective experiences are important for driving personal and social change (Bandura 1997, 1982), as well as contributing towards subjective well-­being (Ryan and Deci 2000). Yet Western notions of psychology are insufficient for dealing with the contestation involved in development and related policy and practice for two specific reasons. First, while psychological theories provide a deep conceptualisation of psychological agency, they face a set of problems relating to the tendency for such concepts to be universalised from studies and concepts arising from Western thought and lacking substantial research regarding their relevance in other cultural, social and political contexts (Stigler et al. 1990). Consequently, as Western psychological expertise is dominant, it can subjugate the production of knowledge and what is ‘known’ to be true when defining ‘psychology.’ Second, another set of problems arises when thinking critically about mainstream psychology and its use in development interventions. Psychological theories by and large have a deficit in theorising power in terms of social complexity and the process of research itself. Psychology presents itself uncritically and as detached from the wider processes of power and politics more generally. Coupled with the development intervention, another apparatus of power presenting itself as neutral or even a force for ‘good,’ these can be a dangerous duo. This chapter is dedicated to exploring what is meant by ‘psychology.’ To do this, I will draw on the case study of Bambara concepts of the self

Power and psychology  23

to help illustrate the tensions underpinning assumptions about the self and psyche within Western psychological expertise. I then outline some of the challenges associated with ‘Western psychological expertise’ when thinking about development interventions. Following from this, I propose alternative ideas of how psychology can be understood, akin to ideas of subjectivity and the ontological turn. Finally, the chapter examines how Western psychological knowledge is political and deployed within broader processes of power.

Bambara notions of self and agency In a neighbourhood on the urban fringe of Bamako, the capital city of Mali, purposeful agency  – specifically, certain initiatives both women and men undertook to improve their livelihoods – were central to people’s daily lives and improving personal and collective ­well-­being.We can think of this agency as purposeful and intentional in that it was directed towards what men and women in the neighbourhood called hèrè,1 which in Bambara loosely translates as ‘­well-­being’ or the ‘good life.’ Hèrè describes not just ­well-­being in the personal or immediate domain but also in the community domain, where the two are interlinked (respondents felt individual hèrè was related to other’s hèrè). Respondents were purposeful in their actions because they were working towards their hèrè. The inductive research initially explored mechanisms that were central to this purposeful agency of both men and women. After spending time in the field engaging with this question of purposeful action, two important concepts emerged as being central to both men and women’s intentional action and their understandings of personhood: dusu (loosely translated as internal motivation)2 and ka da I yèrè la (loosely translated as ­self-­belief).

1 Hèrè is Bambara for ‘good things,’ things not so much focused on materials, but happiness and a general sense of wellness in life. When asking about ­well-­being, it was the word hèrè that was used. People interviewed and in focus groups understood this concept, and no examples of what that could look like were used as a probe. The question was posed using Nièta when talking about the improvement of ­well-­being. Niè means ‘forward’ and ta means ‘go.’ 2 Writing about ka da I yèrè la and dusu is fraught. Nuance can be lost in translation where I have tried to articulate the inductive definitions of terms that have emerged in my research (by suggesting ka da I yèrè la and dusu may be understood as similar to ­self-­belief and internal motivation). Therefore, I am not claiming any absolute definition of ka da I yèrè la and dusu. Instead the descriptions there only carve out a space in which the actual definition would be situated. Like a road sign, I am pointing to a space to where one would find the absolute definition if desired. However, even if losing meaning in translation was not an issue, I would caution against the pursuit of absolute definitions. I argue, like Lacan (1977), that the quest to find an absolute definition would possibly be an infinite task as exact meanings of terms vary between people and always will, just as language, like all structures, changes through time and space.

24 Power and psychology

These concepts emerged time and time again when I asked about what was necessary for people to overcome hardship in their lives. I found that, for both men and women, the concepts of dusu and ka da I yèrè la were vitally important to their purposeful agency. The neighbourhood where this study was located is on the urban fringe of Bamako and is a site of major urbanisation. The economic and social ties of the neighbourhood overlap with those of the capital, which is only 15km away. Over 70 per cent of the people living in the neighbourhood were not born there, and had migrated from rural villages in Mali and abroad searching for work. The population mix results in myriad social relations, including relations of gender and age, where men and women, youth and adults have specific roles within the household and wider society. Further still, most people living in the neighbourhood struggled with limited opportunities, such as restricted access to education and material deprivation. There is also obvious inequality in the neighbourhood with rich families moving from Bamako to the neighbourhood to enjoy the ‘quieter life.’ The rich have built large, ­well-­resourced houses standing in stark contrast to the makeshift or dilapidated houses lived in by the poor. Despite such material hardship for most people living in the study site, the constructs of dusu and ka da I yèrè la had an intrinsic and instrumental value to respondents with differing ­socio-­economic characteristics (years at school, age, gender, household deprivation), and were believed to contribute to social change in the neighbourhood (see Klein 2014).

Dusu and ka da I yèrè la in people’s lives I begin with the two stories of Adama and Asa, who both lived in the study site.These stories illustrate how dusu and ka da I yèrè la are central to purposeful agency and the achievement of hèrè in the neighbourhood. Adama comes from the western region of Kayes. He was born into a family that in his words was ‘very very poor,’ quite different from his obvious wealth now. His father was a railroad worker and was away for long periods of time, which left his mother to look after him and his brother.Their mother struggled to provide enough food to feed her sons, so Adama and his brother had to work. This income eventually enabled Adama to go to school. While Adama was in his early school years, the president of Mali at the time, Modibo Keïta, visited Kayes with the presidents of Senegal and ­Mauritania. Local authorities asked students in the area to come and welcome the presidents and Adama was among these students. He explained to me the impact this moment had on his life: Because this was the first time we had seen an airplane in our lives, to see presidents in our lives, we were very curious to touch the plane. They allowed us to approach the plane and to touch it. At this time

Power and psychology  25

I saw the pilots, they were nicely dressed with nice pants and a cap. So when I went back home I told my mum, ‘Mum I saw a plane and some people were driving them and they were so nicely dressed and good at landing and taking off. So wonderful are these people, I want to become one of them.’ And so my mum said ‘You? How can you become a pilot? You come from a very poor family, your mum is poor and your dad is poor, you can never become a pilot. But if this is what you wish then I will pray to my God to help you become a pilot.’ As Adama grew up he continued to aspire to become a pilot. After he passed his 12th grade exam (after failing once before because he was too hungry to concentrate on the lessons), Adama applied for a traineeship in the air force and was accepted. When he first flew a plane by himself, he took a picture of his then deceased mother with him. It was important she was there with him when he did what she never thought possible. On telling his story, Adama’s only explanation of how he was able to achieve such things when his structural environment was stacked against him was because of dusu (internal motivation) and ka da I yèrè la (­self-­belief). Specifically, Adama said, ‘For people to improve their hèrè, I only have one word to explain this: ka da I yèrè la. People must believe in themselves and their potential; if they do this they can succeed.’ In a similar vein, in telling her life story, Asa, also from the study site, attributed her life outcomes to ka da I yèrè la and dusu. Asa grew up in Côte d’Ivoire and when she was ten her mother died. She lived with her grandmother in Mali until she was 15 years old, when she was married to her husband. They moved to the study site in search of masonry work for her husband. Asa joined a women’s association in order to supplement her husband’s income. The association was a group of women who pooled small amounts of money in a tauntin (revolving loan fund3) every week. The pooled money was lent in turn to each woman to begin a small business. When it was Asa’s turn she used the money to start a business selling shoes. She said this business was very successful and she paid back her loan to the association. However, one night, someone stole all of her shoes and she was left with nothing, her business destroyed. Asa referred to that moment as being one of the most devastating in her life. She said the only way she was able to get through such a hard time and find other ways to support her family was her ka I da yèrè la and dusu: ‘I lost all my stuff, but I did not lose my ­self-­belief. That is why I could undertake other activities such as washing for people and other things

3 A tauntin is a method whereby small amounts of money are pooled and then lent out to one member at a time to start a small business and act like an informal banking system (see Brand 2001).

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that I love. My belief was that one day I would have saved enough money to restart again my selling.’ Asa explained that it was seeing the other women in the association having success that helped her have something to imitate and keep going after such a difficult situation. The stories of Adama and Asa are quite significant because they show the central role of dusu and ka da I yèrè la to purposeful agency. These stories echo many others that I heard in my fieldwork of how ka da I yèrè la and dusu were fundamental to exerting purposeful agency in the study site. Box 2.1 contains further descriptions of ka da I yèrè la and dusu from people living in the study site. These descriptions came directly from life histories and focus groups. Life history interviewing was the primary aspect of the research in which the concepts of ka da I yèrè la and dusu emerged.The ­semi-­structured interview opened with participants describing daily activities, then key moments of their life from birth until the present that the informant thought were formative (Schwant 1997; Denzin and Lincoln 1994). If people raised moments of change in their life, these moments were probed further to ask how the person surmounted them and what factors they thought were fundamental in this change. If ka da I yèrè la and dusu was expressed by the informant, their definition, meaning and beliefs about how one has ka da I yèrè la and dusu were probed. In the focus groups, people were asked directly what ka da I yèrè la and dusu meant.

BOX 2.1: Definitions of Dusu and Ka Da I Yèrè La Dusu4 ‘Dusu is the fact of undertaking initiatives to help your family and community, and it helps you do it. It is the most important because it also makes you move toward your ambition.’5 Also, another female interviewee said of dusu, ‘dusu is to muster something deep inside you to get something.’6 ‘Dusu is something that pushes you to achieve your goal. It is like a kind of jealousy, not exactly jealousy, but like jealous in your interior from seeing other people doing things you love. If you want to do these things, you will do it perfectly and you will do it as it should be done. That is dusu.’7

4 The exact Bambara definition of Dusu is internal power, strength, courage. The opposite to dusu is dusutan, literally meaning no dusu. 5 Female Interviewee 2, the neighbourhood, 16 November 2011. 6 Female Interviewee 1, the neighbourhood, 16 November 2011. 7 Male Interviewee 1, the neighbourhood, 26 January 2011.

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‘Your heart should be full of dusu in order to go out and seek things for your family.’8 Dusu was believed to underpin purposeful agency in the study site. ‘Dusu is the most important among those things, because when you have got Dusu, you could achieve your dreams, your aspirations and it can allow you to stand firm in dealing with your problems.’9 ‘Everybody has got dusu, whether you be black or white, African or Westerner. But here in Malian society, we say somebody has dusu when he’s got the will, the internal force to make change.’10 Dusu was important for people living with and without material deprivation, important for both men and women, for young and old. ‘As a woman and a mother, I have got dusu and now I am doing business and I am earning an income and helping improve the ­well-­being of my family. Moreover, without dusu one cannot do anything. So dusu is the most important.’11 Dusu was also described as not just a trait for individualistic action, but also fundamental for collective action as well. ‘It comes from the heart.’12 For some people, dusu contained an intrinsic element where informants described it also as undertaking action for the love of it. The desire on the part of informants to love what they were doing was strong in many responses and an intrinsic desire for actions was thought possible, although more difficult, to find even if one was living in poverty and desperate circumstances.

Ka da I yèrè la13 ‘Ka da I yèrè la is the start of everything. If you don’t have this kind of thinking everything you undertake will collapse and will not have success. Because it isn’t clear in your mind and you are hesitating and if you want to implement something you need a straight mind and be clear on it to have the outcome. The same goes for family and community [initiatives] also.’14 Ka da I yèrè la was described during my interviews as having clarity in your mind about what you want to do, where not hesitating will lead to an outcome. It was as important for collective agency as it was for individual agency. (Continued) 8 Female Interviewee 1, the neighbourhood, 16 November 2011. 9 Male Interviewee 2, the neighbourhood, 17 November 2011. 10 Male Interviewee 1, the neighbourhood, 15 December 2011. 11 Female Interviewee 1, the neighbourhood, 17 November 2011. 12 Female Focus group, the neighbourhood, 29 December 2010. 13 Ka da I yèrè la in Bambara is to believe in yourself (Ka da = to believe, I yèrè la = yourself). The opposite of ka da I yèrè la is Fugani – which means you do not believe in yourself, you are lazy and have no confidence. 14 Female Interviewee 1, the neighbourhood, 22 December 2010.

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‘For me human beings rely on ka da I yèrè la. … You have to trust yourself to do the work you really want and to gain something to feed your needs.’15 Ka da I yèrè la along with dusu was described as the beginning of all action. So even if one does not have means (financial or material) if one has a strong ka da I yèrè la one is able to start pursuing one’s goals anyway, finding the means during the process. Related to this, people expressed that the level of financial means and/or the access to education were not proportional to how much ka da I yèrè la a person has. They pointed out that one could be materially poor but still have a lot of ka da I yèrè la and vice versa. ‘For me ka da I yèrè la is everything in human life. Because everything is from this. People can undertake everything from ka da I yèrè la. If you trust yourself you can do whatever you want.’16 ‘It is the heart, and ka da I yèrè la, not heart physically but in your mind, in you … For me, ka da I yèrè la and heart are the same.’17 For informants in the study site, ka da I yèrè la is intrinsically important not just for its central position in human functioning but also for its ­built-­in element of morality. My informants understood that people who act with ka da I yèrè la are also people working honestly, not lying to people, and not betraying anyone’s trust. ‘Someone can have ka da I yèrè la but if you don’t have dusu this is like a lost cause. So you can trust yourself to do something but have no motivation to do it, so it means nothing. So you have to put the two together to achieve.’18 Dusu and ka da I yèrè la were spoken about going together, where they complemented each other.

Tensions in writing ka da I yèrè la and dusu within psychological discourse Sitting firmly within the psychological discipline, one may be tempted to view dusu and ka da I yèrè la as different cultural forms of concepts such as ­self-­efficacy (Bandura 1997), found in ­Self-­Efficacy Theory, or autonomy and competence as found in ­Self-­Determination Theory (SDT) (Ryan and Deci 2000). For example, dusu could be subsumed as autonomy within SDT, where autonomy is ­self-­regulation of one’s actions according to one’s values (Ryan and Deci 2000). According to SDT, autonomy, in this sense of the 15 Male Interviewee 1, the neighbourhood, 22 December 2010. 16 Female Interviewee 1, the neighbourhood, 5 January 2011. 17 Female Focus group, the neighbourhood, 29 December 2010. 18 Male Interviewee 1, the neighbourhood, 16 November 2011.

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word, is the main element of human motivation. SDT, championed by Ryan and Deci (2000), holds that all human beings are biologically wired towards growth ‘for their ­self-­motivation and personality integration, as well as for the conditions that foster those positive processes’ (68). While this existence of a biological element in the regulation of ­self-­motivation is apparent, SDT argues there is a need for agents to grow in a supportive environment for people to flourish. Accordingly, the requirements that SDT has articulated for such psychological ­well-­being are relatedness, competence and autonomy (Ryan and Deci 2000). Dusu and autonomy could be thought to be related for three reasons. First, because autonomy and dusu are described as some sort of intrinsic motivation – coming from within to drive people’s agency and change their circumstances. Second, autonomy and dusu contribute to a person’s feeling of satisfaction. Third, autonomy and dusu are relational and need supportive environments for people to be able to undertake agency that is intrinsically motivated. Further, ka da I yèrè la could be thought of as ­self-­efficacy as found in ­Self-­Efficacy Theory. Here, efficacy is a belief in the ability to achieve desired outcomes (Bandura 1997). Bandura and Schunk (1981) have argued that ­self-­efficacy is a universal capability, inherent in social beings (Bandura and Schunk 1981). Bandura (1997) maintains, ‘Beliefs of personal efficacy constitute the key factor of human agency’ (Bandura 1997: 3). There are parallels between ka da I yèrè la and efficacy wherein people express the need to believe in themselves to undertake initiatives to help improve their life circumstances or community ­well-­being. For example, respondents found that the confidence in the ability of the self was a major driver in individual and collective agency. Further, respondents also reported that the origins of ka da I yèrè la included encouragement by peers and watching peers succeed  – similar sentiments to those found in ­Self-­Efficacy Theory (Bandura 1982). However, I caution against such distinctions for two reasons relating to epistemology. First, there is a difference in how the ‘self ’ is conceptualised by people in the study site and much of the Western psychology canon. Second, there is a methodological point of difference, where the way in which most psychological studies is researched, including cultural psychology, does not account for the exploration of epistemological differences.

Concepts of the self A major reason why ka da I yèrè la and dusu cannot be subsumed as cultural variations of ­self-­efficacy or SDT’s autonomy is because they are deeply relational. Ka da I yèrè la and dusu are not seen as individual attributes per se but rather as social, formed in the thick of social relationships. Indeed, the whole idea of the ‘self ’ is very different to that of liberal Western societies where

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the line between the ‘self ’ and ‘other’ is definitive. In the neighbourhood, the gaining of hèrè (loosely translated as ­well-­being) is conceptualised as not an achievement of the isolated ‘self ’ but rather as a relational process that takes place in connection with other social actors. As the traditional chief of the study site explained to me, ‘you have hèrè when everyone has hèrè.’19 The work of the anthropologist Paul Riesman (1998, 1990) with the Fulani ethnic group in Burkina Faso found a similar sentiment regarding the construction of personality in Jelgobe society: personality is not entirely localized in the body and mind of a person, but that it also includes the people with whom he has relations. Without the others, a man lacks a part of himself; this is not simply a poetic way of seeing things, but an objective statement of fact. (Riesman 1998: 167) Hèrè, ka da I yèrè la and dusu challenge conceptions that see psychology as something that belongs in the individual.

Methodological tensions Much of the Euro/American psychology paradigm tends to universalise theories from studies and concepts arising from liberal Western research (Teo 2015; Fernando 2014). Such research has a specific epistemological position based on a presumption that there is a constant central processing mechanism that can be explained in its entirety (Mansfield 2000). While theories of both autonomy and ­self-­efficacy articulate ways of understanding psychological agency, they were born from empirical studies of Western origin – with an orientation that declares them to be just as relevant in other societies. Psychological scholars have attempted to address this gap through reducing such crucial epistemological challenges to an opposition between ‘individualist’ and ‘collectivist’ societies (see Triandis 2001, 2000; Sinha and Tripathi 1994), an opposition which can be found in many ­cross-­cultural psychology studies. For example, Chirkov et al. (2003) studied how the SDT concept of autonomy is relevant in both collectivist and individualistic cultures (United States, Russia, Turkey and Korea); Chirkov et al. (2005) examined autonomy in Canada and Brazil, and again Chirkov (2009) examined autonomy education across different cultural contexts. Klassen (2004) analysed more than 20 efficacy studies and found efficacy beliefs to be less significant for collectivist cultural groups, but ‘when some form of calibration was included, in almost

19 Male Interviewee 1, the neighbourhood, 28 December 2010.

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all cases the efficacy beliefs of the ­non-­Western groups were more predictive of subsequent performance’ (225). While such studies are trying to break with the traditional constraints of psychology, they need to go much further. Culture is not an independent variable to test against the dependant variable – Western individual psychological concepts (Schraube and Osterkamp 2013). There is much to learn from anthropologists in this sense. To anthropologists, culture is not a possession of the individual that one chooses or obtains like one of the many other variables that can be included in a statistical analysis. Instead, culture is an analytical concept that directs scholars to ‘address epistemological difference and social organisation. Culture was what anthropologists brought to the analysis so as to examine how selves and sociality are fashioned through perduring practices and assumptions’ (Gershon 2011: 545). Reducing culture to ‘individualism,’ ‘collectivism’ or another variable reduces the depth of the epistemological difference at play. Psychologists doing ‘­cross-­cultural’ work need to go much further in understanding the key concepts of agency and subjection, and not assume universal applicability of Western constructs or presume there is a constant central processing mechanism. There needs to be an understanding that concepts being tested are outside the epistemological and political environment they were intended for (Gao 2012; Igarashi 2006). This requires going further than just being open to the concept’s relevance at differing degrees depending on ‘culture’ (Stigler et al. 1990). It requires examining the meaning of the psychological or self in people’s lives, as well as other relevant concepts, through ­non-­reductive frameworks that are located in the pertinent social, historical and cultural contexts (Hook 2004; Mkhize 2004). Such research may be a challenge to the psychological paradigm, which Mansfield (2000) has described as viewing the human psyche as an entity that can be known and explained in its entirety. Exploring alternative psychologies is not just an important epistemological exercise but also an important ontological exercise. The latter approach not only challenges the idea of ‘psychology,’ it also challenges the conception of being in itself, where the idea of the human apart from her surrounds is questioned. Both epistemological and ontological questions of mainstream psychology challenge the static notions of selfhood found in much Western psychological expertise, as well as challenging the very idea of positivist science and ­truth-­making.

Defining psychology Psychology is a diverse discipline and has extraordinary variation, which makes defining psychology a rather tricky exercise. Nonetheless, there are

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two elements of the dominant Western psychological canon that are generally reproduced within the thousands of research articles and books, to students within lecture halls, and assumed in counselling rooms. First, and as discussed above, most of the canon of psychological expertise is steeped in Western conceptions of the self. Second, most of psychological expertise is constructed as a neutral tool of positive ‘science.’ This means that much Western psychological expertise universalises a central process mechanism situated in the brain and cognition, which can be understood in its entirety (Teo 2015; Fernando 2014). Klaus Holzkamp (2013) has described Western psychology as ‘psychology without a world,’ highlighting how Western psychological expertise focuses less on the context and social embeddedness in which knowledge, norms and agency is shaped, than on measurable and predictable patterns of cognition (Schraube and Osterkamp 2013). Instead, cultural, social and political elements become ‘independent variables’ to be tested and controlled for in their correlations and regressions, with cognitive attributes.Yet Western psychology has a cultural, social and political context. Within Western discourse, the individual’s ‘cognition’ involves development in a certain linear trajectory, complete with specific psychological capabilities such as reason, logic, ­self-­control and autonomy. These attributes are thought to be developed in children at a young age, and carried through within formal education and family upbringing.Yet, in her analysis of child development, Burman (2007) illustrates the intersectionality of psychological development with national social and economic development trajectories. For example, child psychological development fits in line with economic and political aspirations of the Western liberal state. Specifically, Burman (2007) argues that psychology has no good political beneficial or theoretically ­well-­formed model of what development is, why it happens, or how culture figures in defining and modulating patterns of development. All is subordinated to concepts of progress and development as if they had a content and purpose in themselves. And indeed they do; for it is the content of the dominant culture that has the privilege to remain invisible and thus more covert in its exercise of power. (Burman, 2007: 227, original emphasis included) The invisibility of culture, politics and power in much of Western psychological expertise helps to ensure the discipline is not viewed as a parochial cultural moment of Western modernity but elevates the discipline to a higher status as a universal truth of the human condition – able to be exported across the world. On the other hand, critical psychology scholars define the ‘psychological’ in ways more akin to the concepts of ‘subjectivity’ and the ‘psyche,’ drawing

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on Michel Foucault (1982) and Judith Butler (1997). To Foucault, power is present in all human relations and social structures – including the formation of subjectivity. The formation of subjectivity and becoming a subject is part of the human experience and not just about oppression. For example, as humans, we are subjected to power from our parents from the moment we are born (Deleuze and Guattari 1972). Therefore, subjectivity is not just about being dominated or oppressed, as power is also what drives agency to influence such oppression. This is what Foucault describes as a paradox of subjectivity (Foucault 1977). In her book The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection, Butler (1997) draws upon Foucault’s paradox of subjectivity to create a theory of subjection, expanding further on how power and structure do not just dominate agency but also enable it. Butler finds Foucault’s conception of the subject inadequate because he reduces the formation of the subject to social power and does not take enough account of unconscious and psychic power (Vasterling 2010). Butler argues that there is a difference between the subject and the psyche. Where the subject is constituted solely by social power, the psyche is constituted through social power and the unconscious, which is not necessarily constituted solely by social power. ­Post-­structuralist scholarship is also Western in terms of its tradition, but its critical lens helps locate power in knowledge reproduction. It also helps us understand and analyse Western ideas of modernity and ­truth-­making, identifying them as parochial not universal. ­Post-­structural understandings of the psychological domain, in effect, destabilise the seemingly solid and complete notions of Western psychological expertise.Young (1995), drawing from Foucault’s Order of Things, makes precisely this point: ‘Before we can undo Eurocentrism, before we can undermine its continuing power, we have to understand how it was done’ (1995: 9). ­Post-­structuralism thus helps us move from psychology as a stable body of knowledge to subjectivity which locates social power and the psyche, opening up epistemological possibility for dusu, ka da I yèrè la and other concepts to be decolonised of Western inference.

From psychology to psychologies By destabilising Western psychological expertise, ­post-­structural accounts of the psyche and subjectivity effectively ‘open the door’ for Indigenous psychologies. This is not to suggest that Indigenous psychologies themselves have been waiting for this moment to be bestowed upon them, but instead is intended to highlight the ­custodial-­like stronghold Western psychological expertise has had on the psychological domain, effectively opening the door for scholars, practitioners and students to the world beyond their disciplinary walls.Yet ­post-­structuralism is challenged by its specific ontological orientation, and thus is limited in its explanatory potential in regard to Indigenous

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psychologies. Any blanket application, such as I have already identified in Western psychological expertise, has a colonising effect. Indigenous psychologies are diverse in terms of their notions of personhood. For example, some scholars have described Indigenous psychologies more akin to cosmologies – linking the psyche to natural and spiritual worlds (Jackson 1990; Riesman 1990; Karp 1988). Indigenous psychologies can challenge the ontological orientation of human and human subjectivity found in Western psychology and the social sciences more generally (Viveiros de Castro 2013). It requires a shift from epistemological to ontological terms (Viveiros de Castro 2013). This means that the focus of inquiry lies not in the different perspectives each may take upon the world (their respective ‘­world-­views’ or even ‘cultures’) but rather in the ways in which either of them may come to define what may count as a world, along with its various constituents, in the first place … the difference pertains to the ontological question of what things are or indeed could be, rather than how they might be differentially ‘represented,’ ‘known’ (or at least ‘believed’), or for that matter, ‘constructed.’ (Holbraad 2013: 470) What this ‘ontological turn’ does is open up the possibility of understanding the world beyond the static human/nature divide while also ‘highlighting the fact that there are certain differences that simply cannot be encompassed and captured by one’s own symbolic, cultural or political apparatus. Some differences are the product of different realities rather than different subjective takes on reality’ (Hage 2012: 302). Ontology is much more than semantics: it is a political project that takes alternative ideas, including alternative psychologies, seriously. As Carrithers et al. (2010) put it: The need for the word ontology comes from the suspicion that cultural difference is not different enough, or alternatively that acultural difference has been reduced by cultural critics to a mere effect of political instrumentality. By contrast, ontology is an attempt to take others and their real difference seriously. (175) Allowing for multiple realities would mean taking Indigenous psychologies as being as substantive and serious as Western psychologies, with Western psychologies then being seen as parochial ideas based on the Western subject rather than a universal subject. It would also mean that the whole concept of psychology and psychologies may be redundant outside the Western

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ontology. Viveiros de Castro (2013) illustrates what this multinaturalism would mean, specifically placing Indigenous ideas on a par and with as much importance as Western ideas: We could say … that the Melanesian concept of the ‘dividual’ person (Strathern, 1988) is as imaginative as Locke’s possessive individualism; that understanding the ‘Amerindian philosophy of chieftainship’ (­Clastres, 1974[1962]) is as important as commenting on Hegel’s doctrine of the State; that Maori cosmology is equivalent to the Eleatic paradoxes and Kantian antinomies (Schrempp 1992); that Amazonian perspectivism presents a philosophical challenge of the same order as Leibniz’s system. (488) Taking such an ontological shift would require the rethinking of the conception of ‘psychology,’ to allow for cosmologies and Indigenous ideas that are not necessarily situated in the individual, body or apart from the natural world. Nonetheless, Bessire and Bond (2014) warn us to not disregard all the gains made from critical Western thought.They are concerned that collapsing social life under the broad banner of the ontological turn may overlook and undervalue the effect that social power and structural oppression continues to have on people’s lives. Further, through privileging particular groups to define particular notions of ‘Western’ and ‘Indigenous’ could enact the very domination in ontological turn scholars are trying to work against. It is worth quoting Bessire and Bond (2014) at length on this: In reference to those critical predecessors who are often erased from the intellectual genealogies of ­self-­proclaimed ontologies  – such as Frantz Fanon, Hannah Arendt, Raymond Williams, Judith Butler and Michel Foucault – we suggest that the figure of the ontological may itself operate as a mode for reifying the very effects it claims to overturn. Indeed, it seems as if much of the ontological turn is premised on skipping over an entire generation of anthropologists that took up these same problems and worked them out in very different ways, whether in the cultural refractions of capitalist world systems, in the laboured dimensions of colonial categories, or in feminist and queer critiques of structuralist binaries. (441) What Bessire and Bond (2014) caution against is the complete collapse of ideas and indeed subjectivities into polarised groupings such as Indigenous and ­non-­Indigenous, as this continues to execute ‘a consequential redistribution of who is worthy of protection and who is not’ (Bessire and Bond 2014: 442).

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In addressing this dilemma during our rethinking of psychology (and the ­post-­colonial terrain more generally), the idea of hybridity could be helpful.

Hybridity When thinking about psychological knowledge systems, it is important to avoid the essentialisation of Indigenous psychologies and Western thought. Further, while the psychological trauma inflicted on people subject to colonial regimes is documented, caution should be applied to blanket statements asserting that colonial domination was just about oppression. Rather, colonialisation was always about resistance (Mills 2000). Consequently, the process of colonisation did not wipe out Indigenous knowledge systems but fractured them. Still, it is not always clear where to draw the line in distinguishing what are Western and what are Indigenous ideas, let alone subjectivities. ­Post-­colonial scholar Homi Bhabha’s work on hybridity is illuminating here. Bhabha has developed the concept of hybridity as space within the ­post-­colonial condition and in between two cultures. Bhabha’s concept of hybridisation is grounded in the constantly changing ‘location of culture,’ while proposing how marginal cultures can find a space for continuity and production without assimilation (Bhahba 1994). Drawing on Saïd and Fanon, Bhabha finds that the culture of the coloniser can only exist with the construction of the colonised. Bhabha rejects a static or pure concept of culture; to him, culture is always shifting and changing. This leads Bhabha to the idea of hybridity. For Bhabha, ‘hybridity is the sign of the productivity of colonial power, its shifting forces and fixities … the strategic reversal of the process of domination through disavowal’ (Bhabha 1994: 159). Importantly, hybridity is not assimilation into colonial or ­post-­colonial structures. On the contrary, hybridity according to Bhabha is a ‘third space,’ the hybrid space that for Bhabha (1994) ‘provide[s] the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood … that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation, in the act of defining the idea of society itself ’ (1). This third space is not assimilation into a ‘culturally diverse’ but ­ever-­Western society. It is also not a rejection of the ontological turn either. However, as Bhabha argues, the ontological turn is not always useful for all those excluded through coloniality. He draws on Fanon to argue that the ontological turn is not appropriate for the black identity as the white ontology of the rational and universal hierarchies is so strong: ‘You come too late, much too late, there will always be a world – a white world between you and us’ (Bhabha 1994: 236). Bhabha suggests that attention to unpicking Western modernity and racial subjugation is important. His ‘third space’ is a site in which plurality of agencies, subjectivities and ideas can be pursued, and is not a reproduction of Western modernity.

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Why are subjectivities political? Hegemony and ideology shape the way we understand ourselves in the world. This is because the power underpinning hegemony and ideology also affects subjectivity: Commonsense in [Western] psychological culture contains all the things we ‘know’ most deeply about ourselves, and the things we feel to be unquestionably true. It is all the more misleading for that, however, and is suffused with ideological representations of the self and others that structure our own seemingly spontaneous psychology. Ideology works not because it simply offers an account that can be willingly adopted or easily refused, but precisely because it saturates commonsense. Gender differences, racial peculiarities, anxieties about our bodies and other people’s sexualities each inform our psychology in ways that reproduce patterns of exclusion, pathology and power, and each is carried to us and through us by commonsense. (Parker 1999: 14) Yet the broad canon of psychological knowledge does not entertain questions of hegemony and ideology. Instead, it is presented as an objective science, quite apart from processes of power and subjection. Political philosopher Antonio Gramsci saw hegemony as a relationship between systems of knowledge (Gramsci 1971). Hegemony can be described as relational, where one group is subordinated by another not through material or physical coercion but through the control of ideas. Hegemony and hegemonic orders are hierarchies that become normalised and assumed to be unproblematic (Foster 2004). Hegemony, therefore, stabilises the ‘status quo.’ Examples of hegemony can be seen in social relations of power such as class struggle, (neo)colonisation and racial subjugation and through gendered relations. Gramsci believed that the only way for the subordinated group to liberate itself was through interrupting hegemony. Ideologies are narratives and discourses maintained by hegemonic orders. They create a sense of inevitability, deference and resignation leading to obscure possible alternatives (Foster 2004). For example, Marxist Louis Althusser (1971) used the term ‘interpellation’ to describe how certain ideologies ‘hail’ or ‘call out’ to people who then respond in a particular way. The example given is that when a police officer calls out to a person ‘Hey you,’ this evokes a response of ‘what did I do wrong?’ Similarly, when Fanon gives the example of a young white child exclaiming to his mother in France ‘Look mother, a Negro and I am frightened …’ (Fanon 2008[1952]: 84). The response hailed in Fanon was that of feeling being black, othered and

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not white (Fanon 2008[1952]), which ultimately sent Fanon to interrogate psychic relations under colonial rule, delivered so powerfully in his scholarship (Venn 2006). Yet ideology can sometimes be presented as fixed social structures where there is a ‘truth’ and certainty to narratives. This should be avoided, as, while there may be sets of shared experiences in differing social groups such as ‘women’ or the ‘poor,’ what is most common within these groups is diversity and constant flux of identity. For example, ‘women’ as a group includes many identities – white, black, sexually diverse, elite, poor, young and old.Yet collapsing or foreclosing diversity under the one banner of ‘women’ can obscure the relations of power and lived experiences of all women. For example, white or liberal feminism has been critiqued heavily for the way liberal feminists seek to speak on behalf of all women. Liberal feminists seem to not only overlook those power hierarchies that they themselves benefit from, but also the lived oppression experienced by the women they speak for – the very flipside to their privilege (Kapur 2005; Mohanty 2003, 1988; Brown 2000). Although ideology and hegemony cannot be seen as apart from subjectivity, it is important to not fall into the structuralist account that these processes determine agency. I return to Butler (1997), where power not only constitutes the psyche but also enables the agent. What this means is that while power constitutes and maintains the sociality that people act within, all structural conditions are never fixed and are in constant motion within the dialectic of agency. Therefore, while subjectivity and agency are constituted within hegemony and oppressive structures, it is agency and linking with the agency of others that may shift and shape this process.

Psychopolitics It is important to examine the way in which Western psychological expertise is used by actors to extend broader political goals. The use of Western psychological expertise in development interventions is a case in point. Derek Hook’s account of psychopolitics is relevant here. Hook (2004) explores not just the dominance of some knowledge systems over others but specifically how this knowledge is deployed for political gains. In other words, psychology is a political project whereby psychology can act as a tool of dominance and governmentality. Hook (2004) argues that: The question of the ideological nature of much knowledge produced by psychology is not only a question of who is producing knowledge and for whom, it is also a question of how such knowledge is approached and what are the mechanisms, the particular methodologies and procedures used to produce such kinds of knowledge. It is a questioning

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of what psychology’s underlying assumptions are, the philosophical lenses that come to condition its ‘truths.’ All of these are liable to produce ideologically skewed or unrepresentative kinds of knowledge. Given their Western ‘First World’ origin, these types of knowledge may be less than helpful – if not in fact actively harmful. (16–17, original emphasis) Western psychological expertise can present itself uncritically and detached from the wider processes of hegemony and ideology. This is problematic as when coupled with the development intervention, another process of power, can further hegemonic relations.Therefore, it becomes a matter of urgency to think critically about the intersectionality of power and hegemony regarding the use of psychological expertise in development interventions. What I am calling the psychologisation of development interventions is where psychological knowledge and expertise is used in development interventions to promote the development of individual subjectivities in line with Western modernity. Of particular note is how this process develops individual efficiency, ­self-­regulation and architectures of ‘free’ choice under what are becoming understood as neoliberal subjectivities.

Conclusion In this chapter I have proposed a broader meaning of psychology in light of thinking about its application within the development intervention. First, through examining the concepts of dusu and ka da I yèrè la, I pointed to conceptual and epistemological areas of Western psychological expertise which may restrict what dusu and ka da I yèrè la mean to the people in the Malian neighbourhood. This small example suggests the need to think critically about ‘psychology’ as a specific Western cultural product. Western psychological expertise has implications regarding knowledge production and neocolonial relations when thinking about its deployment in development interventions. Second, I argued that Western psychological expertise should be broadened to include theories of subjectivity and power when thinking about development intervention. This is to allow the linking of the subject, to broader political and social process, in order to avoid disconnecting ‘cognition’ from power. Third, I also explored the possibility to think about psychology moving from a singular notion of the self as found in most of Western psychological expertise, toward ‘psychologies’ to encompass Indigenous ideas of psychology. Fourth, because of the inherent politics of knowledge within psychology, this chapter has also proposed the need to situate the use of psychological knowledge in broader processes of hegemony and ideology. This is because the use of psychological knowledge deployed in

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development interventions – which are another site of contestation – can use psychology as a tool of regulation and oppression.The next chapter will trace the genealogies of psychological expertise alongside the proliferation of the development intervention.

References Althusser, Louis. 1971. Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards and Investigation): Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Translated by Ben Brewster. New York: Monthly Review Press. Bandura, Albert. 1982. ‘­Self-­Efficacy Mechanism in Human Agency,’ American Psychologist, 37(2):121–147. Bandura, Albert. 1997. ­Self-­efficacy:The Exercise of Control. New York:Worth Publishers. Bandura, Albert, and Dale Schunk. 1981. ‘Cultivating Competence, Self Efficacy, and Intrinsic Interest Through Proximal ­Self-­Motivation,’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41(3):586–598. Bessire, Lucas, and David Bond. 2014. ‘Ontological Anthropology and the Deferral of Critique,’ American Ethnologist, 41(3):440–456. Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture. London/New York: Routledge. Brand, Saskia. 2001. Mediating Means and Fate: A ­Socio-­political Analysis of Fertility and Demographic Change in Bamako, Mali. Leiden: Brill. Brown, Wendy. 2000. ‘Suffering Rights as Paradoxes,’ Constellations, 7(2):230–241. Burman, Erica. 2007. Developments: Child, Image, Nation. New York: Routledge. Butler, Judith. 1997. The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Carrithers, Michael, Matei Candea, Karen Sykes, Martin Holbraad, and Soumhya ­Venkatesan. 2010. ‘Ontology is Just Another Word for Culture: Motion Tabled at the 2008 Meeting of the Group for Debates in Anthropological Theory, University of Manchester,’ Critique of Anthropology, 30:152–200. Chirkov, Valery. 2009. ‘A ­Cross-­cultural Analysis of Autonomy in Education: A Self-­ Determination Theory Perspective,’ Theory and Research in Education, 7:253–262. Chirkov, Valery, Richard Ryan, and Chelsea Willness. 2005. ‘Cultural Context and Psychological Needs in Canada and Brazil: Testing a ­Self-­determination Approach to the Internalization of Cultural Practices, Identity, and ­Well-­being,’ Journal of ­Cross-­Cultural Psychology, 30:423–443. Chirkov,Valery, Richard Ryan,Youngnee Kim, and Ulas Kaplan. 2003. ‘Differentiating Autonomy from Individualism and Independence: A ­Self-­Determination Theory Perspective on Internalisation of Cultural Orientations and ­Well-­Being,’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(1):97–110. Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. 1972. ­Anti-­Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. New York and London: Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd, New Edition (2004). Denzin, Norman, and Yvonna Lincoln. 1994. The Handbook of Qualitative Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Fanon, Franz. 2008[1952]. Black Skins, White Masks. 4th edn. Sidmouth, England: Pluto Press. Original edition, Editions de Seuil, 1952.

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Fernando, Suman. 2014. Mental Health Worldwide: Culture, Globalization and Development. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Foster, Don. 2004. ‘Liberation Psychology,’ in Derek Hook (ed.) Critical Psychology, 559–602. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press. Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Allen Lane. Foucault, Michel. 1982. ‘The Subject and Power,’ Critical Inquiry, 8(4):18. Gao, Zhipeng. 2012. ‘The Emergence of Modern Psychology in China, 1876–1922,’ Annual Review of Critical Psychology, 10:1–15. Gershon, Ilana. 2011. ‘Neoliberal Agency,’ Current Anthropology, 52(4):537–555. Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. New York: International Publishers. Hage, Ghassan. 2012. ‘Critical Anthropological Thought and the Radical Political Imaginary Today,’ Critique of Anthropology, 32(3):285–308. Holbraad, Martin. 2013. ‘Turning a Corner: Preamble for “The Relative Native” by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro,’ Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 3(3):469–471. Holzkamp, Klaus. 2013.‘Psychology: Social ­Self-­understaning on the Reasons for Action in the Conduct of Everyday Life,’ in Ernst Schraube and Ute Osterkamp (eds), Psychology from the Standpoint of the Subject, 233–341. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Hook, Derek. 2004. Critical Psychology. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press. Igarashi,Yasuhiro. 2006. ‘Role of Critical Psychology in Japan: Protest Against Positivistic Psychology and Search for New Knowledge of the Mind,’ Annual Review of Critical Psychology, 5:156–166. Jackson, Michael. 1990. ‘The Man who could turn into an Elephant: Shape-­shifting among the Kuranko of Sierra Leone,’ in Michael Jackson and Ivan Karp (eds), Personhood and Agency: The Experience of Self and Other in African Cultures, 59–78. Uppsala: Acta Univesitatis Upsaliensis. Kapur, Ratna. 2005. Erotic Justice: Law and the New Politics of Postcolonialism. London: The Glass House Press. Karp, Ivan. 1988. ‘Laughter at Marriage: Subversion in Performance,’ Journal of the Folklore Institute, 25(1–2). Klassen, Robert. 2004. ‘Optimism and Realism: A Review of ­Self-­efficacy from a ­Cross-­cultural Perspective,’ Journal of Psychology, 39(3):205–230. Klein, Elise. 2014. ‘Psychological Agency: Evidence from the Urban Fringe of ­Bamako,’ World Development, 64(C):642–653. Lacan, Jacques. 1977. ‘The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason Since Freud,’ in Écrits: a Selection., 146–178. London: Tavistock. Mansfield, Nick. 2000. Subjectivity:Theories of the Self from Freud to Haraway. New York: New York University Press. Mills, James. 2000. Madness, Cannabis and Colonialism:The ‘Native Only’ Lunatic Asylums of British India 1857–1900. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Mkhize, Nhlanhla. 2004. ‘Summary,’ In Introduction to Critical Psychology, edited by Derek Hook, 24–52. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 1988. ‘Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses,’ Feminist Review, 30(1):61–88. Mohanty, Chandra. 2003. ‘“Under Western Eyes” Revisited: Feminist Solidarity through Anticapitalist Struggles,’ Signs, 28(2):499–535.

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Riesman, Paul. 1990. ‘The Formation of Personality in Fulani Ethnopsychology,’ in Michael Jackson and Ivan Karp (eds), Personhood and Agency: The Experience of Self and Other in African Cultures, 169–190. Uppsala: Acta Univesitatis Upsaliensis. Riesman, Paul. 1998. Freedom in Fulani Social Life:An Introspective Ethnography. ­Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ryan, Richard, and Edward Deci. 2000. ‘­Self-­Determination Theory and the Facilitation of Intrinsic Motivation, Social Development and ­Well-­being,’ American Psychologist, 55(1):68–78. Schraube, Ernst, and Ute Osterkamp (eds). 2013. Psychology from the Standpoint of the Subject: Selected Writings of Klaus Holzkamp. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Schwant, Thomas. 1997. Qualitative Inquiry: A Dictionary of Terms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Sinha, Dharm, and R.C. Tripathi. 1994. ‘Individualism in a Collectivist Culture: A  Case of Coexistence of Opposites,’ in U. Kim, H.C. Triandis, Ç. Kâgitçibasi, S. Choi and G.Yoon (eds), Individualism and Collectivism, 123–138.Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Stigler, James, Richard Schweder, and Gilbert Herdt. 1990. Cultural Psychology: Essays on Comparative Human Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Teo, Thomas. 2015. ‘Critical Psychology: A Geography of Intellectual Engagement and Resistance,’ American Psychologist, 70(3):243–254. Triandis, Harry. 2000. ‘Dialectics Between Cultural and ­Cross-­cultural Psychology,’ Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 2. Triandis, Harry C. 2001. ‘­Individualism-­Collectivism and Personality,’ Journal of ­Personality, 69(6):907–924. Vasterling, Veronica. 2010. ‘The Psyche and the Social: Judith Butler’s Politicizing of Psychoanalytical Theory,’ in Jens de Vleminck and Eran Dorfman (eds), Sexuality and Psychoanalysis: Philosophical Criticisms, 171–182. Leuven: Leuven University Press. Venn, Couze. 2006. The Postcolonial Challenge:Towards Alternative Worlds. London: Sage. Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 2013. ‘Native as relationality,’ HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 3(3):469–471. Young, Robert. 1995. ‘Foucault on Race and Colonialism,’ New Formations, 25:57–65.

3

Genealogies of the psychologisation of development interventions

Over time, development interventions have shifted and changed in form, as has the logic underpinning these different eras of intervention. For example, the broad development logic of the colonial period was about exploitation and extraction to drive the empire. Specifically, the British empire exploited labour across the Global South, using it to extract resources to feed into the industrial revolution (­Ndlovu-­Gatsheni 2015; Mignolo 2011). The ­post-­WWII and Cold War period was about ensuring capitalism won against statism. Western forces used interventions in the Global South – unfittingly termed ‘the Third World’ – to install infrastructure and institutions that lent themselves to support the West’s political project of growing their global market economy and liberal capitalist ideology (Hobsbawm 1995). What the architects of these different projects considered to be logic are regimes of truth belonging to hegemonic powers; the empire, the West, the global development industry. Interventions from colonisation through to the neoliberal era have always had a psychological dimension  – to target and shape the minds of their subjects. While the logics of development interventions have changed over time, this chapter first explores how the deployment of psychological knowledge in interventions has gone hand in hand with broader global development logics from colonialism to neoliberalism. Second, I take a closer look at liberalism (and later neoliberalism) and coloniality to situate some of the links between the development intervention and Western psychological expertise.

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Colonialism and its legacy Regimes of power have always targeted subjectivities as a way of domination and control. The manipulation and augmentation of subjectivities was a major weapon of colonialism. Indeed, colonialism is in itself is a total existence, a way of thinking about oneself and others always in terms of domination and submission that has come to form the very foundation of our individual and collective lives. It is a vast unnatural and exploiting reality that has been imposed on the world over the last five hundred years. (Alfred 2004: 89) Fanon illustrates the depth of the French colonial project in the minds of its Algerian subjects, revealing the trauma associated with the identity of being ‘black’ that was developed throughout the colonial milieu (Hook 2005). Specifically, Fanon (2008[1952]) shows how the very desire to not be black, is evidence of the deep psychological penetration of colonial power, The problem is important. I propose nothing short of the liberation of the man of colour from himself … The white man is sealed in his whiteness. The black man in his blackness … However painful it may be for me to accept this conclusion, I am obliged to state it: For the black man there is only destiny. And it is white. (Fanon 2008[1952]:12) Such construction and then destabilisation of colonial subject’s identities’ results in what Sartre in his preface to The Wretched of the Earth calls the ‘nervous condition’; the continual anxious and uneasy subjectivity of the colonial subject (Hook 2005). The effect of colonial power on subjectivities was no mistake of design: the colonisers knew the power that could be extracted from subjects by penetrating the psyche. Western psychological expertise was part of colonial subjugation through experimentation on the racial ‘other.’ For example, the discipline of psychiatry was developed through experiments on colonial subjects, who were thought to be subhuman, barbaric and as not having civilised qualities. Consequently, the empire stood in stark ‘civilised’ contrast. British colonial psychiatrists H.L. Gordon and J.C. Carothers argued that Africans had a defunct frontal lobe and underdeveloped brains (Mahone 2007: 45). Sigmund Freud in Totem and Taboo argued there were similarities between ‘the mental lives of savages and neurotics [in Europe]’ (1913: 276). Carl Jung (1939) described a ‘very characteristic defect in the Indian character … deception’ (524). Also, he proposed

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a theory of ‘racial infection’ that occurs when ‘native’ numbers outnumber the white man: Now what is more contagious than to live side by side with a rather primitive people? Go to Africa and see what happens. When the effect is so very obvious that you stumble over it, then you call it ‘going black’ … the inferior man exercises a tremendous pull upon civilized beings who are forced to live with him, because he fascinates the inferior layers of our psyche, which has lived through untold ages of similar conditions. (Jung 1930: 196) In addition to the alterity endured by Indigenous peoples under the colonial regime, Indigenous psychological knowledge was oppressed. For example, Indigenous healers who are respected and a key part of many societies, were taken to be mad by the colonial psychologists (Fernando 2014). Psychiatric and psychological experimentation justified and further developed racist discourses favouring the colonisers and Western modernity more broadly. Colonial rule used intervening in subjectivities as a form of direct control over populations.

Modernisation and the ­post-­WWII era Since WWII, the logic of interventions changed from direct oppression and exploitation towards one of modernisation and improvement. This was largely due to the West needing to change its approach to global regulation in the ­post-­colonial era. Earlier iterations of modernisation thinking have roots in Enlightenment thinkers such as Emile Durkheim and Marquis de Condorcet. Yet it was Talcott Parsons who instituted modernisation as a contemporary theory, where specific variables could be located leading to ‘development.’ Subsequently, the modernisation project has involved the promotion and exportation of specific building blocks of Western modernity to the Global South as a means of progress and improvement. The development intervention became an important tool for modernisation after WWII, and had two key elements. First, development had a focus on infrastructure and technology to promote capitalist integration and liberal democracy as ways to instil Western security and peace. Second, development included the modernisation of people themselves, through the shaping of subjectivities, that is, their worldviews, aspirations and behaviour. Whether or not Henry Truman knew it at the time, his inauguration presidential speech was to be seen as an important blueprint for the West’s modernising mission for the Global South. After the devastating wars of the first

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half of the twentieth century, development and its interventions were seen as the tools to deliver modernisation for all of the world, in what Tania Li has termed the ‘will to improve’ (2007). What is less recognised is that ­Truman’s focus, and indeed modern development’s focus, is on the psychological dimensions of development interventions as a way to improve the ‘other.’ we must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas. More than half the people of the world are living in conditions approaching misery. Their food is inadequate. They are victims of disease. Their economic life is primitive and stagnant. Their poverty is a handicap and a threat both to them and to more prosperous areas. For the first time in history, humanity possesses the knowledge and the skill to relieve the suffering of these people. The United States is ­pre-­eminent among nations in the development of industrial and scientific techniques. The material resources which we can afford to use for the assistance of other peoples are limited. But our imponderable resources in technical knowledge are constantly growing and are inexhaustible. President Truman, 20 January 1949 In this speech,Truman labelled the Global South ‘underdeveloped,’ appealing for whole societies to be saved by Western and specifically US technology, infrastructure, worldviews and ideology. Truman’s vision had two elements to it: the economic and technological advances needed for ‘progress’ and the development of subjectivities whereby people ‘help themselves.’ First, to Truman, and as is reflected more broadly in development discourse since WWII, the ‘economy’ and economic development are the core focus of development and its related interventions. Given his rhetoric about the failure of communism and the Soviet Union within his speech, it is hard to think of Truman’s proposition as anything else but one that declares the US to be the superior leader for ­post-­colonial countries and states capitalism as its method (Sachs 2006). Truman saw technology and infrastructure as a way for government to facilitate industrial progress. The United States and other Western countries had achieved a level of technological innovation that to Truman was a mark of their civility and progressiveness. From this vantage point, innovation and infrastructure could be exported to the Global South to help them ‘catch up’ and modernise. Second, in his speech Truman was not just calling for the modernisation of the economy, infrastructure and technology of the newly independent countries; he was also calling for the modernisation of the people. Truman outlined

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that, ‘Only by helping the least fortunate of its members to help themselves can the human family achieve the decent, satisfying life that is the right of all people.’ It is in this appeal whereby individuals help themselves that ­Truman sets out a plan for the development of modern psyches with modern worldviews, social norms and motivations, able to take up the opportunities afforded by his development regime. Helping oneself implies a need for the individual to have the correct psychological architecture of entrepreneurship, ­self-­sufficiency and dedication to take up Truman’s challenge. The modernising mission after WWII was thought of as a linear progression from underdeveloped aspirations, social norms and behaviours to developed ones – mirroring precisely the economic and technological changes envisaged by Truman: ‘It is the notion of progress that tied development to the discourse and misdeeds of modernity, and that binds the psychology of development to the economic practices of modern development programmes’ (Burman 2008: 225). While Western modernity is celebrated in hegemonic Western discourse, Western modernity has a very dark side, in that it is achieved only through the exploitation, dispossession and denial of plurality, ultimately celebrating itself as the desired state of humanity at the expense of the rest of the world (Mignolo 2011; Brohman 1995). This has had a direct impact on subjectivities in the Global South, as there is an inherent implication of backwardness and parochialism within ­non-­Western societies. ‘Progress’ is typically understood as referring to change from a position of deficit or inferiority to one of advancement, improvement or maturity (Burman, 2008: 225). Truman, by promoting the modern ‘developed’ psyche, excluded the psyches already existing outside his narrow idea of the ‘modern.’ As Sachs points out, For ­two-­thirds of the people on earth, this positive meaning of the word ‘development’  – profoundly rooted after two centuries of its social construction – is a reminder of what they are not. It is a reminder of an undesirable, undignified state. To escape from it, they need to be enslaved to others’ experiences and dreams. (2010: 10, original emphasis included) The modernising mission and project of improvement of subjectivities after WWII was not just reflected in Truman’s vision for development. Another example of the links between the modernisation of economic and technological infrastructure and psychologies can be further seen through the work of psychologist David McClelland. In the 1960s, McClelland released his thesis on what he claimed was a trait found in individuals that he termed ‘n  achievement.’ McClelland (1967) identified n achievement as the human behavioural trait that accounted for the entrepreneurial spirit in some people

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and not others. This n achievement trait, argued McClelland, could explain why people were placed within the middle and upper classes, were economic entrepreneurs, were not poor, and were better workers. Because he saw n achievement as the answer to modernising societies and promoting economic development, McClelland advocated for governments to set policies to support the social conditions to develop the n achievement trait to develop in people. McClelland’s n achievement thesis focused on understanding and promoting the psychological traits of the ‘modern’ individual in order to promote psychological expertise to ‘peripheral’ societies. In doing so, McClelland, like many psychologists and psychiatrists of the colonial and ­post-­colonial eras, not only overlooked and undervalued alternative psychologies beyond those constituted in the West, but also discounted the colonial and neocolonial processes underpinning their projects of improvement. Much of the psychological modernising mission since WWII, and indeed prior to it, is situated in two major processes of Western modernity  – the racial subjection of coloniality and the governance of liberalism (and later neoliberalism).

Coloniality While the colonial period has all but ceased, and many countries gained their independence from the colonial powers in the ­post-­war period, the targeting of the subjectivities of the racialised ‘other’ continues through coloniality. Coloniality is different to colonialism, which is about the taking of the sovereignty of a people for the empire (­Maldonado-­Torres 2007). Coloniality instead refers to the: ­Long-­standing patterns of power that emerged as a result of colonialism, but that define culture, labour, intersubjectivity relations, and knowledge production well beyond the strict limits of colonial administrations. Thus, coloniality survives colonialism. It is maintained alive in books, in the criteria for academic performance, in cultural patterns, in common sense, in the ­self-­image of peoples, in aspirations of self, and so many other aspects of our modern experience. In a way, as modern subjects we breathe coloniality all the time and every day. (­Maldonado-­Torres 2007: 243) Coloniality then is an ongoing process of ordering relations based on perceived racial difference, stemming from the colonial period. Coloniality also involves constituting the structure and control of labour, resources and modes of production, upholding Western hegemony (Quijano 2000). Furthermore, coloniality has a specific mode of being – one that projects the inferiority of

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subjectivities not subscribing to the norms of the West (­Maldonado-­Torres 2007: 243). Western psychological expertise is a case in point, which has stabilised and normalised the Western subject. From this vantage point, and drawing from the previous chapter, Western psychological expertise also reproduces relations of coloniality. Coloniality also has significance in global processes of development as it codifies the relations underpinning those targeted as needing to be ‘improved,’ ‘supported’ and ‘developed.’

Liberalism and governmentality Subjectivities have not just been oppressed but also governed, through the system of liberal governmentality. Liberalism is a normative political doctrine stemming from the age of Enlightenment and views individual liberty as an end in itself. At a very basic level, liberalism can be understood as not just having a commitment to protecting individual liberty and private property but also as a political project of individual ­self-­regulation and responsibility (Li 2007; Hindess 2001). It is the latter point that is particularly illuminating, for it helps us see that liberalism is not just the defence of liberty but the governance of liberty. Specifically, Foucault (1994) sees liberalism not as a theory, or an ideology and even less, certainly, as a way for ‘society’ to represent itself … but, rather, as a practice, which is to say, as a ‘way of doing things’ orientated toward objectives and regulating itself by means of a sustained reflection. (73–74) Unlike the governance systems of the ­pre-­Enlightenment period, liberal governments use soft power to govern their subjects and seldom dominate others; instead, liberal governments enhance the subject’s capacity for ­self-­regulation in line with their notion of the good (Li 2007).The power of soft governance is in the art of encouraging the ‘right’ choices while maintaining the idea of the ‘free self.’ Drawing on Foucault, Li (2007) suggests we understand liberal governmentality as The ‘conduct of conduct’ … government is the attempt to shape human conduct by calculated means … the concern of government is the wellbeing of the populations at large … it is not possible to coerce every individual and regulate their actions in minute detail. Rather, government operates by educating desires and configuring h ­ abits, aspirations and beliefs. It sets conditions ‘artificially arranging things so that people, following only their own ­self-­interest, will do as they ought.’ (5)

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Interestingly, the discipline of psychology is intrinsically linked with liberal governmentality: Western governments needed to govern their populations to do as they ought, and thus psychology as a discipline that helped to shape and regulate subjectivities became an integral tool of liberal governmentality.

Liberal governmentality, psychological knowledge and expertise Historically, Western psychological knowledge emerged precisely as a way to organise, govern and regulate responsible citizens of Western nations (­Christopher and Hickinbottom 2008; Danziger 2006). Consequently, the use of Western psychological knowledge is ‘intrinsically linked’ (Rose 1992: 351) with the West’s project of liberal governmentality.1 Specifically, the use of Western psychological knowledge can be traced to the ­mid-­nineteenth century, where the national governments of Europe and North America, which were still reeling from the expectations unleashed by the Enlightenment revolutions, needed to produce feelings of security, productivity and happiness for their citizens (Foucault 2008; Hook 2004; Rose 1999). G ­ overnments also needed to ensure that citizens experienced the free will and choice promised by the liberal democratic project, all while making sure that these citizens acted as they should, that is, in a responsible and accountable manner. The conditioning and maintenance of the subjectivities of citizens became an important technology to promote and sustain Western liberal societies, and psychology thus became ‘a vital resource in the managing of the affairs of the nation’ (Rose 1999: 5). Furthermore, the basic unit of liberal societies needed to be the individual in order to regulate and calculate progress. It was precisely through psychological expertise that the governance of individual citizens was made possible. Rose (1999) argues that: Psychological inscriptions of individuality enable the government to operate upon subjectivity. The psychological assessment is not merely a moment in an epistemological project, an episode in the history of knowledge: in rendering subjectivity calculable it makes persons amenable to having things done to them – and doing things to themselves – in the name of their subjective capacities. (Rose 1999: 8) 1 This historical shift is well documented by Foucault in what he calls ‘­bio-­power.’ See ­Foucault, Michel. (1984). Right of Death and Power over Life, in P. Rabinow, ed., The ­Foucault Reader. New York: Pantheon Books.

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In appearing technical and scientific, Western psychological expertise is assumed to be ethical and rational. However, when we trace its genealogy we can see that psychological expertise has always been used as a benchmark or standard against which the individual and population is judged. This is because Western psychological expertise provides a tool to regulate the standard ‘self ’ against, doing so through setting ‘norms, standards, discourses, guidelines, warnings …’ (Foster 2004: 567). Within regimes of liberalism, citizens are assessed by their capacity to be governed against particular ideas of rationality and individualism. It should be noted that coloniality operates within and around regimes of liberal governmentality and Western psychological expertise, where those considered outside the West or not encompassing Western norms, subjectivities and aspirations are dealt with through harsher terms: ‘Those deemed capable will be assigned to regimes of freedom, while those deemed less capable will be allocated to more authoritarian regimes’ (Strakosch 2015: 23). This is relevant when thinking about the normalisation and universalisation of Western psychological expertise identifying the ‘not normal’ by what it cannot recognise. Therefore, less autonomous interventions and ‘treatments’ are justified for those deemed less capable. Two examples that will be discussed in further detail in subsequent chapters include, first, the discourse around Indigenous people in Australia being deficient and decadent. This discourse justified the Northern Territory Intervention in 2007, where military personnel were sent into remote communities by the Australian government for the direct targeting of behaviours the state was seeking to change. Further, we can see coloniality operating within and around the ‘War on Terror’ and even within the refugee ‘besiegement,’ where mental ‘ill health’ is seen as a problem for a secure world and has become an important part of national security. Specifically, in security policy discourse, mental (ill) health (based on Western psychological expertise), is a central concern, thought to be a main element in violence, unhinged individuals and, above all, terrorists (Howell 2011). Yet by doing so, overlooks possible relations of power and displacement within international relations policy. Consequently, norms within Western psychological expertise can be used to subjugate and pathologise alternative modes of being (­Maldonado-­Torres 2007) and obscure the relations of power involved in the politics of global upheaval (Hage 2016; Mills 2014; ­Moreton-­Robinson 2009; Hook 2005). Of course, it should be noted that Western psychological expertise has developed into many strands and is not one cohesive cannon of knowledge. This has been partly because psychological expertise has merged with many other disciplines, thus supplementing and extending its reach. Rose (1999)

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has commented on psychology’s generosity to other disciplines, stating that ‘the key to the social penetration of psychology lies in its capacity to lend itself “freely” to others who will “borrow” it because of what it offers to them in the way of a justification and guide to action’ (Rose 1999: 92). Of particular importance to this book is how, as the logic of development interventions has further concentrated towards enhancing economic growth, psychological expertise has been used to underpin behavioural economics – an important technology of neoliberal governmentality.

Globalisation and neoliberalism The neoliberalism that has emerged in recent decades furthers liberalism’s tendency to manufacture the spheres of the market, civil society and the individual. Where classical liberalism imposed limits on government’s control over markets, neoliberalism reconfigured the complete exercise of political power to that of the logic of markets (McMahon 2015; Madra and Adaman 2013). Therefore, alternative discourses are silenced as theorising development policymaking is reduced to that of the economic realm. While neoliberalism is understood and used in various ways (Madra and Adaman 2013; Ferguson 2010), the common ground of neoliberal approaches is how the market becomes a site of verification or ‘truth’ for the state and the individual (McMahon 2015; Madra and Adaman 2013). Neoliberal government contains the inherent assumption that market logic is what behaviour should be organised around. Furthermore, neoliberalism depoliticises social complexity through economisation, wherein the market is the site by which the value of social life is judged. Madra and Adaman (2013) argue that neoliberal governmentality is a ‘project of the economisation of the social, materialised either through the naturalisation of economic processes or technocratisation of their governance or both, [and] entails its ­de-­politicisation’ (692). This ­de-­politicisation limits the political debate, where a consensus is normalised and neoliberal governmentality does not become subject to public scrutiny (McMahon, 2015). Additionally, neoliberalism reduces subjectivity to that of the rational, ­self-­sufficient, economic actor. These neoliberal subjectivities involve a process of determining the psychological conditions within which individuals are able to freely conduct themselves in relation to economic efficiency and effectiveness (Hamann 2009; Barry et al. 1996; Burchell et al. 1991). In doing so, neoliberal governmentality transforms the way individuals relate to themselves, each other and their environment, ‘thereby potentially generating a change in the social being’ (Madra and Adaman 2013). Neoliberal subjectivity thus becomes a way in which the self is known in relation to market logic, where social conditions and complexity – such as the complexities of gender,

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class, race and colonialisation – become less significant. Ilana Gershon (2011) is worth quoting at length here. She argues that: The neoliberal perspective assumes that the actors who create and are created by the most ideal social order are those who reflexively and flexibly manage themselves as one owns and manages a business, tending to one’s own qualities and traits as owned and even improvable assets. Many aspects of selves and the social world become redefined as a result, even culture has become a trait that can serve as a basis for or enhance people’s alliances with others … a neoliberal perspective of agency depends on transforming liberalism’s possessive individualism into corporate individualism, viewing all agents as commensurate corporate entities so that social organization or differences in scale can be ignored. (Gershon 2011: 542–543) So, while subjectivities have always been an important space for interventions to target in projects of development, the neoliberal age has a unique way of conditioning subjectivities in line with market logic.

Behavioural economics and neoliberalism Psychology has continued to have relevance in development logic in the neoliberal era, being picked up recently in what is called ‘behavioural economics.’ Behavioural economics has been seen as revolutionary in the field of economics, using psychological research to disprove the tired neoclassical description of individual behaviour as that of the rational, ­self-­interested, ­utility-­maximising, coherent and stable individual (McMahon 2015). Behavioural economics, on the other hand, views individuals as having non-­ standard preferences, beliefs and ­decision-­making processes (­DellaVigna 2009; ­Camerer and Loewenstein 2004; Kahneman 2003). For example, ­DellaVigna (2009) argues that, unlike neoclassical economics, where preferences and ­decision-­making are consistent both temporally and spatially, preferences change at different points of time depending on the beliefs of individuals, the time and context/environment they are situated within. Behavioural economics has been burgeoned with the increased focus by neoliberal governments and policy actors on predicting and shaping behaviour in development processes. Behavioural economics can be a technology of neoliberal governmentality because it uses market logic to explain human behaviour (be it ‘rational’ or ‘irrational’), reducing human behaviour to the logic of the market (McMahon 2015). Behavioural economics may well challenge the idea of a consistent and predictable homo economicus, yet through

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adding nuance and accounting for irrationality, behavioural economics reinforces homo economicus and makes its logic indispensable to justifying and operationalising neoliberal governmentality (McMahon 2015). This point will be further illustrated in the proceeding chapters.

Conclusion This chapter has argued that the development intervention has always had a psychological dimension to it. The modern development intervention after WWII has been trying to modernise not just societies but also subjectivities. This logic has stemmed from two important processes of Western ­modernity  – liberalism and coloniality. While the citizens of Western societies were afforded governance of their subjectivities, those colonised endured alterity by the West, wherein their subjectivities were denied and in many cases brutally oppressed. Since this time, racial subjection has continued through the process of coloniality, while globalisation has further expanded these processes with the development of neoliberalism. The changing focus of what subjectivity means in this time becomes particularly important, especially in regard to how subjectivities are regulated and controlled. Through tracing the genealogies of Western psychological knowledge I have shown how the psychological domain has always been important to development interventions. Drawing on Burman (2008), there are four specific areas to highlight when examining the links between the development intervention and psychology. First, both Western psychological expertise and development interventions tend to be concerned with regulation and control. The development of psychology has been a process of normalising agency in line with broader governance objectives. Development interventions have also regulated broader aspirations of economic development and modernisation. Both are Western constructions that owe their origins to strategies of population management and control. Second, both psychology and development interventions can obscure complexities in their linear models and logic. Psychology can obscure the complex epistemological and ontological challenges of being, while development interventions located within broader projects of liberalism, neoliberalism and coloniality obscure oppression and upheaval around liberalism’s project of improvement and progress. Third, and related to the above, both psychology and development can marginalise Indigenous, racial, ontological, gender, sexually diverse, ­non-­abled ideas of development and being. This is because both normalise the Western subject – who is typically a white, Western, heterosexual, ­able-­bodied (and mentally ‘well’) bourgeois male (Burman 2008; Brown 2000; Douzinas 2000).

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Fourth, both Western psychological expertise and development interventions are viewed as generally a force for good in the world. There is not much acknowledgement of the relationship between psychology and power. Regarding development intervention, power is generally understood in a sanitised version – through such catchphrases as gender equality, empowerment and participation. Neither discourse addresses the deeper processes of liberal and neoliberal governmentality and coloniality. Still, this is not to say that there is not work underway by development practitioners and psychologists, that directly or indirectly addresses some of the broader challenges of the psychologisation of development interventions. Such initiatives will be explored more in the last chapter. The next chapter will continue to examine the psychologisation of development with a focus on contemporary development interventions.

References Alfred, Taiaiake. 2004. ‘Warrior Scholarship: Seeing the University as a Ground of Contention,’ in Devon Abbott Mihesuah and Angela Cavandar Wilson (eds), Indigenizing the Academy: Transforming Scholarship and Empowering Communities, 88–99. Lincoln: University of Nabraska Press. Barry, Andrew, Thomas Osborne, and Nikolas Rose. 1996. Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, ­Neo-­liberalism and Rationalities of Government. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Brohman, John. 1995. ‘Universalism, Eurocentrism, and Ideological Bias in Development Studies: From Modernisation to Neoliberalism,’ Third World Quarterly, 16(1):121–140. Brown, Wendy. 2000. ‘Suffering Rights as Paradoxes,’ Constellations, 7(2):230–241. Burchell, Graham, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller. 1991. The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Burman, Erica. 2008. Developments: Child, Image, Nation. New York: Routledge. Camerer, Colin, and George Loewenstein. 2004. Behavioral Economics: Past, Present, Future. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Christopher, John, and Sarah Hickinbottom. 2008. ‘Positive Psychology, Ethnocentrism, and the Disguised Ideology of Individualism,’ Theory & Psychology, 18:563–589. Danziger, Kurt. 2006. ‘Universalism and Indigenization in the History of Modern Psychology,’ in Adrian Brock (ed.), Internationalizing the History of Psychology, 208–225. New York: New York University Press. DellaVigna, Stefano. 2009. ‘Psychology and Economics: Evidence from the Field,’ Journal of Economic Literature, 47(2):315–372. Douzinas, Costas. 2000. The End of Human Rights: Critical Legal Thought at the Turn of the Century. Oxford: Hart Publishing. Fanon, Franz. 2008[1952]. Black Skins, White Masks. 4th edn. Sidmouth, England: Pluto Press. Original edition, Editions de Seuil, 1952. Ferguson, James. 2010. ‘The Uses of Neoliberalism,’ Antipode, 41:166–184. Fernando, Suman. 2014. Mental Health Worldwide: Culture, Globalization and Development. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Foster, Don. 2004. ‘Liberation Psychology,’ in Derek Hook (ed.), Critical Psychology, 559–602. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press. Foucault, Michel. 1994. ‘The Birth of Biopolitics,’ in Paul Rabinow (ed.), Michel Foucault Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. London: Penguin Books. Foucault, Michel. 2008[2004]. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures of the College de France 1978–1979. Graham Burchell (ed.). New York: Picador. Freud, Sigmund. 1913. Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Psychic Lives of Savages and Neurotics. New York: New Republic. Gershon, Ilana. 2011. ‘Neoliberal Agency,’ Current Anthropology, 52(4):537–555. Hage, Ghassan. 2016. ‘État de siège: A Dying Domesticating Colonialism?’ American Ethnologist, 43(1):1–12. Hamann, Trent. 2009. ‘Neoliberalism, Governmentality, and Ethics,’ Foucault Studies, 6:37–59. Hindess, Barry. 2001. ‘The Liberal Government of Unfreedom,’ Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 26(2):93–111. Hobsbawm, Eric. 1995. The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914–1991. London: Abacus. Hook, Derek. 2004. Critical Psychology. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press. Hook, Derek. 2005. ‘A Critical Psychology of the Postcolonial,’ Theory Psychology, 15(4):475–503. Howell, Alison. 2011. Madness in International Relations: Psychology, Security, and the Global Governance of Mental Health. Oxford: Routledge. Jung, Carl. 1930. ‘Your Negroid and Indian Behaviour,’ Forum, 83(4):193–199. Jung, Carl. 1964[1939]. ‘The Dreamlike World of India,’ in H. Read, M. Fordham and G. Adler (eds), Civilization in Transition. Collected Works of C. G. Jung, 515–524. London: Routledge & Paul Kegan. Kahneman, Daniel. 2003. ‘Maps of Bounded Rationality: Psychology for Behavioral Economics,’ American Economic Review, 93(5):1449–1475. Li, T. 2007. The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development and the Practice of Politics. Durham: Duke University Press. Madra, Yahya, and Fikret Adaman. 2013. ‘Neoliberal Reason and its Forms: De-­ politicisation through Economisation,’ Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, 46(3):691–716. Mahone, Sloan. 2007. ‘East African Psychiatry and the Practical Problems of Empire,’ in Sloan Mahone and Megan Vaughan (eds), Psychiatry and Empire, 41–66. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ­Maldonado-­Torres, Nelson. 2007. ‘On the Coloniality of Being,’ Cultural Studies, 21(2):240–270. McClelland, David. 1967. The Achieving Society. New York: The Free Press. McMahon, John. 2015. ‘Behavioural Economics as Neoliberalism: Producing and Governing Homo Economicus,’ Contemporary Political Theory, 14(2):137–158. Mignolo, Walter D. 2011. The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Durham: Duke University Press. Mills, China. 2014. Decolonizing Global Mental Health:The Psychiatrization of the Majority World. New York: Routledge. ­Moreton-­Robinson, Aileen. 2009. ‘The Good Indigenous Citizen: Race, War and the Pathology of Patriarchal White Sovereignty,’ Cultural Studies Review, 15(2):62–79.

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­Ndlovu-­Gatsheni, Sabelo. 2015. ‘Genealogies of Coloniality and Implications for Africa’s Development,’ Africa Development, 40(3):13–40. Quijano, Anibal. 2000. ‘Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America,’ Nepantla Views from the South, 1(3):533–580. Rose, Nikolas. 1992. ‘Engineering the Human Soul: Analyzing Psychological Expertise,’ Science in Context, 5(2):351–369. Rose, Nikolas. 1999. Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self. 2nd edn. ­London: Free Association Books. Sachs, Jeffery. 2006. The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time. New York: Penguin Books. Sachs, Wolfgang. 2010. ‘Introduction,’ in Wolfgang Sachs (ed.) Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power. New York: Zed Books. Strakosch, Elizabeth. 2015. Neoliberal Indigenous Policy: Settler Colonialism and the ‘­Post-­Welfare’ State. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

4

The psychologisation of contemporary development interventions

The co-director of the 2015 World Development Report (WDR), Varun Guari, declared that, ‘­Development policy is due for a redesign based on a realistic understanding of human thinking and human behaviour’ (Guari 2014). His words summarise the shift underway in development policy, explicitly using Western psychological expertise to universalise neoliberal development agendas. This sentiment has also been raised in other parts of the development industry; for example, the World Health Organization (WHO) states that ‘Mental health is integral to achieving many development priorities. Ignoring this fact will impede the capacity of countries to reduce poverty and achieve better health and development outcomes’ (WHO 2010: 1). These quotes serve to illustrate the proliferation of attention and deployment of interventions focusing on the psychological domain in development. This chapter explores some of the different ways psychological expertise has become an important tool for contemporary development interventions, especially in the neoliberal era. I will focus on specific examples of the use of psychological expertise in contemporary development interventions, such as the rise of behaviouralisation in development policy. I use the 2015 WDR as an example of the behavioural proposition in development policy, aiming to produce suitable neoliberal subjectivities. I will also explore the use of child psychological development in development policy, the Global Mental Health movement and the ­self-­help and subjective ­well-­being policies.

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The psychologisation of development interventions Contemporary development interventions deploy psychological expertise in myriad ways conducive to the logics of neoliberalism. Yet how psychological expertise is deployed is not always consistent and concise. This is because development interventions, actors and contexts are never consistent. Empirically speaking, governmentality can be vague about the ‘location and ordering of power’ (Mosse 2005: 14).Thinking about the location and relations via which neoliberalism works, Mosse (2005) eloquently outlines the empirical challenges: Not only is it hard to sustain the idea of a ‘perfect synthesis’ of neoliberalism ‘with actual power structures and state policy apparatuses in much of the world’ (Robinson 2002: 1056), but also this is a world comprised of ‘network societies,’ a complex array of formal and informal, state and ­non-­state agencies, and ungovernable global financial markets that exceed the control of even the most powerful transnational actors (Castells 1996); a world in which actor networks that include ­non-­human natural or physical elements ‘overflow’ human intention and technology (Mitchell 2002: 299), and where there is a multiplication of manifestly ungovernable spaces or ‘economies of violence’ (Watts 2003). At the same time, governmentality locates power too vaguely in ‘the West’ or ‘the state’ so that it is entirely abstracted from particular institutions and structures in which political and economic action takes place. (Mosse 2005: 14; Cooper and Packard 1997: 3) It then becomes crucial to focus on empirical accounts of how neoliberal governmentality works within the ‘real world.’ Moreover, neoliberal governmentality is not the only form of governmentality operating. Coloniality also needs to be addressed, where racial patterns of power continue to define a racial hierarchy and normalise hegemony. I will outline the deployment of psychological knowledge in development policy in four areas: first, through the behaviourisation and human capital approaches to development; second, through child development trajectories; third, through the Global Mental Health regime; and fourth, through the happiness and ­self-­help movements. This list of areas of psychological expertise in development interventions is by no means exhaustive, but represents a necessary step in identifying the implications of the psychologisation of development interventions. Furthermore, while I only outline these areas, it is a call to action for empirical research to ground the ways neoliberal

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governmentality and coloniality function through and around the psychologisation of development interventions.

Behaviouralisation of development policy Increasingly, mental efficiency and capability are targets for development interventions to drive economic development. Kautz et al. (2014), in their report for the Organisation for Economic ­Co-­operation and Development titled ‘Fostering and Measuring Skills: Improving Cognitive and Non-­ Cognitive Skills to Promote Lifetime Success,’ argue that cognitive and non-­cognitive skills such as personality traits, goals, personal character and motivations are important for development. Specifically, ‘Skills enable people. They are capacities to function. Greater levels of skills foster social inclusion and promote economic and social mobility.They generate economic productivity and create social wellbeing’ (Kautz et al. 2014: 8). However, this linking of psychological attributes and behaviours to economic development is contentious. I will explore some of this tension now by examining the 2015 WDR titled ‘Mind, Society and Behaviour.’ This report proposes a framework wherein development interventions that are focused on augmenting subjectivities, ­decision-­making and behaviour can help people make better choices to move out of poverty.

Case study: WDR 2015 Reflecting its will to improve, to develop and promote progress in the world, each year the World Bank puts out a WDR.These reports aim to direct development discourse and set the ‘agenda’ on pressing global development issues (Berger and Beeson 2010).The 2015 WDR titled Mind, Society and Behavior maintains a focus on improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the recipients of development interventions’ ­decision-­making ability.The report specifically aims to: integrate recent findings on the psychological and social underpinnings of behavior to make them available for more systematic use by both researchers and practitioners in development communities … these findings help explain decisions that individuals make in many aspects of development, including savings, investments, energy consumption, health and child rearing … this approach expands the set of tools and strategies for promoting development and combating poverty. (WDR 2014: 2–3) The authors of the WDR 2015 use a framework consisting of three principles to provide the direction for new approaches to understand behaviour

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and design and implement development policy.The three principles outlined are: habitual and automatic ­decision-­making; the impact of social norms and social recognition on ­decision-­making; and the influence of mental models on ­decision-­making, where mental models are defined as culture, worldviews and ideology. These three principles are then ‘put to work’ to show how policymakers can, by intervening at the level of habitual agency, shape social norms or mental models to improve development. Specifically, the report’s focus is on the domains of poverty reduction, child development, household finance, productivity and reducing energy consumption. Development within the report is essentially seen as economic development, meaning that the behavioural attributes promoted in the report have a human capital focus. By manipulating and augmenting social norms, development policymakers can influence behaviour, ultimately creating subjectivities that achieve economic development. The report states that, ‘Engineering shifts in social norms is a far from trivial task. Yet norms can and do change’ (WDR 2014: 53). Below are five examples of the kinds of policies the WDR advocates. Marketing existing social norms to shift behaviour and subjectivities. Marketing techniques can help emphasise and effectively sell particular decisions to the citizenry. The report uses the example of the tax compliance of citizens. The report argues that feelings of fairness and seeing others comply within the tax system substantiate their willingness to pay their own taxes. Therefore, the report suggests that marketing social norms that ‘emphasize the extent of tax compliance and encourage the perception that tax evaders are deviants may be successful’ (WDR 2014: 52). Using entertainment and film to develop desirable aspirations. The report discusses the example of a study that tackled what it identified as the fatalistic aspirations of people in Ethiopia. Specifically, the study had Ethiopians, deemed to have low aspirations, watch films featuring relatable, inspiring Ethiopians. These documentaries specifically showed how such inspiring Ethiopians improved their ­socio-­economic positions through goal setting, careful ­choice-­making and perseverance. Using nudges and choice architecture to encourage more desirable behaviour and agency. These are a set of techniques to encourage individuals to unconsciously favour certain options over others. Choice architecture is defined as influencing ‘­decision-­making by simplifying the presentation of options, by automatically evoking particular associations, or by making one option more salient or easier to choose than the alternatives’ (Thaler and Sunstein 2008; cited in WDR 2014: 36). Nudges go further, where they achieve behavior change without actually changing the set of choices. It does not forbid, penalize, or reward any particular choices. Instead, it points

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people towards a particular choice by changing the default option, the description, the anchor, or the reference point. (WDR 2014: 36) The report draws on the example of how sending text messages to people in Peru, Bolivia and the Philippines, to remind people to save, increased these people’s savings. Use of conditions on cash transfers to affect behaviour and agency. The use of conditions on ­state-­assisted payments means that recipients only receive such payments if they comply with the conditions set, such as making state assistance for poor families conditional on their children going to school or having them immunised.The literature on conditional cash transfers is mixed. For the purposes of this work, it is useful to think about the kinds of conditions and the kinds of behaviours the conditional cash transfer is trying to produce. For example, the report was complimentary of the Colombian government, which placed the condition of parents having to send their children to school in order to receive support payments to families and increase national school attendance. Yet research has shown that conditional cash transfers are not always so clean cut. For example, the Australian government through their School Enrolment and Attendance Measure programme suspends complete state payments to Indigenous families if parents cannot ensure their children meet the government’s enrolment and attendance policy.Yet Indigenous education policy in Australia is extremely contentious, being seen by many researchers as dramatically underfunded and as not meeting the needs of Indigenous students, if not as a form of neocolonialism (Bielefeld 2013; ­Billings 2009). Using social pressure and praise to shift individual’s behaviours. This technique involves shifting the subjectivities of individuals by using group or social network pressure and praise. The focus is on using social pressure, such as the fear of shame for not repaying loans or praise to encourage mothers to breastfeed their babies.

Critical perspectives on the 2015 WDR and beyond There are several areas in the 2015 WDR that deserve more attention, as there are inherent psychopolitics underlying the report that have resonance with broader psychopolitics of the use of psychological expertise in development interventions. Specifically of concern is how the report places the agency of individual recipients of development interventions as the primary source of contention while uncritically assessing the role of policymaking and development more broadly, especially how subjectivities are used, augmented and manipulated for the ends of economic productivity.

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Problematising individual agency The report effectively problematises the development subject by implying that more can be done on the subject’s behalf to make them more economically effective in their move out of poverty and hardship. The report then highlights how the ‘choices of the poor can be described as economically suboptimal’ – and thus a site for improvement: lack of ­self-­control is a leading explanation for lack of savings, and the absence of default savings plans for most people in developing countries makes the problem worse. (WDR 2014: 120) And: the empirical evidence suggests that behavior and decisions driven by impatience, procrastination and temptation are economically relevant. (WDR 2014: 114) By asserting that behavioural improvements should be made to help the poor make better decisions, the report assumes that poverty has a particular behavioural element to it. It also ascribes people in poverty as responsible for poverty alleviation and overlooks the structural injustices and the inherent inequality of the capitalism system. Two strands of neoliberal logic are employed as benchmarks to these assertions: first, that market logic is what behaviour should be organised around; and, second, the neoliberal governmentality influenced assumption that the market is the site of social truths and that we can understand the world through what the ‘market’ tells us.This is problematic for three distinct reasons. First, by problematising individual agency, the site of poverty reduction becomes situated in the individual. The individual is then judged based on their efficiency and effectiveness according to the market. Behavioural interventions are also planned based on the individual’s ability to be effective against the market – problematic individuals needing behavioural interventions are judged as being those not able to be economically effective and efficient (McMahon 2015; Madra and Adaman 2013). In his writings, Fanon showed how inequality comes to play on the body, to be made flesh (Fanon 2008[1952]). In the case of the 2015 WDR, a ­socio-­economic crisis is reconfigured and rearticulated as a crisis of the individual. Problematising individual agency removes the ­socio-­economic and historical factors that feed into poverty and inequality. Because of this, the report risks being a manual about coping strategies rather than addressing the complexity of poverty and inequality.

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Second, and relating to the above, the market logic of neoliberal g­ overnmentality overlooks the inherent complexity in social life, where poverty is reduced to economic truths and the ‘responsible citizen’ is constituted by an economically efficient and responsible subjectivity. Yet development scholars such as Sen have refuted such resolute definitions as foreclosing other valued subjectivities. In Inequality ­Re-­examined (1995), Development as Freedom (1999) and The Idea of Justice (2009), Sen advocates for the development of capabilities that support human flourishing in its fullest sense, incorporating diversity of choices and values. Thus, capabilities cannot be reduced to human capital and what is necessary to be economically responsible. Instead, capabilities should be what people value and have reason to value, which may or may not be capitalist in function (Sen 2009, 1999, 1995; Alkire 2002; Nussbaum 2001). Third, through problematising agency, the report forecloses any analysis that sees agency as resistance and subversion to economic development policies.This is particularly important as efficacy and effectiveness in carrying out initiatives firmly rooted in Western neoliberal modernity can be actively resisted. For example, some Indigenous peoples like those in Australia are resisting harsh welfare to work strategies (Rothwell 2015), and Greek citizens have created alternative economies through ­co-­ops in order to evade austerity (Davies 2013; Ratner 2013). The analysis of effective choices and ­decision-­making for economic ends as seen in the report not only does not capture agency as resistance as a field of enquiry, but actively silences it.

The neutrality of the development industry and ‘development’ Within the 2015 WDR, the authors position the World Bank and the broader development policy apparatus neutrally. Instead of directly addressing the structural relations of ‘development,’ the authors of the report attempt to offer a critique of positionality through examining the bias of the individual development professional (see WDR 2014: 186–187). However, the report stops short of problematising the idea of development itself. This would be the opportunity to reflect on the problematic discourse of economic growth, the imperial role of the intervention, and the use of psychological expertise to manipulate favourable agency. Instead, the report reduces the analysis to again, the level of the individual. The development policymaker becomes the site for interrogation, not the discursive environment in which they are produced and act. Throughout the document, the focus is on individuals as needing improvement but there is no analysis whatsoever of the development intervention, its goals, ideology and implicit relations of power. Nor is there an analysis of the mental models and social norms of the development industry as a whole.

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Li, in her Will to Improve, says of contemporary development interventions in Indonesia that: They [development officials and policymakers] pay very little attention to the power relations implicit in their own ­self-­positioning. The will to empower others hinges upon positioning oneself as an expert with the power to diagnose and correct a deficit of power in someone else. (Li 2007: 275) In opting to help people make better choices rather than seeing poverty as a complex economic, social and political process, the report overlooks its own role in this process. This silencing of the production of power in the report is problematic for two reasons. First, economic development is a contested concept and not necessarily a quick fix for reducing poverty. In many cases, economic development has had negative effects on various marginalised populations (Godoy et al. 2005; Ferguson 1994) and is also relational (Mosse 2010; Bernstein 1992). Specifically, relational poverty is a persistent ‘consequence of historically developed economic and political relations, as opposed to “residual” approaches which might regard poverty as the result of being marginal to these same relations’ (Mosse 2010: 1157). Consequently, ­post-­development scholars not only reject the project of economic improvement but also denounce the overarching grand narratives of Western modernity found in much of development discourse (Mignolo 2011; Escobar 1995; Ferguson 1994; Latour 1993). Such scholars concentrate specifically on the ‘cultural and discursive logics of development as a specific form of Western imperialism and ideological domination’ (Robins 2003: 269). ­Post-­development theorists instead aim to transform the structures and processes that are oppressing societies and peoples, opting for plural, locally controlled hybrid forms of economy and governance. Second, while the report rightly acknowledges that manipulating social norms through psychological expertise is contentious (see WRD 2014: 202), at the same time the authors promote the manipulation of behaviour as a normal part of governance. Specifically, the 2014 WDR compares the development approach it puts forward to the law, as another institution that actively engages in social norm changing. This seems to declare the practice of shaping subjectivities as normal, natural and part of democratic societies. However, what is not discussed is the justification for why some norms need to be targeted over others. The report has an underlying notion of the good that is assumed – one that involves modernisation through economic development and liberalisation. The vexed matter of the justification of such ­neo-­paternalism will be taken up further in the next chapter.

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There are, then, inherent psychopolitics underlying the report. Subjectivities are used, augmented and manipulated for the ends of the neoliberal governmentality. By focusing on improving the individual’s choices and ­decision-­making, the report completely disregards the structural exploitation and oppression inherent in their development project. The risk in such an approach is that the approach outlined becomes not a strategy for improving people’s lives but a strategy to maintain the status quo of neoliberal economic development. Resistance and pluralism are reduced to deficits, while social change and emancipation become mere coping strategies.

Child development: the blank canvas In development discourse, children are effectively seen as the blank canvas on which, through government intervention, subjects of maximum social and economic use can be created. In her book Developments: Child, Image and Nation, Erica Burman (2007) skilfully explores the links between the psychology of child development and economic development. Burman (2007), through focusing on the concept of ‘development’ in a broad sense, links the literature on child development to that on economic development. It is Burman’s argument that psychological development in children cannot be analysed without examining the social and economic development links – as economic relations are social relations (but not vice versa) and such social relations shape the types of interventions that distinguish what would be favourable ‘child development’ from what would not. For example, favoured child development would be that concerning an educated, socially responsible, ­self-­governing individual, ready for the labour force, who could responsibly contribute to democratic citizenship. This logic illustrates the way the psychology of child development can be instrumental in relation to broader economic development goals. Such links lead Burman to argue that, the concept of development on which the discipline of developmental psychology relies, and which informs child development policies at national and international levels, has resonances with economic developmental policies whose global direction via multinational organisations and corporations … are shaping and constraining the contexts for individual and national development. (Burman 2007: 2) Going further, Burman (2007) argues that, through the standardisation of childhood development, diversity in all its forms (cultural, historical, political, gendered) is stripped from the individual to create a standardised subject for measurement and governance. Psychological interventions imagine

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childhood development on a linear path, while cultural, gendered, historical and political realities become external variables against consistent and predictable cognitive functions of the child. Yet child development is not an apolitical process. For example, psychologist Jean Piaget argued in the 1950s that children ‘everywhere’ develop according to a particular and defined set of stages, establishing the trajectory of individual cognitive development (Inhelder and Piaget 1958). These stages of child development have been enhanced by new ‘discoveries’ in cognitive and behavioural studies emanating from the West.Yet through this process of the normalisation and naturalisation of the linear trajectory of child development, development psychologists ‘celebrate the white, male, heterosexual, ­able-­bodied, liberal individual’ (­Burman 2007: 150). Furthermore, psychologists correspondingly ‘­pathologise black and minority peoples, gay men and lesbians and poor and disabled people the world over whose failure to exhibit or even fit such privileged lifestyles renders them inadequate, deficient or pathological’ (Burman 2007: 150). For example, the uniform articulation of what constitutes the child excludes the experiences of children around the world who, for example, may work from a young age due to the poverty faced by their families. Some child rights groups and organisations see ‘child labour’ as exploitative and detrimental to their development – yet scholars have shown how such arguments obscure the cultural significance of work for children and their aspirations outside the West (Howard and Boyden 2013; Howard 2012a, 2012b; delap 2001). Furthermore, and ironically so, these organisations that promote child psychology trajectories conducive to economic development are also the same organisations that contest child slavery. Child ­development-­related psychological expertise feeds into development interventions in terms of what is normal and right for child d­ evelopment. It produces a narrative linked not only to the norms within Western psychological expertise but also links this expertise to broader narratives of economic development. The underpinning psychopolitics are strong, prescribing certain and set trajectories of children, in the process defining what childhood and development means. The psychopolitics of child development also offers a benchmark for development actors to ‘improve’ those falling outside the prescribed childhood development trajectory.

Global Mental Health The rise of the Global Mental Health industry, which is of course underpinned by Western psychological and psychiatric expertise, has provided a benchmark to define which subjectivities are well and which are unwell.The coloniality implicit in this shift further complicates neoliberal governmentality and the mode of psychologisation of development interventions.

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In recent years there has been the exportation of knowledge relating to mental illness across the world. This has had implications for how subjectivities are understood and how interventions are deployed, especially regarding treatment. Psychologies are plural and the meaning of madness and ill health is not constant across different societies around the world (Fernando 2014). Therefore, the enunciation of what is mental ill health and the appropriate treatments for such are highly controversial and carry a neocolonial flavour. For example, Mills (2014) examines the rise of Global Mental Health, in which multilateral development organisations, such as WHO, ­scale-­up psychiatric diagnoses and treatments featured in mental health treatment of the West to societies across the Global South. First, Mills (2014) identifies the uncertainty around psychiatry’s success with patients in the West, raising concerns for its exportation and efficacy elsewhere. She draws on research from Summerfield (2012) to argue that psychiatry has no agreed answer nor test as to what qualifies as mental illness. Further, citing Moncrieff (2009), Mills finds the assumption in Global ­Mental Health that there is a chemical imbalance that sets off mental ill health to be insufficient, as there is ‘no convincing evidence that psychiatric disorders or symptoms are caused by a chemical imbalance and no evidence that psychiatric drugs exert their effects by correcting such imbalance’ (­Moncrieff 2009, cited in Mills 2014: 5). Second, Mills (2014), by exploring the Global Mental Health movement through a neocolonial lens, examines the colonial nature of the Global ­Mental Health expansion, where the certainty placed in psychiatric knowledge ‘resists a reading of GMH [Global Mental Health] as simply transposing psychiatric concepts onto countries of the Global South, as though this flows only one way, as though people and populations cannot rework and resist such ideas’ (Mills, 2014: 8). Overlooked by the monolithic expansion of psychiatric knowledge are the myriad Indigenous understandings of mental illness (which may not find such illness at all) and countless personal experiences. Further, Mills (2014) notes a letter authored by activists and scholars from both the Global South and the Global North as a critical response to an article by Collins et al. (2011) in Nature. The Nature article outlined the need for the expansion of Mental Health across the world. In the letter responding to the Nature article, the group of scholars and activists raised concerns that Global Mental Health does not take account of Indigenous knowledge and healing practices, nor does it account for the assertion that the ‘brain is not the global norm for mental health’ (Shukla et al. 2012 cited in Mills 2014: 4). Third, Mills shows the interlinking of the pharmaceutical industry with the Global Mental Health movement, which benefits from the rise of mental ill health diagnoses and the drug treatments that accompany this. The Global South presents an untapped market, where pharmaceutical companies can

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lobby governments to create policies identifying mental ill health as a major developmental concern (Moncrieff 2007). In this vein, Mills analyses the rising number of suicides by Indian farmers and the push for the psychiatrisation in diagnosis of these suicides, where psychiatric treatment would have these people medicated. Such psychiatric treatment obscures the impacts of macroeconomic policies that are placing Indian farmers in impossible positions. Instead, economic distress becomes situated within the brain of the individual through the Global Mental Health discourse (Mills 2014). The mental health discourse driving the development intervention leaves unanswered those farmers’ suicide notes addressed to the government and outlining the impossible conditions they have had to endure under neoliberal economic policies and international trade regimes. A young male farmer’s suicide note stated, ‘[t]he cotton price has fallen to Rs. 1,990 a quintal. We cannot manage with that. Which is why I am giving up my life’ (Perspectives, 2009: 2, cited in Mills 2014: 38). In a strange irony, Mills skilfully illustrates how the same neoliberal economic policies that allow the transnational pharmaceutical industry to flourish, are precisely the same policies causing farmers to take their lives.

Mental ill health in the age of terror Since the events of 11 September 2001 in New York, Western governments’ foreign policy has focused on insecurity and the rise of ‘terrorism.’ Mental ill health is seen as an obstacle for a secure world. Specifically, mental ill health is increasingly correlated with violence, unhinged individuals and, above all, terrorists (Howell 2011). International relations policy has focused on the subjectivities of the ‘other’ and specifically the ‘Middle Eastern other’ as a matter of security and nation building. For example, since 9/11 the United States and its allies have staged the War on Terror, pursuing suspected terrorists using force as well as psychological expertise. For example, Howell (2011) documents ­brain-­scanning technology called functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) that has been developed to identify potential terrorists. It is claimed that fMRI technology uses psychological expertise to detect cognitive patterns and individual preferences for fundamentalist groups, as well as ascertaining whether people have been to terrorist training camps (Howell 2011). In addition, the ­security-­related concern with mental ill health has led to the burgeoning of ‘peace psychology’ and specifically the identification of the cognitive elements of peaceful individuals (Howell 2011). For example, Daniel Mayton argues that there are cognitive factors that can be isolated as determinants for violent behaviour. These cognitive factors include ‘stereotypical distortion, selective attention and memory, and compartmentalised

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thinking’ (Mayton 2001: 148). Further, Mayton argues that there are cognitive functions that are found in ­non-­violent individuals who are ‘more likely to place a higher priority on ­self-­transcendent values than more violent individuals’ (Mayton 2001: 148). Such scholarship promotes a uniform set of factors and obscures the highly complex social, political and historical context in which subjectivities operate. Such scholarship also contributes to a ‘blueprint’ for peaceful interventions wherein ­peace-­building is not just about specific governance and social infrastructure but also the psychological infrastructure needed within the population. Subjectivities outside this imagined ‘peaceful individual complete with a peaceful cognition’ is not only marginalised but also criminalised. Within an age of international relations coloured by insecurity and terror, the psychology of the ­non-­peaceful subjectivity can lead to particular prescriptions with gendered and racialised stereotypes. The persecution of the Middle Eastern other as a terrorist is a case in point.

Mental ill health and economic development Mental ill health is also seen as a problem for economic development, as it is a waste of promising human capital and labour. For example, in 2003, WHO published a report titled ‘Investing in Mental Health,’ outlining the economic costs of mental disorders, including the cost of care (in terms of treatment, service fees and informal ­care-­g iving) and productivity costs (work disability/loss of earnings, time off work, reduced productivity at a national level, etc.).WHO estimates were based on studies on the United Kingdom and the United States and showed the cost of mental ill health as being between 2.5 per cent and 4 per cent of gross national product (GNP). As a result of such findings, the promotion of mental health becomes an important economic focus, so people can stay in work (productivity) and reduce the burden on families and social networks (care costs). However, missing from this analysis is how the cost of economic development and indeed growth causes mental ill health. For example, levels of depression and anxiety within ‘developed’ ­late-­capitalist societies are of endemic proportions (Standing 2011). Where mental ill health is seen as a barrier for economic development, mental health (as neoliberal subjectivities) is promoted and seen as an important attribute of economic development.

Happiness, subjective ­well-­being and ­self-­help Development interventions have also been influenced by scholarship coming out of the human development movement, where the focus of development is not on economic growth but on human flourishing. Subjective ­well-­being and ‘happiness’ have become important measures of progress and goals for

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development. For example, measures of inequality and deprivation based on ­resource-­focused measures such as GDP do not provide any other information about the lives of people except data on the wealth of the country. In response, measures of basic needs as well as life satisfaction, empowerment and agency, have also been considered. One of the most popular measures of subjective ­well-­being has been Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness Index, which rates the success and progress of the country on indicators across nine domains relating to happiness and psychological ­well-­being, community vitality, education, governance and health. The focus on utility (Economist lexicon for happiness and desire) has attracted criticism. For example, Sen (1995) argues that measuring utility can give a very narrow account of individual ­well-­being. To illustrate the limitations of utility, Sen uses the example of a person who may be in a state of chronic grieving. Instead of grumbling all the time, they may try to enjoy small breaks instead of pining for the impossible all the time. Such a person, argues Sen, even though thoroughly deprived and confined to a very reduced life, may not appear to be quite so badly off in terms of the mental metric of desire and its fulfilment … The extent of a person’s deprivation may be substantially muffled in the utility metric, despite the fact that he or she may lack the opportunity even to be adequately nourished, decently clothed, minimally educated or properly sheltered. (Sen 1995: 6–7) Thus, measuring just the mental states of people can miss the broader structural challenges people may face. Furthermore, the focus on subjective ­well-­being and happiness as a policy could be used as a strategy to overlook structural injustice and oppression. This criticism has been a feature of those examining the ­self-­help psychology literature (Rimke 2010; Ehrenreich 2009). Specifically, the ­self-­help literature holds happiness and subjective ­well-­being as the ultimate state of being, with a focus on ­self-­modification and improvement. Structural injustice and oppression can be reinforced through ­self-­help because ­self-­help psychology prescribes the individual’s state of mind as the centre of the world, presenting ‘the individual as the sole ontological pivot of experience’ (Rimke 2010: 64). In promoting a hyper focus on the individual taking responsibility for their own happiness, the ­self-­help discourse can also become a strategy of policy. It reinforces the liberal governmentality of the ‘self,’ the ability to ­self-­regulate and control emotional and psychological feelings against the discourse of responsibility. Specifically, ‘[b]y marshalling the concept of responsibility, popular ­self-­help discourse provides an example of how the

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operations of power in everyday life can incite governance of the self thanks to expert pronouncements about both success and morality’ (Rimke 2010: 63). In many instances, the ­self-­help discourse also promotes the ability of the individual to ­self-­regulate material outcomes.

Conclusion In this chapter, four areas of psychological expertise in development interventions have been explored; the behaviourisation of development policy, child development, Global Mental Health, and subjective ­well-­being. While this exploration is by no means exhaustive, in examining these fields of application of psychological expertise, we can see that often linear, simplified and Western notions of the individual, progress and development can obscure complexity and relations of power. For example, the Global Mental Health regime often overlooks Indigenous ways of understanding and addressing the psyche. The psychology of child development promotes a linear trajectory of attributes to child development, overlooking cultural, social and economic complexity. Furthermore, the behaviouralisation of interventions obscures relational poverty and social complexity through a hyper focus on individual ­choice-­making. Neoliberal rationality also promotes the Western liberal idea of the market and the individual, generally seen as a white, ­able-­bodied, bourgeois, heterosexual male, which in turn marginalises other subjectivities. Yet the psychologisation of development is regulated. Regulation occurs through the assessment of subjectivities against liberal and increasingly neoliberal norms. For example, Dean (2002) argues that when individuals show they can ­self-­regulate autonomously then they are subject to limited intervention. Subjects that are deemed to be inefficient in their regulation, such as not being economically efficient and effective, require some intervention – as seen in the WDR 2015. Subjects seen as problematic, risky, unhinged or violent are subject to authoritarian measures, such as are found in the mental (ill) health measures like those exercised in Guantanamo Bay – through involuntary medication and extreme restraint (Howell 2011).The examination of the legitimisation of intervention is the focus of the next chapter, where I will examine the logic of paternalism more closely, especially regarding the role of the state and related interventions.

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Howard, Neil, and Jo Boyden. 2013. ‘Why Does Child Trafficking Policy Need To Be Reformed? The Moral Economy of Children’s Movement in Benin and Ethiopia,’ Children’s Geographies, 11(3):354–368. Howell, Alison. 2011. Madness in International Relations: Psychology, Security, and the Global Governance of Mental Health. Oxford: Routledge. Inhelder, Bärbel, and Jean Piaget. 1958. The Growth of Logical Thinking from Childhood to Adolescence. New York: Basic Books. Kautz, Tim, James Heckman, Ron Diris, ­Bas-­ter Weel, and Lex Borghans. 2014. Fostering and Measuring Skills: Improving Cognitive and ­Non-­Cognitive Skills to Promote Lifetime Success. Paris: OECD. Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. USA: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Li, Tania. 2007. The Will To Improve: Governmentality, Development and the Practice of Politics. Durham: Duke University Press. Madra, Yahya, and Fikret Adaman. 2013. ‘Neoliberal Reason and its Forms: ­De-­politicisation Through Economisation,’ Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, 46(3):691–716. Mayton, Daniel. 2001. ‘Nonviolence Within Cultures of Peace: A Means and An Ends,’ Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 7(2):143–155. McMahon, John. 2015. ‘Behavioural Economics as Neoliberalism: Producing and Governing Homo Economicus,’ Contemporary Political Theory, 14(2):137–158. Mignolo, Walter D. 2011. The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Durham: Duke University Press. Mills, China. 2014. Decolonizing Global Mental Health: The Psychiatrization of the Majority World. New York: Routledge. Moncrieff, Joanna. 2007. ‘­Co-­opting Psychiatry: The Alliance Between Academic Psychiatry and the Pharmaceutical Industry,’ Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences, 16(3):192–196. Moncrieff, Joanna. 2009. The Myth of the Chemical Cure: A Critique of Psychiatric Drug Treatment. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Mosse, David. 2005. ‘Global Governance and the Ethnography of International Aid,’ in David Mosse and David Lewis (eds), The Aid Effect: Giving and Governing in International Development, 1–36. London: Pluto Press. Mosse, David. 2010. ‘A Relational Approach to Durable Poverty, Inequality and Power,’ The Journal of Development Studies, 46(7):1156–1178. Nussbaum, Martha. 2001. Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ratner, Carl. 2013. Cooperation, Community, and ­Co-­ops in a Global Era. New York: Springer. Rimke, ­Heidi-­Marie. 2010. ‘Governing Citizens Through ­Self-­Help Literature,’ Cultural Studies, 14(1):61–78. Robins, Steven. 2003. ‘Whose Modernity? Indigenous Modernities and the Land Claims after Apartheid,’ Development and Change, 34(2):265–286. Robinson, William I. 2002. ‘Remapping Development in the Light of Globalisation: From a Territorial to a Social Cartography,’ Third World Quarterly, 23(6):1047–1071. Rothwell, Nicolas. 2015.‘Rebellion Thwarts Remote Control,’ The Weekend ­Australian, 24–25 January, 14–18. Sen, Amartya. 1995. Inequality Reexamined. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Sen, Amartya. 1999. Development as Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sen, Amartya. 2009. The Idea of Justice. London: Allen Lane, Penguin Books. Shukla, Abhay, Anand Philip, Anand Zachariah Zachariah, Anant Phadke, A ­Suneetha, Bhargavi Davar, Chinu Srinivasan, Dhruv Mankad, Imrana Qadeer, Jayasree ­Kalathil, K Lalita, K Sajaya, KS Jacob, Kamayani Balimahabal, Manisha Gupte, Mohan Rao, Moosa Salie, Padma Prakash, Prabir Chatterjee, Rama Baru, Rama Melkote, Rajan Shukl, Rakhal Gaitonde, Ramila Bisht, Ravi Duggal, Renu Khanna, Ritu Priya, R Srivatsan, Sami Timimi, Sarojini NB, Sathyamala, Shyam Ashtekar, Suman Fernando, Susie Tharu, and Veena Shatrugna. 2012. ‘Critical Perspectives on the NIMH Initiative “Grand Challenges to Global Mental Health”,’ Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, 9(4):292–293. Standing, Guy. 2011. The Precariat:The New Dangerous Class. London: Bloomsbury. Summerfield, Derek. 2012. ‘Afterword: Against “global mental health,”’ Transcultural Psychiatry, 49(3–4):519–530. Watts, M. 2003. ‘Development and Governmentality,’ Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 24(1):6–34. WHO (World Health Organization). 2003. Investing in Mental Health. Geneva: Department of Mental Health and Substance Dependence, World Health Organization. WHO. 2010. Best Practices: Mental Health Service Development. Geneva: World Health Organization. World Development Report (WDR). 2014. World Development Report 2015: Mind, Society, and Behavior. Washington, DC: World Bank.

5

The state and implementing subjectivities

So far I have used the terms social power, hegemony, ideology and elite as if these words automatically mean the state is terrible, corporations are corrupt and the system is broken. In this chapter I want to work through the problems that arise when we depoliticise development actors and institutions – with a particular focus on the state. Indeed, paternalism needs attention when thinking about the psychologisation of development interventions. Sure, an ‘intervention’ is on one level always paternalistic, it is the interference in the affairs of another because of a belief that the other is not making welfare enhancing choices. Development interventions, even with the most genuine concerns for welfare and altruistic intentions, carry some form of paternalism; always requiring some condition to be met by project partners. Such conditions can range from requiring the poor to provide evidence of financial accountability and showing the involvement and ‘empowerment’ of women, to the use of participatory approaches and evidence of ‘mutual reciprocity’ where the poor contribute labour/materials to projects. Much of these conditions would pass as being fair and reasonable by most development professionals. Still remaining, however, is the underlying assumption that conditions are needed on the poor in order to achieve the project’s welfare aims. Further, debates around paternalism have shifted in the neoliberal era. Contrary to ideal theoretical models of neoliberalism boasting a laissez faire rhetoric and obsoleteness of state intervention, actually existing neoliberalism has mass regulation by the state, and is extremely paternalistic (Cahill 2014). Specifically, financial capability and acumen are the markers of the responsible human, permitting governments, development agencies and others to intervene to correct deviations from ­self-­interested and ­utility-­maximising cognition and

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behaviour (McMahon 2015). Individual behaviour and decision-­making becomes the focus, specifically their ability to be economically ­self-­sufficient and responsible for themselves, their families and their communities (Rose 1999). The state and development actors can then take on a disciplining role for any individuals or groups that are unable to be self-­sufficient or effective in their agency.Yet, by submitting to this abstruse notion of the ‘good,’ relations of power such as racial, neocolonial, gender and class are obscured. Furthermore, new forms of paternalism have been established within the neoliberal era.This ‘­neo-­paternalism’ increases the conditionality, surveillance and regulation of those receiving government support (Bielefeld 2014; Mead 1997). ­Neo-­paternalism also sees poverty as the fault of the individual where there is […] the idea that disadvantage is primarily a result of a deficit of necessary social values and norms. This ‘cultural model’ of disadvantage emphasises the role of socialisation and the transmission of behaviours, attitudes and values from parents to children in explaining intergenerational welfare reliance and poverty more generally. (Buckmaster et al. 2012: 18) Behavioural economics has become an important provider of the kinds of psychological expertise needed to intervene and encourage responsible, efficient and effective subjectivities. Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, attributed as the fathers of behaviour economics, have been busy developing the rationale to fit ­neo-­paternalism with neoliberal ideas of ­non-­state intervention. They insist their ‘libertarian paternalism’ is not an oxymoron, as: Libertarian paternalists urge that people should be ‘free to choose.’ We  strive to design policies that maintain or increase freedom of choice. When we use the word libertarian to modify the word paternalism, we simply mean ­liberty-­preserving […] Libertarian paternalists want to make it easy for people to go their own way; they do not want to burden those who want to exercise their freedom. The paternalistic aspect lies in the claim that it is legitimate for choice architects to try to influence people’s behaviour in order to make their lives longer, healthier, and better […] we argue for ­self-­conscious efforts by institutions in the private sector and also by government, to steer people’s choices in directions that will improve their lives. (Thaler and Sunstein 2009: 5–6, cited in Bielefeld 2014: 293) An apparatus of this libertarian paternalism is the ‘nudge.’ Here, governments and development actors do not ‘enforce’ particular decisions per se, instead

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opting to make some particular options more attractive and easier to choose from than other options. Sunstein (2013) explains ‘nudge’ paternalism: Nudges consist of approaches that do not force anyone to do anything and that maintain freedom of choice, but that have the potential to make people healthier, wealthier and happier. […] Those who favour nudges recognize the importance of freedom of choice. They respect free markets and private liberty.They allow people to go their own way. At the same time, they emphasize that people may err and that […] most of us could use a little help. (9) Chapter 3 explored the example taken from the World Development Report 2015 (WDR) where nudges are used to encourage people to make decisions that they would want to make in the first place – such as making voting easier (WDR 2014: 36). The state or policymaker could not possibly know what a person would want. Instead, policymakers make assumptions, placing some options as easier to choose from. This is highly controversial as being nudged a particular way may not be the preference of the person if they were made aware of not just the situation but also broader processes of power. Further, the nudge is highly interventionist, even though the individual most probably is not aware it is going on.While others have provided illuminating and helpful critiques of these ­neo-­paternalistic approaches (see McMahon 2015; Bielefeld 2014; Coons and Weber 2013; Altman 2007), of most interest to this book is how neo-­ paternalistic approaches use psychological expertise to shape the norms and agency of people. It works at a very subversive level, using social power to give the appearance of freedom and autonomy, yet these choices have been augmented and regulated as part of the paternalistic design. ­Neo-­paternalism and related measures have become important apparatuses to govern subjectivities. This chapter will examine the incorporation of the psychological element in ­neo-­paternalism used in the context of development interventions. While development industry generally has a positive view of itself in ‘doing good,’ in reality, ‘doing good’ is a highly political terrain, carrying a myriad of assumptions about the people they ‘do good’ for, as well as an obscuring of broader processes of power in which the development industry is firmly placed. Drawing on the example of income management in Australian Indigenous policy, I will show how the ‘intervention’ is never neutral, and can acutely be detrimental to the ­well-­being and freedom of the people in whose name the intervention claims to serve.

­Neo-­paternalism and development The development industry is largely silent in its own role in creating discourse as to what development means. Instead it seems to view itself as a force for

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good in the world. We can see such examples within WDR 2015, outlined in the last chapter, focusing on behavioural change in recipients of interventions. In the WDR, the authors position the World Bank and the broader development policy apparatus neutrally. Throughout the report, the focus is on individuals as needing improvement, but never an analysis of the development intervention, its goals, ideology and implicit relations of power. Nor is there an analysis of the mental models, social norms of the development industry. For example, the ­co-­director of WDR 2015 stated, We used to think that individuals assimilate all the information they need to make the best decisions for themselves. They weigh all costs and benefits carefully and decide what is best. We know that is not the case, and because it is not the case we should design the environment to make better decisions. (Guari 2014) To position interventions neutrally, the authors of the WDR justify its moral role to intervene. The authors quote directly from John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty: It is a proper office of public authority to guard against accidents. If either a public office or anyone else saw a person attempting to cross a bridge which has been ascertained to be unsafe, and there were no time to warn him of his danger, they might seize him and turn him back, without any real infringement of his liberty; for liberty consists in doing what one desires, and he does not desire to fall into the river. (WDR 2014: 202) The authors go on to say, ‘Just as that man did not desire to fall into the river, most of us do not want to be forgetful, to procrastinate, or to miss out on important opportunities’ (WDR 2014: 202). To the authors, governments, their discourse and ideology are neutral. Poverty is an individual situation, where governments need to intervene for the poor’s own good. There is no examination as to what development means, nor the complex processes that underpin it. Where the report does identify conflicting ideas or notions of the good, the authors suggest the signifier1 of ‘human rights’ as ‘guiding principles for addressing ­trade-­offs’ (WDR 2014: 202).

1 The critical human rights literature has well documented the paradoxical nature of human rights. Specifically how the genealogy of human rights is deeply rooted within the liberal tradition, and thus cannot be taken as a universal notion of the good (Anghie 2004; Douzinas 2000, 2002; Brown 2000).

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In opting to help people to make better choices rather than seeing poverty as complex economic, social and political processes, the report overlooks its own role in such processes. Indeed, so did John Stuart Mill in justifying cruel colonial interventions stating: If civilization has got the better of barbarism when barbarism had the world to itself, it is too much to profess to be afraid lest barbarism, after having been fairly got under, should revive and conquer civilization. A civilization that can thus succumb to its vanquished enemy must first have become so degenerate, that neither its appointed priests and teachers, nor anybody else, has the capacity, or will take the trouble, to stand up for it. If this be so, the sooner such a civilization receives notice to quit, the better. (Mill 2002[1859]: 78) While Mill’s reference to barbarians may seem overtly politically incorrect to contemporary readers, the line of justification he is promoting continues to be reproduced in development policy today. Knowing better for the sake of the ‘poor,’ ‘vulnerable’ and/or ‘irresponsible’ is the bread and butter of ­neo-­paternalism. Indeed, I want to suggest, this ‘knowing better’ obscures a raft of power relations including racial, class and neocolonial power relations. It also obscures the role development policy, policymakers and related institutions have in reproducing and producing relations of power that sustain their very existence. For example, the WDR suggests ­nudge-­paternalism measures to help individuals make better economic choices in regards to household income, economic efficiency and market transactions. Yet having the individual as the primary focus can obscure how economic development is a contested concept and not necessarily a quick fix to reducing poverty. In many cases, economic development has had negative effects on various marginalised populations (Godoy et al. 2005; Ferguson 1994). For example, the World Bank has been involved heavily in reproducing neoliberal ‘structural adjustment’ policies in developing countries in most of the 1980s and 1990s.These policies, as discussed in the introductory chapter, caused devastating social, economic and cultural impacts to many vulnerable people. Further, Western governments have been accused of using aid as a means to appease developing countries refusing to address unequal trade barriers (Akyüz 2005; Edwards 1992). Through focusing on individual inefficiency, the attention of these broader structural issues and processes of power can be overlooked. Therefore, it is crucial to critically examine the relations of power underpinning normative evaluations of the good, especially when development actors justify paternalism in the name of the ‘good.’

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Racial and postcolonial relations are another area of inquiry important in seeing the social complexity overlooked in ­neo-­paternalism. Social policy in Australia is a case in point, specifically with the introduction of income management to ­re-­engineer social norms of ‘so called’ dysfunctional agency (Bielefeld 2012; Lawrence 2005). I was told once by an employee of a nongovernmental organization (NGO) heading up ‘welfare reform’ in a remote Australian town, with the majority of the population comprising Australia’s first peoples, that they needed to ­re-­engineer the social norms of aboriginal people as there was nothing else to do. Across Australia, Indigenous Australians are seen by policymakers as problematic and needing to assimilate into mainstream ­Australian society (Klein 2016; Fforde et al. 2013). Yet many Indigenous people in ­Australia actively resist assimilation, valuing customary and hybrid ways of living such as living ‘on country.’ Even still, the Australian state through its income management regime quarantines large portions of state assistance to restrict certain purchases aiming to promote ‘responsible behaviour.’ Such state ­neo-­paternalism and neocolonialism supports the enforcement and normalisation of market logic into the lives and subjectivities of those subjected to income management.

Income management and Australian Indigenous policy We can read Indigenous policy in Australia as a story of continued expansion and colonialisation of White Settler society across Australia. Through the colonial process comes the spread of completely different social structures and norms  – different institutions, laws, economy, social relations, spirituality and relationship with the land. Consequently Indigenous history in Australia tells a story about Indigenous agency resisting an inherently racist White Settler society and its project of modernity – characterised by its whiteness, liberal values and orbit around capitalism. Will Sanders (2009) defines the colonisation of Indigenous people into three distinct ideological periods: protection and guardianship (first third of the twentieth century to the 1930s), followed by a push toward legal and ­socio-­economic equality through assimilation and the granting of citizenship (1930s to 1960s), eventuating in a debate between equality with the idea of choice – giving Indigenous peoples a small taste of ­self-­determination (1970s to 1990s).The Indigenous struggle continues today (Rowse 2002). Since the 1980s, Indigenous policies have been shifting back toward convergence style policies which, some argue, is an outcome of the rapidly increasing neoliberal state (Stanford and Taylor 2013; Altman 2010; Engels 2006). While the assault on the welfare state has been experienced across sectors of Australian society, disproportionately, Indigenous Australians have been dealt the weight of the onslaught (Engels 2006), carving out a particular racial element in Australian neoliberalism.

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Specifically, Altman (2014a) articulates two particular shifts signalling the ‘neoliberal turn’ in Australian Indigenous policy. First, ‘progress’ concerning Indigenous peoples is measured by social indicators that reflect norms of white settler society.These indicators have shown a ‘gap’ between Indigenous Australia and white settler society and a lack of ­socio-­economic progress. ­Altman (2014a) argues that the streamlining of Indigenous Australia through a set of indicators measuring a prescribed definition of progress denies Indigenous people their own modernity and is a form of neocolonialism as, through normalising ‘progress’ in line with that of settler society, it assimilates Indigenous peoples. Second, Altman (2014a) shows the dismantling of the Indigenous institutions and governance mechanisms or what Rowse (2002) terms ‘the Indigenous sector.’ Rowse (2002) documents the abolishment of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) and other ­Indigenous-­led institutions such as NGOs under the ATSIC model. Another example of the dismantling of the Indigenous sector was the phasing out of the Community Development Programme (CDEP), which paid Indigenous people for their productive labour regardless of whether or not it was linked to the capitalist economy. This meant that important traditional sectors of productive labour were numerated, such as care for the country, art production and community support. Moreover, the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER) in 2007 presented a raft of policies targeting all Indigenous communities across the Northern Territory. The NTER has been analysed as former Prime ­Minister of Australia John Howard’s signature blow to any remnants of Indigenous ­self-­determination and the Indigenous sector (Altman and Hinkson 2007). Such scholars saw the NTER as a way to justify the implementation of a neoliberal agenda including introducing income management to pursue wider aspirations and shifting public discourse where welfare is a citizen’s right, towards ‘welfare dependency.’ The NTER was a racialised policy made possible through the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act, and one that targeted only Indigenous Australians (Bielefeld 2013).

Income management Income Management was first introduced in Australia as legislated policy through the 2007 NTER, under the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Welfare Payment Reform) Act 2007. Quarantining Indigenous people’s welfare payments was one part of a whole raft of racially targeted measures. Income management quarantines 50 per cent of state payments received by Indigenous people through the use of the ‘Basics Card.’ This card could be used to buy ‘essential items’ only at accredited stores. The card

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restricted the purchasing of alcohol, tobacco, pornography and gambling. While the quarantining of welfare payments was said to be introduced as a measure to protect children, welfare quarantining was compulsory for all Indigenous people on state assistance, whether they had children or not (Altman and Johns 2008), the logic being that such restrictions would promote responsible economic behaviour. From the beginning, income management had a behavioural element to it aiming to change the beha­ viours of Indigenous people through the restriction and conditionality of state assistance. With the change of government in 2008 and the renaming of the NTER programme to the ‘Stronger Futures’ legislative package in 2012 (under the Social Security Legislation Amendment Act 2012 [‘SSLA Act’]), New Income Management (NIM) was introduced across the Northern Territory, replacing the initial NTER Income Management programme. The introduction of NIM brought two more streams of income management to complement compulsory income management  – which also continued for individuals identified by the state and related agencies as ­long-­term welfare recipients or disengaged youth.The first new stream was ‘Voluntary Income ­Management,’ for people who ­self-­nominated to be part of the programme, despite being given an additional payment as an incentive to ‘volunteer.’The second stream was ‘Vulnerable Income Management,’ which included a variety of small programmes of compulsory income management for ‘vulnerable’ groups such as Child Protection Income. The application of NIM also broadened from the racially targeted regime just for Indigenous people, to include also ­non-­Indigenous people. Regardless, 90.2 per cent receiving Income ­Management in the Northern Territory were Indigenous people (Bray et al. 2014). The Federal Government commissioned an evaluation of NIM in the Northern Territory. This evaluation showed there was no guarantee that compulsory income management supported the purchase of items supporting basic needs, it just prohibited items such as alcohol and tobacco while increasing people’s reliance on having their income managed. Furthermore, Bray et al. (2014) found that, amongst other findings, NIM did not signi­ ficantly change behaviours of income management subjects. Specifically,‘The evaluation could not find any substantive evidence of the programme achieving significant change relative to its key policy objectives, including changing peoples’ behaviour’ (Bray et al 2014: xxi). While the Northern Territory was the first site of income management implementation in Australia, lawyer Noel Pearson had been writing about income management well before the NTER. Pearson identified income management as a way to instil responsibility in his monograph Our Right to Take Responsibility (2000) and later, From Hand Out to Hand Up (2007) published through his think tank, the Cape York Institute. Pearson (2000)

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and the Cape York Institute (2007) proposed contentious welfare reforms to instil responsibility, including attaching behavioural conditions to welfare payments. Income management in the Cape York model was introduced in 2008, targeting only Indigenous people in the populations of four communities; Aurukun, Coen, Hope Vale and Mossman Gorge. The Cape York model was more nuanced than the blanket application across the Northern Territory as part of the NTER, including the establishment of the Families Responsibilities Commission (FRC) (Altman and Johns 2008). The FRC is a statutory body made up of Indigenous people who are advised by authorities about individuals who are exhibiting problematic behaviour such as low school attendance, tenancy breaches, child safety issues and convictions in Magistrates Courts. These individuals then appear in front of the FRC where options are discussed with them on the best course of action to take to change their problematic behaviour. In these ‘conferences,’ voluntary and compulsory income management can be two such options presented. While compulsory income management was said to be the last resort, the majority of people going on income management were put on the compulsory measure (FaHCSIA 2012). The FRC approach to behavioural change has been trialled with national and state government funding in four Indigenous communities in Cape York, in the far north of Queensland.Yet there is limited evidence that the Cape York income management trial, which is used as an example to show how people are having their basic needs met, actually achieve this. Specifically, in the 2012 Cape York Welfare Reform Evaluation carried out by FaHCSIA, the evaluators argued that ‘the evidence suggests that the impact of the local FRC Commissioners is in their listening, guiding and supporting role, rather than in the exercising of their punitive powers to order income management’ (FaHCSIA 2012: 50). Even still, Pearson’s welfare reform programme is currently poised for ­roll-­out in eight Indigenous communities across Australia as part of the ‘Empowered Communities’ initiative. Also in 2012 the Federal Government, as part of the Better Futures, Local Solutions policy framework, introduced ‘­place-­based income management’ initiatives. This regime was trialled in five sites across Australia including Playford (South Australia), Shepparton (Victoria), Bankstown (New South Wales), Rockhampton (Queensland), and Logan (Queensland). The place-­ based income management trials included three income management measures: voluntary, vulnerable income management and child protection income management. Vulnerable income management was for welfare recipients in vulnerable situations such as undergoing financial hardship, homelessness/ risk of being homeless, and a variety of payments to young people living out of home. The Child Protection measure was for parents and caregivers who were referred to income management by a child protection worker. In

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the ­place-­based income management trials, no blanket compulsory measure was used. Further, income management has also been picked up by mining billionaire Andrew Forrest, author of Forrest Review of Indigenous Employment and Training, commissioned by the Federal Government. The 200 recommendations of this review focused on ­welfare-­to-work strategies and behavioural conditionalities on government assistance. Although Forrest has not accepted the programme as being one of income management, he did promote the use of the ‘Healthy Welfare’ Debit Card, which would quarantine 100 per cent of state payments of all welfare recipients in a bid to restrict purchases of alcohol, drugs, pornography and gambling. At the time of writing this book, an iteration of Forrest’s ‘Healthy Welfare Card’ is poised for trials by the Federal government in three communities: Ceduna (South Australia), Wyndham and Kununurra (Western Australia). Called the ‘Cashless Debit Card,’ the trials will involve the quarantining of 80 per cent of state assistance to all adults receiving welfare in the trial sites.

Income management behaviour focus While there is diversity across the various income management programmes, all have a focus on behavioural change. Income management links social dysfunction and problematic behaviour with the use of welfare and sees quarantining state assistance as a disincentive that forces behaviours to change. For example, Malcolm Brough, then Indigenous Affairs Minister overseeing the NTER, argued to the Australian Parliament that the point of income management was to bring Indigenous families into line with ‘normal community standards and parenting behaviours’ (Brough 2007: 2). Noel Pearson (2000: 21) states that past government welfare policy has created a ‘passive welfare’ dependence as it required no reciprocity from Indigenous peoples. His argument follows that contemporary policy targeting Indigenous peoples must now champion ‘responsibility and reciprocity.’ According to Pearson, interventions should emphasise the individual taking responsibility for their life, with less focus on the failure of the State and services to provide support to Indigenous peoples to live the lives they value. Pearson, in his welfare reform blueprint, From Hand Out to Hand Up, argues that what is needed is a ­community-­owned process where dysfunctional behaviour is confronted [and which] will rebuild social norms and Indigenous responsibility. Rebuilt responsibility is the key to economic and social development, since responsibility will enable people to convert opportunities into capabilities. (CYI 2007: 21–22)

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Additionally, ­place-­based income management has behavioural change as an aim – the programme ‘encourage[s] socially responsible behaviour, particularly in the care and education of children’ (Deloitte 2015: 2). Andrew Forrest in his Forrest review also focuses on changing behaviours through his recommendation for blanket income management for all those receiving state assistance. For example, ‘Incentives are needed to motivate people to change their behaviour and abandon the welfare lifestyle’ (Forrest 2014: 130). Further, the Department of Social Services (2015) claim their ‘Cashless Debit Card Trial’ promotes socially responsible behaviour, and this behavioural change is listed as an explicit aim of the trial (Department of Social Services, 2015).

Changing behaviour, changing subjectivities As discussed in the previous chapter, neoliberal governmentality contains two inherent assumptions. First, that market logic is what behaviour should be organised around. Second, neoliberal governmentality also assumes that the market is the site of social truths and that we can understand the world by what the ‘market’ tells us. These two assumptions of neoliberal governmentality are reflected in the behavioural focus of the income management regime. Specifically, how market logic such as disincentives is used to create behavioural change and how social crises are understood as the failure of the individual and their behaviour.

Income management and market logic Through targeting behaviour and subjectivities, the income management regime tries to instil market logic in people. Either voluntary or compulsory, ­community-­based or blanket application, income management aims to change behaviour (and subjectivities) using economic disincentives. As Andrew Forrest (2014) states in his chapter titled ‘Breaking the Welfare Cycle’ in the Forrest Review; ‘… for most people a quick, small “hit to the wallet” can be the most effective incentive to change behaviour’ (133). Restricting what an individual can buy and where they can spend their funds is textbook behavioural economic policy (­Saint-­Paul 2011). Income management restricts choices for ‘people’s own good,’ using the logic of markets (disincentives), to condition and regulate how individuals behave. Further, those targeted for such treatment are judged on their apparent failure to be good economic citizens by the very account that they are in need of state assistance. By default, it is assumed their poverty or hardship is a matter of behaviour, and by getting the economic incentive/disincentive structure right, these people’s behaviour will improve to be at a level consistent and acceptable

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with the rest of the population. For example, drawing on Buckmaster (2011), author of a government report outlining the government’s case for income management and welfare reform, A central theme of government policy in this area has been the need to support or induce the adoption of more responsible behaviours in particular communities by, for example, placing conditions on eligibility for welfare payments or on how welfare payments may be spent. (1) Such logic is paternalistic as it assumes that the State, through using market logic, knows better than the people themselves.

Income management and the depoliticisation of complexity The market logic of income management overlooks the inherent complexity in social life, omitting critical processes of power in its behavioural change regime. The theory of change underpinning income management assumes that because social truths are reconfigured as economic truths, the regime can change behaviours. Within NTER/NIM, ­place-­based income management programmes, the trial of the healthy welfare card and Cape York ­Welfare Reform Program, the following behaviours were targeted: • • •

Spending welfare on alcohol, drugs, pornography and gambling. Not sending ­school-­aged children to school. Dependency on welfare and avoiding finding ‘real’ employment.

This theory of change assumes firstly that people on welfare are guilty or at high risk of exhibiting such behaviours. It also assumes those not on welfare (such as the NIM, ­place-­based income management programmes and the trial of the healthy welfare card), do not have such behaviours or are less likely to exhibit them (Altman and Johns 2008). Further, the disincentive structure has been found to be porous. As discussed above, Bray  et al. (2014) found that restrictions of the Basics Card did not stop people from purchasing or trading barred goods through social networks outside of the ‘market.’ This could suggest that irresponsible or criminal activities are not behavioural at all, but due to poverty and ­socio-­economic crises (Wacquant 2009), or as part of the settler state’s postcolonial condition (Anthony 2013; Anghie 2004). Yet in the income management regime, ­socio-­economic and ­post-­colonial crises are reconfigured and rearticulated as a crisis of the indivi­ dual. It also overlooks the role of the state in these social processes – it is not a benign actor.

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­Socio-­economic crises and relational poverty Each of the behaviours isolated as ‘problematic’ in income management discourse are highly contentious. For example, the ‘dependency’ discourse does not account for relational poverty (Mosse 2010, Bernstein 1992). Relational poverty is a persistent ‘consequence of historically developed economic and political relations, as opposed to “residual” approaches which might regard poverty as the result of being marginal to these same relations’ (Mosse 2010: 1157).Viewing dependency as a behavioural deficiency also does not account for how, particularly in remote communities, employment opportunities are severely limited or ­non-­existent (Altman 2014b), and largely a failure of late capitalism’s promise of employment.

Neocolonialism Moreover, sanctioning people for situations outside their control raises serious ethical questions, particularly considering that income management is a pillar of current Australian Indigenous policy. Even when there are mainstream employment opportunities available, such opportunities are not always suitable. For example, it is not reasonable to expect that Indigenous ­people contesting mining on their country will take up mining employment opportunities. Further, behavioural conditionalities that children must go to school neglects to consider the failure of suitable educational and learning environments for Indigenous children provided by schools and the State (Kral 2012, 2008). Moreover, through problematising behaviour, income management forecloses analysis that includes agency as resistance and subversion to neoliberal economic development and/or neocolonial policies. This is particularly important, as efficacy and effectiveness in carrying out initiatives firmly rooted in Western neoliberal modernity can be actively resisted. For example, some Indigenous peoples, like those in Australia, are resisting harsh ­welfare-­to-work strategies (Rothwell 2015), and others have upheld customary economies to support productive livelihoods not solely reliant on Australian market capitalism (Altman 2010). The analysis of effective choices and ­decision-­making for economic ends as promoted through income management does not capture agency as resistance as a field of enquiry, but actively silences it. Further, social complexity being reduced as economic truths in income management assumes that the ‘responsible citizen’ is constituted by an economically efficient and responsible subjectivity. Yet Amartya Sen and other capability scholars have refuted such resolute definitions as they foreclose other valued subjectivities. Sen (2009, 1999) advocates for the development of capabilities that support human flourishing – incorporating the diversity

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of choices and values. Thus, capabilities cannot be reduced to human capital and what is necessary to be economically responsible. Instead, capabilities should be what people value and have reason to value, which may or may not be capitalist in function (Sen 2009, 1995, 1999; Alkire 2002; Nussbaum 2001). For example, many Indigenous people have an array of capabilities that the neoliberal state would find irrelevant, especially Indigenous people living on country. Living on country requires an array of highly refined and skilled capabilities such as (but not limited to) the ability and permission to have a spiritual connection to the country, the ability to know the ways and stories of the country, including the people, animals and plants and the ability to manage ecological systems of the country. Most importantly, such capabilities are central to people’s ­well-­being. Dockery (2011) demonstrated that there is a positive link between Indigenous Australians’ attachment to their traditional cultures and their ­well-­being, asserting that traditional cultures need to be preserved and strengthened if ­well-­being is to be improved. It can be disempowering and oppressive to overlook and undervalue valued capabilities just because they are not valued or seen as vital within Australian settler society. A contemporary film that beautifully illustrates this point is Charlie’s Country. This film skilfully depicts the range of capabilities held by the Indigenous man Charlie. Living in a remote part of Australia, Charlie has the ability to hunt, to fish, to care for country, to have a spiritual connection with the land, to speak his traditional language, to tell the stories of the dreaming, to teach younger people traditional law, to look after his family even though they have been forced off their land and placed in town camps and to negotiate the contestation of worldviews between Indigenous and ­non-­Indigenous actors. The tragedy that unfolds is the systematic and constant dismissal of Charlie’s capabilities and efforts by actors of white settler society such as the police, service providers, government officials, medical professionals and the media. For Charlie and many other Indigenous ­Australians, particularly those living in remote communities, their capabilities are not recognised in policy debates as core to their ­well-­being, especially compared to the ability to be literate in English, to numerate, to hold employment in the mainstream labour market and to undertake workplace training. Rendering valued and highly refined capabilities invisible or disciplining agency with punitive welfare reform measures undermines what valuable freedom means to many Indigenous peoples.

The state and neocolonialism State actors are never benign.Yet with ­neo-­paternalism, there is a reduction in the visibility of the state and its active role in upholding hegemony within the income management regime. Within the regime, the focus is more on

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individuals as needing improvement, and less an analysis of the state and its implication in neocolonialism and ­neo-­assimilation. The state’s goals, ideology and implicit relations of power are rendered invisible. Instead, neoliberal logic presents the State as the caretaker of its populations, yet it indeed plays a political role in using power to condition, enforce and regulate people in line with the market and Western ideology. For example, for income management to be introduced as part of the 2007 NTER, the Racial Discrimination Act was suspended to allow for the set of policies to racially target Indigenous populations of the Northern Territory. Many elders and community members were outraged by this, and declared the intervention as the continuation of the colonial state (Bielefeld 2014; ­Watson 2009, 2007a, 2007b). The income management regime obscures relational poverty and neocolonial relations as it focuses on changing subjectivities and not the heart of vulnerability in Australia. Tragically, poverty, vulnerability and inequality do not get addressed. Instead of addressing the fixation of market logic and the obscuring of social and political complexity, new proposals of income management have refocused the regime on ­community-­based income management or the expansion of voluntary income management. As these proposals do not undo market logic nor do they seek to incorporate social complexity instead of market logic, voluntary income management and ­community-­based income management should be considered not as improvements, but as modes to uphold neoliberal governmentality.

Behaviourisation and participation Participation is usually cited as a means to circumvent paternalism. But is this really so? When we think of the development intervention as being initiated by an institutional body, generally with power and resources to effect change towards a desired goal, there is much to think about regarding the real possibility of participation. Questions such as who gets to participate? Who is not involved? Who decides what participation looks like? Who makes the final decision? This already complex terrain is further complicated when thinking about augmenting subjectivities and related behaviour as it automatically assumes a ‘normal subject’ or ‘normal behaviour.’ Generally this subject behaves ­self-­sufficiently and in line with market logic. Participation is lauded within the income management debates where ­community-­based income management assumes that ‘communities’ are on board with the programme. Further, policy discourse around community-­ based income management suggests ‘communities’ ‘participate’ in the planning and/or implementation of the local Income Management regime. For example, Alan Tudge, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister,

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stated in a media release the day he introduced legislation into the House of Representatives to authorise the trials of the Centrelink Cashless Debit Card, Government has been working closely with communities on the ground ­co-­designing the parameters of the trial … When community leaders stand up and call for reform to better their community, governments should listen and that is exactly what we are doing. (Tudge 2015: 1) ­Community-­based income management reduces social complexity where there seems to be an imagining of ‘community’ as a homogenous entity within such discourse. Yet ‘community’ is a contested term. Hierarchy and relations of power operate across spatial locations and therefore some people have more of a say than others. Regarding income management, it is rarely those subject to the programme who invite the ­place-­based trial. It is therefore not clear how representative the support for the Income Management regime in ‘communities’ actually is. Engaging with a selected few individuals and organisations, with the assumption they speak on behalf of or know ­better than the wider population, is problematic. There is precedent for the ambiguous use of ‘community’ and ‘participation’ in the income management regime. A review of the literature on some of the previous methods employed by the organisations underpinning the Cape York Reform model and the FRC, shows contention around community engagement and participation in the development of the programme. For example, in his essay Whose right to take responsibility? Martin (2008), an employee of Cape York Partnerships, observes that the community engagement phase undertaken before the Cape York Welfare Reform Trial proposed to the ­Queensland Government in 2007 was more to convince local people of the merit of ­pre-­conceived policies and principles than to use consultation as a way to inform the policies themselves and allow deliberation and agency within such discussions. Moreover, in 2012, the Wunan Foundation, which is part of Empowered Communities and wanting to install their own kind of FRC from Cape York, released a scoping study report for their Halls Creek programme, Living Change: Taking responsibility for our future and retaining our culture. In compiling the report, the first five priority agreements were discussed with only 2.35 per cent2 of the Halls Creek Indigenous community members. Such a low engagement rate makes it hard to justify the claims of ‘community support and participation’ made in the scoping study. Further still, of this 2.35 per cent,

2 The scoping study shows the sampling size of the study as 134 people (p. 33) of a wider Indigenous population of 5700 (p. 1).

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29.4 per cent of participants disagreed with the full model of imposing the five key requirements and related sanctions (Wunan Foundation 2012: 39). This limited consultation has significant implications regarding how representative ­community-­based income management really is. While it gives the impression that ­community-­based income management regimes are an improvement because they accommodate community concerns and engagement, attention needs to be paid to who is included and who is excluded in the process. Moreover, ­community-­based income management is still income management. ­Community-­based income management still rests on the assumptions of market logic, problematic individuals and the need for behaviour change. By definition, it deems some agency of individuals problematic, and some not. Therefore, the inference of choice and control through community participation is contentious because from the beginning, some choices, values, behaviours of people are not part of the range of choices acceptable or normalised. Further, when the state has every intention of implementing income management, inclusion of the consultation will be comprised of the ‘rational’ actors, those who see the logic in the income management regime. Certain groups resisting the income management regime can easily be discarded or silenced in the consultation process, portrayed as irrational and or not understanding the logic (market logic). For example, Stop Income Management in Playford (SIMPla) published an open letter to the Federal Government calling for the cessation of compulsory income management, the increase in support services and an increase in welfare payments to be at a liveable level (SIMPla 2014). The letter is supported by over 40 organisations, yet the points they made to cease compulsory income management and increase welfare payments were not included in the final plans.Tinkering around the edges of the regime with the inclusion of ‘consultation’ cannot transform the logic of income management.

Conclusion This chapter has sought to show how paternalistic logic underpinning psychologically focused interventions is highly contentious. I have used the example of income management in Australian Indigenous policy – one that specifically aims to change the behaviours and thus subjectivities of Indigenous people. I have argued that this obscures relational poverty, neocolonialism and the role of the state and other hegemonic actors in the process. The thing about the psychologisation of development interventions is that whoever is making the decision or managing the intervention has a specific ideology underpinning what is a normal, right, and responsible subjectivity. In the case of behavioural change sought through income management,

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Indigenous psychologies are oppressed. Further, within neoliberalism, more extreme logics around the market and efficiency are regulated, providing more restrictions to what the ‘responsible subject’ should be. Even if one does not subscribe to my treatment of paternalistic and neo-­ paternalistic approaches, it is hard to avoid the fact that the shaping, nudging and augmenting of subjectivities will always be political. It will always involve a decision by an actor in a position of privilege to ‘intervene’ about what is normal, and what isn’t. As already shown, to claim such would be to obscure alternative ideas. What is a desirable subjectivity is always contentious, especially when these decisions are being made on behalf of others, and by those firmly placed within Western psychological expertise. As policymaking and project implementation is often rapid and fast paced how can there be time to really consider these deeper political issues? Especially as to do so speaks right to the heart of the development institution itself.

References Akyüz, Yilmaz. 2005. ‘WTO Negotiations on Industrial Tariffs: What is at Stake for Developing Countries?’ Economic and Political Weekly, 40(46):4827–4836. Alkire, Sabina. 2002. Valuing Freedoms: Sen’s Capability Approach and Poverty Reduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Altman, Jon. 2007. ‘The Howard Government’s Northern Territory Intervention: Are ­Neo-­Paternalism and Indigenous Development Compatible?’ Center for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, Working Paper. Altman, Jon. 2010. ‘What Future for Remote Indigenous Australia? Economic Hybridity and the Neoliberal Turn,’ in Jon Altman and Melinda Hinkson (eds), Culture Crisis: Anthropology and Politics in Aboriginal Australia. Sydney: UNSW Press. Altman, Jon. 2014a. ‘Indigenous Policy: Canberra Consensus on a Neoliberal Project of Improvement,’ in Chris Miller and Lionel Orchard (eds), Australian Public Policy: Progressive Ideas in the ­Neo-­Liberal Ascendancy, 117–134. Bristol: The Policy Press. Altman, Jon. 2014b. ‘Searching for the “Real” Economy on Cape York,’ Journal of Indigenous Policy, 15:105–109. Altman, Jon, and Melinda Hinkson. 2007. Coercive Reconciliation: Stabilise, Normalise, Exit Aboriginal. Australia: Arena Publications Association. Altman, Jon, and Melissa Johns. 2008. ‘Indigenous Welfare Reform in the Northern Territory and Cape York: A Comparative Analysis,’ CAEPR Working Paper no. 44/2008:1–39. Anghie, Anthony. 2004. Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Anthony, Thalia. 2013. Indigenous People, Crime and Punishment. Oxford: Routledge. Bernstein, Henry. 1992. ‘Poverty and the Poor,’ in Henry Bernstein, Ben Crow and and Hazel Johnson (eds), Rural Livelihoods: Crises and Responses, 13–26. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bielefeld, Shelley. 2012.‘Compulsory Income Management and Indigenous ­Australians: Delivering Social Justice or Furthering Colonial Domination,’ UNSW Law Journal, 35(2):522–562.

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Bielefeld, Shelley. 2013. ‘Compulsory Income Management under the Stronger Futures Laws  – Providing “Flexibility” or Overturning Freedom of Contract?’ Indigenous Law Bulletin 8 (5 March/April):18–21. Bielefeld, Shelley. 2014. ‘Income Management and Indigenous Peoples: Nudged into a Stronger Future?’ Griffith Law Review, 23(2):285–317. Bray, Rob, Matthew Gray, Kelly Hand and Ilan Katz. 2014. Evaluating New Income Management in the Northern Territory: Final Evaluation Report. Social Policy Research Center: University of New South Wales. Brough, Malcolm T. 2007. Speech to Parliament: The Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Welfare Payment Reform) Act 2007, 7 August, 2–4, 6. Commonwealth of Australia Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives. Brown, Wendy. 2000. ‘Suffering Rights as Paradoxes,’ Constellations, 7(2):230–241. Buckmaster, Luke. (2011) Budget 2011–12: Welfare Reforms to Change Personal Behaviour 2011. Available at: www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Depart​ ments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/BudgetReview201112/WelfareReforms (accessed 25 December 2015). Buckmaster, Luke, Carol Ey and Michael Klapdor. 2012. ‘Income Management: An Overview,’ In Background Note. Canberra: Parliament of Australia Parliamentary Library. Cahill, Damien. 2014. The End of ­Laissez-­Faire? On the Durability of Embedded Neoliberalism. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. Coons, Christian and Michael Weber. 2013. Paternalism:Theory and Practice. ­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CYI (Cape York Institute). 2007. From Hand Out to Hand Up: Cape York Welfare Reform Project, Aurukun, Coen, Hope Vale, Mossman Gorge, Design Recommendations. Cairns: Cape York Institute. Deloitte. 2015. Consolidated Place Based Income Management Evaluation Report 2012–2015, Deloitte Access Economics (ed.) 27 May 2015. Sydney: Department of Social Services. Department of Social Services. 2015. ‘Cashless Debit Card Trial.’ Available at: www. dss.gov.au/­f amilies-­and-children/­programmes-­services/­welfare-­conditionality/­ cashless-­debit-­card-­trial-ceduna (accessed 24 December 2015). Dockery, Michael. 2011. ‘Traditional Culture and the Wellbeing of Indigneous ­Australians: An Analysis of the 2008 NATSISS,’ CLMR Discussion Paper Series, ­Centre for Labour Market Research, Curtin University, 2011/01. Douzinas, Costas. 2000. The End of Human Rights: Critical Legal Thought at the Turn of the Century. Oxford: Hart Publishing. Douzinas, Costas. 2002. ‘The End(s) of Human Rights,’ Melbourne University Law Review, 26(2):445–465. Edwards, Sebastian. 1992. ‘Trade Orientation, Distortions, and Growth in Developing Countries,’ Journal of Development Economics, 39:31–57. Engels, Ben. 2006. ‘Old Problem, New Label: Reconstructing the Problem of Welfare Dependency in Australian Social Policy Discourse,’ Just Policy, 41:5–14. Escobar, Arturo. 1995. Encountering Development: The Making and the Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. FaHCSIA. 2012. ‘Cape York Welfare Reform Evaluation,’ Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, 1–359.

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Ferguson, James. 1994. The ­Anti-­Politics Machine: Development, Depoliticisation, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. New York: Cambridge University Press. Fforde, Cressida, Lawrence Bamblett, Ray Lovett, Scott Gorringe and William ­Fogarty. 2013. ‘Discourse, Deficit and Identity: Aboriginality, the Race Paradigm and the Language of Representation in Contemporary Australia,’ Media ­International ­Australia, 149:162–173. Forrest, Andrew. 2014. The Forrest Review: Creating Parity. Review of Indigenous Employment and Training. Canberra: Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. Godoy, Ricardo, Victoria ­Reyes-­García, Elizabeth Byron, William R. Leonard and Vincent Vadez. 2005. ‘The Effect of Market Economies on the ­Well-­being of Indigenous Peoples and on their Use of Renewable Natural Resources,’ Annual Review of Anthropology, 34:121–138. Guari,Varun. 2014.World Bank: Policies Should Match Behaviour. Available at: www. worldbank.org/en/news/video/2014/12/02/wdr2015-­policies-­should-­match-­ behavior (accessed 4 February 2016), Washington, DC: World Bank. Klein, Elise. 2016. ‘The Curious Case of Using the Capability Approach in Australian Indigenous Policy,’ Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 17(1):1–16. Kral, Inge. 2008. ‘Literacy as Social Practice,’ in C. Richmond (ed.), The Walk to School: An Indigenous Early Years Literacy Strategy for Northern Territory Public Libraries & Knowledge Centres, 20–26. Darwin: Northern Territory Library. Kral, Inge. 2012. Talk, Text and Technology: Literacy and Social Practice in a Remote Indigenous Community. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. USA: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Lawrence, Rebecca. 2005. ‘Governing Warlpiri Subjects: Indigenous Employment and Training Programs in the Central Australian Mining Industry,’ Geographical Research, 43(1):40– 48. Martin, Phillip. 2008. ‘Whose Right to Take Responsibility?’ Arena Magazine, 95:37–41. McMahon, John. 2015. ‘Behavioural Economics as Neoliberalism: Producing and Governing Homo Economicus,’ Contemporary Political Theory, 14(2):137–158. Mead, Lawrence. 1997. The New Paternalism: Supervisory Approaches to Poverty. ­Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Mignolo, Walter D. 2011. The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Durham: Duke University Press. Mill, John Stuart. (2002[1859]). On Liberty. Devon, England: Dover Publications. Mosse, David. 2010. ‘A Relational Approach to Durable Poverty, Inequality and Power,’ The Journal of Development Studies, 46(7):1156–1178. Nussbaum, Martha. 2001. Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pearson, Noel. 2000. Our Right to Take Responsibility. Cairns: Noel Pearson and Associates Pty Ltd. Robins, Steven. 2003. ‘Whose Modernity? Indigenous Modernities and the Land Claims after Apartheid,’ Development and Change, 34(2):265–286. Rose, Nikolas. 1999. Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self. 2nd edn. ­London: Free Association Books. Rothwell, Nicolas. 2015.‘Rebellion Thwarts Remote Control,’ The Weekend ­Australian, 24–25 January, 14–18. Rowse,Tim. 2002. Indigenous Futures: Choice and Development for Indigenous and Islander. Australia: UNSW Press.

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Saint-Paul, Gilles. 2011. The Tyranny of Utility: Behavioural Social Science and the Rise of Paternalism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Sanders, Will. 2009. ‘Ideology, Evidence and Competing Principles in Australian Indigenous Affairs: From Brough to Rudd via Pearson and the NTER,’ Center for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research Working Paper No. 289/2009. Sen, Amartya. 1995. Inequality Reexamined. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sen, Amartya. 1999. Development as Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sen, Amartya. 2009. The Idea of Justice. London: Allen Lane, Penguin Books. SIMPla. 2014. ‘Stop Income Management in Playford Open Letter to the ­Australian Government.’ Available at: https://antipovertynetworksa.files.wordpress.com/​ 2014/11/­simpla-­open-letter.pdf (accessed 27 December 2015). Stanford, Sonya, and Sandra Taylor. 2013. ‘Welfare Dependence or Enforced Deprivation? A Critical Examination of White Neoliberal Welfare and Risk,’ Australian Social Work, 66(4):476–494. Sunstein, Cass. 2013. Simplier: the future of government. New York: Simon & Schuster. Thaler, Richard, and Cass Sunstein. 2009. Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness. London: Penguin Books. Tudge, Alan. 2015. ‘Centrelink Cashless Debit Card Legislation Introduced to Parliament,’ release date 19 August 2015. Available at: https://ministers.dpmc.gov. au/tudge/2015/­centrelink-­cashless-­debit-­card-­legislation-­introduced-parliament (accessed 23 December 2015). Wacquant, Loic. 2009. Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Watson, Irene. 2007a.‘The Aboriginal State of Emergency Arrived with Cook and the First Fleet,’ Australian Feminist Law Journal, 26:3–8. Watson, Irene. 2007b. ‘Aboriginal Women’s Laws and Lives: How Might We Keep Growing the Law?’ Australian Feminist Law Journal, 26:95–109. Watson, Irene. 2009. ‘Aboriginality and the Violence of Colonialism,’ Borderlands, 8(1):1–8. WDR. 2014. World Development Report 2015: Mind, Society, and Behavior. Washington, DC: World Bank. Wunan Foundation. 2012. ‘Living Change: Taking Responsibility for our Future and Retaining our Culture,’ Scoping Study for Hall Creek, December 2012. Wunan Foundation.

6

A place for psychology in development?

So far in this book I have outlined the contested nature of psychological knowledge in development interventions, stressing how large parts of the psychological canon are founded in studies firmly rooted within Western liberalism, obscuring alternative views of the relationship between the self and the world. I have also explored how ideas of power are largely absent in psychological expertise – especially those lacking any examination of the link between psychological expertise, hegemony and ideology. Given the relations of power inherent in the development project, we must ask if there is, then, any place at all for the psychological domain in development interventions. To say no outright  – that there is no place for psychology in development interventions – would be perhaps premature. As we have seen, development has always been about shaping subjectivities, shifting the cognitive infrastructure to fit in with broader projects of colonialism through to modernisation and neoliberalism.Yet when thinking about the neoliberal shift in development and the use of behavioural economics and its unrelenting focus on individualised agency, then perhaps the uncritical application of psychological knowledge is problematic if not dangerous. However, as shown in ­Chapter 2, if ‘psychology’ were more akin to ideas of ‘subjectivity’ and integrated concepts of power, hegemony and ideology, working towards decolonising itself to allow the reclamation of Indigenous psychologies, the answer may be different. Perhaps then, ‘psychological expertise’ could become a tool for liberation, transforming the development intervention and beyond. But what is liberation? Tully suggests two levels. First, liberation can be action, ‘against the structure of domination as a whole in the name of freedom and ­self-­determination’ (2000: 42). We have seen so far in this book

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that Tully’s structure of domination could mean a variety of things: neocolonialism, capitalism, neoliberalism, Western modernity. Second, liberation could also be about everyday resistance and disrupting hegemonic processes of power and the everyday ‘compliance and internal contestation of the strategies and techniques in the name of freedom of insubordination and dissent’ (Tully 2000: 42). In the previous chapter, we examined the everyday resistance by Indigenous peoples to the Australian government’s income management behaviourist regime. Critical psychology scholars see both possibilities within liberation psychology. For example, Hook (2004: 18) argues that critical psychology should not only deconstruct and politicise Western psychological expertise but also be ‘concerned with implementing social betterment and/or change.’ Furthermore, Parker (1999) sees resistance and change as incremental; attention should also be on challenging the assumptions of psychology and underpinning everyday ‘commonsense,’ ‘normal’ human practice. Specifically, critical psychologists should be: interested in developing an ­historically-­situated ­self-­reflexive critique of psychology that is also able to reveal the ways in which pedagogical practices of academic psychology either separate useful knowledge from commonsense and turn it into ‘expertise’ which people feel is alien to their experience, or relegate useful knowledge to the domain of commonsense so that people feel that it is worthless. (Parker 1999: 15, original emphasis included) While there is critical engagement and renewal underway inside and on the fringes of the psychology discipline, there is also an effort towards emancipatory psychology from outside the discipline that may be of interest when thinking about the psychological domain in development. I will explore three specific areas: i) Paulo Freire, Ignacio ­Martín-­Baró and conscientisation; ii) the Black Consciousness movement from South Africa; and iii) the continued reclamation of Indigenous psychologies in Australia.

South American liberation psychology: Paulo Freire and Ignacio ­Martín-­Baró The work of Paulo Freire is important to consider when thinking about liberation psychology. Freire’s life’s work was about helping the people he termed ‘the oppressed’ to understand their subjugation. Freire did this through a process he named conscientisation (conscientização in Portuguese); the development of a critical consciousness to contest and shift oppression (Freire 1970). Specifically, conscientisation is a process that makes it possible for an

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agent to become aware of the relations of power and oppression, thus making it possible for people to act against this oppression (Summerson Carr 2003). Freire ran classes for the Brazilian poor, notably in São Paulo, where he taught and mastered his pedagogy of the oppressed. Conscientisation broadly involved three steps: first for people to engage in dialogue about their oppression; second, for people to understand the mechanisms of dehumanisation and oppression; third, using this new critical knowledge, people were able to realise a new reality of the world around them, and of their own social identity. Specifically, this realisation meant ‘the recovery of their historical memory [which] offers a base for a more autonomous determination of their future’ (­Martín-­Baró 1994: 40). This pedagogy for the oppressed is not just a semantic change of opinion about reality that leaves the objective situation intact. Instead, ‘concientización supposes that persons change in the processes of changing their relations with the surrounding environment and, above all, with other people’ (­Martín-­Baró 1994: 41). Conscientisation uses ­self-­defined psychological processes to engage with people’s oppression, helping them to undo this oppression and reclaim power. Freire, in his pedagogical development of conscientisation, made a point about paternalism and intervention. He saw the process of conscientisation as ­anti-­paternalistic, as there was no set destination nor individual/leader who knew where the process would go. Instead, people would, within the conscientisation process and through the exploration of processes of power and structures of domination, find their own way with it. Ignacio ­Martín-­Baró drew heavily on Freire’s work. Spanish born and a Jesuit priest, ­Martín-­Baró completed his doctorate in psychology in ­Chicago before moving to El Salvador. It was here where ­Martín-­Baró worked towards deconstructing much of what he knew of American psychology, finding it insufficient to speak to the poor and marginalised with whom he worked. He criticised the American psychological canon for its positivist epistemology, uncompromising individualism, hedonistic focus, homeostatic vision and ahistoricalism (­Martín-­Baró 1994). ­Martín-­Baró’s El Salvador was ruled by a brutal regime, a regime which eventually ordered his death by firing squad, shooting him and others down in the middle of the night, in front of his residence. In life and similar to Freire, ­Martín-­Baró went about developing his own liberation psychology. He drew heavily from Freire – tailoring his liberation psychology to the context of the poor and politically oppressed around him. In his liberation psychology, people were to develop a critical consciousness through remembering history, ‘to discover selectively, through collective memory, those elements of the past which have proved useful in the defense of the interest of exploited classes and which may be applied to the present struggles to increase [concientización]’ (Fals Borda 1988: 95). Next, ­Martín-­Baró called for ‘­de-­ideologising everyday experience,’ where

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the stranglehold of everyday experience as oppression is normalised, justified and imposed, vindicating exploitative social structures that serve only the ruling classes. Such an exposé would then allow room for people to articulate a consciousness of their own reality. Finally, ­Martín-­Baró called for the utilising of people’s virtues and solidarity to work towards the collective good with this shared critical consciousness.

South African psychology The psychology literature of ­post-­apartheid South Africa has many critical analyses of racism in ­apartheid-­era psychology (Duncan et al. 2004; Foster 2004, 1991; Duncan et al. 2001). For example, in her analysis of the submissions of psychologists as mental health service providers to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Adelaide Magwaza found that ­apartheid-­era psychologists took part in the ‘racially skewed processes of ­knowledge-­production and training that it generated’ (Foster 2004: 364). Psychology was silent about racial oppression during apartheid and so, as a discipline, was largely complicit during the regime. Don Foster (2004) finds that ­apartheid-­era psychology actively engaged in racism through racist diagnostic systems, focusing on black people as the negative other, upholding racialised organisational structures and excluding black people from the discipline. Nonetheless, psychological resistance was part of the overturning of apartheid. The Black Consciousness movement used liberation psychological discourse to resist oppression and domination. The Black Consciousness movement, which was led by Steve Biko, was about undoing the negative image stamped in the minds of black South Africans from years of colonial subjugation, replacing it with a positive, ­self-­affirming and proud image. Influenced by the writings of Freire, psychological liberation was seen as a prerequisite for political and material liberation – specifically ‘mental emancipation as a precondition to political emancipation’ (Biko 1979, cited in Hook 2005: 489). According to Hook (2005), Biko and the Black Consciousness movement was about solidarity, calling for all oppressed or marginalised peoples under the apartheid regime to come together.

Indigenous healing in Australia As was seen in South Africa, Australian psychologists and their discipline maintained a white,Western hegemony and perpetuated racism even after the colonial era (Rickwood et al. 2010; Dudgeon and Pickett 2000; ­Koolmatrie and Williams 2000; Butler 1998). Still, Indigenous knowledges have continued to be an important source of resistance and healing for Indigenous populations in neocolonial Australia. Indigenous psychologies across Australia

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carry a specific spiritual element and prioritise relationships with the land and nature, the importance of kin and social networks, and the need to live in congruence with one’s beliefs. The spiritual and cultural element is not just significant in ­self-­determination but is also seen as a way for people to heal themselves from oppression (Dudgeon and Pickett 2000). Melisah Feeney (2009) in her research into the healing strategies of remote Aboriginal communities, describes healing as ‘a journey of empowerment, reclaiming control and ­self-­determination’ (10). Dudgeon et al. (2012) describe healing as a spiritual understanding of self, identity, love, belonging, family, security, hurt, heartache, good times, laughter and our connection to land. Having hope and finding acceptance based on love and respect, of understanding of ourselves, our supports and being able to tell ‘our’ stories. (2012: 69) Koolmatrie and Williams (2000) outline specific ways of healing for Indigenous peoples who have undergone traumas such as being part of the Stolen Generation, where between 1910 to 1970 up to three in every ten Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their families. ­Koolmatrie and Williams (2000) show how through telling stories and raising a critical consciousness of colonialism and ­post-­colonialism, people are able to heal. The reclamation, articulation and strengthening of Indigenous psychologies has also been an important process of ­de-­colonialism in settler Australia. Regarding psychology, it is a process not just involving Indigenous peoples but involves the healing that is also necessary for ­non-­Indigenous peoples. For example, Koolmatrie and Williams (2000) ask any ­non-­Indigenous ­people working with Indigenous people to keep in mind the colonial history and the role psychological disciplines played, and to ‘Heal yourself, please. Deal with the issue of what your people have done to our people, what your ancestors have done to our ancestors, then we might be able to help one another. Unless you are healed, don’t bother to come in and work with us because you’ll only make us worse’ (164).

Attributes of liberation psychology There are six areas to reflect on from these approaches. First, they demonstrate resistance against the depoliticalisation of Western psychological expertise. These approaches, either directly or indirectly, reveal Western psychological expertise to be a parochial cultural moment that arose in the West, and thus resist the systematic and continued dislocation and oppression of their ­non-­Western knowledge systems. Second, there is reclamation

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of knowledge and ideas about self, psyche and the world. It is important to note that reclamation is not the promotion of an untouched, unchanged knowledge or what Hook (2005) terms a ‘unified psychology of [Indigenous or] black essence’ (489). Instead, reclamation does not deny hybridity, being primarily focused on ‘disrupting historical experiences of oppression and marginality’ (Hook 2005: 489). Third, there is a linking of critical consciousness to liberation  – where the psychological domain, awakened through critical awareness, can lead to material and political liberation. Indeed, Freire and Biko in particular also emphasised the importance of action in building critical consciousness (Hook 2005). Fourth, there is clear recognition that the psychological domain is one element of broader processes of liberation, requiring critical awareness of political processes and in some cases material resources to press towards radical change. Liberation psychology, then, is very different indeed to ­self-­help psychologies, which do not politicise processes of power, hegemony and knowledge production (Rimke 2010). ­Self-­help, because of its apolitical stance, risks overlooking and undervaluing the need to change the objective reality of structural oppression and deprivation. Or, worse still, the focus on ‘­self-­help’ can actually become a strategy of policy to deliberately overlook structural injustice and oppression. Fifth, these approaches show that ‘liberation’ is not a universal project and that how it is defined varies. For example, Freire showed the constructive nature of deliberation in the conscientisation process, where the ‘oppressed’ could find answers themselves. In this case he avoided paternalism by instead seeing conscientisation as a process of becoming. For him, no path, or state of ‘freedom,’ ‘liberation’ or ‘emancipation,’ was predetermined. It was through the development of a critical consciousness that people would find their own way. This is different from a predetermined definition of what ‘liberation’ and ‘freedom’ may mean. Clearly, there are issues around the dominant class using ‘freedom’ as a way to reproduce itself, which is seen in capitalism in the promise of freedom through free markets (Harvey 2005), in neocolonialism and the promise of freedom through liberal democracy (Mignolo 2011), in statism through the promise of freedom through the state’s management (Wright 2010), and in the patriarchy through the promise of freedom through equality within predetermined patriarchal structures (Mohanty 2003; McEwan 2001; Brown 2000). Finally, all three examples show powerfully how ‘psychology,’ once it is redefined, politicised and decolonised, can actively work towards liberation. However, these three examples of liberation psychology are not necessarily within the domain of development intervention. Two questions remain: does the framework of the development intervention help or stifle these broader radical projects of liberation? and, could development practice a liberation psychology or is this an oxymoron?

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Development interventions and liberation psychology Barbara Cruikshank is very relevant when thinking about liberation psychology and development interventions. Cruikshank (1999) studies ‘technologies of citizenship,’ from welfare rights struggles, philanthropic ­self-­help schemes to the organised promotion of ­self-­esteem awareness in America. She is sceptical of the potential for institutionalising liberation and empowerment, where empowering citizens (psychologically or otherwise) through associations and everyday practices is more a measure of subjection to state power than of real emancipation. Cruikshank’s caution regarding ideas of emancipation within institutional environments is reasonable, given what we know about wider processes of knowledge production and the relations of power in the development industry, particularly in light of the trend towards neoliberal development.Yet if development interventions took a turn towards critical collective action such as that described by Freire and ­Martín-­Baró, where the development intervention and psychological knowledge are situated in broader processes of power, then perhaps there is the possibility of such a leap forward. Let me explore this important area now, using the concepts of ka da I yèrè la and dusu – the two important psychological concepts for people living on the urban fringe of Bamako.

Ka da I yèrè la and dusu – purposeful agency for what? In Chapter 2, I established that, every day, people in the neighbourhood on the urban fringe of Bamako act to either enhance their personal and family ­well-­being or that of the community. Ka da I yèrè la and dusu were seen as essential in underpinning this purposeful agency. People are purposeful in their actions because they are following their aspirations: to get a job, to have a house, to get a good harvest, to have their children educated. Appadurai (2004) argues that the capacity to aspire is essential to people, especially the poor, as it shapes their agency and gives hope. Appadurai (2004) in his essay ‘The Capacity to Aspire’ argues that, in strengthening the capacity to aspire, conceived as a cultural capacity, especially among the poor, the ­future-­oriented logic of development could find a natural ally, and the poor could find the resources required to contest and alter the conditions of their own poverty. (2004: 59) In the study site, aspirations or hamiw1 fed into the grander vision of the ‘good life’ or hèrè in Bambara. They are a vision in the agent’s mind about

1 Hami or (hamiw plural) in Bambara have two literal meanings: one referring to a worry, the other referring to aspirations.

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a possible moment in the future, better than the current moment, which motivates action towards such goals. However, aspirations are shaped by social power – family and social relations shape aspirations, as do broader processes of power such as ‘development discourse.’ While Appadurai acknowledges the importance of aspirations and a source of hope and liberation, the question remains  – what happens if what constitutes aspirations for hèrè also restricts hèrè? In the case of the study of the neighbourhood on the urban fringe of Bamako, it was interesting to document the reproduction of development discourse in the study site, which seemed more to reproduce and maintain the modernisation mantra of improvement found in the local and international development industry than directly contest relational poverty and inequality. This raises the point that, while ka da I yèrè la and dusu are important to people, we must ask what structures and institutions are ka da I yèrè la and dusu being channelled into. Is it revolution or reproduction?

Aspirations and hamiw People’s aspirations or hamiw in the neighbourhood are about the ‘good life’ or hèrè. A man from a poor household in the neighbourhood explained the importance of hami for his life in the following terms: ‘Aspiration helps me be free in society when I am depressed. It helps me to know that what I am willing for and would do for it [the aspiration]. It comforts me.’2 When asked what was important for people to undertake initiatives to help ­well-­being, people referred to hami as important. Specifically, through a household survey I undertook in the neighbourhood, the most commonly cited aspirations people had for their families and themselves included health, followed by being educated and being happy. To have a successful future (which was defined as a kind of prosperity including having money, employment and assets) came next, followed by employment, food, unity within the family, having a house and having money. The most commonly cited aspirations people had for the community was unity and everyone living in solidarity, followed by education, healthcare and clean drinking water for all. Peace, employment and happiness followed. There are two observations from these aspirations. The first is that aspirations are the visioning of a better life from the current moment in time to the future. They reveal a gap between what the agent sees in their current moment as a deficit and what they aspire to in the future. The second observation is that all of the aspirations are formed in the thick of social 2 Male Interviewee 1, the neighbourhood, January 2011.

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life, where social relations and processes of power  – including discourses of ‘modern’ development – shape aspirations. I will examine both of these points now.

Hami as a vision for a better future Aspirations are situated temporally for the agent as they are placed in the future, offering a vision of a better life than the present. Mr Barma provides a good example. When I asked of his aspirations for the family he said he wanted all of his children to go to school. Also, Mr Barma aspired for his family to be healthy. When I asked what his aspirations were for the community, he said also that he wanted every person to have access to education and to be healthy.These aspirations are not much of a surprise given Mr Barma’s life story and current situation. Mr Barma is the head of a very poor household living in a makeshift, ­one-­bedroom raffia hut in the neighbourhood with his four children, wife and his wife’s mother. They live across the road from an elite private school at which one of his daughters has a scholarship. Mr Barma himself never went to school and nor did his wife, but he spoke overwhelmingly about the importance of education and how it gives people opportunities. Mr Barma also has seen many people lose their lives due to sickness.This is why he articulates health as important. Another example is that of Ayesha, a young mother I interviewed in her rented home in the neighbourhood. Her aspirations for her family were for them to be healthy, to have food and to be wealthy. Ayesha’s aspirations for her family are also revealing of her current situation and her past life experiences. Ayesha is a cook for expatriates in Bamako. She talks about their wealth and ease of life compared to her own. Thus, she aspires to a life that has such ease and she thinks this happens because of accumulation of wealth. Although she was employed when I spoke to her, Ayesha told me of times when she had no work and it was difficult because she struggled to feed her family and get them treatment when they were sick. This is also why she sees having health as important. Ayesha’s aspirations again envisage a better life compared to her current one, and are developed in the thick of her social experience. One last example is that of the traditional chief of the neighbourhood. His aspiration for the community was unity and development. In his interview the chief spoke at length of how the biggest block to development in the neighbourhood was the lack of unity and people not working together. He told many stories of how initiatives by the poor floundered because the elite in the area did not help and act in unity with the rest of the population.These insights reveal why he stressed so firmly the importance of working together and social cohesion.

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Hami as a reflection of broader processes of power In most analyses (especially economic ones), aspirations are distilled to the individual level through the language of preferences and calculation (Ray 2006). But aspirations also say so much about a society when considered together. From the three stories of Mr Barma,Ayesha and the traditional chief, we can see how aspirations are formed through experiences in the agent’s life. For example, relations of gender and religion are very important in shaping the aspirations of people. In the neighbourhood (and in much of Mali), gender relations and gendered institutions (such as labour, the market, the household, marriage and the community) define the roles of men and women and are extremely speci­ fic. Being a woman in the neighbourhood carried explicit obligations, which impacted their level of deprivation, educational attainment and ­decision-­making abilities. These gendered roles are also reinforced by Islam. The role of the man as the head of the family (the dominant male role) ‘according to Islam,’ as most people would state, is to be the chief of the family. The chief of the family is expected to provide for the family, including food, clothes and shelter, and if family members are sick he has a responsibility to source medical help.The chief of the family is also charged with ‘sensitising’ family members. Sensitisation is a kind of education, teaching members how to be courteous in society, how to behave with neighbours, and not to be violent or do bad things. The duty of women, specifically wives, is to care for the family, especially children, and to submit to their husband’s rule. One ­middle-­class woman I interviewed from the neighbourhood explained her conception of her role as a wife as follows: ‘If your husband wants you to do this, then you must do this.You must not raise your voice beyond his voice.’3 While Islam has a strong part in defining the roles of men and women, it cannot be assumed as determining them entirely, as there are variations in how these roles have been interpreted, and the intersectionality of class, age and education level also affected gendered roles (Klein 2016; Rosa De Jorio 2009, 1997; Moghadam 1993). Moreover, people’s aspirations in the neighbourhood are also shaped partly by wider discursive development processes occurring in the neighbourhood and beyond, as I discuss below.

The discourse of ‘modern’ development The neighbourhood has a striking discourse in regard to ‘modern’ development, and one that also shapes aspirations. Scholars have documented the way discourses of development shape agency (Crush 2005; Escobar 1995; F ­ erguson 1994). In this neighbourhood, the discourse of modern development fortifies what it means for Mali and the immediate neighbourhood to develop, what 3 Female Interviewee 1, the neighbourhood, 5 January 2011.

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trajectory people’s lives need to take to be considered ‘developed,’ and how through the articulation of certain activities these goals can be reached. The discourse of ‘modern’ development is expressed through particular development ‘buzzwords,’ which were communicated over and over again by me asking people what their aspirations were. These buzzwords included ‘education,’ ‘employment,’‘literacy training,’‘­income-­generating activities,’‘financial means’ and ‘sanitation.’The buzzwords seemed to suggest that one would be developed if these ‘ingredients’ were realised. D ­ evelopment narratives promul­gated within the neighbourhood stem from ­high-­level policymaking within the development industry in Mali and internationally – the political elite, the World Bank and United Nations D ­ evelopment ­Programme (UNDP) staff who develop the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), the ­Millennium ­Development Goals (MDGs), and the ­Sustainable D ­ evelopment Goals (SDGs), capitalist development strategies that filter all the way down to ordinary people’s lives. The ‘development industry’ in the neighbourhood is linked to the industry’s operations in Bamako. Decentralisation, a policy introduced by the newly independent state in the 1960s and designed to support a ‘pluralist d­ emocracy’ (Kassibo 1997), has had many implications for the neighbourhood. For one, it influenced the administration zoning of the neighbourhood – ­designating the ­peri-­rural area as urban. This zoning meant that the neighbourhood is not a focus for the core activities of the development industry, which in Mali mainly focuses on rural areas. Still, international Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), bilateral and multilateral agencies and philanthropic and private enterprise foundations all have a presence in the neighbourhood, and they generally partner with local associations and NGOs to implement small community development projects. What is also interesting to observe is how the predetermined buzzwords informed by PRSPs such as ‘education,’ ‘employment,’ ‘literacy training,’ ‘­income-­generating activities,’ ‘financial means’ and ‘sanitation’ are actively disseminated throughout the neighbourhood and Mali through both the community development projects of these development actors and c­ ertain TV/radio programmes funded by the development industry. It is also worth noting how the development industry works in the neighbourhood, as while participation and partnership are claimed as methodological priorities, it was clear that development brokerage was a major part of getting funds to drive local initiatives. This meant that many local NGOs and associations needed to fit within priority areas for international partners and relied on what Olivier de Sardan (2005, 1988), in his fieldwork based in West Africa, termed development brokers – individuals who can straddle both the local and Western worlds.Those able to fulfil this informal brokerage role were generally from the elite classes, possessive of a high level of education and an ability to present ‘projects’ in the required ­professional-­looking and savvy format, projecting their ability to meet specific requirements in order to gain

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funding (e.g. providing budgets, project objectives and a project plan) (­Olivier de Sardan 1988). Brokers, however, are not generally the people who are at the centre of ‘development,’ i.e. the poor themselves. However, NGO and government funds going to local groups and associations favour associations with development brokers, forcing the poor to be at the mercy of development brokers and their ability to ‘sell’ worthwhile community development initiatives and show they are in line with international priorities. Brokers are the main point of contact with the international development industry because they can communicate and operationalise requirements – not necessarily because they understand the needs of the marginalised (Tendler 1982). The crucial point here, then, is that the ‘modern’ development narrative shapes the construction of what hèrè and the good life actually mean. The ‘modern’ development narrative is a form of powerful ‘knowledge’ that tells people how to act and what to aspire to. It is important to point out that this knowledge, which is firmly rooted in modernisation theory, may or may not be helpful for people in the neighbourhood. Some of the modernisation development agenda is received positively; for example, in interviews people spoke about how access to education and health were crucial to personal and community hèrè. Yet the aspiration for ‘employment’ is depressing for many. For example, in a focus group of young males from the neighbourhood they expressed their frustration and the lack of dignity they feel because they cannot find employment, against a backdrop of the government and some development agencies calling for formal employment as a way to realise progress. These young men talked about how they used their ka da I yèrè la and dusu to try and find jobs, but were not successful. The inability to find employment has social consequences for these young men, often disappointing their parents who had worked hard themselves to get these young men an education so they would get better jobs and help the family. It also meant that many of the young men could not marry, as they could not support a family of their own and were still living off their parents.The promise of capitalist economic development providing formal employment for young people was clearly failing in the neighbourhood. The unemployment rates were high, especially for youth, and, like the rest of Mali, the aspiration of formal employment for the majority is seriously wanting. The modernisation development narrative did not necessarily lead to the realisation of personal and community hèrè for those who repeat, internalise and pursue these development aspirations. Also concerning were the active ‘sensitisation’ programmes being funded by international development agencies to push particular agendas of modern development. These sensitisation programmes work to target specific ­subjectivities  – to change behaviours, aspirations and agency. For example, a radio programme called Cesiri Tono (Fruits of Perseverance) aired over 140 episodes across Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, and Burkina Faso between 2004 and

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2005. This drama told a story about child slavery and trafficking, emphasising their links with unwanted pregnancy and HIV/AIDS. The programme was funded by major international NGOs and aid agencies and specifically aimed to change the behaviours, attitudes and aspirations of its listeners through ­well-­told and dramatic story lines. Yet these narratives around child slavery linked the practice to parents’ irresponsible behaviours, completely overlooking major reasons for child labour such as relational poverty and the global supply chains that Western economies and companies benefit from. In this vein, Neil Howard (2012) problematises the assumptions underpinning much of the international child ­anti-­trafficking policy and discourse. He argues that, ‘in order truly to protect the young labour migrants defined as trafficked, the policymaking establishment needs to focus more closely on the structural economic underpinnings of migration and exploitation, and to adopt a more participatory approach to policymaking’ (Howard 2012: 460). The development industry can present itself as a force for good but it often does so without examining its own assumptions and broader hegemonic relations. Shaping subjectivities within development intervention frameworks such as just described, needs critical attention.

Individualisation as modernisation Another example of the impact of modernisation and development discourse is the process of hyper individualisation in the neighbourhood, which has created social tension. Two concepts shaping subjectivities are relevant here  – kelen bara4 (individualism) and djè ka bara5 (collectivism)  – and are highly contentious in the neighbourhood. Less about direct development interventions and more about the processes of neoliberalisation, a common observation made in the neighbourhood is the tension between the wealthy who feel development should be more of a liberal pursuit underpinned by individualistic beliefs, and the poor who believe in the collective as a way to development. I will draw on this example further but first, however, I will use some definitions to locate djè bara and kelen bara. As a whole, djè bara or collectivism is highly regarded and valued in the neighbourhood while kelen bara or individualism is often judged to be undesirable. It is equated with the mentality of a Western person, and with negative characteristics such as disconnection, selfishness and disregard for others. To most of the people I interviewed, the individualistic way of living as seen 4 Kelen is Bambara for the number one, meaning, single person, bara is Bambara for work. So, kelen bara is work for one person. 5 Djè is Bambara for collective, together, bara is Bambara for work. So Djè bara is work together.

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in the Westerner or Toubabou6 is not desirable because it denies what it is to be Malian, to be part of the collective. It is understood and accepted that the benefits from initiatives undertaken by an individualistic agent cannot be experienced by the whole community. Collectivist agency, in contrast, occurs when everyone contributes to the project and the benefits are spread to the whole community. Two Bambara proverbs were commonly cited in this regard: ‘When birds fly together they make a bigger noise’ and ‘We all walk in the same door together, so we walk out the same door together.’ To those of the collective worldview, individualistic agency typically did not have a developmental mind because it aims to advance ­well-­being for one person, not the group. Thus, to the collective worldview, collectivism is the only way to achieve development across most domains, including education, healthcare and agriculture. That said, collectivism was not always viewed in a positive light, especially by the elite in the neighbourhood as well as Malian and international employees of development organisations operating in and around the neighbourhood. Collective development and related agency were often explained as ‘traditional’ and sometimes ‘backwards’ pursuits. As one interviewee, an academic from the Université de Bamako, who had spent significant time studying in France, articulated, ‘Development in Mali is a process from traditional to modern through decentralisation.7 We must keep the good aspects of collectivity while becoming modern.’8 The elite saw certain parts of collectivity as holding the individual back due to obligations of the traditional society designed to protect the collective, such as sharing wealth, obligations regarding kin relationships and expectations regarding gender and roles relating to one’s birth order. Implicit in this worldview is indeed a distinction between individual and collective ­well-­being that prizes the individual over the collective, and supports private property and just rewards for labour. For example, what one young man from the neighbourhood, who was born in a rural village but had moved to the neighbourhood to live and work for his wealthy older brother and in the process had become wealthy himself, articulates here was a typical response from people in the middle and upper strata when reflecting on the problems with the collective worldview and how assets are shared between the collective: So the people in [the study site] here, yes, the wealthy people work hard and they understand how we can make money and how hard it

6 Bambara word for foreigner, generally of western origin and white. 7 Here the interviewee was referring to national policies introduced after 1996 to decentralise powers and governance to local authorities. 8 Male Interviewee 1, the neighbourhood, March 2011.

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is. It will be hard for them to take it and give it freely. But people from [a village in the region of Segou] do not know that. They think if you have got money it is god who gave it to you and you need to give it to your neighbour, no problem.You see?9

Dusu, ka da I yèrè la and collective agency Despite the push towards individualisation, people in the neighbourhood rarely act alone  – instead most people had become part of associations to help them achieve their personal and collective aspirations. Ka da I yèrè la and dusu were important concepts driving people’s collective action. For e­ xample, when asked how someone can overcome hardship, the women’s focus group in the neighbourhood (which consisted of seven women from poor households) said, ‘We encourage them to stand up with their dusu and do something. We invite them to join this association or another association as there are many associations to do something.’10 Most informants used their ka da I yèrè la and dusu to advance aspirations or hèrè through collective agency in associations. To give another example, one young man I interviewed had started an association to help students in the neighbourhood to pass their university exams. At the time of my fieldwork, the Université de Bamako was closed for the third year in a row.Thus, three years of university students had had to put their studies on hold. At the time of my last stint of fieldwork in December 2011, the university was reopening and had just informed the students they would need to sit their exams for subjects they had taken 18 months before. This young man, who had no problem describing himself as poor but very smart, brought together many of the other students in the neighbourhood to revise and prepare for the examinations. Another woman I interviewed told me about her association, which had developed a women’s tauntin (revolving loan fund). Scattered around the neighbourhood were small green plots in the red dirt where women together grew small amounts of lettuce and carrots to sell in the marketplace.

Dusu and ka da I yèrè la – towards Liberation? So far I have argued that dusu and ka da I yèrè la underpin purposeful action towards hamiw or aspirations. Yet aspirations are augmented by processes of power, which may or may not help people contend with the difficulties they face in the neighbourhood. Consequently, it cannot be claimed that 9 Male Interviewee 1, the neighbourhood, March 2011. 10 Women’s Focus Group, the neighbourhood, 24 January 2011.

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purposeful agency driven by dusu and ka da I yèrè la is only oriented towards liberation. It cannot also be claimed that dusu and ka da I yèrè la are apparatuses of free will. Consequently, the internalisation of social norms needs to be reviewed when thinking about dusu and ka da I yèrè la. For example, the social norms around gendered roles and institutions, modernisation, development, worldviews and which hamiw and aspirations lead to hèrè are all matters of debate. Nonetheless, dusu and ka da I yèrè la should not be reduced to mere subjugation. Saba Mahmood (2005) has navigated such tricky analytical terrain, showing that even when agency is a ‘product of the historically contingent discursive traditions in which they are located’ (2005: 32), as were her women informants in the mosque revival movement in Cairo, we cannot write off their agency as just submissive and oppressed. Instead, Mahmood follows Butler and Foucault in seeing the agent constituted by power, and while there is no free will outside power, it is more interesting to examine how agents deploy their agency. In her own words: ‘we should keep the meaning of agency open and allow it to emerge from within semantic and institution networks that define and make possible particular ways of relating to people, things and oneself ’ (Mahmood 2005: 34). Furthermore, the social space is not static and is perpetually incomplete (Laclau and Mouffe 2001;Torfing 1999) and therefore the production of new structures and norms is always underway and possible, meaning the consequences of agency can put in motion other constructive outcomes (Giddens 1979). Certainly, dusu and ka da I yèrè la had a constructive value to purposeful agency, where even though the original intention of purposeful agency was not realised, useful outcomes were achieved. For example, one poor women’s association I met with was saving money to pay for a Qur’anic teacher to teach them the Qur’an so that they could learn the scripts and integrate these teachings more fully into their lives. At first glance, the Western feminist may analyse this situation as women having little choice in submitting to Islam, yet in so doing misses the fact that, as a result of such training, these women actually became more influential in the community because their literacy gave them a sort of credibility that legitimated these women to others. This credibility helped these women access networks such as Coordination des associations et ONG Feminines (CAFO), which works on poor women’s rights and access to resources. One may consider this example as liberation within Tully’s (2000) second level, as interrupting everyday hegemonic processes of power. But to contest systemic relations of power, one would need to be able to describe that system, to know what it is to be contested in the first place. This is what Biko, Freire and ­Martín-­Baró described as having a critical ­consciousness – a central part of the conscientisation process. Therefore, dusu

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and ka da I yèrè la alone are not adequate without critical awareness (and the possibility of accessing resources and opportunities).This follows Naila Kabeer (1999), who argues that the ability of people to have a critical consciousness is an important capability as the availability of alternatives at the discursive level, of being able to at least imagine the possibility of having chosen differently, is thus crucial to the emergence of a critical consciousness, the process by which people move from a position of unquestioning acceptance of the social order to a critical perspective on it. (1999: 441) Consequently, people’s agency in the neighbourhood should be supported through the development of a critical consciousness alongside other elements of empowerment such as access to resources, dusu and ka da I yèrè la. This was precisely the point conveyed by a young male teacher when he described the situation in the neighbourhood in the following terms: ‘most people are not informed of what is happening. They just have that prescription from the oppressor people and believe in it because they are told to and they do not want to make any change.’11 This teacher saw dusu and ka da I yèrè la as important to liberation but only if they were linked to broader processes of power in the neighbourhood. This meant that dusu and ka da I yèrè la were most useful if they were used to underpin ­agency-­contesting structures of class, gender, Western imperialism and how the development industry reproduces inequality. He went on to describe how important Freire’s teachings could be and the process of conscientisation: It should be policy to bring these people from being dehumanised to human again and get them to initiate critical thinking, help them to build up critical thinking for themselves to see where the problem comes from. So if they can see the cause, then they should be able to think for themselves on how to solve the problem. If they can think of that then they can take action for themselves. So this is something better than just coming for a project to give people money. It is very difficult but I think it would be better to adopt Freire’s steps to help these people make it through. Help them through dialogue, love and information. Find out where the problem is and to think about what are the possible solutions through critical thinking. And then to take action for themselves instead of having someone else to take action for

11 Male Interviewee 1, the neighbourhood, December 2010.

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them. I think they know what is best for them and how even what is best for them. So they could be able to choose what they want and even if they don’t want that they should be able to make it through in succeeding in what they want to do.12 While people in the neighbourhood understood dusu and ka da I yèrè la as underpinning agency and broader change, it is important to see that ka da I yèrè la and dusu are not enough alone to effect such change.The addition of a critical consciousness that deconstructs processes of oppressing power would perhaps lead towards a psychology of liberation. The question then is whether the development industry can allow critical consciousness to develop, even if it means challenging the very premise of the aid paradigm. It is true that some NGOs and community organisations actively pursue methodologies similar to the conscientisation process. For example, a small international NGO funded village elders to run a radio programme in the rural region of Segou. This radio programme encouraged farmers to work with dusu, and to contest the injustices that contributed to their extreme material poverty. This radio programme specifically focused on teaching poor farmers about the inequality in international trade relations and how it affects the level of payments they received for their crops, as well as helping farmers understand their rights as per the Malian constitution, in the hope of holding the Malian state to account for any breaches in rights and compelling it to put its ­people before the interests of the global economy. While this radio prog­ ramme is perhaps conducive in part to liberation psychology, my observation is that such examples were of a minority, overshadowed by the mainstream modus operandi of the development industry, which strives to keep hidden the deep processes of power relating to neoliberalism and neocolonialism.

Conclusion In this chapter I have explored the idea of liberation psychology in development interventions, thinking about the case of the neighbourhood on the urban fringe of Bamako. Psychological movements focusing on liberation have one thing in common – the need to engage with the political sphere, taking into account power and hegemony. Concerning development interventions, processes of power regarding capitalism, neocolonialism and ­neo-­imperialism need to be revealed. The link needs to be made between critical consciousness and subjectivity with broader relations of power that constitute and empower agency. Iterations of conscientisation have made these links where 12 Male Interviewee 1, the neighbourhood, December 2010.

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psychology has been an important ingredient in contesting oppression, domination and exploitation. Liberation psychology in development is not necessarily an oxymoron, then, but ‘development’ needs to be deconstructed and the relations of power underpinning and running throughout it critically addressed. The challenge in regard to development is to situate its interventions within broader processes of power, even if this means contesting the very system that upholds it.

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Ray, Debraj. 2006. ‘Aspirations, Poverty and Economic Change,’ in A. Banerjee, R. Bénabou and D. Mookherjee (eds), What Have We Learnt About Poverty, 1–11. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rickwood, Debra, Pat Dudgeon and Heather Gridley. 2010. ‘A History of Psychology in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Mental Health,’ in Nola Purdie, Pat Dudgeon and Roz Walker (eds), Working Together: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Mental Health and Wellbeing Principles and Practice, 13–24. Canberra: Office of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health, Department of Health and Ageing. Rimke, ­Heidi-­Marie. 2010. ‘Governing Citizens Through ­Self-­help Literature,’ Cultural Studies, 14(1):61–78. Summerson Carr, E. 2003. ‘Rethinking Empowerment Theory Using a Feminist Lens: The Importance of Process,’ Affilia, 18(1):8–20. Tendler, Judith. 1982. ‘Turning Private Voluntary Organizations into Development Agencies: Questions for Evaluation,’ in USAID Program Evaluation Discussion Paper. Torfing, Jacob. 1999. New Theories of Discourse: Laclau, Mouffe and Zizek. Oxford: ­Wiley-­Blackwell. Tully, James. 2000. ‘The Struggles of Indigenous Peoples for and of Freedom,’ in Duncan Ivison, Paul Patton and Will Sanders (eds), Political Theory and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wright, ­Erik-­Olin. 2010. Envisioning Real Utopias. New York:Verso Books.

7

Conclusions

This book explored the use of  Western psychological expertise in ­development interventions. I sought to illuminate how the broad canon of Western psychological expertise as a product of Western modernity has been largely accepted into development practice without much hesitation or scrutiny. It has been the aim of this work to examine the use of Western psychological expertise as a technology of furthering hegemony and prevailing logics within development, where Western psychological expertise is a technology to reproduce particular processes of power and control. Of particular note is how Western psychological expertise has been used to develop individual efficiency, ­self-­regulation and free choice under what are becoming understood as neoliberal subjectivities. I have been critical of Western psychological expertise in this book. Some may find psychology one of the great products of Western modernity. Arguably there have been useful products of Western modernity such as discovery, science, technology and secularism.Yet there is a dark side to modernity such as economic exploitation of capitalism, colonialism, subjugation of women and ­large-­scale wars (Mignolo 2011; Kaviraj 2005). So while modernity has produced medicine to treat illness, it has also produced inequalities that allow some people to access these medicines and others to not. Similarly, Western psychological expertise as a product of Western modernity has produced interesting knowledge used by many around the world.Yet, it does have a dark side. It has obscured Indigenous psychologies, as well as being wilfully used in broader projects of oppression and exploitation, such as seen in behavioural economics. Perhaps most psychologists would not see behavioural economics as part of their canon, yet the fact being that psychology does not have

Conclusions  119

an explicit stance on power and knowledge, allows the discipline to be used by power. Therefore, it is timely that critical attention is given to the ways in which psychological expertise is used within development interventions. It has been the focus of this book to outline some important points when thinking about the use of psychological expertise in development interventions. I will briefly review these now.

Psychologies not psychology In this chapter I have proposed a broader meaning of psychology in light of thinking about its application within the development intervention. This is because first, in reviewing how ‘psychology’ is defined, much of Western psychological knowledge does not consider relations of power. Because development interventions are about power, it is important to include analysis of the way psychological knowledge and power interact within interventions, as this impacts how subjectivities are shaped. Further analysis of power is also important to analyse the ways in which Western psychological expertise can be ‘borrowed’ by other disciplines – such as that found in behavioural economics. Psychology as power and subjectivity helps make the connection to the way the state, policy and interventions shape minds. Ideology and hegemony then become crucial to thinking about the formation of subjectivities (Rose 1999, 1992). Still this is not to say these processes are deterministic, where indeed agency is not the complete reproduction of social power (Borgerson 2008; McNay 1999; Butler 1997).Yet, psychology as subjectivity shows the relationality of social processes on the psyche. Second, through tracing how Western psychological expertise rose alongside liberalism in Western modernity we saw how Western psychological expertise is a parochial Western concept. I suggested we move from understanding ‘psychology’ as a singular notion of the self as found in most of ­Western psychological expertise, toward ‘psychologies’ to encompass Indigenous ideas of psychology. This would mean an ontological turn where psychology is not something represented as necessarily in the individual, but the spiritual and ecological worlds. Third, because of the inherent politics of knowledge within psychology, it is important to situate the use of psychological knowledge in broader processes of hegemony and ideology. This is because the use of psychological knowledge deployed in development interventions – which are another site of contestation – can use psychology as a tool of regulation and oppression.

Development of subjectivities Development has always been about the development of subjectivities.Yet this point is not always the focus of development studies research. Interventions

120 Conclusions

have continuously sought to shape the minds of targeted subjects. Indeed, this was very much the logic of the colonial empire; to inferiorise, dehumanise and oppress Indigenous populations through targeting not only people’s physical worlds, but also their psychic worlds. While the logic of the intervention has changed, targeting of subjectivities remains firmly a part of the development intervention. There are many ways subjectivities are targeted using Western psychological expertise in contemporary development interventions.This book has explored four such areas. First, the behaviouralisation of policy – where behavioural economics borrowing from the psychological cannon to give legitimacy to its human behaviour claims, is used to augment and shape subjectivities towards economic ends. This is highly concerning as such an approach overlooks the social complexity and relations of power inherent in contexts. Through focusing on the perceived deficiency of individual behaviour and ­decision-­making (against market norms), behaviouralisation of development policy overlooks the relational poverty and global structures that development actors can themselves be embedded in. The second area of Western psychological expertise in contemporary development interventions is the use of child psychological development as a way to imprint national development priorities. Specifically, children are seen as a blank canvas and more receptive to the notions of developmentalism.The use of Western psychological expertise, represented as a solid and complete trajectory to what it means for a child to develop, is conducive to being appropriated by broader economic aspirations of the state and other development actors. The surety of child psychological development is problematic because it disassociates itself from how child psychological goals relate to the way these goals feed into national economic priorities. A third area for Western psychological expertise in contemporary development interventions is the push from development actors for global mental health, which also illuminates issues with exporting Western psychological expertise, particularly psychiatric knowledge and treatments. Through a ­post-­colonial lens, the global mental health movement can displace Indigenous forms of knowledge, including those relating to the self, psyche and health. Indeed, mental ill health is not necessarily understood in terms of a chemical imbalance as within Western psychiatric discourse. Further, the pharmaceutical industry has championed the Global Health Movement as a way to penetrate new markets in the Global South. While both legitimise each other, the reality of those the Global Mental Health campaign and the pharmaceutical industry try to target is very different. The example of the farmers in India committing suicide because of failing crop prices was given. Viewing these suicides as a mental health issue strategically situates the ­socio-­economic crisis from a failing global economy to an issue of a few individuals.

Conclusions  121

The fourth and final area, happiness and subjective ­well-­being, has also increasingly become a focus of development interventions. The proliferation of ­multi-­dimensional measures of progress in development has induced the inclusion of subjective ­well-­being as a mark of a society’s progress. While this can be helpful regarding measurement of development, utility can hide material inequality. Subjective ­well-­being can also become a way to individualise poverty, especially seen in the ­self-­help movement where the individual is the locus of concern with life outcomes, both materially and experientially. Equally concerning is how the state and related actors are becoming more paternalistic in the way they legitimise intervention, as well as how they carry out the intervention itself. Two examples were given in Chapter 5, the justification outlined in the 2015 World Development Report, and the case of income management in Australian Indigenous policy. Both show the ways in which intervening in subjectivities in the name of economic efficiency is rapidly becoming a feature of neoliberal times. While participation is a highly regarded feature of the modern day development intervention, we have to ask if there really is room to change the nature of developmentalism through participatory methods. There would be a range of responses to this question, but of concern is how ­neo-­paternalistic justifications continue to build pace in development interventions, legitimising that state ­decision-­making is in the best interests of the subject. The example given was the rhetoric of participation in Community Income Management regimes. Community groups and members may ‘participate’ in the regimes’ development and operationalization, but there is no option in this participation for the regime of income management itself to change. Instead, income management is legitimised as essential for people’s own good – even if the people do not yet know it themselves.The intersectionality of ­neo-­paternalism and the use of psychological expertise in development interventions becomes another important area for examination.

Psychology as liberation It is an interesting thought to wonder what would psychology become if it integrated the idea of plural psychologies and actively engaged in the reclamation of Indigenous forms of knowledge about self and the world. Further, what would psychology become if it integrated specific ideas of power, hegemony and ideology? Could it then be so wilfully used by elite interests? Moreover, perhaps it could then be used by the marginalised, minorities and the vulnerable to fight back against oppression and domination. These are the questions engaged with in Chapter 6, exploring the ways Freire, ­Martín-­Baró and others have furthered conscientisation and liberation psychology. Yet through exploring the case of dusu and ka da I yèrè la,

122 Conclusions

I illustrated issues that may arise instituting these psychological concepts into existing intervention structures. Liberation psychology and development interventions are not necessarily conducive without a critical consciousness; processes of power regarding capitalism, neocolonialism and ­neo-­imperialism need to be revealed. The link needs to be made between critical consciousness and subjectivity, with broader relations of power that constitute and empower agency. Iterations of conscientisation have made these links where psychology has been an important ingredient in contesting oppression, domination and exploitation. Liberation psychology in development is not necessarily an oxymoron, then, but ‘development’ is to be deconstructed and the relations of power underpinning and running throughout interventions need to be critically addressed. The challenge in regard to development is to situate its interventions within broader processes of power, even if this means contesting the very system that upholds it.

The psychologisation of development interventions In writing this book and discussing the manuscript with colleagues, there seemed to be a difference for some between the development interventions I have described here, and interventions that were assumed to have a broad agreement that intervening in subjectivities and changing behaviour is a necessity. Consumption and climate destruction is one example that came up in these discussions.Yet it is dangerous territory when certain issues are seen as uncontentious to use Western psychological expertise within interventions. It can risk masking inequality and oppression, not to mention providing a cover for the reproduction of hegemonic relations. What I hope this book has achieved is to outline the ways in which we can think critically about such claims. For example, while people may find climate change justifiable to change minds, social complexity must be taken into account. Questions of who is being targeted and by whom need to be examined. Social complexity including global relations of power and relational poverty must be part of the assessment in thinking about behavioural change. Further, it is not enough to just focus on the poor’s consumption and climate ­change-­related activity. Indeed, this could be assessed as a diversion of focus and not targeting established and embedded forms of dominance and privilege. Further, the changing of behaviour often requires assumptions about ­people’s behaviour in the first place. As these assumptions are informed by Western psychological expertise, it would indeed be helpful in broadening this base to include plurality of psychologies in thinking about what particular behaviour is assumed normal, helpful and desirable. Neocolonialism is always a risk when particular forms of knowledge are taken as gospel truth.

Conclusions  123

Western psychological expertise fits firmly within this circle of concern. Perhaps subjectivities should break down the constructed divide between the individual and the ecological – an ontological turn to understanding the psyche beyond the human subject. Such a shift could move the discussion from one about humans needing to curb their consumption, to one of a complete shift and understanding of the ‘self.’ Focusing on psychology and subjectivities to shape and change can also obscure resistance.This is because when subjectivities are targeted, the default assumption is that they are problematic, deficient and needing to be changed. Yet resistance is an important part in contesting relations of power and injustice. These relations may not directly be about consumption and the climate; instead illuminating the intersectionality of climate politics with class, race or gender. So set programmes of changing minds cannot assume everyone will find this project amendable, as by assuming deficiency can silence resistance. Therefore, the psychologisation of development interventions is at risk, through making value judgements about what is problematic and what is not, in obscuring and destabilising resistance. On a final note, this book has only outlined specific areas of future research interest, drawing on my own empirical data and the studies of other scholars working in the field. I have not provided a comprehensive empirical study of all the ways Western psychological expertise has been used in development interventions. I hope that this work inspires fellow researchers, if they are not already doing so, to shift their focus here. It is indeed of great significance to examine the ways in which psychological expertise is deployed to create which subjectivities, for what specific ends.

References Borgerson, Janet. 2008. ‘Judith Butler: On Organising Subjectivities,’ The Sociological Review, 53(Supplement s1):16. Butler, Judith. 1997. The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford: CA: ­Stanford University Press. Kaviraj, Sudipta. 2005. ‘An Outline of a Revisionist Theory of Modernity,’ European Journal of Sociology/Archives Européennes de Sociologie, 46(3):497–526. doi:10.1017/ S0003975605000196. McNay, Lois. 1999. ‘Subject, Psyche and Agency: The Work of Judith Butler,’ Theory, Culture and Society, 16(2):175–193. Mignolo, Walter D. 2011. The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Durham: Duke University Press. Rose, Nikolas. 1992. ‘Engineering the Human Soul: Analyzing Psychological Expertise,’ Science in Context, 5(2):351–369. Rose, Nikolas. 1999. Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self. 2nd edition. London: Free Association Books.

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Index

ability aspect of freedom 9–10 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) 82 achievement 47–48 Africans perceived as being physically underdeveloped 44 agency 8, 22, 32, 38, 71, 77, 91, 92, 106, 108, 119, 122. See also human agency; individual agency; affecting 61–62, 78; collectivist 110–111; dysfunctional 81; and freedom 9–10; Indigenous 81; normalising 54; and power 33; purposeful 23–31, 103, 112–14; as resistance 88–89; and structure 6, 8 Algeria and colonialism 44 Alkire, Sabina 6, 9, 10, 64, 89 alternative modes of norms 51 Althusser, Louis 37 Altman, Jon 78, 81, 82, 83, 84, 87, 88 apartheid-era psychology 100 aspirations 103–5, 111; for a better future 105; developing desirable 61 Australia 2; income management policy 16, 81–92, 121; Indigenous healing in 100–1 autonomy of self 28–31, 32, 78 Bamako 15, 16, 23–24, 103–11 Bambara concepts of the self 22–24 Bandura, Albert 22, 28, 29

Basics Card 82–83, 87 behavioural change 61–62, 122; in income management 85–87 behavioural economics 52, 61, 77, 83, 86–88, 118, 120; and neoliberalism 53–54 behaviouralisation of development policy 60–66, 79, 90–92, 120; case study 60–62 Bhabha, Homi 36 Biko, Steven 100, 102 Black Consciousness movement 98, 100 “Black” identity: in Algeria 44; as being inferior 44–45, 100 British empire exploiting labour in Global South 43 Burkina Faso 30 Burman, Erica 15, 32, 54, 66 Butler, Judith 33, 38 capability approach of development policy 8–9, 10 Cape York Institute 83–84 Cape York Reform 84, 91 capitalism 5, 10, 43, 46, 108 Carothers, J. C. 44 ‘Cashless Debit Card’ 85, 86, 91 cash transfers, conditional 62 child development 32, 120; linked to economic development 66–67

126 Index

child labour 67 Child Protection Income 83, 84 child slavery 109 choice architecture 61 climate change 122 cognitive factors for violent behaviour 69–70 collective agency 10, 27, 29, 111 collectivism 27, 31, 109–11 collectivist society 30–31 Colonialism 36, 43, 54, 101, 118. See also neocolonialism; controlling subjectivities 44–45, 97 coloniality 48–49, 51, 54, 59, 67 colonisation: of Australian Indigenous people 81; of Western psychological expertise 34, 43 community 1–2 community development 82, 107, 108 Community Development Programme (CDEP) 82 Community Income Management 90–91, 121 conditional cash transfers 62 conduct of conduct 49 conscientisation 98–99, 102, 112–13, 121, 122 control over subjectivities 44–45 critical consciousness 98, 102, 112–14, 122 critical psychology 13–15, 16, 32, 98. See also psychology cultural model of poverty 77 culture: changing nature of 36; impacting psychology 29–31 decentralisation in Bamako 107 decision making 77; influencing 60–62 de-ideologising everyday experience 99–100 de-politicisation 52 de Sardan, Olivier 3, 107 development 1, 3–8, 14–18, 22, 32, 54, 60, 72, 98, 107–10, 112, 115, 118–22; individual responsibility for 10–11, 45–49; and neoliberalism 10–12; and neopaternalism 78–81; neutrality of 64–66 development brokers 107–8 development discourse 3–4, 104 development industry: in Bamako 107–14; neutrality of 64–66

development intervention 2, 38; changing focus of 5–8; and child development 66–67; contesting 3–5; and liberation psychology 103–5; morality of 79–80; in neoliberal era 11–12; and neo-paternalism 78–81; participation in 90–92; and paternalism 76–77; during post-WWII era 45–48; production of power in 65; psychologisation of 39, 43–55, 58–72, 97–115; and subjectivities 119–21 development policy: behaviouralisation of 60–66; increasing importance of psychological domain 12–13; to universalise neoliberalism 58 development professional 1–2 discourse analysis 17 diversity of social groups 38 djè ka bara 109–11 domination and control 10, 35, 36, 44–45, 65; by psychological knowledge 14–15 dusu 15, 23–31, 103–5, 111; and collective agency 111; definitions of 26–27; and liberation 111–14; related to autonomy 29 economic development: causing mental ill health 69, 70; of individual 63–64, 80; linked to child development 66–67; linked to psychological attributes 60–62 economy: modernisation of 46–48, 54, 108–9; and neoliberalism 52 efficacy. See self-efficacy entrepreneurial trait 47–48 equality and human freedoms 9–10 Escobar, Arturo 3, 4, 5, 65, 106 everyday experience, de-ideologising 99–100 Families Responsibilities Commission (FRC) 84, 91 Fanon, Franz 36, 37–38, 44, 63 film watching to develop desirable aspirations 61 Forrest, Andrew 85, 86 Foucault, Michel 33, 35, 49, 50, 119 freedom 8, 9, 51, 77–78, 89, 97–98, 102

Index  127

freedoms of opportunity 9–10 freedoms of process and agency 9–10 Freire, Paulo 98–99, 102, 113 French dominating Algerian subjects 44 Freud, Sigmund 44 From Hand Out to Hand Up (Pearson) 83–84, 85 functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify potential terrorists 69 gendered roles 106 Global Health movement 120 globalisation and neoliberalism 52–54 global mental health 120 global mental health industry 67 Global South 5, 43, 120; and expansion of global mental health 68; Western modernisation of 45–47 good governance in development intervention 4, 65 Gordon, H. L. 44 governmentality 9, 38, 49–55, 59, 63–64, 71, 86, 90 Gramsci, Antonio 37 Gross National Happiness Index 71 hamiw 103–5, 111; as reflection of broader processes of power 106–11; as a vision for a better future 105 happiness 70–71, 121; focus of development 12–13 healing by Indigenous people in Australia 100–1 ‘Healthy Welfare Card’ 85 hegemony 100, 119; and development intervention 3; and ideology 37–38; of knowledge 14–15; upheld by coloniality 48, 89 hèrè 23–25 historical memory 99 Hook, Derek 15, 38, 98, 100 Howard, John 82 Howell, Alison 15, 69 human agency 14, 18. See also agency; individual agency; being focus of development intervention 6–8; as centre of development 9–10 Human Development Index 10 human flourishing 10, 29, 64, 70–71, 88–89

human freedoms 9–10 human rights 79 hybridity 36 ideology 119; and hegemony 37–38 income management: as Australian Indigenous policy 81–92, 121; behavioural change in 85–87; community based 90–91; and depoliticisation of complexity 87–88; and market logic 86–88 Indigenous people: in Australia 51, 81–93, 100–1; colonialisation of 81–82; marginalizing 54; removal of 2; resisting income management 88; traditions not being valued 89 Indigenous policy in Australia 16, 17, 81–92, 101 Indigenous psychological knowledge 45 Indigenous psychologies 33–36, 118 Indigenous sector 82 Indigenous understanding of mental illness 68 individual: and behavioural economics 53, 62, 77, 79, 86–88, 120; and liberal governmentality 50–51; responsibility for development 10–11; responsible for their poverty 77, 85; taking responsibility of happiness 71–72 individual agency 9, 11, 12, 27, 29, 97, 110. See also agency; human agency; being focus of development intervention 8; problematising 63–64 individualisation and modernisation 109–11 individualism 27, 35, 51, 53, 99, 109–11 individuallist society 30–31 individual self-regulation 49–50 internal motivation 23, 25–31 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 11 interpellation 37 Jung, Carl 44–45 ka da I yèrè la 15, 23–31, 103–5; and collective agency 111; definitions of 27–28; and liberation 111–14 Keïta, Modibo 11, 24 kelen bara 109–11

128 Index

knowledge: in development interventions 5–8; hegemony of psychological 14–15; influenced by Western thought 22–23; reclamation of 101–2 liberal governmentality 49–52, 71. See also neoliberal governmentality liberalism 43, 49–50, 52, 54, 119. See also neoliberalism liberation 97–98; and dusu and ka da l yèrè la 111–14; and psychology 121–2 liberation psychology 16, 98–100, 121–2; attributes of 101–2; and development interventions 103–5 libertarian paternalism 77 liberty, governance of 49, 79 living on country 89 Mahbub-ul-Haq 9 Mali 2; and liberation psychology 103–11; modern development in 106–9; purposeful agency of 23–24; and structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) 11–12, 80 man as head of family 106 market logic 52–53, 63–64, 81; and income management 86–88 Martín-Baró, Ignacio 99–100 McClelland, David 47–48 mental health: and development 58; global 67–70; not accounting for Indigenous understandings 68; and violence 51 mental ill health 120; and economic development 70; during error of terrorism 69–70 Middle Eastern other 69 Mill, John Stuart 79, 80 Mills, China 15, 68–69 modern development: in Mali 106–9; shaping definition of good life 108 modernisation 5, 118; and individualisation 109–11; of people 46–48; during post-WWII era 45–48 Mosse, David 4, 59 motivation and autonomy 29 Multi-Dimensional Poverty Measure 10 multinaturalism 35 mutual reciprocity 76

‘n achievement’ trait 47–48 neocolonialism 39, 68, 80, 81, 98, 102, 114, 122. See also Colonialism; and the state 89–90 neoliberal governmentality 9, 52, 59, 63, 86–87 neoliberalism 59, 63–64, 121. See also liberalism; in Australia 81–85, 88; and behavioural economics 53–54, 61, 77, 83, 86–88; and development 10–13; and globalisation 52–54; and mental health 68–69 neo-paternalism 77, 89; and development 78–81 nervous condition 44 New Income Management (NIM) 83 non-governmental organization (NGO) 81, 82, 107–9, 114 Northern Territory Intervention 51 Nudges 61, 77–78, 80 objective facts in psychology 13 onotology in Indigenous psychologies 34–35 oppression 44–45; and conscientisation 98–99 other, improving the 46–48 pacification 2 Parker, Ian 98 Parsons, Talcott 45 participation in development intervention 90–92, 121 passive welfare dependence 85 pastoralists 2 paternalism 10, 16, 72, 76–78, 99, 102, 121; libertarian 77; neo-, 77; nudge 77–78, 80 peace psychology 69–70 Pearson, Noel 83–84, 85 personality 30 pharmaceutical industry and global mental health movement 68–69, 120 Piaget, Jean 67 place-based income management initiatives 84–85, 86 politics in psychological intervention 38–39 postcolonialism 16, 36, 45, 48, 81, 87, 101, 120 post-structuralism 33 post-WWII era and intervention 45–48

Index  129

poverty: as a complex process 79–80; cultural model of 77; as fault of individual 10, 77; reduction as responsibility by individual 63–64; relational 65, 88, 120 power 33, 37–38, 97, 112; as coloniality 48–49; in development interventions 65, 80; and hegemony 3; presented as knowledge 14; and psychological knowledge 14, 119; and psychology 15–16, 22–24, 54–55 psyche 16, 47; development of 32, 33, 47 psychiatric treatment for global mental illness 68–69 psychological domain 9, 12–13, 15–16, 33, 54, 58, 97, 102 psychological knowledge 37–39, 45, 97, 103, 119; Western 14–15, 16, 23, 36, 50–52, 54, 119 psychologisation of development interventions 39, 58–72; genealogies of 43–55 psychology: critical 13–15, 17, 98; defining 31–33; and development interventions 54, 97–115; Indigenous 34; as liberation 102, 121–2; and power 22–40; as psychologies 119; in South Africa’s apartheid-era 100; as tool of dominance 38–39, 44–45 psychopolitics 38–39, 62, 66, 67 public deliberation in policy formation 9–10 purposeful agency 23–31, 103–5 Racial Discrimination Act 82, 90 racial infection 45 racial other 44–45, 48–49 racial relations 81 racism 14, 36, 48, 54; in apartheidera psychology 100; in Australian neoliberalism 81–82 relational poverty 65, 88, 120 resistance 123 Riesman, Paul 30 Rose, Nikolas 50, 51–52 Ryan, Richard 29 Sartre, Jean-Paul 44 School Enrolment and Attendance Measure programme 62 self 123; Bambara concepts of 22–24; as concept being social rather than

individualized 29–31; helping one’s 47, 51; in relation to market logic 52–53; Western concept of 14, 32 self-belief 23, 25–31 Self-Determination Theory (SDT) 28–29 self-efficacy 13, 28, 29–31 Self-Efficacy Theory 28, 29 self-help psychologies 71–72, 102 self-motivation 28–29 Sen, Amartya 6, 8–9, 64, 71, 88 sensitisation programmes 106, 108 social complexity and income management 87–88 social norms manipulation 61, 65, 81, 87–88, 112 social pressure to change behaviour 62 Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Welfare Payment Reform) Act 2007 82 social support creating state dependency of individual 10 social tension 109–11 society being focus of development intervention 5–6 South African psychology 100 South America and liberation psychology 98–100 state: implementing subjectivities 76–93; intervention with poverty 10; and neocolonialism 89–90; role in income management 87 Stolen Generation 101 Stronger Futures legislation 83 structural adjustment in Mali 11–12 structural adjustment policies 80 Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) 11–12, 80 subjective well-being 70–72, 121 subjectivities 32, 50–54; changing with income management 86–88; and coloniality 48–49; and critical psychology 14–15; development of 119–21; formation of 33; implementing 76–93; non-peaceful 69–70; in post-WWII era 47–48; shaping in Bamako 108–9; and shifting social norms 61, 65 suicide as mental health issue 69, 120 Sunstein, Cass 77, 78

130 Index

tax compliance of citizens 61 technologies of citizenship 103 Teo, Thomas 13 terrorism 51; and mental ill health 69–70 Thaler, Richard 77 theory of subjection 33 third space of hybridity 36 Truman, Harry 45–47 utility metric for happiness 71 values 9, 77, 81, 89, 92 violent behaviour and its cognitive factors 69–70 Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo 35 Voluntary Income Management 83, 90 Vulnerable Income Management 83, 84 War on Terror 51, 69 welfare payment quarantining 82–83, 85 welfare reform 83–84 welfare-to-work strategies 64, 85, 88 well-being 23; subjective 71, 121 Western concepts of self in psychology 14 Western domination 4–5, 10, 35, 36, 44–45, 54

Western imperialism 43, 65 Western modernity 47–48 Western origin of theories 30–31 Western psychological expertise 5, 22–23, 36, 118–19, 123; encourages coloniality 49; and experimentation on racial other in colonialism 44–45; extending political goals 38–39; independent of culture, politics and power 32–33; and liberal governmentality 50–52; resistance to 101–2 Western psychologies: and Indigenous psychologies 34–35; as universal process 30, 32 White Settler society in Australia 81 WHO 58, 70 will to improve 46 World Bank 6, 11, 12, 64, 79, 80 World Development Report (WDR) 6–7 World Development Report: Mind, Society, and Behavior (World Bank) 12, 60–66, 79 World Health Organization (WHO) 58, 70 Wunan Foundation 91